Real Life Work Podcast with Kevin McManus

These seven virtual workshop facilitation tips help reduce meeting waste and increase the potential for virtual event learning. Seven Virtual Workshop Facilitation Tips These seven virtual workshop facilitation tips help reduce meeting waste. More importantly, they increase the potential for virtual event learning. As in person, HOW one facilitates a virtual workshop is what makes the difference. For almost forty years of my work career, I was not a fan of virtual workshops. Virtual content delivery did not seem to provide the potential for enough interaction and skill practice. People would simply fail to retain what was shown and told to them. Now, virtual workshop facilitation is much of what I do. Still, I struggle with the ‘loss’ of my face-to-face workshops. However, I see promise in the trainer-led virtual classroom. That is, if the facilitator effectively manages course content and delivery. It is a good thing such promise exists. I don’t see myself going back to the 100 days per year in ‘airports and airplanes’ world. I want to teach from home. However, there is no way I can compromise the quality of my work. Thus, the question becomes ‘What needs to change in order to teach a virtual course as well as I can teach an in-person course?’ ">

In this week’s Real Life Work podcast, I provide ten answers to the ‘how to change a work culture’ question people so often ask. 10 Ways to Change a Work Culture In this week’s Real Life Work podcast, I provide ten answers to the ‘how to change a work culture’ question people so often ask. How long does it take to change a work culture? If you want to change a work culture, and change that culture relatively quickly, you must fundamentally change your key work system designs. These new designs help leaders develop daily work habits that support a high performance workplace. What do I mean by fundamental work systems change? Well, to help you gain a better perspective of what I mean, here is a list of ten key things that you can do right now. Personally, I have seen the impact these changes make. I am confident that if you give at least a few of them a try, you too will begin see a noticeable difference in a short amount of time. If you have any questions, please do not hesitate to ask! Change Work Systems to Shift Work Cultures Most importantly, keep this in mind. If you want to sustain a lean six sigma, operational excellence, or kaizen pursuit, you must first begin a culture change. Few workplaces get to start from scratch and design your system...

This week’s Real Life Work podcast looks at how to use ten training effectiveness measures to measure training effectiveness. Top Ten Workplace Training Effectiveness Measures Often, even the best organizations struggle to effectively measure workplace training. For example, multiple Baldrige recipients in recent years continue to rely on course participation and completion rates as primary training effectiveness indicators. From an overall results and work systems design perspective, these companies are high performers. Why don’t they measure training differently? Some do. They simply do not want to use their limited application space to show results they can more effectively, and completely, share on site. However, only a small percentage of workplaces can use such an excuse. Most don’t measure training effectiveness at all. Some struggle to provide evidence of any formal training. Organizations often measure training cost, training hours, and completion rates. Unfortunately, they rarely combine these metrics for the purpose of work systems effectiveness review. For example, how do training investments affect process error, equipment failure, and workplace injury rates? How do we choose the best training investment if we need performance gains in a specific area? In this podcast, I share a progressive list of possible training effectiveness metrics. Keep in mind those at the top of the list may seem familiar, but they are also the weakest gauges. ">

This week’s Real Life Work podcast looks at how to use predictive analytics at work to help predict process outcomes and optimize results. How to Use Predictive Analytics at Work to Predict the Future Capture – analyze – use. Predict, prepare, and choose. This week’s Real Life Work podcast looks at how to use predictive analytics at work to help predict process outcomes and optimize results. Plus, this content comes from the second day of my new ‘Measurement, Trending, and Predictive Analytics’ 2-day workshop. My goal is to provide an ‘easy-to-understand and use’ overview of what can be a complex topic. This is fresh material that will help you use predictive analytics more effectively at work. For starters, what are predictive analytics? How do people use measures to predict the future? How might you benefit from the use of simple algorithms and data capture tech that exist? Conversely, if you do not want to think about work for the next 30 or so minutes, use this content to help you pick a stronger fantasy baseball team. Predictive analytics might even help you understand why your bracket went bust in the early rounds of the women’s or men’s NCAA basketball tournaments. At any rate, code and formulas make the digital world go around. Code rules. Please SCROLL DOWN a bit for the podcast player. I hope you enjoy this podcast. ">

In this Real Life Work podcast, I share how I learned to be proactive with process improvement on a daily basis. How to Be Proactive with Process Improvement In this Real Life Work podcast, I share how I learned to be proactive with process improvement on a daily basis. I regularly tell my peers and colleagues that I would not want to do any type of management job, no matter how well it paid, if I was not allowed to trend process performance on a daily basis. Plus, I believe that you cannot consistently improve process performance, let alone sustain high levels of performance over time, without process-level analysis. Proactive Process Improvement Starts With Daily Measurement Do you want to perform effective process performance analysis and improvement opportunity identification? If so, the regular use of line charts, check sheets, control charts, error tracking datasets, and Pareto charts is a must. Why? It’s simple. I hate to be blindsided by surprises. As a plant manager, I learned that it is stressful enough to consistently meet shiftin...

In this week's version of the Real Life Work podcast, I share five ways to improve environmental investigation root cause analysis.

In this Real Life Work podcast, I share my personal profound Baldrige paradigm shift relative to the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award. My Personal Profound Baldrige Paradigm Shift By Kevin McManus, Kaizen Coach and Facilitator In this episode of the Real Life Work podcast, I share learnings from my personal profound Baldrige paradigm shift. No longer is the lens of a Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award Examiner dominant in my mind when I share the Award criteria. Now, the lens of a micro-business owner guides my learning and application. I held off on posting these thoughts, but then Aaron Rodgers began all of his darkness retreat talk. For the past three years, I have lived in 95% isolation. This has largely been by choice – go with the best safeguards, right? Only one other person has regularly been around me. We can discuss all of the potential ‘shift in sanity’ stuff later. Just let Aaron know that if he does do the darkness thing, he should expect a profound performance paradigm shift or two like I received. My Personal Profound Pandemic-Induced Baldrige Paradigm Shift...

in this Real Life Work podcast episode, I let you explore my process measurement madness, and hopefully a measurement best practice or two. Explore My Process Measurement Madness By Kevin McManus, Kaizen Facilitator and Coach In this podcast episode, I let you explore my process measurement madness. My hope is that this podcast inspires you to engage a little more with the practice of proactive, process-based daily measurement. I love measurement. When I would teach the TapRooT® 5-day root cause analysis course, I would always chomp at the bit to teach the Trending module. Why do I love measurement so much? How has measurement helped me improve my own work processes as a small business owner? What types of things do you measure at work? Most, if not all, organizations measure something.  Unfortunately, a very small percentage of organizations have what I would consider to be a high-performance measurement system.  Some organizations measure too many things. Others focus primarily on those numbers that they must track in order to satisfy regulatory and legal requirements. Some leaders tend to focus only on certain input and output numbers, such as those of a sales revenue, total customer volume, total expenses, and total units produced.  Very few organizations trend their performance information in an effort to better understand their work systems. My 40-plus years of experience have led me to conclude this. Less than 10% of the organizations out there have high performance measurement systems.  My experiences as a national Baldrige Examiner, Judge, and leader in organizations that aspire to be high performers, further validate this belief. Even the best still struggle to capture, crunch, and improve daily, transaction-based process results. More importantly, these experiences help me identify what I consider to be the Top Ten Measurement Work System Weaknesses. These weaknesses exist in a majority of the world’s businesses, hospitals, schools, governmental agencies, and service industries. You can find the list in the graphic on this page. LISTEN to my ‘Measurement Madness’ post as a podcast! ">

This equipment reliability and asset health improvement podcast examines how to minimize operational costs and repeat failures. ‘Real Life Work’ Equipment Reliability Asset Health Improvement Podcast Hosted by Kevin McManus, Kaizen Coach and Facilitator How Do You Measure Equipment Reliability? Too many organizations continue to struggle to put a formal equipment reliability system in place. This episode of my ‘Real Life Work’ podcast looks at seven equipment reliability and asset health improvement tips I have picked up over the years. An effective equipment reliability and asset health improvement process provides organizations with two key benefits. First, such a process helps minimize operational costs. More importantly, it helps ensure that the company can deliver the products or services its customers desire. Equipment reliability is a hot topic. Equipment Reliability and Asset Health Improvement Tips Summary Here is a quick summary of the seven tips I share in the podcast. Enjoy! #1: Define what equipment reliability means and why it is important#2: Effectively sell the importance of equipment reliability and asset care to your work team#3: Use an effective “rewards system” to recognize employee behaviors that support equipment rel...

This week’s Real Life Work podcast looks at options for measuring leadership effectiveness, including leader time use and behavior. Measuring Leadership Effectiveness Podcast Hosted by Kevin McManus, Kaizen Facilitator and Coach Welcome to my somewhat weekly Real Life Work podcast. This week’s podcast looks at options for measuring leadership effectiveness. My experiences and learnings have taught me that we must improve how we track two dimensions of leader time use. Too many leader jobs include high levels of leader standard waste. These waste levels limit the amount of time available for improvement of any type. More importantly, they constrain leadership effectiveness. Content exists on my Great Systems website relative to measuring leadership behavior specifically. However, I have yet to comment on measuring leadership effectiveness from an overall job performance perspective. Until now … I hope you enjoy the podcast. Please subscribe and share! Why is it tough to sustain operational excellence? Most organizations rely on a few process improvement teams to help achieve and sustain some level of operational excellenc...

In this ‘How to Measure Investigation Process Effectiveness’ Real Life Work podcast, I share multiple options to measure investigation process performance. How to Measure Investigation Process Effectiveness Podcast Often, my TapRooT® root cause analysis course participants ask me how to measure investigation process effectiveness. In this episode of my Real Life Work podcast, I share with you multiple ways to measure investigation process effectiveness. These approaches go beyond a leader’s simple ‘when will the report be ready?’ question. For example, the ultimate proof of a great investigation is corrective action effectiveness. To what degree did elimination of the problem’s root causes, errors, and failures occur post-fix? How evident is the improvement to your customers? How do you measure investigation process effectiveness? What is your main measure of investigation effectiveness? All too often however, we place too much focus on the time measure. In doing so, we often compromise other results like quality, morale / teamwork, and safety. For example, I frequently see people do poor root cause analysis and write weak corrective actions in order to complete their investigation on time. Is investigation timeliness the...

My ‘Too Many Work Teams, Too Little Team Effectiveness’ Real Life Work podcast explores work team effectiveness and characteristics. Welcome to My ‘Too Many Work Teams, Too Little Team Effectiveness’ Real Life Work Podcast! This ‘Real Life Work’ podcast from 2023 focuses on the topic of ‘Too Many Work Teams, Too Little Team Effectiveness’. It explores different work teams types and the drivers of work team effectiveness. Plus, it explores the characteristics of the three work team types found in all organizations. Finally, I close with the types of changes leaders need to improve the effectiveness of each work team type. How effective are your work teams? It has become a common work practice to use teams to improve organizational performance.  Unfortunately, widespread misuse of the team approach has resulted in a lot of confusion. What constitutes a work team? What strategic focus should our different team types pursue?  In my opinion, all supervisors and managers are on at least one...

In this edition of the Real Life Work podcast, I share how work team leaders use the four steps to effective rule enforcement. Welcome to My ‘Four Steps to Effective Rule Enforcement’ Real Life Work Podcast! by Kevin McManus, Great Systems LLC This ‘Real Life Work’ podcast from 2023 focuses on the topic of effective rule reinforcement. The focal point of this podcast, as it was in the quite popular post, are the four steps of effective rule enforcement. Please follow this link to read my ‘Four Steps to Effective Rule Enforcement’ podcast in text form How do your work team leaders enforce the rules each day? One of the key reasons people make mistakes is that they don’t follow the rules. There are multiple reasons to explain why people break the rules. However, we all too often fail to effectively address the...

In this Real Life Work podcast episode, I explore common system gaps that help explain why our process improvement fixes fail and how to fix that problem. Why Our Process Improvement Fixes Fail By Kevin McManus, Kaizen Coach and Facilitator Welcome to this episode of my ‘Real Life Work’ podcast. In this podcast episode, I explore common system gaps that help explain why our process improvement fixes fail. More importantly, we look at some super best practices to fix that problem. If you would like to READ the post for this podcast, please follow this link! Follow this link to READ my ‘Why Process Improvement Fixes Fail’ podcast as a post Why Do Our Process Improvement Fixes Fail? There is a psychological pattern that causes many of our process improvement fixes to fail. Over the past forty-plus years, I have seen tens of thousands of corrective...

This post explores why our process improvement fixes fail. More importantly, it gives you key ways to help fix those problems. Why Our Process Improvement Fixes Fail This podcast explores why our process improvement fixes fail. More importantly, it gives you tangible ways to help fix those problems. There is a psychological pattern that causes many of our process improvement fixes to fail. Over the past forty-plus years, I have seen tens of thousands of corrective and preventive actions. After a while, a pattern began to emerge. I saw the same pattern with attempts to address ‘unsafe act’ and ‘unsafe condition’ audit findings. It wasn’t just the ‘weak fix’ pattern many people see in their organizations. You know what I mean by weak fixes. Think of your favorite retraining, procedure expanding, and punishment focused changes. Instead, it was a pattern of a less visible nature. My Key ‘Fixes That Fail’ Learning In a nutshell, here is what I saw: Our fixes tend to be weak, and in turn fail, when we blame people and equipment for our problems. The root causes we select set the stage for weak versus strong corrective actions. Those root causes are a result of three things. First, there are the root cause questions we ask and don’t ask, but should. Second, how we collect and analyze evidence drives the root causes we select. Finally, the design of the root cause analysis process itself affects your fixes. Th...

In this Real Life Work podcast, I share my learnings on the ‘how to increase work team engagement’ topic, which is a must for operational excellence. The Real Life Work ‘How to Increase Work Team Engagement’ Podcast In this podcast, I share my learnings on the topic of total work team engagement, which is a must for workplace health. PLEASE SUBSCRIBE to my Real Life Work Podcast on Apple Podcasts, Amazon Music, Google Podcasts, or Spotify. Cheers! READ the transcript for my ‘How to Increase Work Team Engagement’ podcast! Do you need to increase work team engagement levels? When I first entered the world of work more than 40 years ago, employee involvement was becoming the rage. Now, organizations realize that both effective individual and work team engagemen...

This week’s Real Life Work podcast looks at root cause analysis frequently asked questions from my customers. How do you find root causes? Root Cause Analysis Frequently Asked Questions Podcast Welcome to this week’s edition of the Real Life Work podcast, brought to you by Great Systems. Today’s episode focuses on root cause analysis ‘frequently asked questions.’ I consistently encounter these questions as a contract virtual instructor for the Taproot® root cause analysis process. Please email or message me with your questions and podcast ideas. More importantly, PLEASE SCROLL DOWN and enjoy the podcast. LEARN HOW you can bring my VIRTUAL or LIVE 2-day ‘Measurement, Trending, and Predictive Analytics – How the Best Use Data to Improve’ workshop to your organization. ">

This ‘Measuring Process Improvement Effectiveness’ Real Life Work podcast comes from one of my most popular Great Systems website posts. Measuring Process Improvement Effectiveness Podcast This ‘measuring process improvement effectiveness’ Real Life Work podcast comes from one of the most popular posts on my Great Systems website. It began as an Industrial and Systems Engineer magazine  article I wrote a few years ago. Back then, I had just completed another national Malcolm Baldrige Performance Excellence Program site visit. On that particular site visit, my role was to evaluate the organization’s processes for information capture, analysis, and use. LEARN HOW you can bring my VIRTUAL or LIVE 2-day ‘Measurement, Trending, and Predictive Analytics – How the Best Use Data to Improve’ workshop to your organization.

How we lead determines the need for labor organization. Best practices to stay union free exist. Too many leaders seem to ignore them. Best Practices to Stay Union Free (or Attract One) … It’s Your Choice! How we lead determines the need for labor organization. Best practices to stay union [...]

With all the labor organization efforts going on today, I thought I would share this ‘best practices to stay union free’ podcast. Best Practices to Stay Union Free Podcast By Kevin McManus, Chief Excellence Officer, Great Systems LLC During my work life, I have worked in, and for, both organized and union-free companies. In some cases, we had some organized sites and others that were not. With all the labor organization efforts going on today, I thought I would share this ‘best practices to stay union free’ podcast. Plus, these are simply best practices for leading any workforce. My perspective has always been that is if a company has a union in-house, at some point in time the company deserved one. Current management may lead in a much more positive way, but mental models from past negative interactions still exist. It is a challenge to undo twenty-plus years of bad management with just a few years of ‘good management’ attempts. Like it or not, if you choose to continue to manage in a manner that could be perceived as even a bit authoritarian, entitled, non-inclusive, or unfair, a union could be in your future. I have learned that the following practices are effective in ANY workplace setting, organized or union-free. EXPLORE MORE: Check out the Great Systems website for more free resources! Focus on Building Sound Relationships, Not Staying Union Free People give you so much more at work each day than what your naked eye can see. Conversely, if they are dissatisfied, they will take more from your organization than you will ever know. It’s not a threat. It’s simply the realities of how fairness, or the lack thereof, influences one’s performance on the job each day at any organization level. Workplaces that are fair, fun, and focused on excellence are possible. Plus, you can even find them and experience them if one looks hard enough. They’re just not the norm. Where is your workplace at today? What would your people say if we asked them the same question? LISTEN to the Podcast! To read this post, please follow this link: Best Pr...