Category Archives: Winning

Steering and Branding

What’s in a name? How about the three R’s: recognition, reputation, and revenues? What’s the value of a brand? BRANDZ has just published their evaluations and valuations of global brands. It’s a measure of just how valuable the commercial brand is and supporting insight into the whys and wherefores. The shifts and changes in their rankings are a barometer of how our choices of who delivers value are manifested in our buying behavior. It’s not an opinion poll, but rather an evaluation that incorporates business results with analysis inclusive of some subjectivity.
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Class Struggles

Best in Class! How often do we run into the term? I don’t believe it’s a term that has lost much meaning. I suspect that overuse, or selective playing around with what “class” we pick, or the unreliability of rating organizations render it useless too often. In the world or process improvement it is applied to a goal setting step for evaluating how large a gap there is to close and subsequently chartering projects and resources to close that gap. There are some pitfalls to the approach
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My Way or the Highway

American Airlines war with the web is a fascinating series of events. Nobody can argue that the web is the neural and circulatory network for the preponderance of businesses. Unavailability and inaccessibility are likely to be two deathly symptoms of a commercial entity headed for life challenging times. Now, when I hear about accessibility issues, I tend to associate them with technical or network failures. Something broke, or glitches or evildoers are driving the calamity. Not so in this case. This war has to do with how accessibility is managed. American has made a decision that they will set the rules of how customers can access them.

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Better Late Than Never, or Better Never Than Late?

Labor Day weekend is upon us as is also the statistical peak of the hurricane season. Somehow the coincidence befits the times as it may well be a different type of statistical peak for labor. The Labor Department defined the day as “Labor Day, the first Monday in September, is a creation of the labor movement and is dedicated to the social and economic achievements of American workers. It constitutes a yearly national tribute to the contributions workers have made to the strength, prosperity, and well-being of our country.” It provokes an interesting question as to who is the chicken and who is the egg? Are “strength, prosperity, and well-being of our country” a consequence of the labor movement or the cause? What does the experience of our current situation say?

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Who’s Not on Board?

Not that long ago, a major mobile phone carrier had an effective advertising campaign with a catchy slogan. Yet, I found their slogan troubling. It was troubling in that their banner, “We have fewer lost calls” left with me an impression that “we’re not as bad as the other guys” was written with the intent to establish a positive differentiator of quality and reliability. My reaction then was that the goal was to be the best of the bad, or cream of the crap. Upon reflection, I realized that the problem was with me, and in fact, the carrier’s message was the right one. This carrier was actually speaking the language of quality, not of spin (as I confess was my reaction). Quality is measured by the likelihood of failure against a specification. In their case, our case, it was a message that what mattered to the customer was continuity of service and there is a probability that that service will be interrupted, and the best do it fewer times. The carrier must have studied Dr. Noriaki Kano and realized that in some cases, the best can mean fewer defects, and failures against a basic requirement can only bring dissatisfaction. For the basic requirement of service availability, a service unavailability measure is the right metric and satisfaction is not achievable, that is, zero defects can bring only zero dissatisfaction.

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How Did You Get So Ubiquitous?

“Never in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few.” – Winston Churchill, House of Commons, August 20, 1940. Many recognized this as the timeless phrase describing the valiant effort by the British Royal Air Force Fighter Command during August 18th, 1940. It has come to represent the Battle of Britain and lives among the legendary victories, Agincourt, Trafalgar, and Waterloo. The Battle of Britain was very different, strategically, tactically, and operationally. The Battle of Britain developed a fascinating strategic application that becomes ever more relevant, Strategic Ubiquity.

Under the genius of Air Marshall Sir Hugh Dowding, the RAF Fighter Command overcame overwhelming odds against

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Going for the Gold

By now many of us are working through the withdrawal symptoms of POSD, or Post Olympic Stress Disorder. The quality of coverage keeps ratcheting up every time, particularly with the clarity of HDTV, bigger screens, and cameras suspended in truly agile systems. I am amazed at how the athletes perform at levels that continue to redefine what is humanly possible and just how little the difference is between the first and the fifth placers … often a fraction of a second. High performance is redefined.
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Love that Potential!

A long time ago I studied engineering, mechanical engineering. I loved the subject and the lenses it brought. It was and is about transformation, solving problems, creation, leverage, and making new things that work and making old things work better. …
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Think About It!

Have you ever thought about how we think, particularly the kind that leads to decisions? What drives important decisions? How do we know if we made the “right one”? As we enter into the New Year, how will we decide how to navigate ourselves and our enterprises successfully?
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Virtual Value and Space-Time

Wow, the future was yesterday. The shopping data for Black Friday and Cyber Monday 2009 is eye-popping. In the never-ending race for shopper’s wallets, the agile have taken the day.
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