Posts tagged as:

Problem Solving

10 Management Traps – and How to Avoid Them

04.30.2011

Recently Steve Minter of Industry Week interviewed a range of people for an article he titled 10 Management Traps – and How to Avoid Them. The ten traps he lists are: 1. Not ‘Nipping it in the Bud’ 2. Squelching the Flow of Bad News 3. Doing Drop-Down Work 4. Spending Too Much Time on [...]

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Entrepreneurship is problem solving

04.26.2011

I’ve written before that problems solving is a key still for innovation, in 3 Key Stills that Enable Innovation. This is why we must be building problem solving skills at every level of the organization. Perhaps one of the most important aspects of this is simply defining the problem. It’s sounds easy. So easy in [...]

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Lessons from the Road: Surfacing Problems Daily

03.21.2011

This month I am starting a new column for Industry Week. The title of the column is Lessons from the Road. Lessons from the Road is the subtitle of our book The Hitchhiker’s Guide to Lean. In this new column, I hope to provide pragmatic and actionable advice for companies on the lean journey. The [...]

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The Fine Line Between Micro-Management and Surfacing Problems

02.21.2011

Not many people want to be the victim of micro-management. And most managers don’t espouse operating that way. But not all micro-management is created equal. As organizations pursue lean effort,s I see a tension between making problems visible and micro-management. Many organizations are very sensitive to anything that feels like micro-management, even just a detailed [...]

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If you’re not frustrated, then you’re not working on the right problem.

01.03.2011

In my coaching, many of my conversations begin with a source of frustration by the individual. The source of frustration could be rooted in another person, or a team problem, or in their own abilities. But nonetheless, the frustration is there. This is a good thing. The philosophy that I’ve embraced is… If you’re not [...]

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Matt Wrye’s Reflections from the Lean Experience

12.16.2010

At the moment, I am teaching a Lean Experience at our Center for a group of mixed companies that include retail, transportation, micro-brews, and more. Recently, we delivered a private session at the company where lean blogger Matt Wrye works. Matt converted several of his lessons from the class into blog posts. He decided to [...]

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Houston, we have a problem…or don’t we?

12.08.2010

Do you have problems in your organization? Does everyone agree on what they are? Teams worry about problem solving processes and problem solving skills. But if they can’t even agree on what would be a problem and what wouldn’t be, then what’s the point? Is the report or order being late a problem, or just [...]

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How more information doesn’t lead to better decisions

12.06.2010

I recently applied to refinance a mortgage. Of course, bad mortgages were the tracks which the economic train derailed from. New regulations are inevitable when that happens as elected officials want to show their constituents that they fixed it. I’ve gotten to see some of those new regulations and did we miss the mark. The [...]

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Problems across boundaries require a different approach

11.01.2010

How do you engage other departments in problems? Most organizations do this at the wrong time. This is why efforts like value stream mapping exist. People we don’t engage across functions on an ongoing basis, we need over-the-top efforts to break in and start to solve those cross-boundary issues. But value stream mapping, and the [...]

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Don’t problem solve to infinity

10.18.2010

Good problem statements define a gap to close. They do not just describe an undesirable condition that you would like to remove completely. Why does it matter? It comes down to when you consider yourself “done”, or at least done for now. David Allen of “Getting Things Done” fame talks about defining what done looks [...]

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