SuccessfulWorkplace

It came as a surprise as I left the Navy officer’s life that so many people thought my former world was so different from the ‘civilian’ world I was entering. In my first assignment with Perot Systems, I heard comments like, “Life is easy when you can just order someone to do it,” and, “Everything […]

To make big improvements in productivity and customer service, people in an organization must collaborate across corporate hierarchies, functions, companies, and geographies. Emerging social networking technologies offer new ways to overcome these boundaries. Leading companies such as IBM, Ford, and Avery Dennison are making major improvements in key processes by creating online communities to share […]

A recent blog post by Seth Godin (@ThisIsSethsBlog) created one of the “POW!” moments for me. The writeup was about organizations that always deal with “problems,” and what happens when there are no more problems to solve. Problem solvers don’t function well when they don’t have any problems to solve. They often seem lost. We’re […]

If you’ve had a bad experience with an operational improvement effort (like Six Sigma or Business Reengineering), or if you haven’t given it much attention lately, you should take a fresh look. Many companies and executives have been disappointed with these efforts when results weren’t sustained and inefficiency crept back in. But improvement has improved. […]

Profound changes in an organization must be led from the top, but human resource professionals can play a big part in making them happen. Consider HR’s role in accelerating Harvard Vanguard Medical Associates’ operational improvement initiative. This 4,500-employee Massachusetts healthcare group embarked on “Care Improvement” three years ago. Chief Human Resources Officer Dan Michaud told me how HR has […]

“Sometimes you have to go up really high to understand how small you are.” If you aren’t familiar with this statement, they represent the words Felix Baumgartner spoke just before stepping out of a capsule on the edge of space 24.2 miles above earth with nothing but a protective suit and parachute to help him back […]

A culture of continuous improvement is crucial to organizational performance and survival. Just ask Richard Aubut, CEO of South Shore Hospital, the leading regional provider of healthcare in southeastern Massachusetts. “We don’t know what changes will be coming with healthcare reform and other changes in our industry,” he told me recently. “But we do know we need to […]

Many organizations suffer from a tragic pattern: The chief executive officer launches a new change program with great fanfare and intentions, only to shelve it a few years later with little to show for great expenditures of time and consulting fees. How can you break this cycle? Consider a health insurance company that has been […]

Our old toaster was really dying. The good news? We had a routine. Every time the toast popped up looking like a refinery smokestack, we would rush to open the windows, the kitchen door and hope the smoke detectors slept peacefully. For the really bad times, we’d throw a fan in the window and use […]

More and more companies I see these days are making strategic process changes to drive unprecedented business model innovation. Forbes has embraced online collaborative publishing as it adds a substantial online presence to its traditional print magazine. Healthcare organizations are implementing electronic health records systems so they can migrate from islands of medical services to […]