Blog
The articles below explain how to overcome common barriers to improvement and how industry leaders sustain the gains where others are not able to.
This is based on our work with well-known and award winning organisations. There is much to learn from them. If there are any topics you would like is to add, please get in touch.
For more detailed articles check out our DAK Academy website guide which contains links to videos, articles and downloads.
Getting better at what you do!
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Every year we learn more about the work we do which helps us to do the job better. Harnessing that collective learning process is what drives performance improvement. At the same time, people move on, roles change and new recruits take time to get up to speed. That is why for every organisation, every day is a learning day and why the ability to develop people is a measure of management competence.
What does it take to guide this learning process so that every learning day helps the organisation to get better at what it needs to do to prosper and grow.
Creating the conditions for learning
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The most effective form of learning for adults is through practical projects. This is particularly relevant at the moment because research indicates that today, learning priorities for enterprises and individuals alike are the soft skills of communication and collaboration. Skills which can only be developed through social interaction. So the creation of learning environment involves setting out practical improvement projects and providing the resources to support learning as part of that. In fact as shown below, best practice involves putting the improvement agenda at the heart of the learning process and vice versa.
Workplace Learning and Engagement
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What distinguishes a proactive individual from one that is putting in the hours is a greater understanding of cause and effect and their insight into how to achieve the best performance from their efforts.
These are exactly the skills that workplace learning is designed to develop and share. In addition as adults prefer to learn from practical situations it is also a very effective way of speeding up the skill development process.
Workplace Learning involves the use of practical improvement projects to develop job related skills and knowledge.
Correctly designed, these programmes also provide leaders with the opportunity for conversations with direct reports about business priorities and actions to improve performance.
That is also a way for Leaders to hone coaching skills and create the conditions for learning and engagement.
Getting the Basics Right
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Only around 1% of organisations achieve lasting success on their journey from reactive management to proactive industry leading capabilities. Although it may seem counter intuitive, the main difference between the 1% and the rest is ....
Lean Maintenance: Moving Beyond Breakdowns
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The Operations Director was concerned. The company was making great strides in improving productivity, quality and cost performance yet to the director’s eyes, the Lean revolution had bypassed the maintenance function.
The Director recognised that Maintenance Engineering is a core, added value process without which, the business couldn't give customers the value they expect.
In addition to that, the maintenance function has a significant impact on the root causes of the classic 7 lean wastes as set out in the table below.
Mastering Performance Management
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Over 69% of manufacturers feel that their Performance Management process is not fit for purpose. Set out in this article are the building blocks used by the 31% who have successful Performance Management processes.
Getting to Net Zero: Putting The Basics in Place
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One of the commitments made by the UK at COP26 is that UK firms must outline how they will meet the net zero goal by 2050. Not surprising as this goal has been written into law so government were always bound to take steps to encourage industry to engage with this theme.
The 2050 net zero goal is a forecast (with is a 50% probability) of what it will take to limit global temperature increases to 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels. The science indicates that this is necessary to mitigate the most severe long-term economic consequences of climate change.
So what are the options?
Accessing Advanced Technology Gains
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Despite the fact that online meetings have been around since the 1980's it took the lockdown to make this a part of business as usual. Of course, this adoption would not have been possible without the wider availability of decent broadband and personal computing. The opportunities provided by the convergence of technology trends is obvious with hind sight but at the time, as in previous industrial revolutions, recognising and applying that potential is more like a voyage of discovery.
A lesson to learn from this is that as technology advances, organisations will need to lean how to adapt.
This is not a straight forward journey, for example, an industry leading organisation committed to exploring the potential of Industry 4.0 gains failed on more than one occasion to deliver the gains from advanced technology.
They finally succeeded when they recognised that:
Managing Digitisation Projects
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Classic project management methods sidestep the need to collate internal knowledge, facilitate decision making, coordinate the part time involvement of internal resources and engage people with changing ways of working. In the real world, the project manager needs to become a team leader, facilitator and internal consultant.
Nowhere is that more important than when implementing advanced technologies which includes actions to:
What Manufacturers Can Learn from Deliveroo
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When considering an investment in advanced technology it is easy to fall prey to the siren call of individual gadgets or systems platforms but too much emphasis on the technology is a common characteristic of those who fail to deliver a return on their investment.
So where do the real gains come from?
