Shipulski On Design

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If you haven’t done it before and you want to start, you have only one option – to start. Much as there’s a huge difference between lightning and lightning bug, there’s a world of difference between starting and talking about starting. Where talking about starting flutters aimlessly flower to flower, starting jolts trees from the […]

Independence is important; independence is powerful; it’s dangerous; it’s threatening. But, above all, independence is about control. If you believe it’s a zero-sum-game, independence is adverserial – more for you, less for me. It’s give-and-take without the give – I don’t give you control, and you take it anyway. If you believe there’s no trust, […]

In school the problems you were given weren’t really problems at all. In school you opened the book to a specific page and there, right before you in paragraph form and numbered consecutively, was a neat row of “problems”. They were fully-defined, with known inputs, a formal equation that defined the system’s response, and one […]

Planning is important work, but it’s non-value added work. Short and sweet – planning is waste. Lean has taught us waste should be reduced, and the best way to reduce waste from planning is to spend less time planning. (I feel silly writing that.) Lean has taught us to reduce batch size, and the best […]

From the outside it’s unclear how things happen; but from the inside it’s clear as day. No, it’s not your bulletproof processes; it’s not your top down strategy; and it’s not your operating plans. It’s your people. At some level everything happens like this: An idea comes to you that makes little sense, so you […]

Every day is a meeting-to-meeting sprint with no time for some of the favorite fundamentals like the bathroom and food.  Though crazy, it’s the norm and no longer considered crazy.   But it is crazy.  When you’re too busy to answer emails that’s one thing, but when you’re too busy to realize answering email isn’t progress, […]

We’ve been conditioned to ask for direction; to ask for a plan; and ask for permission. But those ways no longer apply. Today that old behavior puts you at the front of the peloton in the great race to the bottom. The old ways are gone. Today’s new ways: propose a direction (better yet, test […]

I used to believe in control, now I believe in trust. I used to believe in process, now I believe in judgment. I used to believe in WHAT and HOW, now I believe in WHO and WHY. I used to believe in organizational structure, now I believe in personal relationships. I used to believe in […]

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 technical stuff is the easy part. Technical systems respond predictably, but people don’t. There’s nothing worse than solving the wrong problem, so before you start solving you’ve better done a whole lot of defining. There is no exact answer; engineering is all about judgment. Organizational structure is important.  Whatever the structure, see its strengths […]

Whether it’s innovation, creativity, continuous improvement, or discontinuous improvement, it’s all about cultural change, and cultural change is about change in behavior. With the police state approach, detailed processes are created and enforced; rules are created and monitored; and training is dealt out and attendance taken. Yes, behavior is changed, but it’s fleeting. Take your […]