Dr. Eliyahu Goldratt, in his book the goal, describes a weekend camping trip with some scouts in which, one boy tended to lag behind the rest of the group resulting in the group  being delayed on their journey. The boy's name was Herbie.

Every organization is designed around a set of processes that ensure that the organization ca operate efficiently. However, processes tend to have their hiccups, either intended or unintended. The hiccups are your Herbie.

We cannot have a…

What is your view of your world? I know it sounds like a strange question but hear me out. The vast majority of HR consists of responding to HR challenges in a transactional mode. The issue fire make sits presence known and you respond to it and then mov eon to the next fire. That is how HR has been since the early days at National Cash Register. Here is the problem however. Approaching the need to continuously improve the organizational problems in a transactional mode…

Today's change maestro's management tip looks at another view of the continuous process improvement effort in your organization. We need to look at the very essence of the process. One of the initial tools in process improvement s the creation of a process map. It is used to track the various steps in the process so we can better understand the entire process. So the question is are you designing the process map completely or are you leaving out steps? The…

Hey I get it! In normal circumstances when we are confronted with a problem we rely on our 

past experiences to find solutions to those problems. I



n doing so you may very well be cheating your customers. Design thinking tells us to ask two initial questions: 

what is and what if?  What is clearly loos at what…

When beginning the process of introducing solutions involve the customer in the discussions.



Jack Welsh told us that “The best Six Sigma projects begin not inside the business but outside it, focused on answering

 the question - how can we make the customer more competitive?  What is…

As Daniel Kahneman suggests in his book Thinking Fast and Slow, the human mind tends to take the easiest path when trying to resolve issues and make a decision. This never more true when we are trying to solve process problems.

When your organization is faced with these problems the tendency is to either claim that there is no problem or decide that this problem is similar to a previous problem and so you select the same resolution even if it is not a good match.

Francesca Gino…

In our book Reality, Perception and your Workplace Culture I discussed this point in detail. It becomes a case of looking at the world from the image in the mirror or looking at the world from what you see looking out the window.

To bring about genuine process improvement you need to be able to see the world from the point of view of the customer. Your customer sees the world as having a problem and it directly effects how they interact with…

Many organizations believe that the most effective way to run an organization is to construct the flow of information from the top down. This leads to an environment of silos. The problem is that silo is not the way the processes flow. They are constructed in a chain with each link of the chain feeding the next one.

All processes begin with the creator of the component of the end product or service which when combined with other components result in the product or service which you…

The goal of all teams is to resolve a problem. That goal is achieved when we learn to think out of the box. When we think about the eulogy at Robert Kennedy's funeral. He said, "some men see things as they are and say why. I dream things that never were and say why not."

Your organization is presented with a problem, large or small, that is threatening to disrupt your process flow and the needs of your customer so how do you select the route forward/

First, after selecting the makeup of the cross-functional team members you need to review where you stand as an organization. Your empowered management has…

When we look at a problem. reality is not our companion. We tend to look at things in the way that creates the solutions to our problems in the easiest way. We are biased towards looking at the way to resolve the problem that entails the least amount of effort.

But that is not how the world necessarily operates in reality. Reality lays out the problem and its conditions and expects us to find the best path to resolve the issue. That is what happens when we see the…

In our book Reality, Perception and Your Workplace Culture I discussed the two views of the world that organizations have regarding problems. They either see them from looking in the mirror or looking out the window. They either see problems how they see the problems, or they see them as their customers see the problems.

I recently finished reding the Education of an Idealist by Samantha Power who quotes economist Albert Hirchman who suggests a different approach. He suggests…

Normally on Wednesday 's blog post we present issues surrounding process improvement, however I saw this post from the Harvard Business Review and thought it was appropriate for the times we are facing.

When trying to address racial disparities, managers often focus on recruiting and hiring. But if you want to create a truly diverse,…

Have you every traveled to Montreal or gone into the ethnic sections of some of our bigger cities? What was the problem that you encountered? The chances are you encountered conversations, which you could not comprehend what was going on. For all you know they could be saying adverse things about you or your organization and you would not have a clue as to what they were saying. This is equally true regarding our workplaces.

 Actively listen to your organization and it is likely you…

On July 1, Productivity Press will be releasing our new book on Employee Empowerment.

One of the major discussions in the business world is: How do we get our human capital assets more engaged in the organization? Current Gallup Polls state that 85% of our employees are not engaged within their organizations.

Employee Empowerment is not some wild idea. Employee Empowerment takes a concerted effort on the part of the entire organization. The TLS Continuum Empowerment Model…

Cross Functional Teams are the basis of our process improvement efforts in any organization. Because of that it is critical that members of the team be comprised of those who are working to solve our organizational issues be there because they really want to resolve the issues.

What the team does not need is team members who are there in body only. Team members must be actively involved in the problem solving effort. This means that they need to listen to the vies and…

Sustainable change management only occurs when you have an empowered organization. An empowered organization occurs when you have an empowered and engaged human capital assets. To carry the thought forward, if you have engaged and empowered human capital assets they will carry that sense to their cross-functional team roles.

An empowered team seeking organizational teams must ensure that they are encompassing three factors - diversity of ideas and makeup, utilization of new tools, and…