Lolly Daskal
Leadership may be complex, but it doesn’t have to be complicated. We can always simplify. Often our greatest hardships are those we impose upon ourselves.
There are some who think that in order to...
Matthew Littlefield
Although there is no bad time to improve quality management maturity, an optimal time is during fiscal planning for a new year. Executives and quality professionals who are affected by the...
Jason Furness
This is the first part of a three-part series on the “six layers of resistance.” It’s based on the work of Eliyahu Goldratt, who has now passed away. Goldratt was the originator of a body of...
Kevin Meyer
“I will take time to be alone today. I will take time to be quiet. In this silence I will listen... and I will hear my answers.” —Ruth Fishel
One of my great pleasures is going for a walk on the...
Harry Hertz
During my 25 years with the Baldrige program, I have never come across an organization that couldn’t improve its communication, no matter how good it already is. The importance of...
Mike Micklewright
To many people, the relationship between daily kaizen and statistical process control (SPC) might seem as remote as the relationship between a kangaroo and the past iconic American TV series...
Jack Dunigan
Whenever I hire a new employee, as part of his orientation I am always careful to emphasize that it would be wrong to mistake my forbearance for indifference, that while I am long-suffering and...
Gilles Hilary
Eric (not his real name) was under pressure from his sales department. He was hesitant to close a large financing deal with a Chinese corporation but had little beyond his intuition to back up his...
Davis Balestracci
Dealing with individuals is one important aspect of culture change. I addressed this in “How Does Your Organization Define Accountability?” Every organization has many tribes (i.e., departments or...
Bruce Hamilton
A piece of popular lore, provided by Shigeo Shingo, is that the original name for mistake-proofing (poka-yoke) was actually fool-proofing (baka-yoke). Shingo chided managers at Panasonic for...
Quality Transformation With David Schwinn
I teach management and leadership. Recently, the topic in one of my classes was change and stress. I asked my students, who are nearly all employed and range in age from 19 to 55, what caused them...
Quy Huy
Middle managers could take the lead in a changing corporate world, if they would only recognize that their primary value is emotional, not functional. Once again, middle managers...
Bill Remy
A recent article in The Wall Street Journal reported that quarterly profits and revenue at big U.S. companies are poised to decline for the first time since the 2008 recession, as some industrial...
Leo Sadovy
Having a mentor is the No. 1 factor in increasing the steepness of your personal learning curve. So says my oldest, Garik, a Park Scholar at North Carolina State University (class of 2012), during...
Arun Hariharan
During my years of experience helping companies with quality, I’ve observed that in some, any conversation and initiatives related to quality seem to revolve around operations. In manufacturing...
Mary Ann Pacelli
As a manufacturer, you don’t want workers; you want company ambassadors. Workers are individuals who show up and get their tasks done. Company ambassadors are a team of employees who are...
Giles Hutchins
Much of today’s organizational management mindset—whether corporate, nonprofit, government institution, or startup—is rooted in a flawed logic about how the world works.
“We have been, and...
The QA Pharm
Historically, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has cited the Supreme Court decisions of United States v. Dotterweich (1943) and United States v. Park (1975) as Federal Food, Drug, and...
Jack Dunigan
Delegation. If you’ve been in leadership for very long, you’ve undoubtedly had a class or two on the subject, read a couple of books about it, and encountered effective delegators as well as...
John Bell
Leadership doesn’t begin when you step up on the first rung of the management ladder. One direct report doesn’t make you a leader; nor does 10. Yet, the moment you have...
