I’ve been trying mostly unsuccessfully to help our managers start sharing their great ideas. I know these things are happening everyday, but we’re not great yet at cross-pollinating the ideas. I think it’s mostly due to the managers lack of ego, they’re not spending enough time thinking how great their ideas are. And maybe in part we haven’t created the right forum for people to share. I’d like to fix that.
In the meantime, I’m outing them and some of their good ideas.
This is one I saw on the MIT truck. It’s a little whiteboard that’s being used to track the issues that have arisen during the day. At the end of every day our managers send out a “closing note” for their location. The notes include all of the critical stuff we could get better the next day. Stuff like missing utensils, food quality issues, stuff that wasn’t packed right, maintenance issues, etc. It’s been a critical thing to help us improve.
One of the problems with the notes has been making sure they include everything. Sometimes stuff goes on that the manager doesn’t see. So this idea is great. It let’s anybody on the truck quickly keep track of anything that happens. At the end of the night it all goes into the email. Pretty cool, right?
