Born to a Dalit family, Megha was raised in Southwest India and learned English at her convent school. As a child, she aspired to be a fashion designer or a cardiologist, but her parents insisted that she become an IT engineer. After four years of higher education, Megha found a job in the booming technology sector.

I had the pleasure of interviewing Whitney Johnson, author of the book, Build an A Team: Play to Their Strengths and Lead Them Up the Learning Curve (Harvard Business Review Press, 2018).

A leading supermarket chain in an eastern European Union country feared an 8-percent drop in sales as discounting giant Lidl was about to enter its market. So, in collaboration with researchers, it decided to run a randomized controlled experiment. The goal was to reduce its costly personnel turnover problem in a bid to improve quality and operational efficiency.

The world is running out of experienced pilots. Supply is not keeping up with the growing demand for air travel. In Australia, the effects are already starting to bite. Even flagship carrier Qantas is having problems. In recent months it has had to perform a very nimble tap dance to crew its vast fleet and maintain its extensive flight schedule.

Who’s more clever, engineers or designers? Alexa-connected toilet, anyone? How do you promote rigorous thinking? We discussed all of that and more during this week’s QDL.

“CES brings you... the Alexa-connected toilet!’

Just when you thought that nothing crazier than your clothes dryer could be connected to the internet... there’s this.

Happy New Year one and all! For our first QDL of 2019, we were pleased to present some thought-provoking content on the benefits of compromise, the dangers of rhetorical trickery, and the meaning of Chekhov’s gun. Let’s take a closer look:

If you’re a leader, you got to where you are because you think strategically and are killer at execution. You simply can’t get far without being good at both.

Now that you’re in charge of people, though, your ability to increase impact depends on how well you manage other people. You need your team to become smarter, sharper, A-players.

This is part three of a three-part series. Read about good metrics in part one and bad metrics in part two.

As the global economy grows, it’s more necessary than ever to stay on top of efficiency. Keep up with increasing production demands by implementing a continuous improvement method to streamline the workflow.

Continuous improvement is an ongoing effort to improve products, services, and processes. It starts with small, incremental changes, and over time it adds up to produce major improvements to productivity, quality, and cost savings. A 5S system is an effective improvement tool to guide this process.

In this episode we look at bioethics, next-gen manufacturing employees, and the death of Le Grand K.

What happens if customers want designer babies? We discuss the latest news about a Chinese researcher who claims to have edited the genes of two babies. Should society draw a line in the sand?