The Operational Excellence Society is a “think tank” that creates and aggregates content for individuals who wish to be high-performance members of high-performance teams at high-performance organizations.
What is Operational Excellence?
We define Operational Excellence as; “a state of readiness that is attained as the efforts throughout the organization reach a state of alignment for achieving its strategies; and where the corporate culture is committed to the continuous and deliberate improvement of company performance AND the circumstances of those who work there – and is precursor to becoming a high-performance organization.“
The Mirror Nobody Wants to Look Into
On Leadership, Self-Delusion, and the Six Dimensions That Separate the Real from the Counterfeit I was brought in to work with a company in Florida at the tail end of COVID. They employed a little over 100 people and were a regional manufacturer, first generation family-owned, struggling with profitability just enough to know that real peril was on the horizon. The owner — I’ll call him Warren — had built a great deal of what the company had become. His fingerprints were on everything. He was proud of that, and not without reason. In fact, Warren’s company was the subject…
Founders Desk Archive
featured articles
Scaling and Sustaining Your Education and Training Program
I have been helping companies design and deploy their Operational Excellence (“OpEx”) and Continuous Improvement (“CI”) programs for a very long time. Mind you, I was not born with this…
Choose Your Hard
Life is a never-ending stream of decisions. From the moment we wake up in the morning to the time we go to sleep, we are making decisions. Even the very…
Build Organizational Capacity and Capability – For Free
I was coaching one of the national oil companies in the Middle East, offering mentorship to the director of their operational excellence program. He was frustrated because he had invested…
The Importance of a Project Review Board
A key to success in any Operational Excellence or Continuous Improvement program will be found in the way opportunities for improvement are harvested and prioritized; and how well the projects…
Considering the Entire Employee Lifecycle
I wrote an article entitled “The Strategic HR Department” where I shared my thoughts on the characteristics of a Human Resources Department that is strategic with a purpose of being…
You Are Unique, but Not Special
In my article, “Build Organizational Capacity and Capability – For Free”, I listed several root-causes for training and education programs reaching a “stall speed” and a detailed approach for avoiding…
Expert Contributors
Biannual Supply Chain Report: Five Trends Shaping the Economic Landscape
From disruption to continual risk. After several years of disruptions, US supply chains are entering a new phase in which they are no longer fixed but expected to be in constant motion. Firms are operating in an environment where trade policy,…
Action items for AI decision makers in 2026
Expect a level-set year and a sharper focus on enterprise value. Artificial intelligence has dominated economic and business attention for the past several years. But the hype cycle is slowing…
The Best Manufacturers Build AI with Workers, Not for Them
Summary. Manufacturers are pushing ahead with AI, but workers often feel unprepared, uncertain, and distrustful. Research shows a clear gap between executive optimism and frontline experience, driven by unclear roles, weak…
Why We Love to Hate HR… and What HR Can Do About It
Five smart moves that will help, by Peter Cappelli Summary. Complaints against Human Resources (HR), which are nothing new, have a cyclical quality. They’re driven largely by the business context. When…
Applying Lean Six Sigma Methods to Litigation Practice
A growing number of law departments and law firms are exploring Lean Six Sigma and similar methodologies to continuously improve the way they deliver legal services. By tailoring these techniques…
Whatever happened to Six Sigma?
GE adopted Six Sigma from Motorola in 1995, and under Jack Welch it became corporate religion. But as GE began a long, slow decline, so did the popularity of Six…
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THOUGHT FOOD
the opex vault
How the Mysterious Dark Net is Going Mainstream
Did you know there’s a parallel Internet you may not have run across or even heard of? Only accessed by a special browser, it is home to a freewheeling collection…
Anthony Goldbloom: The Jobs we will and won’t lose to machines
Machine learning expert Anthony Goldbloom, assesses the extent to which robots will influence our working lives in the future in this insightful TED talk. By crowd-sourcing solutions to difficult problems…
Have a cigar: Cuba and Europe to write a business plan
Reuters reports on new investment related developments between Cuba and Europe, with a focus on possible obstacles in the form of human rights. The good news is, the European Union decided…
Operational Excellence Sustainability – The First frontier of change
The Problem As Covey said: “Begin with the end in mind” Why should this principle be applicable to the subject of sustainability when performing improvement projects under the Operational Excellence…
