Get It Done! Soft Skills not Hard Tools are Required

Written by Chuck Yorke


If your organization has people, then interpersonal skills are needed.

I work with companies that are on a path they callrepparttar lean journey. Whatever you call it, it’s based onrepparttar 150118 Toyota Production System. Some manufacturers embraced it and it became known as Lean Manufacturing, expanded intorepparttar 150119 Lean Office or Lean Enterprise. During this transformationrepparttar 150120 approach became focused on tools, but Toyota’s approach is about people.

The focus of Lean Manufacturing training has been on technical skills such as value stream mapping, 5S, and set-up reduction. People skills; also known as “soft skills” or interpersonal skills haven’t been much of a priority. Difficulty in moving from a traditional to a lean organization is usually blamed onrepparttar 150121 culture ofrepparttar 150122 organization. If this is true than interpersonal skill training needs to be a higher priority. Communication often determines ifrepparttar 150123 transition succeeds or not. Couldrepparttar 150124 “soft” stuff actually be more important thanrepparttar 150125 “hard” stuff?

Somehow, many companies seem to believe that training managers to “create a vision” and engineers to maprepparttar 150126 value stream, make work instructions visible and dictate how to clean and organize will magically transformrepparttar 150127 company.

Delegation for Business Leaders - How Letting Go Works

Written by Martin Haworth


To createrepparttar time forrepparttar 149582 specific role of a leader, as much as possible ofrepparttar 149583 day to day deliver must be handed over.

This level of delegation is very important, not only to createrepparttar 149584 space forrepparttar 149585 leader to develop visions and longer terms strategic goals, but also in encouragement of key individuals who will both be challenged by new activities, but will also be developed forrepparttar 149586 future benefit ofrepparttar 149587 organisation.

A leader’s role is to focus on those areas of operation where he or she can deliverrepparttar 149588 greatest value and this requires huge shifts in perspective ofrepparttar 149589 role. Leaders differ from managers in terms of accountability.

Whilst a leader is accountable forrepparttar 149590 strategic growth ofrepparttar 149591 organisation andrepparttar 149592 delivery of results, a manager is more responsible of delivery of shorter-term results through people.

These are, of course, generalisations and roles vary.

Developing others through delegation is a great way to grow skills and confidence in your workforce. Through utilisingrepparttar 149593 viewpoints of others, you createrepparttar 149594 variety of solutions which might well escape you, from your own experienced, though single perspective.

As well as radically improvingrepparttar 149595 quality of your workforce,repparttar 149596 leader who works in this way also does much more for their own focus. If a job can be done atrepparttar 149597 lowest possible cost level, true with some training and onrepparttar 149598 job coaching, then that frees you up forrepparttar 149599 role you're being paid for too.

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