Meetings are perennial problems. People sit through meetings and then complain about how big a waste of time it was. Here are a couple very simple tips to try and actually improve (instead of just agreeing that meetings are wasteful, but doing nothing to improve).
It is obvious a few companies don’t have any ability to provide even just reasonably bad service (for them the goal of decent service is so far away as to not be reasonable). How often do Verizon, Comcast, Time Warner, AT&T, United… get blasted for horrible custom service?
must focus daily on how any process can be improved
must focus on adopting improvement systemically (not just locally, by one person or team)
must focus on discontinuous improvement which could include high energy kaizen events and dramatic innovation must include a study phase (PDSA) where the improvements are evaluated to determine whether they actually achieved the predicted results and
must include improvement of the improvement process itself
The Deming Scholars MBA program at Fordham includes a heavy dose of internships (“Subject matter is delivered in five integrated learning cycles. Five eight-week sessions of classroom lectures, seminars and study are linked by seven-week internships at participating firms”). Sadly the Deming Scholars MBA program has closed.
Gordon England, the Deputy Secretary of Defense, signed a directive establishing policy and assigning responsibilities to institutionalize the Lean Six Sigma effort throughout the USA Department of Defense.
I have previously written about the ethically challenged companies that claim they are not American to avoid paying the taxes that they owe. For some reason the executives, often seem to stay in the USA though? They even continue to get huge USA government contracts (military and other). It is sad that such behavior is tolerated.
Training new employees and then paying them to quit, sounds pretty bizarre; Zappos is not afraid of doing things differently. Why Zappos Pays New Employees to Quit – And You Should Too...
"Clients often ask how we motivate our staff members. The answer is simple, we don’t. We feel good people are already motivated, what they need is removal of the things that de-motivate them..."
Do your outstanding people think their importance is in getting through another day through hard work and individual expertise. While those qualities are good most important to the success of the organization is improving the system not getting through one day. If those seen as the stars are not improving the system and processes then get them to work doing so.
The recent drastic reductions again emphasize (once again) that changes in the federal funds rate are not correlated with changes in the 30 year fixed mortgage rate. In the last 4 months the discount rate has been reduced nearly 200 basis points, while 30 year fixed mortgage rates have fallen 18 basis points.
For decades foreigners have taken debt from Americans that promise to pay back later (to pay for what they consumed). Now many are deciding that these debts are not attractive investments and are looking to own productive assets in the USA (companies, factories…).
A company truly driven by a focus on continual improvement, respect for all employees and reasonable executive compensation might be a company serious about adopting Deming and Toyota management principles. It is hard for me to imagine such a situation that doesn’t truly seek, as the primary aim of the organization, to benefit many stakeholders (workers, owners, suppliers, customers…) not just executives (or just executives, board and owners…).
The Purpose of an Organization quoting Dr. Deming: “The aim proposed here for any organization is for everybody to gain – stockholders, employees, suppliers, customers, community, the environment – over the long term.”
