Your Management System: An Engine of Creative Destruction
In the management system world ISO is often seen as a tool for compliance, consistency, and control. But what if they could be more than that? What if the very mechanisms designed to maintain order could also drive radical innovation and transformation? This is the essence of creative destruction, a concept popularised by feller called […]
Conscious & unconscious stages of learning
A Practical Tool for Navigating Growth & Change Running a business means you’re constantly learning, whether it’s adopting AI, new tech, navigating compliance, or developing your leadership team, you (and your team) are going to have to master new skills on the fly, whilst at the same time keeping the wheels turning. This is where […]
How to help your staff help you
Why is training, and even lifelong learning, important? Well, what our grandfathers learnt was pretty much the same as what their grandfathers learnt. Life was slow, the pace of change was slow, technology didn’t change. Like it or not (many of us don’t), but life ain’t like that now, as can be seen from the […]
Company values – what is their importance?
In a number of previous blogs, we have looked at various companies and their purpose, mission and vision several different times and from different angles. With these in place, an associated task is to think about defining your company values. Values statements serve as a framework to guide the daily actions and decisions; they represent […]
Drive the learning
Drive the Learning: The Final Step in Sustainable Improvement In the previous four blogs, we have explored the foundational elements of effective organisational transformation: Articulate intent, Know the flow, Master the measures, and Engage the people. Each step builds upon the last, creating a coherent system of improvement rooted in clarity, systems thinking, and human […]
Engage the people
It has been said that the most important job of any manager or leader is to both engage and grow their staff, and even their successors! Additionally, if you are an entrepreneur or business owner you actually make your business significantly more valuable if you engage and grow your team, in effect, to make yourself […]
Master your measures
I first came across this approach of looking at data when I was undertaking a Master’s degree with the world’s first Professor of Quality Management, a great guy called John Oakland. Now, this thinking and these tools and techniques are so powerful (and so criminally (IMHO) under-utilised) that if I didn’t have a mortgage to […]
Know the flow – Core Activity Map
In the last blog, we looked at articulating intent and defining your organisational purpose, which defines the value that is delivered to your clients. We are now going to look into the processes and practises that are instrumental to the delivery of your purpose. So, if we want to build a robust management system that […]
Articulate intent
As an owner manager there is a key question you might want to consider contemplating: What is your (company) purpose? I don’t mean to make a profit – that’s a result. When we think of an organisation’s purpose, we are thinking about the job you do for your clients and customers that they can’t do […]
5 Steps to Business Planning
Well, it’s that time of year again, the Christmas songs are out and I’m already out of Whamageddon, having heard that damn song “Last Christmas” on the very first day of December! All far too early for me! In the words of another famous singer, Mr Lennon, “Another year over and what have we done?” […]