The Myth of Japanese Companies and Management
It seems that at every Conference, Symposium, or other gathering of higher-learning and thought-leaders – where the topic is Lean Six-Sigma – many of the attendees, and almost all of the speakers, glorify and hold with the highest veneration the supposedly unmatched performance and prowess of Japanese companies and their management. Enshrined as proof-positive in the…
No Skid Marks: Experiences and Lessons in 30 Years of Business
Thirty years ago this month, in August of 1985, I started my first business, XONITEK Systems Corporation. It didn’t really dawn on me until I found myself at the David N. Deutsch Saratoga Weekend (aka “Camp David”), which is like a mini (very mini) World Economic Forum (aka “Davos” after the town in Switzerland where it…
Business Lessons Learned from Playing Golf
It’s Spring – finally. The Winter darkness has noticeably given way to longer hours of daylight. The cold and the snows are abating. The crocuses and early spring flowers are in bloom. It’s a pleasure to waken to the birds chirping. And a person can feel that Spring is just around the corner. That is, except…
Continuous Improvement Capability: Has the training worked?
CONTENT PARTNER CONTRIBUTIONAs seen in the Jun-2015 edition of the Lean Management Journal Continuous Improvement (CI) is a well-established concept within organisations. Many have developed elaborate CI strategies and transformation programmes. However, in our opinion, there is a fundamental problem that advocates of CI need to address. How successful have we been as a CI community…
Communication: I say Tomato, You say Pomodoro
Communication. We talk about how important it is. How critical it is to have in any endeavor in order to move the ball down the field and, ultimately, for success. Yet in almost every instance where there is failure, we can almost always trace back to one of the root-causes for the failure being a lack…
Effective Arguing; Beware of Logical Red-Herrings
As I am apt to, from time to time, I recently attended a conference on Operational Excellence and Change Management. There were two issues related to one another that came-up time and again from the “Change-Agents” as being a challenge and those were; 1) How do I get the support of management and 2) How do…