Thanks, as always, to Ryan McCormack for this. He always shares so much good reading, listening, and viewing here! Subscribe to get these directly from Ryan via email.
News, articles, books, podcasts, and videos about how to make the workplace better.
Operational Excellence, Improvement, and Innovation
Operational Excellence in Cloud Security: Lessons From CrowdStrike Outage and Amazon’s Playbook
The Crowdstrike outage had a clear technical root cause, but the incident shed light on opportunities to embed operational excellence practices to prevent future occurrences. Josh Burgin of Upwind shares how digging deeper into causes, prioritizing preparedness, and cultivating a culture of continuous improvement and learning can help improve resilience.
Are GE (and Lean) Executives In Demand Again?
The 2000’s saw Fortune 500 companies desperate to scoop up Welch acolytes as their new CEOs, with some fairly terrible results. Fast forward to today, is Larry Culp’s success with lean thinking making GE executives more attractive to companies seeking operational excellence, for example, Microsoft’s recent announcement of Carolina Dybeck Happe as their new COO? Here’s hoping that she has greater success than Nardelli did with Home Depot, or McNerney with 3M, or Immelt with GE.
How to Run a Factory: Timeless Advice from the Late Jim Harbour
Here’s a reprint 2014 interview with Jim Harbour, an automotive industry expert of 60 years summarizing his principles on how to improve. It covers many lean manufacturing talking points, like refraining to focus on “all new” approaches, not jumping to the latest technology for tis own sake, and how reorganizing is not the first solution approach to take. Still relevant in 2024? I think so, but the pull to disruptive technology as the first order solution is so strong that it is nearly irresistible.
Creating a Culture of Improvement
OSHA Is Placing More Emphasis on Safety Culture
It’s not just tools and enforcement. OSHA continues to place more emphasis on safety as a core value, realizing that “we can’t get what we need out of safety and health programs without talking about safety culture.” As I shared last month, workplace safety and operational excellence go hand in hand.
Recognize the Importance of Recognition
Recognition is essential to culture, but employee retention increasingly depends on getting recognition right. Data shows that employees that receive high-quality recognition are 45% less likely to leave after two years.
Go to Gemba
Reducing reliance on assumptions by actually reducing the distance between leaders and the work is a longstanding practice of lean leaders. With greater reliance on digital tools, data, and remote work, going to gemba remains a powerful approach to stay connected as close to the work as possible.
Be Visible
CIOs are increasingly responsible for leading enterprise-wide change. Robert Slepin provides his perspective on the importance of change management and sponsorship for CIOs.
Coaching – Developing Self & Others
“Why Can’t People Just Accept It and Move On?”
All change is hard. There may be good reasons why people aren’t ready to simply accept reality and move on, including harbouring a competing commitment that has not been uncovered.
Don’t Be Afraid to Narrow Your Focus
We often worry that narrowing our focus limits our opportunities. Jamie Flinchbaugh encourages us to narrow our focus to get the very best customers and provide greater value.
Check Your Self(Care)
Leaders (should) care about their employees’ well-being. Some go so far as to give all of themselves to their charges without prioritizing self-care. In the long run, it’s difficult or impossible to care well for others if you aren’t taking care of yourself. Check out this self-care checklist for leaders.
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Check out my latest book, The Mistakes That Make Us: Cultivating a Culture of Learning and Innovation:
