1: The year was 1993.  GE CEO Jack Welch was in Japan when he heard a story about the country’s railway system.

After World War II, Japan’s economy had been decimated.

“A large portion of the country’s population lived in or between the cities of Tokyo and Osaka, which were separated by just 320 miles of train track,” Charles Duhigg writes in Smarter Faster Better: The Transformative Power of Real … continue reading

1: A GE worker had an idea.

He suggested to his managers that they stop outsourcing the construction of protective shields for their grinding machines, as Charles Duhigg explains in Smarter Faster Better: The Transformative Power of Real Productivity.

This employee was taking part in what GE called a “Work-Out” within a struggling division that made jet engine parts.

Yesterday, we looked at a potential trap with SMART … continue reading