Recent surveys indicate that as many as 70% of North American companies have made organizational restructuring as part of their plans to weather the current economic downturn. Many industries are reporting financial losses with auto manufacturers and distributors and retailers of big ticket household items leading the way. As a result companies are cutting staff to align their business with [...]

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Why CEOs and Presidents Lose Their Jobs? In the August Mastermind Digest we wrote that it was important for leaders to be able to look well in the future. As examples of the consequences of this lack of foresight we used the recent downturn in sales and profit that Ford, GM and Chrysler have suffered due to the inability of their leaders to anticipate the future and maneuver their companies around[...]

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Recently Ford, GM and Chrysler suffered their worst financial losses. These auto companies have been scrambling to refit their production facilities in North America to produce smaller more gas efficient cars. But this takes time. For example Ford hopes to bring six new small vehicles to North America from Europe by the end of 2012. What do you do in the meantime if your sales for large gas [...]

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There have been thousands of books and articles about leadership and capability to perform work. Yet despite the vast accumulation of literature on this topic few have identified the building blocks that define what leadership is when it is applied to an individual's capability to perform the work. The requisite organization system of management formulated over a sixty year period by the late [...]

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The following reviews some key concepts that are utilized in applying organizational design concepts to ensure that companies meet and surpass their objectives. What's the difference between responsibility & accountability? Responsibility refers to an obligation or judgment you place on yourself according to your own ideals and conscience. For example, as an employee, you may feel responsible [...]

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It's Monday morning and you are returning from an exhaustive one-week business trip while you were battling a flu bug. Your voice mail has ten messages that will have to be answered within the next few hours, e-mail is screaming for attention and you haven't had time to grab a coffee. All of this noise surrounds you but the most pressing issue is to prepare for the meeting that is scheduled with [...]

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North American car manufacturing leaders never truly understood W. Edwards Deming until it was too late. Dr. Deming was the quality guru that North American turned away. Japan believed. Japan prospered. Japanese car manufacturers are becoming the world leaders in one of the world's dominant industries. Is your company at the same tipping point when it relates to sustainability? Is the sky the [...]

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Organizational design is ensuring that you have the proper organizational structure to carry out the strategy. The next step is the selection and development of people to work within the organizational structure. With current talent shortages that are becoming more acute every year companies will falter badly if they make too many mistakes by selecting key people who do not posses the cognitive [...]

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In Search of Blue Oceans of Profitability and Growth At a recent conference, Frank O'Dea the co-founder of Second Cup and PROSHRED, described the tremendous growth and profitability that both companies underwent when they stumbled onto blue ocean strategy concepts that were later portrayed in the million copies sold business book "Blue Ocean Strategy- How to Create Uncontested Market Space and [...]

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The Inglis Story: How It Became the Number One Appliance Company in Canada In a recently published book called "Organization Design, Levels of Work and Human Capability", one of the chapters describes how Inglis, the appliance company, grew by 33% in a flat market by implementing sound organizational design practices to achieve: The right organizational structure. The right people. The[...]

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