The mistake of studying people and not processes
One of the obvious places to look for opportunities to improve is to study a process within the organization and see if you can make it better (simpler, faster, or less expensive
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How does this impact me?
The third piece of the organizational alignment puzzle is how the reward system supports it or not. Rewards, whether compensation or recognition, have a powerful influence on people’s behaviors and can upend
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Are there any questions?
Due to the fact that we travel to our clients, it’s difficult to get many of our staff together in one place at one time. Twice a year we make an effort
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Is everyone on the same page?
In the last Opportunity we talked about the need for organizational alignment and that there were three sub-components. In this article we will focus on the first component, clarity of direction (organizational Read More
How to straighten out alignment
Over the years we have become increasingly fond of the term “alignment” even though it sounds a little like one of those typical buzz words. It’s a very good concise word for
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Finding opportunities in IT
The IT world can be something of a black box for many people. There is a general recognition of its importance but often a lack of understanding of how it really operates,
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Finding opportunities in logistics
Logistics sometimes means different things to different companies, which we once made the mistake of pointing out at a trucking convention (see Lessons Learned # 2 – Don’t put down your audience).
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Finding opportunities in quality
Quality has gone through many evolutions over the last twenty years driven by the popularity of gurus like Juran, Deming, and to a lesser degree, Crosby. Different concepts have caught on like
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Finding opportunities in maintenance
As technology has advanced and organizations have become more and more reliant on smoothly running equipment, viewing maintenance as a critical function to support throughput, rather than as a cost center to
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Finding opportunities in production
In production, management’s task is to effectively schedule the multitude of component processes that run in series or in parallel. In operations that are process-oriented, management must schedule resources and output around
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