What does a facilitator do?

A question that regularly arises is “What does a facilitator do?” which is a very pertinent question, especially in a business context. I will now try and provide a little more clarity on what, in my experience, good facilitators should do.

Making performance improvement real

Last week I visited Haldex Concentric in Birmingham who manufacture pumps for commercial vehicle engines. They are shortlisted for an award at the Midlands Excellence Awards, to be announced this week.

They have instigated a continuous improvement approach to improving their productivity using both Six Sigma and Lean approaches. This allows them to clearly demonstrate their improvement in productivity over time. Their approach to reporting business performance demonstrates both simplicity and effectiveness.

Business Efficiency Tools – Stronger in combination?

As a believer in taking the medicine I prescribe I’m always on the look out for opportunities to develop and improve my skills. Hence I recently attended an event at Midlands Excellence where Julian Beaney led a very informative morning discussing the various business efficiency tools in common use.

I admit to being a bit of a cynic about putting all my eggs in one basket when it comes to delivering improvements. I’ve seen too many people try and blind their customers with science by slavishly following a set route rather than remembering what the aim of the task is. Hence I was also very interested to see what other practitioners would say about the various tools.