Workplace Fail: People Are Ticked Off

We’re now going to tackle the topic of people being Ticked Off. Employee anger, as well as other personality and mental disorders, are a major reason why people don’t do their jobs. Ticked off, as the Urban Dictionary hilariously tells us, is an intermediate stage of anger midway between “miffed” and “pissed off.” The effects […]

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Now Available: Why People Don’t Do Their Jobs

Now available on Amazon is my latest book, “Why People Don’t Do Their Jobs: The Four Root Causes of Everything”. This brilliant work of non-fiction is available for pre-order as of December 24, and is available on both Kindle and Paperback on January 15th. Why People Don’t Do Their Jobs Your flight is canceled, your […]

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System Fail: Online Ordering Ace Hardware Version

Here is the story of the System Fail: Online Ordering Ace Hardware Version on Christmas Eve. We have talked about a similar story before on this blog, and were it not infuriating, I might almost be happy about another opportunity to complain about it. Here is the Story It’s possible that I need one of […]

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Why Your Nail Shop Went Broke

While doing research for my new book, “Why People Don’t Do Their Jobs”, I came across the following scene in a strip mall, and decided to send a message to answer the question “why your nail shop went broke.” Yes, that’s right, for whatever reason, known only to nobody, there are four nail shops located […]

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How to Develop a Terrible Workforce

In the spirit of Deming, we’re going to take on the project of workforce development, namely how to develop a terrible  workforce. Deming, as I reminded you recently, says that a system is perfectly engineered to produce what it does. So if the system has already produced a workforce that doesn’t show up for work, […]

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Threat to Quality: The Workforce is Impaired

We’re going to share some statistics today about how the workforce is impaired. This is part of our overall understanding of why people don’t do their jobs. Historical References Probably this has gone on since the invention of labor, or maybe the invention of impairment. If you want to go back as far as Dickens, […]

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Non-compliance: Why do people speed?

Today’s project is to look into the question: Why do People Speed? . The practice of speeding, in the car sense happens at a rate of about 90% despite it being counter-indicated in the car SOP. This is a pretty common situation in which there is a set of rules, and a certain fraction of […]

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How to Fail: The Louisville School Bus Catastrophe

We’re going to tackle the Louisville School Bus Catastrophe now. This crisis, which has still not been completely resolved, has in it a lot of the elements we have talked about that contribute to human failure.  The most important part of this story is that it’s only a matter of time before it blows up […]

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Emergency Mismanagement of the Lahaina Wildfire 

As part of our ongoing study of human failure, we’re looking at the mismanagement of the Lahaina Wildfire. Wildfires happen all the time, but this was a particularly interesting case where the problem may have been made worse by management ineptitude. I say “may have” because it is not completely clear at the moment exactly […]

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Air Chaos: The Case of the Missing Luggage

The Case of the Missing Luggage. Imagine you, standing in line at the airline lost baggage department, at midnight. Your bag is missing and you need answers. Why did this happen? I am writing this is because a couple of people in my circle have reported recent baggage chaos in the system. To be perfectly […]

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