In the two years I have been running the LEAN Communications contest I’m still surprised that so few contest entrants have a crisp description of the direct results/value they achieved with their contest entries.  Measurable results should be the motivation for LEAN...

The LEAN communications contest is getting better, not just older. The 2nd annual contest attracted more entrants who successfully: 1.Used technology to enhance the experiences of their customers and simplify their ongoing 2.Cut waste while either improving or...

Michael Hammer, the influential business writer, visionary and consultant, who died in early September, was a rare individual. He, along with his co-author, James Champy, of the 1993 best-selling book Reengineering the Corporation: A Manifesto for Business Revolution,...

Google is a gift to communicators. Yes, I know people are grumbling about Google lately. For example, there’s the Atlantic Monthly  article, Is Google Making Us Stupid? The New York Times on July 27 weighed in with "Literacy Debate: Online, R U Really...

Papers are read! Grades are in! Now I can reflect on what I learned from my students in the organizational communications session I taught this summer as part of EDDL 911: Organizational Behavior, Change and Systematic Reform in the new Ed.D. program in Educational...

“Getting people to think and take the initiative is the key” to effective LEAN leadership, according to John Shook, Senior Advisor to the Lean Enterprise Institute (LEI) and a former Toyota manager. That advice jumped out at me as I was re-listening to an old podcast...

My advice to “ask” for help keeps backfiring on me—while I back out of my driveway. I’m willing to be a Good Samaritan and lend a hand—especially since I suggest to others who need to be LEAN to ask for help so they can do more with less.  (See blog posting #1:...

Act to advance. Three words and 14 characters, well within my Twitter 140-character limit. That’s my new marching order for myself and ideally for everyone else I work with. What’s this all about? Making sure you’re not wasting time, which is one of the tenets of...

For the past year, I’ve been venting and lamenting about documents with inconsiderate names…names that are totally centric to the sender, not to the recipients. This totally violates the principle of LEAN communications…the importance of thinking about your customers...