Book Review

Reviewed by Mamta Madhavan for Readers' Favorite

Sydney the Monster Stops Bullies by Dr. Tom DePaoli is the story of Sydney the Monster who loved kids and liked to play with them. He always tried to make them comfortable and calm. Sydney chased away the bad monsters or locked them in the closet. While Sydney played fun games with the children, he also taught them more about the monsters and how, like humans, all of them were different from each other. Sydney's spongy skin absorbed water and parents were surprised to see their kids' rooms always clean and neat. The mean monsters, however, made fun of Sydney. This book with its message reaches out to kids, parents and teachers, and speaks about the topic of bullying and the physical and psychological effects it can have on bullied kids.

The story is engaging and it has an excellent message for young readers. The illustrations are bright and cheerful and they get the message across nicely and effectively. Sydney is a lovable character and all kids would definitely love him and his ways. It's a good storybook for read aloud sessions in classrooms and school libraries. The author handles the topic of bullying very well and conveys a strong and positive message. The book also gives confidence to readers on how to stand up against bullying. It teaches children to become friends instead of bullying each other. This simple story captures the hearts of young readers with its positive message.

Contact Dr. Tom = thomasdepaoli@yahoo.com drtombooks.com for newsletter sign up https://drtombooks.com/contact/ My Books link: https://www.amazon.com/Tom-DePaoli/e/B003XSV1IQ

 

 

 

 

Purchasing and Supply Chain Professionals Need to Lead Process Improvement Transformation

By Dr. Tom DePaoli

For more leading-edge ideas see my books on Amazon:

Common Sense Purchasing, Common Sense Supply Management and Avoiding a Supply Chain Apocalypse

Often companies make the grievous mistake of not letting procurement or supply chain professionals select or source the consultant or consulting group to lead process improvement. Lean Six Sigma and Lean are too important to leave in the hands of other departments not familiar with the comprehensive evaluation of a bid or a proposal. In fact, procurement or supply management not only should lead the selection, but lead the entire process improvement transformation. Nothing can have more financial gain for a company than improvements in the supply chain! Here are some hard-learned selection lessons.

Experience trumps everything in selecting a Lean Six Sigma or Lean consultant. It’s critical that the consultant you hire has multiple experiences with multiple projects. Verification by checking with former clients is essential. Beware of consultants who want to charge exorbitant fees for all the process improvement training belt classes. You can quickly master this training internally for employees to become at least an entry level Green Belt by using the train-the-trainer concept. Belt certifications differ from company to com­pany. Insist on training effectiveness data from the consultant and examples of successful projects and tools used in their methodology. There are hundreds of improvement tools that could possibly be used in the process improvement. There are however only about thirty to forty that are used most frequently and are the most effective.

Strongly consider a fixed hourly rate especially for training, but remember that you get what you pay for. Make sure you can retain all the training materi­als developed during the process. Many of the available training materials are generic, and you will want to retain any custom­ized ones for your company. Make sure the consultant understands that you will demand process improvement self-sufficiency in two years or sooner.

The consultant’s people skills must be superb. Initially many members of a process improvement team are hostile to the process and transformation until they understand it. Strive to make the contract performance-based on the savings of the projects rather than amount of training delivered or other parameters that they suggest. Consider jointly developing online training courses that can be used with much greater flexibility. Process improvement meeting organization and facilitation skills are indispensable. Insist on sitting in on a live meeting that the consultant conducts like a kaizen. Observing a consultant in action is one of the best ways to judge their skills. Make sure the consultant can fit into your organizations culture and adapt to your organization’s standards and norms. Nothing destroys process improvement initiatives faster than cultural mismatches.

Finally prepare your organization for the process improvement transformation. The most successful proven way to make process improvement initiatives work is to make employees accountable for it. In other words, tie their cooperation, progress and training in process improvement directly to their pay or raises. You must financially incentivize it for them. Other so called persuasive or cooperative approaches have a much higher failure rate.

 

 

          Dr. Tom DePaoli, (Dr. Tom) is currently an independent management consultant, the Principal of Apollo Solutions, which does general business consulting in the human resources, supply chain and lean six sigma areas. His organization was self-founded in 1995. He retired as a Captain from the Navy Reserve. In other civilian careers, he was a supply chain and human resources executive with corporate purchasing turnaround experience and lean six sigma deployments. He has worked for over ten major companies and consulted for over fifty organizations throughout his career. Some of his consulting projects include: information systems projects, re-engineering organizations, transformation, e-procurement, e-commerce, change management, global sourcing and negotiating. His industry experience is in the chemical, paper, pharmaceutical, IT, automotive, government, consumer, equipment, services and consulting industries. He has been published extensively in journals, magazines and books. He is the author of eleven books all available on Amazon.  He has instructed at six education facilities in numerous roles. He is active in supporting the YMCA, Wounded Warrior, and the prevention of the bullying of children.

https://www.amazon.com/author/tomdepaoli    = Dr. Tom’s Amazon author’s page

http://www.apollosolutions.us  = website of Apollo Solutions his business

drtombooks.com  = more information on Dr. Tom’s books

http://www.linkedin.com/pub/dr-thomas-depaoli/0/736/6b3/  = LinkedIn home page

 

 

Procurement and supply chain leaders need to lead transformation.

#procurement #supplychain Leadershp #transformation

https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/procurement-supply-chain-professionals-need-lea

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Contact Dr. Tom = thomasdepaoli@yahoo.com drtombooks.com for newsletter sign up https://drtombooks.com/contact/ My Books link: https://www.amazon.com/Tom-DePaoli/e/B003XSV1IQ

 

 

 

 

Leaders Work Hard and Volunteer for The Tough Assignments

By Dr. Tom DePaoli

See my book on Amazon Leadership by Storytelling for more leadership stories.

 

I was working for a fortune 500 company as an employee relations manager, in human resources, in a large midwestern plant. The company had just undergone a very tough period. It had gone to war with its employees and tried to break the current union and implemented a take it or leave it contract. All this did was infuriate the employees and create a giant slowdown in the plant. Fortunately, the company decided to reverse this approach and work with the union and employees as a partner. One of the goals was to reduce the number of skilled trades in the plant from the current 29 classifications. This created much inefficiency and complicated rules. It literally could take three people to change a lightbulb.

The company hired a consultant in creating partnerships and improving employee relationships for three days. The fee was over $10,000 for the sessions. I sat in on the sessions. I soon realized that I was much more knowledgeable about our union, the culture, the skilled trades and the approach that we needed to implement pay-for-skill than the consultant. I decided to do research on my own and discovered some articles on pay-for-skill and skilled trade consolidation. After a discussion with my boss I volunteered to lead the skilled trades consolidation and implement a pay-for skill compensation system. This was a tough and contentious project. I was to be the first in the company to lead the implementation of the compensation system.

Despite the company’s attempts to destroy the union, the union president and the union committee still trusted me, and considered me fair and open to compromise. I decided to become an expert on pay-for- skill compensation and started researching the concept. I had always considered getting a PhD, and now I investigated options for a PhD, and made a dissertation proposal to a university. I would research organizations that already had similar pay-for-skills systems and study the factors that made them successful. They accepted the proposal. My logic was since I had to do the research anyway for my work-life, why not jointly take an academic approach to pay-for-skill. I received help from the local university in my research and the use of a super-computer to analyze my data. After working long and hard with the union, we jointly reduced the skilled trade classifications from 29 to 5. Crafts persons could also become multi-skilled and have multiple skills such as welder pipe-fitter and carpenter combined! The more skills, the higher pay they received. Crafts persons were not pressured to have multiple skills, but if they did not, their pay would not be as much as a crafts person with multiple skills.

Their skills training was subsidized by the company and we established an on-site tech-school for them to gain the skills. We also extended the opportunity for skills training to production workers and management.

 

I finished the PhD in four years and published the results of my data. The overall knowledge and understanding of the workforce improved dramatically. Pay-for-skill is a long-term investment in employees that is exceptionally successful. The project gave me a reputation for volunteering for tough assignments. Leaders work hard and volunteer for the tough assignments.

 

Dr. Tom DePaoli, (Dr. Tom) is currently an independent management consultant, the Principal of Apollo Solutions, which does general business consulting in the human resources, supply chain and lean six sigma areas. His organization was self-founded in 1995. He retired as a Captain from the Navy Reserve. In other civilian careers, he was a supply chain and human resources executive with corporate purchasing turnaround experience and lean six sigma deployments. He has worked for over ten major companies and consulted for over fifty organizations throughout his career. Some of his consulting projects include: information systems projects, re-engineering organizations, transformation, e-procurement, e-commerce, change management, global sourcing and negotiating. His industry experience is in the chemical, paper, pharmaceutical, IT, automotive, government, consumer, equipment, services and consulting industries. He has been published extensively in journals, magazines and books. He is the author of eleven books all available on Amazon.  He has instructed at six education facilities in numerous roles. He is active in supporting the YMCA, Wounded Warrior, and the prevention of the bullying of children.

https://www.amazon.com/author/tomdepaoli    = Dr. Tom’s Amazon author’s page

http://www.apollosolutions.us  = website of Apollo Solutions his business

drtombooks.com  = more information on Dr. Tom’s books

http://www.linkedin.com/pub/dr-thomas-depaoli/0/736/6b3/  = LinkedIn home page

 

 

Learn to lead by stories. #leadership

https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/leaders-work-hard-volunteer-tough-assignments-depaoli-1c

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Contact Dr. Tom = thomasdepaoli@yahoo.com drtombooks.com for newsletter sign up https://drtombooks.com/contact/ My Books link: https://www.amazon.com/Tom-DePaoli/e/B003XSV1IQ