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Flinchbaugh

Dream Big, Act Small

03.10.2010

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 that it comes only one day [...]

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Creating Employee Engagement, Part 4

03.08.2010

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 other group.
Employees need to be able to [...]

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Creating Employee Engagement, Part 3

03.05.2010

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 with it?” I usually get answers ranging [...]

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Creating Employee Engagement, Part 2

03.03.2010

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.
A certain set of beliefs and behaviors need [...]

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Creating Employee Engagement, Part 1

03.01.2010

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 is in the head, and knowledge, which [...]

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You must lack common sense!

02.24.2010

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 I believe even books have called it [...]

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Organizational Design and the Role of HR in Lean

02.19.2010

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 to get involved, they don’t know [...]

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The Fall of the Mighty Toyota

02.17.2010

p=357 Killer decontenting: http://www.thetruthaboutcars.com/too-good-to-be-true-how-toyotas-success-caused-killer-decontenting/ Direct link to Toyota’s content: http://pressroom.toyota.com/pr/tms/toyota/toyota-consumer-safety-advisory-102572.aspx WSJ, the engineering problem: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB20001424052748703389004575032844153687042.html#mod=todays_us_opinion Lentz on NBC’s Today Show: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/21134540/vp/35179161#35179161 http://www.inpursuitofelegance.com/post/2010/01/30/Toyota-Recall-The-Penalty-of-Leadership.aspx http://blogs.hbr.org/winston/2010/02/toyota-getting-squished.html?… p=365 http://www.lean.org/shook/ what Toyota workers are doing: http://www.mcclatchydc.com/homepage/story/83859.html Tom Johnson: http://blog.pegasuscom.com/Leverage-Points-Blog/bid/30450/How-Toyota-Ran-Off-the-Road-and-How-It-Can-Get-Back-on-Track Toyota right way to work: http://betterforeveryone.blogspot.com/2010/02/toyota-once-hailed-as-right-way-to-work.html Time: http://news.yahoo.com/s/time/20100211/wl_time/08599196359500

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What NOT to Learn from the Undercover Boss

02.15.2010

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 getting to the point of [...]

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Reflect, Don’t Dwell

02.12.2010

Most organizations don’t spend time in reflection. It seems wasteful. But it’s vitally important in an organization trying to make progress. Without learning, courses aren’t corrected and lessons aren’t internalized.
A favorite quote of mine by Soren Kierkegaard speaks to this point:

“Life can only be understood backwards, but it must be lived forwards.”

This means to me [...]

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