All Features
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…
Matt Fieldman
If you look around your plant floor, I’m sure the layout, equipment, and technologies are different today from what they were 10—or even five—years ago. You’ve put time, effort, and money into improving every aspect of your operations. You’ve cut costs and made investments where they were necessary…
Bruce Hamilton
As years roll on, I’m noticing more parts of me breaking down: Teeth, eyes, knees, cardiovascular, stomach—the list keeps getting longer, as does the list of docs I see. I’m blessed to be living in an area with the world’s finest medical care and lucky that healthcare innovation (and Medicare) have…
Mike Figliuolo
You can learn a lot about leadership from Master Oogway in Kung Fu Panda. He emphasizes leading today rather than worrying about yesterday or tomorrow.
My expectations for the movie were quite low. I mean, a panda that does kung fu? A jackrabbit I could buy. But a panda? Then again, I’m a huge…
James Chan
The plan-do-check-act (PDCA) cycle plays a central role in fostering improvement by facilitating a structured and ongoing approach to problem-solving. Because the PDCA cycle is ongoing, it also plays a central role in helping organizations navigate shifts in the economic climate, align with new…
Andy J. Yap, Winnie Jiang, Mark Mortensen, Spencer Harrison
Imagine a world where your boss could be fined for contacting you after hours. California is considering a law to make this a reality.
The “right to disconnect” movement is gaining traction globally, with Australia joining France, Italy, Slovakia, Luxembourg, Portugal, and the Canadian province…
Mike Figliuolo
I just rewatched The Green Hornet, and it was awesome. As I finished the movie, I wondered what made him a great leader (or not) and how those lessons might apply to the business world. I know. I’m weird like that.
The good news is I’ve unlocked the secret of great leadership, Green Hornet-style.…
Mitutoyo Corp.
Choosing the right microscope for your application is no small feat. It’s a decision that requires a deep understanding of the task at hand and the tools available to you. From magnification to resolution, and from ease of use to customization options, there are several aspects to consider when…
Knowledge at Wharton
Nano Tools for Leaders, a collaboration between Wharton Executive Education and Wharton’s Center for Leadership and Change Management, are fast, effective tools that you can learn and start using in less than 15 minutes, with the potential to significantly affect your success and the engagement and…
Mike Figliuolo
My platoon was out in the field on training exercises. We had been out there for about two weeks, so we all smelled kind of “ripe” at that point. One of the more senior officers in my battalion came to my unit’s area to see how things were going. This “gentleman” personified the term—he was an “…
Kristen Goodell
Women make up nearly half of the working population in the United States. But they are underrepresented in the manufacturing industry. According to Women in the Workplace, women constitute approximately one-third of the manufacturing workforce and only 24% of manufacturing C-suite positions.…
Harry Hertz
Who cares about succession planning? As an organization or an aspiring senior leader, you must care. Proper succession planning by an organization and its senior leaders is one of the keys to organizational resilience and long-term success. I know this from many Baldrige Award-winning organizations…
Peter Cappelli
A recent report showed that 59% of managers said they had received no training on how to be a manager before becoming one. Management professor and director of Wharton’s Center for Human Resources Peter Cappelli says that stunning statistic is compounded by the fact that most of those managers are…
Etienne Nichols
In the United States, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is the federal agency tasked with regulating the medical device market and ensuring the safety and effectiveness of all devices for patients.
The FDA classifies medical devices by risk into three categories: Class I, Class II, and Class…
Stephanie Ojeda
An analysis of U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) warning letters by the Food and Drug Law Institute reveals a perhaps not-so-surprising link between training gaps and FDA violations.
It’s one of several factors motivating companies to switch to automated training management software. The…
Kelly Nault, Ko Kuwabara, Yejin Park
Giving and receiving help are essential aspects of organizational life, whether that’s providing career advice or soliciting a colleague’s input on a tricky technical problem that you just can’t solve. Through help exchange, individuals gain access to ideas, resources, and relationships that help…
Mike Figliuolo
This article is an excerpt from the cutting room floor. It was in an early draft of my book One Piece of Paper: The Simple Approach to Powerful, Personal Leadership (Jossey-Bass, 2011; order your copy here). It covers how to lead through guidelines rather than leading through rules.
We need…
Bruce Hamilton
I was asked to lead a workshop in the sales order department of a manufacturer that we had helped with process improvement on the factory floor. Those efforts had positively reverberated across the company in the form of fewer late and expedited orders. Still, sales order employees were wondering…
Donald J. Wheeler
When presented with a collection of data from operations or production, many will start their analysis by computing descriptive statistics and fitting a probability model to the data. But before you do this, there’s an easy test that you need to perform.
This test will quantify the chances that…
Kate Zabriskie
‘She wanted to return a cake that was almost gone. How bad could it have been? Normally, if something is spoiled or not up to standards, it’s returned almost intact. This thing was a pile of crumbs. But it gets better: She demanded cash, yelled at me, and started causing a scene. I hope she never…
