Ask for some help to get past your pockets of incompetence or inaccurate self conception Read More
Happiness Hunters
To all the happiness hunters out there, of which I count myself one, we are hunting snipes. Just like snipe hunting which is typically a practical joke played on those as part of a hazing, snipes do exist (check out wiki page on it). Happiness exists but it is not something we can directly influence.… Read More
How Much Kool-aid Are You Drinking?
There’s one thing we all believe in. We all believe in the story we tell ourselves. This story is a composite of our past experiences, what we’ve accepted as truth, stories from others, our continuously unfolding experience, and the reality of our environment we interact with. The problem is this story does not represent the… Read More
Why Not Ask Why?
I love to read and occasionally come across some statements I disagree with. Recently, I came across the following: “ ‘Why’ questions result only in recriminations or accusations, burying my creative energies under tons of ‘shoulds’ and ‘oughts’ which leave me paralyzed with guilt or self-righteousness.” “ ‘Why’ questions, like Harpies, suck out the blood… Read More
Approaching Major Decisions
It’s essential to know what’s important to us when approaching a major decision like switching careers, changing jobs, or heading into retirement. Do you know what’s key and critical in your life? Have you created a contract with yourself prior to negotiating a contract with a new company? How does your free time or time… Read More
Do you know the roots of your issues?
Without knowing the cause of our issues it’s really hard to make changes last beyond our attention spans. As indicated in the previous post, the first step in correcting a problem is to contain the situation so there are no further negative impacts. The second thing to do is seek an understanding of why the… Read More
Time to Correct Ourselves
We received the final audit report yesterday. My company received a few findings from the AS9100 audit. A finding is a lapse in conformance or in other words a situation where we don’t do what we say we do or not doing what we are expected to do. A finding shows our integrity is not… Read More
Giving Ourselves Mental Workouts
In order to get the most out of our mental assets, we need to manage those factors that affect them. Our beliefs about ourselves and how we work can directly affect our success. Specifically, our beliefs about our intelligence and memory are of interest here. Is our intelligence something that is given to us through… Read More
Thinking about our Roots
Root Cause is a way of thinking that allows us to continually improve complex systems with both manageable and emergent properties. It implies an ordered sequence of events. However, having worked many root cause analyses as a quality engineer, within complex and even simple systems the causal chain is not linear, direct and easy to… Read More
Dealing with One of Those Days
Over the weekend, I had one of those days. You know the kind where things just don’t work out. I love cooking and lined up a few meals to cook for the family. Breakfast was good. The family enjoyed the eggs, fresh hash browns, sausage and toast. Afterwards, I started peeling apples for some fresh… Read More
Business of You 