Leadership Category
Date: 01 Oct, 2011
Posted by: Steven Leuschel in: Community | KCOE News | Leadership | Operational Excellence
Community Leadership Award The Saint Vincent College Center for Operational Excellence Community Leadership Award recognizes an individual whose leadership has made a significant impact in his / her community. The mission of KCOE is engaging organizations to help them achieve world-class performance. Our core values are: 1. People matter, a lot (mutual trust and respect, all around) 2. Make it better than you found it (constant improvement is part of my job). Boniface Wimmer To whom is the Community Leadership Award awarded? The award is for an individual who exudes mutual trust and respect...
Date: 18 May, 2011
Posted by: David Adams in: Leadership | Lean | Operational Excellence | Uncategorized
Dude, You Need Innovation! I just Googled (yep, it’s a verb now…) the word “innovation”. As of this date, there were “about” 201,000,000 results. You can discern something about a topic by the number of Google results there are. Innovation is a big deal these days. It may be a simple cloaking device for the real issue: organizations need to drive out cost without driving out people. To me, this sounds like a simple equation for Operational Excellence, at least the KCOE version of it. We aim for mutual trust and respect and the effect is this: costs drop. You win and your team...
The Bias for Action: Initiative and Decisiveness I am still running slightly behind my plan to discuss these 12 Leadership Truths (based on the United States Marine Corps’ Fourteen Leadership Traits). This month I will be thinking through initiative and decisiveness. Last month I talked about Judgment and in January I discussed Justice. We have had a lively discussion so far ranging from Twitter commentary to personal phone calls. So far, folks seem to resonate with our thoughts on the leadership truths that need to be present to support a culture of mutual trust and respect, the culture...
Date: 04 Apr, 2011
Posted by: David Adams in: Leadership | Lean | Operational Excellence | Uncategorized
Give Those Tired Old Lean Tools a Rest… This is a picture of a process map where the different colors represent information and service (think product) flows as well as value-added or non-value-added steps in the process. If you were a casual observer watching me work with this multi-disciplinary team of engineers, detailers, leaders and craftsmen, you may think, “This guy is doing a Kaizen Event.” But, I’m not. In fact, this is a picture from Week 5 of a Quality Control (QC) Circle meeting. If you ask the team what they are doing, they’d simply reply, “Problem...
Do These Six Things to Improve Your Judgement S0, exercising some poor judgment, I missed last month’s installment in my resolution to write about the 14 leadership traits each month. Last month – February – was Trait Number Two: Judgment. In hopes of catching up, I am offering six practices that – if honed to a skill – will absolutely improve your judgment. One: Go and See for Judgment OK, so I’m not fooling anyone into thinking that these six practices are original. They are right out of the KCOE Operational Excellence System playbook. Now that I’ve...
Broken pdCa Cycles Abound! I’ve been ruminating on this article for a few days now. I am seeing broken pdCA cycles as the root causes for so many problems. I see it here in the Center and in the hospitals and factories where we coach. I thought I’d give my two cents or, rather, two tips, for strengthening your PDCA cycles. PDCA Weaknesses First, be aware of your personal weak areas. Many process problems stem from what I call shunted PDCA cycles. These weak cycles are usually the weakest at the “check” step. The check is either shallow or completely missing. If checking...
Date: 24 Jan, 2011
Posted by: Steven Leuschel in: Coaching Stories | Leadership | Operational Excellence
Master Plan Example I am in the process of transferring a pencil/paper master plan to an Excel sheet. It’s easy to read so I am sharing a screen shot with those interested. Send us a message if you’re interested in learning more about master planning within the KCOE System of Operational Excellence. Enjoy! Master Plan Example
Balanced Scorecard Example Definition Balanced Scorecard: Most businesses have a set of metrics that they follow periodically. The balanced scorecard forces the Operational Excellence Steering Committee (SC) to determine 10–15 key metrics only that drive the business. These metrics are found by determining goals and objectives in the five priority areas (safety, quality, productivity, human development and cost). General balanced scorecard example metrics can be seen below. The BSC planning process involves setting targets for these objectives (expressed as metrics) for the next five years. ...
Lean Leadership: leading with Justice The Definition of Justice for Lean Leadership jus⋅tice [juhs-tis] –noun the quality of being just; righteousness, equitableness, or moral rightness: to uphold the justice of a cause. rightfulness or lawfulness, as of a claim or title; justness of ground or reason: to complain with justice. the moral principle determining just conduct. conformity to this principle, as manifested in conduct; just conduct, dealing, or treatment. the administering of deserved punishment or reward. (Source: Dictionary.com) Let me begin by making some suppositions. First,...
Keep is Real, Keep it Simple: World Class Leadership Considering World Class Leadership and What Happened Last Year As I consider the year ahead, I was struck by the number of questions I fielded last year on basic leadership in the context of “lean” or our own KCOE (operational excellence) System. It would seem that despite several thousand years of knowledge recorded on the subject, we still prefer to chase the latest fad or the hippest guru for inspiration. My resolution for 2011 is to bring twelve simple lessons to you over the next 12 months. They are simple because they a generally...
