A selection of blog posts by James Paterson.
The Routledge Companion to Lean Management
The Routledge Companion to Lean Management is about to be published and contains an new article on ‘Lean Auditing’ by James Paterson.
‘I feel proud to have been included in this book with so many notable lean experts’.
James Paterson
The book is edited edited by Torbjorn H. Netland and Daryl J. Powell. They have produced a nice video to explain Lean, and the contents of the book, in simple terms: Continue Reading
Root Cause Analysis (RCA) – A refresher
Over the past 15 years working in the internal audit arena I have seen a growing interest in the topic of Root Cause Analysis (RCA). My involvement in the topic has evolved from using it as part and parcel of a “lean auditing” approach, to running RCA workshops and consulting advice across Europe. I was also responsible for helping the IIA UK to up-grade its guidance on Root Cause Analysis (published in 2015). Over the past 12 months I have delivered open and in-house courses in the UK, France, Norway, Switzerland and even Mauritius!
This post provides a refresher on this important topic with some key pointers to help you benchmark your current approach. Continue Reading
Root Cause Analysis
Delighted to have had my article on Root Cause analysis featured on the cover of the IIA Middle East September 2016 magazine.
Culture and the HR function
James Paterson speaks to Jenni Hardy about culture and the HR function – April 2016.
James: We’re going to talk about culture, and behaviour, and how you would know that you have a good culture. Can you please take us through some of the thoughts you have about how to approach this based on your own experiences in HR?
Jenni: In my experience culture is significantly influenced by the strategy of an organisation and its leadership; these are the key transformational influencers. The culture is also affected by the external environment, so what industry sector the organisation is in, what markets and its competitive environment etc.
Then how you measure it, and how you see it, how things work around here, is best evidenced by the observable behaviours, what goes on around here. This can also be complemented by an annual employee survey.
As mentioned before, the culture will be influenced by the CEO and the direction that he or she sets, in terms of objectives and values. When done well, expected values will articulate the sorts of behaviours they want to see; but this will – of course – be influenced by day-to-day management behaviour and the behaviour of the staff around you, creating sub-cultures. Sub-cultures will comprise of factors such as “Am I fairly rewarded”, “Am I recognised”, and “Do I feel my views are heard”? Continue Reading
Reflections on culture
A conversation between James Paterson and Ralph Lewis – March 2016
James: Thanks for agreeing to be interviewed Ralph. Can we start by talking about the idea of a healthy culture and less healthy culture and how we might measure this?
Ralph: Let me start of by saying that there’s an awful lot of stuff said about culture that needs to be understood in a broader context. So what we mean by culture, and a good culture, will often be put it in the context of the society you are in, as different societies have different cultural preferences.
In addition, there is often a link between the personality of senior leaders and the attributes they look for in a company culture. However, 1) I am not sure they understand in depth what culture means, and 2) I am not sure they understand what sort of organisational culture is actually going to be helpful to performance in a sense broader than pure financial results. Put another way, the people in power in an organisation often want to promote a culture that suits them for personal reasons, and I don’t mean in any corrupt way, but often they seek something that they are comfortable with. Continue Reading
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We invited James to look out our ways of working from a LEAN perspective, and help us focus on those key areas where we could make real improvement, both for us, as an audit team, and for our customers. James worked closely with one of our sub teams, getting to the root causes of our concerns, and then facilitated a workshop day for the whole partnership where we explored the issues and came up with agreed ways forward. James was energetic and engaging; he clearly knows what gets in the way of organisations being lean, and helped us develop an action plan that we know will deliver results.
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James has been excellent in terms of helping me to focus on key themes and messaging specific to my organisation, whilst ensuring that the general assurance strategy we have drawn up reflects best practice. I have enjoyed our sessions together, and I think a large part of that is the way James has not imposed a standard one size fits all approach, rather working with me to really understand our business and drawing on my knowledge to shape a suitable risk, audit and assurance strategy. This has all been done within a fairly demanding timeframe so I have appreciated James’ flexibility in working around my day to day business demands. Consequently I feel the output is very much tailored to our business, and represents an efficient and effective investment of time and money.
I look forward to working with James in the future and would certainly recommend him for any work of this nature given the experience that I have had.
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