Occasionally a foolish climber will decide to scale some peak solo while traveling light. If the climber is good, this will work just fine as long as the weather holds. If the weather deteriorates, the climber had better to ready to get off the mountain as soon as possible or a disaster may follow.
Are You Ready for This?
Irresistible forces are operating all around you. Some could...
Lacking a meaningful purpose can cause aimlessness when faced with irresistible forces. In light of that, how can you and your organization maintain a strong sense of purpose and direction when you are buffeted by volatile organizational conditions?
You need to find powerful, motivating values that will direct your enterprise towards a more empowering and successful future. You should also...
If you have a valuable leadership and management tool, I'm sure you make it a point of emphasis to be sure that everyone learns how to apply the tool. Otherwise, it's like leaving large gold nuggets and bulging diamonds lying around on the floor in your offices: You are making a lot less money than you would with more focus on what's valuable.
In larger organizations, developing the...
New breakthrough solution cost reducers often lack confidence when they begin. As a result, they pick some area of glaring inefficiency as an easy target.
In such activities, it's not unusual for a breakthrough solution to be possible by simply applying methods known since the 1920s. That approach is unfortunate because the solver often gets a sense that breakthrough solutions for cost...
Don't look back. Something might be gaining on you.
-- Satchel Paige
When you buy most vehicles, they come with an owner's manual that describes routine checkups and maintenance. The purpose of such checkups is to see that everything is working properly and, if necessary, to bring your vehicle up to safe and efficient standards of operation.
While a few items like oil changes need to...
What is a slow-developing opportunity? It's almost always an opportunity that you don't know how to pursue yet.
What's a slow-developing, expensive opportunity? It's an opportunity for which you've spent a lot of money without yet knowing how to pursue the opportunity. The only difference between the two is that more money is spent in the latter case.
What's the lesson? Focus on...
When clients and students describe their first breakthrough solutions, they always acknowledge that repeating the process will be a good idea. When the improvement has been related to reducing costs, however, few set a date for that repetition. I strongly encourage you to set such a date . . . and consider making the time to begin again sooner rather than later.
I had a recent...
One of the most reliable ways to see what's unnecessary is simply to develop a new business model that eliminates some functions. Perhaps no area has been as profoundly influenced by this approach as has been environmental stewardship by manufacturers and those who deal with wastes.
The original social model for dealing with environmental problems was to create legislation that mandated...
The people who design offerings are often the worst people to design do-it-yourself directions for beneficiaries, customers, and users. Why? Designers know too much! They can help themselves very easily. But do-it-yourself features aren't going to do much good unless they are easy for everyone to use.
What's a good way to make offerings more do-it-yourself friendly? Prompt the person...
Assuming that you've found an exciting element to optimize at reduced cost, what kind of a goal should you set? Most people can imagine creating some pretty astonishing performance with unlimited funds.
But that's not the real world. Even the U.S. space program has to economize these days.
With that restriction in mind, many people will set quite low performance targets. When you do...
