All Features
James Brewton
Keeping every healthcare employee focused on continuous improvement, every day, is a huge challenge. It’s natural for people to lose sight of long-term goals and objectives due to the pressures of daily responsibilities. One powerful tool executives can use to keep continuous improvement at the…
Jeffrey Phillips
I recently had the opportunity to speak to a leadership team that is considering building an innovation capability in their business. I was asked a question I get infrequently, but one I always enjoy answering. The question is this: “What keeps businesses from innovating effectively?”
The answer…
Jess Scheer
T
he world’s worst-kept business secret is that most acquisitions fail. Depending on what metric you use to evaluate success, mergers miss their intended goals by as much as 85 percent of the time. With a failure rate that high, there’s no single cause, and there’s no silver bullet that will…
Davis Balestracci
As most of you know, one of my mantras for change agents is, “Those darn humans! God bless ’em,” i.e., don’t be surprised by anything. People never seem to mind change... for other people or departments.
Ever heard this: “It’s about time someone did something about that. They really needed to…
Mike Figliuolo
Time is your most precious resource. If you’re not mindful about how you invest it in your team members, you won’t be happy with the “returns” you get. Being more effective requires you to look at your time in a new light.
Do leaders work, or do they sit back and supervise others? Where you stand…
Maurice DeCastro
Would you market your business today the same way you were marketing it 30 years ago? Would you use the same technology? Would you lead your team the same way? I’m guessing most leaders would answer each question with a resounding “No.”
If that’s the case, why has the work culture for business…
Harry Hertz
As the following diagram of the Baldrige framework indicates, the basis of the Baldrige Criteria for Performance Excellence is a set of core values and concepts that are embedded in high-performing organizations.
These core values and concepts (listed below) are the foundation for integrating key…
Akhilesh Gulati
The big data revolution is requiring a seismic shift inside organizations, both in the way we build relationships and the way we make decisions. Each is now driven by data rather than intuition.
In general, decision making is accomplished via a thought process of selecting a logical choice from…
Barry Johnson
The adage “if you aren’t moving forward, you’re falling behind” is true more often than not. Regardless of the type of business, all organizations need to improve to survive. The last words uttered by managers in failing organizations are, “We’ve always done it this way.”
The key to long-term…
Jack Dunigan
It seemed like a good idea at the time and an incredibly generous act on the part of the company. When Gravity Payments founder and CEO Dan Price announced that he would raise everyone’s minimum wage to $50,000 a year with $10,000 a year increases until everyone’s minimum was at $70K in 2017, it…
Barbara A. Cleary
Last year’s Gallup poll of worker satisfaction revealed that almost 90 percent of workers were either “not engaged” with or “actively disengaged” from the work at their jobs—a shocking revelation that has apparently been repeated in many polls.
Barry Schwarz, a professor of psychology at…
Jesse Lyn Stoner
One of the most important things you can do is to identify your team’s mission. And one of the biggest wastes of time is creating a mission statement that isn’t used.
An earlier post of mine, “How to Write a Mission Statement in 5 Steps,” explains what a mission statement is and how to write one…
Quality Transformation With David Schwinn
The recent news coverage of “bruising” and inhumane management practices at Amazon and other well-known companies got my attention because of its relevance to our new book, The Transformative Workplace: Growing People, Purpose, Prosperity and Peace (Transformations Press Unlimited, 2015), and…
Alan Nicol
A good friend and mentor of mine said, “We should eat the bread that we make.” He is James Wardlaw, now of Summit Engineering Solutions, and he reminded me of this piece of wisdom during a recent conversation.
It means that we should live with the consequences of our own work. We should deal with…
Davis Balestracci
Is accountability used as an excuse for draconian enforcement of arbitrary goals? We’re familiar with the insanity of wasted time spent overreacting to common cause. I remember the dreaded review meetings, spending all day listening to litanies of excuses, finger pointing, blaming others, and…
Frank Sonnenberg
In years past, a company’s health was measured by the size of its balance sheet. While that still may be true today, great leaders know that an organization’s competitiveness is determined by its ability to harness the power of intangibles—often referred to as “soft issues.”
To achieve…
Carlos Venegas, Gaurav Tamta
Quality goes beyond the purview of the quality professional. Quality, it has been said, is everybody’s business, but too many outside this discipline see it as something dry, bland, and boring—and perhaps for good reason.
For example, one of the authors of this article had the painful, all-too-…
In today’s hyper-competitive global economy, talent is often your most valuable weapon. If you’re like most business leaders, you’re not above engaging in a little employee-poaching to improve your position. After all, if you can entice an MVP from another company to enlist in your ranks, you’ll…
Jack Dunigan
His name is Danny, and he owns “Danny’s Fashion Shoppe, bespoke tailors, Hong Kong.” His store is tiny, tucked into one of the many arcades that line Kowloon’s streets. The walls are stacked high with bolts of cloth, interrupted three or four times by mirrors.
I used to get my suits made there.…
Kelly Graves
What lasts longer, an expensive motivational speaker or a cup of espresso? It’s about the same, but the espresso provides a much better return on investment. You see, from a behavioral standpoint, you can’t motivate me, and I can’t motivate you. However, people can and do motivate themselves, and…
Maxine Attong
Manufacturers know the high cost of defects—the direct and indirect costs of manufacturing the recalled items, the cost to restock, the unquantifiable loss of consumers, and (at times) the need for a publicity campaign to rebuild product confidence and brand reputation. These costs provide a…
John Bell
From as far back as my days in brand management, I have held a deep affection for strategy. This might have something to do with the fact that I can be stubborn. Good strategists are also stubborn, even pigheaded. Why is that?
Because without strategic stubbornness, the hard barrier lines that…
Davis Balestracci
This is a continuation of my last column, which I’ve written to honor my late dad who loved golf. As promised, let’s look at the Masters golf tournament final four-round scores for the 55 players who survived the cut. We’ll analyze and then give it a twist based on the ongoing enumerative vs.…
Kelly Graves
Most everyone has read the maxim, “Plan your work and work your plan.” This is simple and effective advice—when it’s followed. Unfortunately, it can also be overwhelming when it comes to ensuring that everyone in the organization knows what the strategic plan is and how they can directly support…
Quality Digest
When asked a direct question, telling the truth is always a good option, so is giving a direct answer. That being said, sometimes a parable is worth a thousand words.
“The kind of seed sown will produce that kind of fruit. Those who do good will reap good results. Those who do evil will reap evil…
