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"Are you familiar with the term willful blindness?" This was the question that floored the Murdochs at Tuesday's parliamentary select committee hearing because it cut right through the narrative News International executives have been spinning to counter the hacking scandal that has engulfed the media group in recent weeks. Innocent ignorance has been NI's defense from the start. Rupert put too much trust in his key lieutenants, James could not be expected to know every detail of the NI operation and Rebekah merely delegated responsibility to her staff and relied on their good judgement. Those at the top could not be expected to know everything that was going on in NI and, besides, who could have anticipated that the work of a few rogue freelancers would undermine the entire News Corp empire? As a performance, it was neither convincing nor original. We have seen and heard it all before from leaders during other crises. Consider the Royal Bank of Scotland , BP , ...

Interns take note: energy and enthusiasm are no longer enough. You've got to bring something more meaningful to the table. A friend and senior executive at Yelp recently shared how busy she was balancing a demanding job, a busy travel schedule, and a newborn at home. We were catching up at a Northwestern University alumni event ; so naturally I suggested she take on a student as a summer intern. She looked at me square in the eye, without a trace of irony and stated, "I have no time for an intern." Isn't the whole point of an intern to make your life easier? When an overworked young Gen Y executive says she has no time for an intern, isn't something wrong with our system? Interns aren't supposed to be a drain on time, energy or resources. In practice, however, they can be. In today's competitive economy, where everyone is doing more with less, you've got to figure out a way to be value add from the start. Interns, you might just have to come up w...

This week News Corp. execs James and Rupert Murdoch were dragged before a investigatory committee of Parliament over the U.K.'s phone-hacking scandal. Meanwhile hacktivists LulzSec decided to take matters into their own hands, and targeted the website of News Corp. paper The Sun, replacing its homepage with a faked edition. Shortly afterward, LulzSec said it had also acquired a huge amount of corporate emails from the Murdochs. They've since pledged not to release them, lest they compromise ongoing legal cases against News Corp. and its executives, but the Murdochs may still face having their email dirty laundry aired in the future. How is this kind of hack pulled off? We spoke to our expert adviser, Nick Percoco of Trustwave's Spiderlabs, to gain an insight, based on his expertise as an ethical hacker--hired to pull off these kinds of attack by companies themselves. The Website Hack, Simply Done Website redirects are pretty common nowadays--it's a relatively lo...

This visualization tool can enable practitioners to make sense of large volumes of interconnected data and fast-track implementation of Lean Six Sigma.
 Hospitals and health plans know that the high cost of care is squeezing the U.S. economy. That’s why so many of them are using Lean Six Sigma to control spending by refining internal processes—while still satisfying customers in a highly competitive market. A major health care consortium based in the Dallas-Fort Worth area recently used Lean Six Sigma to find ways to improve its health insurance validation process and thereby improve customer satisfaction.  With a looming deadline before them, Ralph Jarvis, principle of Jarvis Business Solutions, and his staff used “mind-mapping” to kick off and manage a Lean implementation that resulted in a dozen ways for the hospital to improve its insurance validation process. Mind mapping software uses visual shorthand to capture in one screen the kind of complexity and depth that might...

Following three simple rules can make the process of selecting and leading teams less painful and more successful. If you were selecting a basketball team, what criteria would you use to select the players? What about if you were selecting an academic team? If the selection of a process improvement team were the objective, what criteria would you use? The answers to these questions may seem simple, but Belts can sometimes make things complicated. For example, too much attention to politics and control can spoil a team’s chemistry. There are some standard rules, though, that can make the team-building process less painful and more successful for Six Sigma professionals. Three Simple Rules 1) Don’t be too rigid. The makeup of a team will need to change a little as it moves through the process improvement phases. There should be a core group of members all the way through, but often there will be a shifting of other members depending upon what the team needs at the time. There are thr...

Here are some sample HR metrics that can be used to measure performance: Turnover The rate of employees living the organization and being replaced by new employees. Turnover = Number of employees who left the organization / Total headcount. Cost of Turnover Cost associated with loosing current employees and replacing them with new employees. Example: Cost of hiring, Cost of training, Cost of Overtime. Involuntary Turnover (Termination Rate) The rate of terminating employees due to poor performance . Involuntary Turnover = Number of terminated employees / Total headcount. Voluntary Turnover The rate of employees leaving the organization based on their own decision.    Hiring Cycle Number of days from employee leaving the position to new employee starting to work in the position.    Cost of Employee Training Total training cost divided by total headcount. Safety Number of accidents per period. Lost Time Number of days lost per period due to...

In an effort to keep the costs of universal health coverage down despite an aging population, the Canadian province of Quebec adopted a Lean Six Sigma-based approach, according to the Pan American Health Organization. "There is no perfect health system, but we are striving for both excellence and sustainability," said Quebec's Minister of Health and Social Services Yves Bolduc, in a recent presentation at PAHO headquarters in Washington, D.C. The focus on process improvement efforts such as eliminating ineffective or wasteful practices, promoting coordinated teamwork among health professionals, emphasizing integrated care models and encouraging the use of electronic medical records and tele-medicine has led Quebec to become home to "one of the best healthcare systems in the world," according to Bolduc, as quoted by the news source. The resulting efficiencies - which include the reduction of unnecessary referrals and the improvement of patient outcomes - lowe...

It's amazing how much one troubled employee can undermine a department's productivity. A staff member who routinely makes cutting remarks, elevates him or herself at the expense of others, or spreads undermining gossip can sink a department's morale fast. Otherwise positive and productive team members begin to dread coming to work, and the group's best thinking gets siphoned off the company's mission as everyone scrambles to stay out of the bully's crosshairs. The question on the tip of everyone's tongue when this type of nightmare takes hold is, "Why doesn't senior management do something?" It's the job of the boss to enforce consequences when someone gets out of line. Emotionally exhausted peers often complain passionately and privately to their superiors in these situations. They fantasize that the troublemaker will be removed, put on probation, or at least given a firm reprimand. Unfortunately, in many such cases, justice seems to p...

Enchantment defines a relationship with employees that is deep, delightful, and long-lasting. If you can enchant your employees, they will work harder, longer, and smarter for you — and, ideally, you for them too. Here are the ten best ways to enchant your employees. Provide a MAP. In Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us , Daniel Pink explains the big three of what employees want from a boss: an opportunity to Master new skills while working Autonomously towards a high Purpose. There are lots of other things that might attract employees, but a MAP is what really enchants them. Empower them to do what's right. A logical offshoot of autonomous work is that you trust your employee enough to make the right decision for customers. When you show this level of trust and empower employees, they do the best work that they can. Judge your results and their intentions. Most managers are harsher judges of the results of their employees than they are of their own result...

Don't panic if your month is full of red marks! I love deadlines. I like the whooshing sound they make as they fly by. Douglas Adams, 1952-2001 Do you love deadlines? I bet you don’t. In fact, I can’t name anyone who loves them… Except it is in the witty sense that Mr. Adams puts into them. In fact, I hate the sound of them whooshing as they pass, luckily I’ve learnt how to live with them, and you can too. Dealing with deadlines Visualise them : This should be a no-brainer, but you’d be amazed at how many people fall in this trap. You need some calendaring system to track your deadlines. It does not matter if it is a fancy iPad application that syncs through Dropbox with your office server or a sheet attached with duct tape to your front door. Anything will work as long as you are consistent and use it. The best tool should have at least a monthly view, to have a clear map of what waits to be done in the next 30 days. It should also be effortless to add a new task or check...

What makes you effective at work? Perhaps you'd say it is your excellent communication skills, your deep background in your field, or perhaps your ability to think on your feet. Chances are, you wouldn't focus much on your habits. Yet your routines are a powerful force that affects your daily behavior. Habits are associations that relate aspects of your world to an action. Your brain is a habit creating machine that allows you to perform those actions without having to think. An organized workspace allows you to focus your thoughts on the difficult new problems that you face without having to think about mundane aspects of work like filling out routine forms, pulling out a sheet of paper to take notes, or picking up the phone to answer a call. Indeed, if you move to a new office you probably find the first few weeks uncomfortable because your old habits no longer work and you have not yet developed new ones. You suddenly find yourself thinking about all kinds of simple tasks...

If a brand can describe its core values and philosophy on its business card without a detailed description, the brand becomes a full representation of its vision. I heard a story that a few years ago Ingvar Kamprad, the founder of Ikea , happened to drive past one of his stores. In passing, he noticed something wasn't quite right with the characteristic blue stucco. So, he pulled over, parked, and went in search of the local manager. Needless to say, the manager was a little taken aback when the head of the company asked why this store had chosen to use this type of plaster. The manager proudly explained that this store had saved Ikea literally half the amount of money the company would ordinarily spend by using cheaper stucco of a far greater quality. As the story goes, Kamprad said: "I don't care how much it costs--whether it costs more or less--it needs to be removed." Within weeks the stucco had been replaced with the more expensive, yet poorer looking plaster--a...

Nearly every company in the world gives lip service to the idea that "our people are our greatest asset." Yet when the Conference Board Survey came out earlier this year, employees were the unhappiest they have been in their 22 years of tracking job satisfaction rates. Around the same time, CNNMoney reported a survey that indicated 84% of Americans are unhappy with their current job. And earlier this month , Mercer's "What's Working" survey found that one in three US employees are serious about leaving their current jobs. Why is this lack of happiness at work important? Job satisfaction is not only the key predictor of turnover rates, in The Happiness Advantage , I make the research case for the fact that the single greatest advantage in the modern economy is a happy and engaged workforce . A decade of research proves that happiness raises nearly every business and educational outcome: raising sales by 37%, productivity by 31%, and accuracy on tasks by 1...