Thought for the Day
“Do not confuse effort with results” – Elliott Begoun
De-Cluttering
Do you find that there are not enough hours in the day? If so you should look at everything that you do and ask a simple question – Do I need to do this anymore?
We tend to hoard things whether they are possessions, roles or tasks. Just like we de-clutter our homes from time to time we need to clear out or work life.
We accumulate lots of tasks that keep us busy but do we still need to do them all? – I recommend that you prepare a Stop Doing List as well as a To Do List.
The start of the new year is a great time to do your Stop Doing List
Aggregation of Marginal Gains
The main topic for my November 2016 Newsletter was the Aggregation of Marginal Gains. This idea is so powerful that this month, I want to tell you about a very practical application.
Sir David Brailsford, British Cycling’s Performance Director, explains the Aggregation of Marginal Gains as “the one percent margin for improvement in everything you do.” His belief was that if you improved every area related to a process by just one percent, all those small gains would add up to remarkable improvement.
I was asked by one of my clients to run a workshop to look at how we might improve their main process so I facilitated a half day workshop attended by the staff who operate that process every day together with the MD.
We mapped the process as it is now being delivered by writing the various steps on post it notes, so that we could move them around consolidate steps or add new ones. We then asked does that represent the process now and having got confirmation we moved on to the critical question – How can we improve each step by just 1%. In just two hours ideas were generated for a 14% improvement!
The power of this technique lies in the fact that the people operating the process know what is wrong with it and have ideas about how to go about improving it. – you just have to ask the right questions and listen.
How can you use the laws of Aggregated Marginal Gains to boost your businesses Productivity?
Featured Video
Why haven’t the machines taken all the jobs yet? – a recent TED talk by David Autor:
Just follow this link:
http://www.ted.com/talks/david_autor_why_are_there_still_so_many_jobs
Business Support
MRW Corporate Solutions have won a contract from Greater Manchester Growth Hub, as part of the Portfolio Executive Consortium, to deliver their Executive Development Programme in 2016 and 2017.
The programme is supported through the European Regional Development Fund and allows for business leaders (owners, MDs, senior managers) to take a ‘fully-funded’ 18 hours of Executive Development, worth £1,500 over a 3 month period in a mix of one to one and group sessions.
To Pre-qualify, your businesses must be located or trading in one of the ten Greater Manchester Boroughs, you must be an SME with turnover less than €50m, have a minimum of 5 staff and must be Business to Business suppliers of product or services.
I can offer tailored sessions covering the following subjects but there is scope for a wider brief if you feel you need something different: –
- Team Profiling and Team Building
- Leadership Development
- Financial Consequence of Management Decisions
- Strategic Planning
- Managing Change
- Personal Productivity, Operational Efficiencies and adopting Continuous Improvement
- Executive Coaching and Executive Development
We can also support you throughout the application process
Please note that the money is being spent more quickly than envisaged and is currently forecast to run out by May of 2017. So if you want to get the benefits from this programme let us know asap.
If you would like to take advantage of this free programme, contact me alan@mrwcs.com or phone 07860 813444