Sublime

As some organizations move to more autonomous teams and agile practices, the link can be lost between executives’ desired customer value and the delivery of the work. The autonomous team relies heavily on the role of product as the “glue” that brings diverse perspectives together and aligns them with the portfolio team and customer expectations.

The Manager’s Essential Body Parts Management involves heart, gut, soul, and nose So . . . lead with your heart trust your gut (trust your hunches) build soul into the organization and develop a nose for bullshit

Eventually, this group of ideas formed the core of the now world-famous Toyota Way: •Kaizen: continuous improvement (predating Shewhart but perhaps inspired by Sakichi reading Henry Ford’s book). •Jidoka: the machine stops when there’s a problem. •Andon cord: any worker can stop the assembly line when there’s a problem. •Go to gemba:** the supervis

Welch learns. He moved from a top-down vision (the famous dictum that all GE businesses had to be #1 or #2 in their markets) to a much more learning-filled operation (his “Work-Out” system).

I learned everything I could about possible causes of failure, and I decided to spend most of my time on the factory floor to make sure every step was done properly. It soon became apparent that the instructions the engineering department gave the factory people were not adequate to ensure that every step would be done properly. I found the factory