Operations strategy

The CEO wants to increase collaboration and cut costs with an open-plan work space, but the knowledge workers say they need their walls, their doors, and their privacy.

Speed is not the only - or even the most important - factor.

Many companies approach product development as if it were manufacturing, trying to control costs and improve quality by applying zero-defect, efficiency-focused...

Your organization needs to change too.

Examining groups like ISIS and al Qaeda through an organizational lens.

The Toyota story has been intensively researched and painstakingly documented, yet what really happens inside the company remains a mystery. Here’s new insight into the unspoken rules that give Toyota its competitive edge.

Many CEOs don't seem to care about organic growth. They either give up on it, in the belief that their companies will inevitably become low growth, or...

As a boy, Bush watched "Emergency!" on television and was captivated by the romance and seeming magic of saving lives. As an adult, he found the reality...

Stores have evolved, so the jobs should too.

Like manufacturers, service organizations find operational economies of scale in investments in fixed facilities, inventories, and transportation. It’s generally advantageous to centralize these operations, as in the following cases. Some repair facilities cut costs by limiting the number of spare parts and field service locations, or at least by limiting the stocking locations for low-demand […]

It's more complicated than simply implementing new technologies.

It will become the problem and the solution.

Prepare your employees for automation and machine learning.

Since the early 1970s, host governments have intervened more and more in the affairs of multinational corporations. Today they regularly establish rather demanding conditions for MNCs wanting to do business in their countries. What kinds of conditions are these? What type of threat, if any, do they pose to the normal operation of corporate decision […]

Combat complexity with modularity.

Companies can no longer consolidate decision-making at the top.

Government may be the biggest and the oldest industry in the world, but the statement “I’m from the government, and I’m here to help you” is universally considered a bad joke. Increasingly, people don’t believe that government knows how to help or wants to bother. They find concepts like “total quality,” “customer-driven,” and “continuous improvement” […]

Early lessons from pilot programs.

When the Gallup Organization applied Six Sigma principles to sales and service groups at several companies, it learned how much performance variation exists between seemingly similar work groups. Managing that variability can raise overall performance by orders of magnitude and can create organic growth.

Should you go all in, or take a more measured approach?