COMPETING Podcast Category

Empowerment and Accountability:  Opposites or equals?  Certainly when not handled appropriately, these important “people-related” concepts can make the “soft side” of continuous improvement into the “hard-side”.    In this podcast we will explore both Empowerment and Accountability from the Lean perspective.   Empowerment Why empower? Because management cannot see everything; they need help and lots of… Read more »

Competing Part 2 Trust A favorable environment for continuous improvement is a trusting environment an environment where people feel they can take a chance and occasionally make mistakes. an environment where when a mistake is made the results are not public embarrassment or humiliation.  With the equal partners of empowerment and accountability in the background,… Read more »

Creating a Favorable Environment for Continuous Improvement Part 1. Respect: it’s costs and it’s value “I’ve learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.” – Maya Angelou We need an environment where everyone is allowed and invited to be… Read more »

A few years back I was working with a client to improve information flow in an office.  The problem was too much waiting, as flow stopped due to batch processing and ever-changing bottlenecks due to variation in the cycle times of work required….sometimes sales order processing was the bottleneck and sometimes procurement, or the credit… Read more »

Competing – Temporary employees Does your business sometimes use temporary help to “solve their short and mid-term capacity problem”.  Many of my clients do and often, temporary helpers are just thrown at the problem with little training or attention and are shown little, if any respect by management.  I see three temps hired to solve… Read more »

The definition of a problem is “any question or matter involving doubt, uncertainty, or difficulty”. I find it interesting when I ask people about their business, I am often told that the they have fixed their problems.  Does that mean they no longer have doubt or uncertainty about outcomes and have no difficulties with safety,… Read more »

I know some, well-intentioned managers who are good people but have subconsciously developed the skill of demoralization.  Their mere presence can take the air out of an enthusiastic group ready to act on a problem or implement a solution. Why? I suspect there are many psychological causes that help create skilled demoralizer, but I practice… Read more »

Being out of sync Everywhere I go I notice that much of life’s frustration is related to people or systems being out of sync. We all have experienced what happens when some one does not have what they need when they need it. We have to wait (for the doctor, for the retail person, for… Read more »

Continuous Improvement is about people and communication.  Many of us are effective speakers, but few are really good listeners.  If, as Dr. Shingo said, 95% of objection is cautionary (I believe this caution is due to lack of trust) then one of leaderships/managements primary objectives must be to create an environment of mutual respect and… Read more »

Art Smalley was fortunate to have been one of the few Americans to work for Toyota in Japan for an extended period of time. From working on assembly lines to maintaining precision equipment to project management he experienced all facets of production life in Toyota. Combined with his proficiency in reading and writing the Japanese… Read more »