Expertivity Technologies , Alex McDonnell “The measure of intelligence is the ability to change.” That quote from Albert Einstein has a particular resonance today, given the recent troubles of one of our (Irish) national political parties, Fine Gael and it's handling of the "Alan Shatter affair". ...
Expertivity Technologies , Alex McDonnell Confusing Common Practices with Best Practices I work quite a bit with helping senior management teams improve the performance of their organisations and one of the most common issues I come across is the confusion between "common practices" and "...
Expertivity Technologies , Alex McDonnell When Fixing What's Broken Doesn't Work Don't Improve Your Legacy Business System, Shed It! For over 30 years now I have been engaged by organisations in the service and knowledge-work sectors to help them improve their performance. In almo...
Expertivity Technologies , Alex McDonnell Joined-Up Thinking and the "Germ Theory of Management" If I hear another commentator, while bemoaning the ills of our country (any country but in my case Ireland), say that "what we need is some joined-up thinking" and say it as if it's some "as-yet-to-be...
Expertivity Technologies , Alex McDonnell Today's Problems Come From Yesterdays Solutions. The above quote from Peter Senge's great book "The Fifth Discipline" is one of those profound pieces of wisdom that, even when said out loud,, doesn't always capture the depth of the insight. Edward D...
Expertivity Technologies , Alex McDonnell What is Lean Enterprise Excellence & Operational Excellence Our CEO Alex McDonnell explains what Lean Enterprise Excellence & Operational Excellence is: quality management improvement project industry experience depth understanding black belt shingo model...
Expertivity Technologies , Alex McDonnell Why "Cause" beats "Urgency" every time. I admire John P Kotter, I have been an avid reader of his books and an evangelist for his message about leading change. In his book "Urgency" Kotter says he believes that "the single biggest error peo...
Expertivity Technologies , Alex McDonnell Transforming Lean: Is Leans Roots in Japanese Religion and Culture holding it back? Christian Wittrock from Aarhus University in Denmark wrote an interesting paper* in 2015 tracing Leans roots in Japanese religion and culture. The abstract from his paper states: "James Womack, Daniel...
Expertivity Technologies , Alex McDonnell Service Sectors Biggest Problem Solved: How Long is a Piece of String? Anybody familiar with fractals will know that the answer to the question is "infinite". Fortunately most teams in service and knowledge work organisations don't need to calculate the length of your co...
Expertivity Technologies , Alex McDonnell Easiest Way To Improve Performance? Step 1: Stop Making Things Worse! I work with service and knowledge work organisations and it's often quite surprising to them how much they can improve performance by just stopping making things worse. Of course, its not that people ...
Expertivity Technologies , Alex McDonnell "Whistling Past The Graveyard" of Bad Performance Measures. In Ireland, where I come from, we have a tradition of folklore, mystery, tall tales, "sayings" and proverbs that cover every possible life situation, one of which is "whistling past the graveyard". Ac...
Expertivity Technologies , Alex McDonnell Ryanair: When Complex Adaptive Systems bite back! Ryanair is Europe's largest airline and is probably the first modern day organisation to build a successful business model based on despising its customers, its people and its suppliers. It could do t...
