How do you as an individual, “be different� As a company? How do you create value that stands out from others providing your services? And if your services fall in the same category as others, you must not be different, right? Shouldn’t you then be in your own category? Catching up on some blog reading, [...]
My friend Sam Duregger (@duregger) pointed me to an article about the obsessive-ness people have developed with their smartphones. The article opens with a story about a man who was so engaged with his smartphone he didn’t notice the bathtub water he was filling for his daughter was overflowing onto the floor. Why is this [...]
Today’s Alertbox on useit.com discusses how Agile software development is improving the focus on user experiences, and provides summary data showing the internal organizational satisfaction with the methodology. Here’s the data: Project Methodology Integration of User Experience Satisfaction with the Method Waterfall 2.5 2.9 Agile 3.1 3.7 Iterative 3.2 3.8 What is this saying? Responses [...]
robust [roh-buhst]: strongly or stoutly built. checklist [chek-list]: a list of items. Struggling to create a process that produces a quality end product every time? Something as simple as a checklist may be your starting point. It apparently has worked for hotels. If you’ve heard about Peter Pronovost, then you’ll know the value it has [...]
Is Iowa the only state with a concerted, identified effort to improved quality, cost, and service, even having a “Lean Day Proclomation� Just read a post from Jamie Flinchbaugh on Mark Graban’s blog. Jamie will be speaking at the Lean Government Exchange in June in Des Moines, IA. Glad to see Iowa government continuing to [...]
Seems to me that “Depression 2.0†never happened, and probably isn’t likely to. On the Forbes DigitalRules blog, Twenty Reasons for Optimism. On the Value Acceleration blog, Mitch has noticed busy airports and cities. And what’s fueling the turn around? Innovative people like Jeremy Parker, who’s story is told on Mark Cuban’s blog. I like [...]
Dan Roam of "The Back of the Napkin Blog" discusses a new book on his blog called Problem Solving 101 by Ken Watanabe. The book was originally written in Japanese, but after great success in Japan there is now an English version selling in the US. Here’s a brief snippet from the book’s web site: [...]
This post was inspired by my wife and "On being nimble versus visionary" over at the Learning About Lean blog. Now is certainly a time in the business environment to be flexible. To be adaptable. To grab opportunity when others sit back and watch. And the airport shuttle guy in the airport in Mexico was [...]
About to go on a rant…a rant about marketing speak. I guess this isn’t the first time I’ve done this. I guess what is probably frustrating for me is that seemingly a lot of people swoon and end up in a trance at the horse and pony show a lot of companies produce. "Yes, oh [...]
"We’re cutting R & D." "We have money right now, we’re just not spending any of it." (something I heard from a potential client of mine in the last few months) A VP I was speaking to at a large manufacturer said a mistake their organization made in 2001 was to not invest capital in [...]
"If future of US depends on my travl agent calling my tennis coach so they can open nail salon,we r in serious trouble" http://t.co/PliUSXlpThursday Mar 1 - 2:31pm