The Bacon number is a measure of closeness to Kevin Bacon. Believe it or not, it has some useful applications in business. (more…)

Every organisation wants a productive workforce. But measuring productivity, which is critical to improving it, is a struggle. It's hard to make it tangible. In his book Smart Work, productivity expert Dermot Crowley gives us a clue about how to measure productivity using a very practical proxy.

People occasionally ask me whether we should measure the positive, or what we want more of, rather than the negative, what we want less of. Mostly they believe it should be the positive. But when does it matter? Or does it ever matter?

There are lots of goals that are really hard to measure. I've written about measuring workforce capability, but another hard-to-measure goal is workforce diversity. Don't expect a list of the best measures, though. The problem lies with what diversity actually means to you...