Celebrate Big Things. Celebrate Little Things. Celebrate Often.   In my last blog, I shared some of my recent experiences with groups mastering the aspects of problems related to people. Just as meaningful to me has been some recent experiences related to groups’...

Are you clear on how the people-related aspects of your organization’s problem-solving efforts operate? Over the last 30 years in my problem-solving experiences, groups have often struggled with the ‘people part’. For example, safety incidents almost always involve...

What do football and leadership have in common? Can’t guess the answer? They’re both prone to pile-ups. In football once there is a ball on the ground, the players all pile on — it always seems like a bit of overkill. Similarly, once there are problems in the...

Recently in my work, I was reintroduced to the use of Design Thinking methods as applied to People Strategies. Originally, I came across this work from the book Agile HR which included a focus on designing employee experiences, so I knew it would be just up my alley....

Recently, I posted an article on LinkedIn from Harvard Business Review called How HR Lost Employees’ Trust — and How to Get It Back. It was thought-provoking to me and provided some insights to areas where we need to improve how HR operates. While this has always been...

HR does organizations a big disservice when it solely focuses on meeting the needs of the business. HR should also meet the needs of individuals; the individuals drive the business. It can be a big win-win. When we can work with the needs of our people, we’re going...

Science tells us that organizations are better off when their people are happier, more satisfied, more connected, and more self-reliant. If you can optimize how your people operate, how they feel, their experience, and their level of joy, you will get better results...

Jason’s manufacturing team has been producing a consistent number of units per week, but in the last few years, they have struggled to get anywhere near their previous rate of production.  To make matters worse, they have more client orders than they’ve ever had – so...

Have you ever discussed something at length with your team without really arriving at a decision?  You’re not alone.  This often happens with organizations before they learn to communicate more effectively.  For example, an operations group was having regular meetings...

My best mentor In many of my talks over the years, I've mentioned my best and favorite mentor, Phil. We work together doing volunteer work for the Association for Manufacturing Excellence. I often ask him for help with work situations and challenges in my various...

In previous blogs, I've reviewed the importance and benefits of employee teams working to improve the issues revealed by engagement surveys. Organizations that already use methodical problem solving on various production or service issues can use the same approaches...

What's the difference between a job design, and a job description? What's the connection between job design and continuous improvement cultures? Most people consider job descriptions a waste of time. But why?  We’ve all seen job descriptions, they are usually a...

Recently, I was speaking with an organization about their continuous improvement efforts. As we were exploring some of my more recent work and research in the area of better understanding people in the workplace, I was asked “what is one thing people can do to improve...

Engagement is possible, but it's not always easy. We speak as though a leader can engage their team by just being an effective leader, but true engagement requires people to take action. Engagement is a two-way street.  So if leaders can’t necessarily control their...

Sharon was preparing to ask her direct report how she was doing as a leader.  Like most leaders, she had never formally asked someone for feedback about her performance and was a little nervous about how to proceed. Sharon remembered that the last time her boss asked...