I started XONITEK in August of 1985 in Endicott, New York.  I still own its latest incarnation, now located in Sheridan, Wyoming.  Having owned my own businesses for the last 40 years makes me uniquely unemployable.  Perhaps that could change given the right circumstances (whatever those might be). Since the very beginning, the purpose of...

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Summary.   An outdated way of thinking about peak performance is: “maximum effort = maximum results.” But research shows that it doesn’t actually work that way in reality. Here’s what actually works: The 85% rule, which counterintuitively suggests that to reach maximum output, you need to refrain from giving maximum effort. Operating at 100% effort all of...

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Vince Lombardi was a famous American professional football coach, whose team won five National Football League (NFL) Championships in seven years in addition to winning the first two Super Bowls. One of my favorite Lombardi quotes is: “Gentlemen, we are going to relentlessly chase perfection, knowing full well we will not catch it, because nothing...

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Like many of you, I’ve had a lifelong quest for learning and for trying to improve my own personal performance and drive excellence in my companies. Excellence is defined as “the quality of being outstanding or extremely good.” Synonyms for excellent and excellence are distinction, first rate, superb, blue chip, choice, first class, five-star, top...

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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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These approaches can also be applied to Continuous Improvement, Lean, or Six Sigma Programs. I started my first business, XONITEK, in August of 1985.   I still own its latest incarnation located in Jackson Wyoming.  Having owned my own businesses for the last 37 years makes me uniquely unemployable.  Perhaps that could change given the right...

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… but all too often leaders don’t let them! It’s been a while since I published my first article “Even with Lean, Complexity Kills” in which I lay claim to lean being  more about real organisational teamwork than a set of tools or systems. Of course teamwork alone will not deliver lean or operational excellence....

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Everyone likes to be part of a winning team. This is true for sports, business and throughout life’s activities. I always enjoyed the old ABC Sports quote during their program introduction which emphasized “the thrill of victory… and the agony of defeat.” In my new book, “The Power of Goal ZERO“, I detail the five...

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My guest today is Sam Smolik, SVP Americas Manufacturing (retired) for LyondellBasell and author of the book, “The Power of Goal Zero“. After his retirement, Sam decided to share the lessons learned during his journey and years of experience – the best practices and techniques for achieving Operational Excellence – and that led him to...

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It’s another “Open Mic Night” at The Outliers Inn and JP and Mule are happy to welcome our guest and have a casual chat with whatever might be on their minds (and ours). JP starts off with sharing a return trip from Newark back to Frankfurt which was quite like the movie “planes, trains, and...

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I invite David Mackey is a senior manager at AbbVie presently responsible for the implementation of the SAP “procure to pay” processes at AbbVie. Previously, he was the Director of Operational Excellence at Pharmacyclics (a subsidiary of AbbVie). In addition to AbbVie, he has had senior leadership roles at Genentech and Roche. We start the...

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“Building a plane while flying it” or some variation has been used to describe situations in education (2011), education (2016). education (2017), health care, medicine, ride-hailing startups, business strategy, even fluffier business stories, and…this. And long before earning broad criticism for its use in tech, the phrase was vividly illustrated in an ad for Electronic Data Systems (EDS) that has since been appropriated for all...

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New research shows how resilient organizations thrived through the pandemic. Here’s how to use those lessons to craft a better approach to how work gets done across time (real and asynchronous) and space (digital and physical). In May 2020, we published an article arguing that the return to the workplace was a new muscle that organizations...

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Today I invite back to “State of Readiness”, Brent Gleeson, a Navy SEAL combat veteran and serial entrepreneur. In addition to being a best-selling author of “Taking Point” and his new release, “Embrace the Suck“, Brent has leveraged the principles of leadership, discipline, accountability and resiliency learned in training and applied down range for building...

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Business Excellence: why being good is no longer good enough. Managers who want to assert their company or their business unit with a quality-focused strategy in the ultra-competitive and complex markets of the 21st century’s digital age can no longer avoid Business Excellence. What does Business Excellence mean? Derived “excellence” for extraordinary, excellent quality of...

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My guest today is Dave Light, owner of Certainty Resources Limited and author of the book, “The Certainty Principle”. We start this episode by exploring David’s meandering journey and how each opportunity, with some tenacity and focus, led him to the next. But his personal transformational moment, the one that helped him to decide to...

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It’s January 2020.  I have just made a pitch to the corporate big-wigs for a way to reduce their real-estate costs (premises including rent and utilities), their corporate travel costs, even their carbon footprint using the latest telephony and collaborative applications.  I postulate that they will even see an increase in productivity while improving their...

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Today I invite to State of Readiness, Brian Strobel who is the VP of Corporate Quality at Sierra Nevada Corporation (the aerospace company, not the beer guys) and author of the upcoming book, “Pursuing Excellence: A Values-Based, Systems Approach to Help Companies Become More Resilient” (2021), in addition to his previous book, “Leading Change from Within: A...

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Several months into a global pandemic, leading organizations are redefining expectations of what is possible. Consider how offices around the world shifted virtually overnight to digitally enabled remote work. Grocery retailers and restaurants rolled out new pickup and delivery services. Hospitals rapidly expanded telehealth options. Automakers, apparel makers, and mobile phone assemblers retooled on the...

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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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The world has become obsessed with making things more efficient, better faster, smaller, cheaper.  Has our never ending quest for more and more efficiency actually had an adverse effect on us all? This fascinating talk by historian Edward Tenner unpacks the many promises and dangers that arise in our quest for  efficiency and provides seven...

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McKinsey & Co means that most executives we know have a powerful, intuitive feel for the rhythm of their businesses. They know how hard and fast to pull strategic levers, move their organization, and drive execution to achieve their objectives. Or at least they did. But in the light digitization that has intensified the rhythm...

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The Economist suggest that if you want to go unicorn spotting, you must not hesitate to take a turn around the brand-new park on top of San Francisco’s Transbay bus terminal. This is not because it is perched on a spectacular, undulating building that itself looks quite like a mythical beast to the likes of...

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“62% of leaders we surveyed didn’t want to lead, but incentives lead them to take a promotion” Michael C. Bush This is a quote from Michael C. Bush, who recently took part on the HBR Webinar “Leading the Agile Organization”. I thought this was a really interesting insight, and very telling. In my perception if...

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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 Frederick Fladmark, from the Norwegian Armed Forces. Date & Time : Thursday, May 9, 2019 from 12:00 PM to 2:00 PM (EDT) Webinar Abstract Learn how to create effective teams that grow your business,...

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Welcome to Episode 36 of the Outliers Inn – High Performing Sales Organizations with Michael Webb Topic: Joining AntlerBoy and JP today at the Outliers Inn is Michael Webb, President of Sales Performance Consultants.  Michael will share the wisdom he has gained working in sales; from his start at Borroughs Corporation, and Rockwell Automation before founding...

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‘Leadership by intent’ has been described as the leadership technique that can best contribute to making organisations more adaptable and effective. That it can create an environment of employee empowerment. That it can help businesses thrive in environments that are increasingly volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous. In this article, I describe what leadership by intent...

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The Operational Excellence has noticed that business improvement projects follow a predictable pattern. The company initiates a program in an operational unit. Within a short time, it scores easy victories and realizes gains. This justifies deploying additional resources to continue the positive trend. But after the low-hanging fruit is gathered, the program often stalls and...

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The company of today has its supply chains and finances stretched further around the globe than ever before while simultaneously having increasing pressures to drive value across a complicated and fluid set of metrics and deliver innovations, products, and services more quickly and reliably. The competitive advantage belongs to the companies that can quicken their...

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In my article, “Build Organizational Capacity and Capability – For Free”, I listed several root-causes for training and education programs reaching a “stall speed” and a detailed approach for avoiding it.  Among the root-causes listed were; time, expense, work/learning balance, scalability, retention rate, and atrophy. But there is considerable risk to the program even prior...

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