In a Newtonian world, for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. Hit a billiard ball and it will shoot off in a predictable trajectory. Basic physics. Two of the greatest management thinkers of our times were physicists: W. Edwards Deming and Dr. Eliyahu Goldratt, both of whom developed systemic approaches to management. At […]
Give Up Busy – Choose Productive
Being busy is considered by many to be a virtue. People may be giving their businesses 200% of effort. But in reality, being busy as you work through a shopping list of “to do” tasks can be the opposite of virtuous. How? Because it can lead to wasting time on the wrong things, unproductive multi-tasking […]
The Damage from Silos in Your Organization: A Systems View
Most organizations are hierarchical. This way of managing means that responsibility gets divided up into functions and the ‘head’ of each function is responsible for the results of that function and the budget allocated. Isn’t this rational? After all, the notion of hierarchy is as old as the bible. Literally. Moses was introduced to it […]
Why Do We Get Stuck on the Path to Change? The Human Constraint
Why is it so difficult to change, even when we know how to make it happen? Why is it so difficult to embrace newly learned and valid concepts and apply them? There are reasons why people resist change and there are also practical ways to work towards achieving an agreed upon goal. This was part […]
Where Digital Transformation is Taking You and Your Organization
Change is happening fast and everywhere. The familiar is shifting from a physical, tangible world to a reality that is online and digital. Even some of our oldest, even ancient industries like printing and clothes manufacturing are becoming increasingly digitized. What do these changes mean for the business world and where are they taking us? […]
Don’t Be Misunderstood! 5 Steps to Giving Clear Instructions
You need people to do things and to do them in a certain way, but so often they just don’t get it. To paraphrase Nina Simone, the Animals, Elvis Costello and many others, you’re intentions may be good and you don’t want to be misunderstood. So how do you get people to do things? By telling […]
How to Give Clear Instructions – Lessons from a Martian
One of the major causes of unsatisfactory results in operations and dissatisfied employees in organizations is that we are unable to give clear instructions. We don’t know how to adequately communicate the knowledge required to carry out the task given. (This is answer number two to the question from our previous posts on Empowerment: “Why can’t people […]
Empowerment: 5 Questions to Help People Do Their Jobs
Empowerment is a great word but can be meaningless unless we give it an operational definition. Operationally, empowerment means that there is alignment between a person’s authority and the responsibility they are given. Continuing from our previous post on Empowerment, what can we do operationally when people don’t seem able to do their work on […]
Why you Need Theory, Not Tips, for Your Organization Today
The world is full of tips on how to do things better. The problem is that without some solid theory behind you, those tips are just patches. Theory, you say? But we need something practical, don’t we? Well, here’s the thing. There is no such thing as good practice without solid theory to back it […]
Empowerment: Making it Real in Your Organization
The word “empowerment “ has been applied so broadly that it is now meaningless. It has become “a catch-all and therefore empty word” as pointed out in reference to women by Hadley Freeman in her article (‘From shopping to naked selfies, how ‘empowerment’ lost its meaning’.) Sadly, with the overuse of certain words, many terms […]
