Business-Driven 365

You’ve heard of Microsoft Teams by now, but you’re probably cringing about yet another application to learn. Worse yet, you’re likely thinking it’s another application to unnecessarily distract your employees.

I’m going to tell you why you’re very wrong if you...

This is a boring, but necessary article. It describes how to implement Teams during a two-hour staff meeting. If you’re looking for inspiration on why to implement Teams, look at this post or this post. But, since somebody’s got to discuss the agenda and tactics for the...

So why did I put such a non-business photo at the top of this business post? It’s because non-work activities such as the subject of the photo may be what your employees are most interested in, and why you must use WIIFM to get them to buy into Teams (or any collaboration improvement) from...

“You’ve got to help us!” The man across the table from me practically came out of his seat as my single sentence resonated with him. All I had said at the Chamber of Commerce networking event last Friday was that we help organizations eliminate all internal email.

Such is the...

The Situation

Soon after the merger that doubled our company’s size in 2012, the Senior Vice President of Power Generation Operations informed his Regional Vice Presidents that he needed a “Weekly Report” by Sunday morning each week so that he could in turn, compile and present...

The Situation

In 2005, employees at our largest coal power plant (and the third largest in the country) used various, inconsistent means to request “Lockout Tagout” before working on equipment. “Lockout Tagout” is a process by which mechanics, electricians, and other...

The Situation

One large generating station conducted a regular weekly meeting in which recent barriers to efficient maintenance work were discussed and actions planned to eliminate such barriers in future work.

These barriers were such things as mechanics getting the wrong parts due to incorrect...

The Situation

Maintenance outages are a stressful and action-packed time for electric generating stations. It is not a small deal when a utility idles a large generating unit because if things go badly and return to service is delayed, that unit’s generation may not be available for peak...

The Situation
We developed an Operating Model during merger transition work in 2005. The “Op Model” became the bible of generating station management at the new company. It prescribed detailed operating, maintenance, and financial management methods.

Adherence was expected of station...

A station manager recently confided to me that he was frustrated that he was mandated to get his supervisors out on the shop floor at least 50% of their days at work. "How can I do that when 70% of their work is on the computer?" he lamented.

I felt his pain; I thought the same when I heard the...