Value Transforming Blog

We have been contemplating the ways we have seen employees respond to the consequences of a decision and the imminent resulting risk.  We have noted these responses and know that there are at least two categories of response, Road Sign or Ambulance. Road sign people focus on moving the organization to a better place by […]

April 6, 2013

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A cost reduction as we have already defined it in a previous blog results in an improvement against budget. A plethora of cost reductions can result in a significant reduction in overhead, which is increases the margin of every product in the building. Cost reductions immediately affect the bottom line. Cost reduction work has the […]

April 5, 2013

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When working for a company that takes cost reductions seriously, we can expect to see some categories repeated. Let’s take a look at these and what they are: Cost reduction: we spend less on a line item than our budget Cost avoidance: we choose to spend and then decide not to (often occurs with capital […]

April 4, 2013

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“Scaffolding” is a term often used in education, but in our experience, rarely followed to a significant extent. Scaffolding allows us to grow a student in capability by starting easily and providing progressively more intricate and involved exercises. This approach actualizes Lev Vygotsky’s concept of the zone of proximal development. When training clients, we must […]

April 3, 2013

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The Seven Circles approach (De la Maza, Michael. Rapid Chess Improvement, 2002) uses a repetitive approach to developing automaticity in chess strategy. For those in the automotive world, it resembles a layered process audit somewhat. It requires different levels, different speeds, exercises, and more. We suggest this approach is a good way to intensively educate […]

April 2, 2013

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Consider a rather large project that like so many projects had some difficulties. The project team had a major component (subsystem) delivered from a supplier. The supplier has one set of processes and the customer organization another. This supplier delivers multiple versions of this major subsystem. The customer integrates this subsystem into the larger system […]

March 30, 2013

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Failure to train employees is a failure to invest in our own companies. In one case, we saw an incredible decline in unplanned production line downtime when we started teaching the technicians how to do their jobs—what a concept! If we are afraid our investment will move on to the next company after we have […]

March 29, 2013

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We have seen the word “layoff” used during a reduction in force. A reduction in force is a mass firing, often engendered by management ineptitude but sometimes driven by market forces. A layoff occurs when we temporarily dismiss an employee, but we provide preferential treatment for them when the market bounces back. Even with the […]

March 28, 2013

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Teams must grow; teams cannot be simply appointed and anointed. We may have a designated group that evolves into a team, but this emergent phenomenon takes time. It takes time to discover the strengths and weakness if each member of the group, understanding that ultimately transforms into trust, the backbone value/concept for any successful team. […]

March 27, 2013

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Occasionally, we are put in the position of removing an employee; that is, we must fire them. In many cases, we will not have enough documentation to validate the ineptitude of such an employee. Furthermore, we may not have a standard algorithm (procedure) to follow when removing this individual. Many companies add the impediment of […]

March 26, 2013

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