Posts tagged as:

Leadership

Your Baby is Ugly

by Pete Abilla August 30, 2010

No, we’re not talking about children or infants here. We’re talking about people who are so invested in their idea, business, and process, which results in hyper tunnel vision and they begin to believe the fantasy that their [enter "whatever" here] is the best and cannot get better. Calling that [thing] imperfect is analogous to [...]

0 comments continue reading

Motivation Matters

by Pete Abilla May 23, 2010

Every one in a while, I’ll see something funny, inspirational, and motivating 1 at the same time. This picture is of a car with THREE pizza delivery thingies on the roof – from Pizza Hut, Domino’s Pizza, and Papa Murphy’s Pizza, Little Ceasar’s Pizza, Papa John’s Pizza.  Yeah, this guy delivers pizza for 3 different pizza companies.  [...]

1 comment continue reading

Some Growth is not Visible

by Pete Abilla May 4, 2010

With Spring underway and flowers are beginning to bloom again, my mind is drawn to lessons learned from the garden.  During the Winter months, what have my trees been doing?  Have they been growing at all? Then, I’m reminded that not all growth is visible – that’s true for trees, plants, and flowers.  But, it’s [...]

5 comments continue reading

High Yield, Low Maintenance

by Pete Abilla April 22, 2010

Much has been written explaining “What is Lean?” or similar articles.  But, little has been said describing what a Lean Practitioner is like. Regardless of where lean thinking is applied: lean practitioners in software, in lean startups, manufacturing, healthcare, and others – what are they like? Here’s my stab at that description. Lean Thinkers and Lean [...]

1 comment continue reading

Defining Corporate Culture

by Pete Abilla April 13, 2010

Defining culture is difficult.  Most change management consultants would say that a culture is defined by our language, behaviors, and interactions. Anthropologists go a step further by saying that culture is defined more by what is absent than what is present. In a recent meeting I attended, a question was asked regarding culture and what [...]

5 comments continue reading

Visualizing Decision Making Complexity

by Pete Abilla April 2, 2010

I’ve written before that there are, at times, too many cooks in the kitchen.  In that article, I quantitatively show how the number of communication links grows exponentially as the number of team members grow.  This state of affairs adds tremendous burden to a system, as well as confusion, diffusion of responsibility and, most troubling [...]

3 comments continue reading

Yvon Chouinard, Lean Thinking, 5 Whys

by Pete Abilla March 31, 2010

Many years ago, I visited the Patagonia Distribution Center in Nevada.  It was convenient because I had been living in Nevada at the time while working for Amazon.  And, as part of my ongoing education in Lean and Operations in general, a group of us would visit plants and distribution centers across America.  That visit [...]

3 comments continue reading

A Mindless Worker is a Happy Worker

by Pete Abilla March 8, 2010

One thing I know from experience: when people are given a chance to participate in creating something good, solving a problem, and play a role in adding value through the use of their mind, hands, and heart, good things happen.  Indeed, morale increases and a type of magic takes place – a feeling joy can [...]

19 comments continue reading

How to Add Value

by Pete Abilla March 7, 2010

In Lean Thinking, we use the phrase “value-add” and then qualify that term as taken from the “customer’s perspective.” While that might be true, it’s not concrete enough and is actually difficult to understand. I am reminded of something my older brother taught me a long time ago.  He said simply (I’m paraphrasing): You will [...]

14 comments continue reading

1 of 3123