Gilles Hilary
Phil used to be a very senior financial executive. When asked for a number, he would typically provide with a rough ballpark answer, such as, “It’s about 5 percent.” He’d then be peppered with...
Joelle K. Jay
Do you have a regular support group of leaders, or, as I call them, a “mastermind?” Being a member of a mastermind is a powerful strategy used by high-achieving leaders to move ahead quickly and...
Dan Jacob
Airbags, ignition switches, and even emissions software; although large recalls make the news at a regular pace, these are surrounded by scandal. News reports include claims of illegal or unethical...
Matthew Barsalou
The start of a failure investigation may involve brainstorming, but empirical methods will be required to actually identify a problem's cause. Implementing an improvement action without a confirmed...
Mike Micklewright
When considering any effort toward performance improvement, you should always start by looking at the organization’s principles and culture, and making sure these are aligned so they not only...
Kevin Meyer
Those of us in the lean world are accustomed to discussing "flow"—where work is performed in an even manner to reduce mura or lack of regularity, one of the three forms of waste. Activities are...
Barbara A. Cleary
When giant companies known for the quality of their products and services find themselves suddenly in the news due to massive recalls—think Volkswagen, Toyota, John Deere, Craftsman, or Chipotle—...
Hilke Plassmann
The holy grail of marketing—a universal predictor of customer behavior—may be closer than ever, thanks to recent advances in the field of neuromarketing.
Even at its best, traditional market...
Mike Figliuolo
Finding the right balance between how you handle success and failure makes a tremendous difference in the motivation level of your team members. There are some simple techniques for celebrating...
Thomas R. Cutler
It’s no surprise that multinational companies have complex global supply chains. What’s less obvious is how to simplify supply-chain processes and arrive at a lean, consistent, reliable, and cost-...
Meredith Griffith
Sponsored Content
Most of us have heard of a backward way of completing a task, or doing something in the conventionally wrong order, described as “putting the cart before the horse.” That’s...
Kelly Graves
An overwhelming majority of organizations have inadvertently created an “us vs. them” culture. They turn much of their focus and many of their resources away from serving the customer and instead...
The Un-Comfort Zone With Robert Wilson
Last weekend, as I was clearing clutter, I found a copy of H. G. Wells’ The Time Machine. As I thumbed through it, I recalled that Wells, in his future world, describes man’s descendants as...
John Flaig
Sometimes when authors try to make a technical concept more understandable, it’s simplified but unfortunately, less accurate.
For example, when the developers of Six Sigma wanted to explain...
Lolly Daskal
If you are going to be a leader or hold a leadership position, there’s one quality you absolutely require to be successful. You need to be a seeker.
A seeker is someone who is always searching....
Arun Hariharan
The other day, I visited a retail outlet of a wireless services provider to get information about its international roaming packages. The company has a few thousand outlets nationwide; they’re...
Michelle LaBrosse
Your project teams seem to have all the right pieces—team members with technical proficiency, good internal communication, an organized project manager—but something still isn’t quite right. Your...
Davis Balestracci
This article is based on some ideas from my respected colleague Mark Hamel. Despite the lean framework, these ideas apply to any improvement approach—all of which come from the same theory, lean...
Jim Benson
When you are a consultant, or worse yet, seen as a thought leader, people hire you expecting that you’ll know “the answers.” At best, what you actually know are paths to make sense of problems...
Elisabet Lagerstedt
A few years back, a searing pain in my elbow sent me to the doctor, who diagnosed me with olecranon bursitis. Apparently, all that time spent leaning forward on hard desks in different meeting...
