In a recent article in Auto News about the demise of Toyota president, Tatsuro Toyoda, they state that Toyoda “earned an MBA from New York University, where he studied under the famed quality-control guru W. Edwards Deming.” Deming is perhaps one of the most quoted and yet misunderstood leaders in management thinking and practice, and […]
Out of Control: Why We Must Transform Organizations Now
Our world has changed. Especially since the global financial crisis. Our reality is complex, that means it’s dense with interconnections and interdependencies that we cannot ignore. We can’t just think about what goes on inside our organizations (complicated enough) but how they interact with and impact stakeholders and entire supply chains. It’s hardly surprising so many managers feel […]
Creating Sustainable Prosperity – a Practical Proposal
Most people would like to be rich. After all, isn’t that the secret to happiness? The fact that in the wealthy First World increasing numbers of people struggle to get by, never mind thrive, is a major conundrum of our times. What we need to create is sustainable prosperity. What if there were something that […]
Achieving Laser Focus in a Meeting the Systemic Way
I recently participated in a meeting for an innovative digital project where speed is now of the essence. We were able to surface assumptions that saved us endless conversations, weeks of delay and false starts based on misunderstandings. In that meeting I saw in action, yet again, the power of a Thinking Process Tool from the […]
The Leaders We Need for Flatter Organizations
A leader is someone who connects with something deep inside you and brings out the leader in all of us. Ghandi, Churchill, Martin Luther King, Nelson Mandela, these are some of the great leaders of our times. They inspired people to go beyond what they thought they were capable of to achieve something momentous for […]
Empowerment – Making it Work Operationally
If you look up “empowerment” on Google there are over 100 million items. So what do we mean by empowerment and why is it such a tricky matter? What tools can we use to make sure empowerment is done more effectively at an operational level? In any organization, things need to get done and people […]
Forget Perfection – the Goal is Quality
In our last post, we looked at eliminating toxic beliefs that choke organizations. In this post, we focus in on the toxic belief of wanting perfection, and how this relates to the serious business of Quality. Perfection – an unattainable goal One of the toxic beliefs people have is that perfection equals success. This is […]
How to Eliminate Toxic Beliefs that Choke Organizations
An excellent article entitled ‘5 Toxic Beliefs that Ruin Careers‘ hits on a key issue in life and business, namely how our perceptions affect the way we think and act. In this post, we look at how the Decalogue Methodology can address toxic beliefs. Why do some succeed where others fail in the same circumstances? […]
Tackling our Cognitive Constraints to Get to Breakthrough
A major stumbling block to growth for organizations lies in their cognitive constraints. In other words, there are mental models, or, more simply, limiting beliefs that prevent us from seeing solutions. In the Decalogue approach, we have worked over the last 20 years with hundreds of top and middle managers to build custom made implementations […]
Using Constraints as a Leverage Point for Sustainable Growth
Whether you’re aware of it or not, every organization has a constraint, something that currently limits output. Correctly identifying the constraint is the key to managing the entire organization in all its complexity with greater precision and predictability. As we have said many times, every human process, from getting to work in the morning to […]
