Continuous improvement is not transformation. With continuous improvement, products, processes and services are improved three percent year-on-year. With transformation, products are a mechanism to generate data, processes are eliminated altogether and services move from fixing what’s broken to proactive updates that deliver the surprising customer value. A strategic initiative is......
If you use your sane-and-rational lenses and the situation doesn’t make sense, that’s because the situation is not governed by sanity and rationality. Yet, even though there’s a mismatch between the system’s behavior and sane-and-rational, we still try to understand the system through the cloudy lenses of sanity and rationality.......
When you’re asked to do more work that you and your team can handle, don’t pass it onto your team. Instead, take the heat from above but limit the team’s work to a reasonable level. When the number of projects is larger than the budget needed to get them done,......
You could be a subtle leader if… You create the causes and conditions for others to shine. And when they shine, you give them the credit they’re due. You don’t have the title, but when the high-profile project hits a rough patch, you get called in to create the go-forward......
I’m all for stretch goals to help people grow. “Hey, you did this last year but I think you can do ten percent more this year. And here’s why – [list three reasons here.]” This works. This helps people grow. This is effective. This is grounded in what happened last......
If you haven’t noticed, the pace and complexity of our work is ever-increasing. There’s more to do and there are more interactions among the players and the tasks. And though there’s more need for thinking and planning, there’s less time to do it. And the answer from company leadership –......
It’s relatively straightforward to tell the difference between activities that are done well and those that are done poorly. Usually sub-par activities generate visual signals to warn us of their misbehavior. A bill isn’t paid, a legal document isn’t signed or the wrong parts are put in the box. Though......
Most companies have growth objectives – make more, sell more and generate more profits. Increase profit margin, sell into new markets and twist our products into new revenue. Good news for the stock price, good news for annual raises and plenty of money to buy the things that will help......
On every operating plan there are more projects than there are people to do them and at every meeting there more new deliverables than people to take them on. At every turn, our demand for increased profits pushes our people for more. And, to me, I think this is the......
Shipulski On Design
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The Shipulski On Design
