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 the off-shifts and so on. As I have mentioned many
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How to lead your company to success in a downturn
Leadership is a very broad and nebulous term. Generally accepted definitions of leadership are “The activity of leading” and/or “A person who rules or guides or inspires others.” By these definitions, anyone can be a leader, whether you formally manage and lead a team as a manager or supervisor
Money talks in quest to reduce waste
Following along with one of my past blogs, “Reliability is a ‘green’ initiative”, I would like to talk some more about waste reduction. Waste is seen in many different forms in manufacturing, and much of these wastes can be reduced or eliminated through incentives. It is no mystery that money
Emotional Intelligence: It’s link to improving productivity and profitability
What is Emotional Intelligence? If you ask this question, you will probably get many different and vague answers. The fact is that the concept of EI in the workplace and the connection between EI and leadership abilities is still being studied. Since 1990, Peter Salovey and John D. Mayer – considered
Avoid carbon copy syndrome; you must create your own lean system
First of all, thanks for the e-mails and comments. I received an e-mail about two days ago asking for my opinion on lean systems. In this blog, I will explain my opinion as best I can and as short as I can. OK, lean systems are great and can make a company prosper. They improve quality, eliminate wasteful
Plant performance: It comes down to intensity and respect
Talk about working in a fishbowl! Folks working for the TSA in airports most always perform to an impatient, critical, assessing audience, as most of us are forced to watch them work for much longer than we want. And if you’re just standing in line impatiently waiting, then observing and criticizing
How to lead and survive in our multi-generational workforce
Leaders today are facing the most complicated workforce in the history of Corporate America. For the first time ever, four generations are working side-by-side, each at different life stages, and each with conflicting perspectives, expectations and needs. The members of each of these groups –
Desk experiment: Author stands up for lean (literally)
I would first like to express thanks to everyone for the e-mails I have received in response to my previous blog postings. I am pleased to see that there are plenty of individuals thinking outside the box. Continuous
CI groups can do more harm than good to lean efforts
As strange as it may sound, I believe that continuous improvement (CI) culture is something that many organizations resist without realizing it. Sometimes it is not a mountain to climb but an anthill to step over. In this blog, I will discuss that anthill as I have seen it. Culture is defined as integrated
Coke, Pepsi and lean: Is it all in the packaging?
I have been a developing change agent at my company for about five years now. I have saved my company a lot of money and have been promoted twice. I have had the opportunity to be trained by multiple lean consulting firms and have traveled to Japan, Mexico and California for continuous improvement training.
Best-selling checklists?
As an unrepentant checklist fanatic/junkie, I recently had to pick myself up off the floor in an airport newsstand (not a bookstore, but a newsstand!). There with all the romance novels, Dan Brown books and the latest silver-bullet management books was The Checklist Manifesto by Dr. Atul Gawande. A best-selling
