Since the beginning of recorded history, great leaders of engagements have known two things; 1) Time is the enemy with speed and decisiveness in making a decision being an advantage and 2) there is no such thing as the perfect plan. Therefore the ability to adapt as circumstances unfold is critical to success. Sun Tzu,
March 2019 Monthly Musing Why do we assume more words, and a more complex vocabulary is better? Why should we write a 500-word essay when 150-words (or fewer) will get the same information across? Many problems could be avoided if we just learned to communicate in a plain manner so as to be easily
February 2019 Monthly Musing February is the nastiest month of the year. The warmth of the holidays and joyous gatherings with friends and family are gone – all that is left as evidence that they happened at all are the bills and a few photographs. It is biting cold. The kind of cold that makes
I was coaching one of the national oil companies in the Middle East, offering mentorship to the director of their operational excellence program. He was frustrated because he had invested considerable funds building a team of sixty Lean Six Sigma Black Belts over a nine-month period, and they had not yet worked on—much less completed—any
January 2019 Monthly Musing By now, most of us have made and broken our “New Year’s Resolutions”. But I recently came across the idea of a “dream-map” which might prove to be more useful. It’s similar to an A4 exercise found in Lean. But instead of being forensic and detailed,