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The Ugly Side of Change: Office Politics, Negative PR, and (GASP!) Smear Campaigns

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The Ugly Side of Change: Office Politics, Negative PR, and (GASP!) Smear Campaigns

Let’s talk for a few minutes about the ugly side of change: Office Politics, Negative PR, and in extreme cases, even Smear Campaigns. If you are a #changeagent, in all likelihood you have either been tangled up in some of the aforementioned, or at some point in your career, you will be entangled. It’s the unfortunate reality that if you set about making improvements and doing things differently, at some point you will rock the wrong boat.

If you are like most, you are likely wondering, “What am I doing wrong?!?”

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To Understand Lean, You Must Understand More About Toyota

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To Understand Lean, You Must Understand More About Toyota

Why You Should Care About Toyota

If you want to understand and eventually excel at something, you must first understand its history and origins, and then study and practice it daily, seeking coaching and knowledge to refine your skills along your journey.

The same principle applies to “lean”. You can’t really understand it without going back to the source and learning about Toyota, and the Toyota Production System (actually, you need to go back much, much farther but that is beyond the scope of this blog post for now!).

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Tales from the Trenches: Too Much Change Can Be a Bad Thing (Really!)

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Tales from the Trenches: Too Much Change Can Be a Bad Thing (Really!)

A Walk Down Memory Lane…

Many years back, my husband worked at Ford Motor Company. The years were 1999 through 2001, while I was studying to complete my MBA at The University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. Anyone familiar with Ford’s history, will recall that those are the exact years that Jacques Nasser was at the helm of the auto giant as its President and CEO, and more than likely, those years are not remembered kindly.

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Tales from the Trenches: Making the Case for Change

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Getting Started

During my 30-plus years in Managing Plants and Business Units, I have been confronted with the challenge of using Toyota Production System (TPS) Concepts to make radical change in the trajectory of many organizations. I learned early on that getting acceptance for the need for change by the most important constituency… the people on the floor that were actually making the company’s products and/ or delivering its services, is the most critical first step in getting started.

Putting leaders with colorful slide decks and compelling speeches in front of workers at your next ‘Town Hall Meeting’ doesn’t work: simply telling folks from the floor that the company wants the operation to embrace the ‘new manufacturing paradigm’ as a way of becoming more competitive and improving profitability is a DOA approach.

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Go and See

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Go and See

“Go and See” and talk with the people on the frontline to understand the non-conforming issues that they are dealing with. We believe that treating people with respect means telling them the truth, helping them where they need help and holding them accountable, and expecting them to do the same of you.

As the saying goes, “The truth will set you free, but first it will make you miserable” is fundamental to my leadership approach. Running a manufacturing facility using only computer data, prepared reports and posted metrics is naïve at best, self-serving at worst. After all, as a manufacturing executive, I know that money is not made/lost in manufacturing on a daily, monthly, yearly basis, but hour by hour.

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Why I care about Culture...

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Why I care about Culture...

As a Manufacturing Engineering and Lean Transformation professional, I divide my time almost equally about technical and cultural topics. To me, it is not at all surprising, but I wonder if it is to others...

The Lean Journey: Thoughts on the road I have traveled...

The Lean Journey: Thoughts on the road I have traveled...

All lean journeys start pretty much the same way, whether on a burning platform for change, or with a directive or desire to cut costs and lead times, or some other motivation to make organizations more competitive... or when organization 'reboot' failed or stalled lean implementation...