This week's Operational Excellence Mixtape tackles the challenge of sustaining improvement amidst turbulence and change fatigue. We explore why values must act as your “North Star” when markets shift, methods for building quality systems that fight entropy (with examples from Toyota and BMW), and the crucial lesson that strong culture must precede structural flattening. Plus, we look at a provocative shift in coaching: why employees are starting to prefer blunt, blame-free feedback from AI over their human managers.
News, articles, books, podcasts, and videos about how to make the workplace better.
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.
Operational Excellence, Improvement, and Innovation
Make values your North Star during turbulent times
Change fatigue is spreading fast, and stopping change isn't an option. Workflows, org charts, and markets keep shifting. Leaders can't freeze everything, but they can give people a North Star: values.
Toyota Canada CEO Cyril Dimitris points to customer focus and respect for people as guiding principles in turbulent times. Read his full speaking notes for more.
Stop chasing fixes and build quality into the system
Entropy is the silent saboteur of continuous improvement. Leaders fix one problem, get praised as the person who “gets sh*t done,” then move on, leaving improvements to drift back into chaos. When things slide, audits and compliance theatre get rolled out, but those too decay into checkbox rituals. If you want to beat entropy at scale, treat quality not as an afterthought but as your operating architecture.
Process confirmation at BMW
On the theme of battling entropy, of all the improvement tools I've picked up, few pack as much punch at pushing change to the frontlines and cutting through chaos like process confirmation. Trouble is, it's one of the hardest habits to build as leaders would rather chase the next blaze than leave their offices. Christoph Roser shows how BMW flipped that script at their Dingolfing plant, using process confirmation to hardwire a culture of continuous improvement (Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4)
Healthcare needs technology that works together
After 25 years in the workforce, one of the biggest drains on productivity I have seen is the Frankenstein collection of clunky, outdated tools shoved together to give clinicians patient information. The stakes are sky-high yet your barista often knows more about you than your doctor. Dumping in more dashboards won't fix it. Clinicians need seamless tools that actually help them do their job.
Creating a Culture of Improvement
Do “flatter” organizations have stronger cultures?
For decades people have debated whether “flat” organizations outperform traditional hierarchies. Research shows less hierarchical companies tend to have stronger cultures, but which comes first: the structure or the culture? The study suggests structure alone doesn't create culture. Instead, a strong cultural focus lets you remove layers without wrecking alignment. In short: don't strip out managers hoping culture will magically follow, build the culture first, and then flatten with confidence.
Employees can thrive through change – depending on what it is
Change fatigue is real, and employers rightly worry about burning out staff. Yet Qualtrics found that people who experience major organizational change often report higher engagement, but only when the change genuinely helps them. Employees can distinguish beneficial changes from those that mainly serve the organization. The solution is straightforward: involve employees when selecting and designing the tools that shape their work. It sounds obvious, yet it remains a challenge.
Hard questions about change
What if resistance wasn't an obstacle to overcome, but rather a signal for you to become more curious? You know it's going to be good when Michael Bungay-Stanier joins Dave Stachowiak to talk about change leadership. Listen to two of the best in the business as they entertain hard questions about change on Change Signal.
Coaching – Developing Self & Others
It's goal-setting season, and I've been using AI to mercilessly critique goals – and it's uncannily good. When asked to review others' goals, I discovered something odd: people bristle at the same blunt feedback if it comes from me, but swallow it whole when it's delivered by a bot.
That made me wonder: how broken is trust and feedback from leadership? And would employees actually prefer AI over their own managers for candid reviews? Bots are blunt, blame-free, and less threatening than bosses.
Follow Ryan & Subscribe:
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rjmccormack/
Subscribe to receive these via email
