Operational Excellence

Last Week’s Top Tweets

February 20, 2012

In case you missed it, here are some tweet & re-tweets of articles & other things that caught my eye last week: MUST READ: From Dan Markovitz (@timeback): Respect for people — treating them more like machines. bit.ly/zVyKew From Others: From Boston College Center for Work & Family (@BCCWF): Need more leadership support + manager training: Flexible Hours Aren’t Working As Well As Companies Say businessinsider.com/flexible-hours…#workflex From Joe Dager (@business9o1)RT @jchyip: w/out a clear overall shared vision, “improve” tends 2 B a lot of random ideas until everyone eventually gets bored & gives up From Dan Feliciano (@DanFeliciano): IndustryWeek : Demand Surges for Lean...

Raising awareness of ROWE and Lean

February 16, 2012

By David M. Kasprzak

Last week, I posted a question on Linked In: Are Lean/Six Sigma and ROWE (Results Only Work Environment) complimentary, or competing, approaches to workplace transformation? Both place a heavy emphasis on value and the elimination of any activities that don't produce that value. Lean, however, advocates an engaged management that is able to "go to Gemba." In gemba, leaders can observe where value is created in order to find waste and identify areas for improvement. ROWE, however, places a heavy emphasis on worker autonomy and freedom, as long as the Results are achieved. This could lead to the Gemba being anywhere...

The Get Shit Done Theory

February 8, 2012

By David M. Kasprzak

I had a conversation recently with someone who is clearly very smart, and a successful business owner. I was taken by surprise, however, when I asked this person how they control for spuriousness in their claims that a particular action led to improved performance. The reply was: I operate more on gut and intuition than science, and because crunching numbers doesn’t delight our customers, I don’t do it. I found that particularly curious, and remarked that it is at odds with most process improvement schools of thought. (I did make a mental note, however, that it might be possible...

Last week’s tweets

February 6, 2012

By David M. Kasprzak

In case you missed it, here are some tweet & re-tweets of articles & other things that caught my eye last week: From Others: From @tedcoine: YES!! RT @shawmu: Actually give a S### about the development of individuals.ow.ly/8SkuB via @kris_dunn From @ShingoPrize: Robert Miller said Shingo Prize focuses on more than just culture, it focuses on how to change culture #lean#ShingoPrize From @DemingSos: “Stamping out fires is lot of fun, but it is only putting things back the way they were.” “Manage cause, not result. #Deming#quick-fix From @TheOnion - Area Man Uninterested In Creating A Better Community Even Though This May Benefit Him In...

How do you go to the Gemba when the Gemba is anywhere and everywhere?

February 1, 2012

By David M. Kasprzak

I have a dilemma. Since I have been blogging about ROWE and contemplating the virtual workspace, it is at odds with my affinity for Lean Thinking and, especially, the concepts of going to Gemba and Leader Standard Work. If process excellence is facilitated by having Leaders go to where the work takes place, how can this same process excellence be gained when workers are at home in their pajamas, banging away on laptops?

Plan for peak capacity, or get good at eliminating waste

January 25, 2012

By David M. Kasprzak

Plan for peak capacity, or get good at eliminating waste

when does anyone start to examine how we do things, to look for inefficiency? If we eliminated that inefficiency, how many hours of unnecessary processing, running around to find things or people, sitting in pointless meetings, etc. etc. could be done away with?

So, will culture help me grow my business?

January 23, 2012

By David M. Kasprzak

So, will culture help me grow my business?

All business is, to one degree or another, a volume business. The size of a business is determined by its revenues. While nearly every improvement school focuses on lowering costs – do they help to increase revenue? Most businesses will live within a certain margin that is reasonable within the company’s industry. True growth, however, occurs by selling more and increasing the volume of dollars flowing in. So, how can a business see the impact of adopting progressive cultural experiments on total, overall dollars at its disposal? If you had asked me up until a...

Why you can’t blame ROWE for Best Buy’s trouble

January 9, 2012

By David M. Kasprzak

Culture-transforming practices don't necessarily make business successful. It's still a matter of sound decision making at the top that makes a company profitable, or not. The benefits of progressive, empowering, engaging cultures is that they are more able to take advantage of good decisions or favorable changes in the environment and, generally, lessen the impact when things take a turn for the worse.

Shattering the rules: The too hard pile

January 4, 2012

By David M. Kasprzak

It is because of fear that we look at change as being too hard. We believe the obstacles insurmountable. The deck is stacked against us, or maybe we just don’t know how – so we fear looking foolish if we fail. So we don’t try. We throw things on the Too Hard pile and forget about them. We throw them there, so we don’t try and we just accept. We accept until we start to believe things are this way for a reason. We believe long enough to start to defend it,...

Typical Recruiting: The first step to the last straw

January 3, 2012

By David M. Kasprzak

Typical Recruiting: The first step to the last straw

From time to time I am contacted by recruiters, usually third-party folks who are looking to gain a commission, and once in a while I get a message from an in-house recruiter who has found my resume on monster.com or LinkedIn. The typical introduction, whether by phone or email, tends to go something like: Hello, I am ___________, a senior recruiter with ___________. I have a position I think you are a perfect fit for. Please forward me your resume and I’ll give you more details about the position. Now, all of that sounds normal, right? It’s...

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Operational Excellence

Last Week’s Top Tweets

Raising awareness of ROWE and Lean

The Get Shit Done Theory

Last week’s tweets

How do you go to the Gemba when the Gemba is anywhere and everywhere?

Plan for peak capacity, or get good at eliminating waste

So, will culture help me grow my business?

Why you can’t blame ROWE for Best Buy’s trouble

Shattering the rules: The too hard pile

Typical Recruiting: The first step to the last straw

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Site Creator & Author: David M. Kasprzak

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