Culture

What Safety Incidents Say About Your Organization

An organization’s record of safety incidents represents more than a measure of how cautious its employees are in high risk environments or with high risk materials. This metric also directly corresponds to an organization’s values, management philosophy and priorities, employee engagement and culture as well as productivity (cost, quality, delivery) issues.

 

Isolated incidents aside, the recurrence of unsafe practices is not simply a story of individual or human error specifically. […]

By |Continuous Improvement, Culture, Employee Engagement, Leadership, Lean / Six Sigma, Safety|
Read More

Speaking At Lean Systems Summit

 If you’re interested in learning more about why Continuous Improvement doesn’t stick (and getting it to) check out my session at the Lean Systems Summit: Conflict Is The Root Of All Waste

 

I’ll be speaking on August 8th and would love to meet up if you plan on attending. 

 

Check out the event overview here.

 

Check out the post event comments and presentation here.

 

 

 

By |Continuous Improvement, Culture, Employee Engagement, Lean / Six Sigma, Performance, Productivity, Waste|
Read More

5 Characteristics of High Performing Workplaces

As featured in the June 2014 issue of Effective Flow Magazine: 

 

 

 

It’s the elusive goal behind every Continuous Improvement initiative: Every organization wants to become a high performing workplace. But what does this entail? How does one go about achieving it? How long does it take? I’ve spent my career answering these questions.

 

I have read countless tomes on the subject of business success and how to achieve it, benefited from […]

By |Business Model, Continuous Improvement, Culture, Employee Engagement, Leadership, Mission, Performance, Productivity, Values, Vision|
Read More

The Why and How Business is Personal

A thoughtful articulation of one of the tenets of Macresco’s philosophy as well as the relationship between communication, culture and performance. 

By |Communication Skills, Culture, Employee Engagement, Macresco, Performance|
Read More

Business Good = Good Business

To end the week on a positive note, I am pleased to see Barry-Wehmiller @barrywehmiller recognized as one of Inc’s 25 most audacious companies. #Audacious The basis of its audacity? It dares to treat employees like human beings, eschews the idea of “managing” people and defines leadership as a responsibility to “steward” those in your care. This organization’s financial success proves the value of their altruistic approach to business governance […]

By |Culture, Leadership, Performance, Strategy|
Read More

3 Lessons From Starbucks Standard Work

Like many tortured souls in my line of work, I frequently enter places of business and during whatever wait there is, reimagine different elements of the operation from the layout and processes, to the product array, delivery mechanism and related possible revenue streams that would improve the customer experience, culture and / or profit.

 

This activity comes as second nature to me and so I can run through scenarios quickly. […]

By |Change Management, Culture, Employee Engagement, Mission, Operations, Performance, Process Optimization, Productivity, Strategy, Values, Vision|
Read More

Practicing At Failure Is A Good Thing

Interesting perspective on the value of taking planned risks as a means of building an organization’s capacity for change. A business that can stomach failure is better prepared to face and manage the change it won’t always be able to see coming. Even better than that, this kind of company will be less afraid to consider change on a day to day basis which will naturally give rise to […]

By |Change Management, Culture, Employee Engagement|
Read More

Surprising habit of highly successful companies

The secret to success according to Bill Taylor of Fast Company, the man who has covered many of the great organizations of our time:
“But the most successful companies care more than everyone else — about customers, about colleagues, about how the organization conducts itself in a world with endless opportunities to cut corners and compromise on values.  You can’t be special, distinctive, compelling in the marketplace unless you’ve built […]

By |Culture, Employee Engagement, Strategy, Values|
Read More