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In the topic 'Organization Improvement'


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Want to Improve Customer Service – Treat Your Employees Better

This is the title of a recent report in the University of Pennsylvania newsletter Knowledge @ Wharton. Part of the article reports on “a recent study conducted by Marshall Fisher, a professor of operations and information management at Wharton, and other colleagues.” He goes on to show how one of the keys to improving customer […]

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We Need to Apply Quality Improvement Lessons to Safety

As I fine tuned my Leadership and Culture Development for Higher Health and Safety  webcast presentation, I’ve been reflecting on the lessons learned from the quality movement and the widespread failure to apply those to workplace safety. Starting in the late eighties and eventually morphing into Lean/Six Sigma, the quality movement completely revolutionized management thinking […]

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Vision, Values, and Mission: Well Lived Trumps Well Written

In preparation for an offsite executive team retreat, the executive organizing the session sent me a draft of the mission and vision statements “we’ve been struggling with.” She included earlier versions and iterations of each statement. She was especially frustrated and confused by the overlap of the two. She was looking for my help to […]

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When Smart and Fast Leaders Leave Their Teams Behind

I recently ran a Moose-on-the-Table workshop for a major division of a large company going through the wrenching change of a wholesale restructuring and totally refocusing their business. Our session centered on fostering Courageous Conversations because their history of not addressing tough issues with each other was a major reason this division ran itself into […]

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Use This Checklist for a Ten Point Management Team Check Up

Last month I posted a blog on Use This 10 Point Checklist for a Leadership Check Up. This was developed as I prepared for this year’s only open/public Leading @ the Speed of Change  workshop here in the center of the universe – my hometown of Kitchener, Ontario (just 45 minutes west of Toronto airport). […]

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Career GPS is an Excellent Benchmarking Tool for HR Issues

Toronto-based Human Resources Professionals Association (HRPA) has just released an excellent new “Career GPS” tool. This online assessment is designed to help HR professionals pinpoint and track their professional development goals. But the first six of eight Domains provides a very useful summary and checklist of the critical “soft skills” everyone in a management position […]

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Research on Leadership and Culture Development for Higher Health and Safety

I am continually looking for research linking the “soft skills” of leadership and culture with safety performance. Most safety programs are focused on “hard” or tangible systems and processes like regulations, training, audits, risk assessments, compliance, incident analysis, and the like. Those are critical elements in moving toward zero workplace injuries. The focus of my […]

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Top Reasons Cultural Transformations Fail

Our Linked 2 Leadership group on LinkedIn (connect with me at http://ca.linkedin.com/in/jimclemmer) is having a lively and insightful discussion on the question, “What are the top reasons why cultural transformations fail?” Since the failure rate of organizational change efforts like health and safety, quality, productivity, innovation, customer service, morale/engagement, teamwork, or public sector renewal is […]

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For the Health of It: The Bottom Line on Healthy Workplaces

We’d expect that healthy employees in healthy workplaces create healthy bottom lines. What may be unexpected is just how big the impact is. We’d expect that work-related stress is also considered a big problem. Did you expect it to be far more critical than smoking or high blood pressure? Consider these research findings:  Employees with […]

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Creating Sustained Performance through Thriving Workplaces

University of Michigan management and organization professor, Gretchen Spreitzer and Georgetown University assistant business professor, Christine Porath published a very practical article in the January-February issue of Harvard Business Review. “Creating Sustainable Performance” surveyed 1,200 white and blue-collar employees in several studies over seven years across a swath of industries. They concluded that a better […]

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Leadership and Culture for Higher Safety Performance

Improving organizational health and safety is like motherhood. Everyone is in favor of it. Vision, values, and mission statements abound with warm words about its importance. Who doesn’t agree with slogans like “everyone going home safe and healthy every day”? Only the most twisted executive or manager wants to hurt anyone. Yet many organizations are […]

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Vote for the World’s Top Leadership Gurus

Last spring I was pleasantly surprised to be included in the World’s Top 30 Leadership Gurus for 2011. It’s an honor to be included with the leadership leaders who have inspired and taught me such as Warren Bennis, Tom Peter, Ken Blanchard, Jim Collins, Stephen Covey, Marshall Goldsmith, and Rosebeth Moss Kanter. Voting is now […]

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Book Review of “Good Company: Business Success in the Worthiness Era”

Good Company ties together the lessons we’re still learning from The Great Recession, and explains what’s fueling the occupy movements, shows how social responsibility and environmentalism is dramatically shifting business approaches, and identifies the rising power of customers. Good Company is an inspiring and uplifting read for those of us working to bring about a […]

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Valuable Insights from New Study on Top Companies for Leaders

The RBL Group in partnership with Aon Hewitt and Fortune magazine has just released the latest version of their “Top Companies for Leaders” study. Every few years since 2002 this study has been conducted to look at the talent management practices of the best companies around the world across hundreds of data points. 470 companies […]

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Why Organizational Change Resolutions Are Easily Broken

Over the past few decades many organizations have jumped on the change bandwagon with a long list of resolutions to change their ways and develop new habits. Here’s a partial list: Safety culture Customer centric/focus/service Teamwork Innovation Flexibility/adaptability to change Best place to work/top employer Excellence Market/industry leadership Higher employee engagement Like too many New […]

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Thoughts That Make You Go Hmmm on… Recognition, Appreciation, and Celebration

“The most neglected form of compensation is the six-letter word thanks.” – Robert Townsend, former Amex and Avis executive and author of Up the Organization “What we’ve found is that exceptional leaders lead with gratitude, they pause to feel and express it first, because they have discovered that this is an essential way to improve […]

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Harnessing the Power of Participation

There’s another excellent article in this month’s Harvard Business Review on harnessing the power of highly engaged people. Professor of leadership, Douglas Ready, and PhD student, Emily Truelove, report on how companies like the beauty retailer Sephora, luxury hotel chain Four Seasons, and French food giant Danone, came through hard times stronger than ever. In […]

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Archived Webinar on Our Leadership and Culture Development Approaches Now Available

Last week’s follow up leadership and culture development webinar is now available for you to review. The session outlined our implementation steps, approaches, and Client examples for leadership, organization, and culture development. Building on my Leading a Peak Performance Culture webcast (click on the title to view it) this webinar starts with a 35 minute […]

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Thoughts That Make You Go Hmmmm on…”Great by Choice”

Selections from Great by Choice: Uncertainty, Chaos, and Luck — Why Some Thrive Despite Them All by Jim Collins and Morten Hansen:  “We cannot predict the future. But we can create it…we can be astonished, confounded, shocked, stunned, delighted, or terrified, but rarely prescient … life is uncertain, the future unknown. This is neither good […]

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Book Review: “Great by Choice: Uncertainty, Chaos, and Luck – Why Some Thrive Despite Them All”

This is a very timely, inspiring, and practical book for leading in turbulent times. It’s the culmination of a nine year research project that began in 2002 “in the aftermath of 9/11 and the bursting stock bubble, watching the exponential rise of global competition and the relentless onslaught of technological disruption, hearing the rising chant […]

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