Intuition is that silent voice from the heart that tells you what you should be doing. It is an inner voice, not so loud and clear. Our mind speaks louder than the heart – which is why we often ignore our gut feeling, intuition or whatever else we may call it. A few years back, […]
I wrote a post earlier titled “Points to Ponder on Your Internal Customers: Your People” listing some of the important considerations when managing your people. Internal customers are your people, and it is important to treat them well. Obvious! Today, I want to touch upon your “prospective internal customers” – people who you interview and […]
One of the sure ways to fail in any operational improvement initiative is to keep thinking about possible areas of improvements sitting in comforts of a corner cabin. Your thinking, approach and mindset may not necessarily align with those affected by such improvements. In worst case, you might not even be aware of the actual […]
At the core of leadership is ability to support improvements. One of the biggest change when an organization embarks upon a process improvement journey is the change in mindset. While the objectives change, business leaders tend to cling on to traditional management styles of ‘command and control’. With ‘command and control’, managers will control everything […]
A lot of organizations fall in what I call “planning trap” – a lot of planning in the meetings, lot of decisions on improvement areas and eventually very little action. One of the simplest measures of team/organization effectiveness is to keep a close watch on how much is decided in a meeting versus how much […]
Once in a while, when I have exhausted all current reading material, I get to my book cabinet and randomly pick up any old book that I first notice and read a few chapters. It helps me get out of my routine reading and I discover new insights from the same books that I may […]
We live in the world of instant gratification. Technology has made it easier for us to respond quickly, and rising competition/customer expectations has made it mandatory. We lay out a strategy and look for quick execution. The moment it goes into execution, we start looking for results. We need ‘early signals’ about probability of success. […]
In manufacturing world, improving quality of raw material was the first step to improve quality of final product. Then came manufacturing process and efficiency of assembly lines. Ditto with knowledge world, except that raw material here is not plastic beans, but a knowledge worker’s brain. Consider that with range of other softer aspects like motivation, […]
Here is one idea that can dramatically strengthen your organizational fabric. Ask everyone in manager or lead positions to spend at least a couple of hours each month training others (preferably their teams). They decide the topic (mostly one that is their primary skill area, processes, methodologies, soft skills or whatever) and deliver a talk […]