All consultants, when being frank, will admit to the odd self-inflicted disaster. The responsibility of many failed projects rests fair-and-square with the initiators. They create projects or new starts with utter abandonment, overlooking the commitments each projects require. Like children, projects need to have plenty of affection, attention, and nurturing. The consequences for projects when […]
Relate the size of the contract to the risks involved. Contracts for minor assignments (less than £30,000) should be, at most, a two-page document. In most cases it could be all contained in an email with a confirmation or a simple signature, on the email, with the words “agreed as outlined above”.
We do need to […]
Recruiting staff and a consultant is a life and death decision as Peter Drucker reminded us. It is better to spend 40 hours in a comprehensive selection process (putting up fences at the top of a cliff) than spend 400 hours sorting out the mess (at the bottom of the cliff).
It is imperative that you […]
Recently I have realised the importance of distinguishing Internal from external critical success factors. A Board of a charity rightly pointed out that the CSFs tabled (the internal CSFs) were too internally focused. They wanted to see, understandably the external picture, the external CSFs. The Board was naturally looking from outside-in. The Board want to […]
Peter Drucker in my mind is the Leonardo de Vinci of management. His work will be appreciated more in 400 years from now. We all would benefit from reading the Definitive Drucker, a book that offers a summary of the sage’s advice.
Drucker observed that many new initiatives failed as the wrong people were leading them. […]
Behind most successful managers are the successful projects where they have been able to obtain leverage from using consultants properly. You have a choice: Learn to achieve through getting the right consultants “on the bus” or hire unwisely and set yourself up for failed projects. From my observations and first hand experience in being a […]
This is a technique that was developed to radically reduce the time it took to write new software applications. It recognized that teams in very intense work periods do not always function properly.
Scrum (an Agile technique) – started off as a rethink of project management by Jeff Sutherland, a fighter pilot in Vietnam. He saw […]
Many of us have gazed wistfully into the distance thinking how marvelous it would be to be able to have cost of producing a product at any time of day. Activity based costing seduced the accounting profession very much like the sirens in Greek mythology.
Right from the start the writing was on the wall. The […]
I believe Toyota to be possibly the greatest company in the world. It has 14 principles which are the backbone to its culture and Toyota can embed these principles in all countries it operates within. Its Kentucky plant in the USA exceeded all Toyota expectations with its acceptance of the Toyota way. To understand the […]
In lean there are eight types of waste. These wastes are seen within the whole organisation and within the accounting function. I have outlined the eight wastes below in Exhibit 1
Exhibit 1 The eight wastes that need tackling
Eight types of waste
The eight wastes within the accounting function
1. Over-production (Building batches of products larger than the […]