Gifts?

Many readers of this blog do not celebrate Christmas. However, even for the this is a good time to think about presents and gifts?

Think about what would really transform your organisation - new technology, new ideas, new organisation, or whatever ... and then think about how you can become Santa (the catalyst) that can make it happen.

Energy Strategies

Governments around the globe are trying to determine 'sensible' energy strategies. Sometimes these strategies cost (taxpayers) quite a bit of money as governments mandate or encourage the switch to 'greener' energy technologies.

However, it is clear that (as fuel gets scarcer) the costs of fossil-based fuels will continue to rise. So we clearly need to switch to greener alternatives ... the question is how fast?

For example, the California Energy Commission earlier this month approved almost $2 million for the University of California Davis to develop ways to increase the energy efficiency of light commercial buildings.

The research represents a promising opportunity for helping the state reach its ambitious greenhouse gas and energy efficiency targets. The goal of the project at UC Davis is to increase the energy efficiency of existing multi-tenant light commercial buildings — such as strip malls, office parks and mixed-use developments — while decreasing greenhouse gas emissions.

The project aims to identify the best technologies to use, market barriers to avoid and to make recommendations for retrofitting buildings. Three principal investigators will join faculty and staff from the California Lighting Technology Center, the Energy Efficiency Center, the Graduate School of Management and the Western Cooling Efficiency Center on the project.

There are bound to be mistakes and stumbles along the way to a greener future ... but we do need to progress on this journey ... and we need more research like this to give us better signposts for the journey.

Good or Bad Figures

I see lots of national and regional productivity figures ... I even publish some of them in this blog.

However, I am holding back at the moment ... the recent (ongoing?) recession means that most figures are not really to be trusted. Oh, they're 'accurate' ... but at the start and end of recessions especially there are lag effects that make interpretation of the figures more difficult ... and certainly more dangerous.

So, in many countries productivity appears to be going up .. but that's because output is rising but many organisations have not started re-hiring ... they are using overtime and other temporary ways of providing the resources necessary to create those outputs.

So, governments should be way about trumpeting higher productivity ... in time the figures will settle to their 'real' levels.

Jamaicans - Read This!

The publication Jamaica: Productivity Summary Report 1972-2007, by the Jamaica Productivity Centre, should be required reading for all Jamaicans - government ministers, officers and public and private sector management and employees. It states: "Labour productivity or output per worker has been declining at an annual rate of 1.3 per cent over the past 34 years (1973-2007). For the past five years (2003-2007) this decline has increased to 1.8 per cent per annum."

And this is at a time when technoloy has been revolutionsining manufacturing, offices, hopsitals and mostl other workplaces.

The statistics also compare most unfavourably with the figures achieved by Jamaica's Caricom partners who have shown improvements of 1.5 per cent per annum from 1972, and pf 2 per cent in the last 10 years. The report states: "In 1997 the average worker in Trinidad was three times more productive than the average Jamaican worker. However, this gap had widened to over five times by 2007".

China - the great balancing act

I have just returned from a few (very busy) days in China – in Beijing and Guangzhou. The country never fails to amaze.

For example, I went to the Guangdong Higher Education Megacentre – a ‘town’ just outside of the city of Guangzhou which houses 15 Universities and 300,000 students. Now that’s what I call investing for the future.

This investment is seen elsewhere. The infrastructure continues to develop. I saw new roads, new railways, new bridges, new tunnels.

I also made a couple of internal flights with China Southern – a very good airline with fantastic customer service.

Of course I also experienced some of the less welcome aspects of China’s development – I couldn’t (at first) blog or tweet – Blogger, Twitter and Facebook are all banned. I did eventually manage to ‘beat the system’ … I won’t tell you how or that route will be blocked too.

China is trying to develop – very fast – in a controlled way. It tries to balance growth and freedom. My overall assessment after several visits – is that they have largely got the balance right. And I am not so arrogant t as to claim that the West has all the right answers … we all know the ills of our own development processes … and freedoms.

So China continues to be an enigma. I continue to love the place. I will most certainly return.

Get them to read

We all look at technology and technical improvements to give us more productivity. But sometimes, the answers lie elsewhere.

According to the research on literacy, four in 10 Canadian workers lack the necessary level of literacy to understand a safety manual, a set of instructions on a new piece of equipment, or a new piece of computer software necessary for them to accomplish their work.

One recent report on the subject shows that improving literacy scores by one per cent would increase labour productivity by 2.5 per cent.

Cold progress

Fresh & Easy Neighborhood Market recently opened the first grocery store in Southern California to use naturally occurring carbon dioxide (CO2) refrigeration. The store, located in Rosemead, is Fresh & Easy’s first to be GreenChill certified and is among four stores that the company opened today, including the 100th in California.

Fresh & Easy’s sub critical cascade CO2 refrigeration system, which is one of only four in the United States, reduces the impact of the store’s refrigeration on the ozone layer by about 70%, as compared to industry standards. By utilizing a natural refrigerant, the system has an approximately 50% lower Global Warming Potential than traditional refrigerants.

The store also earned a silver certification award from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) GreenChill Partnership by meeting tough benchmarks for cutting emissions that harm the earth’s protective ozone layer and contribute to global warming. Fewer than 40 of the nation’s 35,000 grocery stores have received GreenChill Store Certification awards.