For many people it's budget time again and I don't know about you but for me, doing the annual department budget was never my favourite task. My first budget was terrible, it was largely just given to me and not knowing much better I said sure I can do a 5% cut in costs! Having been through the loop a few times now I've learned the odd thing o...

If you want to change the culture in your organisation focus on the behaviours, no big shock really but what if I said there is a good chance that your own measures or business metrics are fighting against your efforts to grow your culture and improve behaviours?   Lets Look At An Example  We worked with a company who said that "Quality i...

The Thematic Goal process is, as we discussed here, a process for creating a rallying cry to give everyone focus on the single most important thing in your business, right now. It's executed by using Supporting Objectives with Lead measures that we discussed in our last post, here. Once you have your lead measures then, it's time to get into action...

The Thematic Goal as we discussed here, is your rallying cry to give your organisation the laser focus it needs to have on a specific topic. In a sense you create your own 'controlled' crisis without a crisis. Now that you have clarity about what is the most important thing your organisation needs to focus on, it's time to figure out the next stage...

Did you ever notice how what looked like impossible tasks or deadlines seem to just happen when there is that sense of crisis? "If we don't achieve X then we" loose the major customer or the company or whatever it is. People rally around, pull together and suddenly everyone is heading the same direction and you make the numbers or the deadline? It ...

What are you trying to do?  For the last 3 times I've started to write a particular article and then stopped, restarted, then stopped again. The reason?.. it just doesn't look right, it's not how I had it in my head, it's not... perfect. It wasn't till I was out walking the dog that it hit me, I was stuck in one of those really dangerous spots...

I've sat in a few, ok a lot of exec & operations meetings at companies as they discuss the various metrics that are being used to monitor the performance of the company and make some fairly major decisions. Each time I do I see largely the same thing, and it's not good. The range of metrics used in businesses always surprises me in the commonal...

"Now THAT's an hour of my life I won't get back!" ..it's a phrase I have heard a number of times leaving meetings, I'm willing to bet you have as well, in fact come on, let's admit it, it's a phrase we have all probably used. Meeting are generally those parts of the business that people hate and it doesn't seem to matter if you are an exec or anyon...

Summary This NZ based electronics manufacturer needed increase and sustain manufacturing capacity to meet increasing orders. We were asked to help evaluate the capital investment options of a new machine to provide the increase in capacity with a budget of approx. $200-300K available. The Challenge Our client, a growing New Zealand Based Electronic...

It's easy to get caught up with what everyone else is doing, to try and guess what's in their heads or what their strategy is for the way forward. People and companies all over the world spend countless hours and bundles of money trying to figure out what the other guy is doing or going to do rather than focus on the important thing, what are they ...