This morning I ask you to do me a small favor. Take a random sample of your LinkedIn connections and read their list of skills. See how many list change management as a skill. Then I would like your responses to the question are they really involved in change management?

My feeling is that the vast majority of them are not involved in true change management. Let me explain that further. For the vast majority of those who say they are involved in change management they are saying that…

I just finished reading an excellent article titled Beyond Bias in Strategy+Business Magazine. While reading it I could not help to take into consideration the events unfolding in the global marketplace today. We condemn those in the Black Life Matter. We condemn those to respond to violence as someone who wants to…

In last week’s blog I talked about being willing within the organization to take a chance on trying something new if it means a better organization This week’s post suggests some strategies to get to that point. So here are my suggestions to achieve that fearless organization:

Strategy #1: Eliminate silos – The TLS Continuum and continuous process…

You were starting school or playing a sport. Think back to what your mother, or father told you at the time. If you were like my parents you were constantly reminded that if we did not succeed, try, try again until you did. Funny thing happened when we entered the business world. Suddenly you are told if you can’t do it safely don’t do it.  If you tried something and it didn’t work then you are penalized for trying on your annual performance review. If you tried to show sings of innovation…

A common misconception among many managers is that continuous process improvement will happen overnight. It just does not happen that way. The implementation of the TLS Continuum and continuous process improvement demands and even requires that we create a new corporate normal. This new normal creates a new corporate culture, which can be dramatically different from what your organization is accustomed to.

Our goal then must become looking at the entire organization and looking at…

Congratulations you have made it to that corner office. Now comes the hard stuff. What really is your role within the organization? What are the organization expectations now you have reached this level of your career ladder? The role of senior leaders within our organizations is dramatically changing and to be successful you need to likewise change. You need to change from being a manager to a coach. The purpose of this post is to explore the two roles and their impact on the…

Everybody has them. Every organization has them. As the global workplace we call them by many names. But when we refine them to their roots they are all quotas. Salesmen are told they have to sell so many units. The rank and file are told they must produce so many units per work shift. Customer service is told they must handle so many customer calls per hour. These are quotas. If it looks like a quota, acts like a quota or smells like a quota it is a quota. So that brings us to the basic…

You make a phone call to your credit card company and you get caught in the virtual whirlpool as the VM system takes you through all the options. One of the continuing recordings says “in order to serve you better please give us the reason for your call today.” You are in the office and a client calls and one of your colleagues answers the phone. After listening to the problem your colleague responds that she will have to transfer you to someone else because that is not her job. Even worse…

As we discussed in the TLS Continuum Part 18: Changing Managers to Leaders, as managers/leaders in the new global; marketplace we have a new responsibility added to our workload. This new responsibility is to both educate and train our human capital assets so that the organization can move forward.

Wait a minute are they not the same term?

Talk to many in and outside of academia and they will tell you when we educate someone, we also train them. Others will tell…

On August 28, 1963, Dr. Martin Luther King delivered his iconic “ I have a Dream Speech.” Like Dr. King I too have a dream or more correctly a vision. While I am not referring to my four-year-old son as Dr. King did, I am referring to our global workplace. Let me paraphrase Dr. King’s speech and relate my vision or dream to you the reader.

I have a goal in my professional life to deliver a message. It is a message that will transform our business world to greater heights. Today…

Throughout this TLS Continuum series I have tried to stress that in order for the TLS Continuum to be successful we need to create a new normal as far as corporate culture is concerned. This change applies to not only the organization as a whole but to the role of management as well.

Answer this quick question for me? What kind of manager are you? Are you that fierce tyrant or are you the manager who strives to make the organization grow? The answer to these questions is imbedded in…

Back in the early 70’s there was both a hit song titled I Can See Forever and a best selling book about GM titled On a Clear Day you can see General Motors. The point of the analogy can be rooted in Deming’s 6^th point of quality. In this point he emphasized…

 I am consistently seeing the statistic that 75 percent of all process improvement efforts fail. Why such a high rate of failure? Part of the problem is the tendency for management to put off the start of the improvement efforts. The reasons for it run the gamut covering a wide spectrum. The purpose of this segment of the TLS Continuum series is to consider some of…

 Acme Manufacturing is a proud firm that has been serving its customers for nearly a century but lately they have been experiencing some problems. Just yesterday their largest customer called the CEO of Acme and told them if the reliability of their products did not drastically improve, the customer was going to take their business elsewhere. The CEO immediately calls a management meeting and tells the department managers and HR if the human capital assets can’t do the job correctly…

In Part 13 of the TLS Continuum Blog series we talked about the necessity of getting out of the corner office in order for process improvement to take place. This sequel will present 10 strategic initiatives to aid you in that journey towards the new corporate culture.

Strategic Initiative #1: Visit a customer – Set aside one day a month to get out of the office and visit with your organization’s top clients. Begin a dialogue with them as to what they expect from your…

Congratulations you have been designated a high performance, high potential human capital asset. You have achieved the goal of getting the corner office. Your career development plan/succession plan is on target with this stop only going to last about three years and then you are off to another assignment. These plateaus are enhancing your career portfolio but along the way you have missed out on a golden opportunity to take your career to the highest level it could go. Do you really know…

I am currently reading a must read for all HR professionals, The Rise of HR: Wisdom from 73 Thought Leaders*, which was recently released by the Human Resource Certification Institute. It makes the case for the fact that the HR space has changed to one centered in VUCA (volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous). The contributors…

This past week has been full of events in our world that makes one stop and consider just where we are going. Beginning with the horrific shootings in Charleston, the shooting of law enforcement officers and the apology at the sentencing trial of the Boston Bomber we see examples of situations where we as a global community we see our problems but we do not take it…

It was our intent throughout the TLS Continuum Roadmap to lay out a clear path to reach where we are now.  In addition as we proceed with this and the subsequent installments It is critical that we make sure we are on the same page at this juncture.

In the nine parts of the series we began by looking at the importance of values. I was concerned that to understand the roadmap it is was necessary to understand the role of organizational values in the process improvement efforts. Part 2…

In order to understand how our organizational processes work In Part 4 of this TLS Continuum series I asked if you knew where you were going? To understand the response to the question the article guided you through the process of creating an eagle’s eye view of the organization called a process map. The purpose of the Process Map is to provide you with a picture of the steps…