All Features
Sara Harrison
A hush has fallen over the workplace. At tech startups and banks, in doctors’ offices and law firms, workers are increasingly being asked to keep secrets. These aren’t personal confidences but organizational secrets about clients, proprietary technologies, or business strategies. Sometimes…
George Schuetz
Electronic temperature compensation in gaging has become a valuable tool in improving the accuracy and gage repeatability and reproducibility (GR&R) of gages in harsh manufacturing environments.
The need for temperature compensation comes into play when the expected errors from temperature…
Mike Figliuolo
Moving to a new job can be scary and intimidating, with many risks inherent in making that transition. But if you think of the transition like laying siege to a fortress, you will be just fine.
There are a few major risks you must account for as you plan how to attack your next job. Those risks…
David Satterwhite, Mark Hembree
The world of remote work spawned by the pandemic posed several new and unprecedented challenges as employers and employees alike reconfigured relationships and adopted new expectations for each other.
For most people who were able to do so, skipping the commute and working from home was preferable…
Gleb Tsipursky
The transformative potential of generative AI in learning and development (L&D) is a topic of growing interest among business leaders. And if you think your workers aren’t using generative AI, you could be seriously off base.
According to a global study of 14,000 workers in late 2023 by…
Seb Murray
Last year, the corporate world adopted a new term: flattening. This refers to how tech companies, which rapidly hired droves of middle managers during the pandemic boom, are now eliminating this layer through widespread job cuts.
Recent research by Mustafa Dogan, Alexandre Jacquillat, and Wharton’…
NIST
‘There is a tremendous opportunity for women to influence the manufacturing industry in a positive way,” says Lisa Dach, strategic business advisor at the Northwest Industrial Resource Center (NWIRC), part of the Pennsylvania MEP and the MEP National Network. “Women in leadership improve the…
Megan Wallin-Kerth
When you think of good customer service—particularly the barriers to it—two factors generally come to mind: timing and wording. Imagine walking into a store that sells soap and bodywash products and immediately being bombarded with, “May I help you?” “Looking for anything today?” or the dreaded, “…
Mike Figliuolo
Susan Strayer, a friend of mine, posed a question on social media the other day: “Can you sum up your expertise in 140 characters or less?” Great question. A few people took her up on the challenge. Being an overachiever, I did it in three words. Before I dive in, let me provide some context.
For…
Michael Platt, Vera Ludwig
Four years after the Covid-19 pandemic accelerated remote work, its advantages and drawbacks have been well documented. For leaders, the biggest hurdles have remained constant: building employee engagement, trust, and communication.
Nano Tool
Scientists from the Wharton Neuroscience Initiative …
Harish Jose
Recently, I wrote about the process capability index and tolerance interval. Here, I’m writing about the relationship between the process capability index and sigma. The sigma number here relates to how many standard deviations the process window can hold.
A +/– 3 sigma contains 99.73% of the…
Mike Figliuolo
I hate the use of the word just in front of anyone’s title, as in, “He’s just an analyst,” or, “She’s just a cafeteria worker,” or, “I’m just an administrative assistant.”
No one is just anything. The word is demeaning and pejorative. We’re all people—we happen to have different responsibilities.…
John Tschohl
Are your employees empowered to make decisions on the spot in favor of the customer? Your single goal should be to have overly happy customers. Too many things go wrong each day. You want your employees to understand they are in customer service, and their No. 1 responsibility is to take care of…
Mike Figliuolo
Reading the news (or even your email) can be distressing to the point of despondency. It can also be fun. It’s especially fun when people say or write silly stuff, and the reporter or editor has to write [sic] after a misspelling or a stupid comment in the original transcript. Sic, usually placed…
Daniel Marzullo
The “comfort zone” is that cozy space where everything feels familiar and stress-free. It’s where we stick to what we know, using the same old strategies that keep things steady but can also lead to feeling stuck.
In this zone, there’s not much motivation to push for new achievements, so progress…
Etienne Nichols
On Jan. 31, 2024, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) released its final rule for the new Quality Management System Regulation (QMSR).
The new QMSR is the result of aligning the current good manufacturing practice (cGMP) requirements of the FDA’s quality system regulation (QSR) with the…
Mike Figliuolo
We take ourselves too seriously, and in doing so we become boring and no fun. Sometimes it’s OK to let loose, act silly, and have a good time. It’s energizing.
So often we while away the days being the consummate professional. We read professional journals. We write professional messages. We hold…
Jennifer King
At a time when virtual meetings, video conferences, and online work calls are the norm, there’s good news for those who see a unique value in in-person networking. A survey conducted by Harvard Business Review has found that 95% of professionals believe face-to-face meetings are crucial to…
Jones Loflin
In a previous article, I discussed the concept of “stress bragging”—that tendency to boast about our stress levels as a way to highlight our productivity and importance. I touched on ways to curb this habit in ourselves. But what about when others do it? Here are some effective strategies for…
Mike Figliuolo
It’s all well and good to pontificate about “the customer comes first” or “deliver outstanding service,” but often it’s hard for your team members to wrap their heads around what that really means. You can say these things until your jaw muscles are sore, and post all the customer service rules you…
Adam Zewe
Someday, you may want your home robot to carry a load of dirty clothes downstairs and deposit them in the washing machine in the far-left corner of the basement. The robot will need to combine your instructions with its visual observations to determine what it should do to complete this task.
For…
Kate Zabriskie
‘I don’t like confrontation, but I’m tired of his abuse. He signed me up for another committee without asking.”
“I know I need to say something about her taking credit for my work, but how to start?”
“Another joy of adulting, I’ve got to have one of those thorny conversations. Not fun.”
Difficult…
Mike Figliuolo
Are you giving your lowest-level employees the power to make crucial customer-relations decisions without supervision? If not, you’re making a huge mistake.
Within a four-hour period on Friday I witnessed both excellent leadership and an abject failure of it. These experiences occurred with the…
Jones Loflin
I love gardening and growing fresh vegetables. Recently I had checked in on my Brussels sprouts seedlings and, well, they looked awful! The reason quickly became obvious to me: I had overwatered them.
I was so excited about growing Brussels sprouts this year, I didn’t want anything to happen to…
Harry Hertz
The Baldrige Executive Fellows is an annual cohort of executives learning about leading their organizations using the Baldrige Excellence Framework as a guide. As part of the collaborative experience, each executive fellow undertakes a capstone project of strategic significance to their…
