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The importance of visible leadership
Just this week, I caught a few moments of the reality show where the CEO goes out “undercover” – albeit with a film crew – to capture what’s really happening in the trenches of an organization. It reminded me of how frequently we fail to understand what’s going on in our own world during
In a learning organization, you must learn needs of workforce
Before you attempt to ask people to learn something new, you should take a few minutes to diagnose their needs and how they might learn best. See, not everyone learns the same way, at the same rate, or has the same background or experiences that you do. At the end of the day, you aren’t the one learning,
Workplace lessons learned from a baseball game
As some of you know, I spend a fair amount of time working in California. It happens I was there last week and thought I would share a story from that trip. It happens that one of my friends was part of a group taking some engineering interns out for a last hurrah at an Oakland Athletics baseball game
How do your employees really feel about their jobs, the company?
The Jet Blue flight attendant who wigged out last week, while admittedly demonstrating in an overly dramatic way that he was fed up with his job, is a sign of things to come if employers do not start paying attention to their employees. In the event that you have missed the news this past week, the Jet
A workplace situation. You’re in charge. What would you do?
Recently, I have been outside of the United States facilitating a “Skills for Maintenance Leadership and Supervision” course. One of the things that I enjoy doing in these supervision courses is to provoke the group with situational scenarios and ask them how they would respond. Fortunately or not,
Developing your leadership skills through mentoring
Mentorship refers to a personal developmental relationship in which a more experienced or more knowledgeable person helps a less experienced or less knowledgeable person. The receiver of mentorship was traditionally
Employ standard work in maintenance tasks
In many organizations, the focus on maintenance tasks is too general in nature, trusting the craftsperson to do the right thing. While we should trust our people, most of whom are highly competent and skilled, we also should set the expectation for the work to be accomplished in a precise manner. Otherwise,
When it comes to strategic planning, don’t forget the people
It has been the norm for decades that organizational strategic plans have been created by upper levels of management. Annually, the best and the brightest division heads come together to brainstorm the company’s strategic challenges and solutions, articulate the vision for strategic growth, and formulate
Bring plant-floor zombies back to life; let them use their brains!
This blog will be somewhat short. I apologize, but I wanted to get a thought in this month. I hope that the content, as basic as it may be, sparks your interest enough to conduct some research on the subject. I hope that it eventually motivates organizational leaders to push for employee empowerment,
Attain the double vision of reliability AND maintainability
Have you got double vision? I hope you do, but not in the sense I bet that you are thinking. No, I’m not talking about having one too many or that splitting headache that sometimes results in double vision. I’m talking about driving availability. It’s a measure that is made up of two component
