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...

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...

When I mention making sure our team members can measure their performance, have a clear understanding of its relevance, and know their significance in the process, it doesn’t sound all that hard - and it’s not! But don’t mistake this simplicity for something that requires no...

With just a basic understanding of why people do what they do, Matt was about to intentionally break the golden rule with his team and avoid so many of the costs of poor communication! By following a simple pattern, he was able to begin adding fuel to a different fire… Instead of the fire...

A week or two after Matt and I had the hour-long conversation about how he could “get people to do what he told them to do,” he called again to ask what kind of voodoo magic I had taught him… Breaking the golden rule in how he was communicating with each of the individuals on...

When I searched the phrase “results of combining leadership and management” the vast majority of the results I found were articles comparing and contrasting the two. While I make it a point to be as loud as I possibly can in emphasizing that adding manager to a title does not...

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...

Once we’ve identified the root causes that truly are our profitability killers, our next step is to initiate change. In so many scenarios though, those changes seem to be expected through throwing some training at an issue and hoping it sticks… If it were some sort of new tool we...

With the importance of a “realistic, clear-eyed, complete assessment of the current state” in mind, I’ll challenge you to get really honest with yourself… Do you have that kind of clarity for what your current costs are in areas like turnover, productivity, or downtime?...