Good Morning from London.

What began as a simple idea — helping companies ignite employee engagement through innovation-powered continuous improvement — has sparked an extraordinary reaction here in the UK.

Since releasing my latest book, PROACTIVE Problem Solving, in January (an Amazon bestseller, by the way!), the U.S. response has been fantastic. But nothing prepared me for the energy and enthusiasm I’m experiencing on this tour through Scotland, Wales, and London, organized by my friend and our partner, Phil Oliver of Eureka! Europe.

We’re only halfway through, and I can confidently say: I’ve never seen anything like this. In Edinburgh, I signed more books than at any of my previous keynotes here. Even more meaningful were the emails I received afterward — from corporate execs, government officials, and university leaders — expressing their excitement about how “Stopping the Stupid” could energize their teams in this AI-flooded world. I’ll admit I wasn’t sure how UK audiences would respond to the irreverence of the phrase — but it turns out, CEOs and senior leaders are just as eager to eliminate the inefficiencies in their systems as the frontline employees are.

What’s even more exciting is that leaders instantly understood the deeper message: that engaging employees in improving broken work systems sets the stage for success in larger, bolder innovation.

As I often say, product and service innovations lose up to 50% of their value between idea and market — mostly due to internal compromises. But when employees have already experienced success solving process problems, they’re far more likely to lean into solving the challenges that come with delivering breakthrough products. That connection is resonating here in a powerful way.

Two more events remain this week, along with another tasting of our award-winning Dexter Bourbon. I look forward to continuing this incredible journey — and sharing more insights soon.

Cheers,

Doug Hall 

Founder – Eureka! Ranch
Co-Founder – Dexter Bourbon Company from the Brain Brew Distillery
Co-Founder – Eureka! Ranch Distilled Spirits Group

Click to learn more about:  DOUG’S Bio     DOUG’S Services     DOUG’S Books

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I am very excited to be spending next week in Scotland, Wales, and London to do keynote speeches and coaching based on my latest book PROACTIVE Problem Solving.

I look forward to the events and for connecting with friends I’ve made over the past thirty years of traveling to the UK. 

Taking my learnings and teachings from Canada and the United States to the UK is always a wonderful educational experience for me.  Being there brings a fresh and diverse edge to my talks and research.    

Historically I’ve spoken about finding and fast tracking “Big Ideas” inventing new brands or renovating existing brands.

For this trip, my focus is on helping managers who are VERY FRUSTRATED with their inability to get things done!  That’s because research indicates that the average manager wastes 3.5 hours a day dealing with broken work systems (some would call them “stupid” work systems) – the processes, practices, and procedures that get in the way of their performance and that also frustrate and disengage colleagues, and slow the organization’s productivity and growth. 

Philip Oliver, our regional partner at Eureka! Europe, came up with a clever way of telling the story through the lens of the crazy success we’ve had with our Dexter Bourbon Company from our Brain Brew Distillery.  

The talk is titled:  Seven Lessons in Leadership from A Craft Whiskey Distillery. 

Obviously it will be good fun using lessons from a U.S. distillery with the folks in Scotland who pioneered whiskey.  I anticipate enjoying friendly humor, some polite challenges to me, and as always mind-opening insights from sharing what I’ve learned with an audience that has a very different cultural mindset. 

As I wrote in PROACTIVE Problem Solving – our modeling of creativity finds that diversity like this is not additive, not multiplicative, but rather exponential in its impact. 

Cheers,

Doug Hall 

Founder – Eureka! Ranch
Co-Founder – Dexter Bourbon Company from the Brain Brew Distillery
Co-Founder – Eureka! Ranch Distilled Spirits Group

Click to learn more about:  DOUG’S Bio     DOUG’S Services     DOUG’S Books

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Scientists at the University of Lübeck in Germany have found for the first time that our sleeping brains continue working on problems that baffle us during the day. 

Volunteers were 3 times more likely to successfully solve a series of math problems than than sleep deprived participants.

Previous studies have shown that about one third of the population are sleep deprived – contributing to increases accidents and worsening health. 

Sleep is thought to help us consolidate memories and sharpen thoughts. 

This study confirms bio-chemical studies of the brain that indicate memories are restructured before they are stored. 

There are some experts who believe that in fact – lack of sleep could be a key reason why senior citizens have memory problems – it’s common that seniors have trouble sleeping. 

Researchers believe that even gradual decreases in the total time for slow wave sleep and deep sleep is correlated to a decrease in memory function and problem solving ability.

So when you feel the urge to take a snooze – tell your boss, spouse or partner you are not being lazy – you’re just improving your ability to proactively solve problems!

Cheers,

Doug Hall 

Founder – Eureka! Ranch
Co-Founder – Dexter Bourbon Company at the Brain Brew Distillery

I’m On My Way to London & Glasgow in early June… 

FOR DETAILS ON UK EVENTS CLICK HERE

Click to learn more about:  DOUG’S Bio     DOUG’S Services     DOUG’S Books

Click to SEND DOUG A MESSAGE

THE SITUATION – The benefits of increasing employee engagement are well understood: decreased absenteeism, decreased safety incidents, decreased employee turnover, increased profitability, increased productivity and sales.

However the existing system for measurement of engagement is an employee survey of “satisfaction and commitment to the company” is fine for episodic annual measurements but not as a tool for continuous improvement of your system for improving employee engagement. 

NEW METRIC – The new system metric is the number of improvements to human work systems per employee per year.  Tracking this metric gives us an ability to draw control charts – starting on a monthly basis and then as the system volume improves it moves to weekly.  The initial goal for engagement is 10 improvements to how the work gets done per employee per year. 

The ideal measure of improvements is changes to the organizations Standard Operating Procedures (SOP’s).   SOP’s provide clear documentation of how the work of your organization gets done.  They are the foundation of successful and sustainable process improvement. 

IMPLEMENTATION CHALLENGE – The challenge with SOP changes being the metric for employee engagement is that most organizations do not have SOP’s or if they do they are either out of date or not broadly accessible by team members. 

EASY STARTING POINT – Two Step SOP – The easy way to get started is to use a two step process for documentation.  

The first step is a simple explanation of work process changes 

• Name of Work System Change
• Name of Person(s) who Created the Change
• Background on System Purpose & Problem 
• Solution detailed Step by Step
• Quantified Value of Change or Estimate of It
• Name of peer(s) who helped improve description
• Name of person(s) who Approved the Change

The second step is to publish the changes

• Names of Changes w/ Link to Details
• For Trade Secrets Only the Name is Published
• Include Summary Control Chart of # of Changes

The third step is to update your Formal SOP if you have one

• Translate informal to your formal SOP format
• Add to Centralized SOP Database
• If formal SOPs are not available file informal one

YES IT IS WORTH THE EFFORT  – The truth is that broken systems and low employee engagement are the root cases of 94% of the stresses, headaches and frustrations of team members, managers and leadership.   That said, the journey from a culture of chaos and fire fighting to one of never ending continuous improvement requires patience.  The good news is that the process will build momentum on it’s own. As one team member said to me when I told her it would take time, “Doug I don’t care how long it takes. The fact that we are finally confronting the chaos gives me hope for the future.”

A THREE STEP SYSTEM

Cheers

Doug Hall 

Founder – Eureka! Ranch
Co-Founder – Dexter Bourbon Company at the Brain Brew Distillery

I’m On My Way to London & Glasgow in early June… 

FOR DETAILS ON UK EVENTS CLICK HERE

Click to learn more about:  DOUG’S Bio     DOUG’S Services     DOUG’S Books

Click to SEND DOUG A MESSAGE

I observed the power of engagement by team members and customers last weekend.  Petar and I I spent last weekend supporting the Joe Borrow Foundation’s golf event.  On Friday night we served Old Fashioned Cocktails at a pre event party.  On Saturday we were hole seven providing golfers with a tasting sample of our Dexter Three Wood Bourbon.   

During the weekend I had a unique opportunity to observe the behavior of the attendees as many learned about and experienced our Dexter Bourbon for the first time.   I was struck by how clear and obvious it was that we were creating engagement with the brand.  AND, how similar it was to what we observe when we work with leadership to create engagement among team members with PROACTIVE Problem Solving of broken systems in the work place.  

It didn’t take a survey to quantify the impact…..

1. Engaged team members & customers ARE OVERT in their excitement.  

When folks experience something that is truly meaningfully unique – be it a new way of working or a 96 point Bourbon they let you know it immediately.  You can see it on their face instantly.  And, they just HAVE TO TELL YOU how much they enjoy the experience.  The reason for this might well be the dozens of disappointments they’ve experienced when the training or whiskey didn’t live up to their expectations.

2. Engaged team members & customers TELL OTHERS about their learning.

Interestingly the event the night before with about 25% of those who were playing golf lit the excitement for Dexter.   Throughout the day, as the golfers came up to hole seven and saw Petar and I – we could hear those who had experienced us the night before tell the others in their group about how amazing Dexter was.    It’s the same with team members at companies.  When the lady who participated in PROACTIVE Problem Solving was able to Stop The Stupid way that she worked – so that she could vaporize the need for rework – she just had to tell others about it.  That my friends is how you create true and lasting Culture Change.

3. Engaged team members & customers PROACTIVELY Engage Others.

Beyond simply telling others – those who are truly engaged proactively engage others.  At the party the night before – when a participant had what they called “the best old fashioned in their life” they brought others over to our bar asking us to tell our story and make one.  On the golf course, folks drove their golf cart back to us to get another sample to take to a friend.   It’s the same with PROACTIVE Problem Solving – when someone is full engaged I’ve observed that they don’t take no for an answer.  They inevitably pull out a tool they learned and teach it / use it with others they want to enroll in the culture change movement.

To learn more simply click to learn more on links at the bottom. 

If you are in the UK click on link below for tickets to my three speaking events in early June.

Cheers

Doug Hall 

Founder – Eureka! Ranch
Co-Founder – Dexter Bourbon Company from the Brain Brew Distillery
Co-Founder – Eureka! Ranch Distilled Spirits Group

I’m On My Way to London & Glasgow in early June… 

Here’s information on my UK speaking events: 

✅ Monday 9th June (AM) in Glasgow

✅ Tuesday 10th June in London

✅ Friday 13th June in London

FOR DETAILS ON UK EVENTS CLICK HERE

Click to learn more about:  DOUG’S Bio     DOUG’S Services     DOUG’S Books

Click to SEND DOUG A MESSAGE

Stopping the Stupid is becoming a rallying cry at organizations who are activating their team members and managers to confront the small yet frequent flaws in work systems that get in the way of personal and organizational success.   

Here’s a just a couple recent stories of victory by team members who are ignited as PROACTIVE Problem Solvers of Broken Work Systems. 

Stopping the Stupid – Warehouse Reorganization Saves 7 minutes/order.   The company fulfills about 150 orders for spare or replacement parts each day.  The team that picks and packs the parts for shipping recently found a way to Stop The Stupid amount of walking they do each day.   They saved 7 minutes of walking for each order by moving the 200 top selling parts to racks near the front of the warehouse.  Voila! Less walking and greater productivity.

Stopping the Stupid – Educating the People Entering The Data – A team was responsible for checking the paperwork associated with custom orders.   It was a very frustrating job as some 90% of the time an error was made on the forms. They sorted the mistakes and found the three input areas on the forms that constituted the highest percentage of errors.  Then, they went to each error source to identify the cause of the errors.  To their surprise it was mostly because of change over in staffing.  New people that were assigned to enter the data were not being trained properly.  When they instituted new training, VOILA!, the mistake levels dropped immediately. 

In both cases – the solution was not “rocket science” rather it was simple common sense.  And, it was activated by those close to the work – working with their team leader.

Friends – YOU TOO can STOP THE STUPID that prevents you and your team from realizing personal and organizational success.

Cheers

Doug Hall 

Founder – Eureka! Ranch
Co-Founder – Dexter Bourbon Company from the Brain Brew Distillery
Co-Founder – Eureka! Ranch Distilled Spirits Group

I’m On My Way to London & Glasgow in early June… 

Here’s information on my UK speaking events: 

✅ Monday 9th June (AM) in Glasgow, with National Manufacturing Institute Scotland REGISTER

✅ Tuesday 10th June in London, with Space Network REGISTER

✅ Friday 13th June in London, with THE CENTRE FOR TEAMS LIMITED for Teams and Institute of Physics REGISTER

Click to learn more about:  DOUG’S Bio     DOUG’S Services     DOUG’S Books

Click to SEND DOUG A MESSAGE