clarity

Do the “blink” test on your reports

By Bernie | July 13, 2012

Review your reporting, can you tell at a glance how your business is performing? Can you (and the rest of your team) easily tell how your organisation is doing, even after coming back from holiday? If you can’t, consider designing a report template and making things visual, with more charts and performance icons. Here is…

report saying yes

How to keep your reports short and effective

By Bernie | November 24, 2011

Which is the easier question to answer?: “Tell me about France” or, “Tell me about the restaurants in the village of Venosc that serve Italian food” ? It’s very obviously the latter (assuming you have the information available in the first place). It’s the difference between these two questions that explains how some reports can be…

Smooth bottoms and dashboard design

By Bernie | August 30, 2011

Most people don’t look at the bottom of their laptop. If they do then they will see one of two things: If it’s a Apple Mac the bottom with be smooth and (with the latest ones) completely featureless apart from four rounded rubber feet. If it’s a PC it will have little hatches, a Microsoft…

Why my phone bill is brilliant.

By Bernie | August 24, 2011

I’ve just had a bill through from Virgin. It’s not often I find myself smiling when I look at a bill, but this one was a bit different. Virgin have redesigned the bill and put a nice explanation in there as well, see this image (click on it for a bigger version).. I like this…

Do You Work for an Idiot?

By James Lawther | July 9, 2011

Here is a process improvement idea for you. It is called “poke yoke”. I am told that that is Japanese for “making things easy to get right and difficult to get wrong”. It is a rather grand name for what my old boss used to call “idiot proofing”. Let me give you an example: think…