a vendor for a $200,000 project to do customer data mining and another vendor to plug into all our POS systems to get sales data for customer analytics. “The first problem is that both projects violate the data privacy policy that we’ve given our customers,” John says. “We repeatedly promise that we will not share data with partners. Whether we

“In those moments, you wonder whether the problem is the economy, our strategy, our management team, you IT guys, or, quite frankly, maybe the entire problem is me. Those are the days I just want to retire.”

you can’t achieve the strategic until you’ve mastered the tactical,”

“every work center is made up of four things: the machine, the man, the method, and the measures.

hook for a huge number of projects. So, let’s look at what our capacity is.

When everyone is conditioned to believe that no isn’t an acceptable answer, we all just became compliant order takers, blindly marching down

“Shit. How the hell are we supposed to write an IT outsourcing contract if we don’t even know what the business needs?” he says, slamming his hand on the table.

When you spend all your time firefighting, there’s little time or energy left for planning.

efficiency and effectiveness of operations.