Mike Richman
The dog days of summer have arrived, but fear not! We brought you another cool episode of QDL this past Friday, covering lean improvement, the Deming philosophy, leader psychology, and Industry 4.0....
Nate Dvorak
Retention is challenging for many organizations, especially in today’s tight labor market, where 63 percent of full-time employees say it is “somewhat likely” or “very likely” that they could find as...
Jennifer V. Miller
Is your organization built on a culture of trust?
Look around you; there are plenty of clues as to whether trust abounds. How quickly are decisions made? How many people do you copy (or worse, bcc...
Nicole Radziwill
ISO 31000 defines risk as “the effect of uncertainty on outcomes.” Identifying risks and determining ways to respond to them help you learn about your processes, your organization, and the...
Rob Matheson
MIT researchers have developed novel photography optics that capture images based on the timing of reflecting light inside the optics, instead of the traditional approach that relies on the...
Manfred Kets de Vries
A certain amount of stress is needed for us to function effectively. Stress is very much a part of the human condition. We all face disappointments, setbacks, losses and pain. But to live a rich and...
Harish Jose
I came across an interesting phrase recently. I was reading Kozo Saito’s paper, “Hitozukuri and Monozukuri,” and I saw the phrase “kufu eyes.” Kufu is a Japanese word that means “to seek a way out of...
Oscar Combs
ISO 9001:2015, clause 6.1 requires an organization to identify its risks and take actions to address identified risks. It is very tempting to start with a huge list of potential risks for the...
Ruth P. Stevens
Lead generation is a major preoccupation of the typical B2B marketing department. Indeed, most B2B marketers report that leads—with an emphasis on quality leads—are their primary goal. So, let’s...
Bruce Hamilton
Bob C. was a frontline employee with 25 years of experience. His day was spent operating a machine that stripped and terminated leadwire assemblies. Problem was, there were more than 1,000 different...
Annette Franz
Is there a link between corporate culture and the bottom line? In a nutshell, yes. Corporate culture is linked to so many business decisions and business outcomes, you might be surprised.
Today’s...
Richard Wilkinson
Whether it’s the effort to redefine the kilogram or researching the Harry Potter realm of quantum mechanics where things can somehow be in two or more places at one time, quite a bit of the...
Katie Takacs
As a consumer, it’s nearly impossible to get away from videos, advertising or otherwise. To give you a numeric sense of our collective obsession with online moving images: Since last year, YouTube...
Jim Benson
‘What if there’s a task in my options column that just never moves?”
This question comes up in almost every class we teach.
And we ask, “What if that happens?”
We get answers like, “You...
Kumar Mehta
Establishing the conditions that encourage innovation is the best way for your company to develop an environment that lets you produce offerings with new and novel value—innovations in the eyes of...
Mike Richman
Dirk is on vacation, so I had the show all to myself this week. To celebrate, I picked stories that resonate with my own personal perspective of quality—revolving around team building, innovation,...
Mark Rosenthal
During a TED talk, Amy Edmondson, the Novartis Professor of Leadership and Management at Harvard Business School, talks about “How to turn a group of strangers into a team.” Although long-standing...
Innovating Service With Chip Bell
Standing in the gate area of Delta Airlines at the Dallas/Fort Worth (DFW) International Airport, I was watching the monitor to learn if my name appeared on the “upgrade to first class” list....
Michael Jarrett
Transformational leaders are the exception, not the rule.
A consistent picture emerges from lists of top CEOs. In Harvard Business Review’s Best-Performing CEOs ranking, Pablo Isla of Inditex, the...
Willie Davis
Congratulations: You’re new to your organization, and the obligatory “meet and greets” are complete. You have met your team, your supervisor has conveyed expectations, your office is organized and—...
