E-bits

PENCIL-WHIP-IT…Let’s Lie to Ourselves

E-bits January 2015   PENCIL-WHIP-IT…Let’s Lie to Ourselves   The test-cells being toured looked great.  Their 5-S score was a solid 4.5.  I stopped at a line of compressors to review the TPM, Total Predictive Maintenance, sheets.  “Impressive,” I said, flipping through pages of small print items.  Initials were at […]

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The BIG talent development questions…

Cultivating talent is a strategic initiative.  Use this set of questions to help create your talent development plan.  What problems must we be solving in 2025 for which we need to be cultivating talent  today? What are the non-negotiables for running the business? What decisions were made in 2011 about […]

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Management Churn Burns

Premise:  Organizational performance improves with management stability and consistent vision. Seven-in-eight, eight-in-nine…both are very telling stories.  I recently worked with two different people who reported having almost a boss-a-year.  Seven bosses in eight years!  Is it a surprise that performance stagnates when the senior person constantly changes?  A union president […]

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Attitude Adjustment

April, 2012 Are you experiencing feelings of frustration, irritation or indifference? Are the people around you finding you to be cranky, snippy or rude? Maybe today is a good time for an attitude check; a time to hit the “attitude reset button.” While there are some fairly complicated definitions of […]

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Dangers of Drift

01 March 2012 To be at your place of peak performance stay vigilant for drift. Drift is a concept that Prof. Sidney Dekker at Lunds University in Sweden uses to describe a facet of human factors and safety. Human factors determines how a person‟s assessments and actions made sense to […]

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Just 5 Goals

31 January 2012 The positive impact of writing down your goals is one of the most widely researched topics in psychology. Ed Locke, the pioneer of goal-setting theory, proved “goal setting positively impacts performance.” 2012 started at full throttle and look how quickly January passed. Five goals are offered to […]

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Kick It Up

13 December 2011 “Yes, we know the pallet jack has a broken wheel, but we use it anyway,” say the workers looking at a huge gash in the beautiful epoxy floor. This month’s E-bits is your wake-up call, ”Intensity is a necessity.” I am your watchman raising the caution flag […]

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Why not deny?

30 September 2011 “People who don’t take ownership of their actions” is sited as the #1 co-worker irritant by 78% of the professionals responding to a recent LinkedIn poll of 17,000 professionals. Does that irritate you, too? Self-protection drives people to not own their actions. I wonder if this data […]

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The MUDA of non-productive payroll

30 August 2011 30—38% of revenue is a good rule of thumb for payroll according to Don Todrin, a specialist in solving business debt problems; as it climbs toward 50% the businesses are always in trouble. How well are your payroll dollars working for you? No less than six situations […]

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Change Agent Extinction

26 July 2011 No one steps up. The workshop is ending, the walls are covered with great charts guiding the way to the future, and no one makes a move to collect the charts or offers to call the next meeting or lead the effort. There is power in controlling […]

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