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John Heap Articles

Written by: John Heap

Do you need a Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) Program - Click To Read Article
CSR is 'fashionable'. it appeals. however, too many organisations adopt CSR as a 'badge' to demonstrate their altruism, their environmental credentials. This article argues that CSR is a business issues - not a badge of honour; it we approach it right, CST can help our bottom line.

Employee Empowerment - Click To Read Article
Empowerment has nothing to do with fatuous statements like “Our people are our greatest asset”. Almost all companies who say such things treat their employees badly, keeping them constrained and confined in rigid roles, supported by limiting job descriptions and masses of bureaucracy. Yet, empowerment is a relatively simple process (in theory, if not in practice). here is a simple 6 step guide.

Poke-Yoke prevents errors - Click To Read Article
Poka-yoke is a Japanese term for ‘fail-safing’ or ‘mistake-proofing’. adopting it means making sure that errors cannot occur ... or, if they do, are spotted quickly before they can cause further damage. It is a simple concept ... more an attitude of mind ... but it can make a big difference to the quality and reliability of what you do.

How to Increase Innovation & Creativity - Click To Read Article
We all want to increase the levels of innovation in our organisations – don’t we? Well, it won't just happen. you have to make it happen. Here are some simple tips.

Handling Layoffs - Click To Read Article
The economic times have been pretty harsh for many companies. Many of those have considered laying off some staff. Here are 8 top tips for handling layoffs and handling them well!

Setting Effective Business goals - Click To Read Article
All companies need to know whether they are 'on track' ... moving in the direction they intend to move in. This requires the business to understand this direction ... and the goals it has to meet to ensure it does indeed keep on track. Explains how to link goals to strategy ... and how to measure progress towards those goals and the ultimate strategic objectives.

Continuous Improvement - Click To Read Article
Firstly, this article asks the question ... "Is Continuous Improvement possible?" With a slight caveat ,the answer is 'yes'. It then sets out how you can achieve continuous improvement - without adopting any of the commercial 'methodologies, without using expensive consultants. You will , of course, have to put in some effort ... mainly thought! But it is possible - for any busines.

Innovating by Breaking the Rules - Click To Read Article
Innovators are rule breakers. We often see how new entrants to a market break the rules. The low cost airlines did this when they challenged the ways in which the major airlines did business. The new players used e-tickets, did away with allocated seating, bypassed travel agents, flew to new, smaller airports, etc. So, if you want to be innovative, you have to work out how to at least challenge the rules to if they can be effectively broken. How? Read on ... and find out.

What business should I start? - Click To Read Article
As we very slowly creep out of recession opportunities start to present themselves. The brave act now ... setting themselves up for a successful future before the competition gets its act together. But what business is going to work best?

Making a Promise to Your Business - Click To Read Article
In business we learn how to be logical, disciplined and structured – making decisions on evidence, ensuring we have relevant data to hand. However, in small businesses and in entrepreneurial situations, we also know that sometimes we have to act on gut instincts, on intuition. This article explains why sometimes, making a promise to your own business is a way of forcing yourself into such situations to unlock the real potential behind your business.

Dealing with lazy employees - Click To Read Article
If you think you have lazy employees, stop and think ... whether you have just got bored, untrained or unconfident employees. They require a different approach. This article explains how to go about handling those whose performance is less than you expect ... and ways in which you can end up with a fully-functioning employee once again.

Suggestion boxes and schemes - Click To Read Article
The suggestion box might seem an out-of-date concept in this technological world ... and it is fair to say that many suggestion schemes have been less than successful. This article explains what might go wrong ... and how to overcome these problems (simply!) to create effective, successful ideas to improve your business.

Choosing Suppliers - Click To Read Article
Most people select suppliers of goods and services on a combination of price and inertia. We keep on buying from our current suppliers until we feel (or find out) we can get a better price elsewhere. Perhaps we need to be a little more careful about how we do this ... inertia is not a very effective means of ensuring value for money. This brief article takes you through a simple process that should help you save money and reduce risks.

How to ... Deal Informally with Poor Performance - Click To Read Article
We all have employees who, from time to time, exhibit poor performance. We can handle this through official disciplinary processes (which might upset other staff) or we can first try to handle it informally. However, handling it informally needs to be done with care - in a structured way. This article explains how.

Performance Transition & Transformation - Click To Read Article
Making a 'step change' in performance requires an understanding of what the steps are - and knowing where you are on the 'ladder'. This article explains the basic concepts that should allow organisational leaders to work through the process of defining the steps, their position ... and steps required to make a real performance transition or transformation.

Managing & Motivating Teams - Click To Read Article
This can be a big subject but, like many other seemingly complex subjects, it can be translated into some basic, quite simple, principles and processes. So, that's what this article does. It explains in simple language how to build, manage and motivate teams to achieve specific tasks, projects and goals.

Defining & measuring Business excellence - Click To Read Article
Most organisations think they are striving for excellence. But how many companies do we know that we think of as truly excellent? What creates the gap? How can an organisation become excellent .. and how would it know when it was?

The Gemba Walk - Click To Read Article
‘Management by Walking About’ is an accepted way of undertaking a kind of audit or check-up on how things actually happen – as distinct from how they are expected to happen. The Gemba Walk takes ‘management by walking about’ quite a bit further by imposing a particular structure on the walk – ensuring that no details are missed.

Kaizen - Click To Read Article
Kaizen is a system of continuous improvement. It sounds complex - but it is not. Find out how to adopt KAIZEN principles in your organisation.

Productivity Improvement via Method study - Click To Read Article
There are a number of approaches to improving productivity: the best-known currently is probably ‘Lean’ but such approaches go back many years to the days of the early ‘productivity pioneers’. Many people (and especially people of ‘a certain age’) will immediately think of ‘time and motion’ when asked to describe a productivity methodology. This refers to the early days of ‘work study’ when the aim (as it often still is today) is to reduce the time taken by, and the motion involved in, work. The ‘improvement’ methodology of work study that derived from time & motion study was method study … and an understanding of method study gives a real insight into how all productivity improvement methodologies work.

Management by Walking About (but take a camera)! - Click To Read Article
The related article on 'Go To Gemba' points out that you have to see and hear things for yourself - never trust what you are told. Management by Walking About (MBWA) is clearly a simple way to see and hear things - but if you add a digital camera, you can collect evidence at the same time ... and you often see things through a camera lens that you don't see directly.

Running out of office space? - Click To Read Article
Growing companies need more space ... and space is expensive. Hot desking is one way of controlling costs - and keeping your 'road warriors' out there for most of their time - getting more leads, making more sales.

There is always a better way! - Click To Read Article
The 'big boys' call it continuous improvement. We know it is just common sense - always looking at what you are doing and finding ways of doing it better. This tells you the questions to ask ... to get the right answers.

Open Innovation vs Outsourcing - Click To Read Article
Open Innovation and Outsourcing both involve the use of external organisations to 'get things done'. However they are not the same thing. This article explains the differences and explains when to use each of them.

Crowdsourcing - Click To Read Article
Want the widest set of ideas to solve your problem or design your new product? Try crowdsourcing - a way of getting lots of people to contribute ideas. its easy, cheap - and effective.

Achieving Peak Performance - Click To Read Article
Athletes are trained to reach peak performance through a regime of coaching and mentoring. If they fail to reach world-class performance levels, they fail to achieve significant rewards. There are ways of applying the same concepts of coaching to business staff and even to teams of staff. Make sure your key staff achieve their maximum potential by reaching their peak performance.

Overall Effectiveness - Click To Read Article
The big guys use OEE (Overall Equipment Effectiveness) to measure how well they use the expensive equipment they own. Can small businesses and entrepreneurs use the same measure?

Go to Gemba! - Click To Read Article
There are times when it is not enough to listen to what people tell you about a situation .. and especially a problem. You have to see, smell and feel for yourself what is really going on.

How do you make your company competitive - Click To Read Article
To be competitive, you need an advantage over the other players in your markets - a better product/service or a better way of getting it to the customer.

Innovation - it's easier than you think - Click To Read Article
Innovation is not the 'big idea' that transforms your business or how you do it. Well, it might be but innovations can be small - but still important. If you try to hard for the revolution, you might miss the small but crucial improvements that can change your business.

Stakeholder Analysis - Click To Read Article
Who has an interest in your activity ... and in what ways might they affect what you do? Stakeholder analysis answers these questions ... and means you are better prepared to take adavntage of those who can help and minimise damage from those who may not like what you are oding.

Reducing Energy Costs (and saving the planet) - Click To Read Article
For many of us, energy costs are signifcant - and rising. There are things we can do to lower them ... wouldn't it be crazy if we didn't try!

Waste Not! - Click To Read Article
Waste is not the stuff you throw in the bin. It is all the things you do in your business that waste time and money. The Japanese know a thing or two about getting rid of waste ... why not learn from them.

Innovation is simple! - Click To Read Article
Innovation can be simple - but we have to put in place the processes that make it so. Otherwise, our employees remain disengaged and non-creative.

Becoming lean and mean - Click To Read Article
The 'lean' philosophy stated at Toyota - but can be (and should be) applied to any business. It is very simple - keep things flowing and avoid waste. Read more!

Getting Rid of Waste - Click To Read Article
Follows on from "Waste Not!" and shows the practical things you can do to reduce the time and money doing things you should not be doing!

Critical Success Factors - Click To Read Article
If you don't know the few, really important things you need to carry out to achieve your mission - how can your staff. Identify them - and communicate them. Then everyone knows where to focus their efforts.

Count more than the money - Click To Read Article
Counting the money you make tells you how well you did last week or last month - not how well you are going to do in the future. For that you need a more balanced view.

Benchmarking (Part 2) - Click To Read Article
If we decide that benchmarking makes sense, we have to decide what we should benchmark and how we can get the data we need - internally ... and from those we want to benchmark against.

Open Innovation - Click To Read Article
For smaller companies particularly, the resources inside the company might be too small to allow real innovation to flourish. The principle behind Open Innovation is that you can partner with others to exploit greater thinking power ... and you can exploit the intellectual property of others. So if you can work with others to mutual advantage (perhaps many others ... and hence the term 'crowdsourcing') why would you not?

Improving Productivity through Energy Management - Click To Read Article
For every $1 of energy cost saved, a typical US business would have to make $10 worth of extra sales to make the same additional profit. This article takes you through a simple process to build and execute an energy managment strategy.

Green Productivity - Click To Read Article
Going green has to be more than 'doing good' ... it has to make good business sense ... and it can. Go green before the 'green police' force you to!

Benchmarking (Part 1) - Click To Read Article
To know how well we are doing, we need to compare ourselves to somebody else. Benchmarking is the process of comparing our performance to some kind of standard or to the competition - and using that comparison to drive improvement.

Benchmarking (Part 3) - Click To Read Article
Though benchmarking can be a complex process in practice, in principle it is quite simple. This article sets out a simple, straightforward strategy for establishing a benchmarking process.





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