At some time you’re going to face serious adversity. Maybe you already have. Your crisis may be an internal or external one, but it will come. The more extensive your leadership reach, the more likely you are to face these situations. The impact can be disastrous for your business and for you personally. Just ask [...]
Adversity: It’s Not Whether It Will Happen But How You React That Counts
February 3, 2012 By Leave a Comment
How do you go to the Gemba when the Gemba is anywhere and everywhere?
February 1, 2012 By 1 Comment
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?
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Short-term thinking: Misery is OK, as long as it’s less lousy
January 31, 2012 By Leave a Comment
It’s not acceptable to say that today’s misery is acceptable as long as it’s not as bad as what the other guy is doing. Even if we do not know of a better way, we should be diligent in our minds about whether or not something is tolerable. How often do we see underperforming departments, but continue to let them limp along? How often do we see wasteful practices and ignore the problems? Worse yet, how many senior members of the management team actively thwart their subordinates’ attempts at sharing information and voicing criticism?
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So, will culture help me grow my business?
January 23, 2012 By 1 Comment
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 week ago, my answer would have been: It can’t. [Read more]
It’s not your management, it’s a “labor market mismatch”
January 12, 2012 By 2 Comments
What’s being done right now to make sure that the workforce they have today will be able to meet the needs of the future, or will we be hearing about this labor market mismatch in the future, too? Are businesses really just hoping that the right graduates come out of college with the necessary skills, or that mid-career pros will be able to utilize existing skills in entirely new ways, or are they providing guidance and resources so that the labor pool stays stocked with talent? [Read more]
You can’t bloviate your way to an improved workplace
January 10, 2012 By 3 Comments
I think we’ve all encountered the senior manager who has been assigned to “fix” a dysfunctional chunk of the organization. Typically, they come in with a great many ideas, usually born from experiences in other situations, and then they begin to implement the tools that worked elsewhere. There’s often a short period of enthusiasm, if [...]
Shattering the rules: The too hard pile
January 4, 2012 By Leave a Comment
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, and then the status quo reigns. That is a powerful load of inertia to overcome [Read more]
Typical Recruiting: The first step to the last straw
January 3, 2012 By 1 Comment
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 just business as usual and part of the HR hiring process. Sadly, if we’re looking at it as part of an acceptable process, we’re looking at it all wrong.
Understanding that Results are an absolute
December 21, 2011 By Leave a Comment
As I continue to contemplate the machinations of the Results-Only Work Environment (ROWE), I’ve had a few conversations recently with people who are trying to understand how ROWE works. While I am far fom an expert, I have come up with a few things in order to share my understanding. [Read more]
Evolving Excellence reviews My Flexible Pencil
December 19, 2011 By Leave a Comment
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