Karl Pearce – CEO Citizens Advice St Helens

I’ve recently finished doing a BA Hons in Business Management, which involved reading lots of different books, journals and websites, to learn all aspects of business management.

One of the areas I was really keen on learning about is leadership, and one of the most useful books is ‘Leadership – theory and practice’ by Peter G Northouse. It tackles the fundamental elements of Leadership theory and systematically explains the strengths, limitations and history behind each theory, as well as giving useful insights into the ways and reasoning behind their development. It’s an excellent book that details leadership theory from past to present, and I still use it now, even though I’ve successfully completed my degree.

Learning about business and management has opened up areas of learning that I wouldn’t have been aware of before. One of the areas that I really enjoyed learning about is Kaizen, or continuous improvement. Kaizen is an approach which is about constantly making small improvements to the way we do things that help to improve quality and/or efficiency. What I really like about this approach is that employees are seen as the best people to identify ways of improving things, as they are the ones that see processes in action all the time. We use this approach to develop a culture that encourages and rewards employees for their contribution to the process.

If you want to learn a bit more about Kaizen, see the Mind Tools article below.

Mind Tools article on Kaizen