Tag: leadership

Keeping the “I” out of “team”

by Dan Oswald I have the always desirable but elusive teamwork on my mind as I write this. The dictionary defines it this way: “cooperative or coordinated effort on the part of a group of persons acting together as a team or in the interests of a common cause.” There’s a lot in that definition. […]

Train Employees to Share Innovations in the Community

Well-known for training its own employees on lean principles, Toyota partnered with the Evansville Vanderburgh School Corporation (EVSC) in Indiana to teach the school district how to make its process of collecting and distributing 14,000 netbooks to students in grades 6 through 12 more efficient. Since October 2012, members from the Toyota Production System Support […]

Are You Training Employees to Be Leaders in the Community?

Primary objectives for training employees are always to help them perform their jobs in the most efficient and productive way possible. But once those goals are well in hand, additional objectives can be beneficial to both your organization’s bottom line and its corporate reputation. Well-known for training its own employees on lean principles, Toyota partnered […]

customer

You won’t know what your customers want if you don’t ask

by Dan Oswald Knowing what your customers want and need and delivering it are key concepts for any business. But how do you really know what your customers want? The first person I worked for after graduating from college knew exactly what his customers wanted and needed. He had that knowledge because he once held […]

Are you measuring the risk or the reward?

by Dan Oswald I read something the other day that asked, “Are you playing to win or not to lose?” It’s an interesting question. You may be wondering what the difference between the two exactly is. You may think that if both strategies are successful, the result is the same. But is it? Winning is […]

Train Managers to Be Proactive

Jathan Janove is an employment lawyer whose book, Managing to Stay out of Court (Berrett-Koehler/Society for Human Resource Management), includes the following proactive management tips that you can teach your managers and supervisors. ‘That Was Then, This Is Now’ is a good way to effect change in an organization. Grant amnesty for all past mistakes […]

Do You Train Managers to Lean Forward?

Koehler/Society for Human Resource Management), explains the concept of skiing with your weight forward. In his introduction, Janove evokes the image of a beginning skier. Frightened of going too fast, he or she likely obeys the instinct to lean back on the skis. The truth is, however, that keeping the weight forward steadies the skier […]

Use Summer to Motivate Employees

McBean, author of The Facts of Business Life: What Every Successful Business Owner Knows That You Don’t (Wiley, October 2012,), encourages employers not to wait until fall to review and adjust company directions. Especially if changes will involve employee training and/or hiring and training new employees. Most business owners probably look at the summer as […]

Are You Taking Advantage of Summer’s Learning Opportunities?

McBean, author of The Facts of Business Life: What Every Successful Business Owner Knows That You Don’t (Wiley, October 2012,) says the reality is that the season is actually a great time to do a half-year review and make some smart moves for your business, rather than indulge in the summertime lull. Take summer’s opportunity […]

The answers are easy!

by Dan Oswald Have you ever faced a problem at work that seemed so overwhelming, so insurmountable that you struggled to even know how to begin to resolve it? And the more you studied the problem, the more convinced you became that the solution must be equally as complex. Your exercise in problem solving became […]