When I searched the phrase “results of combining leadership and management” the vast majority of the results I found were articles comparing and contrasting the two. While I make it a point to be as loud as I possibly can in emphasizing that adding manager to a title does not...
One of the most powerful lessons I learned in the fifteen or so years I worked in behavior-based safety had nothing to do with safety and was only indirectly related to human behavior… That lesson was in how much the act of serving others impacted the influence an individual could have on...
You will never hear me say that leadership, especially the kind of leadership that’s necessary to effectively run a large organization, is easy. What you will hear me say from time to time is that it’s actually damn hard! In fact, I’ve often heard John Maxwell joke about the...
In March of 2000, as a 23 year old 250 ton stamping press operator (and carpenter on the side), I applied for and was somehow offered a position implementing the latest and greatest Lean manufacturing initiative the company I was working for was pushing down from the corporate office. I had been...
If we want to have any hope of capturing even the slightest bit of the profit we’re currently throwing away by not developing the most authentic influence we possibly can with our teams and eliminating all that waste that’s so often tied to miscommunication, we need to have an...
Before we even begin unpacking any of the specific action steps you or would need to consider to capture even the slightest bit of that profit lost due to poor leadership, I believe it’s absolutely critical to quantify just what we’re likely leaving on the table. I mean, I’ve...
Organizations of all sizes invest significant amounts of time, money, and energy on improving their processes with hopes of becoming more profitable. Sometimes this is based on a goal of becoming best-in-class but sometimes it is just to stay competitive with customers or in attracting talent....
Whether Santa Claus comes to town or not, we can rest assured that from the moment we accept responsibility for leading our teams someone will ALWAYS be watching the example we set. Hopefully they won’t be watching when we actually are sleeping (because that’s creepy, even for Santa)...
No, not the 1991 single by Extreme! I’m talking about what you and I need to provide to set the tone in our organizations - especially since we’re far more likely to get what we are then just what we want!
Whether they’re listed in the employee handbook, on a document in a...
One of the first things I learned after I moved from running a press to training on and implementing Lean Manufacturing initiatives nearly 25 years ago was how labor efficiency rates were set. In most cases, the number of widgets that were expected on an hourly basis from any given process was...
Since we’re gonna get what we are, and not necessarily what we want, I believe it would serve us all well to consider some real life examples of leadership that yielded teams of people who did what they did. Interestingly enough, my internet search for specific leaders who did this yielded...
The Rolling Stones shared a bit of wisdom with us years ago when they said, “You don’t always get what you want. But if you try sometimes, you just might find, you get what you need…” That may hold true in some cases but when it comes to leadership, you get what you are!...
