Does a culture walk or talk? Quality Progress released their annual salary survey results for 2014. For me this was very eye opening. Does a culture walk or talk? They…
Pushing the problem Last time I looked at a real effect of the record auto recalls of 2014, supply chain consolidation and shifting the burden away from assembly. There are…
I was reading Jerry Shih?s article in Quality Management Forum from this past fall and found it thought provoking but incomplete. I agree with the spirit pointing to a bigger understanding of what motivates people and therefore leads to larger bottom line success. People in the US are no longer motivated by a shared sense of duty to job or country. As Shih alludes to, command-and-control leadership and their associated structures are not as useful today.
The vast majority of successful changes have a sound technical solution and therefore their results did not stem from an accident. The vast majority of failed changes also had a sound technical basis. The gap lies in alignment of the stakeholders to enact the change. Quite often the organization or culture is ultimately singled out as a vast and insurmountable problem that was the cause of a failed change effort.
As 2014 finished up, an article in December?s Quality Progress, caught my eye. It was about the record year of recalls for the automotive industry. Since it was published, Chrysler announced an additional, huge recall as well. The analysis in the article pointed to three main contributing factors but I think they fall short of some underlying trends, especially some side effects of lean that are oft overlooked.
Today I’d like to talk about intermittency and stress. I always thought Art DeVany?s ideas about fitness were spot on. I still do in fact. I had trouble enacting the random workout side of things. This frustrated me for several years. In fairness to the Evolutionary Fitness protocols he laid out I was too stressed out to be able to stick with them.