Summary.   Perfectionism is often driven by striving for excellence, but it can be self-sabotaging. There are three big mistakes that tend to kill perfectionists’ productivity. First, they are often unable to designate any decision as unimportant which prevents them from quick action or delegation. Second, they feel morally obligated to overdeliver. Third, they rigidly cling to...

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Summary.   In a recent survey of 100 productivity hacks, timeboxing — migrating to-do lists into calendars — was ranked the most useful. Timeboxing can give you a much greater sense of control over your workday. You decide what to do and when to do it, block out all distractions for that timeboxed period, and get it...

This post How Timeboxing Works and Why It Will Make You More Productive appeared first on Operational Excellence Society.

Summary.   To prevent holding a meeting in which participants are unprepared, veer off-track, or waste the team’s time, you should create an effective meeting agenda that sets clear expectations for what needs to occur before and during the meeting. Seek input from your team members to ensure the agenda reflects their needs and keeps them engaged....

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Summary. The highest-performing teams have one thing in common: psychological safety — the belief that you won’t be punished when you make a mistake. Studies show that psychological safety allows for moderate risk-taking, speaking your mind, creativity, and sticking your neck out without fear of having it cut off — just the types of behavior...

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Fixing broken processes is the better choice for increased productivity and a more engaged workforce. “A bad system will beat a good person every time.” Dr. W. Edwards Deming One of my favorite quotes from Dr. Deming is, “A bad system will beat a good person every time.” This is one of the many lessons...

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Back in the middle of 2017, as Tesla was ramping up the production of the Model-3 and the company was worth only $63.5 billion (as opposed to $1 trillion today), Elon Musk famously stated that he was entering “Production Hell“.  Evidently, he made it through just fine. But people reading this might think; “Isn’t Musk...

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I Tried 4 To-Do List Methods. Here’s What Worked. You know that slimy, green ghost from Ghostbusters? The one that floats around eating everything in sight? That’s kind of what my to-do list reminds me of. Every day it just grows bigger and bigger as I desperately try to get it under control. (Anyone have an extra proton pack lying...

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In this episode I invite Ofra Kalechstain, CEO of Matics, to join me to share her story and the story of Matics; a publisher of suite of Manufacturing Executions Systems (MES) applications that help manufacturers monitor and manage their production operation activities.  As CEO, Ofra’s responsibilities are to lead and steward the company’s ambitions to...

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Learn how to take back control of your attention span. Walking back to your desk from a meeting, you quickly send a text to a friend, and as the “typing” bubble appears, an alert from Venmo comes through. Ah, your brother has paid you back. You open the app to see that you still owe...

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Joseph Paris invites Andrew Chrostowski, Chairman of the Board and Acting CEO of RealWear to “State of Readiness”.  We start with discussing what RealWear is all about – and it is one of the coolest systems I have seen for employee-enablement.  RealWear had designed and developed ruggedized head-mounted wearable Android-class tablet computer that frees a worker’s hands for dangerous jobs.  Being...

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I was giving a commencement speech a number of years ago at a university where several students were getting their degrees of varying levels, and I could tell my first comment took the parents as well as many of the graduates completely by surprise. I said, “I don’t want you to try to live a...

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This is an except from Chapter-1, Introduction from my book, “The Simplicity of Lean”. Lean means many things to many people and its success or failure is important to a large number of stakeholders: customers, employees, management, shareholders, suppliers, and society as a whole. Is Lean a toolkit? Is it about cost saving? Is it...

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In today’s age, the question comes to fore: Do hiring algorithms prevent bias, or amplify it? This fundamental question has emerged as a point of tension between the technology’s proponents and its skeptics, but arriving at the answer is more complicated than it appears. HBR means that hiring is rarely a single decision, but rather...

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In the process industry, three things can impact your productivity; machine downtime, variations in batch cycle times and losing a batch because it is out of specification. In either case and simply put, when your equipment is down or it’s not reliably producing product, you risk missing production targets – in every case – are...

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Welcome to this episode of the State of Readiness podcast – with Stephane Jeanmart from Syngenta I welcome Stephane Jeanmart, Chemistry Operational Excellence Lead at Syngenta, a global agrochemical business headquartered in Basel, Switzerland.  In this episode, Stephane shares his journey from being formally trained in Chemistry, a discipline of predictable outcomes governed by formulas...

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MIT Sloan means that innovation is one of the driving forces in our world. The constant creation of new ideas and their transformation into technologies and products forms a powerful cornerstone for 21st century society. Indeed, many universities and institutes, along with regions such as Silicon Valley, cultivate this process. The crux of the article...

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The Operational Excellence Society is proudly hosting its latest online business educational initiative, coined The Operational Excellence Webinar Series. This webinar’s thought leader is Benjamin P. Taylor, Managing Partner at RedQuadrant. Tuesday, April 30, 2019 from 2:00 PM to 3:30 PM (EDT) Webinar Abstract When tough times hit, it is crucial that people collaborate. In a time of political uncertainty and...

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The Operational Excellence Society is proudly hosting its latest online business educational initiative, coined the Operational Excellence Webinar series. This webinar’s thought leader is Joseph Paris from the Operational Excellence Society. Webinar Abstract Functional silos remain the primary barrier to strategy execution. Research consistently confirms this fact. But they persist, despite efforts to eliminate them. In fact, 80%...

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Topic: In this episode, your hosts, AntlerBoy an JP, start by lamenting the software industry and their almost arrogant – sometimes not almost arrogant – disregard for the customer and the user experience.  Not that software companies will ever change, but rather a resignation that we have to endure.  But the episode gets productive, or rather...

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The Standard Social Innovation Review means that too many organizations ignore or avoid addressing internal conflict, and that a healthy perspective on disagreement can increase resilience and spur needed innovation in a socip-business context. Conversely, when left unattended to, the problem will most likely become one of destructive internal conflict, meaning abnormalities such as high...

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Operational Excellence (OpEx) is a term that embodies many things that CEOs seek to achieve, such as consistent strategy execution, profitable growth and sustainable cost reduction.  While there are many definitions of the term, most would agree that it entails focusing on customers, cross functional execution and consistent delivery of outcomes that create value for...

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Forbes contributor Joseph Folkman begs the question in this article centered around the construction of High-Performance teams: What behaviors do team leaders exhibit that create these extraordinary teams? In an attempt to answer the question on every worthy leader’s lips, five factors which describe the behaviors of leaders who run such high-performance teams are outlined in...

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McKinsey and Company poses that small, independent teams are the lifeblood of the agile organization and that top executives can unleash them by driving ambition, removing red tape, and helping managers adjust to the new norms. But on a deeper level, what exactly does it take to set loose the independent teams that make agile organizations...

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HBR attempts to equate the firing process with a most appropriate metaphor: A no-fault divorce. This insert means that as painful as divorce may be at the time, it allows two people to correct a mistake and move on to a more satisfying future. And handled well, termination works the same way. Here’s how to do...

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We’re obsessed with Time. Songs and literature don’t forget to remind us that Time goes by, that Time is the key measure of almost everything, even of apparently very solid, indestructible structures as concrete walls. There’s a key question about Time, which is that we know Time’s effects but – as for many other of...

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What is it about unfairness? Whether it’s not being invited to a friend’s wedding or getting penalized for bad luck or an honest mistake, unfairness often makes us so upset that we can’t think straight. And it’s not just a personal issue — it’s also bad for business, says Marco Alverà. He explains how his...

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An Old School Approach to Machine Failure Wins New Converts Lubrication-related equipment failure is a problem that plagues industrial facilities of all sizes and stripes. By some estimates, it causes as much a $1 trillion a year in reactive maintenance, unplanned downtime and lost productivity across the U.S. As we’ll see in a moment, failure...

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The Problem As Covey said: “Begin with the end in mind” Why should this principle be applicable to the subject of sustainability when performing improvement projects under the Operational Excellence banner? What we see in deploying many projects across a variety of organisations is a lot of enthusiasm and energy for change at the start...

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Henry Ford, the founder of Ford Motor Company, delivered a clear and concise message regarding the importance of teams and the power of team building by saying, “Coming together is a beginning. Keeping together is progress. Working together is success.” The strength and success of an organization’s operational excellence transformation are highly dependent on a strong team culture....

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I’ve worked for some great companies, including four Fortune 500 corporations. Along the way I met outstanding management teams. However, one team stood out in my mind above all others, the Emerson Electric, (RIDGID) Sales and Marketing Management Team, they are the prime example in my career of a company who lived their parent company’s...

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