By: David and Jim McNeil
Some consider an organization’s ability to rapidly pivot, innovate and capitalize on turmoil a miracle! Those in the continuous improvement field view these capabilities as benefits of a resourceful and engaged workforce.
At the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic, enterprises as far afield as the hospital care and medical equipment communities to the manufacturers of autos, apparel, vacuum cleaners, air-bags, electronics, and other specialties rapidly aligned their operational know-how to save lives.
Almost overnight, these companies shifted production from traditional product lines to desperately needed ventilators, gowns, respirators, and face masks, needed by health care workers and the sick and dying.
These versatile organizations are equally prepared for business challenges they are likely to confront and provide a model for others.
Create this capability in your organization. Read how in The Five Keys to Continuous Improvement.
Visit our website: www.thefivekeys.org
Covid-19, Doctor Fauci, Leadership and Change
Charged with the task of changing behaviors among a nation of over 300 million people is hard to grasp. However, those of us responsible for leading change, in our own organizations, should take note.
Leading our Nation’s medical response, was Dr. Antony Fauci, Director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID). Fauci advanced a clear and fact-based explanation as to why changes in our behaviors were necessary. He laid out a series of actions that were well-defined and compelling, that if followed, was our best means of defense. Throughout, he communicated by providing regular factual updates complete with visual charts and measures emphasizing the dire need for change and the progress being made.
Lessons for Change Leaders
Whether Fauci followed a trusted leadership playbook or simply his natural instincts, he and his team validated for us, many of the most critical aspects in leading change.
We invite you to learn more about leading change in your organization in our new book The Five Keys to Continuous Improvement.
Visit our website: www.thefivekeys.org
“One Reason People Resist Change is Because They Focus on What They Have to Give Up, Instead of What They Have to Gain.” Rick Godwin
Spell out the benefits: People must clearly see how this “change” will improve their organization and how it benefits them personally. Share early wins, goals reached, and milestones met. Connect these positive results to personal and organizational benefits. Recognize good performance that aligns with the change efforts.
Be Patient: Don’t expect people to readily adopt a new innovation or change proposal. Your organization’s culture and behaviors have hardened over time – sometimes decades. Changes to these habits and customs take time and effort. With commitment, reinforcement, and through example, colleagues will join in the effort - over time.
We invite you to learn more about leading change in your organization in our new book The Five Keys to Continuous Improvement.
Visit our website: www.thefivekeys.org
Good Communication is the Bridge Between Confusion and Clarity
In leading change initiatives, we have yet to find an organization that communicates too much. Using all communication forms, channels, and techniques available exponentially increases support and participation. Update progress regularly, and share successes, failures, and challenges. Acknowledging disappointments and adversity demonstrates honesty and confirms real-life issues that need to be overcome.
Seek Feedback: In order to keep your fingers on the pulse, create opportunities for colleagues to provide you with their feedback – welcoming both good and bad. Learn from your colleagues what they think, their worries, and desires. Share what you learn with other leaders and resolve legitimate concerns.
We invite you to learn more about leading change in your organization in our new book The Five Keys to Continuous Improvement.
Visit our website: www.thefivekeys.org
CDi Latin America Forum 2021: The Essence of World-Class
... Stay ahead of the rest of the industry
What?
CDi Latin America Forum 2021: The Essence of World-Class
When?
August 12, 2021
Where?
Virtual - Zoom
Cost?
US $19.99 (33% early-bird discount - Limited sale price!)
Normal Price: US $30
What is the Forum and why do we do it?
We, CDi Latin America, want to inspire leaders, collaborators, organizations and the community in general to excellence in every way for a better world.
The CDi Latin America Forum is a space designed for all those who wish to share their knowledge, experience and ideas to promote the understanding of World-Class management, as an important step along the route towards continuous improvement and progress, in their organizations and their community.
World-Class is the search for excellence, which begins with closing gaps between the expectations and reality of the stakeholders (interested parties), but does not end there. Any organization, no matter where it is located, can become a World-Class company, if its focus is on enduring over time with a healthy corporate culture and continuous improvement mindset.
This is an ideal opportunity to receive knowledge and ideas from World-Class management experts, as well as lessons learned by delegates from different organizations on their journey to World-Class. It will also provide an opportunity to make valuable contacts to share successes or questions in the future.
Join us on 12th August 2021 to talk about how to achieve and stay!
Introducing the Speakers
... Outstanding Experts in the Industry

JIM MCNEIL
Jim McNeil is a practicing Organizational Change Consultant with industry experience in service, manufacturing, health care, pharmaceutical, telecom, and advanced technology. In his early days, he served as a union leader in the United Auto Workers (UAW). From 1990 - 1997, Jim was President of the largest UAW Local successfully initiating change in a very complex environment.
Jim is a partner with Competitive Dynamics International, a global consultancy with clients in 80 countries and experience in more than 3000 worksites. He holds a Master of Organizational Development degree, has been published in the Journal of the Organization Development Network and co-authored with others three books: “Unleashing the Magic in Organizations”, a field guide titled “Whole-Scale Change Toolkit” published by Barrett-Koehler and recently, “The Five Keys to Continuous Improvement”.
Jim McNeil, USA - Organizational Change
Topic: The Five Keys to Continuous Improvement

DAVID MCNEIL
David J. McNeil is Director of Continuous Improvement, North America for Competitive Dynamics International, a consultancy with clients in 80 countries, over 3200 worksites and 25 years of experience. He holds a Bachelor of Science Degree from Michigan State University, Black Belt Certification in Lean Six Sigma as well as being certified in Kaizen Event Facilitation and Value-Stream Mapping. His experience is in Intentional Culture Change methodology, Strategic Planning and in leading World Class Continuous Improvement initiatives in both large and small organizations.
David McNeil, USA - Continuous Improvement
Topic: The Five Keys to Continuous Improvementt

GABRIELA WONG
Gabriela Wong works as Industrial Development Manager at Reylácteos S.A. in Ecuador. As such, its objective is to strengthen the culture of excellence and continuous improvement through the implementation of appropriate methodologies. She also leads the development of new products and related processes.
Gabriela has a Bachelor of Science in Food Science with a specialty in Agribusiness Management from the University of Pennsylvania.
Gabriela Wong, Ecuador - Agribusiness Management
Topic: The Dilemma of Investing in Culture Change in Challenging Times

DR. IAN MATHESON
Ian, PhD in Gas Kinetics from St. Andrews University, in Scotland, has been a World-Class company practitioner since 1990, when the west started to take an active interest in the successes demonstrated by the top Asian companies. He has given advice to thousands of leaders in different sectors all around the globe.
He is managing director of CDi-AMA, serving the Americas, Middle East (including India) and Africa.
He and his co-consultants bring many years of experience and an exceptional track record in boosting organizations' bottom line performance, and making the companies truly great places to work.
Dr. Ian Matheson, Scotland - World Class Practice
Topic: The Essence of Effective Problem Solving

DR. FLORIS BURGER
Floris Burger is a Director of Competitive Dynamics International and has been consulting to the mining industry throughout southern Africa for more than 20 years. Floris’ interests include systems-thinking especially in the context of organizational performance optimization and has authored several peer-reviewed academic journal publications on the aforementioned. Floris holds a PhD in organizational behaviour.
Dr. Floris Burger, South Africa - Organizational Behavior
Topic: Safety Psychology: The Missing Link to Improving Safety in the Workplace
FABRICIO LÓPEZ
Fabricio López, an Agronomist from the Zamorano Pan-American School of Agriculture and Master in Business Administration (UNITEC), works as General Manager at Regal Springs Honduras. He has practiced his profession in Honduras, Mexico and Indonesia, leading activities from technical and quality control processes, performance management and commercial systems; all with very good success.
Fabricio López, Honduras - Aquaculture Operations Management
Topic: TBA

MACARENA VERGARA
Macarena is dedicated to supporting leaders and teams to achieve their goals from a place of integrity and consciousness, empowerment and agency. She does this through professional leadership/executive coaching, leadership training, e-Coaching training, facilitation and speaking engagements.
Previously, she was an international consultant with over 15 years of experience and education in development economics, public health and gender equality. She worked globally for aid agencies, consulting companies and non-profit organisations, before training as a professional Coach and starting a private coaching and leadership training practice.
Macarena Vergara, Chile - Executive and Leadership Coach
Topic: Coaching Skills for Leaders: Why are they necessary?

ROSA ZAPATA
Rosa has contributed to multinational companies and small enterprises in their quest for excellence, organizational change and business transformation. Her focus is to help companies to build a culture of continuous improvement with special emphasis on dramatically increasing the commitment and involving of employees at all levels of the organization.
As Director of CDI Latin America, she has the opportunity to introduce World Best Practices through the CDI Philosophy in Latin America and to help companies to achieve their strategic business goals. She has collaborated with different operations in Mexico, Ecuador, Peru, Central America, Argentina, Uruguay, Paraguay and Chile in sectors such as mining, bottling, pulp and paper, agriculture, finance, sales, academia and services.
Rosa Zapata, Honduras - Organizational Change and World-Class
Topic: Lessons Learned on World-Class journey
The Agenda
Time (CST) | Topic | Speaker | Company / Country |
8:00am-8:15am | Welcome and Kick-off | Rosa Zapata | CDI LATIN AMERICA |
8:15am-8:45am | Coaching Skills for Leaders: Why are they Necessary? | Macarena Vergara | CHILE |
8:45am-9:00am | Questions and Answers | ||
9:00am-9:30am | The Dilemma of Changing Culture in Challenging Times | Gabriela Wong | REYLÁCTEOS ECUADOR |
9:30am-9:45am | Questions and Answers | ||
9:45am-10:15am | The Psychology of Safety: The Missing Link to Improve Workplace Safety | Dr. Floris Burger | CDI SOUTH AFRICA |
10:15am-10:30am | Questions and Answers | ||
10:30am-10:50am | Break / Networking / Individual Rooms | ||
10:50am-11:20am | The Essence of Effective Problem-Solving | Dr. Ian Matheson | CDI AMA |
11:20am-11:35am | Questions and Answers | ||
11:35am-12:05pm | TBA | Fabricio López | REGAL SPRINGS HONDURAS |
12:05pm-12:20pm | Questions and Answers | ||
12:20pm-12:50pm | The Five Keys to Continuous Improvement | Jim & David McNeil | CDI USA-CANADA |
12:50pm-1:05pm | Questions and Answers | ||
1:05pm-1:15pm | Lessons Learned on the World-Class Journey | Rosa Zapata | CDI LATIN AMERICA |
1:15pm-1:30pm | Break / Networking / Individual Rooms | ||
1:30pm | Broadcast Closes |
For more Information
Would you like to send us a comment or have any further questions?
Contact us:
Spanish info@cdi-la.biz
English admin@cdi-ama.biz
Levels of safety and safety measures within the workplace are emotive subjects for the majority of organisations’ stakeholders whose interest in safety range from moral to profit grounds.
Despite significant safety-related improvements, the International Labour Organisation estimates that some 2.3 million women and men around the world succumb to work-related accidents every year – this corresponds to over 6000 deaths every day. Additionally, there are some 374 million non-fatal work-related injuries each year, resulting in more than four days of absence from work. Worldwide, there are around 340 million occupational accidents annually. The human cost of this daily adversity is vast and the economic burden of poor occupational safety and health practices is estimated at 3.9 per cent of global gross domestic product each year.
High safety risk industries, for example mining and manufacturing, apply significant resources in order to constantly refine safety policies and procedures. Figure 1 is an example of the range of practices a typical mine applies. These practices are extensive and consist of preventative measures and reactive measures, and also include leading and lagging safety performance indicators.

Figure 1: Mine Safety Practices
Our world-wide experience from consulting to mining and manufacturing industry clients led us to believe that many organisations are reaching a state of marginal returns in the pursuit of increased modifications and additions to safety practices.
Which additional initiatives should be considered that, proportional to traditional practices, will result in increased safety levels? When we consider the question, we need to be reminded that 99 per cent of incidents and accidents are caused by human error. Equipment failure, falls of ground, non-compliance and outdated procedures are all examples of human error. This solicits a further question: if human error practically causes all incidents and accidents, do we really understand the consequences of our employees’ thoughts and feelings (also referred to as employees’ state of mind) that led to said errors? And even if we do, do we have the necessary processes in place to support employees in this regard? Most organisations have some form of employee wellbeing support that typically addresses health and financial related concerns. The support, however, is often reactive and unfortunately sometimes subsequent to unsafe behaviour.
Our behaviour (actions) are determined by our thoughts and feelings and are also referred to as our thinking (or rational) and emotional drivers of behaviour. Figure 2 illustrates the major elements of the human brain. Our thinking and feeling take place in two areas namely the prefrontal cortex and the amygdala.

Figure 2: Elements of the brain
The prefrontal cortex is the part of the frontal lobe which lies in front of the motor area and is mainly involved in thinking about the future, making plans, and taking action. The amygdala is a collection of cells near the base of the brain. There are two, one in each hemisphere or side of the brain. This is where emotions are processed, given meaning, remembered, and attached to associations and responses to them (that is, emotional memories). Examples of emotions are joy, sadness, anger, disgust, and fear.
When we are highly emotional (positive or negative) up to 75 per cent of our prefrontal cortex capacity is used to manage our emotions – from there the saying that someone was too emotional to see events clearly and to act accordingly. Employees and leaders at all levels of the organisation experience stresses from many sources that include amongst others the following: leader-member exchange tension; strain between team members; production pressure; and perceived unsafe or unfair work conditions. Leaders and employees may also have to deal with personal challenges related to marital, health, community, and financial concerns.
Figure 3 depicts the so-called below the surface or unseen antecedents that determine our behaviour. Thoughts and feelings can be referred to as our state of mind. Importantly our state of mind is not a personality trait – we can change it, and we can control it. It does not mean “that is the way we are”.

Figure 3: Antecedents, behaviour and consequence
The typical behaviour that results from excessive negative and positive emotions (and therefore consumes too much of our rational or thinking brain) is:
- a) Lack of vigilance – not mentally alert to the situation and environment;
- b) Lack of caution – not thorough and careful;
- c) Lack of, or over-confidence – low level, or unrealistic self-belief;
- d) Non-compliance – not respecting standards and procedures; and
- e) Lack of resilience – unable to persist in the face of difficulty and ability to bounce back.
What should management do, from a psychology of safety perspective, to not only improve safety levels, but also productivity? Figure 4 indicates a process to achieve the aforementioned.

Figure 4: Psychology of safety process
The process involves the following role players: the employee; a fellow team member; the employee’s leader; and the Human Resources department. The foundation of the process is self-awareness, self-management and support from others. The illustrated process is preceded with an awareness exercise to enhance management and employees’ understanding of the basics principles of the psychology of safety.
The process starts with data and information gathering consisting of a self-assessment, an assessment of the employee by a self-selected team member (brother/sister’s keeper), and an assessment by the employee’s leader. The assessment gathers data and information on the employee’s perceived level of vigilance, caution, confidence, compliance, and resilience. Feedback is subsequently provided to the employee. Being a process, the assessment step takes place periodically.
Equipped with the feedback (self and others), the employee would typically be required to develop and commit to a set of stop-start-continue actions. The commitment would be to the employee’s leader and his/her brother or sister’s keeper. The employees and their leaders are also workshopped on ways to improve vigilance, caution, etc. The stated process gathers individual-focussed information complementing the typically Human Resources-driven employee wellbeing processes.
To conclude, management can achieve significant and sustainable performance improvement by:
- a) Acknowledging that employees’ (and management’s) performance is often constrained by a state of mind that inhibits rational thought;
- b) Empowering themselves and their employees with essential practical knowledge on the psychology of safety; and
- c) Implementing a process that improves self-awareness, that requires commitments to behaviour change and is supported by individual coaching and systemic Human Resources-driven activities.
References:
Gellar. E.S. 2001. The psychology of safety handbook. 2nd Edition. Lewis Publishers.
Harvard Business Review. March-April 2021.
Beatty, S. 2000. The human brain: essentials of behavioral neuroscience. 1st Edition. London, UK: Sage Publications. Inc.
https://www.ilo.org/moscow/areas-of-work/occupational-safety-and-health/WCMS_249278/lang--en/index.htm
For me and my teams which are spread across a number of plant units, the MDW methodology has provided us an effective tool to firstly engage the various teams on the agreed key KPIs for the sections, discuss variances and also possible solutions and secondly it allows me as a leader to promote and reinforce all positive efforts from each and every member of my team so as to sustain a culture of learning and development and to continually meet our targets.

Production Manager, Secondary Smelting and Oxygen Plant, Mufulira Smelter.
Mopani Copper Mine, Zambia
MDW as a tool has assisted the Concentrator team to focus on the key operational aspects that reduce process variation from the set KPIs.

Production Manager, Kitwe Concentrator.
Mopani Copper Mine, Zambia
Mining

Powerful KPIs Masterclass
Webinar description:
Dr Ian Matheson, PhD in Gas Kinetics from St. Andrews University, in Scotland, has been a World-Class company practitioner since 1990, when the west started to take an active interest in the successes demonstrated by the top Asian companies. He has given advice to thousands of leaders in different sectors all around the globe.
He is Managing Director of CDi-AMA, serving the Americas, Middle East (including India) and Africa.
He and his co-consultants bring many years of experience and an exceptional track record in boosting organizations' bottom line performance, and making the companies truly great places to work.
Would you like to send us a comment?
Write to info@cdi-ama.biz
MOVIT Products Ltd has been producing beauty and skin products for over twenty years. It is based in Kampala, Uganda and exports to eight countries in the region.
MOVIT has engaged CDI East Africa to assist the company to introduce world-class practices through the Mission-directed Work Teams (MDWT™) program to support their successful growth strategy.
CDI East Africa director Faith Kimani and CDI-AMA director Ian Matheson launched the program in January 2020, and we are confident that MOVIT’s plans to expand throughout Africa will be realised.

Management meets in a follow-up meeting with CDI East Africa’s Faith Kimani to confirm roll-out strategy.

The chairman and CEO open the first workshop to introduce MDW™ at MOVIT.
What does organisational alignment mean, can it be measured and what can you do to improve it?
Dr Floris Burger (Director of CDI Mining) was invited as a guest speaker to the South African Colliery Manager’s Association (SACMA) quarterly meeting that took place in Witbank on 1 November 2019. Floris’ presentation focussed on the concept of internal alignment within mining organisations.
South African mining organisations are facing numerous challenges: volatile commodity prices; policy uncertainty; rising input costs and; increasing and changing stakeholder expectations. In order to successfully address these challenges, each mining organisation needs to respond in a unified, aligned way. The presentation provided feedback of his research that determined the degree of perceived organisational alignment within South African based mining organisations and also the key enablers of organisational alignment.
The key finding regarding perceived organisational alignment was the significant variance between agreed objectives and goals and actual resource allocation.
Whilst the study identified eleven statistically significant enablers of organisational alignment the following three stood out:
1. Organisational Values: Emphasise the importance of intra-organisational value congruence and develop normatively desired behaviour representative of internal and external stakeholders.
2. Stakeholder Voice: Include the on-going identification of all stakeholder groups, market and non-market stakeholders, in the organisation’s strategic management processes and determine stakeholder needs and expectations on a routine basis.
3. Balanced Objectives and Goals: Organisations should firstly adhere to the principle that internal organisational variety (complexity) needs to match the extent of the external variety (complexity) imposed on the organisation. Secondly, they should recognise that “variety” refers to the range and dynamic nature of market and non-market stakeholder needs and expectations. Finally, organisations should develop overall organisational objectives and goals that are most likely to promote joint production.
His closing remarks included that mining organisations in South Africa need to ensure that all legitimate stakeholders are more actively involved in the value creation and trade processes. Organisational alignment needs to be understood as ground-level pragmatism as opposed to lofty moral principles if it is to drive sustainable performance.
Presentation: Dr Floris Burger, Organisational Alignment, SACMA 1 November 2019
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/floris-burger-8b450943/
Facebook: @CompetitiveDI
Can a lean initiative work in a non-manufacturing environment or department?
The answer is YES.
Indeed Lean Transformation is for any organization that seeks to grow and has a set of objectives to meet. This means Lean or Continuous Improvement initiatives are for all businesses, organizations and departments.
Of course many know lean as a set of tools only meant for a manufacturing plant, department or factory. Nothing could be further from the truth. Lean is for Finance, HR, Sales and Marketing. It’s for the Service sector as much as it is for manufacturing.
Any organization that wants to be part of the future has to find a way to engage in a lean transformation process because times are ever dynamic and business is ever changing. The principles underpinned in lean are such that you keep thinking of the best way to do what it is you do on a daily basis for better “Value” delivery to your customer.
When I joined the Coca-Cola Bottling Co of Nairobi in 1996 as an accounts assistant, the business hadn’t yet embraced Lean. Soon after it was bought by a South African Bottler who brought a Lean transformation system with them. Before the program was introduced we operated in silos. Finance, at least at my junior level for instance, didn’t feel the need to know what was going on in the Sales department or any other department for that matter. The concern at our level, was mainly to meet our deadlines and that was it. My concern at the time was: have I updated and sent the cash flow every Monday? Is the cash book well maintained? Or, have I paid my suppliers on time, have I done my accruals? And as long as I met these deadlines, I didn’t really see the need to know much about the sales people or other departments. I wasn’t the only one with this wrong mindset. But then this would soon change. Suddenly there was pressure for everyone to know how the business was performing. They told us, you are either selling or helping sell. Our senior managers started walking the floor and asking questions like:” Do you know how much we sold last month? What was our target? Etc. The lean transformation culture was slowly taking shape company-wide even though at the time it was only being implemented in the manufacturing department. Our plant had heard of the great results coming from the sister Bottler in Uganda, which had embraced lean with an open heart. Tanzania was also coming on board and no bottler wanted to be left behind. Everyone wanted to be the best Bottler in the group!
A few years later, I was transferred to the Sales Department where I was to manage coolers. Soon the company decentralized budgets in order to hold every department accountable for their own spend. I was selected to help the Country Market Execution Manager, run the Sales budget and to assist in supervising Warehouse and Distribution’s as well.
Soon we begun to become truly accountable for every cent spent in our departments. No one wanted to have an “over-spend”. The company also decided to roll out the Lean program company-wide and I was selected to be the Champion in Sales. The transformation was great. Communication barriers begun to fall. Alignment between management and the sales force begun to flow. Feedback from the market also begun to flow upwards and horizontally. Each Area Sales Manager had a team. They would meet weekly to assess their performance in line with the Company’s objectives and to conduct problem solving. As a champion I would participate in their meetings, collect feedback and share with management or at least help management come to the floor to see the Innovations and problem-solving that was taking place. I would also help in horizontal alignment between Sales and other departments. Some of the meetings would be very heated but in the end we did problem solve. The Silos were slowly falling away and people were taking ownership.
As a result of this, certain key issues affecting performance were addressed; Sales numbers were often met and surpassed. Morale went up! Distributors were happier as we also had a forum for active engagement with them. The missing tools were provided and even though most of the management team left soon after this phase, Mission Directed Work Teams™, a lean transformation product of Competitive Dynamics International (AMA), which I now implement as a consultant, did transform the business, Everyone including finance and HR was concerned about how to get better in every KPI that was being measured in order to satisfy their customers!
But what is lean or lean management?
It is best described by James P Womack & Daniel T Jones in their book LEAN THINKING as:
Being concerned with Defining Value from the customer’s point of view, identifying the value adding processes from Design, Launch, to Order, to raw materials, to manufacture, to delivery to the customer and organizing these processes in sequence, whilst removing the non- value adding activities or processes and then making this value flow without interruption as the customer pulls as you pursue perfection.
“All we are doing is looking at the timeline from the moment a customer gives us an order to the point when we collect the cash. And we are reducing that time by removing non-value adding wastes”
Taichi Ohno, Founder TPS, 1988
Since the primary role of a lean transformation exercise is to identify Value from the customer’s perspective, map out the value adding processes in the value stream, eliminate the non-value adding activities and wastes, engage the people and make value flow, any organization or department can and should be able to engage in lean transformation.
If you consider the 7 wastes identified by Taichi Ohno; Namely waste of; Transportation, Inventory, Motion, Waiting, Over-processing, Over-production, Defects and most recently the 8th waste of under-utilized human potential, you will realize that every organization has room for improvement. This applies to Factories, Banks, Call Centers, Hospitals, Hotels, Tour operators, Supermarket chains, Governments, NGOs etc. The same goes for every department in any organization: Procurement, HR, Finance, Sales, and Marketing, Warehousing, Distribution and Manufacturing. Every organization and department has an opportunity to improve on their processes and eliminate wastes to become a lean enterprise.
What’s important is having the right mindset and a culture of continuous improvement from the person with the broom to the CEO, and for management to provide an enabling environment. You’ll be surprised that everyone, including the person with the broom or the one driving the forklift, wants to make the business better and successful. But more than this they know how.
We all can go lean and continuously improve!
SOURCE:
Lean Thinking, Toyota Way
Still on unlocking your organization’s potential through people…
Visionary companies compensate people well without discrimination. There’s no need in having a budget on team building events and motivation when you don’t compensate them well in the first place. The package should be attractive for all levels both junior and senior. There are industry averages for benchmarking; you can choose to be upper quartile. Visionary companies would rather pay everyone well and peg it to a high pressure team bonus system than underpay. When the junior staff feel well taken care of they won’t have a problem if the bosses are well taken care of too.
Some of the conflicts and industrial strikes witnessed around us are based on this one fact; the lower levels perceive that the senior ones are well compensated and better taken care of than they are. This creates the “WE” vs “THEY” mentality. With this you can’t build a lasting visionary organization. You will even have serious challenges achieving your short term objectives.
The right leaders will also help create an environment of empowerment and teamwork. Level 5 leaders allow their people to brainstorm and to problem-solve for decision making. They allow everyone in the organization to make a contribution and give an improvement idea regarding their work and business at large. They encourage original ideas from everyone in the organization. Some have stumbled on new products as a result of this. They foster team spirit and encourage cooperation between departments and teams, thus eliminating conflict and fostering growth.
Great leaders in visionary companies understand that the people dimension goes beyond their employees and extends to customer and suppliers as well. Toyota for example, a great visionary lean enterprise, has made Respect for People and Continuous Improvement its pillars. These visionary companies cooperate with their Key Accounts, Dealers, Agents, Distributors, Partners’ and Suppliers. They consider their partners’ incentives as equally important as employee pay packages. They will train and develop them in-order to build a lean, visionary enterprise. In most cases they have agreed to grow together. Toyota will go into a joint venture with a supplier it considers key, if it has to in order to meet its objectives, rather than list a new supplier. They want to retain their best partners as much as they want to retain their best employees!
Once you have set the people dimension well in place, be sure to anchor it to a culture of Continuous Improvement which should (if possible) be embedded in the company’s core values to ensure continuity & cushion the business against laxity which will very easily lead to complacency.
A great leader, also known as a Level 5 Leader, is one who possesses Extreme Personal Humility and Intense Professional will.
SOURCE:
Built to Last, Good to Great, The Toyota Way
“People are not the greatest asset to your business, the right people are.” Jim Collins - Good to great.
At the heart of every institution are people. At the centre of every lean transformation process are people. At the heart of your business are people, visionary and non-visionary companies had/have people. The question then begs; what is the difference between the visionary companies and those that haven’t made it to this category so far, in terms of people?
Research has established that the right people and the right disciplines guided the visionary companies into their great success.
As you think of how to take your organization or department to the next level think carefully about the people aspect.
If our boards pick the right people to the top, then we will begin to get it right on people all through the business. In order not to destabilize your business, it’s highly recommended that you select and promote from within except in circumstances where no ideal candidate can be found internally. Why do we recommend that you select internally? Because these people understand your purpose, philosophy, vision, values and culture better than outsiders. They have grown with the business. If you need to hire senior executives from outside then select people who agree with your Core Ideology above.
Once we have the right leaders at the top, they in turn will get it right by selecting and creating an environment for selection where people, whose personal values marry with your organization’s values, are given priority. Once you do this, training them about the work for which you are hiring them becomes a lot easier. Two can’t walk together unless the values are aligned.
When recruiting, the visionary companies placed a lot of emphasis on character attributes rather than on specific educational background, practical skills, specialized knowledge etc. Not that these are not important but they figured out that these are more teachable, whereas dimensions like attitude, character, work ethic, basic intelligence, commitment to fulfilling tasks, motivation, self-drive and values are much more ingrained.
Of course if you get people with a blend of everything from Education background to appropriate ingrained attributes it’s an added advantage, but people shouldn’t be denied an opportunity simply because they lack something that can be taught. Once hired, train them and they should be quick to learn in order to gain the necessary skills.
Visionary companies did not use layoffs as a Primary tool for transformation. They seldom lay off; even in times when some plants had to shut down. Instead they will first reassign people to other territories, departments etc. However when a layoff must happen, (this needs to be more of an exception than a norm), then they will get the wrong people off their teams in order to achieve their goals faster and much more cost effectively. If you have people who don’t live your values, who don’t understand where you are going as a business, who don’t show commitment to your vision and don’t contribute to your overall strategy, then, yes, the most logical & cost effective thing to do is to release them and then steer the business in the right direction with the right people.
SOURCE:
Built to Last, Good to Great, The Toyota Way

Developing Engaging Leaders in the Workplace
Webinar description:
Jenny Johnson, Professional Coach and Partner Consultant at CDi London, is our special guest on this webinar, discussing how to develop engaging leaders in the workplace. With over 10 years working with businesses in the UK, Jenny´s skill lies in helping leaders effectively communicate and engage the people they work with.
Would you like to send us a comment?
Write to info@cdi-ama.biz

Mining in Latin America
Optimal Resource Allocation:
A Perspective on Organizational Alignment
Webinar description:
This webinar is based on the multi-country, multi-site analysis conducted over 4 years in the mining industry by Dr. Floris Burger, Director at CDi Mining.
Research link:
http://bit.ly/2F1b4Za
Would you like to send us a comment?
Write to info@cdi-ama.biz
Research shows that all great and enduring businesses with at least 50 years of exemplary performance discovered one secret; there’s no short cut when it comes to success. They were blessed with Level 5 leaders through whom their enduring legacies were built.
A level 5 leader is not concerned about his/her personal credit or glory but rather how to build and leave behind a lasting successful business. These leaders understood that in order to win they must first answer the question of “Who” should be in the team. With the right people in your team you can then steer the business in any direction that’s deemed appropriate.
But exactly who is the right person to have in your team? Level 5 leaders understand that the right person is best determined by more innate qualities e.g. Work Ethic, Adaptability, Integrity, Personal beliefs & values etc. These qualities can be taught but can’t be attained by people who generally aren’t built up as such. Rather than spend resources and time trying to change a person to be more motivated about their work you’d rather hire a person already self-motivated about life in general and help them acquire the skills needed for the job. For Level 5 leaders, Qualifications, Specialized skills and work experience were not a primary consideration. These can be acquired.
Once you have the right people in your team, then together you can figure out what suits the business best to make it valuable to society, shareholders and the workers in the long-run. The danger would be to identify the best business, strategy or continuous improvement initiative to get into and then due to lack of focus or a clear path for the future to keep changing when times are tough, or when we don’t quickly see results. At the slightest resistance we change or kill our continuous improvement programs before we have seen the results. A farmer will not simply quit his trade because of bad weather in one season. He must try for several seasons to really know if farming a particular crop is worthwhile or not.
Likewise our continuous improvement initiatives ought to be given a chance, 3-5 years to see initial results, and for sustainability we ought to hold onto them 10 years or longer because with every plough, the ground is getting more ready to yield a crop
A good strategy or continuous improvement initiative shouldn’t be abandoned every time we have a new CEO or Management Team. The enduring businesses (Over 100 years with the youngest being 80 years) spent a lot of years in the buildup, researching, testing & trying different options without making a profit, some near bankruptcy until their best ideas came to fruition. Once identified, they then stuck to the lane and have never looked back. Have profits followed them? Yes, year in year out for decades.
Consistency and focus will lead to sustainability of your strategic plans including Continuous Improvement Programs. Sustainability will yield to an enduring legacy, which benefits Society, Team members and the business owners!
Don’t hang up your boots yet. Stay focused for sustainability.
REFERENCE COMPANIES:
Toyota Motor Company, Kimberly-Clark, Walgreens, Fannie Mae, Wells Fargo
-The Diffusion of Innovations
"Diffusion of innovations is a theory that seeks to explain how, why, and at what rate new ideas and technology spread."
Everett M. Rogers
All of us involved in introducing continuous improvement initiatives have likely taken note that the adoption of a change effort required more time and patience than originally planned for. We have learned that it is wise to plan accordingly and not attempt to compel compliance – it doesn’t work. Even small changes in organisations require time for people to assess and accept what those changes entail and the impact on themselves personally.
For employees to truly support and get behind a change effort, a critical mass of those colleagues must be attained. Until then, the majority will not join and come onboard. When a new program, new technology or improvement initiative is introduced into a work system, even if many think the idea is a good one, most employees are reluctant to show support until they are persuaded that others are getting behind it too. The effect is a slow start until a critical mass is reached, then a runaway snowball effect often takes place.
The graph below, based on the theory developed by E.M. Rogers in 1962, demonstrates the adoption sequence of a new concept, idea, behaviour, innovation or product, among individuals and organisations. What this tells us is that regardless of the beneficial aspects of an innovation, its adoption does not happen simultaneously among all those impacted. Some will adopt an innovation faster than others – and some, perhaps never.

Critical Mass: A sufficient number of adopters of an innovation so that the rate of adoption becomes self-sustaining and creates further growth. Typically, 10-25% of the population
As a CI leader it is important to understand that the adoption of innovations does not distinguish between executives, managers, supervisors and the frontline employees. In each of these employee groups you likely will find colleagues who fall into 5 classic adopter categories. Because someone holds a managerial role do not take for granted that they endorse the change initiative. They, like their frontline colleagues, will assess the likely impact of the initiative for themselves and what that means to them now and in the future.
ADOPTER CATEGORIES
Through additional research, we also learn that certain characteristics are shared among those who comprise these 5 adopter categories: Innovators, Early Adopters, Early Majority, Late Majority and Laggards. In the chart below, you can compare the differing descriptions of each adopter category and what additional information they may require to respond positively to the innovation, new program or improvement initiative.
THE TAKEAWAYS
- Even small changes in organisations take time as people assess what the change entails and the impact on them personally.
- Because someone holds a managerial role do not take for granted that they endorse the change initiative.
- Three critical factors likely to impact the rate at which critical mass accelerates:
- How quickly and enthusiastically “leaders” embrace the change
- The complexity of the change and ease of implementation
- Clear and immediate benefits
SOURCE:
Rogers, Everett M. (1962). Diffusion of innovations (1st ed.). New York: Free Press of Glencoe. OCLC 254636.
Rogers, Everett M. (1983). Diffusion of innovations (3rd ed.). New York: Free Press of Glencoe. ISBN 9780029266502.
Wejnert, Barbara (August 2002). "Integrating models of diffusion of innovations: a conceptual framework". Annual Review of Sociology. 28: 297–326. doi:10.1146/annurev.soc.28.110601.141051. JSTOR 3069244.
To know more about this visit:
This year 2019, Competitive Dynamics International (CDI) is contributing with the second virtual module for the Leadership and Disaster Resilience Program of the Honduran Institute of Earth Sciences (IHCIT) and the National Autonomous University of Honduras (UNAH), given by the engineer Rosa Zapata, director of CDi Latin America.
The second module is aimed at technical staff working in different government entities, academia, NGOs, civil society. The central theme of this module is Resilience and Leadership, with a duration of 10 virtual weeks and a face-to-face session in Honduras.
Designed to promote training processes on issues of risk management, leadership and resilience as a practical alternative to improve the skills of professionals in different sectors that develop actions in the search for risk reduction, contributing to the development of the participants for who can apply it in their work and personal environment.
The Leadership and Disaster Resilience Management Program is sponsored by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, The University of George Washington, IHCIT and UNAH.
Follow us on our social networks to know more about what we are doing.
LinkedIn: @CDIAmericasMiddleEastAfrica
Facebook: @CompetitiveDI
It is said that people have habits, and companies have routines. In reality, a routine is nothing more than a more structured and joint habit that leads to the formation of organizational cultures. Everything in life, in its form, is a set of habits. Most of life seems a reflexive form of decision making, but in reality they are habits [1]. But there's a problem! Our brain does not know how to differentiate good habits from bad ones. So, what do you think could happen with organizational cultures ?!
It is important to recognize that, just as personal habits can be developed, cultivated and even modified, organizational cultures can also be pre-conceptualized and planned to the need and challenges of the business, identified in the strategic planning exercises of each company.
On the other hand, it is known that the role of senior management and the team of managers is to offer sustainable results, but when the results are not as expected, this becomes a problem. Inexorably, all those who really want to improve their company must be full of problems which must be managed. Doing management is having a sequence of actions necessary to achieve a certain desired result, or also called method [2]. The essence of work in an organization is to achieve desired results, and therefore it is essential that all people master the method. A method for the effective solution of problems. However, bringing a method to action requires a routine of day-to-day work, without failures. The great difficulty in achieving this excellence is to establish the basis of a good routine,
Habits arise because the brain is always looking for ways to save effort, since it is a muscle that also needs to rest. The brain process of a habit is a three-step loop: signal, routine, reward. The reward is what tells the brain if it is worth remembering the loop.
In every organization, there are basic habits that can start a process that over time transform everything. Having the habit of solving problems is one of them. The basic habits, when they start to change, remake other patterns, and with that the organizations cultures are built. In fact, basic habits offer "small triumphs". And when a small triumph has been achieved, the forces are set in motion to achieve another! So, when we hear the phrase "organizational culture", whether it's a results communication conference, workshops or simple management meetings, let's take a few moments to think. How are we building the company's organizational culture? For example, a badly designed recognition system could lead to people or teams starting to work in the form of islands, with conflicting objectives, and this can provoke reprisals and resentments to the internal one. Is it really what we want and need as an organizational culture?
References:
[1] The power of habits (Charles Duhigg)
[2] The true power (Vicente Falconi)
- Consistency leads to sustainment
Article 3 of a series of 3.
Inconsistency in our organization may be the quickest method of squashing a CI initiative. A clear message supported with consistent actions defines the expectations and standards that drive continuous improvement programs. Employees need to know what to expect and what is asked of them. Mixed messages and grey areas inspire the variability within organizations that can undermine the results we desire. Defined standards supported by accountability stabilize that daily rhythm of continuous improvement.
Finding this consistency and rhythm of your CI initiative alleviates the organizational fear of the unknown. There will always be a level of chaos or disruption in every organization. A CI culture identifies the process to address these disruptions and abnormalities. That process and new routines, can become that one dependable and constant factor in a world of chaos that any level of leadership or employee can lean on in a moment of crisis.
Employee participation to a new process is essential, but perhaps may even spark a rise in fear of failure, as the execution of these routines and behaviors are potentially out of our comfort zone. It may even be implied or misunderstood that failure equals punishment. Perhaps the most important key to a successful and sustainable CI culture is the engagement of our workforce! A statistic published by the Marketing Research Firm, Aberdeen suggests that Companies with engaged employees see 233% greater customer loyalty and a 26% greater annual increase in revenue. Implied punishment and fear is counterintuitive to CI success.
Utilizing tools such as coaching, visual management and reward and recognition provide an organization the opportunity to alleviate fear, encourage ownership, shift cultural habits and foster engagement. These tools are part of that daily CI rhythm and consistency necessary to close the gaps and sustain a CI culture.
Leaders inherently play the pivotal role of successful CI transformation. The journey starts in the day to day routines and activities that we perform as an organization – these “habits” secure the commitment of the leadership team and build the foundation for a new organizational culture. Accountability provides us an opportunity to reinforce our cultural habits, foster engagement and to provide sustainment. CI is a journey. It is a new way of working and thinking. It is a process. World Class results are the outcome of adhering to a good process!
To know more about this visit:
Marcos Pavani, Director at CDi - Brasil was an invited speaker at the First Maintenance Excellence and Industry 4.0 Workshop in Sao Paulo, Brazil.
For more information visit:


Taking the first steps on a Continuous Improvement Journey
Article 2 of a series of 3.
Often, the introduction of a CI initiative is accompanied with some amount of training and education for all employees. Certainly, employees must understand the “Why” the initiative is important to the organization in order to foster engagement and commitment. Quite commonly, the “Why” is well received by all. However, the “How” we implement, can seem daunting to employees and a bit overwhelming and misunderstood. Perhaps, it is even perceived as more work and outside of the normal day to day tasks. So how does an organization take the first step?
Organizations frequently use the word transformation when describing the journey of a CI initiative. This implies that over a period of time; the organization has changed the way it thinks, performs and manages the business – a cultural shift – a transformation. A key principle of CI is small changes and improvements over time lead to large scale change and results. One can apply this same philosophy to the CI journey itself. By identifying key behaviors for leadership and implementing those routines and processes over time, we begin the CI journey, reinforcing the cultural shift and leading to large scale change - a transformation.
By providing supervisors and managers with a thoughtful and structured process for daily/weekly and monthly routines, we create the necessary momentum needed to lead this transformation. Adherence to this process is extremely important in the early stages and can help ease the overwhelming feeling of the “How do we do it?”. Until a new process becomes “the way we do business”, constant reinforcement, coaching and accountability is critical.
In Brandon Hall Group’s 2014 State of Performance Management Survey, 34% of global organizations said that executives do not hold leaders accountable for performance.
To assure sustainment of a new organizational culture, it becomes necessary to build accountability into the process. It is natural for leaders to fall back on what they know or what they have done in the past – especially in a moment of crisis for the organization. Certainly, new behaviors and routines take time to become the new standard or habits of the organization.
By providing our leadership with a clear set of expectations and obligations, we eliminate those grey areas of individual management style, define common goals, standardize best practices that drive performance and reinforce the commitment and support to the frontline workforce. Essentially, setting the stage and closing the gaps for a CI transformation.
To know more about this visit:
Leader Standard Work – supporting a new organizational direction.
Article 1 of a series of 3.
Every organization strives for World Class Performance. Often, an organization comes to the conclusion that implementing a CI (Continuous Improvement) program is the logical pathway to achieving these results. When an organization decides to implement a program, it is safe to say that they will be asking employees and leadership alike to either add or subtract particular habits/activities from the way they currently conduct work. Leader Standard Work becomes a critical component to achieving the success and sustainment of a new organizational direction by embedding behaviors and routines into their process. Whether it is problem solving, coaching or offering support to the frontline employees, these new routines are the building blocks to successful implementation.
I have had the opportunity to work with dozens of successful organizations that have been in business for decades. Many have started as a small or family business and have become increasingly successful over time. One could argue that their success is based upon what they have done in the past and to deviate from those practices would be insanity. Having asked many a manager why they adhere to specific practices, I am often told: “that is the way Bob taught me to do it before he retired”, or “this is the way we have always done it.”
In many cases, as the business grew, a certain manager performed the work in a way that made sense to them. And over time, this became the “standard work” for that particular management position. Often, no one questioned this particular practice due to the success – or better put, the lack of failure in this department. And so, in many cases, inefficiencies were built into the daily work – not by design but more by inheritance.
Another observation I have made, is that Supervisors and Managers have often been promoted into their position because they were good operators and have a wealth of knowledge about the process that they are now in charge of overseeing. Often, the skills that led them to that position do not necessarily translate into being a successful CI leader. In a case like this, it is even more important that best practice routines are established. Keep in mind, we want to set them up for success!!
CI initiatives inspire us to ask if what we are currently doing is truly the best possible practice that may be available to us. As uncomfortable as this may be, it is a necessary question. These new routines may be difficult – especially for those who have been in the organization a long time and have built a career on their past success stories. Managers may even interpret our requests for changing the way they work as a message that what they were doing was wrong – a paradigm we should always steer away from and which is most likely untrue.
However, these tough questions must be asked. Identifying key routines and behaviors for all levels of leadership create the necessary CI “habits” that drive organizational results. Leader Standard Work becomes the tool that supports these new behaviors. Adherence to these new routines is paramount to the new initiative and must be maintained for the sustainment and cultural shift we seek.
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On 3rd October CDI East Africa hosted a workshop to present aspects of the Mission-Directed Work-Teams™ (MDW™) program for workplace excellence at the Strathmore University Business School in Nairobi.
Faith Kimani, director of CDI - East Africa, coordinated the workshop and introduced Dr Ian Matheson of parent company CDI-AMA (Africa, Middle East, Americas). Ian shared many principles and anecdotes that differentiated the practices espoused in Mission-Directed Work-Teams™, and which resulted in superior performance compared with those adopted by traditional companies. Ian has been active in promotion of World Class business practice for over a quarter century and has been responsible for implementation of the program at sites in Europe, Asia, Australasia, Africa and the Americas. The program has been applied in 80 countries in all sectors of business in manufacturing, mining, government, banking, supply chain, administration and other companies.
The delegates were drawn from both Kenya and Uganda. Several had already commenced with the program at their companies. Feedback was positive and it has been decided that similar workshops should be scheduled in 2019. Details will be available next year. For further information on the program please contact Faith Kimani at Faith@cdi-ama.biz or Dr Ian Matheson at ian@cdi.biz, or alternatively check the website at www.cdi-ama.biz for more information and updates.


Living our values
In accordance to one of our values: Make a Contribution, CDi Latin America conducted the workshop World-Class Organisations and their Competitive Advantage at the Chamber of Commerce of Cortés (CCIC) in Honduras.
Delegates of different companies in the manufacturing and service sector learnt about the principles and actions needed to become a world-class company and how to make a difference in terms of competitiveness.
Follow CDi Latin America on their Twitter account: @CDiLatinAmerica
To know more about this visit:
https://twitter.com/CCICHN/status/1037465834514509830


In the previous article on the subject of organizations as living systems it was explained that organizations function within an open system environment. In this article I will discuss how, within the aforementioned context, the application of Mission Directed Work Teams™ (MDW™) improves organizational performance.
First, organizational performance may be viewed as the degree to which the organization is able to maximize cash flow in a sustainable way. Second, the aforementioned can be achieved if the allocation of resources is balanced in such a way that the expectations of all its legitimate stakeholders are addressed in a sustainable way, that is, each stakeholder group needs to be satisfied with the appropriation of value as a result of the value created, measured against their contribution to the value creation process.
Systems theory is often used as a conceptual framework for describing and analyzing organizational-relevant events that are interrelated in a persistent manner. Such relationships are on-going because they sustain themselves by acquiring energy and information input from external, environmental events. These phenomena include groups of individuals in inter-dependent relationships, and the interaction of these individuals with their environment, governed by the principle of equilibrium.
The table below contains a summary of system characteristics and associated descriptions and is followed by a brief discussion on each characteristic. The article then discusses how MDW™ practices apply to an organization’s performance (that is, the system’s performance) and closes with suggested key habits of system-thinking managers.

Table 1
Inputs consist of information and signals from the environment and system functioning as well as materials and information that are to be transformed into products and services. Inputs also describe antecedents as well as enabling or constraining factors on role players’ interactions. These include individual characteristics (for example, competencies, personalities, personal values), team or group-level factors (for example, task structure, external leader influences, demographics), and organizational and contextual factors (for example, organizational design features, environmental complexity).
In an operational sense, throughputs refer to the processes required to transform inputs into outputs (typically goods and/or services), that is, to create value. Management’s role is to minimize waste by reducing variability between expectations (in between all legitimate stakeholders) and perceived organizational outcomes.
The cyclicality inherent in the throughput process is largely a process of dynamic planning and re-planning and includes episodic cycles. Episodic cycles refer to situations where different processes are executed at different times, depending on task demands. Whereas throughputs (deliberate processes to transform inputs) are considered to be the primary mediator between inputs and outputs, the emergence systems characteristic refers to internal system states that form over time and its formation is not a direct consequence of the inputs from the environment.
The perspective a manager or an organization as a collective will have of what the value creation process entails will depend on their view on what constitutes value to start off with. The value an organization plans to create is typically incorporated within its purpose or mission statement and subsequent strategic, tactical and operational objectives and goals, leading the discussion to the goals and outcomes systems characteristic. The goals and outcomes of a process may or may not be the same against what was expected (that is, the stated or unstated objectives and goals). Organizational and individual objectives and goals are often completely arbitrary, and the perceived organizational objectives and goals often vary from one person to the next. Importantly, goals are assumed as given inputs into decision-making processes. The values, experiences, and knowledge of leaders in the upper echelons of organizations impact the strategic decisions made by these leaders, ultimately influencing organizational performance. Conditioned by personal values and intra-organizational dynamics, all layers of management will interpret and filter top-down initiated assignments and events. The aforementioned emphasizes the openness of an organizational system.
Although an organization is cognitively open and therefore interacts with its environment – albeit not necessarily in a structured way – it needs to be operationally closed in order to allow constant alignment of purpose. This alignment is required as a counter to entropy – to do so organizations accumulate and store more energy than required as a form of negative entropy. This additional and often redundant energy takes the form of organizational expansion, elaboration and bureaucracy in the form of policy and procedures and is often perceived as constant conflict between flexibility and standardization.
Systems theory influenced many management theorists to envision the organization as more organic and holistic, that is, as an “organism” rather than as a “machine”. Viewed holistically, then, all of an organization’s elements or components are “necessary” to be able to fulfil its purpose. The interdependence characteristic provides the primary reason for looking at an organization as a system. Interaction between role-players (including unilateral communication) takes place because role-players perceive an interdependent relationship triggered by a common goal, service-expectations and process or task dependency. Organizations are essentially a social system, that is, the interacting units are people. Interaction between internal role players as well as with external stakeholders is, therefore, the life blood of organizations. Mutual expectations are agreed upon and variances (outcomes versus expectations) are addressed. Critically, (albeit in a perfect competitive environment) organizations with a narrow view on external as well as internal interdependencies will eventually experience a decline in performance as relationships extinguish or become destructive due to the inadequacy of interaction.
Control mechanisms, that is, positive and negative feedback loops, maintain the system at some desired state. Triggers from the outside (environment) influence the system to adjust in order to maintain a degree of internal order in response to the external environment in which it is embedded. Negative feedback mechanisms reduce the effect of these fluctuations, while positive feedback mechanisms increase these fluctuations to sustain this equilibrium state.
Adaptation refers to the preservation and changing of the character of the organization. Adaptation also refers to the organization’s renewal as it responds to threats and opportunities in its environment. Organizations are required to change and adapt in response to environmental fluctuations in order to sustain function and retain advantage. Related to the concept of adaptation is organizations’ responsiveness. Responsiveness involves two organizational capabilities namely its ability to anticipate change in its external environment and also the speed it is able to respond. In an open system, environmental interchange is on-going and because the environment is in a constant state of change, the system must be adaptable. This adaptability should go beyond homeostasis to accommodate self-organization (control) following a destabilizing event. Parts of a system must behave in accordance with its rules and must adapt to the environment on the basis of feedback, which explains the ways systems use their own outcomes to gauge effect and make necessary adjustments.
Open systems are self-governing or autonomous, but not “independent” in as much as they are conditioned by the environment and its inputs. An open system must be capable of sensing deviations from the ‘‘assigned’’ norm and of correcting these tendencies thereby maintaining a degree of balance. A primary function of the interacting subsystems (that is, departments or groups of individuals within an organization) is to help maintain system balance. Not all systems have equal capacity to adapt. Highly chaotic systems cannot maintain their behaviors, as small forces can result in systems disruption (the so-called butterfly effect). Highly chaotic systems have too few stable components and tend to fail due to too little buffering and low adaptability. On the other hand, highly ordered systems are often too rigid to coordinate new behaviors and likewise tend to fail. As organizations expand, the need arises for increased integration and coordination as a counter.
The characteristic of equifinality in open systems means the same final state can be reached from differing conditions and a variety of paths. In an organizational context, equifinality therefore means that the final state – for example the performance goals of an organization – can be achieved through multiple and different organizational structures and processes, even if the contingencies the organization face are the same. Related to the equifinality characteristic of open systems the essence of systems thinking lies in a shift from seeing interrelationships rather than linear cause-and-effect chains.
System hierarchy refers to the attribute that every complex system consists of a number of subsystems that have levels of increasing complexity. Organizational subsystems are composed of interconnected role-players that form a network of linkages that interact nonlinearly to form the organization’s unique identity. The hierarchy of complexity within an organization would be: an individual, a group, and the organization.
How does Mission Directed Work Teams™ (MDW™) application improve system functioning – and thereby organizational performance? MDW™ is a structured process that intensively involves all team members in high-engagement top-down cascades creating understanding, dialogue, feedback (bottom-up) and accountability. It empowers team leaders to creatively align their teams and individual roles with the overall objectives and goals of the organization and to involve team members in problem-solving key variances.
The MDW™ approach considers current teams as the smallest unit of analysis from an organizational behavior perspective. This allows a sound balance between the overall macro view of the organization (the overall organization being more than the sum of its parts) and the opposite each-individual employee view on organizational behavior (a reductionist view).
Each team is required to develop their team purpose supporting the overall mission of the organization. The aforementioned, however, should not be a top-down process only. As teams develop their respective purpose statements it should inform the overall mission of the organization. Teams are, furthermore, required to routinely provide evidence of their understanding of the organizational mission, overall strategy as well as strategy execution status. To this end, it is expected of team leaders to engage in sense making, that is, team leaders need to describe and rationalize organizational-relevant events and circumstances to team members. It goes further, though, as team leaders need to put external-to-organizational events that impact the organization into context for team members. Linked to the development of a team purpose would be the norms and values the team members prescribe to. Striving towards adherence to common values has been proven to be a key organizational alignment enabler and it also contributes to system stability and predictability.
Next, team leaders and their team members need to manage the input of information from various stakeholders of which their team leader’s principal and the team’s customers are the primary sources. With frontline level teams, the aforementioned as well as the teams’ suppliers are focused on. However, the more senior the team, the wider the periphery of stakeholders will be and, therefore, increasingly includes the balance of stakeholders (e.g. organized labor, the community, external suppliers, government institutions, shareholders). Structured engagement between role players with the aim to reduce variances is the cornerstone of MDW™ practices, hence the identification of each team’s stakeholders, based on perceived dependencies, is of critical importance as to ensure the interacting units internal to the organization as well as with external parties are formally ‘’connected’’ and that mutual expectations are clearly defined.
The cyclicality characteristic of a system is dampened through the application of MDW™ practices since teams are required to continuously align and re-align their objectives and goals with that of their stakeholders, therefore applying a more dynamic approach compared to the typical quarterly individual performance management activities, for example. The use of standardized MDW™ visual tools also reduce perceived organizational complexity and system cyclicality.
Teams are required to identify a balanced set of objectives and goals aligned with their key stakeholders’ objectives and goals. Balanced objectives and goals will include aspects such as quality, speed, cost, safety and people. The aforementioned should, furthermore, reflect balance pertaining to time horizons (that is, short and long term objectives and goals). With set trigger levels for problem solving, team leaders engage in problem solving activities in order to return to plan but also to prevent re-occurrence whilst behavior that led to the meeting objectives and goals are strengthened. Team leaders need to continuously balance the resource allocation (time and material) between their key stakeholders in order to maintain the optimum level of system stability. When cascading objectives and goals, managers should be reminded of the equifinality system characteristic, that is, the same final state can be reached from different initial conditions as well as through different strategies. This will allow team leaders to creatively align their teams’ objectives and goals with the organizations mission and should result not only in more realistic and relevant objectives and goals but also increased ownership and subsequent increased accountability.
MDW™ practices are also well suited to ensure that all teams and by default, then, the organization, continuously adapt to its changing environments. This is achieved by teams staying ‘’close’’ to their respective stakeholders’ expectations and taking corrective (and preventative) action when expectations are not met (single feedback learning). Teams, however, are also encouraged to practice double feedback learning during which they challenge the assumptions behind objectives and goals for their validity. The aforementioned also counters entropy and often, organizations realize that continuous improvement is often only good enough ‘’just to keep up’’ with the changing environment, hence many organizations rather subscribe to continuous change instead of periodic efforts to make step changes.
To summarize. Through the application of MDW™ practices, organizations optimize system performance by institutionalizing structured engagement between stakeholders with the main objective being to reduce variances between expectations and perceived outcomes.
My suggested key habits of systems-thinking managers:
- Optimise the overall purpose of the organization by looking for common objectives between stakeholders;
- Identify the system elements by looking for patterns of interaction;
- Identify the level and asymmetry of dependency between interacting units through the identification of cause and effect;
- Provide context to subsystems (teams) by engaging in sense-making discussions; and
- Facilitate learning experiences through inclusive problem solving.
In closing, from Yuval Harari – ‘’in a world deluged by irrelevant information, clarity is power’’.
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- Lazenby, J.A.A. 2007. Ethics, identity and organizational learning: challenges for South African managers. Proceedings of world academy of science, engineering and technology, 24:25-30, October.
- Lepmets, M., McBride, T. & Ras, E. 2012. Goal alignment in process improvement. The journal of systems and software, 85:1440-1452.
- Mathieu, J., Maynard, M.T., Rapp, T. & Gilson, L. 2008. Team effectiveness 1997-2007: a review of recent advancements and a glimpse into the future. Journal of management, 34(3):410-475.
- Sabherwal, R., Hirschheim, R. & Goles, T. 2001. The dynamics of alignment: insights from a punctuated equilibrium model. Organization science, 12(2):179-197.
- Schneider, M. & Somers, M. 2006. Organizations as complex adaptive systems: implications of complexity theory for leadership research. The leadership quarterly, 17:351-365.
- Smets, M., Morris, T. & Greenwood, R. 2012. From practice to field: a multi-level model of practice-driven institutional change. Academy of management journal, 55(4):877-904.
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In July, we had the pleasure of launching MDW ™ in Molino Harinero Sula S.A. with its executives . This is how their World-Class Journey formally begins.
During this session we worked on the strategic deployment; Directors and managers were introduced to the world-class philosophy and we built the structure which will support them the following months.
At CDI Latin America we are very pleased to be able to collaborate with a group of enthusiastic executives willing to make a difference for their company, their employees and their country.
Welcome to the MDW ™ community!
Molino Harinero Sula is placed in San Pedro Sula, Honduras.
Should you wish to know more about this company visit www.molinoharinerosula.com



Launching Continuous Improvement (CI) Efforts When Trust is Low.
The issue of “trust between Leadership and Employees” as a prerequisite to launching a Continuous Improvement (CI) effort warrants exploration. Few could argue that having a trusting relationship, as employees and management begin working more closely together, is advantageous. But what happens when trust is low? Is it wise to “jump in” and begin an all-out CI initiative when little trust exists? And, what if trust between the parties further deteriorates during the process? Should you throw in the towel and try another time?
Some argue that, without a foundation of trust, nothing can be accomplished, and those, foolish enough to try, are doomed to failure. The solid ground of being able to count on each other (leadership and employees) to act in certain ways, they say, is essential to building a successful and sustainable program. It’s asserted that trust must be strong and is a precondition to beginning any worthwhile effort. I disagree.
High levels of trust are often lacking in organizations, and yet these businesses have no choice but to improve performance in order to be competitive in their industry. Distrust may have been fomented over years or even decades, and people have learned to be wary of promises of new investment and employee engagement. Employees, salary and hourly alike, have learned to always keep their eyes wide open and expect that this “flavour of the month” won’t last very long. No one wishes to play the fool! Employees and Leaders, by experience and instinct, look out for their own personal interests and don’t necessarily equate success of the business to their individual benefit.
So, the question remains, when trust is weak and yet change is necessary, is it wise to move ahead?
I SAY YES and suggest you take the leap and begin now – regardless of the trust level. The very fact that consideration is being given to launching a CI effort is evidence that improving performance is vital – to both the business and ultimately to all employees. It is also a fact that neither leadership nor employees can go it alone – they need each other.
So, after years in the trenches and launching several dozens of CI efforts, I have come to the view that real trust can be a by-product of working more closely and collaboratively together. When people do what they say they will do repeatedly, time after time, trust will increase.
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The last few years have witnessed some of the worst industrial actions taken by trade unions in the workplace.
With national constitutions empowering workers to go on strike if they feel that their grievances are not addressed, employers have witnessed some of the highest levels of employee downtime while the workers have had a chance to voice their displeasure openly.
Whilst every party felt their action was justified, it's the consumer of their goods or services that suffered. Never mind that some of the most protracted strikes (in Kenya) were in education & healthcare sectors!
Some of the critical questions to ask then are:
- Why so much waste in terms of time & productivity per man hour?
- Why such pain (in healthcare lives were lost)?
- Could the strikes have been avoided?
- Are all of the strikes justified?
- Why the mistrust?
- What can we do to make sure it doesn't happen again?
To answer these questions I'll take you to MDW´s™ Goal Alignment Module - the Foundation Module in the program that carries over 60% of the entire program.
Visual management and clear communication of goals / values helps bring the two parties closer hence eliminating mistrust.
The employer cascades the organization's goals, objectives & past performance in terms of Quality, Speed, Cost, Safety, and People to every employee thereby eliminating lack of information and "mistrust ". Everyone in the organization knows how the organization is performing and what’s expected of them!
The employee is then able to measure current/ actual performance daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly etc. against past and current targets. Their challenges are communicated easily via MDW™, back to management. Management visits the shop floor and sees how the teams are doing, the challenges affecting them "before it’s too late” and assists in closing the gaps as they arise.
Employees begint to appreciate what’s feasible in terms of salary and remuneration. Employees also get to “own” the business as they come to appreciate their input and productivity determines to a great extent their employers ability for a better remuneration.
With such a clear communication cycle:
- Industrial action and mistrust become a thing of the past!
- Problem-Solving becomes an organizational culture and a joint responsibility.
- Success is recognized.
- The teams are happier.
- Productivity is increased and society at large is happy!
Try MDW™, it works!
Sources:
https://answersafrica.com/teachers-strike-incidences-in-kenya.html
https://citizentv.co.ke/news/teachers-oppose-signing-of-performance-contracts-109699/
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-39271850
https://www.nation.co.ke/news/doctors--strike-rages-on/1056-3781074-p4rhunz/index.html
https://www.standardmedia.co.ke/article/2000048655/constitutional-right-to-strike-begins-to-bite
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Success is a concept that is understood by most people without even giving a precise meaning to it, because everybody, in the course of life, has already been in situations where the “success” or “failure” in a specific activity would have a huge impact in their future life. Who has never experienced anxiety before, during or after that important GCSE or matric exam?
The success for organisations can be defined as something similar, but in this case “the success” should be very specific and defined. To achieve the survival of the company, to succeed consistently and systematically in its operations or to thrive positively can be synonymous with the success that companies should and can aim to achieve.
Therefore, success is not static, something that is achieved and there ends the story, like an Olympic medal can mean for a great athlete. Success is something that should be achieved and nurtured at all times, even considering that, at the time of its existence the meaning of success can be modified, being adapted to the size of the organisation.
The achievement of success is particularly critical in every type of organisation from small owner-managed businesses to medium and large companies managed by big teams of people of different disciplines. In this moment, as noted by Peter Drucker, it is necessary to accord a special attention to cooperation, synchronization and communication between people.
Whatever the nature of the search for the desired success, it will only be successful if the personnel cooperate with each other in an active and conscious way to achieve the goals and objectives. It is necessary that people want to work together, much more than to work individually.
In addition to working together, it is critical that the work is synchronized in a correct way. It is not worth working together, but finishing the processes at an inopportune moment, when they have not generated the desired results.
The processes of communication allow that cooperation and synchronization can occur in an active and precise way. The precise transmission of necessary information, with the clear feedback of its receipt and understanding is what will assure that the organisations achieve and maintain more results, in the greater meaning of PROSPERITY ALWAYS!
The researchers of the success of the organisations, being managers, thinkers, directors, managers of processes of continuous improvements, agree, however, that the key to the success of any organisation lies in the people who work in it and their relationships.
For this reason, to achieve success, an organisation should be successful in organisation of its people, in cooperation, synchronization and communication amongst them all.
For this reason, to help companies, of any size, around the world, the team of Competitive Dynamics International, especially CDI Brasil, has created MDW Program – Mission-Directed Work Teams, following and implementing the best world practices to achieve and sustain the SUCCESS OF ORGANISATIONS.
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In classical science, nature was seen as mechanical systems composed of basic building blocks. In accordance with this view, Darwin proposed a theory of evolution in which the unit of survival is the species and sub species of the biological world. A century later it has become clear that the unit of survival is not any of these entities – what survives is the organism in its environment. Therefore, if an organism only thinks in terms of its own survival it will invariable harm its environment and may thus destroy itself.
Organisations, too, are living systems. Organisations are essentially a social system, that is, the interacting units are people. The psychic systems (minds) and interactions (between people) constitute the elements of the organisational system. Formal and informal work relationships can be considered as underlying relational systems that stretch beneath units and shape what occurs within them. These systems are defined by patterns of affect, cognition, and behavior (conative) among members of enclosed groups ranging in size from dyads (between two individuals) to organisations as a whole and are the source of complex social interactions and coordination of the system.
What is the purpose of an organisational system? An organisation is as a legal entity that serves as a nexus for a set of explicit and implicit contracts among individuals (with different needs), functioning in a way as to meet the relevant marginal conditions with respect to inputs and outputs, thereby maximising cash flow. The challenge organisations have is to manage the conflicting objectives of the individual participants in order to achieve a form of dynamic equilibrium (alignment) so as to yield the expected result of maximised sustainable profits.
Furthermore, functioning within an open system environment, an organisation is enclosed by its external environment implying that, to a degree, the external environment (society) is represented within the organisation. The purpose of an organisation should therefore be expanded to: organisations exist to create and trade value for the benefit of internal stakeholders as well as its external stakeholders in such a way as to meet the relevant marginal conditions with respect to inputs and outputs, thereby maximising cash flow. In order for an organisation to achieve the aforementioned, it is required to balance the allocation of resources in such a way that the expectations of its legitimate stakeholders are addressed in a sustainable way, that is, each stakeholder group needs to be satisfied with the appropriation of value as a result of the value created, measured against their contribution to the value creation process.
The organisation serves as the connection point for a set of formal and informal agreements among individuals representing all legitimate stakeholder groups. The organisation’s management hierarchy is the only group of stakeholders who enter into a form of contractual relationship with all other stakeholders and is also the only group that exercises positional power to influence resource allocation.
Within the above stated context, then, managers need to exhibit a form of organisational ambidexterity related to stakeholders. On the one hand, managers (each with their own perspective on the organisation’s overall purpose) need to develop and maintain relationships and associated agreements with stakeholders (externally as well as internally), thereby recognising the cognitively-open nature of the organisation. On the other one hand, for the organisation to be efficient, it needs to be operationally closed, implying tight-fitting – even bureaucratic – internal relationships and subsequent agreements among managers.
Interaction between internal organisational role players as well as with external stakeholders is the life blood of organisations (in its environment) and takes place due to perceived common goals and process and/or task interdependencies. Mutual expectations are agreed upon and variances (outcomes versus expectations) are addressed.
What is the main managerial implication of viewing organisations as open living systems? In contrast to the traditional unidirectional input-process-output view (left hand diagram below), managers should have a stakeholder-oriented perspective in that all role-players with legitimate interests participating in an organisation’s endeavours do so to capture value and that there is no prima facie priority of one set of interests and benefits over another. Managing the often competing interests and inputs of the stakeholders should therefore not be viewed as a zero-sum game (that is, addressing the needs of one stakeholder does not necessarily come at the expense of another). Also, a systems view of an organisation implies that value creation is instead viewed as value exchange – hence the arrows between the organisation and its stakeholder groups point in both directions (see right hand diagram below depicting the aforementioned).
The next article will focus on how the discussed principles can be applied through the implementation of Mission Directed Work Teams™.
References:
- Burger, F.J. 2016. An organisational alignment framework to improve South African mining companies. North West University.
- Capra, F. 1996. The web of life. Anchor Books.
- Carroll, A.B. & Buchholtz, A.K. 2012. Business and society: ethics and stakeholder management. 8th ed. Mason, OH: South-Western College.
- Gunaratne, S.A. 2008. Understanding systems theory: transition from equilibrium to entropy. Asian journal of communication, 18(3):175-192.
- Jensen, M.C. & Meckling, W.H. 1976. Theory of the firm: managerial behaviour, agency costs and ownership structure. Journal of financial economics, 2(4):305-360.
- Kahn, A., Barton, A. & Fellows, S. 2013. Organisational crises and the disturbance of relational systems. Academy of management review, 38(3):377-396.
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Have you heard something like this: "I can not make the meeting today, so I will re-schedule it for...".
Throughout my career as a consultant in continuous improvement and business transformation, I have had the opportunity to visit many organizations in different countries of North and South America. Regardless of the industry, the size of the organization or the region in which they are located, I have found that one of the first obstacles, when starting the journey towards world-class, is the skepticism around holding regular team meetings.
The apathy to meet (especially of active operational people) can have many origins and a lot has been written on the subject. There are numerous articles on how to hold an effective meeting.
Maybe, instead of repeating constantly how to have effective meetings, we should pay attention to the cost of having unproductive meetings.
According to research done1, only in the United States of America:
- There are 11 million ineffective meetings every day. This amounts to 4 billion a year.
- More than 50% of the people surveyed said that having meetings is an unproductive activity. This amounts to 2 billion a year.
- Unnecessary meetings cost companies $ 37 million annually, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.
- Two thirds of the meetings end before reaching a decision. This means that problems are not resolved in time or are not resolved at all, delaying the achievement of objectives.
To have an idea of what your particular scenario is, you only need to do the calculation: how much time is spent in all those meetings and how much does it cost in terms of unproductive employee hours? What is the value of an inconclusive meeting?
All of you who are or have implemented MDW ™ know that team meetings are an essential element towards improving communication and achieving goals in the organization and that there is also a correlation between effective teams and the results of the organization.
So, why do we continue having fruitless meetings? Neuroscience gives us a possible answer: Habits. Or simply put, "This is the way we've always done it."
From experience, I offer you a series of clues that can help you know the existence of this problem by identifying if your team has these habits:
1. Meetings ramble on with no predetermined time standards.
Unplanned events are a source of stress at work. The absence of a plan or frequent postponement of meetings will introduce significant stress in the team through continuous changes in the daily work routine.
2. Distractors are allowed to interrupt the meeting.
An interruption of 5 minutes may require approximately 20 minutes for the team member to recover the initial concentration level. This category includes the WhatsApp being answered during the meeting and the e-mail that we can not wait to read.
3. It is acceptable practice that the participants to the meeting arrive unprepared (without issues clarified, solutions considered or pertinent data gathered).
This is one of the key reasons whereby decisions are not made on time and the negative effects of the problem persist.
4. The meeting is handled as a brainstorming session.
This is one of the most common issues that mask the experience of point 3, mentioned above. Members arrive at the meeting to "throw ideas into the air" instead of coming up with firm ideas, based on facts and previously submitted information.
5. Nobody is held accountable (or responsible) for closing the actions of the meeting.
The group is allowed to delay the execution of decisions as many times as they wish. They do not follow-up on agreed actions and do not worry about clearly summarizing new ones at the end of the meeting.
6. The actions are not clearly described.
Each action agreed should include the deliverable and output to be obtained, the responsable person and the due date.
7. Generating a good vibe in the group is more important than the productivity of the team.
Personal relationships are not the same as productive relationships. The ideal is to achieve the second without sacrificing the first.
If you are part of the 50% of the population that considers team meetings a waste of time, the probability is high that you are following some of the steps mentioned above. The good news is that every habit can be changed, through:
(a) The constant application of the the good practices until they becomes new habits. Try to eliminate all the negative behaviours described above.
(b) Introduce a program which will address the negative practices, which render our meetings unproductive.
Notes:
(1 ) https://www.bls.gov/
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Can the HR Department Lead a Lean Transformation? - An opinion.
Many companies today are embarking on programs to instill a sustainable, continuously improving culture into their operations. These initiatives are presented with many different names – Operational Excellence, Worker Engagement, Lean Six Sigma, World Class Business, High Performing Work Teams, to name but a few. Kotter’s Change Management model includes, as a critical step, the establishment of a “Guiding Coalition” to steer the process. So who should participate in this team and who should lead it if we wish to maximize our chances of success? I have worked in this industry for over a quarter century, both from within business and as a consultant, and I am astonished how many companies nominate the Human Resources team to lead the transformation.
In this short discussion I would like to share a few of my thoughts on the topic.
Can it work well? Absolutely! One of my favourite clients was a global resources company operating in a very poor third world country. Skilled local personnel were all but unavailable and infrastructure and services certainly did not match the requirements of a company striving to be the best in the world. The Guiding Coalition had to manage the excellence initiative whilst developing the available resources to deliver top service. The job was given to HR. They were also given all necessary support in terms of time, manpower and finance and were actively supported by the Chief Executive. Within three years they were recognized as the world leader in their field in critical KPIs such as Quality and Safety.
Unfortunately this is the exception rather than the rule. Nevertheless, potential clients continue to recommend that HR oversee the process. The reasons are not too difficult to find, yet I believe this decision is counterproductive and should be reconsidered. Why do companies push this viewpoint?
- Liker introduced us to the Four Ps in The Toyota Way. The importance of emphasizing both commitment / engagement of the People and the appropriate Lean tools is widely recognized. Indeed, several authors have concluded that success is 20% based on Tools and 80% based on Attitude. The high focus on People suggests an important role for HR.
- HR is the dumping ground for numerous initiatives that do not seem to belong in any other specific department. I have seen HR departments managing training, employee relations, trade union interface, canteen, security, clinic, community development, newsletters and much more. It is easy to simply add another element to the list.
The HR department is rarely seen as a critical component of the value stream, whereas Sales, Finance, Production, Distribution, etc. can have a direct impact on the bottom line. HR is therefore “neutral” and should be able to take a balanced view when prioritizing activities.
I have never seen an improvement initiative, which decided to focus on improving HR as first priority. The client sometimes argues that, as a result of operational problems, the value stream departments will be too busy to oversee the program.
Many successful change programs are led by a newly constituted Continuous Improvement team. Even so, HR has a most important role to play in the transition. I believe that they must be represented in the Guiding Coalition, but they must not lead it. They have other important work to do. A Latin American HR Manager at one of my clients hit the nail on the head, when he decided that his HR team Mission was to “Help all teams on site achieve the site objectives, with happy, fully-developed employees.” His team members attended meetings of all teams on site to determine their People needs, set themselves goals to deliver against these customer requirements, and enabled the site to be ranked No.1 in a global assessment of performance. However, they did not lead the change program!
HR has many important support functions to attend to. Topics include recruitment, induction, facilitating job designs and career development, interaction with trade unions, recognition systems, assessing company culture and frustrations, assisting to monitor people goals such as personnel development and much more. The Continuous Improvement Manager will assist them to apply continuous improvement principles within their own department. They will realize that monitoring average time to fill a vacancy is nothing but processing waste, but questioning why laboratory technicians can be sourced in a week and it takes ten months to find a financial manager provides real triggers for problem-solving. Counting training days is waste; assessing effectiveness can add value. Continuous improvement must be applied everywhere. It must be in our DNA.
When I embark on a long road trip, the sound system in my car is a necessary support function to keep me informed of road conditions, to entertain me and to prevent me from dozing off. However it does not take me to my destination. HR is the sound system.
The program must be led by an expert in the field. The sooner the value chain takes ownership, the better. The more senior the program Sponsor the better, too. When HR assumes the driving role, our experience is that they frequently do not command the attention the program deserves and all suffer as a consequence.
In a follow-up to these thoughts I will endeavor to review the critical role HR MUST play and who I believe could lead the program most effectively.
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Show & Tell Online in Spanish
In this Show & Tell Online we discuss:
- Characteristics of a succesful continuous improvement initiative.
- Role of leaders within the organization.
- Key ingredients for sustainability of results.
- Lessons learnt while implementing MDW™.
Originally aired: 17 January 2018 at 19:00 UTC.
Hosted by: Rosa Zapata (Partner, CDI Latin America)
Time: 76 minutes.
It is a very gratifying experience for a Consultant to see how the work one does has a positive impact on people and their family for the better. The following is a excerpt taken from: Importance of the Coalition Team / By: TONICORP, Ecuador. A Case Study presented at the annual conference CDI - Show & Tell 2013 / Johannesburg, South Africa.
"... As already indicated above, through the methodology (MDW™), we are achieving amazing results: Changing the culture of our people by developing in them the behaviours that reflect the company values is a whole adventure!.
Leaders and team members have found that what they learned with MDW™ is also applicable in their homes; that is the case of Mr. William Carpio.
William´s team, The 7 Kaisers, have twice won the best mini-business® award. Obviously, he is proud of what he has achieved and shares - as is normal - his achievements with his wife, Jennifer. She identified that this behaviour could also bring benefits to her home and quickly embarked on a strategy that we were delighted to hear about:
Jennifer, challenged William to replicate in his home what he did in his mini-business®. William accepted the challenge of making innovations in the home, closing the priority actions generated by the household, and then teaching the family to apply 5S, involving both Jennifer and their children. With much joy and satisfaction William proudly told us that he had successfully met the challenge, and that his family was happy with what they have learned and their new contribution at home.
The Team Member development is the prime focus of MDW™. Better people make better products and deliver better service. They live better lives and in turn they develop others around them, both at work and at home.
To know more about how to achieve a true Culture of Engagement in your company visit:
When embarking on a new program, the question we often hear is “How soon will it be before we see results?”. The answer is always “It depends!”.
Any site has a combination of low-hanging fruit and the less obvious improvement opportunities. Curtiss-Wright’s Shelby, NC plant proves that with good leadership, energized teams and visual management it is possible to start harvesting very quickly. The site experienced a major upswing in quality and overall business results as described in this excerpt from their in-house magazine SOAR.

The best news is that these improvements have been sustained and continue to grow. Is it the same in your site? If not your company might be missing out.
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Excellent program, your company will never be the same after applying these tools.
Managing Director.
Empaques y Etiquetas Empaflex
Ecuador
In a very small company one frequently encounters Jacks-of-all-Trades, who know almost everything that is going on in the company. They understand both the suppliers and the customers, they know the people in the company by name, they arrange production schedules and equipment maintenance. Without them the company would be paralysed. However, as the company grows these key players must be replaced by systems, which provide the same service. None is more important than the Supply Chain Management (SCM) function. They are the brain and spinal cord, i.e. the Central Nervous System, which must be able to guarantee that materials, spares and services are available at exactly the right place, in exactly the right quantity and at exactly the right time.
One such large, successful company is Sasol. Sasol is a leading global player in the petrochemical business, based in South Africa but with operations around the world. In early 2016 Sasol engaged CDI to introduce the Mini-Business® model in Procurement teams in three centres, and has seen significant performance improvements in almost all of their key performance indicators. 2018 will see the process rolled out further into Demand Management teams in several centres. These critical players provide the link between the operational sites and the Procurement functions to ensure excellence in the supply chain. The first workshop is now behind us and we look forward to seeing the same success as was delivered in Procurement.
Images: Introductory workshop with Demand Management Team members.
It is a wonderful experience for any parent to follow the progress of a successful child, and in particular to see that the coaching you gave so lovingly when he/she was young was heeded and respected. It is even more gratifying when the child builds on that early teaching and adopts the philosophies as his own beliefs.
A similar experience greets the consultant when he can re-visit an old client and see that he was able to make a meaningful and lasting contribution to the client’s day-to-day operations all those years ago. The test of sustainability is a true indicator of the successful efforts of both consultant and the management team at the client.
CDI-AMA has recently enjoyed such an experience at Widney Holdings. The previous visit to the site was in 2004, and CDI-AMA was requested in 2017-2018 to conduct a couple of refresher workshops on elements of the MDW TM program. It was indeed a pleasure to engage with such a positive workforce. The team meetings were continuing each day, performance was being tracked and actions were being generated. The operators had taken full ownership for performance. Production cells were ergonomically designed and work flow maintained. Maybe the fact that Toyota is an important client helps to sustain the process!
Engagements such as this make our task so much more rewarding.
.


We started with CDI at the end of 2013. At the time we had low performance in cost, efficiency, safety and quality. Also, we had a low level of people engagement towards business objectives. After a leadership reorganizaation and rethinking strategies, we started to strongly follow and monitor the implementation of MDW TM module 1 as one of the pillars for change. This module was key to aligning the efforts of operational staff with the plant strategy, mission and vision, as well as in the incorporation of a greater number of people in managing change through innovation, recognition, commitment and creating the required sense of belonging. The Multi-Level Meeting has been a key element to achieve this.
As a result, we can say that the targets expected to be achieved in a three years plan were achieved mostly in the first year. For example: 12% improvement in OEE Crushing, 25% improvement in cost per tonne Crushing, 7% improvement in specific steam consumption, 45% improvement in accident statistics, 3% improvement in recovery of fat, and much more.
A good strategy together with a good choice of goals, committed managers and senior management assistance in implementing MDW TM was very important.
We have much to do, but the results exceeded our expectations in the first year. This is an example of what aligned, committed and motivated people can achieve, even in a complex and challenging environments like ours.
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Plant Manager,
Complejo Industrial Lagos,
Louis Dreyfus Commodities Argentina


The decision to work with CDI in implementing MDW TM has been one of the most important we have made. I am very pleased with the results, improving staff attitudes in relation to their work and meeting the goals
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Managing Director,
Industrias Lácteas Toni S.A.

Carlo Westaway
Irrespective of the quality of their communication, world-class organisations always strive to improve their practices related to this topic. This is no exception at the Entyce Beverages Coffee and Creamer plant in Johannesburg, South Africa, a division of the AVI Group of Companies.
Carlo Westaway, the operations executive for the above plant is continuously working on initiatives to improve communication and improve engagement amongst the employees reporting to him.
Carlo fully subscribes to the fact that monthly multi-level meetings improve top-down, bottom-up and horizontal communication. After some very successful MDT1 multi-level meetings where team leaders presented their monthly mini-business results to the plant leadership and peers, Carlo identified at least two improvement opportunities related to multi-level meetings.
Opportunity 1: MDT2 Multi-Level Meetings
As leading by example is a key value for Carlo he also instituted a monthly multi-level meeting for the MDT2 teams at the plant. At this session, each Head of Department presents progress on key deliverables to his/her peers. The MDT1 and MDT2 multi-level meetings take place during successive weeks each month and the presentation agenda for each level of team is determined by the key opportunities and initiatives at the plant.
Opportunity 2: Team Leaders Presenting to Business Executives
Not only is the multi-level meeting an ideal opportunity to highlight progress and opportunities, it is also a perfect springboard to celebrate success and recognize good performance. Carlo has therefore given winning team leaders from the MDT1 multi-level meetings the opportunity to present their multi-level meeting presentation to the business directors during the monthly director’s visit to the plant. This has assisted Carlo to indicate to the directors the personal and team development practices achieved through MDW.
Another key drive at the plant to keep all employees informed of the latest news and information is a regular newsletter, covering various topics that is posted at various key positions on site as well as handed out to employees.
Below are contents from the Entyce Beverages Coffee and Creamer plant “Spill the Beans” Newsletter (Quarter 4, 2017). This edition gives specific attention to the MDW teams at the plant.
Well done to Carlo and his team for driving great people practices to improve engagement!
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Who are the Key Players?
Much has been written about the high failure rate of Six Sigma and Lean Transformation initiatives. Several authors have suggested that as many as 70% either do not succeed or, alternatively, do not sustain the gains. Many reasons are advanced for this problem, but all point to common factors.
While the consulting fraternity is not blame-free – some are certainly inexperienced cowboys trying to play in the market – there is consensus that the philosophy will work in almost every application, if the balance between process tools and people engagement is understood and applied correctly. The executives cannot succeed alone and even the most enthusiastic engaged employees cannot succeed in an inappropriate climate. In our experience there are three key groups:
The Workforce. We refer to these teams as the “Value Chain” and they are the players who actually add value for the stakeholders. Given a supportive company culture and the requisite management recognition, we find that we can count on a successful implementation in over 95% of cases.
Middle Management. This sector is more often a problem area. These are frequently the personnel, who have been promoted because they were excellent performers while working in the Value Chain, and they are reluctant to pass on necessary skills to the workforce. Instead of focusing on coaching, they try to retain credit for their original areas of expertise. They do not understand that their role is to develop new front line teams that can perform even better than they did themselves. Rother suggested that typically 50% of their time should be spent coaching others.
CEO and other Executives. This group is far removed from the front line and often fails to grasp what a key role company culture can play in the success of the initiative. They believe success is dependent on somebody else. It is our experience that the clients, who extract maximum benefit from any improvement initiative are always those where this third group understands the process, asks the right questions, recognizes the right people and behaviours and walks the talk.
Dr Bob Emiliani has published an excellent paper on this topic, which should be standard reading for lean practitioners. He adopts a challenging “in-your-face” style, which will make some readers uncomfortable. That should be no excuse to ignore the thinking. I recommend it.
References:
http://www.bobemiliani.com/goodies/exec_resist.pdf
To know more about this visit:
A story of when the super-geniuses asked for help from the average people
What do you think about when you hear the word NASA? Surely, some alternatives could be: ships, space travel, technology and science ... but, if you are like me, in addition to these words, surely you also have the perception of a place where people work with a high – if not the highest - Technical and scientific level in its field.
Chris Hadfield, Canadian astronaut, describes in his book An Astronaut's Guide to Life on Earth, not only the rigorous training that astronauts undergo, physically and mentally, but also, the mystique that exists in NASA to analyze every situation ... it does not matter how small or insignificant it may seem. Imagine having to screw something, wearing a heavy suit that makes movement difficult, in an environment where everything - including that screw - is hostile! It's no wonder that the ability to make Formal Problem Resolution is vital for NASA and that each astronaut must possess it. Considering all this, engineers and scientists at NASA should be able to solve any problem and not need anyone else, right? Not so much ...
In 2016, NASA made public the Space Poop Challenge, which sought to solve the management of human waste in space. Considering that every day, the possibility of humans traveling to Mars or beyond takes more weight, giving a solution to this type of situation becomes imperative. The interesting thing about this initiative is that the challenge was launched to the public, so that any citizen could offer suggestions on how to solve this problem satisfactorily, and help NASA with, say, this small detail.
5,000 proposals were received, 19,000 people grouped into 150 teams from each country and continent participated. In February 2017, NASA announced the winner, Mr. Thatcher Cardon, whose proposal was based on his experience as a surgeon. Its design has a tiny air chamber in the crotch of the suit, through which items such as catheters and inflatable panels can be passed.
This story is interesting because it confirms something that we often forget: Human beings like to solve problems. From the moment we learned to make fire to this day, fighting against climate change, our history and evolution has been based on the Formal Problem Resolution.
In most companies and business environments, it is probably where we least remember this. The maelstrom of everyday life and the volatility of markets makes us assume that only those who are in a leadership position have the ability to understand daily problems and provide solutions. The participation of the collaborators, especially those in highly operational positions, is almost nil and, all the potential of obtaining creative and economic solutions for the company, is lost. In addition, there are other factors that influence us to not take advantage of all that potential in companies:
- The human being, by nature, likes to solve problems, but that does not mean that the way he does it is the most efficient. It is not about knowing what tools exist, but about which one should be used in each case in particular.
- Formal Resolution of Problems, requires a good dose of humility and not trying to impose the point of view we have or force what we believe is the solution, but address the situation without prejudice. Arrogance does not fit in the Formal Problem Resolution.
- Complying with points 1 and 2 is not enough, but a healthy problem solving culture is generated. A culture, where - as in NASA - no situation remains uninvestigated and without finding the root cause.
Let's accept it, to solve problems (claims of a client or a high number of defects) in a correct and definitive way is not easy and takes time, which is a contradiction in the time in which we live, where we expect things to happen quickly, and where managers expect the answers to occur almost spontaneously. And, if we add to this an atmosphere of fear or retaliation, things get complicated. But with determination and an adequate process, it is possible to improve the quality of the analysis process and therefore, the quality of the results, based on a true Organizational Culture of Formal Problem Resolution.
I find the elements in this story almost symbolic, and as NASA has realized that the alternatives to better solutions increase when we involve more people. The human being likes to solve problems ... and he likes to be part of the solution even more. Can you assure that in your company each collaborator is a true problem solver? If your answer is no, your company is wasting a golden opportunity and it´s time to do something about it.
To know more about how to achieve a true Culture of Formal Problem Resolution visit:
References:
http://edition.cnn.com/2017/02/16/tech/nasa-space-poop-challenge-winner-announced-trnd/index.html
An Astronaut's Guide to Life on Earth. Hadfield, Chris. Hachette Book Group, 2013.
Más sobre Chris Hadfield (youtube song).
Imagine you’re the Captain of a commercial fishing boat with 10 fishermen trawling for tuna. Just three fishermen are busy deploying the outriggers, hauling in the nets and chilling the catch, five are taking in the sunshine, talking with friends and waving to other boats as they pass by and two are at work trying to knock a hole in the bottom of the boat and sink it. Hard to catch many fish this way – much less build a sustainable fishing business. Yet, this is the dilemma that most businesses and this Sea Captain are confronted with today.
According to Gallup’s research touching 150,000 workers – people in all states and industries:
- Only 30% of employees are actively engaged in their work
- 50% are not engaged
- and nearly 20% are actively disengaged. Said another way, 70% of workers are disengaged from their employers at work.
They go on to categorize employees into three main groupings:


NOW IS THE TIME FOR ACTION. As the remnants of the “great recession” and the fight to just “survive” continues to fade in the minds of corporate leaders, attention to building a stronger, more profitable and resilient company is once again front and center. At the core of this attention is the chorus of 78% of corporate leaders saying that employee engagement is both an “urgent and important priority” (Deloitte). Employers want growth and employees are the main drivers. Contrast today’s thinking with that of business leaders a decade or so ago, who dismissed the notion that there are clear links between employee engagement and an organization’s overall success. These leaders of old paid a lot of attention to process and very little to people.
RESEARCH CONFIRMS. Well respected research firms like Blessing White, Deloitte, Gallup and many others conclude that most core business measures including: productivity, profitability, safety incidents, customer satisfaction, quality, employee retention, and absenteeism are all positively impacted by higher levels of employee engagement. Gallup’s recent polling demonstrates that the impact on these key measures is not just marginal but huge!
Engagement effect on Key Performance Indicators:
- Productivity 21% higher
- Profitability 22% higher
- Safety Incidents 48% lower
- Customer Satisfaction 10% higher
- Defects 41% lower
- Employee turnover 25% - 65% lower
- Absenteeism 37% lower
*median outcomes between top and bottom quartile teams.
WHAT DO I NEED TO KNOW? Genuine employee engagement is more than a flavor of the month initiative that fades slowly in the sunset or when money gets tight. In fact, employee engagement is not a “program” at all but rather an organizational culture that values the intelligence, experience and advice provided by the people that do the work. And companies considered to be the “best of the best” have learned how to unleash this wellspring of talent, experience and innovation in a structured way that produces incredible results.
So you ask, what do these “best of the best” do to create and nurture this culture of engagement? Based on experience at over 3000 work sites where Competitive Dynamics International has launched employee engagement initiatives through their MDW program, they tell us : “we’ve seen huge successes and yes, the occasional failure, and what we have come to learn is that there are essentially 5 key elements in establishing and sustaining a culture of genuine employee engagement” They are:
- Leadership: Employee engagement requires strong leadership. Leaders across the business need to understand that engaging employees is not an option but a key component of their corporate strategy and ultimate success. Developing a culture that values and listens to its employees takes time, patience and commitment. Leaders must walk the talk.
- Goal Alignment: A clear line of sight between the business goals of the organization and the work employees perform must be established. Employees want to contribute and yearn to understand what the organization needs from them. Alignment requires good communications and business specifics to enable employees to make good decisions.
- Accountability: Employees desire feedback. They wish to know how well they are doing and how their work impacts the overall results of the organization. Employees want and need goals and measures and the support to achieve them.
- Recognition: People in every organization wish to be appreciated for the good work that they do. This is not about money but recognition for work well done.
- Personal Growth: Engaged employees long for the opportunity to use their skills and develop new ones. Providing opportunities for growth and learning significantly enhance worker’s commitment to their employer. “Anyone can buy machines, people make the difference.“ (Competitive Dynamics International´s first-hand experience is broadly supported by research of Blessing White, Gallup and others).
When all is said and done, the unyielding truth is that people want to work in an organization where they are respected, valued and engaged. Create that culture and you will tap the unlimited potential that employee engagement has to offer.
For more information about this you can visit:
Construction
Automotive
Government
Food and Beverage
Food and Beverage
Food and Beverage
Automotive
Pepsico
Manufacturing
The process has brought everyone on board. People see that they have an impact, that they are
valued and we are all on this journey together. This has made all the difference.
Operations Manager
Fleischmann’s Yeast – Memphis
When I first thought of team metrics, I thought it was just a boring thing to learn and taking 8 minutes out of our day (was a waste of time).
But since a year has passed, I have learned so much of what everyone does in the company that contributes to make it better. This process helps everyone get along better and being willing to help one another to improve - for the company and to reach a goal for yourself. It’s not just individually coming to work day by day, you have an open area to learn from - the mini-business unit. It’s all about what you make of it.
Execution Payables Coordinator,
Allenberg Cotton Co.
We began MDWTM in November of 2011 and since then, we have received 5,342 improvement ideas directly from our employees. We have implemented over 4500 of their ideas and those that dealt with safety, we have completed 96% of them. Prior to MDWTM, we were lucky to get 5 or 10 ideas per year.
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CI Manager, BA
Prior lean implementations gave us improvements in process but did not really involve the people. The MDWTM structure is all about getting the people engaged.
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Chief Financial Officer
Bridon American Corporation
Within just six months of launching Mission-Directed Work-Teams® / Mission Focused Teams (MFT) at our Memphis site, cost savings initiatives directly attributable to MFT generated over
$400,000 of annualized savings.
Vice President Manufacturing
AB Mauri – Fleischmann’s
Mission-Directed Work-Teams® has consistently demonstrated a very positive impact on plant safety measures.
Significant declines in work related lost time injuries are noted, improving both the health and welfare of the employees and the bottom line costs to the enterprise. The added plus is that the process fosters a culture of safety awareness
President,
Safety Council of Southeast Michigan
During the first 12 months of launching Mission Directed Workgroups (MDW) we realized a $1.8 million dollars savings and had double digit improvements in Safety, People, Quality, Speed and Cost.
We are now beginning our 5th year with MDW® in place and the excitement still strong and we continue to have double digit improvements year on year! Our employee engagement continues to be at record highs.
Vice President Operations,
Bridon American Corporation
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Finally, for many of us headphones have become as much a fashion item as a piece of audio gear. That’s fine, but you don’t have to sacrifice decent sound for an eye-catching design, though you’re likely to pay.
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Photographer: Frank Behrens
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Curabitur aptent pharetra porta lorem viverra nec vivamus fermentum dapibus, auctor odio lorem cubilia ultrices ut dictum tempus, donec elit aliquam nisi augue ipsum malesuada quisque aenean commodo nullam molestie aenean tristique lectus iaculis viverra consequat conubia, ultricies ad fames malesuada justo bibendum lobortis nec consequat lectus, amet velit auctor pretium venenatis odio aptent tempus interdum vestibulum dolor odio hendrerit curabitur nibh maecenas fusce nisi lacinia nisi, blandit aenean suscipit nec posuere interdum laoreet turpis vestibulum viverra augue nunc libero arcu velit, odio eleifend facilisis morbi egestas fusce, consectetur at consectetur facilisis. Id ne aliquem ex exerant is colores. Pro assumere ideamque lectorem actiones qui. Cui dissolvant distinctae eas imo persuadere. Ad caeteris me exemplum atheorum posuisse ea im. Longum secedo sum duo platea sap quoque. Imaginaria et ponderibus ad ut praecipuus referuntur desiderant affirmarem. Sua percipitur perficitur perspicuum continuata solutiones nia. Sit mox rom minima eamque verbum dubium. Sternat sciamus at adorare tacitus et. Actuali caetera hominum sit creasse figuras mea peccato dei. Ac cogitatio inquirere potuerunt eundemque posuerunt si. Delapsus deficere majorque quicquam firmanda hic hic differre est. Gi sciens habere docere ea. Eo ii recta ab plane fidam re leone. Aut plus atra sed soni. Deciperer archimede potentiam ex at. Formaliter necessario tes lor discrepant sui tot imaginabor. Nul credent ita generis cau fit ejusdem veritas.
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- Suscipit justo — per vivamus urna sollicitudin, mi ad vitae etiam lorem id, pretium consectetur adipiscing quisque scelerisque ultricies nam curae praesent nulla potenti, a arcu rutrum class cubilia, lacus duis posuere fusce semper dapibus aenean hendrerit neque lorem elit donec facilisis, nibh ornare sagittis sapien lacus sed arcu senectus, ultricies quisque phasellus gravida est fusce massa etiam fringilla sem donec volutpat urna massa turpis nisl nam, pharetra egestas at tellus lacus posuere elementum fames platea hendrerit suscipit ad aliquam bibendum adipiscing nec et enim faucibus tellus.
- Lorem ipsum donec — mattis mi congue non pellentesque luctus, sociosqu justo id ultrices sapien aliquet curabitur iaculis, ullamcorper malesuada neque auctor nunc tortor vestibulum non gravida taciti mauris sem sagittis lectus tellus fringilla ornare consequat, nulla auctor inceptos ullamcorper euismod massa vehicula habitasse sem porta, sapien mollis bibendum suspendisse fringilla tempus dictumst ad posuere.
- Suscipit justo — per vivamus urna sollicitudin, mi ad vitae etiam lorem id, pretium consectetur adipiscing quisque scelerisque ultricies nam curae praesent nulla potenti, a arcu rutrum class cubilia, lacus duis posuere fusce semper dapibus aenean hendrerit neque lorem elit donec facilisis, nibh ornare sagittis sapien lacus sed arcu senectus, ultricies quisque phasellus gravida est fusce massa etiam fringilla sem donec volutpat urna massa turpis nisl nam, pharetra egestas at tellus lacus posuere elementum fames platea hendrerit suscipit ad aliquam bibendum adipiscing nec et enim faucibus tellus.
- Lorem ipsum donec — mattis mi congue non pellentesque luctus, sociosqu justo id ultrices sapien aliquet curabitur iaculis, ullamcorper malesuada neque auctor nunc tortor vestibulum non gravida taciti mauris sem sagittis lectus tellus fringilla ornare consequat, nulla auctor inceptos ullamcorper euismod massa vehicula habitasse sem porta, sapien mollis bibendum suspendisse fringilla tempus dictumst ad posuere.
- Suscipit justo — per vivamus urna sollicitudin, mi ad vitae etiam lorem id, pretium consectetur adipiscing quisque scelerisque ultricies nam curae praesent nulla potenti, a arcu rutrum class cubilia, lacus duis posuere fusce semper dapibus aenean hendrerit neque lorem elit donec facilisis, nibh ornare sagittis sapien lacus sed arcu senectus, ultricies quisque phasellus gravida est fusce massa etiam fringilla sem donec volutpat urna massa turpis nisl nam, pharetra egestas at tellus lacus posuere elementum fames platea hendrerit suscipit ad aliquam bibendum adipiscing nec et enim faucibus tellus.
- Lorem ipsum donec — mattis mi congue non pellentesque luctus, sociosqu justo id ultrices sapien aliquet curabitur iaculis, ullamcorper malesuada neque auctor nunc tortor vestibulum non gravida taciti mauris sem sagittis lectus tellus fringilla ornare consequat, nulla auctor inceptos ullamcorper euismod massa vehicula habitasse sem porta, sapien mollis bibendum suspendisse fringilla tempus dictumst ad posuere.
- Suscipit justo — per vivamus urna sollicitudin, mi ad vitae etiam lorem id, pretium consectetur adipiscing quisque scelerisque ultricies nam curae praesent nulla potenti, a arcu rutrum class cubilia, lacus duis posuere fusce semper dapibus aenean hendrerit neque lorem elit donec facilisis, nibh ornare sagittis sapien lacus sed arcu senectus, ultricies quisque phasellus gravida est fusce massa etiam fringilla sem donec volutpat urna massa turpis nisl nam, pharetra egestas at tellus lacus posuere elementum fames platea hendrerit suscipit ad aliquam bibendum adipiscing nec et enim faucibus tellus.
- Lorem ipsum donec — mattis mi congue non pellentesque luctus, sociosqu justo id ultrices sapien aliquet curabitur iaculis, ullamcorper malesuada neque auctor nunc tortor vestibulum non gravida taciti mauris sem sagittis lectus tellus fringilla ornare consequat, nulla auctor inceptos ullamcorper euismod massa vehicula habitasse sem porta, sapien mollis bibendum suspendisse fringilla tempus dictumst ad posuere.
- Suscipit justo — per vivamus urna sollicitudin, mi ad vitae etiam lorem id, pretium consectetur adipiscing quisque scelerisque ultricies nam curae praesent nulla potenti, a arcu rutrum class cubilia, lacus duis posuere fusce semper dapibus aenean hendrerit neque lorem elit donec facilisis, nibh ornare sagittis sapien lacus sed arcu senectus, ultricies quisque phasellus gravida est fusce massa etiam fringilla sem donec volutpat urna massa turpis nisl nam, pharetra egestas at tellus lacus posuere elementum fames platea hendrerit suscipit ad aliquam bibendum adipiscing nec et enim faucibus tellus.
Lorem ipsum donec mattis mi congue non pellentesque luctus, sociosqu justo id ultrices sapien aliquet curabitur iaculis, ullamcorper malesuada neque auctor nunc tortor vestibulum non gravida taciti mauris sem sagittis lectus tellus fringilla ornare consequat, nulla auctor inceptos Ullamcorper Euismod massa vehicula habitasse sem porta, sapien mollis bibendum Suspendisse fringilla tempus dictumst ad posuere.
LJ @ Praterstrand
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Design and layout by Emmy Black
Suscipit justo per vivamus urna sollicitudin, mi ad vitae etiam lorem id, pretium consectetur adipiscing quisque scelerisque ultricies nam curae praesent nulla potenti, a arcu rutrum class cubilia, lacus duis posuere fusce semper dapibus aenean hendrerit neque lorem elit donec facilisis, nibh ornare sagittis sapien lacus sed arcu senectus, ultricies quisque phasellus gravida est fusce massa etiam fringilla sem donec volutpat urna massa turpis nisl nam, pharetra egestas at tellus lacus posuere elementum fames platea hendrerit suscipit ad aliquam bibendum adipiscing nec et enim faucibus tellus.
Lorem ipsum donec mattis mi congue non pellentesque luctus, sociosqu justo id ultrices sapien aliquet curabitur iaculis, ullamcorper malesuada neque auctor nunc tortor vestibulum non gravida taciti mauris sem sagittis lectus tellus fringilla ornare consequat, nulla auctor inceptos ullamcorper euismod massa vehicula habitasse sem porta, sapien mollis bibendum suspendisse fringilla tempus dictumst.Ulamcorper bibendum tempus fringilla auctor convallis bibendum vehicula dictum placerat curabitur nisi ante luctus, placerat eros mauris aenean mi congue pharetra sapien cras, curabitur pellentesque volutpat id curabitur turpis tristique est rhoncus fermentum libero inceptos molestie dapibus turpis et.Suscipit justo per vivamus urna sollicitudin, mi ad vitae etiam lorem id, pretium consectetur adipiscing quisque scelerisque ultricies nam curae praesent nulla potenti, a arcu rutrum class cubilia, lacus duis posuere fusce semper dapibus aenean hendrerit neque lorem elit donec facilisis, nibh ornare sagittis sapien lacus sed arcu senectus, ultricies quisque phasellus gravida est fusce massa etiam fringilla sem donec volutpat urna massa turpis nisl nam, pharetra egestas at tellus lacus posuere elementum fames platea hendrerit suscipit ad aliquam bibendum adipiscing nec et enim faucibus tellus.
Café del Mar
[soundcloud url="https://api.soundcloud.com/tracks/174726306" params="auto_play=false&hide_related=false&show_comments=true&show_user=true&show_reposts=false&visual=true" width="100%" height="450" iframe="true" /]
Design and layout by Café del Mar
Curabitur aptent pharetra porta lorem viverra nec vivamus fermentum dapibus, auctor odio lorem cubilia ultrices ut dictum tempus, donec elit aliquam nisi augue ipsum malesuada quisque aenean commodo nullam molestie aenean tristique lectus iaculis viverra consequat conubia, ultricies ad fames malesuada justo bibendum lobortis nec consequat lectus, amet velit auctor pretium venenatis odio aptent tempus interdum vestibulum dolor odio hendrerit curabitur nibh maecenas fusce nisi lacinia nisi, blandit aenean suscipit nec posuere interdum laoreet turpis vestibulum viverra augue nunc libero arcu velit, odio eleifend facilisis morbi egestas fusce, consectetur at consectetur facilisis.
Lorem ipsum donec mattis mi congue non pellentesque luctus, sociosqu justo id ultrices sapien aliquet curabitur iaculis, ullamcorper malesuada neque auctor nunc tortor vestibulum non gravida taciti mauris sem sagittis lectus tellus fringilla ornare consequat.
Nulla auctor inceptos ullamcorper euismod massa vehicula habitasse sem porta, sapien mollis bibendum suspendisse fringilla tempus dictumst ad posuere. Ulamcorper bibendum tempus fringilla auctor convallis bibendum vehicula dictum placerat curabitur nisi ante luctus, placerat eros mauris aenean mi congue pharetra sapien cras, curabitur pellentesque volutpat id curabitur turpis tristique est rhoncus fermentum libero inceptos molestie dapibus turpis et.
Ron: Lorem ipsum donec mattis mi?
Noel: Lorem ipsum donec mattis mi congue non pellentesque luctus, sociosqu justo id ultrices sapien aliquet curabitur iaculis, ullamcorper malesuada neque auctor nunc tortor vestibulum non gravida taciti mauris sem sagittis lectus tellus fringilla ornare consequat, nulla auctor inceptos ullamcorper euismod massa vehicula habitasse sem porta, sapien mollis bibendum suspendisse fringilla tempus dictumst ad posuere. Ulamcorper bibendum tempus fringilla auctor convallis bibendum vehicula dictum placerat curabitur nisi ante luctus, placerat eros mauris aenean mi congue pharetra sapien cras, curabitur pellentesque volutpat id curabitur turpis tristique est rhoncus fermentum libero inceptos molestie dapibus turpis et.
Ron: Pellentesque volutpat id curabitur turpis tristique est rhoncus?
Noel: Suscipit justo per vivamus urna sollicitudin, mi ad vitae etiam lorem id, pretium consectetur adipiscing quisque scelerisque ultricies nam curae praesent nulla potenti, a arcu rutrum class cubilia, lacus duis posuere fusce semper dapibus aenean hendrerit neque lorem elit donec facilisis, nibh ornare sagittis sapien lacus sed arcu senectus, ultricies quisque phasellus gravida est fusce massa etiam fringilla sem donec volutpat urna massa turpis nisl nam, pharetra egestas at tellus lacus posuere elementum fames platea hendrerit suscipit ad aliquam bibendum adipiscing nec et enim faucibus tellus.
Ron: Curabitur aptent pharetra?
Marry: Porta lorem viverra nec vivamus fermentum dapibus, auctor odio lorem cubilia ultrices ut dictum tempus, donec elit aliquam nisi augue ipsum malesuada quisque aenean commodo nullam molestie aenean tristique lectus iaculis viverra consequat conubia, ultricies ad fames malesuada justo bibendum lobortis nec consequat lectus, amet velit auctor pretium venenatis odio aptent tempus interdum vestibulum dolor odio hendrerit curabitur nibh maecenas fusce nisi lacinia nisi, blandit aenean suscipit nec posuere interdum laoreet turpis vestibulum viverra augue nunc libero arcu velit, odio eleifend facilisis morbi egestas fusce, consectetur at consectetur facilisis.