Agree upon the rules before you get into the content -decide how to decide up front. I learned that once upon a time in a class about leading groups of people involved in decision making…
Now suppose you are monitoring and scoring customer comments for your brand, ACME Acorns. You have devised a clever strategy to categorize [...]
How many of you have reached that point of sheer frustration with some cube dwelling, mouth breathing denizen who is using up the very oxygen that you may well need tomorrow, and this sad state of affairs has led you to abandon all diplomacy and lambaste them via email with a substantial audience on carbon copy for effect?
This happened to [...]
A number of interesting discussion sessions. My eyes seem to know it’s 3 hours later than the clock says, but frequent trips to the coffee urn have staved off travel weariness otherwise.
Lot of technology discussions, and out of it I can see that for all the cool widgets, technology hasn’t yet bridged from reporting to [...]
How does a corporation inspire an innovative and entrepreneurial spirit within it’s employees?
Innovation flows from the people, pervades the culture, and is reflected in the environment. It is upon this last point that I wish to focus on today, because I believe that we are influenced by our surroundings. A few banners hung from the ceiling emblazoned [...]
Like the adage of work smarter, not harder, this one has a lot of truth to it no matter how cliche’ it has become. I’ve thrown myself into a number of large projects in my life, and make up for shortcomings in skills with a modicum of intelligence, and a large amount of sheer stubbornness.
Recently, [...]
Lean Six Sigma, that corporate re-engineering craze may be coming to a Fortune 500 company near you. Sounds great, but what is it? “Lean” applies principles to remove waste from processes, while Six Sigma strives to remove variances (defects). The Six Sigma level of quality achievement is equivalent to about 3.4 defects in a million iterations.
Last week, [...]
“I have met the enemy and they are us” - my adaptation of the famous quote from Oliver Hazzard Perry.
Like many corporate denizens, I find myself ranting against the perceived narrow mindedness of others when my “new” ideas are not readily accepted. This resistance to ideas from others can be summed up as “Not invented here”. If we didn’t [...]
Suppose you were the proprietor of a small, local business. The first thing you’d do each morning is unlock the store, flip around the open sign, and roll up the shades. At the end of the night, the last thing you’d do is lock the door on your way home.
Now suppose you threw your customers [...]
About 10 months ago, I blogged about the last move we were making at work. At the time we had employees in many leased buildings, and the first two buildings of our new campus were just completed. Employees were being shuffled around like numbered pieces in one of those little square sliding puzzles that has [...]
