blog.
Workflow as Easy as P-D-S-A
In 1939, Walter Shewhart introduced the concept of “plan-do-check-act” as a scientific process of acquiring knowledge. In the 1980s, Edwards Deming refined the cycle by changing “check” into a “study” process. The cycle is logical and is used to test information before moving to the next step. It can be applied to all types of learning and improvement. It can also be applied to improve your daily workflow. Here’s how…
Success is 20 Percent Intelligent Effort
For the longest time, I was doing it all wrong. I was killing myself with work. And to add insult to injury, I was doing the wrong kind of work. “Wrong” in the sense that I was focusing on everything rather than zeroing in on the most important. I think exhaustion made me stop. That was when I realized that perhaps Pareto was right.
Whenever I Have a Problem, I'm Around
Are you a player? Or are you a victim?
If you’re a player, you choose to resolve problems. If you’re a victim, you act as if there is no choice and accept everything that is thrown your way. Whether one can say they have a problem is based solely on their perception of the situation.
If Everything's Under Control, You're Going Too Slow
Mario Andretti, retired world champion racing driver, said: “If everything’s under control, you’re going too slow.” In other words, there has to be flexibility in work in order to achieve maximum productivity. When there is little or no flexibility in work, there is a good chance that the work is being micromanaged. In the workplace, this quashes much more than productivity.
Involuntary Systems are the Key to Success
Have you ever thought about how many times your heart beats in a second, minute, day, or hour? Very few of us ever think about how our body functions, yet there it is–doing an amazing job of balancing all of our internal systems to keep us alive.
Working to Death
A recent reader survey shows that British Columbia’s business professionals are working long hours, trending to near 70-hour work weeks. If you’re in this group, you’re setting yourself up for serious health and safety problems, most of which stem from sleep deprivation. In addition to these concerns, working long hours is counterproductive and does more damage to your organization than you might think.
The Fast Track to Change
Here’s a hypothetical situation. Company A has been experiencing dropped calls in its customer service department. This has led to an increased number of customer complaints. To handle this, the customer service department’s overtime hours are going through the roof. As you can imagine, this is costing Company A a lot of money not only in overtime, but in lost customers. What should Company A do? There are two options. They can choose a traditional approach to problem solving or apply the Kaizen method.
Establishing the Need for Improvement: Benchmarking
One of the key requirements of implementing a continuous improvement program is to first establish a need for improvement. You may think this is quite easy, since you already “know” what needs improving. But establishing a need for improving services or products may be harder than you think. If you can’t show the need for improvement in a clear and meaningful way, it will be extremely difficult to get support for making change.
That's The Way We Do It Here
Culture is defined as "specific behaviours acquired (in part) from social influences." These social influences can come from family, friends, co-workers, and others. When we wish to focus on efficiency improvement, culture can be an aid or a hindrance, depending on whether the culture is affected by forces encouraging change or forces resisting change. Let me give you a couple of examples.
The Power of Why
One of the best ways to get to root causes of problems lies in the question “why.” Why does it take 30 days to pay an invoice? Why does Finance require five signatures on the cheque? Why is the Contracts Division involved in payment processing? Why? It is such a simple question, but it can generate powerful results.
Planning Makes Perfect
When was the last time you developed a plan? Did you implement your plan? And here’s the million dollar question: Did you implement your plan successfully? If implementation was successful, then it is very likely that you spent at least half your time in the planning process before you started with implementation.
The importance of planning cannot be overemphasized, but in western cultures, the tendency is to follow a cycle of “plan,do, re-plan, re-do, re-plan, re-do,” until the plan and implementation are completed.
This is the wrong way to plan and implement, since the end result can take twice as long and cost twice as much as necessary.
Work Smarter, Not Harder
What’s the secret to working smarter, not harder? The answer is standardized work methods. If you do not have documented standards for your work, then you are working much harder than necessary.
Secret to Enabling a Paradigm Shift
Do you have a paradigm? Yes, of course; we all do. Paradigms are what we use as a frame of reference for whatever we do. Paradigms are our boundaries that tell us what to do in order to be successful within those boundaries.
How Can "Voice of the Customer" be Used to Improve Organizational Performance?
In Lean Six Sigma, a specific methodology is used to address improvements in an existing process. These improvements are based on “the voice of the customer.” In other words, the organization’s motivation for improving organizational performance is based on what the customer is telling the organization. This makes sense since the organization’s sole purpose is to serve its customers. Without customers, the organization fails to exist.
What are the Top Ways to Improve Team Dynamics on a Project?
If you’re working on a project, you’re most likely working with a team and you know that sometimes there can be conflict within teams. Team dynamics are influenced by both the differences and the similarities that people bring to the team. So how do you improve team dynamics to maximize high performance?
Using Internal Resources to Implement Projects
An organization can use its internal resources to implement new projects even if its internal resources are not subject matter experts (or SMEs). Here’s how: have your staff work alongside SMEs to learn how to implement projects in one or more pilot sites. By working alongside SMEs, staff is exposed to detailed implementation procedures which procedures they can apply to other sites as implementation progresses.
Project Charter - Why do we need one, anyway?
I’m often asked why one needs a project charter. After all, if we're working on the project (or if the project was our idea), we certainly know what needs to be done, don't we?
While organizations, individuals and project managers may very well know what needs to be done, the project charter is an essential tool that provides purpose and motivation for a team to do its work.
Productivity or Greece?
Productivity is a very complex topic and even among experts it is difficult to exact a prescription to improve productivity. In its simplest form, productivity measures the efficiency of production. It is the ratio of production output to what is required (inputs) to produce the output. In terms of economic growth, governments look at productivity as the product of labour based on the average number of hours each employed person works and the proportion of the entire population that is employed. Labour productivity drives living standards. However, just because a person is employed does not mean that they are productive.
Overworked? Really?
I have worked with many clients over the past few decades and one of the common complaints that I hear repeatedly is that they are “overworked.” While this doesn’t typically surprise me when I hear it from staff, it continues to surprise me when I hear it from executives.