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Category Archives: Operations
Toyota’s tent joins Ford and GM in the boot.
As a little kid, the milkman used to deliver from a horse drawn cart. Even then, in the mid fifties it was outmoded, almost rustic, but endlessly engaging for a 5 year old boy. Much later, I was the … Continue reading
Posted in Change, Management, Operations
Tagged Change, change management, competitive strategy, Governance, Management, Operations, Personal Rant, Politics
2 Comments
StrategyAudit’s second law of SME success
Scaleable. My world is SME’s, helping them to be more profitable, more commercially sustainable, more accountable, by being focused on customers and their own processes and priorities. The outcome is that most successfully remain SME’s, avoiding the many death traps … Continue reading
Posted in Change, Leadership, Management, Operations, Strategy
Tagged Change, change management, Governance, Leadership, performance assessment, SME, Strategy
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Give Charman Stone a medal.
The decision by the federal Government not to support SPC last week has opened a can of worms. This time, the worms have some grunt, as the head worm, Charman Stone has shone a light into the corners of the … Continue reading
Posted in Change, Governance, Leadership, Marketing, Operations
Tagged Agriculture, Change, change management, demand chain, Governance, Operations, performance assessment, Politics, retailer, supply chain
3 Comments
Some non PC views on Holden
Amongst all the emotional rhetoric and dubious numbers being visited upon us by various interest groups and pollies after the announcement by GM that they will be folding their tents, there seems to be very little sensible analysis of the … Continue reading
Posted in Change, Management, Operations, Strategy
Tagged change management, competitive strategy, Leadership, Management, performance assessment, Risk
2 Comments
Design thinking: wasted hype?
Perhaps unfortunately I was on the receiving end of a rant about design thinking last week. It was a passionate, articulate, and informed rant, but a rant nevertheless. There is no doubt in my mind that design thinking is a … Continue reading
Posted in Change, Governance, Leadership, Management, Operations
Tagged Branding, Change, change management, communication, competitive strategy, Entrepreneur, Governance, great management, Leadership, portfolio, Strategy
3 Comments
Reality is visual
I had a post prepared for this morning, relating to the evolution of “local” agriculture, specifically around Sydney. However, the events of the weekend, the burning of Sydney’s surrounding bushland, including several of the farms of those I have been … Continue reading
Posted in Communication, Governance, Lean, Operations
Tagged collaboration, communication, performance assessment
5 Comments
Thinking “Lean” is instinctive.
It is amazing how people adopt to “lean” instinctively, without any planning, or knowledge of the cliches and tools spruiked by consultants (including myself). People are pretty sensible when left to themselves, they do not build waste into a … Continue reading
Posted in Customers, Lean, Operations, Sales
Tagged collaboration, communication, customer, demand chain, lean, Operations, performance assessment
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Defining the future of agriculture
Most of the really great innovation that happens has as a core component, a re-definition of what the future should look like. From Orville and Wilbur Wright, to Henry Ford, Martin Luther King and Steve Jobs, the words they used explained … Continue reading
Posted in Change, Collaboration, Demand chains, Operations, Strategy
Tagged category management, Change, change management, climate change, communication, demand chain, Entrepreneur, Innovation
2 Comments
Marketing debt.
I have just been a part of a post investment review with a client, looking at what a significant investment in capital equipment has delivered, compared to the planned outcomes, that underpinned the Capex. Not a pretty sight, and … Continue reading
Choose your customers
The sorts of customers you have play a significant role in defining who you are. A former client had a customer base that valued the hands on, custom design, and short supply chain they offered on their packaging component items. That … Continue reading
Posted in Change, Customers, Lean, Operations, Sales
Tagged Change, competitive strategy, customer, demand chain, Management, negotiation, performance assessment, Sales
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Engaging sales people.
I found myself in a heated debate last week with a headhunter about the value, and challenges of SME’s outsourcing the hiring of employees, particularly salespeople. Her view: SME owners are so time constrained that anything not “core” to success … Continue reading
Posted in Governance, Management, Operations, Uncategorized
Tagged change management, customer, Governance, Leadership, performance assessment, Sales, SME
1 Comment
Cognitive productivity.
At a simple level, cognitive productivity is just using the brainpower at your disposal to deliver the optimum outcome, weather that brainpower be resident between your ears, or between the collective ears of many in a group. However, it is … Continue reading
Blurring lines between manufacturing, capability, and imagination.
Manufacturing is not just an amalgam of industries, far more importantly, it is a capability, a way to capture imagination in a physical form. In discussions about manufacturing, its slow demise in Australia, the level and type of support it … Continue reading
Posted in Governance, Innovation, Leadership, Operations, Small business
Tagged Change, change management, collaboration, competitive strategy, Governance, Innovation, Leadership
2 Comments
Failing is not the same as failure.
It is often said that for successful innovation to occur, you must be prepared to” fail often, fail cheap”. Early testing and prototyping speeds up innovation cycle times, the longer a project proceeds with issues unnoticed or unfixed, the harder … Continue reading
Posted in Lean, Management, Marketing, Operations
Tagged category management, lean, Operations
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Not deciding is to decide.
Ever put off a difficult decision? asked for more information that you know will not change the outcome? shuffled the responsibility elsewhere? Most of us have, at one time or another, but we generally tell ourselves that we delayed the … Continue reading
Posted in Governance, Management, Operations, Small business
Tagged communication, Leadership, Management, performance assessment, SME
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Productivity increase = Wealth creation
The maths are simple, do more with less, and you have more left over at the end. Productivity is not just something you aim for in the factory, the opportunities to do more with less are everywhere, in every activity … Continue reading
Posted in Change, Governance, Lean, Operations
Tagged Change, change management, Governance, lean, Operations, performance assessment
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The “Duck” story for 2013.
How often have I heard the phrase ” he needs to get his ducks in a row before he can progress”, or some variation thereof. Often, and most recently yesterday, as a reason that less than expected progress had been … Continue reading
Posted in Management, Operations
Tagged Management, performance assessment, portfolio
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Negotiating with context and anchoring
We all negotiate every day, from the small mundane things in our lives to once in a decade decisions. Two simple considerations play a key role in the outcome: 1. Controlling the environment in which the negotiation takes place, and … Continue reading
Posted in Collaboration, Operations, Small business
Tagged Alliance management, collaboration, communication, Governance, negotiation, Strategy
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Seeing the real cause
How often do we get sidetracked by several possible causes of an adverse or unexpected outcome? In the course of doing a fair bit of process improvement work over the years, one of the really successful strategies I have used … Continue reading
Posted in Lean, Operations, Small business
Tagged change management, lean, Management, Operations, performance assessment, supply chain
1 Comment
An Apple supply chain pivot?
Tim Cook, the Apple CEO has just come out and announced that Apple will restart manufacturing in the US, starting with an unnamed Mac computer model, some time in the near future. The driver of “offshoring” to sources of cheap … Continue reading
Posted in Branding, Change, Lean, Operations
Tagged Branding, change management, lean, Operations, performance assessment, Strategy, web stuff
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StrategyAudit 