Tribal Knowledge and the 5/67 Rule

Tribal Knowledge and the 5/67 Rule

The 5/67 Rule is a subset of the 20/80 Rule or 80/20 Rule.  We discovered it during our War on Waste.  We were always in a hurry to get projects completed and we didn’t have time to look at 20% of the problem.  But we did have time to look at 5% of the...
Adam Smith’s Mistake and Me

Adam Smith’s Mistake and Me

By Leonard Bertain, Ph.D. 1.  Summary I  have been teaching client employees to solve problems over the last 35 years.  Mind you, over those years, I helped client companies address over 10,000 ideas and helped them generate over $2 Billion of first...
“Optimistic Humanism” needs “No Blame”

“Optimistic Humanism” needs “No Blame”

I just saw a 3 minute video of Steve Jobs talking about “Optimistic Humanism.” In the video he is talking about Quality and the role that it should play in a business and acknowledged by customers. His initial point in the video is that “the Japanese...
Pope Francis Talks about Leadership

Pope Francis Talks about Leadership

It’s a rare day that I would introduce Pope Francis as the subject of a blog.  But he deserves this one.  He lectured his Cardinals about the 15 Diseases of Leadership as only he could do. It is a message that we all could listen to: The 15 diseases of...
Tribal Knowledge, No Blame and Honest Data

Tribal Knowledge, No Blame and Honest Data

A number of years ago, I wrote a column for the Oakland Chamber of Commerce on the Tribal Knowledge Paradigm and one of the issues that came up was a particular company’s inability to get orders on time to the customer.  I wrote a few of these...