Culture
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It Really All Begins with Respect
There is much attention given these days to idea of respect, and deservedly so. Respect is one of the basest and most foundational yearnings of mankind. Maslov even included the high-order notion of respect in his famous Hierarchy of Needs as just below the need of self-actualization. It is safe to say we instinctively crave…
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How we onboard talent makes a big difference in their success
It can be shocking to hear that many people are still being thrown into the deep end of the pool on day one of a new job. How we prepare our salaried, hourly, and even temporary employees for success says quite a bit about us. We only have the one, fleeting opportunity to demonstrate respect…
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Is Having All Green Really a Good Sign?
Green means good and red means problems, right? Therefore, people commonly interpret an array of green indicators to mean that “My ability is confirmed by the sea of green. I’ve succeeded in spinning all the plates.” This mentality, however, misses the whole point of continuous improvement. The indicators are there to measure the health of…
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The High Call of Stewardship
We spend a lot of time these days talking about tools. Tools that make our lives easier. Tools that help us visualize information. Tools that can be used to break down problems or compile solutions. But sometimes we need to take a step back from the tool and look more closely at the intent. After…
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Taking a good look at Organizational Health
When was the last time you went to the doctor for a simple check-up? Most people, it appears, tend to avoid these preventative trips to a physician and would rather wait until an ailment has started impacting their quality of life or their daily routine. What about you? I confess that I tend to presume…
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Simple Ways to Stimulate Innovation
So, you want to have an organization that demonstrates an eagerness to grow and evolve, with an intense appetite to satisfy any customer’s needs. You want innovation to be “part of the DNA” of the company and are not sure where to start. This is a marathon ambition, but not an unreasonable one, so buckle…
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Enhancing your Improvements through Teams
As the saying goes, “there is no I in team”. You will also find it true that improvement – sustainable, intense, and profitable improvement – isn’t well suited for just the individual either. Whether continuous improvement (kaizen) or radical step-change improvement (kaikaku), we often make the grand mistake of relying on the genius of one…
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Can an incremental improvement mindset transform your operational excellence journey?
Continuous Improvement (CI) commonly takes many forms in todays’ organizations. Some companies take a very surgical approach, applying CI selectively to the high-profile corporate “strategic imperatives”. Others may engage dedicated change agents with specially honed skills to resolve specific process or product gaps. Sometimes companies train the multitudes and encourage CI through suggestion systems and recognitions programs. Whatever…
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Don’t Settle for Surface Solutions. Dig Deeper…
Business moves quickly. The pressure to produce results is always high. We can all relate to the constant call for more output, more productivity, more improvement, and more results. It’s tempting in those moments to look for shortcuts, to make assumptions, or to make unjustified leaps. Unfortunately, succumbing to these temptations is a gamble that often doesn’t pay off…
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Refreshing your team pays dividends
Since ancient times, harvest has been a community endeavor. The harvest window was typically small and numerous laborers would be hired to complete the harvest in time. As these harvest arrangements were usually at-will, the landowner understood well that his reputation in how he treated his workers would impact his harvest for years to come. There were generally…