Author Archive
Goldman Sachs and the Need for Hangings in the Village Square
The child like and pseudo religious belief that the free market will, by itself, right all wrongs in time, a belief adhered to by Alan Greenspan and other groupies of Ayn Rand, is at the heart of our financial crisis and the crisis of capitalism. This Greek tragedy was played out at Enron, Lehman Brothers, and now Goldman Sachs and BP. The question is whether corporate executives are capable of adhering to principled behavior in the absence of punishment of significant severity to balance out the significance of potential rewards for unprincipled behavior.
Lean Politics: Give Up Ideological Waste
The environmental disaster in the Gulf of Mexico is in part the result of political/ideological waste. Lean management focuses on the elimination of waste from manufacturing and other processes. Lean managers develop a keen sense for what adds value and everything else is waste. There is some mass schizophrenia when it comes to the role of government and the private sector. This madness is a complete waste of resources and is itself responsible for many of our problems. It is past time to get beyond this madness.
Obama’s Gulf Leadership Lesson: The Limits of Power and the Power of Empathy
There are times when intelligence, analytic ability, is far less important than urgency and empathy. It is the difference between leadership in combat and leadership in a court room or academic setting.
Decision Making Chaos on the Deepwater Horizon
It appears clear now that the Deepwater Horizon, the Transocean drilling rig under contract with BP, suffered from poorly designed decision processes.
Management Waste – Get Lean and Eliminate It!
One of the core ideas of Lean Management is the elimination of waste. This usually means eliminating unnecessary tasks, motions, inventory, rework, etc. However, the new challenge for lean management is to improve the efficiency of management itself. Much management activity is waste. This waste is just as destructive, or more so, than waste on [...]
Toyota: Did they believe too much in their own reputation?
The Washington Post today reports Toyota’s own explanation of their failure. By their own account, they put growth ahead of quality. They did not have the sense of urgency to respond to customer feedback. Again, nothing in this condemns shop floor practices, the essence of the Toyota Production System, or “lean”, rather it condemns the priority and actions of senior managers.
So What Happened to Toyota???
Last week I was at a client and I was explaining some point of lean culture and I used an example from Toyota. The union president who was in attendance stood up and said “I’ll tell you one thing, you better not tell us to do anything because Toyota did it. Ten people in the past week have come up to me and told me that we aren’t doing anything because Toyota does it.” That about sums up the sentiment out there.
Ordering Lean Team Management
Amazon and other online retailers do have Lean Team Management available. However… I’ll make you a deal! The list price of the manual is $38. Order copies of ten or more through me! If you purchase ten or more copies I will fulfill that order for $28 each. If you order 25 or more copies [...]
Lean Team Management
Before we sold Miller-Howard Consulting Group to Towers Perrin in 1998, the core of our work was implementing team-based organization. We had two workbooks that defined our process and enabled our clients. These were the Team Management manual and Change Management or Whole System Architecture manual. Because teams are the core social system, the foundation, [...]
Sustainable Wealth
Among other things, and the BIG thing I am working on now is a re-write of the New Capitalism book. So, why am I re-writing? That book had already been through several revisions and it took me a while to realize that the one important idea in that book, the idea that could make a [...]
Morgan Stanley and the Global Financial Village
If you doubt that we are decisively entering the age of a global financial village note the following from the WSJ weekly summary: “When we left him and Morgan Stanley last week, they were peering into the abyss. This week they are alive to fight another day. Morgan Stanley closed a $9 billion equity injection from [...]
The Social Capital Deficit
Financial capital, the focus of so much media attention these days, is a result of, but does not produce, social capital. Our economic woes will not be solved until we come to understand the pillars upon which wealth rests. Banks aren’t lending because of trust in one another. As a result, they aren’t lending to [...]
The Financial Crisis – Blaming the Person for Failures of the System
Every media outlet has been struggling to assign blame for current financial crisis. Obviously there was greed. There was incompetence. There was dishonesty. There was arrogance. And many other human failures. Politicians have been attacking “greed” by corporate executives. Once again we have discovered that people in high places are mortal souls, mere humans with [...]
The Strategic Value Stream – How Organizations Create Wealth
The purpose of corporations is to create wealth… not only financial wealth for stockholders, but total wealth for society. When corporations build competence in their employees they are creating wealth. When they innovate they are creating wealth. When they build relationships across groups of people and countries they are creating wealth. Wealth is not only [...]
Lean Organization Requires Alignment of Social and Technical Systems
The more experience one has with Lean manufacturing or organization, the more clear it is that lean is a system in which both human and technical systems have been aligned.
Getting to Lean – Whole System Design
Lean organizations are a culture, not a technique. How do you create that culture?
Shamu and Me
Shamu, husbands, children, inmates, managers and employees… all respond to reinforcement.
Power and Influence 2006
Both governments and companies suffer under illusions of power… the intoxication of the material world and the dismissal of the power within the heart and mind.
A National Strategy for Competitiveness
I want to be the moderator at the next Presidential candidate debates. There are a couple questions I would like to ask about their plans for creating national wealth.
Does Spiritual Capital Exist?
Spiritual capital is not the same as membership in religion, or participation in religion, although that may be a stimulus to building spiritual capital.
Capitalism Lives, but…
Capitalism is a live and well, but now it is time for an internal redefinition of capitalism, the capital that matters in the new competive world economy.
Back from the Dead!
I’m finished writing!!!!
Managementfirst Interview
And, here is a wonderful and helpful interview of……me! I think they did a good job.
Lessons from Katrina: 2
A few of the many lessons in management and leadership to be learned from the pre and post of hurricane Katrina.
Leadership Under Fire – Katrina’s Aftermath
The preparation and the response to “The Big One†in New Orleans should result in a complete re-assessment of how we choose and appoint our leaders. Any good corporate executive knows which jobs are best done by lawyers and which are best done by generals.
Broad Slicing the Organization (or Country!)
In Blink the author defined thin slicing as the ability to make quick judgments. What we need now is the ability to engage in broad slicing, the ability to identify unifying themes that slice across all units and people in an organization.
Becoming Authentic – Understanding High Performance
A study of the highest performing individuals reveals “athenticity” – like the “natural” they have a perfect fit for their work
Changing the Culture: The Whole Loaf of Bread
What could be better than sliced bread? A whole loaf. But when you have a culture of continually slicing the bread to find solutions to problems it may be hard to put the pieces of the culture together.
Let’s Get Tough!
The debate over our country’s nominee for U.N. Ambassador has come down to a debate over toughness and management style. It makes me wonder if anyone knows what it means to be tough.
Great Quotes
From my writing I have found some great quotes on our place in universe.
The ONE Principle
Watching the painful gyrations of our government over the past few weeks, it convinces me that there is one most important leadership principle in this age. This is true not only for our government, but for our corporations, teams and families. And, it is not new. It only needs renewal.
A Reflection on The Unity of Our Government
I hope the tragedy of the killing of the husband and mother of Judge Joan Lefkow in Chicago may bring some appreciation to the service provided by Federal Judges, and all Judges for that matter.
Just a Few Fun Quotes
“To his dog, every man is Napoleon; hence the constant popularity of dogs” – Aldous Huxley “How often we recall, with regret, that Napoleon once shot at a magazine editor and missed him and killed a publisher. But we remember with charity that his intentions were good.” – Mark Twain “Even Napoleon had his Watergate.” [...]
How We Talk Matters
Our national conversation is dominated by polarity politics – left or right, blue or red, liberal or conservative. Is this two dimensional linear view the way we should discuss problems?
Does Happiness Matter?
Authentic happiness conributes to business success.
Getting up-to-date…A brief, recent history of me
Just in case any of my former associates, clients, friends or enemies check in here and wonder what this guy has been up to… a brief report on the past six years.
Welcome to Management Meditations
A blog dedicated to creating commitment and collaboration at work Since about 1969, from the time I began working as a counselor at Polk Youth Center, N. C. Department of Corrections, I have been focused on how human behavior responds to the nature of organizations and all of their systems and structures. From prisons to [...]