All Features
Gwendolyn Galsworth
The one complaint—the one problem—that nearly every company puts at (or very near) the top of its list of challenges is communication. George Bernard Shaw, the famous Irish playwright, sets us straight on this when he said: “The single biggest problem in communication is the illusion that it has…
Laurel Thoennes @ Quality Digest
You can be known as a hard worker and counted on to tie up loose ends, but fall behind when co-workers’ tasks are on hold until yours are complete, and you’re perceived as needing an attitude adjustment. What would you want to do? Place blame or work on a remedy? There is a solution: Personal…
Mike Richman
F unny I should be writing this op-ed at this time, as our friend and colleague, Quality Digest’s editorial director Taran March, is currently traipsing around Paris and its surrounding environs, no doubt enjoying a baguette or brioche or some other culinary delight. Gratefully, that’s about the…
Bruce Hamilton
For me, Taiichi Ohno and Shigeo Shingo are a bit like the Lennon and McCartney of waste elimination. Together they frame the technical and social sciences of what we call lean today.
Taiichi Ohno tells us there are seven wastes that account for 95 percent of the elapsed time between “paying and…
Ryan E. Day
I remember my first trip to Michigan in 2012. I was covering the Ford Motor Co.’s annual Trend Conference and had the opportunity to meet Alan Mulally, who gave a compelling presentation explaining the vision, strategy, and implementation of the One Ford plan. I was impressed more with the man…
Mark Rosenthal
It was September 1901, in Dayton, Ohio, and Wilbur Wright was frustrated. The previous year, 1900, he had built and tested, with his brother Orville’s help, their first full-size glider. It was designed using the most up-to-date information about wing design available. His plan had been to “kite”…
UC Davis
Three transportation revolutions are in sight, and together they could help reduce traffic, improve livability, eventually save trillions of dollars each year, and reduce urban transportation carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions by 80 percent or more worldwide by 2050. That’s according to a report…
John Bell
Do Less Better is the name of my book (Palgrave Macmillan, 2014). Do less better is also a culture and a strategy of organizations and their leaders. Do-less-better practitioners are fanatical about focus and simplification; herein lies the secret of their success. Yet, do less better isn’t…
Rob Mitchum
People have touted the potential of big data and computation in medicine for what feels like decades, promising more effective and personalized treatments, new research discoveries, and smarter clinical predictions. But only recently have these technologies made it to the clinic, where they can…
Gwendolyn Galsworth
There is an enemy in your company, and it’s invisible. You can’t see it because it literally is not there. Yet its impact is massive on every level of the enterprise, from boardroom to marketing to operations to the field staff. And the only way we have even the smallest chance of destroying it is…
Sandrine Tranchard
Depression and mental health conditions are on the rise globally. Affecting more than 300 million people of all ages across the world, depression causes immense suffering to people and their families, as well as placing a great economic cost on society. Its consequences and solutions were…
Laurel Thoennes @ Quality Digest
Traffic crawled. Ahead of me was a pickup, its bumper thick with stickers. From the one most cracked and faded, I saw the word “welfare.” Just before the driver switched lanes, I made out the rest: “Work harder—there are millions on welfare depending on you.” That triggered a memory so vivid I no…
Jim Benson
The notion of a successful distributed team seems like a wonderful yet unobtainable dream.
But stop and think: How often are your nondistributed teams successful? When have they been successful, and why? It’s never because of your plan, or because you hired the best people. It’s not because you…
Andrew Sloan
At times it can be difficult to have a common-sense discussion about the relationship between business and the natural environment. The discourse (maybe argument is a better word) tends to be highly charged, and the opposing camps seem to have lost the ability to listen to each other.
The…
Jeffrey Phillips
The attempt to eliminate noise from an operating system or a business process is an interesting and perhaps worthwhile challenge, until one considers the question: What is the real signal? What is creating the noise?
In many businesses today, there are several signals, what we might call noise…
Ruth P. Stevens
Business marketers have much to gain from retention marketing. Business customers tend to be fewer in number, and each is more valuable—meaning you can’t afford to lose even one. But how do you keep your customers active and buying from you, vs. the competition? How do you prevent defection?
Let’s…
DNV GL
According the International Organization of Standardization (ISO), there are more than 300,000 certifications to ISO 14001 in 171 countries around the world, making it the most relied-upon symbol of environmental stewardship and sustainable business practice. True to its core tenant of continual…
Michael A. Witt
Editor’s note: This is part two of a two-part series. Read part one here.
While globalization has benefited humanity in many ways, its continued progress is in serious doubt. As I wrote previously, the two leading political science theories, liberalism and realism, both predict that globalization…
Martin Green
I think curiosity is at the root of all scientific careers. That, and insecurity. In my formative years, I felt compelled to assign a rational explanation to everything. I didn’t know it then, but I was practicing to be a scientist—and having lots of fun.
I remember entertaining numerous…
Kara Baskin
Care.com co-founder Donna Levin played a key part in that company’s growth, and the passion was personal. Levin’s work plans were curtailed when her son was 11 weeks old and had a seizure following a difficult pregnancy. Tests were inconclusive. Her daycare situation evaporated; she and her…
Sponsored Content
Manufacturers often hold suppliers to a rigid quality process that dictates tight controls on all raw materials. Nonconforming material can potentially halt the production line, wasting time and money. Unfortunately, material mix-ups are a reality in critical manufacturing…
Kevin Meyer
“Excellent firms don’t believe in excellence—only in constant improvement and constant change.”—Tom Peters
The plan-do-study-act (PDSA) cycle is the core component of continuous improvement programs. You may have heard it called the plan-do-check-act (PDCA) cycle—and they are very similar—but I…
Brian Lagas
Embracing sustainable and green principles is more than simply “a good thing to do.” Manufacturers are realizing the many practical short- and long-term financial benefits to implementing environmentally conscious improvements. Such practices helps organizations become more efficient, competitive…
Andrew Maynard
In 2014, more than 32,000 people were killed in car crashes in the United States. In 2012, more than 2 million Americans visited the emergency room as a result of car crashes. An estimated 94 percent of the crashes that caused these injuries and fatalities are attributable to human choice or error…
Chad Kymal
Deadlines for ISO 9001:2015 and ISO 14001:2015 registration have appeared on the horizon. Although we have 24 months to get registered to these new standards, some related timelines are looming even closer, notably scheduling a recertification or surveillance audit.
Some organizations have…
