The Essential Quality Your Business Needs

  Is there one? One quality which is more valuable (and therefore more necessary) than others.

Well, that is not a simple question.   All businesses need a variety and a numb er of qualities to go successful through their start-up phase and then perhaps a different (though overlapping) set of qualities for their 'stablisation' phase, their growth phase - and so on

However, through each of these phases, perhaps one specific quality is more valuable than others.  

Then, we get the situation where the external context (the business environment) makes a particular quality more important.

As of now, all businesses are facing threats from technology (and specifically AI).  Ironically the threat posed by AI is even applicable to AI companies themselves. (The biggest threat is faced by those whg don't think they are facing a threat.)

In situations where there is a generic, external threat (and especially where that threat is only partially understood) all businesses need the essential quality of remaining flexible.  This can be called flexibility, agility, resilience or ….. but it is the ability to 'read' the situation and take appropriate action.  This will depend on the market the business is in - but act it must.  

So, all businesses should currently be reading their own situation snd the external factors that are in play (and how these relate to the business and the way it operates).  You should be getting ready to act - even if tyou are not yet quite ready to act.

Is your business agile enough to survive?

Just Work a Bit Harder

  That’s what many of us think we have to do to make ourselves more productive, more effective.

But it’s not true!

I’ve repeated many times in this blog that you are not productive if you are not doing the right things.

The simplest way to illustrate this is if you have a product in your portfolio that is loosing money - for whatever reason.  If you increase the output of that product you lose more money.  Is this a smart thing to do?  Of course not.

The answer is noy complicated. You have to have a sound and secure strategy - designed to meet your long-term goals, achieve your mission.  Then you have to translate that strategy into a series of action plans designed to reach agreed targets along that route to success.  

This is really what’s meant by ‘Work smarter, not harder’.

There are all sorts of intermediary and ancillary issues to think about - staff training, development  and deployment, staff well-being, your own well-being,  looking past current priorities through improved marketing snd productivity innovation ….. I could go on but I guess you get the picture.

Think about why you are running a business (or a department, a machine, a process, etc.  Then think about what success means. Start to plan how to get there.  

Then work hard!

Comment and advice for Andy Burnham

 The UK has a new Primę Minister - allegedly  a charismatic, left-leaning one.  He is looking to change things - lots of things.   

He claims to be supportive of business but we will have to wait and see.  

What I want are policy and actions that will support businesses in increasing their productivity - support for the creation of adaptive, flexible, skilled employees, support for innovation, support for research and  development.

My one worry about what I have heard and read so far is that Andy Burnham is keen to redistribute wealth - from rich individuals to less rich ones, from the state to devolved agencies in the regions,.   There appears to be some clarity about the measures he will take to do so … but he seems less clear about creating more wealth to be part of that redistribution.

Andy …. Think of your task not as creating, and then distributing wealth - but as creating value for all stakeholders … and then think of the support you need to provide to those various stakeholders to maximise their own particular contribution to creating value for all. 

A Gap to be Filled by AI?

 Automation has long been championed as a driver of higher productivity in the manufacturing sector.  It has been very successful in some areas - most often in high volume manufacturing operations  such as automotive and computing.  We are all used to seeing robots carrying out activities such as welding car parts.

However in lower volume manufacturing operations, understandably, there has not been the same level of investment.  There is still a disconnect between the vision of automation and the technically and financially feasible creation of automation tools, flexible enough to cope with smaller batch numbers and run times.

Now there is hope that the addition of AI  and other advanced software technologies can bridge this gap and extend automation into more areas of manufacturing.  This allows intelligent control of flexible operations.  For example, vision systems allow machines to see what is happening, whether queue are forming and to assess the results of an operation such as assembly.  Overall control can be handled by a remote human operator who can monitor the images produced and adjust operations 'on the fly'.

Some technologies of interest are much simpler.  RFID tags are increasingly added to oomponents so they can be identified, located and handled more accurately.  This increase of contextual information enhances the ability of the larger systems and technologies to understand what is happening and make appropriate adjustments.

The net result is faster, smarter, more agile manufacturing systems - and, of course, higher productivity.

Too Hot?

 Are you enjoying the period of hot weather we are in the middle of (in the UK)?  Some people don't but most seem to like it. 

Of course it may depend on your work situation.

If you can work from home in your tee shirt and shorts, you might think the hot weather is a bonus.  If, however, you have to of in to the office in s shirt snd tie (and even jacket) you might have a different idea. 

It might even make you ill or exacerbate a condition you already have.

In some industries, such as agriculture and construction,  there is a clear drop in productivity and/or effectiveness in hot weather - where there is a clear loss of working hours and some jobs cannot be carried out in extreme hear.

And if things are bad in the UK, spare a thought for southern Europe where temperatures are even higher.

And this heatwave is not a one-off incident or freak - it is the direction of travel. Global warming means we are increasingly likely to be exposed to such conditions.  

you need to begin treating it as such.  You need top stop making small, temporary adjustments and plan an infrastructure that supports effective economic activity in the changing climate.

For example, you may have to switch working hours to cooler periods of the day, increase flexible working, improve (preferably passive) cooling of workplaces, and so on.

Such measures may be inconvenient and will obviously incur some cost but it may be preferable to always invoking emergency measures to protect the workforce from excessive heat and keep changing planned activity.

Too Many Fctors

There is a host of factors that determine the productivity of an organisation - operating at a number of different levels.  

For example, the productivity of an organisation that is making products that are not attractive to the intended customer base cannot be high, irrespective of whether the company is efficient.   Then, a company  that is making  products  the customers want has low productivity if it cannot meet the quality requirements of those customers.

So how does a company manage all these factors.  It is one of those things that can be explained simply.  The company needs to adopt a sensible and appropriate strategy and then execute that strategy effectively.

It does sound simple, doesn't it?  Yet, it isn't. The company has to have a kind of 'golden thread' running from the mission and vision through strategy to tactics ,, through critical  success factors and on to systems, processes and operations.

Spinning that thread is the job of the executive team - and is why they get highly paid.

We, productivity consultants and advisers, have to keep looking over their shoulders and providing them with data that addresses key performance indicators and helps their planning and decision-making. We can make good executives better - but we cannot make bad executives into good ones.  

If they don't recognise the need for the 'golden thread' and the need to pay attention to detail at all levels of the organisation, they are possibly beyond hope . They will (hopefully) address some of the many productivity factors, but they will not have the consistency of vision and approach that aligns all parts (and all people) of the oorganisation in pursuit of key success factors and the eventual mission

Is ghis why democracy doesn't work?

 Most western democracies are going through turbulent economic times.  Of course, recently we have had the various Trump troubles - tariffs that seem to change on a whim - and wars and unrest that seem to pop up with increasing speed.  But Western woes predate the current Trump era - and even the COVID era, though that did have a significant, negative impact on most economies.

Oner problem is that we learned about our troubles too late to act.  As the situation turned and worsened, we were still reading 'good' figures and positive results.  

This is because many of the indicators used to judge performance are lagging indicators.  They tell us we're in trouble well after the trouble started.  We (the public) were enjoying low inflation, low interest rates and high property prices whilst national productivity was stalling.

The UK is now in a dangerous position whereby we cannot afford new infrastructure that might help catalyse productivity growth. Business confidence is very low - and when it is  low, businesses do not invest - in new capital equipment, and, even in the training snd development of the workforce.

We are experiencing the pain of low growth - and there is almost certainly more pain to come. 

Meanwhile the political parties are arguing about 'peripheral issues' - without productivity growth we cannot afford to increase our defence budget, increase spending on the NHS,  solve the social care problem and make everyone feel warm and cosy again.

Of course, voters don't vote for pain, so we wouldn't vote for a government even if it had the solutions to our current malaise.

This is why democracy is fundamentally flawed.  It works in good times- but not as well in bad times.

Of course I haven't anything better to offer you!