Checklist for Technological Change

Following are some questions that may help you focus on areas that may still need to be addressed if you are planning some technological change.

  • Are there any formal and/or informal norms that the planned technological change will impact?
  • How much does your planned technological change build on the existing values and procedures used in your organization?
  • Can you identify the positions or individuals that are

[ Read more ]

Assessing What Is and Is Not Working

  • What about the current structure helps or hinders the organization in achieving its strategy?
  • What roles and responsibilities are clear or not clear?
  • Are the organizational goals clear or is there confusion?
  • Which customer needs are being satisfied or not met?
  • Which people skills exist or are missing?
  • Which work flows are efficient and effective? Or not?
  • Which informal processes support organizational goals? Or work against them?
  • What aspects of

[ Read more ]

A Culture of Entitlement

Dave Anderson, author of “No-Nonsense Leadership: Real World Strategies to Maximize Personal & Corporate Potential” (Learn to Lead Press, 2001), offers an eight-point reality check to help you determine whether entitlement is still alive and well in your organization:

  1. You base promotions and job retention on tenure, not performance.
  2. You give bonuses, whether or not people have earned them.
  3. Employees get raises regardless of

[ Read more ]

10 Conversations That Can Transform Your Workplace

  1. Mind-engaging work
    When was the last time you got so caught up in interesting work that you lost track of time? What were you doing? What was it — about the work itself, how you were going about it, its connection to a greater good — that made this such a wonderfully consuming activity?
  2. Seeing the fruits of your labor
    When you want to see the

[ Read more ]

Supply Chain Questions

The following list of questions about supply chain characteristics can be used as a beginning benchmark of how well your company is progressing with supply chain management.

  • We clearly understand the strengths and weaknesses of our current supply chain sub-processes and have developed action plans for improvement?
  • We have defined our supply chain improvement objectives and have unwavering management commitment to achieve superior

[ Read more ]

Supply-Chain Maturity Model

Consider these questions in the context of your overall company, business units, and IT department. Do you have: 

  • A focused approach to managing alliances?
  • A formal process for creating service strategies?
  • A formal process for maximizing sourcing and distribution?
  • A new-product development process that considers standard components and processes, and includes suppliers and customers?
  • A way to incorporate changing customer needs and new technologies in your processes and

[ Read more ]

Supplier Survey Questions

Ask the supplier to respond to the following questions with a rating from one (lowest) to 10 (highest):

  • Do you enjoy doing business with us?
  • Do you feel we treat you as a vendor or as a business partner?
  • Do our employees treat you courteously?
  • Are we a larger or a smaller customer for you (10=largest)?
  • Do we supply you with enough information

[ Read more ]