As I approached the bridge, I could see floor trim scattered across the road and a man frantically trying to pick up the splintered fragments as cars zoomed by him. I quickly pulled over to offer my assistance to his plight. He looked at me, shook his head and in an exasperated tone said, “I think I need to go home and get back in bed… it’s been one of those days.”

Facing the Insurmountable

During one of my early kaizens (I was serving as the Kaizen lead under the watchful eye of my sensei), we had uncovered what our team thought was the world’s most unsolvable problem, just slightly smaller than world hunger.

Nothing Kills Progress Faster than “That’s Just The Way It Is”

“Kaizen (Continuous Improvement) is a strategy where employees at all levels of a company work together proactively to achieve regular, incremental improvements to the manufacturing process.” — Lean Production

“What you do has far greater impact than what you say.”            — Stephen Covey

“Why is it so hard to make improvements?”, the VP of Operations asked me. He brought me in to discuss whether or not we could help them.

Stop chasing your tail

The plant manager’s face looked dejected and you could feel the tension in the room.

“Leaders who refuse to listen will eventually be surrounded by people who have nothing significant to say. ”       — Andy Stanley

September 29, 1998, I remember sitting in my 3rd grade classroom as the teacher wheeled in the A/V cart and turned on the TV. There was a sense of anxiety from my teacher, Mrs. Goode. But at the time, I didn’t understand the significance of what was about to happen.

I read someone say the other day that it feels like we are all grounded. I would have much rather just taken the spanking and moved on! Anyway, I hope everyone is hanging in there.

We are now (hopefully) about in the middle of the COVID-19 pandemic and it’s still a day-to-day situation. The first case in the US was confirmed on January 20. It’s hard to believe that it has been almost a quarter of 1 singular topic and news story.

I sincerely hope everyone is doing well during this very crazy time of the quarantine amid the COVID-19 situation. We are trying to share information and thoughts for how to navigate this time-period and give you and your teams the best chance of coming through unscathed or at least minimally scathed.

This week, the topic on everyone’s mind is COVID-19, or Coronavirus. Rightfully so, we are in the grips of something that is pretty-scary and is causing things that many of us have never encountered.

One of the things I love most about working in Manufacturing is seeing all of the creative ways people and companies find to measure processes and performance. I believe in the old saying that “Everything that can be measured doesn’t count, and everything that counts can’t be measured” which points to the human side of the company.

One of the hardest parts of leading any organization is hiring great talent. As organizations are hiring to keep up with growth, and are dealing with this challenge, we wanted to share a little insight into some ways that we approach this process along with a quick case study.

“Respect is earned, not given.”

I heard a man at the airport say to his colleague as we waited to board our flight. I did not take the time to listen to anymore of the conversation, I knew all I needed to know about their work environment. I had seen it too many times before.

I remember when I first realized I needed to get my vision checked. I was about 28 years old and I was driving home on the interstate at night. I began to realize that I couldn’t read any of the words on the signs until I was right on them, sometimes too late to actually read them. I also noticed that every light that I saw actually appeared to be three lights in the shape of a triangle. I thought to myself, “this isn’t normal”. I did what any other rational person would do, and I put it off. It wasn’t until I started getting headaches that I finally pulled the trigger and saw an optometrist. It appears that even though I had 20/20 vision for my entire life up to that point, my eyes had decided to change, specifically the shape of my cornea had changed causing astigmatism in both eyes. The good news is that the condition is easily fixed with corrective lenses.

While working 2nd shift at Toyota I took the opportunity to eat lunch with my son at his school. As the kids were lining up to go back to class, another father had the following conversation with his son:

Father: Do you have any tests today?

Son: *nodded his head*

Father: You are going to get a 100%, right?

Son: *nodded his head again*

Father: That’s my boy, O’Doyle’s* only get 100%!

I was recently asked to give a talk to a group of manufacturing professionals on the topic of culture. Having been in industry for a couple of decades, I’ve seen a large variety of organizational cultures and the effects that an organizational culture has on its members, their general happiness, and their productivity.

We all know that culture matters. Drucker is famously quoted with the phrase “culture eats strategy for breakfast” indicating that the best strategy and plan can easily be overcome by a poor organizational culture. Consider these statistics:

Have you ever been stuck in a rut with problem solving activities? What causes stagnation in companies when it comes to solving problems? At its core, I like to break down problem solving into 2 key components. The first of these is tools and techniques, and the second is the team selection itself. We will focus on the tools and techniques in a future piece, but for now I want to spend a little time explaining why I believe that the “who” is more critical than the “how” when it comes to problem solving.

I work with many companies who have extremely smart and capable people running the organization. A common problem that I tend to see is that a single person is charged with doing root cause analysis for issues within the company. Usually, this individual is either a QE or other individual with a technical background. The result of this approach also tends to have a common outcome. More often than not, the individual will come up with a solution that is driven by the data. Great! Problem solved, right? The next day, after the solution has been implemented, a new problem arises that was created by the solution to the first problem. The same individual is assigned to “fix” the new problem, and a solution is implemented. Then another problem arises from that fix, the cycle continues.

Last week, Supply Chain Now Radio hosted The Effective Syndicate President and Founder, Beau Groover, as he presented the webinar, "Lead the People - Manage the Process." If you missed the live webinar, you can view it here:

Trust is a little word that carries with it a gigantic impact.  Whether I am speaking about a personal, intimate, or work relationship, Trust is the single most important component you can have (or too often don’t have).  Trust is hard to develop for lots of us, and most of us have been burned once or twice by trusting the wrong person.  And as the saying goes, once burned twice shy.  However, if you have your sights on leading, Trust is a non-negotiable component. So, what’s a person to do?  Let’s talk about how we build and cultivate trust in the workplace.   

Let’s start with the fundamental concept of trust: What does it mean to trust someone?  For this entry, I am talking mainly about the workplace, but the concepts are the same whether it’s a personal or a professional relationship.  Also, I am not a psychologist, so please read these from the perspective of someone who has watched, coached and led human teams for 20 years, not someone who wants a job as a college professor.