Ep123 Hidden Capacity: Stop Digging Holes That Don’t Need Digging

Most organisations chase capacity in the wrong place. We add people, extend hours, buy more technology, when the capacity we're looking for is often already there, quietly trapped beneath rework, excess and delay that everyone has simply learned to accept as normal.  Lego found $450 million throug…

Ep122 Converge, Diverge, Converge: The Rhythm of Great Problem Solving

Different perspectives feel like a strength, until they quietly become the reason five people leave a meeting solving five different problems. A tapping exercise from Stanford reveals why: once you know something, you can't imagine not knowing it, and that gap is where teams get stuck.  The fix is…

Ep121 The Danger of Being Exceptionally Good at the Wrong Thing

Sometimes the smartest, most experienced people in the room can look straight at the future and completely misread it. Not because the data is wrong, but because it answers the wrong question entirely.  This episode traces that pattern through Nokia, Kodak and the Swiss watch industry, three marke…

Ep120 Inside the Complex Air Crash Investigation of USAir Flight 427 – Capt. John Cox

Great problem solvers don't chase theories, they chase evidence, even when it takes years to find it. That's the lesson from Captain John Cox, who led the four-year investigation into USAir Flight 427, one of the most complex air crash investigations in history.  With 56 years in aviation, includi…

Ep119 Understanding the Problem Before Solving It

Real problem solving starts long before the whiteboard comes out. When Flight 427 went down in 1994, it took investigators nearly five years to find the answer, not because they lacked evidence, but because premature theories are seductive and discipline is hard.  Most workplace problems aren't li…

Ep118 Rework: How Small Errors Can Lead to Massive Problems

Rework is the thief hiding in plain sight. We rarely count it as waste — we just call it "work." But every correction, resend, and re-check is a bill we already paid once, now due again.  A warehouse re-slotting project seemed to be working... until productivity refused to move. The real issue was…

Ep117 Continuous Improvement Is a Leadership Skill — Paul Ives

Operational excellence doesn't begin with processes or tools – it begins with people. Manufacturing leader Paul Ives argues that continuous improvement only succeeds when leaders create the right culture, earn trust and consistently reinforce the behaviours they expect.  With more than two decades…

Ep116 The Gordian Knot and the Problem With Complexity

The biggest breakthrough in problem-solving may be recognising that the problem itself is wrong. The ancient story of Alexander the Great and the Gordian Knot offers a powerful lesson for modern organisations: sometimes the smartest solution isn't to untangle complexity, but to question why it exis…

Ep115 Excellence Beyond The Finish Line

What keeps you running when winning is no longer possible? In 1964, Sri Lankan Olympic runner Ranatunge Karunananda found the answer in the most unlikely place. Lapped repeatedly in the 10,000 metres final, he kept running long after the winner had finished and the crowd had stopped laughing. He ha…

Ep114 The Hidden Cost of Small Inefficiencies

Small inefficiencies are easy to dismiss. One extra piece of paper, one unnecessary approval, one duplicate report or one additional click hardly seems worth worrying about. But frequency changes everything. When a small inefficiency is repeated thousands or millions of times, it becomes significan…