Too many good ideas

Lesson Learned #24 Here’s a joke we often hear: Consultants take your watch, tell you what time it is, and then keep your watch.” It’s funny and, like most jokes, it’s at

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Addition is easier than subtraction

Lesson Learned #31 It’s a lot easier to add cost when times are good than it is to reduce cost when times are bad. Maybe one of the more obvious lessons we’ve learned

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Operations needs to own the project

Many companies have corporate improvement teams of one kind or another, such as quality or Lean or Six Sigma or some combination. And sometimes they bring in outside consultants to serve a similar role.

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Too many reports, too little time

Lesson Learned #8 When we work for an organization we always look closely at how managers plan, execute the plan and then report on the results. We’ve learned over time that the

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Clients Don’t Care What Consultants Think

Lesson Learned #4 One of the key things clients expect in a performance improvement project is that their managers will take ownership of the changes that are required to improve performance. That’s not

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Learning through observation

People are often curious about how we can go into such a wide variety of organizations and businesses and somehow help them improve. One advantage we have is that we tend to see similar patterns over and over across industries and even across nationalities.

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It’s easy to lose sight of the purpose

The backstory on 52 Maxims was that we worked for The Ritz-Carlton Hotel Co. for a number of years; during that time were introduced to their concept known as “The Basics” that consisted of 18 fundamentals of service, which they used as daily reminders for their staff.

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The most dangerous kind of resistance

Lesson Learned #49 One of the interesting things we’ve learned is that the manager who is initially the most outspoken opponent of starting a performance-improvement program often ends up its greatest champion.

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