Blog

Some Christmas Blogger Fun

by Jamie Flinchbaugh on 12-24-09

Mark Graban of LeanBlog was nice enough (the way an 8 year old boy is nice to his 6 year old brother) to put together this collection of lean bloggers in this Elf dance. Besides Mark and myself, you will also find Kevin Meyer of Evolving Excellence, Pete Abilla of

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Make the Most of This Time

by Jamie Flinchbaugh on 12-23-09

Are you the only one in the office this week? Or the only one next week? What a great time to get something done that is important, but not urgent. Pick one thing that’s been frustrating you. It could be your own email or file management system, or your project

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Test for Actual Use, not Intended Use

by Jamie Flinchbaugh on 12-22-09

When you test, what attributes are you testing for? Most testing begins with design criteria. This is reasonable to include but not the right starting point. You must develop with the user in mind. You must test with the user in mind. You must test for actual use, not just

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Successful Lean Steering Committees

by Jamie Flinchbaugh on 12-21-09

Do you have a group of people leading lean? Whether formal or informal, there is often such as group particularly early in the lean journey (meaning the first several years). I get a lot of questions by email, some by clients and others by readers. Many are two specific to

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Take Fridays Off, or Work While They Slack?

by Jamie Flinchbaugh on 12-19-09

Here are two contrasting points via video. One video is from Chris Brogan of ChrisBrogan.com. The other video is from Cameron Herold of BackPocket COO. Check out both the videos. Chris says work while they slack and you can distance yourself from the competition. Cameron says take Fridays off. No,

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Building a Culture, One Habit at a Time

by Jamie Flinchbaugh on 12-18-09

I get a lot of emails and questions about culture change. I even get it directly: “how do you change culture?” Email isn’t quite sufficient for such a question, and either is a blog post. But we can peel back the layers of the cultural onion, one later at a

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Collaboration at a Local Level

by Jamie Flinchbaugh on 12-17-09

How do you learn from other companies in your area? How can you help each other? Professional societies and their local member chapters often filled that void, but only within the narrow silo professions in which memberships are formed. Collaboration on a broader level, around topics such as performance and

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4 Steps for Small Daily Investments

by Jamie Flinchbaugh on 12-15-09

What do you do when one of those little fires pops up? It’s not a big deal, it’s just a small problem. Put the fire out, move on to what’s next. After all there are many important projects to complete. But of course, before you get to them, another fire

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Sweat the Small Stuff..It May Save Your Life [guest post]

by Jamie Flinchbaugh on 12-14-09

This is a guest blog post by Ankit Patel, CEO of The Lean Way Consulting. You can also follow his blog or find him on Twitter. Flying is the safest form of travel in the world and a safe takeoff and landing is arguably a true 6sigma process but accidents

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Taking Small Steps

by Jamie Flinchbaugh on 12-11-09

One Small Step for Man Are you building plans for 2010? Strategic plans? Goals? Action plans? Even New Year’s Resolutions? Many of you are. You are told to think big, dream big, plan big. I’m couldn’t agree more. Until… you stall. You start thinking about the resources. You start thinking

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