Soft Metrics and Hard Culture
I wrote last week about hard metrics and soft culture, which is a good description of how we need to think about PDRs and the personal management process. But today, let us look at this ...
Baobabs and Business
We hear so much criticism of business in the media it’s easy to forget just how important it is for society. Quite apart from manufacturing the products we want and need or providing services to ...
Data Democratisation and the Trouble with Rolling Averages
I was watching a webinar the other day with various luminaries adding weight to a subtle sales pitch. Two of them were talking about future trends – one claiming data democratisation (Google it!) was spreading ...
My Master’s in Management internship project with Jaguar Land Rover
What is the organisational culture like? In this Management MSc Jaguar Land Rover internship project, I have learnt how Jaguar Land Rover built the iconic British brand through innovation. In a big organisation like Jaguar ...
Hard Metrics and Soft Culture
Cranfield is in the process of introducing a new faculty contribution system as part of the performance development review process (PDR). As part of that discussion, yesterday we were talking about the metrics and how ...
Ozone depletion – the world is getting it right
"The Montreal protocol is a model of cooperation. It is a product of the recognition and international consensus that ozone depletion is a global problem, both in terms of its causes and its effects. The ...
Life in Fruit Towers – working with Innocent Drinks on my Logistics and Supply Chain Management MSc thesis
Time flies! It’s been a while since my last blog, which I wrote when we were on our study tour, and now it's the time of the year for our thesis project! As logistics and ...
How do structural engineers make sure an aircraft wing can carry the weight of the entire plane? Modelling failure of metals and composites
Being able to predict the behaviour of materials is one of the key skills of a structural engineer. A structural engineer must know how to design components so that they can carry the loads in ...
Black Box Thinking, or Learning from Failure
We were just reflecting at the latest Round Table on Matthew Syed’s book “Black Box Thinking” (2015, John Murray Publishing, London) and in particular on learning from failure. So what I have done here is ...
Methods, Methods, and Methods… Part 2 of 2
So in our previous blog, we mentioned that we come across challenges like - “We’re going to do ‘Demand Management’ using Method ‘X’”. Per previous blog, our usual response is to unpick this requirement statement ...