Great work systems support daily kaizen and sustain workplace health

Welcome to the Great Systems best practice work systems website!

Hi! I’m Kevin McManus. Welcome to the Great Systems best practice work systems website. It takes great work systems to support daily kaizen and improve workplace health.

As sole proprietor of Great Systems, my goal is to help leaders create healthy workplaces where people want to work.  On this site, I provide work team leaders with proven best practice tools, blueprints, workflows, and models to help make that possible.

At the turn of the century, I started Great Systems with one goal – to make work fair, fun, and focused. Today, too many workplaces remain far from that goal.

We should spend our work time in workplaces that are positive, inspirational, and effective. Instead, our workplaces are autocratic, chaotic, and a daily drudge.

To create great workplaces, we must upgrade our legacy 20th century work systems. The most common leadership practices from our vintage management past no longer apply.

I invite you to explore this site and ask questions. Leverage the edge that great work systems design provides.

Great Systems News – September 2024!

LEARN HOW you can bring my VIRTUAL or LIVE 2-day ‘Measurement, Trending, and Predictive Analytics – How the Best Use Data to Improve’ workshop to your organization.

Tech advances over the past five years make it possible to rethink HOW we use data each day.

How do you use data to make decisions and identify high leverage change opportunities? What key measures do you use to reduce waste, increase profits and provide a safe and secure workplace?

This workshop helps you use data more effectively each day. For example, a predictive analytics and work team engagement focus are integral to the 2-day agenda.

Please contact me if you want to explore this highly interactive, application-focused learning experience. Cheers!

Bring my VIRTUAL Mistake Proofing Best Practices workshop to your organization!

How often do you wait for an equipment failure, customer complaint, or late delivery to happen before you fix the broken work process? What techniques and tools do the best teams and workplaces proactively use to minimize daily error and failure potential, and in turn, risk?

This 2-day workshop covers the key daily work practices any team member can use to achieve these and other goals.

Message me if you have questions. If you want to check out the workshop content and exercises prior to hosting a course, you can buy my full color, 156-page Mistake Proofing Best Practices workbook on amazon.com

Most Popular Posts – August 2024

Customer feedback is the best barometer of what is popular in the daily kaizen and operational excellence arenas. Here are my top five posts for the most recent month from a ‘visits per day’ perspective. How consistent is the population’s interest with yours?

Root Cause Analysis Frequently Asked Questions

This page explores the pros and cons of five popular root cause analysis processes. For example, what is the difference between the Five Why’s and the TapRooT® root cause analysis process? How do people use other root cause analysis approaches to help solve problems?

How to Measure Employee Ownership

Workplaces need high levels of work team ownership to help sustain great levels of customer services and product / service quality. How do you measure employee ownership in your organization? This page details ten best practice approaches to gauge work team ownership.

How to Measure Process Improvement Effectiveness

Many leaders say that they consistently improve their work processes. However, how many can actually prove it? What metrics give you confidence that the formal process improvement investments you make truly return value? This page gives you multiple options to measure such payback.

Work Team Characteristics – What is a Work Team?

All organizations have teams. However, how many teams do they actually have in place? What team mix do they need to achieve strategy and improve performance over time? This page defines the three team types all organizations have.

Four Steps to Effective Rule Enforcement

Too many people struggle to enforce work rules over time. All too often, leaders use ineffective strategies to achieve consistent enforcement. Enforcement does not have to be a negative thing. The four-step process I detail on this page helps leaders achieve the levels of compliance they need day after day.

‘Teach Your Teams’ Daily Kaizen Workbooks and Workshops

I created each of my workbooks and methods through experience, practice, and experimentation. The content worked, and still works, for me. So, I want to share it with you.

The design of my learning events helps create a highly interactive and engaged learning experience. Primarily, I want to help you learn to effectively teach my content, plus other content you see as a value add.

Currently, three courses are live on my Great Systems YouTube channel. Each ‘Team Your Teams’ course contains full audio and video content to complement the print and eBook workbooks I sell on amazon.com. Plus, we can set up a virtual event to help you integrate use of this content into your leadership and team development plans.

CLICK HERE to Buy Great Systems Continuous Improvement Workbooks at Amazon.com!

Please keep me in mind for your work system improvement needs. I am happy to facilitate a virtual 2-day workshop that utilizes any of the workbooks I offer in the Great Systems Shop. There are no travel costs.

Plus, my workshop cost per participant is very reasonable. Do you want to learn more about my ‘teach it yourself’ daily kaizen workbooks and workshops? If so, please send me an email at kevin@greatsystems.com,

Stay Current With My ‘Real Life Work’ Podcast

I know that my customers have little time to invest in work systems research. That’s why I do it for them! On a regular basis, my ‘Real Life Work’ weekly podcast explores current operational excellence best practices and daily kaizen challenges. My goal is to place a ‘real life work’ focus on ‘how we create healthy workplaces.’

The podcast is now live, with more episodes in queue. Expect to see future episodes that focus on the key elements of daily continuous improvement. Such elements include Leader Standard Work, total team engagement, work system measurement, and proactive process improvement.

Plus, I plan to include safety and risk management best practices in the mix, along with more kaizen and root cause analysis content. If you want to be part of the show, drop me a line at kevin@greatsystems.com.

Recent Podcasts:

‘How to Change a Work Culture’

‘Ten Ways to Measure Workplace Training Effectiveness’

‘How to Use Predictive Analytics at Work’

Root Cause Analysis Best Practices

Effective root cause analysis is a ‘must have’ tool that all work team members should use to reduce daily errors, failures, and waste. Unfortunately, most root cause analysis tools rely on opinion.

For 20 years, my teaching and investigative experiences have shown me how the research-driven TapRooT® root cause analysis process consistently produces different, and better, results.

Four pages on my site have a root cause analysis-specific focus. If their content fails to answer your questions, just drop me a note!

How Can Great Systems Help You Make Kaizen a Daily Lifestyle and Improve Workplace Health?

Great Systems is NOW in its fourth year of virtual service! At little or no cost, you can bring my daily kaizen and OPEX content to your organization.

For example, the design of my ‘Teach Your Teams’ daily kaizen workbooks helps front line leaders teach continuous process improvement basics to their work teams. Videos to support three of these workbooks are currently available on my Great Systems YouTube channel.

Virtual Great Systems Workshops

My virtual workshop model dedicates 40% or more time to facilitated breakout group work and dialogue. Also, my use of individual assignments helps increase class engagement. Assignment review helps drive learner accountability. Plus, my virtual workshop classes follow this content delivery model to make your experience more than just time spent online.

I offer both static (no live interaction) and dynamic webinars (full interaction) on a regular basis. Please let me know if there is a continuous improvement topic I can help you with.

Lastly, please keep in mind that my costs are reasonable. My goal is to provide virtual courses, content, and coaching to help you maximize work team engagement and effectiveness, and optimize work system results.

Let me help you make kaizen a daily work habit and accelerate your operational excellence pursuit.