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Yesterday I was working with a team who was working on a very long-term kind of change. They were really stuck, spending a lot of time trying to figure out how to achieve the end state. That is a mistake. Abraham Lincoln said: “The best thing about the future is

This is the final part of a 4 part series on Creating Employee Engagement. You can first read Parts 1, 2, and 3. Skills Required for Engagement Skill gaps to create engagement exist both in employees and managers, although most transformation efforts tend to focus on only one or the

This is part 3 on employee engagement. Read Part 1 and Part 2. The Development of Systems to Support Engagement When conducting an assessment, one of the most revealing questions that I seem to ask is “if you have found waste or an opportunity to improve, what do you do

This is Part 2, you can read Part 1 on Creating Employee Engagement. The Role of Culture in Engagement Culture is the set of shared assumptions, beliefs, and principles that a group or organization holds. It is best measured or observed by the shared behaviors or habits that are exhibited.

Learning happens in the classroom. Coaching happens through a formal mentor often away from our work. At least that’s what we’ve been lead to believe. But that view has many limitations. As it applies to learning, learning is never internalized in the classroom. There is a difference between information, which

Plenty of companies say the focus on the customer. Many of them say they want customer feedback.   But few post unfiltered, real-time customer feedback on the front-page of their website where everyone can see it, whether good or bad. CustomInk.com can say that. Here’s just the latest feedback as an

Kiyoshi Suzaki, a lean thinker who deserves to be at the top of any lean guru list, wrote: Lean tools are common sense – after the fact. I think that makes sense based on my observations. People see it, and they want to call lean “common sense”. Some organizations and

This originally appeared on the Lean Career Compass blog. Lean is a human system. And human resources deals with humans, right? So HR should have a pretty active role in lean. In most cases, I see them sitting on the sidelines. This is sad. It’s not that they don’t want

..and other such troubling headlines and comments have been popping up everywhere throughout the news cycle and the blogosphere. The major Toyota recall has stirred up activity every where, from a common leading story on the nightly news, to blog articles of all sorts.

I don’t know if the show will last, but the Undercover Boss certainly has an interesting premise. Leaders of organizations go undercover in their own organizations to do front-line jobs, learning what is really going on. This is a great idea, and one consistent with lean where we talk about