Process Improvement

Website Design and Voice of the Customer A major company that I worked for wanted to redesign their inter­nal website. They assigned their best programmers and some marketing people to design the new website. The programmers insisted on putting all the latest bells and whistles on the website and convinced the project leader that these […]

Employee Selection Kaizen. Hiring the Right Way. When I ran a Human Resources department, I was alarmed by the high turnover rate of new employees during the first year of employment. This was not only costly but caused more work in the department. We decided to form a team to look at the current process

We all know the value of procurement savings both hard and soft to many organizations. They are often recoverable immediately with little or no capital investment. Often a cross-functional team comes together and develops the savings which does take time but usually very little if any capital expenditures.The paper industry is very capital intensive. A

Most management professionals have never heard of appreciative inquiry. It is a systematic discovery process to search for what is best or positive in an organization or its strengths. These strengths are then improved upon to create an even stronger and more dynamic organization. Implementing change remains positive and thus springs from an organization’s strengths,

Management professionals need to realize that they must not only market their management strategies but their successes. Many management professionals neglect to create a marketing plan for their organization. I use the term marketing plan with communication plan. Some of the goals and techniques of your marketing-communication plan should be to educate top management on

Broken-windows theory is primarily used in law enforcement. It is not a complex or very complicated approach in concept. When a neighborhood starts to show disorder, decay or even minor crimes occur, the police force acts aggressively to prevent further disorder and increases in crime. Then significant statistical analysis recommends where and how to deploy

Don’t Believe What You Hear From the Media or So-Called Experts Be Skeptical A major company that I worked for wanted to redesign their inter­nal website. They assigned their best programmers and some marketing people to design the new website. They hired a team of website design experts to advise them. The experts showed the

Here is an innovation idea that borrows from another industry. No one ever thought of doing it originally. It is a good idea to know your competition. It is a better idea to look at how other industries operate or innovate and their best practices. I once was the purchasing manager for an equipment manu­facturer

One particularly difficult transformation process was my third—which meant that I should have learned many lessons already! Nonetheless, only two people in a department of twenty showed any enthusiasm for supply management trans­formation. Most of the personnel had long-established rela­tionships with suppliers, and the department was divided into subgroups identified by the materials or services

Most business professionals have never heard of appreciative inquiry. It is a systematic discovery process to search for what is best or positive in an organization or its strengths. These strengths are then improved upon to create an even stronger and more dynamic organization. Implementing change remains positive and thus springs from an organization’s strengths,