Something is seriously wrong…
The healthcare industry as a whole in the United States is corrupt, dysfunctional, ineffective, and inefficient. And regardless of “party affiliation”, everyone appears to share this opinion. The only real disagreement (and a heated disagreement at that) is what should be done about it, and whether what has been done to date has a chance of working as promised over time. Continue reading
Making or supporting decisions involving product or system reliability is fraught with uncertainty. Is it reliable enough? Will failures occur prematurely? Are failures dangerous?
Uncertainty is risk.
In recent years more organizations and international standard bodies have focused on risk management. Identifying, analyzing, and mitigating uncertainty in a systematic manner. Continue reading
I live in the northwest of the US. We are now the small business and start up mecca of the US. Why? San Francisco and Silicon Valley are too expensive. So, folks are moving in droves to Portland and Seattle – 1/3 of the license plates in my hood are out of state.
But, there are challenges. The cost of housing and living in the NW is now approaching San Francisco standards of 4 years ago. The challenge is that the surplus of new folks (millennials in their late 20’s and early 30’s) moving into town require livable wage work. So with the influx of folks into the NW, Seattle and Portland are raising the minimum wage to $15/hour. Continue reading
Background
A defense company I worked for wanted to get into the Sonobuoy business. At the time, one company dominated the market and usually received the largest share of the Navy contract. A couple of other suppliers got the balance of the production quantity to keep it a competitive business.
My company developed a win strategy based on a ¼ scale prototype and purposely under bidding the competition. It worked. They won the largest piece of the production contract. Continue reading
When you were a kid, people told you what to do. Later in life, the same. We don’t like to be told what to do.
When we think about delegation, it comes with this baggage: that being told what to do is a drag. We only take it well from people we really respect. We don’t want to be that awful Do this! person, and we don’t want to be resented by people we’re delegating to. So, it’s easy to fall into the trap of not delegating enough. Continue reading