Archive for March, 2009
Monday, March 23rd, 2009
It’s that time of year again. Business plans and budgets are signed off, employee reviews are due and the annual objective-setting extravaganza is looming.
In the ideal world, this all happens seamlessly. As a manager, you have a clear line of sight to the organsation’s vision and goals; your manager discusses their objectives with you - along with the targets and measures in place; you have a pleasant, inspiring and meaningful conversation that crystallises for you exactly what you need to do, how you need to do it and exactly what you will have done at the end of the year to contribute to the success of the business. You can’t wait to go and have a similar conversation with your team to set them all on the way to success, leaving you to concentrate on your bit.
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Thursday, March 19th, 2009
Leadership is usually defined with such statements as
* Creating and communicating a vision and strategic direction
* Aligning the organisational stakeholders
* Motivating and inspiring people to deliver
The principles of Lean thinking are
* Define value from the customer’s perspective
* Define the value stream activities for the waste free delivery of each product/service
* Align the value stream for continuous flow
* Manage demand at the pull of the customer
* Seek to continually perfect what you have created
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Wednesday, March 4th, 2009
Why Do Change programmes Fail ? - A subject close to my heart!
I have had the good fortune to work with some great companies and achieve some fantastic results with them using lean and Kaizen methods. The problem is that when I’ve returned some time later for the next round of improvements, I have found that changes and principles implimented have slipped, or even disappeared altogether. Why on earth after all that effort, soul searching, creativity and sweat have the benefits won been allowed to evapourate ?
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