Blog Articles
Leading and Managing are Not the Same Thing
March 18, 2022 – Gwendolyn Galsworth
The year: 1989. Florida Power & Light had just won the Deming Prize, Japan’s national quality award, and became the first company outside of Japan to do so. Congratulations poured in from all over the world and deservedly so. The words of the company’s CEO, Charles Turner, struck a particularly insightful note: The biggest obstacle...
Read Full ArticleWhy Not Collaborate? Check the Three Insights of Organizational Excellence
March 13, 2022 – Bruce Hamilton
In my experience, collaboration is a prized quality of enterprise excellence more frequently discussed as an elusive ideal than actually practiced. Yet, this non-technical aspect of continuous improvement—working together—is truly the catalyst that amplifies both individual and organizational innovation. Therefore, as an examiner for the ...
Read Full ArticleWhy Bother With a CI Culture Assessment System?
February 17, 2022 – Chris Butterworth, Morgan Jones, and Peter Hines
“Why Bother?” is deliberately intended to be a thought-provoking title. It also reflects the authors’ experiences with some of the struggles that organizations go through to get real value from an assessment system. One of the most common reactions we see from many people can be summarized as, “Please, not another audit from HQ!” CI le...
Read Full ArticlePurpose, Passion, and Performance: The Power of Omotenashi in the Workplace
February 12, 2022 – Mike Martyn
Note: This article is excerpted from Mike’s new book, Management for Omotenashi: Learning to Lead for Purpose, Passion, and Performance, recipient of the 2023 Shingo Publication Award. Management is the act of adhering to the process and managing complexity. By contrast, leadership is about setting direction, instituting change, a...
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