If we really want to have a shot at capturing the profitability that’s killed by confusion in our organizations by providing our teams with the kind of clear expectations they desperately need to produce great results, it will require a very focused effort! We absolutely must become experts in provi...

I know very few people who jump out of bed each morning full of vim and vigor in pursuit of mediocrity. In fact, most everyone I’ve ever know to accept average as the highest level of success and achievement they believe possible has seemed to loathe getting out of bed and to dread each step they ta...

Let’s face it, if we expect the members of our teams to take more responsibility than we do, we ain’t leading them! And if we want our teams to achieve the kind of results that’s only possible by always meeting (and frequently exceeding) what’s expected of them, we absolutely have to make sure that ...

The cost of confusion hits our bottom line(s) in so many ways; increased downtime clarifying details, quality errors (regardless of our industry or process), delayed deliveries, and even lost customers. All of those things kill profitability! When we think about the statement I shared previously fro...

If we wanna stop leaving all that profit on the table, we’ve got to take action. The hard part though, as I just shared, often boils down to what we can or cannot dedicate our resources to - or at least that’s what I hear from folks in leadership roles quite frequently. If we only had money in our b...

Missing expectations can be a significant profitability killer! Don’t take my word for it though, ask anyone who’s ever worked for a publicly traded organization… On May 25, 2023, an interview on Yahoo Finance detailed a 14% drop in the value of Dollar Tree stock after the company missed its profit ...

Make no mistake, confusion contributes to several of the profitability killers we’ve looked at already; so much so that I believe it’s critical we take a focused look at it individually as well! Whether it’s through the lack of clear expectations that we touched when we worked through the High Risk ...

As we build a top down leadership model that has a positive impact on recruitment and retention throughout our facility, we can expect that same leadership style to drive results in our areas too as long as we understand the difference between servant leadership and subservient leadership. I heard D...

I often share stories from my first few years in manufacturing, explaining how terrifying it was back then for an engineer to hover over my shoulder with his stopwatch. I didn’t understand that he was capturing the cycle time of the machine I was operating and not necessarily timing me. I guess I wa...

No, not the 1991 single by Extreme! I’m talking about what you and I need to provide to set the tone in our organizations - especially since we’re far more likely to get what we are then just what we want! 

Whether they’re listed in the employee handbook, on a document in a fancy frame that hangs i...

About a dozen years ago, I was offered a position with global responsibility for the behavior-based safety process within the company I worked for. The fellow who had been in the role for more than a decade was retiring and since I had supported him by working with most of our facilities across Nort...

While the strong mentors Jordan had helped him maintain a strong public image, there were still areas where he led teammates in a less than positive direction… I’ve referenced the difference between the influence Michael Jordan earned and the positional authority Jerry Krause relied on several times...