I work for a culture (the Air Force) that prides itself on innovation and a mission-first approach. However, in a long-term work project involving process mapping and process design for an internal customer, I’ve also noticed a culture of workarounds driven by several factors: 1) obsolete yet required forms; 2) lack of concrete guidance fromRead… Read more »
Hypocrisy — It’s a vice we all hate. The opposite virtue to hypocrisy is authenticity or integrity. All of us want to be authentic in every aspect of our life and to be known as people of integrity, which by definition means that there are no seams between our professional and personal lives. As aRead… Read more »
I read this very touching tribute to the Washington Navy Yard victims this morning. While I am an Air Force civilian in at a base in suburban Boston, we are all part of the same national security team. I feel the loss as if they were on my base. Their lives of quiet persevering dedicationRead… Read more »
I just read this excellent article by Lean thinker Michael Balle called “Waste-Free Capitalism.” Most Americans accept that capitalism is the best economic model for allocating scarce resources and maximizing wealth. Most Americans also know that it isn’t perfect. Waste — until recently — has been seen as a “cost of doing business” or usingRead… Read more »
Last weekend, I was thinking about my undergraduate days when I took a lot of philosophy courses at a small Catholic liberal arts college. I remember the classical Greek philosophers Plato and Aristotle approaching reality from two different yet complementary angles. At the risk of overgeneralizing, Plato believed that reality existed in ideas from whichRead… Read more »
This article Fast Transients is near and dear to me as an Air Force employee. Anyone who runs even minimally in Air Force circles knows that fighter pilots (currently) run the Air Force. So, a good rule of thumb when briefing them is to phrase non-military concepts in terms they can understand. One such exampleRead… Read more »
As a federal employee who has both managed people and is currently certified by the Air Force as a Lean Six Sigma Black Belt, I found this article very interesting: A Total Shift in Mindset How often do we instinctively blame people instead of find out what broke down in the process leading to theRead… Read more »