One way we understand something new and different is by comparing it with something we understand. We start with an analogy or metaphor. ProcessTriage® , our trademarked brand wonderfully captures the idea of applying the structured but rapid medical examination process of battlefield or mass casualty events, to business processes. It also reflects how fast […]
A common challenge CEO’s have is finding and growing middle managers. While that’s true in most growing enterprises, it’s notably hard for CEO’s who started their companies without having any experience at developing managers. Oh, they’ve hired producers — individual contributors for specific jobs; the more frequent kind of hires, but not process managers. During […]
Sometimes I reach out to one of my subject matter experts for his thoughts, like I did earlier today. And I ended up practically hanging up on him when he started ‘thinking out loud’ about my question. I didn’t mean to be rude — after all, I did ask for his opinion. Yet I heard myself admonishing him […]
High performing teams that create high performing businesses are a lot like a choir. Each member sings their part while listening and harmonizing with other parts — basses with baritones and tenors and sopranos. A culture of continuous business process improvement requires three voices — leadership voices. Here’s a link to an article in Thinking […]
I live for this. It wags my tail (in dog-speak)! It pops my buttons (in proud parent-speak)! I have the unique and humbling pleasure to facilitate Process Triage workshops. The participants in these workshops are the best-and-brightest, cadre-grade producers and expert doers of their organizations. Our triage facilitators face literally a parade of outstanding front-line […]
We have surveyed our triage workshop participants — we call ’em Triagers, after each triage from our beginning. We summarize these anonymous remarks in our facilitator’s report to the Sponsor and Host. One of the questions is open-ended: “What did you like most about the workshop?” Triagers frequently say they liked the deck of Small […]
When we’ve done something enough times, whatever it is, after some number of repetitions we know what to expect, riding a Learning Curve no doubt. Readers of this blog likely know we study how highest performing teams continuously improve their collaborative work — their business process. We’ve distilled what we’ve learned into the Process Triage […]
This blog post links an article I wrote for the Thinking Bigger Business magazine. It’s an inspirational piece about enjoying the journey, and recounts a word of wisdom from my dad, of blessed memory. It’s not about the pursuit of happiness… Enjoy!
I was reminded Ken Blanchard’s quote* ‘No one of us is as smart as all of us’ this week. While it’s always a delight to work with a company’s front line experts, it’s unusual for these triagers to all be serial entrepreneurs and start-up mentors. Generally, process triage teams are task experts in technical matters, such as […]
Mark Shwartz, a case-study quality triage host at RCF Technologies (Vadalia, GA) raised the subject of base lining some process measurements before kicking off some Small and Big Now process improvements. To the point, the answer is No! Don’t hold up the improvement efforts, just start measuring as you improve. The reason you shouldn’t wait […]