You may have heard and read much in the last few years regarding creativity and innovation. Or you may even have attended a creativity workshop that you found interesting and fun that has helped you come up with some new ideas. Now your current employer may be requiring innovative input. However, you find that your suggestions are mostly ignored or frowned upon. This is mainly because nobody has told you the „The Secret”. Continue reading →
Lean Six Sigma Deployment Q+A
Here are some typical Questions and our Answers regarding the deployment of Lean Six Sigma in an organisation. If you have more questions, please feel free to add them as a comment and we will try to answer. Continue reading →
Management by Walking About
“People leave bad managers, not companies …,” is one of the results of a famous Gallup survey conducted at corporations in the US. This does not mean we have “bad” people as managers. It rather means that not every high-performing employee is really suitable for a managerial position. Other surveys have shown that less than 30% of high performers have the ability to do well as supervisor. Continue reading →
Seven Habits of Highly Effective Process Managers
Not every organisation needs to develop process managers with Lean and Six Sigma skills. Yet, every organisation deserves to have managers with some basic process management skills. Even better, if process management skills became part of daily business routine, were applied unconsciously, became habits. What are these habits you should be cultivating? Continue reading →
Aspirational Leadership
A few years ago I was leading a session for high potential managers in an international phone company. Before I was to speak, a senior executive from the company was asked to say a few words to the group about becoming a leader. He told this story… Continue reading →
Banking – A Productivity Gold Mine
When I joined General Electric Capital fifteen years ago, I asked them why they would hire an engineer with no banking knowledge. The answer was quite surprising: “We have enough people who understand banking. Unfortunately, we do not have those with a process mindset.”
Assuming, the world of banking must have changed since then might be a mistake. Here is a snapshot of just some months of recent banking experience. Continue reading →
Driving Change With Clear Messages
Two weeks after joining Central Bank in Germany, I spend a full week in the so-called Black Belt Training by TE Capital Europe. Black Belts are the project managers for process improvement approaches at TE. This approach comes from Motorola and is called Six Sigma. The first two weeks in the new company, I have tried to understand Six Sigma and to learn about the methodology and steps, after I got somehow familiar with TE Capital and its terminology, our banking products and our bank itself. While my new colleagues could help me with the latter, the learning of Six Sigma seemed to be an unsuccessful venture, as nobody in my bank had more than a hunch about it. Continue reading →
Succession Planning: Is Your Organisation Ready For The Future?
Thinking ahead is a cardinal rule of business. In addition to monitoring the daily operations of your business, you need to think about the future. And, as difficult as it may be, it’s important to envision the day when you no longer will be in charge. For successful organisations faced with demanding leadership requirements in a changing and competitive business environment, a succession planning process may be the most important human resource management investment the company can make.
Continue reading →
Balancing Customer Satisfaction and Productivity
Your staff members complain about having too much work, the proportion of people on short-term sick-leave is consistently above average and the turnover rate is disturbingly high. Do these symptoms indicate that you need to increase your staffing? However, the average number of daily transactions processed shows that your staff should be able to easily handle the volume. So, what is the problem? Continue reading →
See You in Gemba
A team spends months on improving customer-facing branch processes of a bank. After benchmarking with sister companies across the world and after carefully mapping out process steps they come up with an improved flow that drastically reduces the processing time for branch customers. It surely looks like a nice success story. However, they get devastating feedback from the customers whilst piloting the solution in five branches. Why? Continue reading →
