All Features
GBMP
Hub Pen Co., located in Braintree, Massachusetts, imports specialty writing instruments and imprints them with company logos and other customized inscriptions. In 2013, the company received a grant for training in lean and continuous improvement, which was delivered by the Greater Boston…
Davis Balestracci
In honor of baseball season, I’m going to apply some simple statistical thinking to my favorite sport in a two-part series today and tomorrow. I want anyone to be able to enjoy this, so I’ll mark any technical statistics as optional reading. For those of you interested only in the interpretations…
Giles Hutchins
Globalization, disruptive technologies, pressure on finite resources, increasing social disparity, and demand for business transparency: Enter the age of uncertainty. These transformative times are reshaping the workplace in profound ways, demanding the crossing of thresholds at myriad levels. …
Lillian Erickson
The updated version of ISO 9001, published in September 2015, generated much anxiety among companies fearing a bumpy transition to the updated and significantly changed international standard. Admittedly, we at MasterControl were not immune to those worries.
Despite having quality experts…
Tonianne DeMaria
I recognize that the title of this column might stir up some controversy, especially among fellow coffee enthusiasts. Not to mention it puts me at risk of getting exiled from my beloved adopted home, Seattle. And yes, perhaps “Clarity > Coffee” even seems a tad hypocritical, considering that I’…
Niranjan Deodhar
Previously in this series, we looked at applying the principles of process improvement (PI) to itself. We identified metrics that help define effective and efficient PI, and then analyzed some work practices that help drive these metrics. Here, we move on to analyze more work practices, this time…
Knowledge at Wharton
A trained mechanical engineer, Mark Chang found himself “totally uncertain and unprepared” the first time he was called on to hire someone else.
“I didn’t even know why I was hired in the first place—what did they like about me?” Chang recalls. “So, how do I go out and look for the next person?”…
Gilles Hilary
Phil used to be a very senior financial executive. When asked for a number, he would typically provide with a rough ballpark answer, such as, “It’s about 5 percent.” He’d then be peppered with questions about how he had arrived at that figure.
After a while, he got tired of this questioning and…
Gallup
Increasingly dynamic workplaces have made organizational change an everyday reality. Demands for workforce agility require a step up from those commanding—particularly in ongoing measurement and making use of feedback during this breakneck pace of change.
There is a definite need for continuous…
Joelle K. Jay
Do you have a regular support group of leaders, or, as I call them, a “mastermind?” Being a member of a mastermind is a powerful strategy used by high-achieving leaders to move ahead quickly and reach their goals.
A mastermind is a small group of dedicated peers who share and support each other…
Dan Jacob
Airbags, ignition switches, and even emissions software; although large recalls make the news at a regular pace, these are surrounded by scandal. News reports include claims of illegal or unethical activity executed by individuals or larger groups of people. Unfortunately, as new reports expose…
Matthew Barsalou
The start of a failure investigation may involve brainstorming, but empirical methods will be required to actually identify a problem's cause. Implementing an improvement action without a confirmed root cause risks a reoccurrence of the issue because the true root cause has yet to be addressed.…
Mike Micklewright
When considering any effort toward performance improvement, you should always start by looking at the organization’s principles and culture, and making sure these are aligned so they not only permit positive changes to occur, but also ensure that the changes will be sustained over the long run. By…
Kevin Meyer
Those of us in the lean world are accustomed to discussing "flow"—where work is performed in an even manner to reduce mura or lack of regularity, one of the three forms of waste. Activities are synchronized, layouts are optimized, resources are available exactly where and when they are needed, and…
Barbara A. Cleary
When giant companies known for the quality of their products and services find themselves suddenly in the news due to massive recalls—think Volkswagen, Toyota, John Deere, Craftsman, or Chipotle—the first question to emerge often is: What went wrong?
Before jumping to the conclusion that quality…
Hilke Plassmann
The holy grail of marketing—a universal predictor of customer behavior—may be closer than ever, thanks to recent advances in the field of neuromarketing.
Even at its best, traditional market research has built-in limitations. First of all, consumers may be biased or unwilling to reveal their true…
Mike Figliuolo
Finding the right balance between how you handle success and failure makes a tremendous difference in the motivation level of your team members. There are some simple techniques for celebrating success and dealing with failure. Apply them and you’ll find your team is happier and more effective.…
Thomas R. Cutler
It’s no surprise that multinational companies have complex global supply chains. What’s less obvious is how to simplify supply-chain processes and arrive at a lean, consistent, reliable, and cost-effective solution. One global leader, ITT Corp., has taken on this challenge with the help of Ultriva…
Meredith Griffith
Sponsored Content
Most of us have heard of a backward way of completing a task, or doing something in the conventionally wrong order, described as “putting the cart before the horse.” That’s because a horse pulling a cart is much more efficient than a horse pushing a cart. This saying may be…
Kelly Graves
An overwhelming majority of organizations have inadvertently created an “us vs. them” culture. They turn much of their focus and many of their resources away from serving the customer and instead direct them toward fighting one another and vying for power. Or they have given up and are just “doing…
The Un-Comfort Zone With Robert Wilson
Last weekend, as I was clearing clutter, I found a copy of H. G. Wells’ The Time Machine. As I thumbed through it, I recalled that Wells, in his future world, describes man’s descendants as evolving into two distinct species: the Eloi and the Morlock. The Eloi live in an Eden-like setting where…
John Flaig
Sometimes when authors try to make a technical concept more understandable, it’s simplified but unfortunately, less accurate.
For example, when the developers of Six Sigma wanted to explain control charts and process capability analysis, they needed to include how the signal can be separated from…
Lolly Daskal
If you are going to be a leader or hold a leadership position, there’s one quality you absolutely require to be successful. You need to be a seeker.
A seeker is someone who is always searching. Seekers bypass mediocrity and are not content to settle for the status quo. They search for excellence…
Arun Hariharan
The other day, I visited a retail outlet of a wireless services provider to get information about its international roaming packages. The company has a few thousand outlets nationwide; they’re called “relationship centers” staffed with half a dozen employees who try to up-sell products and…
Michelle LaBrosse
Your project teams seem to have all the right pieces—team members with technical proficiency, good internal communication, an organized project manager—but something still isn’t quite right. Your team still struggles to get projects done on time and isn’t as productive as it could be. What’s going…
