Plan

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.

The danger of assumptions

One of our senior partners once had a sales meeting with an executive for a company headquartered in London, England. The executive had a beautiful office with a stunning view of Trafalgar Square.

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 ...

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 ...

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.

A Bird In Hand Is Worth Way More Than Two In The Bush

“A bird in hand is worth more than two in the bush,” is an old English proverb from the fifteenth century, and ...

Loyalty matters

Loyalty tends to be stronger to those closer to you or with whom you share some kind of common objective.

The real value of “5S”

5S is a Japanese workplace organization methodology that is typically part of most "lean" programs. There are a few variations of how to translate the original five Japanese words.

A specific target is better than a range

When we work for a company, we always do our due diligence upfront to pinpoint a specific improvement target for the project. Well, almost always...

The difficulty and importance of managing “shoulder periods”

Many industries experience "shoulder periods." These are the time periods leading up to and away from the peak volumes. Figuring out how to manage these periods can be a difficult task for managers, but it’s also very important for realizing performance improvement gains.

What are your three key indicators?

Over the years, one of the things we've noticed is that each new manager tends to create new reports, for whatever purpose they have at the time. Old reports are not eliminated, so over time there are a mountain of available reports – and a mountain of performance indicators -- in the system.

To whose benefit?

There’s a Latin expression that will resonate with anyone who has struggled to implement change in an organization: “Cui bono?” Commonly attributed to the Latin orator Cicero, it means “To whose benefit?”