Manufacturing businesses are constantly under pressure to improve processes to become more profitable, particularly in production activities – reduction of waste, better use of resources, wise procurement practices, work flow improvement, team motivation, etc. Attempts at empowering people on the shop floor to bring about improvements, however, are often not successful, based on the following…
I had to do some grocery shopping today and couldn’t help noticing the following words on the till receipt: “Do it with passion or not at all!” I fortunately love my job and put passion into what I do, but not everyone has this same experience of work. There are many employees, even some on…
Executives and their governing boards, within the current financial turbulence that most companies are experiencing, are being forced to re-evaluate strategies, cut costs and re-deploy employees and other resources to provide some return for shareholders. These leaders seem to be seriously challenged with growing revenue organically and are finding it hard to demonstrate value and…
In a Harvard Business Review study (July 2012), the article “Why top young managers are in a nonstop job hunt” (Monika Hamori, Jie Cao and Burak Koyuncu) described research based on the analysis of international databases of over 1 200 young high achievers and concluded that many of the best and brightest are not receiving the…
I see it all the time – leaders abusing their power. Instead of enabling the business environment to enhance productivity and engender trust, they manipulate circumstances to suit their own needs. Because they have authority (and this is particularly true of the chief executive officer/managing director position), they have the ability to manoeuvre people like…
The word “entropy”, from a physics perspective, is the corollary of the second law of thermodynamics, the way in which energy flows from a hotter object to a colder one – entropy goes up as the range of possibility and action goes down. An example of this can be found simply in cooking – once…
According to an old legend, vizier Sissa Ben Dahir presented an Indian King Sharim with a beautiful, hand-made chessboard. The king asked what he would like in return for his gift and the courtier surprised the king by asking for one grain of rice on the first square, two grains on the second, four grains…
One of the key roles of leadership is to assist your employees with their growth and development. Jim Rohn noted: “A good objective of leadership is to help those who are doing poorly to do well and to help those who are doing well to do even better”. This involves the mind-set, skills and knowledge…
The world needs talented people who make their respective contributions willingly and who act with the “bigger picture” of growth and development in mind. Creating opportunity and possibility for others as they apply these talents and skills appropriately, they not only engender stability in the economy, but also steer its growth. This is partly the…
Companies are simply not taking responsibility for career development amongst employees anymore. Sure, there are exceptions when companies fast-track certain individuals to fulfil the responsibilities of specific posts that are important to the business, but on the whole, career development is now largely left to the individual to accelerate and realise. For the most part,…
It is the main task of the CEO or business leader to establish the priorities that hopefully synergise to create a powerful money-making machine. Unless you are a one-person show (like a street vendor), you cannot personally implement them all – you need other key people to get them done. It was Walter Wriston who…
I am surprised at how many people hate feedback, whether it centres on performance, personality, character or behaviour issues. There seems to be a fear that the one giving the feedback does not have your best interests at heart and that the feedback will be detrimental, rather than uplifting, in terms of your growth and…
