Continuous Improvement
Looking for something specific? The following topics address a wide range of business needs and challenges.
An Example of (Safety) Leadership Success: Narrowing Focus to Create Results
The best way to eat an elephant is one bite at a time. This eighth blog discusses one leader’s intentional push to move away from everything is important right now to a narrowed, organization-…
An Example of Leadership Success: Building Psychological Safety
Want a team that performs at the highest levels? Make winning fun and learning a critical part of growth? The seventh blog is dedicated to one leader’s determination in developing a high-…
The Case for Conducting a Behavioral Lean Maturity Assessment
Organizations that embody continuous improvement are exemplars within and outside of their respective industries. Ironically, we measure nearly every key metric critical to the forward progress of…
Behavioral Lean: The “Best of Both Worlds” Approach to Cultures of Continuous Improvement
Creating a culture of continuous improvement is an aspiration for many organizations. Continuous improvement cultures bring to mind industries such as commercial space flight. Only 55 years ago…
Four Reasons Lean Initiatives Fail and How Leadership Can Help
It’s been estimated that at least 60% of continuous improvement initiatives fail to achieve their desired results. In reaction to lackluster results, I’ve seen budget cuts, SME resignations, training…
Common Leadership Errors: Focusing on Backward Accountability
Feedback is a critical component of helping others improve their performance. Information about what behaviors to repeat or do differently in given situations allows for continuous improvement over…
Common Leadership Error: Failing to Evolve
The world around us is constantly changing. The markets we operate in, current economic conditions, world events, access to material goods and competition are all things leadership considers when…
Common Leadership Errors: Retraining Fixes Everything
What happens in your organization when a human error occurs? By human error I mean an undesired behavior that could, or does, lead to some undesired consequences for the performer, people around them…
When Safety Systems Work Well
I recently had the opportunity to do an assessment with a company that is a safety culture exemplar. At ADI, we work with a lot of companies that have sophisticated safety management systems, but…
Caution—Don't Try This At Home
In my experience, mistakes can be our greatest teachers under two conditions. We must take the time to understand both why they happened, and how to change our behavior to prevent repeating them. I’d…
The Demise of Effective Training
My colleagues and I have noticed a disturbing trend as we complete surveys and assessments for our clients. A significant number of employees are telling us that skills training has become woefully…
Improvement Discontinued
The signs of an impressive continuous improvement (CI) culture were plentiful. Walls of the common areas were adorned with A3 problem solving papers and visual management boards were scattered across…
Sustainability in Your Process Improvement
Lean and Six Sigma are very useful tools for process improvement initiatives with the intent of reducing waste and variability in work processes and the product. These reductions can lead to a…
Lean: The Missing Piece is Behavior
For many years the lean champions who have been through our Performance Management classes have all said the same thing, “This is the missing piece.” Most of them had experienced the same…
