On Monday MIT hosted a webinar with Steven Spear on the topic of “Creative Experimentation.” A key theme woven throughout Spear’s work is the world today is orders of magnitude more complex than it was even 10 or 15 years ago. Where, in the past, it was feasible for a single person or small group [...]
As we approach the end of the calendar year, many companies are starting to work on their Annual Operating Plans Wishes for next year. Why do I say wish? Because all too often these plans dictate what they wish would happen. Throughout the year, performance is “measured” against the plan. Positive variances are rewarded. Negative [...]
Today’s Dilbert strip highlights a situation that is only funny because it happens so often: The idea that a company can focus on 25 key areas, or 125 key performance indicators (yes, I said 125 because I have seen it myself) is obviously ludicrous. Of course a manager has a legitimate concern to ensure people [...]
Mike Rother and Bill Costantino have shared a presentation titled “Toyota Kata Unified Field Theory.” I think it nicely packages a number of concepts in an easy-to-understand flow. I want to expand on a couple of points but first listen to the presentation. (Yes, it has a sound track, to be sure to hit the “Play” [...]
I spent last week teaching three sessions of Job Instruction. One session at the end of night shift starting at 5am, the second session catching the start of day shift at 7am, then the third session for swing shift at 1:30. What is cool, though, is there is a senior member of the site leadership [...]
I was in a conversation today and we ended up boiling 5S down to three key points: You have everything you need. You need everything you have. You can see everything clearly belongs where it is. Of course at the next level, these statements are the standards you are continuously checking against. Presumably we have [...]
Mike Rother shared an overview presentation on the “Improvement Kata.” Introduction to the Improvement Kata View more presentations from Mike Rother. The words on one graphic really jumped out at me: Aside from his intended point that you never get good at anything but “business as usual” if “business as usual” is what you [...]
27 months ago I wrote a piece about a “ firefighting culture” where I described the actual process used to fight fires – following PDCA. I have learned a few things since then, and I want to tighten my analogy a bit. What is the core thinking behind true firefighting? This is actually closer to [...]
Now and then, usually when coaching or teaching someone, I get what I think is a flash of insight. Then I realize that, no, there is nothing new here, it is just a different way to say the same thing. Still, sometimes finding a different way of expressing a concept helps people grasp it, so [...]
While the dentist was looking over my x-rays, he saw something he would like checked out by a specialist. He used words like “sometimes they..” and “might be…” when describing the issue he saw. I get a referral. The information on the referral slip is the name of the referring dentist (which I can’t read), [...]