Raising awareness of ROWE and Lean, redux

May 8, 2012 By Leave a Comment
Upon_Reflection_by_Cynnalia

Where ROWE is cool, and I mean really, really cool – is when it acknowledges the people side of things – that there are concerns outside of work that might keep me from being in the office, and if you let me take care of those things when I need to, I will pay you back with interest. THAT is a good thing. But when the people that do the work are left entirely on their own to organize themselves, without anyone to oversee the process, that is not good management – that is the acceptance of bad management as some kind of innate, inevitable truth. Yes, we need to be much more centered on allowing people the freedom to perform without paternalistic, demeaning oversight. Even the best of flocks need shepherds to guide and direct the herd, though. When the humanistic approach gets elevated, everyone wins. When it gets glorified, everyone loses.
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Filed Under: Behavior & Culture, Continuous Improvement, Operational Excellence, Team Building & Human Capital Tagged With: , , , ,

You are at the mercy of your analysts (and you don’t even know it)

April 24, 2012 By 1 Comment
Analysis

Anyone who has worked for any amount of time doing staff-level analytic work invariably knows that, when reports are presented, people will glance over the numbers looking for anomalies but never bother to understand the computation leading to what is in that report. Any attempt to explain the methodology results in blank stares, glassy eyes and, in many cases, utter disdain for wasting time explaining the math.

Unfortunately, what matters more than the number is the methodology. Information can be excluded and massaged. It can be changed to put a positive spin on the situation. As such, acting on information you don’t fully understand can lead to a disaster. [Read more]

Filed Under: Business Management, Operational Excellence, Planning & Measurement Tagged With: , , , ,

Management Innovation Exchange, and the weekly rewind

April 9, 2012 By Leave a Comment
Think Differently

I’m not certain how many of the usual readers of this blog are aware of the Management Innovation Exchange. According to their site:

What is the MIX?

An open innovation project…

The Management Innovation eXchange (MIX) is an open innovation project aimed at reinventing management for the 21st century. The premise: while “modern” management is one of humankind’s most important inventions, it is now a mature technology that must be reinvented for a new age.

The spur for a revolution in management… [Read more]

Filed Under: Behavior & Culture, Business Management, Operational Excellence, Useful Tools Tagged With: , , , ,

Let’s all stop being professional, a rhino’s tale

April 3, 2012 By Leave a Comment
The giant rhino monster

Every time someone with enough rank and a title granting them authority starts to screw up, behave in a foolish or terrible manner, or speak like a fool – we are told that we shouldn’t address the issue because “That wouldn’t be professional.” So, since being professional prevents us from acknowledging there are problems, let’s make a conscious decision to be profoundly un-professional.

What’s at work here is the manifestation of fear. Fear that if I point out there’s an 80,000 pound rhinoceros in the room, someone will make my life difficult, or I’ll lose my job altogether. Which is silly, because the rhinoceros is obvious and it stinks to high heaven. [Read more]

Filed Under: Behavior & Culture, Business Management, Uncategorized Tagged With: , , , , ,

Respect for People is not Respect for Person, just ask Clint Eastwood

March 21, 2012 By Leave a Comment

On my mind lately is the concept of “Respect for People” that is at the core of Lean and one of the fundamental building blocks of the Shingo Model.

I remember just about 3 years ago, as I was first introduced to Lean via the Greater Boston Manufacturing Partnership, there was a video in which Bruce Hamilton mentioned that, sometimes, leaders need to tell the late adopters to get with the program. “Wait a minute…” I thought. “Doesn’t that contradict the need for management to show concern for each of their charges, and guide them to accepting new ways of thinking & doing?” [Read more]

Filed Under: Behavior & Culture, Featured Posts, movies, music, tv, entertainment, Operational Excellence, Team Building & Human Capital Tagged With: , , ,

ROWE: An attempt at achieving the Lean Ideal?

March 15, 2012 By 4 Comments

In the past few months that I’ve been blogging about ROWE, I have been poking at how the two concepts might help to reinforce each other, with the premise that ROWE-thinking could help to enable Lean-thinking by overcoming the tools-based focus that is so prevalent in Lean implementations and, instead, returning the focus to the culture where I believe it belongs. fter stirring the pot and looking for the common ground between the two, I am now wondering if my original theory – that ROWE could enable Lean – was a bit backwards. [Read more]

Filed Under: Behavior & Culture, Business Management, Continuous Improvement, Featured Posts, Operational Excellence, Team Building & Human Capital Tagged With: , , , , , ,

The weekly rewind

March 5, 2012 By Leave a Comment

A look back at some articles that caught my eye:
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Filed Under: Behavior & Culture, Business Management, Continuous Improvement, Operational Excellence, Team Building & Human Capital, Uncategorized Tagged With: ,

Guest post on A Lean Journey, and the weekly rewind

February 27, 2012 By Leave a Comment

Today, I have a guest post appearing on Tim McMahon’s A Lean Journey Site. The Topic: ROWE in the context of the Shingo model. When Tim asked if I’d like to do a guest post on his site, I jumped at the chance. I also reached out to Mark Hamel, a blogger, an award-winning author for his book: The Kaizen Even Fieldbook, and a Shingo Prize examiner, for input. Mark wrote a complete post of his own which will appear on Tim’s site tomorrow. Mark dives even deeper into how ROWE aligns with the Shingo, and how it does not. [Read more]

Filed Under: Behavior & Culture, Business Management, Continuous Improvement, Funny things, Operational Excellence, Random observations, Team Building & Human Capital, Uncategorized Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , , ,

Choosing between the Business Sucks or the Work sucks (and you can’t say “it depends”)

February 23, 2012 By Leave a Comment

Last week on Linked In, I posed this question in the Q&A forums:

Which would you prefer – A workplace with a progressive culture and employee-centric focus to its operations that struggles due to suboptimal business performance, or a difficult command-and-control environment, but with a record of high performance? What I found interesting about this, and many of the answers, was how much they discussed the issues they supposed were behind the question, or the question’s merits, without ever really providing an answer. [Read more]

Filed Under: Behavior & Culture, Business Management, Family, Random observations, Team Building & Human Capital Tagged With: , , , , ,

Status Quo Thinking – Improvement Enemy #1

February 10, 2012 By Leave a Comment

  Posted on January 13, 2012 by CVB Consulting Group What’s one thing that all high achievers, both individuals and teams, have in common? They are never satisfied with how things are. Said another way, they refuse to accept the status quo. A status quo mindset is one of a caretaker. It accepts “what is” [...]

Filed Under: Behavior & Culture Tagged With: , , ,
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