Articles by Jim L. Smith

Unlocking success requires a positive mindset, clear goals, and a willingness to embrace challenges. Discover the key principles that can elevate your journey and help you achieve your dreams.

Today, organizations face various risks like cyber-attacks, data breaches, system failures, service disruptions, and natural disasters. Identifying and managing these risks at acceptable levels is crucial. Failing to acknowledge these risks can leave organizations unprepared to handle their potential impact.

Management at a company didn't allow blaming employees for incidents. For instance, an employee got injured while not following safety rules. The root cause was identified as the lack of motivation to follow procedures, leading to more effective corrective action.

Most people have heard the phrase, “What gets measured gets done”; however, more than that, organizational excellence comes from having clear world-class performance measures that are consistently achieved.

Change management is a process for ensuring that the people affected by change understand the nature of the change and the reasons for it. Successful change management is an all-hands-on-deck activity.

As many manufacturers realize, a forecast is always a gamble. At best, it is an educated guess.

This column continues the discussion on delivering the best effort to break through roadblocks as we journey through life. If you haven’t had the chance to read my previous column, I would encourage you to do so.

Few things are as frustrating as knowing someone has more to give in their job, to their family, or to society, but he or she routinely withholds their best efforts. How do you contend with this condition?

Not long ago, I had a conversation with a senior quality manager at a large manufacturing operation about the future of the quality profession.