All Blog Posts (674)

Carol Kinsey Goman, Professional Change Agent for 25 years – states “ … The turbulent economy increases pressure to “do more with less.”…Customers are demanding “better, faster, cheaper” everything. Competition is fierce. The pace of change is accelerating. “

Sound like your challenges as a Continuous Improvement Team Member??

She states “leadership success belongs to those who can keep a work force resilient and engaged while dealing with a tsunami of change, complexity and…

I have been thinking for some time that there is a better approach to make Lean and Sigma work in your process.  When I hear that a company or hospital has abandoned it Lean or Six Sigma programs, I wonder what went wrong.  Why did it fail?  What was not done that caused the effort to fail?  What was not done that caused the effort to fail?  What can we change that will make these efforts more successful?

I just read a blog from Blair Nickle, Sr Manager at HPP that wrote an article…

I was recently introduces to the KASH model by Tom Chandler - who will be conducting training on the Judgement Index in our April Industrial Leadership Series Training course - and thought it was an excellent tool to share.

Each team member (TM) brings four distinct characteristics to an organization – Knowledge, Skills, Attitude and Habit – which affect performance and hence the success of the individual.  While most of the organizations focus on selecting employees based on…

I have just read a report written by Matt Hanrion, Senior Manager with Healthcare Performance Partners.  The book, Lean-Led Hospital Design: Creating the Efficient Hospital of the Future cited research that found more than 50 percent of hospital organizations in America now have some form of a Lean Healthcare initiative in progress (was referenced in Matt’s report).  Less than 10 percent were having measureable success with their initiative.

Matt pointed out some problems and…

Lean Turnaround presents the premise that PRODUCTIVITY = WEALTH – Thus Lean improves VA activity and therefore creates wealth.  Art Byrne presents 3 management principles and 4 Lean fundamentals.

Principle 1 - Lean is the strategy

Improving the  Value Added  activities is the  foundational core of your strategy;  Focus on process not results,  better VA=new strategic options and Lean is a time based growth strategy

Principle 2 - Lead from the…

Riding a bike – Once you learn to ride a bike you never forget - Working in a system is like riding a bike – We pedal faster if needed or slower, turning and braking we just have to manage the system – Now If we had to build a bike how many of us could accomplish this task?? How about building a production system??  Often the questions asked are: Why are there so few examples of great companies? Why do so many Lean implementations fail?? Maybe the question should be why do we expect our…

Were one to distill the advice of Edwards Deming to its essence, it would be “don’t tweak.”  Respond to noise in a non disciplined fashion, and all you do is exacerbate what you meant to improve.  Hence, Statistical Process Control to distinguish real problems from normal fluctuations in repeatable processes and  PDCA cycle  to impose the rigor of the scientific method on change. Of course, Deming was not the first to arrive at this view that discipline in design is a precursor to discipline…

The Dilemma

The future of your organization and the potential of your employees are intertwined; their destinies are linked.

An organization can only become the best version of itself to the extent that the people who drive the organization are striving to become best versions of themselves.   This is universally true when the organization is a business, a school, government, a not-for-profit, or a sports team.  To the extent that a CEO, an executive team, and a group of…

Is this an individual that uses: Plan, Do, Check and Act?

Or does this individual use the Six Sigma methodology of Define, Measure, Analyze, Improve and Control (DMAIC).

No one can improve a process that is constantly changing.  We must stabilize the process to get the variation under control.  This work would fall into standards for each work station and/or job and training of employees.  We also need to collect data that measures what we want to control.

Managers want…

During various on-site deliveries of our 'Lean Leadership' module, as well as presentations on this subject at conferences, I learned an important point about the term 'teaching'.  We often say that leaders need to 'teach'.  More specifically leaders should teach their direct reports and others with whom they come in contact about the direction of the business, and process improvement and problem solving methods, among other things.  However the term 'teacher' stirs up apprehension in some…

I am always  looking for information that will help me understand how Quality Initiatives benefit the user.  I have found an excellent article in Quality Progress (November 2012) written be Rip Stauffer and Debra Owens. 

Questions that need to be answered

• Does Quality have a payoff?
• Have quality management initiatives contributed significantly to organizations that implement them?

A study was conducted in the UK to answer the above…

Two thirds of corporate transformations fail to reach their goals, and many times the reason is that frontline employees are not engaged in creating solutions and do not feel a sense of ownership about the reasons for the change, writes Bo Vestergaard, professor at the University College of Northern Denmark and author of one of the Academy of Management Meeting's top ten best papers of 2012. According to a 2010…

As our business environments become more and more complex, the ability to collaborate becomes critical for a leader. Collaboration is much more than partnership. It will take the leader of the future to collaborate with internal teams/employees, external suppliers/customers, and investors. For this reason, Kouzes and Posner (2007) list Commitment #7 Foster Collaboration as a critical piece of meeting the leadership challenges. “You simply can’t get extraordinary things done by yourself.…

The earnings for 2012 Quality Professionals were essentially flat for 2012 (QP Magazine-2012 QP Salary Survey).  If you have ever had a question about your Quality salary, it is covered in this publication for December 2012.  Quality Professional naturally starts to question why their earning ability is basic stagnant.  We could blame it on the economy.  Or is it partly the fault of the professional.  You might ask:

1.   Do I need more training?
2.   Do I need to get…

In Marshall Goldsmith’s (2003) research into global leaders of successful multinational companies, one of the important skills he identified was the ability to creat trust with employees. “The leader should treat coworkers as partners, not competitors, by sharing knowledge openly and honestly, and establishing an enduring relationship of trust” (p.68). I believe the ability to build trust in a relationship is one of the most beneficial…

When beginning the Lean journey, several factors for selection and training must be taken into consideration or the results of the journey risk compromise.

1. Planning -- Training isn’t a budget line-item. It’s a pathway to success!

Training is discussed, it’s budgeted for, but often it’s never implemented. When business is good and operations are busy, management struggles to commit time for training. When business is poor and operations are slow, management…

One could easily argue that the foundation of Deming’s work in TQM was developing leaders on the front line who would search for opportunities to improve the process and product. In Commitment #5, I argue a similar process for leaders. The goal is not only to have front line leaders, but to have an organizational culture that shops for opportunities. To accomplish this goal, you must develop a servant leadership culture in your organization that will empower others to search for…

As we look at the next commitment in developing a servant leader culture in your organization, the focus moves to your followers. How does your vision motivate your employees? Is this a shared vision where everyone feels they are on the ‘same team’? A few months ago, I wrote on disruptive leadership and the misuse of power by using manipulation instead of motivation. The opposite of this type of disruptive action is for leaders to hold power as a servant leader.

“Servant leadership is…

Over the last few weeks, we developed a Servant Leader’s Credo and audited specific actions to ensure that the values in the credo matched the actions of the leader. Now the ten commitments of a servant leader turn from looking to the past to envisioning the future. The vision is based on the desire to develop servant leaders in order to gain an advantage in your market. Through a servant leader culture, your organization will listen to customers more intensely, seek more understanding from…