Business Mastery

Not many of us are going to install the full-blown Toyota Production System anytime soon. But, there is one aspect of it that has wide applicability for all of us.

The 5 Whys methodology is a great problem-solving technique that anyone can employ.

Although it’s not intended to be the end all and cure all, it is a technique I suggest you use to help solve the very next problem you face. It involves asking “why” over and over again until you get to the root of the reason the problem happened. Once you know the root cause, the solution is often much more clear.

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First a bit about the term CEO. It’s short for Chief Executive Officer one of the C-level positions in a company. A company can have a variety of C-level jobs within the senior management team. For example, the CIO, Chief Information Officer, is in charge of all the information. The COO, Chief Operating Officer, handles all the operations. And, the CFO, Chief Financial Officer, takes care of all the finances.

It’s easy to say the CEO manages all the executives and she does, but there are really only three components to the CEO’s position making it one of the easiest to define.

1. Establish and maintain the Vision.
2. Create and live the Culture.
3. Intercept Entropy.

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Most of us would like to think of ourselves as able to do more. To have a job with more responsibilities. To make more money. To be able to be more of service in the community.

And yet, most of us like to wear our “hard work” as a badge of honor.

There is a conflict there so let’s discuss this a bit.

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I have written often about the need to constantly evaluate results and make appropriate adjustments.

While I am a very big proponent of planning, both strategic and tactical, nothing gets done until you actually get in the game. And, when you are in the act of acting, things don’t often go as planned. The real performer, the one who really get things done, is the one who can make the most out of the current situation.

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As I frequently promote in my Leriot System, we must constantly assess the enter situation and do our best to make sense of it, make the appropriate adjustments and improve our outcomes.

The recent economic debacle in the U.S. and elsewhere coupled with the recent congressional results reminds me of the arguments I loved to have with my Economics professors at the University of Washington. They were teaching the simple notion of supply and demand and how government policies were used to provide various incentives and disincentives for the public good. I insisted government simply interfered with the natural order of things usually with awful results. I “knew” they were communists and I now know I was a libertarian at heart.

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