Shipulski On Design

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It’s easier to spot when it’s a rut of failure – product costs too high, product function is too low, and the feeding frenzy where your competitors eat your profits for lunch. Easy, yes, but still possible to miss, especially when everyone’s super busy cranking out heaps of the same old stuff in the same […]

The system is big and complex and its output is outside your control. Trying to control these outputs is a depressing proposition, yet we’re routinely judged (and judge ourselves) on outputs.  I think it’s better to focus on system inputs, specifically your inputs to the system. When the system responds with outputs different than desired, […]

Engineers fear social media, but shouldn’t. Our fear comes from lack of knowledge around information flow. Because we don’t understand how information flow works, we stay away. But our fear is misplaced – with social media information flow is controllable. For engineers, one-way communication is the best way to start. Engineers should turn on the […]

Rumor has it, manufacturing is back. Yes, manufacturing jobs are coming back, but they’re coming back in dribbles. (They left in a geyser, so we still have much to do.) What we need is a fire hose of new manufacturing jobs. Manufacturing jobs are trickling back from low cost countries because companies now realize the […]

Your business is going away. Not if, when. Someone’s going to make it go away and it might as well be you. Why not take control and make it go away on your own terms? Why not make it go away and replace it with something bigger and better? Success is good, but fleeting. Like […]

Doing new is difficult and scary.  For safety, we create complexity and hide behind it; we swim for the weeds; we dive for the details. (At least we’ll come across as knowledgeable about something when we bury our heads in details.) All of this so we can look smart and feel safe. But with new […]

Seeing things as they are takes skill, but doing something about it takes courage. Want an example? Check out movie The Sixth Sense directed by M. Night Shyamalan. At the start of the film Dr. Malcolm Crowe, esteemed child psychologist, returns home with his wife to find his former patient, Vincent Grey, waiting for him. […]

Change the culture. Easy to say, tough to do.  What does it mean, anyway? Culture is a result of something – behavior.  I’ll go further – culture is behavior, behavior themes, but behavior still. Behavior is a result of behavior. Want to change someone’s behavior? Wrong question. You can’t.  You can change yours, they can […]

Companies pursue lots of ideas; some turn out well and some badly. Since we can’t tell with 100% certainty if an idea will work, bad ones are a cost of doing business. And it makes sense to tolerate them. The cost of a few bad ones is well worth the upside of a game-changer. It’s […]

I read a refreshing article in the Washington Post. Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates wants to save $20B per year on the Pentagon’s spend. I could kiss this guy! Gates wants contracts scrutinized more closely for inefficiencies and unneeded overhead. He said the savings could be shifted to support U.S. troops around the globe. Pentagon […]

Everyone wants growth – but how? We know innovation is a key to growth, but how do we do it? Be creative, break the rules, think out of the box, think real hard, innovate. Those words don’t help me. What do I do differently after hearing them? I am a process person, processes help me. […]