May 20, 2010 A recent EPA party-pooper report estimated that 63% of all methane and 36% of all nitrous oxide (N2O) in the atmosphere is man-made. Despite imprecision, these suggest pushing nature out of balance. The National Academy of Sciences just released a report...
May 20, 2010 In a recent speech, Dick Schonberger packed a PowerPoint slide with a list of techniques associated with lean operations, a looooong list, in fine print. That's why organizations that regard lean as a collection of techniques can never master them; nobody...
May 13, 2010 Major disruptions in industrial societies liven the news. Dense populations and properties fatten the damage, and complex industrial societies are highly vulnerable. Imagine New York City without electrical power for a week. Natural disasters include...
May 13, 2010 “Too Big to Fail” justifies bailing out companies so big that discontinuing operations would disrupt everyone’s lives. But if their mission is that vital, they have a public service obligation. We should expect excellent performance; perhaps demand it....
May 4, 2010 Q: What do Enron, Lehman Brothers, BP, and Toyota screw-ups have in common? A: Tunnel vision on growth, abetted by hubris, diverting concentration from quality performance. The subtle version of this is "incautious optimism" that growth will let us clean...
May 4, 2010: The Fable of the Bees, written by Bernard Mandeville in 1705, is a poem which observed how each bee serving its own interest contributed to the common good. Adam Smith took up Mandeville’s themes, which are the bedrock of capitalist philosophy to this...
April 26, 2010: In a nutshell, yes. Just to function, every organization needs work rules and standard procedures. And we know some best practices of fast-learning organizations today: Open to innovation from anywhere: sustain R&D; have playpens or spin-offs to...
April 15, 2010: Markets wildly overvalue traded financial securities when exuberant traders balloon prices higher and higher; then reality dawns en masse. Bang. Bubble gum spatters everywhere. Global-scope bubbles like the Big Financial Pop gum up the whole world....