Amidst immense global and societal change, it is clear that citizens around the world are expecting more from their governments. Never has this increased expectation been more clear than in the wake of the Ebola crisis. Healthcare professionals, lay citizens, and politicians alike are all raising serious concerns about public healthcare systems and their perceived inefficiencies. In the face of the global Ebola » Read More
A few days ago, I was talking with the CEO of a large company in New England with almost 15,000 employees. A couple of years ago, he had started an idea system, and although things were progressing well, he felt that some members of his leadership team and a significant percentage of his managers weren’t yet on board with the system, and were only paying lip service to it. He had been gradually trying to hold them » Read More
A few years ago the CEO of a health insurance company asked me to help him set up and launch a high-performing idea system. He knew that his industry was about to go through major changes – Obamacare was just coming down the pike, as were some big changes in Medicaid and Medicare — and his company was going to have to be ready for them. But the problem was that neither he nor anyone else knew what the » Read More
Peter Drucker once told us about an interesting investment rule that the financier J.P. Morgan had developed more than a century ago. Morgan had observed an interesting pattern in his client companies. Those having excessive pay differences between levels in their hierarchies did not perform as well. Consequently, he would not invest in a company if pay differences from level to level were more than thirty » Read More
Not long ago, the owner of a medium sized software development firm asked me a very good question. “How does a high performance idea system work in a project environment where every project is different?” We discussed that in a project-based company like his there were lots of processes that could be improved, but his question made a good point. A project environment does have unique challenges for a high » Read More