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Year End Newsletter 2016

By Drive, Inc. on Saturday 31 December 2016.

A colleague had a poster up in his office quoting Peter Drucker, the famous management effectiveness author, speaker, and guru. It simply reads,"Culture eats strategy for breakfast." Then below it, a post script reads "Same goes for objectives." I was intrigued, as I, alongside my colleagues, perform a lot of work with clients around the creation and implementation of strategy and objectives.

Drive in Japan Part 3

By Drive, Inc. on Tuesday 15 November 2016.

We all know, or at least we think we know, how to make things better. Yet we fail to make things better. We say we know what we are doing, but the evidence proves that we spend most of our time correcting things that have gone wrong, without really fixing the process that could prevent the problem in the first place. We call this firefighting, and we are experts at it. We hear about someone else who seems to make things work so easily and wonder how they do it. So we visit them where they produce their goods, but they fail to show us how they work to make their products in a timely manner, without defects. They fail to show us how they organize and facilitate everyone’s work so that nothing goes wrong. So we come away still bewildered about what we have seen, while failing to understand how and why what we have seen actually works so well.

Maintenance Prevention

By Drive, Inc. on Saturday 15 October 2016.

Typically, Total Productive Maintenance (TPM) is depicted as a house with pillars. The number of pillars and the classification on each pillar can differ widely. At Drive, we see TPM as shown in figure one below.

Strategic Alignment Part 5

By Drive, Inc. on Thursday 15 September 2016.

Over the past few months, we have discussed aspects of our team’s trip to Japan. We hope you have enjoyed our digression, and now it is time to complete our series on Developing Strategy for the Organization. If you would like a full recap of the first four parts of this series, please click here. A brief recap follows:

Drive in Japan Part 2

By Drive, Inc. on Tuesday 16 August 2016.

In last month’s newsletter, I informed you that we had the pleasure of visiting three manufacturers in Japan, including Toyota and AVEX, a tier two supplier of valves to Toyota. I described what we learned while visiting Toyota. This month I would like to share what we experienced and learned at Avex.

Drive in Japan Part 1

By Drive, Inc. on Friday 15 July 2016.

In June, we had the pleasure of visiting three manufacturers in Japan, including Toyota and AVEX, a tier two supplier of valves to Toyota. There was a great deal of learning that I would like to share with you.

Strategic Alignment Part 4

By Drive, Inc. on Wednesday 15 June 2016.

Once the leadership team has created a list of all the gaps using the processes mentioned in the previous newsletters in this series (in addition to any other processes or data), it is time to determine which gaps the team will focus on in the coming year. This is where we have to make some tough choices. Sometimes success isn’t determined by what we choose to do, but by what we choose NOT to do. This means we may say NO to some very good ideas; and that should be acceptable to the team. The resulting vital few gaps will be what drive the plan and alignment going forward.

Strategic Alignment Part 2

By Drive, Inc. on Friday 15 April 2016.

Last month, we introduced our series on Strategic Alignment. We discussed the importance of Speed, Reliability, and Flexibility. This month, we will continue to discuss the importance of Strategic Alignment.

Strategic Alignment Part 1

By Drive, Inc. on Tuesday 15 March 2016.

We wrapped up our series on Creating Alignment with the team in last month’s newsletter. Now that we have aligned our thinking as a team, we will focus on creating and aligning to a strategy to move the business closer toward perfection.

Creating Alignment Conclusion

By Drive, Inc. on Tuesday 16 February 2016.

We have dedicated an entire year to our “Creating Alignment” series. It all started with the story below: Can you imagine with me for a moment a boat at sea. The boat has all of the horsepower it needs and three times the fuel it needs to get to its destination. However, the rudder is broken. Although this ship has the fuel and horsepower necessary to get it to the destination, it will spin around in the ocean and eventually run out of fuel and never get to its final destination. This is analogous to many teams we encounter these days. These teams have enough people, those people are even energized, but they lack clear direction based on principles.

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