Most people stay in jobs longer than they should. It’s no different from staying in a relationship past its expiry date. You know it’s no longer working, but walking away feels difficult. In a workplace, the longer you stay in a toxic or stagnant environment, the more likely it is to change you before you ever change it. At some…
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Think success at work is about experience, resources, or raw talent? Think again. The biggest predictor of team success is psychological safety—the ability to speak up, admit mistakes, and share ideas without fear of embarrassment, punishment, or exclusion. Watch this Instagram reel on why psychological safety matters more than anything else for high-performing teams. Why Psychological Safety Matters Better Performance,…
I’ve watched the engineering industry glorify speed over sense for years. We praise people who respond to emails at midnight. We celebrate those who jump from meeting to meeting without breaks. We reward constant availability over actual output. Let’s call this what it is. Broken. I recently came across an article on Nature.com that introduced me to slow productivity. This…
Recent articles claim people are less productive when working from home. From my experience, this is far from true. But it’s not just my observations. Stanford University found a 5% productivity increase during remote work, and the University of Sydney reported similar findings. Another benefit of working from home is that the average worker saves four hours weekly by not…
Change is challenging for people and should only be engaged when there are clear benefits. Engaging in change just for the sake of change can create unnecessary disruption, individual disengagement, and dissatisfaction. In this blog post, we’ll explore the essential considerations to make before embarking on a change initiative. Make Sure the Team is Ready for Change For change to…
Leaders’ constant expression of busyness can significantly impact team performance and morale. It sets a negative example, leading team members to feel pressured to appear busy to seem important. This pressure sets the scene for a slew of bad habits and poor optics. Leaders who consistently portray themselves as busy may encourage similar behaviours in their team, fostering a culture…
In my previous posts, we explored the challenges faced by engineering teams working with offshore design support offices and how lean principles can help streamline workflows. This week, we’ll look at specific lean solutions we implemented that can transform engineering workflows and achieve better outcomes. Streamlining Information Flow One major issue identified was the disorganised flow of information, leading to…
In my recent post “Lean Management in Design and Construction“, I provided an overview of how lean principles, originating from the Toyota Production System, can drive significant efficiency and performance improvements in the workplace. This week, I want to look into a specific application – optimising workflows between a local engineering team and their offshore design support office. The team…
The first subject I studied as part of my Masters was lean management. I had only ever heard about lean management in a negative context, whenever I had heard people speak about it, they were talking about companies cutting staff to the point teams had to work steady overtime to keep up. So I was quite curious as to what…
Have you ever wondered why projects consistently take longer than originally planned? I touched on the topic in my Master’s dissertation and found that the answer may lie in a cognitive bias known as the planning fallacy, and I recently stumbled upon a fantastic article by Dave Stewart, “The work is never just ‘the work’” where he discusses his personal…