Thanks, as always, to Ryan McCormack for this. He always shares so much good reading, listening, and viewing here! Subscribe to get these directly from Ryan via email.
News, articles, books, podcasts, and videos about how to make the workplace better.
Operational Excellence, Improvement, and Innovation
Setting Effective Team Goals
Goal-setting is everywhere and essential, but it also sparks common debates. Should goals be ambitious and challenging, or realistic and achievable? If goals are too long-term or idealistic, they may demotivate the team. Conversely, if they are too short-term, the team might become complacent and lose sight of the bigger vision.
Another debate is whether goals should encourage competition or collaboration. Goals that focus too much on individual performance can lead to sabotage and unhealthy team culture, while overly team-based goals may result in free-riders who don't contribute their fair share.
Many organizations struggle to design team goals effectively. John Dyer and Dr. Mohamed Saleh have a great discussion on how to set effective team goals in the episode “Unlocking Team Success: Setting Team Goals.”
From the archives: the long history of suggestion boxes
The best ideas usually come from employees, but management has a long history of being poor listeners. The go to solution has long been the much maligned suggestion box, the lazy manager's attempt at listening theater, but North America has a long history of gathering employee ideas this way, as evidenced by this World War II video on the value of the suggestion box for accelerating improvements in US war manufacturing plants.
What can leaders learn from Mikael Arteta's transformation at Arsenal FC?
I'm no soccer (football) fan by any stretch, and I understand Arsenal FC's performance to be uneven the last 6 years, but I enjoyed this article on how Arsenal's coach, Mikel Arteta is approaching creating a culture of excellence. Is his approach too ‘corporate'? Time will tell.
Creating a Culture of Improvement
Is your organization change allergic?
Building change capacity in organizations is increasingly important, yet many are stuck in the traditional episodic change management thinking. I highly recommend spending 20 minutes listening to Anne Gotte share her insights on building change capacity in large organizations on this amazing episode of Change Signal: Is Your Organization Change Allergic?
Shift from change management to change fitness
Similarly, leaders and employees everywhere are experiencing change fatigue and burnout, largely due to leadership's approach to change management as an episodic event rather than a basic capability to build and strengthen. Organizations need to shift from change management to change fitness.
The link between learning and innovation
Most of my readers will already understand that learning and innovation are inextricably linked. But how we learn, including the sequence, timing, and structure is shown to improve outcomes for innovative teams. How might we incorporate deliberate approaches to learning as part of our planning processes?
Coaching – Developing Self & Others
Do you ever find yourself simply “hoarding” items on your to-do list? Are you paralyzed by the prospect of actually doing what's on the list? You're not alone.
Oliver Burkeman suggests throwing out your list and becoming an “immediacist” about to-dos.
The Lesson of Craft
Turn what you love to do for free into something the world can't live without – through the compounding of small, incremental improvements. Obsession doesn't hurt either.
Follow Ryan & Subscribe:
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rjmccormack/
Subscribe to receive these via email
Please scroll down (or click) to post a comment. Connect with me on LinkedIn.
Let’s build a culture of continuous improvement and psychological safety—together. If you're a leader aiming for lasting change (not just more projects), I help organizations:
- Engage people at all levels in sustainable improvement
- Shift from fear of mistakes to learning from them
- Apply Lean thinking in practical, people-centered ways
Interested in coaching or a keynote talk? Let’s talk.
Join me for a Lean Healthcare Accelerator Trip to Japan! Learn More
