Leadership Archives | Page 35 of 37

Authentic Continuous Improvement

By Ron Pereira - October 8th, 2008

From time to time a blog article absolutely knocks me out of my chair. This morning was one of those occasions. One of the blogs I always, without fail, read is Evolving Excellence which is written by my friend Kevin Meyer. Today, Kevi

4 Easy Ways to Learn New Things

By Ron Pereira - October 7th, 2008

I don’t think much of a man who is not wiser today than he was yesterday. ~Abraham Lincoln I’m severely addicted to learning new things. I haven’t always been like this. As a young boy school stressed me out. This probably ex

4 Hour Workweek versus Working Your Face Off

By Ron Pereira - October 5th, 2008

With all the news of our struggling economy (in America) and massive bail outs I couldn’t help but think of two people – Tim Ferris, author of The Four Hour Workweek and Gary Vaynerchuk of Wine Library TV fame. Four Hour Dream is B

I am, therefore I think

By Ron Pereira - September 10th, 2008

I believe René Descartes may have gotten it backward when he said, in Latin, “Cogito, ergo sum.” When translated this famous saying means: “I think, therefore I am.” I contend he should have said, “I am, therefore I think.�

Are You Ready For Lean?

By Ron Pereira - September 8th, 2008

I just skimmed through a short white paper that attempted to provide a checklist to help an organization decide if they were ready for lean. It was written by a person who works for a “human capital management solutions” company. Y

Step Away From the Dashboard!

By Ron Pereira - September 2nd, 2008

Here’s a question for you. Is the mission control center of your organization centered on a set of dashboards or balanced scorecards? In other words, when a crisis is about to hit (or has already hit) how do you react? Do you run to

Inspired by Phelps

By Ron Pereira - August 17th, 2008

Where were you when history was being made? I was pacing in front of my TV while holding my new born baby and screaming at the top of my lungs as Jason Lezak held off his Australian competitor in the 4x100m Medley Relay. Once it was fi

Alice in Chains and The Soft Zone

By Ron Pereira - July 22nd, 2008

A few weeks ago I was hanging out with some of my neighbors. The kids were playing, the wives were talking, and the men were drinking a few beers while playing the bean bag game. You know the one… where you try to toss bean bags onto

Should we Keep to the Middle?

By Ron Pereira - July 20th, 2008

Here’s a list of principles worthy of our attention as we start the week. Carefully observe oneself and one’s situation, carefully observe others, and carefully observe one’s environment. Seize the initiative in whatever you unde

Laying the Foundation: Part 2

By Ron Pereira - July 15th, 2008

Tonight we’ll wrap up our series on how to lay down a strong foundation such that your continuous improvement initiatives not only survive… but flourish. In part 1 of the series we talked about creating tension, ensuring our effort

Laying the Foundation: Part 1

By Ron Pereira - July 14th, 2008

Tonight, I’d like to share some tips for how we might all go about laying down a rock solid foundation in an effort to ensure our continuous improvement bear real fruit. The most obvious foundational tip I can offer is to respect peo

Planting Seeds

By Ron Pereira - July 13th, 2008

What can we learn about continuous improvement from the person Christian’s call the King of King’s, Lord of Lord’s, and The Great I AM? Lots. Let’s start in the book of Matthew. And he spoke to them at length in parable

Less Talking, More Action

By Ron Pereira - July 8th, 2008

“Too many words. Let them just see what we do.” -Blessed Mother Teresa This is an odd quote for a blog that primarily depends on the written word in order to communicate. With this in mind, I’ll keep this post short and sweet. In

The Art of Instruction

By Ron Pereira - July 7th, 2008

“I never teach my pupils; I only attempt to provide the conditions in which they can learn.” ~Albert Einstein Last night we discussed two different learning theories – entity and incremental. I read about these theories i

Two Approaches to Learning

By Ron Pereira - July 6th, 2008

Have you ever watched the movie Searching for Bobby Fisher? It’s the one about the child prodigy chess player. Well the child, Josh Waitzkin, is all grown up now and has written a book called The Art of Learning. I am not done with t

The Spiritual Side of Continuous Improvement

By Ron Pereira - June 26th, 2008

I’m exhausted – both physically and mentally. For the past 5 days I’ve been involved in an extremely intense kaizen. One could even call it a kaikaku – or radical change event. I’ve coached, learned, cleaned, painted, and swe

What is Value?

By Ron Pereira - June 20th, 2008

“Above all, lean practitioners must be relentlessly focused on the customer when specifying and creating value.” -Womack & Jones, Lean Thinking I love Seth Godin’s blog. He has written some amazing posts over the year

5 Steps to Developing a Tiger Like Attitude

By Ron Pereira - June 17th, 2008

“Nothing can stop the man with the right mental attitude from achieving his goal; nothing on earth can help the man with the wrong mental attitude.” -Thomas Jefferson Since watching and reading about the greatness that is T

5 Steps to Developing a Thinking Organization

By Ron Pereira - June 11th, 2008

Scott recently asked: Ron, you mention “thinking production system” instead of Toyota. How do you learn to “think” better? What’s your recommendation for that? I agree with your premise but in my experience, learning to think

Strategies to Sustain Operations Excellence

By Ron Pereira - June 9th, 2008

This is an abridged version of a presentation I recently gave at a manufacturing excellence conference. If you’d like to download the video follow this link to Google Video and click on download video.

Entropy, Salmon, and Swimming

By Ron Pereira - June 4th, 2008

A can of soup falls if you drop it, your car tire blows out when a nail punctures it, and eventually my barbeque grill cools down after grilling steaks, even in the hot Texas air. Why is this? Allow me to explain. While these things ar

A Lesson in Courage

By Ron Pereira - May 27th, 2008

“Without courage, wisdom bears no fruit.” -Baltasar Gracian Family Vacation Over the Memorial Day weekend my family and I went on a much needed vacation. We normally go to Sea World each summer, but since my wife is almost 8 month

Make a Mistake… Own up to it

By Ron Pereira - May 22nd, 2008

A lesson I’ve known for a long time was just reinforced for me here at a restaurant in the London Heathrow airport. Here’s what happened. I arrived at the airport early so decided to sit down for a nice English breakfast (

Lessons from the airport

By Ron Pereira - May 18th, 2008

Recently, in the DFW airport, as I was buying a bottle of water I watched an older man chastise two of his younger workers for wearing earrings. Apparently, in this store you aren’t allowed to wear things in your ears. Fair enough. B

Why Do Employees Underperform?

By Ron Pereira - May 9th, 2008

The best free lean magazine I know of, Industry Week, recently discussed an interesting survey done by LifeCare Inc. where they investigated why some employees underperform in their jobs. While I am from the school that says you nee

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