****************** The Challenge of Lean
From Lean Enterprise Institute

The Challenge of Lean
Purpose – Provide value to customers cost effectively and consistently in order to prosper.
Process – Through the primary value creating workflows for design, make, and ship, and the streams that support them.

Tools Management

How do you manage tools? Amy Erickson offers these suggestions.

“The best tooling management programs are those that are very visual, simple to use (no computers) and designed by the people who use the tools themselves. If management tries to force a system, then you will also have to force compliance. Getting the users involved will produce a better solution. Also, if done properly, this activity is a lot of fun and will help build a sense of team within the shop. You will be amazed how some people will step up and volunteer to help lead this.

Leadership

I was preparing an organization to submit their application for their state’s quality award when the lead writer said. “our organization has no values!” What she meant to say is that her organization had no formal statement of values. This company is like many contractors who have never created a formal statement of the core values they live.

Core values are guiding principles to how the company acts. Different than a vision statement, the values statement is not what we want to become, but are what we are today. These values are not dreamed of, but discovered. Every company, like every individual, has values it live by. Some may be bad, others good, but all have ways that they act or behave towards others within and outside the company. Most contractors reflect the values of the founding owners. However, as the company gets larger and expands beyond the original founding workers, new employees may not share the same values. This creates a mixed message. Customers are told the company lives a certain way but see employees not acting that way. A formal statement of company values is the first step to obtaining consistency in how customers are treated.

IN HIS BOOK "The Fifth Discipline," Peter Senge suggests that companies become learning organizations. He defined a learning organization as an "organization where people continually expand their capacity to create the results they truly desire, where new and expansive patterns of thinking are nurtured, where collective aspiration is set free and where people are continually learning to see the whole together."

**************** Leadership – 15 Ways to Lead Your Company - Down the Tubes.

These are proven techniques for successfully sinking your company. Are you using them?
1. Keep everyone in an adversarial position.
2. Rank each person, job and department against each other.
3. Treat all suppliers as enemies.
4. Have project managers pitted against each other for resources and funding.

Read it on the Contractor Magazine site

BY DENNIS SOWARDS , Quality Authority

Get serious about customer complaints

HOW DO YOU HANDLE customer complaints? Most contractors think they do a good job of resolving them. But when asked, "How do you know?" most owners/ CEOs respond, "I don't!"

Research shows that if customer complaints are resolved quickly, fairly and with a win-win approach, customer loyalty actually increases. But how does one know how well the company is handling complaints?

**************** Leadership
A recent survey of US workers found that only 49% trust their senior managers. The trust level has dropped annually since 2004.

Only 53% of the employees surveyed feel that senior management makes the changes necessary for the company to stay competitive. In 2004, this was 57% for the same survey.

"This dip in ratings is concerning because employees' attitudes about their senior leaders are a key factor in building engagement," said Ilene Gochman, national practice director for organization effectiveness at Watson Wyatt (the company that did the survey). "People want to work for companies where they have confidence in the organization and trust what senior management is doing. Fostering that trust is especially important in today's global market as it creates an environment in which employees understand that changes to the workplace may be necessary to remain competitive."