Entries in General Management (49)

Friday
Feb282014

The State of the Supply Chain Union

For the past few years, we have written a Supply Chain State of the Union or yearly outlook and published it in our blog. We are late in doing so this year simply because we were not exactly sure what opportunities and issues to focus on. We are sure now. The focus for this year is simply: Process Improvement

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Saturday
Jan252014

Leadership and Trust

There was a brilliant article in Forbes dated December 9, 2013: 7 Reasons Employees Don't Trust Their Leaders. Glenn Llopis authored this article and captured, very nicely, topics that we have discussed in this blog, in bits and pieces, over the years. It is worth reading the article. Here are his 7 Reasons and our perspective on them:

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Thursday
Nov072013

The Problem with DAN

We have written on the problem of senior executives and entire management teams ignoring problems in their businesses. We have tried to make sense of this problem with a variety of theories which, admittedly, none of which seem to resonate or strike us as compelling. This phenomenon for sure exists. We have simply not been able to explain easily it or put pithy nomenclature around it.

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Thursday
Oct242013

Fire a Customer ?

A friend of ours, Khatchig Jingirian, the President of Smythe and Cross Fine Jewelry in Los Altos posted the following on Facebook. I graciously fired my first customer today.

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Saturday
Oct192013

Beating a Dead Horse - Here's How

Our Principal, Mark Gavoor, met with Lon Blumenthal today. According to Mark, "Lon is an impressive supply chain thinker and consultant." Mark and Lon discussed many shared issues and concerns in the management consulting profession. Among the many things they discussed was the ineffective management practice of beating a dead horse. Lon pointed Mark to a discussion posting by one Tom Snell, a Project and Account Manager at an electrical contracting firm in Southern California, on LinkedIn. Them observations are both brilliant and funny. What often makes funny things brilliant is often the degree to which they reflect the truth. And there is a lot of truth in these observations.

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