Almost every organisation you encounter will talk about leadership, how important it is to them and how they lead from the top. Sometimes, when you push a little and peel back the layers a bit, leadership and the commitment to having great leadership is perhaps not as ingrained in the company as they would have you believe. That's what clause 5.1 i...

The Threshold Policy  As a leader you are judged, fairly, or unfairly by your team's performance, that is after all one of your primary responsibilities, ensuring that your team delivers (and of course growing new leaders). Achieving this can bring great success, failing to results may well result in a shorter term at the helm than you planned...

Every organisation has challenges and areas where they need to improve, even the very best of them. The challenge is always figuring out what to work on and what not to work on or putting it in another way what are the Good things to work on and what are the Great things to work on. The aim is to only work on the great things rather than just work ...

We have all been there, we argue black & blue that it's round when someone else argues nope, it's a square, the weather is too hot or just right, you should set the machine like this or like that, the examples are endless.  I was talking about this top of viewpoints to a client last week and pulled out this image that I've used many times ...

I was talking to someone the other day about gardening in their organisation, I must admit it got a bit of a "are you mad" look which was fair. However, when you think about it there are similarities. After all as a leader, your role is to grow your people so let's think about it for a moment or two.  Room To Grow  Plants need room to gro...

Last week I was involved in a conversation with a person I met at a networking event where we were discussing problems they were having at their workplace with people not following processes. They asked me what I thought they should do to get people to follow the processes and stem the flow of issues. "How Do I get these people to just do what they...

If you are a long-term reader of our blog you will know that one of the things that we continually talk about is your organisational values and how you reflect these in everyday operations, how you live those values. So, what has this got to do with Quality? Well, let me ask you how many times do you see Quality in an organisations value list? Thei...

Many people in leadership positions struggle to have difficult conversations, not just those new to the roles, people who have been in a management/leadership position for years can still struggle to have the conversations that are needed within the organisation to help everyone improve. There are shelves lined with books by experts on the topic in...

In our previous post on Core Values, we outlined Permission to Play Values, those values that must be present in someone before you even let them in a organisation. There are some obvious ones here, Honesty and Integrity for example but there may be other ones that your organisation decide to add that are specific to your business or industry and t...

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...

Like a great many people around the world I ventured out at the weekend to try and see the Lunar Eclipse. I had a plan, since I knew I had to be at the top of a hill above the city to get a  clear view of the sky I would be up so I could leave at  5:30am to be where I wanted to be, have time to set up my camera gear and get read...

I have a question for you to think about this week. How often have you had a conversation with a colleague, a staff member or perhaps even your partner where you left feeling sure they knew what to do, what you wanted, what was expected yet that's not how they felt? Let me ask it another way, how often do you feel frustrated because something wasn'...

We thought it was time to get a quick bit of feedback from everyone about how they see 2018 shaping up and their focus for next year, and what better way than one of our 60 second surveys. We want to know about your 2018 focus for your business is it a big bold new direction or a continuation of the current long term plans? Create your own user fee...

If you have read our blog for a while you will know that we hold the annual employee review with great distain, for many reasons it's in effective and does neither side of the equation any real benefit. When it comes time to sit down with the boss to do an employee review session what invariably happens is that, as an employee, you quickly dig out ...

There are so many area's as a leader that you need to focus your energy on from making sure your team are performing well, those improvement projects you need to do to get those business metrics heading in the right direction and of course not forgetting the monthly reports and bottom line results! The list feels never ending. What if there were a ...

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 ...

Meetings are a complete waste of time!.. well if that's how you feel then you're probably doing them wrong! I know sounds strange when you go to so many meetings to hear that but yep you're doing them wrong and what's more, as a leadership team, there are only 4 types of meeting you need to be having, that's right, only 4 meetings but lik...

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 ...

I used to work for a boss who had an over riding rule, "The  answer is YES" no matter what, we answer yes then figure it out, then we do it. While from a marketing point of view this may well have been great, from a real world perspective it was terrible, let me explain. For a start there was an ever growing mountain of things to do, thin...

Becoming a Budget Ninja may not sound like something to aspire too but believe me, once you learn the ways of the budget Ninja you wont go back! Your busy getting prepared, you have studied with the grand master of the finance department and know what your challenges are. You've carefully read (and printed out our info-graphic) for 8 Tips...

So you have done the hard work, you have figured out what your real Core values are, you are clear on your permission to play values and you also have a couple of aspirational values that you are going to build a plan to embed these into your organisation. You are all set, let's get the posters made & framed! Frame them, Don't Frame them.. Not ...

Before we start I want to point I'm not going to be talking about in-depth project management or project office systems, I'm not talking about slippage, work breakdown structures or Gant charts or  Scrum sessions or anything like that. What I am talking about is actually controlling what projects happen in your organisation and why that's...

You hear the advice from a huge number of people, hit the big things 1st, focus on the biggest bang for the buck, don't sweat the small stuff. Yet the thing that people forget, it's all small stuff, until it's not! Big stuff starts out as small stuff, then it grows, it feeds waste or lack of accountability or poor company culture and it grows then ...

Productivity conversations are always interesting conversations, generally they start about being more efficient in the organisation, when what is really meant is I want more out the factory, which is fine. We invariably talk about what has been done so far and how they lead the floor and the example they set themselves. One of my favourite little ...

I can't tell you the number of companies I have seen who list speed or "responsiveness" in some form as a core value in their organisation. They claim it's the way of working in their business but when you really look it's just not there. It's listed because the leadership knows that moving at speed in the right areas is critical to getting things ...

When it comes to describing the LEAN Wastes I like the DOWNTIME acronym, it gives the added hint that these aren't good things. Most people know and attack the popular ones in the group, the loud ones if you like, Defects - it's out there big, bold, brash and hard to ignore. Inventory, it's in your face, always demanding more valuable (and costly)&...

Daily work life can be busy, meetings, phone calls, paperwork, emails, more meetings. It just never stops. By lunchtime, your head hurts and your thinking I just need 5 minutes to get things in an orderly list, then I'll be on top of it. The reality is that the rest of your organisation is probably having the same issues and as a result ultimately ...

We don't want managers, we want leaders! We hear and see that phrase or something similar to that a lot. In fact, so often it's now one of those throwaway lines that it's now just seen as spin, something that organisations say to sound good. But what if an organisation really meant it, what would that look like? What if, Leader was an actual title ...

How do you feel when you hit the situation when you have to say those dreaded words... "I Don't Know"? and why are they dreaded words in the first place, what makes it hard for some to say "I Don't Know" while others seem to manage it quite well?Don't get me wrong if you are saying "I don't know" every day while doing your job and it's about things...

"What If?" are magical words, they are the first words of endless possibilities and adventures. If people in history had never asked "What If?" we wouldn't have achieved so many things, no discovery of different continents, no flying in planes round the globe or setting foot on the moon. We would not have radio, computers, phones, electricity, mobi...

When people talk about lean there are so many areas that are discussed, there are of course all the tools – 5s, Kanban, load balancing (Heijunka), mistake proofing (poka-yoke) Root Cause analysis with things like fishbone diagrams, A3 problem solving, Andon systems, Gemba walks, Kaizen and so the list goes on, there is the history of it and what it...

People never seem to pay attention or understand what's being said, why do I have to keep repeating myself? We have said that our culture is X or that our priority is Y it was perfectly clear! I hear this time and again from leaders at all levels in organisations so often I'm losing count. Frequently it's backed up with I've told people this, we me...

Martin looked at the calendar on his wall and back to the invite on the screen to the off-site review. That can't be right he thought, we only just had an off-site to figure out this strategy stuff. He cast his mind back to the 2 days they had spent at the Hermitage Hotel in Mt Cook Village, it had become one of his favourite places on earth, the w...

A month ago I caught up with some friends for a drink and a chat to set the worlds to rights. I should explain that means we had a really good chat about everything that was bugging us and shared our various opinions on how to go about fixing it. Back home in Scotland, it's a great pastime, in part I think as a way of venting and letting off steam ...

It was Dan's idea, it can't be wrong, can it? Dan hired that person, they must be Ok, it's everyone else that just need time to adjust. Dan's the leader, so must know all of the answers, doesn't he? Let's be honest, it's possible that Dan is in fact always correct and infallible, it is however unlikely. Before we go on What I if told You that you r...

The other week I had a really interesting discussion over a coffee with potential client. They had been working internally to find a way to really drive and push a continuous improvement culture into their organisation and were looking for someone to help out. We talked about what their current challenges were and what they want to achieve, they sa...

When we promote people to their first management or leadership position it's very rare that we have actually trained them in advance for that position, it's equally rare that we train them at all for the new position there are in. Almost universally we promote people who were really good at the role they are in, they were a great accountant or engi...

Work groups are characterized by the least amount of interdependence. They are based on organizational or managerial hierarchy. Work groups may meet periodically to hear and share information. Teams are highly interdependent - they plan work, solve problems, make decisions, and review progress in service of a specific project. Team members need one...

I've never understood how being busy, having a full calendar somehow became a badge of honour, I'm so important that there is no time, it wouldn't surprise me to hear someone say they were actually booked 25hrs in one day! It's a madness that seems to be getting to epidemic levels. What does your calendar look like? Is it full of really important m...

I was at a meeting the other week when one of those annoying corporate sound bites was used to shut someone down, you know the ones that seem to sound right but when you stop and think about it a little they make zero sense at all. We've all heard and probably, unfortunately, used them from time to time but this one is one of the dumbest ones I can...

Solving problems can be challenging, that is after all why they are called problems. It gets harder though if it is something completely out of left field, something that is completely new to you and just leaves you stumped. It can be stressful at times, especially if you have a bunch of people all depending on your decision. Thankfully, you are pa...

I have been working with a couple of people of late who are just struggling to get things done, they have so much on their plates that there is just more to do than there are hours in their working week. The result of that is that they are stealing time from their personal lives to try and get things done in their work lives and feeling guilty abou...

The phone is ringing and you know it is going to be another unhappy customer, the only question is what are they going to complain about? Their product is late, there are defects in what they got, they got the wrong thing, there were too many or not enough. Every time the phone it is a complaint, another fire to be put out, another thing that you n...

With the year almost over a friend of mine got an email from his with a sheet of paper attached asking him to put together his 5 objectives for 2021 and remember they must be SMART! Smart being a SMART Goal which is about being Specific Measurable Achievable Realistic and Time bound. I hate this he said, what is the point, what the heck am I suppos...

I remember sitting in Biology back in high school (admittedly a long time ago) and the teacher explaining that our bodies were just a big battery for our brain. Sure, we have arms for reaching out and grabbing things, typically food, legs make us mobile so we can run away from the sabre tooth tiger and of course eyes to see the same sabre tooth tig...

The interesting thing about the leadership clause of any standard is that it is one many organisation do not pay enough attention to. It tends to be an area where people still believe it is the quality or the safety or the compliance manager's role and so the senior management team take a hands-off approach leaving things to the person they have ha...

Over the years we have talked with many organisations about their mission, vision, and company values, about setting up objectives and people to do well and be aligned to those things and it's gone well. Yet, I've always through there was a bit missing in the puzzle. When we talk about values, we mean the real values your company has, not the buzzw...

If I knew then what I know now… The inference from that little phrase is that you would obviously make a different decision and so things would turn out better. Often however that's not the case, certainly not with people at work. We all hire people who aren't suited for the company, they aren't necessarily bad people, it's just they don't fit the ...

Beware the HiPPO! It sounds like something out of the latest blockbuster superhero or horror film doesn't it, a dire warning to the hero about the danger the HiPPO poses with the expectation that the hero, at some point, will have to face the HiPPO and survive. Encountering a HiPPO can range from being terrifying too hilarious to, well, depressing....

When I hear about companies and their zero targets it makes me shudder, I feel sorry for the people involved in the organisation knowing that they can never succeed. It doesn't matter if you call it a target or a goal, zero means zero. According to the merriam-webster dictionary, Zero is "the absence of all magnitude and quantity", in other words i...