In the mid 1960’s, a man witnessed an awful multi-car pileup in San Francisco. That man also happened to have a PhD in psychology and was an inventor as well and he decided to do something about rear end collisions. The result was a third brake light installed at the top of the rear window in automobiles. Testing showed that the addition of the third light reduced rear end collisions by 50 to 60%. Continue reading
To quality professionals, the challenge “So prove it!” is far more than a school yard taunt, since their organizations must continually demonstrate to customers, board members, suppliers, associations, regulatory bodies, and others that their products or services indeed meet the quality standards that they espouse.
Going to a hospital to get healthier should not be a life-threatening activity. Yet, various research accounts (The Institute of Medicine) state that around 100,000 Americans die annually from preventable hospital errors. Patient Safety America estimates the number of deaths to be between 210,000 and 440,000 a year. Whatever the real number may be, the fact is the cascading threats that create preventable hospital deaths are invisible, underestimated and can build up slowly and silently over time. Continue reading
Today’s New York Times had an article: Is There Any Stopping Donald Trump?. “They (voters) want to try something utterly different—utterly disruptive, to use the locution du jour—and that leaves them, on the Republican side, with the options of Trump and Ben Carson. Trump has the fire.”
We live in the age of disruption. I’ve seem my career and work be disrupted. So, this is my story and in many ways may become the story of your work, career, and job. So, pay heed. Understand the conventional rules are now being changed. For more tips, visit: Working It.com
I started out of high school doing manual work. My first job was as an ordinary seaman in the merchant marine. I worked on rust buckets on and off for 5 years. This manual work was very hard and frankly not suited to my style, abilities, temperament, and life direction. Continue reading
What is “design for reliability” (DFR) and how would you recognize it if it was occurring? Is it possible for an individual to ”do” DFR? Is design for reliability a specific technique? Like meditation, nearly anyone can strike a pose that appears similar to someone in deep meditation, yet can you tell by observation if that person is really mediating? Probably not. The same is true for organizations or people declaring that they are doing DFR. Maybe they are—or maybe not. Continue reading