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Respect the Neural Network of Your Business
Earlier this year I shared a tale of woe. One of my long-term clients had suffered a ransomware attack due mostly to the negligence of the business leadership to be respectful of the need to maintain...
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Welcome to Production Hell
Back in the middle of 2017, as Tesla was ramping up the production of the Model-3 and the company was worth only $63.5 billion (as opposed to $1 trillion today), Elon Musk famously stated that he was...
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They are dumb
I had a project where I was hired to try to help turn a company around. The challenges faced existed across the entirety of the company. In fact, there was no function of the company that was...
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Mind your costs
I recently came off a project with a metal fabrication company that was in severe distress. I was originally introduced to the company in October of 2020 by a mentor of the owner who thought they...
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Task Overload
We have all been there at least once in our lives. It might be that we are faced with a single, big, fat, hairy challenge and we don’t know where to start. Or it might be that we are faced with...
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Being Setup for Failure
Employers don’t hire people – or assign them a project or task – in the hopes they will fail. And employees don’t take on a job, project, or task in the hopes they will fail. On the contraire, the...
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Practicing Safe Computing
I recently landed at Newark Airport and when I turned my mobile phone on, it caught on fire. Not the kind of fire with flames and sparks shooting out of it. Rather, one of my clients got infected by...
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“Nomads at Last”– Redux
It’s January 2020. I have just made a pitch to the corporate big-wigs for a way to reduce their real-estate costs (premises including rent and utilities), their corporate travel costs, even their...
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Ready, Fire, Aim!
There is a saying, rather a curse; “May you live in interesting times”. It is a curse because interesting times are times that are full of Volatility, Uncertainty, Complexity, and Ambiguity;...
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Know what? So what…
There was a recent post in the Operational Excellence Group that I own on LinkedIn. The post was about the National Aeronautics and Space Administration’s (NASA) Lean Six Sigma program and the...
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Choose Your Hard
Life is a never-ending stream of decisions. From the moment we wake up in the morning to the time we go to sleep, we are making decisions. Even the very act of waking up and going to sleep is a...
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Post COVID-19; Not a Brave New World
By any definition, by any stretch of the imagination, the COVID-19 pandemic has been a transformational event that has affected, either directly or indirectly (probably both) each and every person on...
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Eulogy of a Continuous Improvement Program
When you were born, everyone could see the twinkle in your eyes for the fire and passion you held. As you grew, you became inspired by the reported accomplishments of others; and consumed with great...
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Teachers: Your Students are your Legacy
For students in school, it’s graduation time. Many young students are graduating from one grade to the next and still others are graduating from their high school and taking the next big step on...
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COVID-19; Blame is for God and Small Children
Unless you are a person that firmly believes there will be a second wave – or even that there might be a second wave – the reactions and measures taken to the COVID-19 pandemic are starting to calm...
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The Myth of Japanese Companies and Management
It seems that at every Conference, Symposium, or other gathering of higher-learning and thought-leaders – where the topic is Lean Six-Sigma – many of the attendees, and almost all of the speakers,...
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No Skid Marks: Experiences and Lessons in 30 Years of Business
Thirty years ago this month, in August of 1985, I started my first business, XONITEK Systems Corporation. It didn’t really dawn on me until I found myself at the David N. Deutsch Saratoga Weekend (aka...
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I say Tomato, You say Pomodoro
Communication. We talk about how important it is. How critical it is to have in any endeavor in order to move the ball down the field and, ultimately, for success. Yet in almost every instance where...
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Effective Arguing; Beware of Logical Red-Herrings
As I am apt to, from time to time, I recently attended a conference on Operational Excellence and Change Management. There were two issues related to one another that came-up time and again from the...
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8.5 “Must Know” Career Tips & Tricks (v4.0)
I wrote the first version of this article three years ago and have been updating it every year since. I have had a great many people remark to me that it has helped them a great deal (which is the...
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