All 3 entries tagged Excellence

How far should a company go for safety excellence?

Health and safety who is actually responsible for that?

I know it would be logical to say the company but what about the individual as well. Are we not responsible for our own actions and thereby also our own safety. Of course if an employer demands an employee to do something against safety regulations it will be the employers responsibility if something happens. Clear situations like that is pretty simple to argue for who is responsible and not. But what about the lovely gray areas?

Some work routines might not be dangerous short term but instead have long term affects. Telling an employee or arguing for that an employee should change their way of working because of healthy issues long term will be difficult. Imagine to tell a person that in 20 years your shoulder might be ruined and you therefore has to work different from what you have been doing the last 10 years. The change might not make your work easier, in fact it might mean that it would take longer time for you to produce which in some incidence would mean lower salary being paid. Would he change his work rhythm? If he doesn't then he will be unable to work in 20 years and who would he then blame? the company or himself? he was warned about it?

An example would be an insurance company. A person helps another person who is stuck under a heavy item. He safe that's person life by lifting the item and thereby hurts his back. His back gets so hurt that he is unable to work anymore and therefore wants insurance to pay him for lost salary. The insurance company declines his wishes because it was his own free will that chose to help that other person and therefore not anything to do with his job. He was therefore not covered. Is that fair?

The society does not think it's fair, but that's because of his heroic action and he saved another person's life. But why should the insurance pay for heroes? why could he just be saved by the rescue people?

Where is the different in when it is the organizations problem and when it is the individual?

Is it excellence if it just always the company who is responsible? or is there a limit connected to how far a company should go?

Rasmus Gejl Kristensen : 12 Jun 2012 10:53 |  Tags: Excellence Kbam |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

Manage football in an excellence way is it possible?

Building up an sound an healthy culture is one of the main elements in all parts of excellence. To create this element areas like communication, teamwork, leadership, empowerment etc. comes in. None of these elements are easy to apply and it is mostly seen as a journey for an organization to go on. But all of them are seen as being the thing for creating success. In other words that is the stuff we will be working with to create excellence in future jobs.

European football teams are huge business in the world today. It is really a billion pound market where players are transferred, jersey are sold with players name on it, TV license are made for us to see it etc. All in all it is an organization where business excellence can be applied.

Football is based on team work. One player cannot win a game by himself he has to have a good team behind him. But team do have a strategy to develop good players for future transfers. You can almost call it a modern slave factory. Players are the company's asset and they have the right to sell and buy players. If one players plays some good matches and scores some brilliant goals his price will most likely increase. Other teams therefore want to buy him for their team and for the right price he will be sold.

How can you build an sound culture here?

If we assume that players development is equal to company improvements. When employees make improvements they shall not be fired because it hurts the culture of the company. Instead they could be promoted or in other way rewarded or recognized for the development made. On a football team this is different. When a good team culture is created good players will shine, but then they will be sold and thereby hurt the culture.

Is excellence really able to be applied in this kind of environment or is a special case?

Rasmus Gejl Kristensen : 05 Jun 2012 14:23 |  Tags: Excellence Kbam |  Comments (2) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

Dont do excellence– Live in the moment!

Its Saturday and I'm still working on my literature review for my dissertation. In that process I'm surfing a lot of different news channels for getting "brain" brakes similar to what others calls procrastinating ;)

Doing this surfing I stumbled upon an article about one of our Danish ministers who is not doing well at moment. All the polls are showing a huge drop and journalist are therefore really focused on him at the moment. Some journalist event brought a cake for him to his birthday showing this drop. All this must be really frustrating for the minister because all attention is on this and not his political program which is was elected on. So what should he do?

Im really a hypocrite in this situation. I know that he should think long term and not short term. Denmark just had an election so he should not focus on how many mandates he would get in 3 years but focus on doing the things he was elected for doing. Even though I know this I still make comments to the drops in the polls by saying things like "they are in deep trouble" or "man they can't do the walk but only talk". So I am reading what the journalist says and thereby becomes the customer even though I don't like the process behind it. Weird right?

A part of Excellence is achieving balanced results- short and long term. Do politicians do this?- No. They are purely focusing on the short term decisions and who can blame them. We are the ones demanding these short term decisions because we read what the journalist are writing. And those same journalist are there for showing the truth in a democracy- like a power.  But then again, is it not more fun to jus live in the moment? Who cares about the future if we are having a great time know? Why should we?  

Rasmus Gejl Kristensen : 14 Apr 2012 13:25 |  Tags: Excellence Rdm |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem