I was reading a quote from Taiichi Ohno earlier on Just in Time. I was always taught that you’re either late or early, you can’t be on time, but that depends very much on your granularity of measurement system: minutes, easier to determine. Seconds, less so. Anyway, it got me thinking about a topic that is going to be in my book which I call ‘Front Foot Thinking’. It’s a huge subject, but I have boiled it down to a couple of things of import. Front foot thinking covers a mu

I’ve spent most of my working life around improvement. Factories, offices, supply chains, leadership teams. Different sectors, different decades, and the same conversations. And if I’m honest, something has been bothering me for years. We are very good at improving things. We are much less good at holding them. People are busy. Programmes are everywhere. Boards are full. The language is fluent. Yet the system always seems to need rescuing again six months later. More effort,

Most businesses don’t have a performance problem. They have a time problem they can’t see. When I look at performance, I don’t start with efficiency targets, engagement scores or execution plans. I start with Time. Specifically, the time it takes to convert cash out into cash back in again. Every business runs on a cash cycle, and that cycle has two inseparable sides. One is physical. Materials arriving, moving, being transformed, tested, stored and shipped. The other is fi