Note taking is a valuable skill. Most people can’t remember all the details they are deluged with every day. Having a method to record the important morsels of information without getting buried in all the noise can mean the difference between being effective at your job and being a black Read more…
Ownership creates responsibility. Whether it is a company, a process, or a desk, people tend to take more responsibility when they are dealing with something that is theirs. Pride of ownership is a term that is most commonly applied to homes, but it also applies to processes and work areas. Read more…
A while back I read an article about the Florida Panthers. They are an NHL hockey team with the seventh largest arena in the league. In Florida, I am certain that hockey does not reign supreme. It is a state where most kids seldom see a dusting of snow growing Read more…
Barriers to entry are the variety of factors that keep new entrants from competing in a particular industry. It may be the strength of the brands of the incumbents. It may be the cost of developing competing technology. It may be access to raw materials or distribution channels. It may Read more…
A few years ago when my daughter was in preschool, her teacher sent home a stack of materials to use for classroom decorations. Naturally, I pretended to have a pressing deadline to prepare for, so the work fell to my wife. The task was to use the accompanying box of Read more…
There are countless quotes about rules, most of them negative. Rules are made to be broken. –unknown There are no rules here – we’re trying to accomplish something. –Thomas A. Edison Rules and models destroy genius and art. –William Hazlitt The common perception of rules is that they are stifling, Read more…
When someone is happy, they say “I am happy.” They do not say, “I am not sad.” When people speak in negatives, they are typically meaning, at least subconsciously, whatever they are saying with the “not” removed. In the case above, if a person says, “I am not sad”, it Read more…
Office politics are the unwritten rules of interactions in an organization. Social politics form in any group of people that interact regularly. Families have politics. Cliques in schools are a form of politics. And, of course, coworkers have a set of norms that they operate under. Office politics are commonly Read more…
Days sales of inventory (DSI) is an accounting measure that gives an idea of how much inventory is on hand in a company. A large number means the company is generally inefficient at turning raw materials into profit. The formula for DSI is: The average inventory is calculated as follows: Read more…
A sunk cost is an expense that has already been incurred and has no bearing on future decisions. Imagine that you are working on restoring an old car and have budgeted $2000 to complete the project. After all the repairs are made and you turn the key, you hear nothing. Read more…
A job shop is a flexible production operation that builds to order. They specialize in (but are not limited to) low volume, high-mix work. They often do custom production rather than manufacture standard parts. A job is a discrete unit of work—same product, same setup—of a specified quantity. A job Read more…
One of the challenges of being a big company lies in making sure one hand is talking to the other. I recently came across an instance in which this seemed not to happen. I was running McAfee security software at the time, and occasionally received emails from them. I was Read more…