Training, Coaching and Consulting
BPM: A Short Guide Business process management or BPM can easily become a buzzword and a needlessly applied and useless approach to improving your business if it isn’t done for the right reasons. What’s more, the early stages of business process management can become immediate, crippling failures if not done right. 1) To help you […]
For as long as there have been companies and managers, there have been schools of thought on how to do business better. Over the past two centuries, this has moved from pushing more people onto the factory floor regardless of safety, to a more nuanced approach of identifying individual skills and capitalizing on the immediacies […]
A real estate agent and a pharmacist are standing in the “12 items or less” line at a supermarket. Next to them, where the other express line used to be,there is now a large scanning machine, resembling the ones you send your carry-on luggage, shoes, and laptops through: a conveyor belt on the bottom, and […]
Tedious work has been an inevitable ingredient in many types of jobs for generations, but now there may be a solution in a new format: Robotic Process Automation (RPA). This is a type of software, not a physical robot, and it is designed to take over some of the more repetitive and dull elements of […]
Lean software development also known as LSD is a translation of the lean IT principles and manufacturing practices in the software development realm. It was adapted from the production system or Toyota, which became the basis of the different lean approaches being practiced now in western private and public sectors. The terminology lean software development […]
What happens when your company doesn’t understand “lean”? Since the introduction of lean manufacturing and related concepts like kaizen in the 1950’s, companies everywhere have tried to match the achievements of Toyota. No matter what department – from manufacturing to human resources – scores of managers have tried to emulate the best practices that Deming […]
As a management concept, lean has several highly logical and practical disciplines, which at first glance tend to apply primarily to waste management, processes and data. I have written about these concepts before in articles such as Applying Lean and Excellence in an Age of Rapid Change and The Human Side of Continuous Improvement. It […]
There is a well-known principle in the world of project management that is highly applicable to day-to-day productivity both on the shop floor and in offices everywhere. The principle is called Parkinson’s Law, and it reads like this: “Work expands to fill the time available.”For example, for most people, a project that is due at […]
Continuous improvement can easily become one of those buzzwords that everyone embraces without fully understanding it. People often believe they are practicing continuous improvement by making a single positive change, for example in the way they manage a meeting, or in providing more listening time for employees, but even these tentative steps tend to […]
One of the most pressing topics on the minds of managers, executives and employees everywhere is the future of work. It is vital for them to understand what people need to know and what skills they need to possess in order to stay competitive and employed in a world increasingly dominated by information and automation. […]
Lean Six Sigma has proven itself to be an influential and effective strategy, one that improves processes by identifying and removing wasteful practices. This calls into question whether a specific type of leader is needed to drive a company towards lean management, or whether the program itself can be self-led. The most direct application of […]
Achieving Management Excellence Even When Employees Want To Quit It is a well-known fact that many employees who leave a company are not quitting their job, they are quitting their manager. In these cases, an individual has studied and worked hard to get into a position that contributes to his/her career path or life goals. […]
Deploying Change Management Process Towards Establishing Operational Excellence Talking about operational excellence and actually making it happen are two very different concepts. What appears to be great in theory, or even as a case history faces at least three significant challenges in deployment and maintenance once introduced locally. The first is relevance. What works for […]
Defining Excellence Metrics: A Challenge for Today’s Leaders “If you can’t measure it, you can’t improve it.” That is one of Peter Drucker’s most poignant quotes. It is foolish to pursue a campaign of continuous improvement without quantifying and analyzing every facet of a company’s performance, and then acting upon the results. Progress is not a […]
Can a country operate as a company? I don’t mean in a purely capitalist sense, focused solely on profits and market dominance, but instead, can it embrace principles of excellence and lean management even when it does not partake directly in free market economics? Every country depends on an extensive administrative system to keep its […]