And Author of the book; “Reimagining Industry Growth: Strategic Partnership Strategies in an Era of Uncertainty” Hello and welcome to another edition of State of Readiness. I am your host Joseph Paris. My guest today is Daniel Varroney, President and CEO of Potomac Core; a consultancy specializing in helping trade organizations transform into strategic partner...

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I have been in business, running a consultancy (XONITEK) since 1985.  Besides it making me uniquely unemployable, I have had the opportunity to observe and interact with the many incarnations and varieties of Human Resource (HR) Departments at countless clients over the course of years. Marking our calendars, today is April 10th, 2023.  And to...

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The COVID years of 2020 and 2021 notwithstanding, the subject of “culture change” has been a topic at many (if not all) conferences on Operational Excellence and Continuous Improvement that I have attended over the past several years.  But the conversation always seems to gravitate towards the “how”whenever the subject comes up, with little attention...

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Give a listen… My guest today is Stephan Meyer PhD, CEO of Almademey Ltd. I have known Stephen for some years now, he being one of the first professionals when I arrived in Germany over a decade ago. I have always found our conversations quite interesting. Like me, he knows you can’t hit home-runs without...

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You can read the summary… Or just give a listen… Welcome to another episode of “The Outliers Inn”. Today’s theme is travel tips and tricks. Whether by train, plane, or automobile, anyone who has traveled recently has probably experienced some level of anguish. We have seen the countless challenges people are facing broadcast on the media;...

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You can read the summary… Or just give a listen… Welcome to another episode of “The Outliers Inn”. Today’s theme is making mistakes. It starts right off with Mule asking JP whether he made any mistake lately. And JP shares that he just filed his taxes, and perhaps he made a mistake, only time (and...

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Summary; Most companies preparing to launch an Operational Excellence Program do not take a moment to contemplate what their program is hoping to achieve, or even if what they are hoping to achieve is what the company truly needs. These 9 Questions, asked of all the right people, help to get your program properly aligned...

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You can read the summary… Or just give a listen… What do you do when the co-host forgets to come to the session? Well, at The Outliers Inn, you just roll with it. Indeed, “Mule” didn’t show up so I called upon one of our regulars, Don “The Beer Man” Burshnick to stand in without...

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Every leader should design and communicate how they want to make decisions. Making it clear what you care about, what you need to know about, and what you’re tasking others to move on will help minimize confusion about who should be making which decisions. It also helps clarify when you as the leader can be...

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Summary.   Setting resolutions often feels like a pointless exercise — something we do at the beginning of each year only to then feel guilty by February. The pandemic has only made the practice feel more helpless. Why even attempt to set resolutions when you have no idea what will transpire in the coming months? The author explains...

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Earlier this year I shared a tale of woe.  One of my long-term clients had suffered a ransomware attack due mostly to the negligence of the business leadership to be respectful of the need to maintain their information technology infrastructure and be vigilant against external threats from bad actors (along with internal threats from system...

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There is a saying, rather a curse; “May you live in interesting times”.  It is a curse because interesting times are times that are full of Volatility, Uncertainty, Complexity, and Ambiguity; interesting times are VUCA times; disruptive, chaotic, and transformative. Whereas life in uninteresting times is predicable, rote, even boring. We are living in interesting...

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By any definition, by any stretch of the imagination, the COVID-19 pandemic has been a transformational event that has affected, either directly or indirectly (probably both) each and every person on the planet.  That the “story” of COVID-19 is being knocked off the front page by the media (like “climate change” before it) and replaced...

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In this edition of “State of Readiness”, I invite Dr. Morphis Tsalikidis. Morphis is an experienced professional in the field of Operational Excellence who I have known for a great many years and with whom I have shared the stage at several conferences. Our conversation is on the impact of COVID on businesses and their...

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Topic: One of our regular guests, Don Burshnick, stands-in for Antlerboy and takes his place behind the bar at The Outliers Inn – somewhere at which he is all too familiar and steps right into the roll. We start the evening off with a discussion about SpaceX and the successful completion of their manned mission...

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As an Eagle Scout, the motto of “Be Prepared” has served me well when camping outdoors, navigating young adulthood, and also as a global business leader and parent.   Although much healthy debate will ensue on how one can truly prepare for a global crisis on the order of 9/11, a banking system collapse, or the...

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Almost overnight, the game has changed for leaders. Just a short time ago, pre-coronavirus, we seemed to be in a relatively stable world where many factors were known and predictable, and achieving success looked like the pursuit of perfection. But in a crisis, when reality is changing by the day (or even by the hour),...

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Daniel has spent his entire professional and personal career in the field of Industrial Engineers.  In this episode, we explore the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic, a “Black Swan” event, on the way businesses might operate post-pandemic.   We start by discussing how telephony in education and the corporate world will be embraced more readily...

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In an interview with the Wall Street Journal on November 19,2008, Rahm Emanuel was quoted as saying; “You never want a serious crisis to go to waste.  And what I mean by that [is] it’s an opportunity to do things that you think you could not before.” He was referring to the crisis that was...

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This session starts off serious with Antlerboy sharing some rather serious endeavors he is launching.  But the guests (mercifully) come to visit and breathe life back into the conversation with talks of; robot competitions, beer (again), heaps of cash for consultants in the UK, and the tragedy of a video being removed from YouTube causing...

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For 20+ years Joe has been empowering organizations, teams, and individuals to continuously improve processes and outcomes toward their goals and ultimately achieve Excellence in their chosen business, function, or discipline.  What makes Joe unique is that he has led successful transformation programs across several Fortune 100 companies – and he has experienced the deployment...

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The world has been turned on its head thanks to COVID19 and as with most negative things, such as wars and other pandemics, there is generally a hidden benefit that appears once the crisis is over. The fallout from the Coronavirus is already beginning to demonstrate new ways of working and bringing about changes to...

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As working from home become part of a new normal and social distancing is something the world has to learn to practice, virtual meetings are replacing physical meetings in every business of every kind. It could be said that virtual meetings can be painfully boring but, at as Andy Molinsky, writing the Harvard Business Review...

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Cindy is as self-made a person as anyone I have ever met.  After graduating high school and not having any particular skills that were as yet discovered nor the grades or money to get into University, she joined the United States Navy as an enlisted person.  Perhaps she knew, and it’s just as likely she...

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I have been helping companies design and deploy their Operational Excellence (“OpEx”) and Continuous Improvement (“CI”) programs for a very long time.  Mind you, I was not born with this knowledge.  Rather I gained this knowledge by working with companies and observing the challenges they faced and helping them to overcome those challenges – and...

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Heraclitus was wrong: Change is NOT the only constant. The failure rate of change projects remains constant as well, at about 70%. Every next failure would prompt publishing an article with a comprehensive list of steps to take and pitfalls to avoid in order to succeed – but not the root cause of the problem. ...

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For individuals and organizations to get ahead and stay ahead there must be a culture of continuous learning in the workplace.  For leaders, this creates a new set of challenges and further demands as they effectively take on a new and slightly unfamiliar role of Learning facilitator-in-chief.  McKinsey discusses, delves into and begins to define...

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Topic: Antlerboy (aka Benjamin Taylor) continues to be plagued by substandard internet, although right in the middle of London and across the street to MI-6, yet can only get ADSL service to his office.  How can that be in 2019?  Broadcasting from home is not possible because Antlerboy is too “afraid” to tell his wife to...

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In the late 1970s, “quality” began to evolve from its historically “Neanderthal” passive inspection approach to its current “Cro-Magnon,” more pro-active, project-based approach “bolted-on” to the current operational status quo.  Joseph Juran was a pioneer in such efforts. Various subsequent adaptations such as Six Sigma and Lean evolved it further; but, over time, it has...

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McKinsey & Co means that embracing AI promises considerable benefits for businesses and economies through its contributions to productivity growth and innovation. At the same time, AI’s impact on work is likely to be profound. Some occupations as well as demand for some skills will decline, while others grow and many change as people work...

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