This blog post owes a debt to John Seddon’s excellent tale about chicken wings on the new Vanguard website. The reason for writing this is that, whilst in Pizza Express the other night, I found myself in exactly the same situation that Seddon outlined. Let me explain… Continue reading
Category Archives: Management
Little Boxes Pt2 – Jigsaws Are Better
In part one of this blog, I concluded that repairs scheduling is fundamentally flawed. Maintenance companies try to shoehorn irregular shaped jobs into nice, standardised boxes and it leads to appointments being missed and repairs left unfinished. The company wants its’ customers to be compliant and flexible, but customers need the opposite to be true. So how do we fix the system? Continue reading
Little Boxes – a blog of two halves
The boxes you see below were a feature of all repairs services throughout the country in the last decade. As it happens, the photo was taken earlier this year, proving that they are alive and well in many services. Continue reading
Battleships
The recent blog by Systems Thinking For Girls about the Corporate Shame Avoidance Scheme brought back some exciting memories of pre-meetings and shame avoidance tactics we engaged in as repairs contractors in the Public Sector. Continue reading
Run for the hills; it’s Lean and Investors in People!
Two, true tales from the coalface today; Little Miss Lean and Mr IiP. Continue reading
Tales from the Private Sector; the rush to get the figures out
Month end is the dread of every finance department. The pressure is always on to “get the figures out”. The figures are normally based on monthly management accounts and contain some sort of variation on the “this month/year to date/same period last year” type analysis. For most companies, they are the single most important measure of performance and the only ones that are discussed consistently at every senior management meeting. They are also the only measure that financial backers tend to care about. Coincidence? Continue reading
Office Politics
Are you a Manager? Are you reading this in the comfort of your own office? Your very own office? Well done! Having your own office is important; it lets everyone else know that you are important and these things matter to us. Continue reading
The Beginners Guide To A Better Repairs Service
This is your cut out and keep, essential guide to creating a better repairs service. Handily split into client and contractor modules, why not use them together to create the perfect partnership, for you and your customers. Continue reading
Would you like to come back for coffee?
Why would you want to earn a lower margin from a long term customer, when you can have a quick profit from a one-off transaction? The need for short term gain over long term stability is a curse of the target-driven world that we live in and was summed up nicely in a recent post from @STforgirls Continue reading
Cycling, Team GB and Systems Thinking
Watching the British cycling team at London 2012 has been a heart-warming experience. Their success is quite incredible and it made me think about the approach they take to preparing their riders and, bear with me on this, how it echoes the Vanguard Method. Continue reading