How many of us on a daily basis tolerate less than perfect, or even less than acceptable standards that, if we chose to, we would be well within our rights to challenge? Whether we are talking about the service we get in stores, restaurants or banks or from the people we work with – our teams, managers, suppliers – all seem to have an infinite range of reasons and excuses as to why it is impossible to deliver what we expect, whether we are talking about hard product or attitude and behaviour. Read More
Archive for June, 2009
You Get What You Tolerate*
Tuesday, June 30th, 2009Lean Enterprise Needs Enterprising Talent – Part 1
Friday, June 26th, 2009The global talent war has seen organisational leaders scratching their heads to understand how they can attract and retain the very best talent that is going to directly impact their organisational worth to shareholders, stakeholders, employees and of course customers.
As the ever present headaches of…
- trying to balance focus on maximising profit and margin v investing for growth
- implementing short term high impact initiatives v long term strategic thinking and planning
- focusing on a business as a whole (“corporate think” and control) or on its constituent parts (functional, geographical, product/service streams) Read More
Surely We Can’t Afford Sustainability in Today’s Economy?
Wednesday, June 3rd, 2009I resisted the temptation to have a really good apoplectic rant at a conference last night. Two construction industry apologists were suggesting that the nation, and the construction industry in particular, couldn’t afford to address sustainability in the current economic climate.
What a load of tosh. Read More
What Needs to be Done in UK Housing?
Wednesday, June 3rd, 2009Whichever way we look at home energy consumption the numbers are scary and construction (world wide) is reacting slower than it needs to.
Taking the UK as a ‘below average’ performer there is some simple maths to emphasise the task:
- 26million existing homes (99.9% leaking heat and wasting energy)
- A shortage of 2million homes
- Current build rate of <100thousand per year.
- Maximum ever U.K. build rate of 400k in 1948
- Design life of 200 years (optimistic).