Whatever size and whatever sector your business may be in, there are powerful leadership takeaways from the impressive Philips journey. It was a joy for us at Intelligent Management to read an interview with Frans van Houten, CEO of Royal Philips (over 80,000 employees worldwide) and to discover how much it mirrors the work we […]
A Year of Breakthrough Thinking
As we come to the close of a year and the beginning of a new one, many of us will be looking back at the adversities and satisfactions we experienced over the past 12 months. Below we have provided links to some of our posts that had the most impact throughout 2021, always with a […]
Why Doesn’t Every Company Use the Theory of Constraints to Succeed?
While visiting a plant last month, our Founder, Dr. Domenico Lepore, told the dramatic story of his experience at a German aluminium plant, part of a multi-billion, multi-national business. The General Manager had invited Domenico to give a presentation after hearing him speak at a Theory of Constraints (TOC) conference. In that plant, the hot mill […]
Project Management Kryptonite: Silos and Mismatched Authority and Responsibility
If you Google the term ‘Project Management’ you will find hundreds of millions of results. It is a multi-billion dollar business and there are official institutes that train Project Managers. So why do so many projects still fail to deliver? In this post we are concerned with internal projects in an organization and what happens […]
Avoiding Compromise with a Win-Win Solution
I recently re-posted on LinkedIn something from Goldratt Consulting with a quote from Dr. Goldratt: “Our fear that conflicts will lead to a tug of war diverts management attention to constantly struggle with unacceptable compromises.” This is part of the introduction to a book Dr. Goldratt was working on called ‘The Science of Management’ before […]
To Bring MBAs Up to Date, Don’t Add On Courses, Transform the Program
We’ve been saying it for years, but now even the Harvard Business Review is saying that MBAs need to update their programs. The article quotes Scott Cook, founder of Intuit: “When MBAs come to us, we have to fundamentally retrain them — nothing they learned will help them succeed at innovation.” The HBR article goes […]
Cause and Effect Reasoning Is an Essential Skill for Leaders
An article in the Harvard Business Review draws attention to the problem of confusing correlation with causation. “Western management has failed to understand cause and effect” W. Edwards Deming Mistaking correlation for cause can be dangerous.because it prevents us from understanding reality. Most importantly, if we do not nurture the ability to think cause […]
The Great Resignation – Companies Must Offer Meaningful Work
An article in this week’s Time Magazine states ‘Young People are Leaving their Jobs in Record Numbers – And Not going Back‘. The ‘Great Resignation” as it has been nicknamed reflects large numbers of people choosing not to recommit to regular jobs. This is bad news for companies who may not be able to find […]
20/20 Foresight? How Decision Makers Can Look Ahead for Unintended Consequences
How to think is not a skill that we learn at school, or even university. We take it for granted that by receiving an education we also receive information about using our brains in a more effective way. Sadly, every day we live with the consequences of poor decision making at every level, government, corporate […]
The Theory of Constraints on Wall Street – a SPAC Experience
This post is by Angela Montgomery, author of ‘The Human Constraint‘. Many people lump the Theory of Constraints together with Lean and 6-sigma as “techniques for continuous improvement”. This is a woefully inadequate perception of the Theory of Constraints (TOC). In all our publications we attempt to illustrate the universal scope of Dr. Goldratt’s achievement […]
