Tag: management
Why Deming’s 85/15 Rule Should Transform Your Business
I’ve spent years studying management philosophies that actually work, and there’s one principle that keeps coming back to haunt me: W. Edwards Deming’s 85/15 rule[1]. It’s brilliant, it’s proven, and it’s almost completely ignored by British and American businesses. The rule states that when things go wrong in your organisation, there’s roughly an 85% chance…
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Leadership Explained
File tidying, I should do it more often. I just came across the following which is an extract of some work I was proofreading for my daughter, Jo. Huczynski and Buchanan (2013, p802) define leadership as ‘the process of influencing the activities of an organised group in its efforts towards goal-setting and goal achievement.’ Leadership…
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The Corporate Boat Race
An American automobile company and a Japanese auto company decided to have a competitive boat race on the Detroit River. Both teams practised hard and long to reach their peak performance. On the big day, they were as ready as they could be. The Japanese team won by a mile. Afterwards, the American team became…
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Crisis Management
This is the fallacious approach of many in a crisis: It’s a bit like this false logic: Or: Gosh, that reminds me of some interesting bosses I’ve had in the past. The examples provided illustrate a logical fallacy known as affirming the consequent or, more generally, a type of faulty reasoning that involves making unwarranted…
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The 20-Minute Course in Leading from the Bottom
Getting your hands dirty at the frontline of business is a useful reality check for managers. It can give practical insight into what is working – or not – and staff will value the input, as long as it is not seen as underhand or as micro-management Like it or not, sitcoms such as The…
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