A new leader can kill a company in 18 months. Here’s how:<\/p>\r\n
Download my free ebook, Agile Process Innovation-Hacking Lean Six Sigma for Results<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n<span data-mce-type=\"bookmark\" style=\"display: inline-block; width: 0px; overflow: hidden; line-height: 0;\" class=\"mce_SELRES_start\">\ufeff<\/span><\/iframe><\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n<p>“Hi, I’m Jay Arthur, author of \u201c<a href=\"https:\/\/www.amazon.com\/Lean-Six-Sigma-Hospitals-Improving\/dp\/1259641082\/\">Lean Six Sigma For Hospitals<\/a>\u201d and <a href=\"https:\/\/www.qimacros.com\/demo\/\">QI Macros [software]<\/a>.<\/p>\r\n<p>Back when I was in the phone company, I noticed some patterns that occurred. I was in the IT department and after divestiture in 1984, the company decided that we needed to create our own <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Bell_Labs\">Bell Labs<\/a>, our own research and innovation thing. They brought in all new leaders to do that, and they built a new building up in Boulder, Colorado. IT was part of that and we were all not terribly happy, and this new-to-leadership team thought they knew everything about software development, and were trying to enforce that on everybody\u2026 and guess what? Productivity went {downward sound effect}, and it was very interesting to watch.<\/p>\r\n<p>“Sometimes new leaders and new leadership teams can kill the productivity of a department, and you may have experienced that. So just be aware that that might happen.<\/p>\r\n<p>“And then some years after I left, <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Qwest\">Qwest<\/a> came in and took over Mountain Bell or <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/US_West\">US West<\/a> and, one of the baby bells. I remember my friends were raving about how exciting this new world of being part of the internet was going to be. Unfortunately, the leadership team really killed that company in about 18 months. The stock went from $65 to a dollar in 18 months. It almost went into bankruptcy.<\/p>\r\n<p>“Well, <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Joseph_Nacchio\">Joe Nacchio<\/a> got fired and then got convicted of and sent to prison for doing crazy stuff. <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Richard_Notebaert\">[Richard] Notebaert<\/a> came in and started doing a lot of healing work. He said \u201cWe’re not going into bankruptcy\u201d and brought the company back from almost being kaput.<\/p>\r\n<p>“So this is the kind of thing that can happen when you get a leadership change and you get an arrogant leader and terrible stuff happens.<\/p>\r\n<p>“So that’s my Improvement Insight. Beware of new leadership, because it may just throw your whole company into disarray. Let’s go out and improve something this week.”<\/p>\r\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A new leader can kill a company in 18 months. Here’s how: Download my free ebook, Agile Process Innovation-Hacking Lean Six Sigma for Results.  “Hi, I’m Jay Arthur, author of “Lean Six Sigma For Hospitals” and QI Macros [software]. Back when I was in the phone company, I noticed some patterns that occurred. I […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":8200,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[290],"tags":[631,118],"class_list":["post-7714","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-improvement-insights","tag-leaders-kill-companies","tag-lean-six-sigma"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.qimacros.com\/lean-six-sigma-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7714","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.qimacros.com\/lean-six-sigma-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.qimacros.com\/lean-six-sigma-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.qimacros.com\/lean-six-sigma-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.qimacros.com\/lean-six-sigma-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7714"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/www.qimacros.com\/lean-six-sigma-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7714\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8290,"href":"https:\/\/www.qimacros.com\/lean-six-sigma-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7714\/revisions\/8290"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.qimacros.com\/lean-six-sigma-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/8200"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.qimacros.com\/lean-six-sigma-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7714"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.qimacros.com\/lean-six-sigma-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7714"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.qimacros.com\/lean-six-sigma-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7714"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
<span data-mce-type=\"bookmark\" style=\"display: inline-block; width: 0px; overflow: hidden; line-height: 0;\" class=\"mce_SELRES_start\">\ufeff<\/span><\/iframe><\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n<p>“Hi, I’m Jay Arthur, author of \u201c<a href=\"https:\/\/www.amazon.com\/Lean-Six-Sigma-Hospitals-Improving\/dp\/1259641082\/\">Lean Six Sigma For Hospitals<\/a>\u201d and <a href=\"https:\/\/www.qimacros.com\/demo\/\">QI Macros [software]<\/a>.<\/p>\r\n<p>Back when I was in the phone company, I noticed some patterns that occurred. I was in the IT department and after divestiture in 1984, the company decided that we needed to create our own <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Bell_Labs\">Bell Labs<\/a>, our own research and innovation thing. They brought in all new leaders to do that, and they built a new building up in Boulder, Colorado. IT was part of that and we were all not terribly happy, and this new-to-leadership team thought they knew everything about software development, and were trying to enforce that on everybody\u2026 and guess what? Productivity went {downward sound effect}, and it was very interesting to watch.<\/p>\r\n<p>“Sometimes new leaders and new leadership teams can kill the productivity of a department, and you may have experienced that. So just be aware that that might happen.<\/p>\r\n<p>“And then some years after I left, <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Qwest\">Qwest<\/a> came in and took over Mountain Bell or <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/US_West\">US West<\/a> and, one of the baby bells. I remember my friends were raving about how exciting this new world of being part of the internet was going to be. Unfortunately, the leadership team really killed that company in about 18 months. The stock went from $65 to a dollar in 18 months. It almost went into bankruptcy.<\/p>\r\n<p>“Well, <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Joseph_Nacchio\">Joe Nacchio<\/a> got fired and then got convicted of and sent to prison for doing crazy stuff. <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Richard_Notebaert\">[Richard] Notebaert<\/a> came in and started doing a lot of healing work. He said \u201cWe’re not going into bankruptcy\u201d and brought the company back from almost being kaput.<\/p>\r\n<p>“So this is the kind of thing that can happen when you get a leadership change and you get an arrogant leader and terrible stuff happens.<\/p>\r\n<p>“So that’s my Improvement Insight. Beware of new leadership, because it may just throw your whole company into disarray. Let’s go out and improve something this week.”<\/p>\r\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A new leader can kill a company in 18 months. Here’s how: Download my free ebook, Agile Process Innovation-Hacking Lean Six Sigma for Results.  “Hi, I’m Jay Arthur, author of “Lean Six Sigma For Hospitals” and QI Macros [software]. Back when I was in the phone company, I noticed some patterns that occurred. I […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":8200,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[290],"tags":[631,118],"class_list":["post-7714","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-improvement-insights","tag-leaders-kill-companies","tag-lean-six-sigma"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.qimacros.com\/lean-six-sigma-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7714","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.qimacros.com\/lean-six-sigma-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.qimacros.com\/lean-six-sigma-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.qimacros.com\/lean-six-sigma-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.qimacros.com\/lean-six-sigma-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7714"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/www.qimacros.com\/lean-six-sigma-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7714\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8290,"href":"https:\/\/www.qimacros.com\/lean-six-sigma-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7714\/revisions\/8290"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.qimacros.com\/lean-six-sigma-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/8200"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.qimacros.com\/lean-six-sigma-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7714"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.qimacros.com\/lean-six-sigma-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7714"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.qimacros.com\/lean-six-sigma-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7714"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}