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…
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…
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…
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…
Curiosity is the desire to learn more, or the state of dissatisfaction with a lack of knowledge. It is also a fundamental part of any problem solving mentality. Curiosity provides the drive to follow up on an issue once it is identified. It gives the spark that makes people continue Read more…
Most people have a baseline as far as what they think can be accomplished with continuous improvement. So, when a leader starts talking about Lean capabilities, many people take the message with a grain of salt. The gains that Lean offers can seem too good to be true, especially to Read more…
Change management is a fairly large field of study that deals with effectively and efficiently introducing changes into an organization. When changes occur, there are some predictable sequences of events that follow. Understanding this process will help smooth transitions that are associated with continuous improvement. Change has two main components. Read more…
Coaching is the act of giving specific guidance to help a person make better decisions that will result in the individual getting closer to reaching his or her goals or accomplishing a specific task better. Generally speaking, coaching is very targeted, and usually comes as a result of a formally Read more…
Continuous improvement is as much about not going backward as it is about making progress. Knowing what to avoid is as important as knowing what to do. While many of the items on this list of No-No’s won’t derail your Lean efforts, they do act as speed bumps that slow Read more…