David Crysler

If your company keeps having problems that look a lot like ones you already fixed, look at how your team decides a fix is done. That's usually where it falls apart.

Just because you’re ISO certified doesn’t mean you effectively reach the root cause of all your problems. Most of the time you’re stopping too soon with symptoms. That’s why we built the Operations Workbench Root Cause Analysis Engine: workbench.thecrysler.club/

Every order, someone re-keyed the miscellaneous charges from the quote by hand. The room's first read: sounds like a system issue. A week later we watched it live. They were adding quote lines one at a time, which skipped the charges and let the 100-unit price ($172.92) stick on an order for 10 (should have been $277). The system could already build the order from the quote in one shot. Before blaming the software (or buying a new one), watch someone do the task to see what you learn.

For years the reason behind the changes I pushed came down to four words: "Dave wants to do this." That's not a reason anyone else can own. What fixed it: telling people why, then asking the team what if we ran it as an experiment?

Years ago I coded (by hand) a configurable estimating/quoting tool for a company I owned... I know dating myself here by admitting I used to write code "the old fashioned way." Anyway, I have a client who was wanting to build their own and I shared that I had this old version I would recreate using modern tools. Which was super fun because it took like 20 minutes to recreate using my old code base. I'm considering making it available for companies who may need a starting point vs trying to vibe code their way from zero. Would this help you or someone you know? If so, drop me a dm or comment.

The first problem isn't the technology. It's that nobody trusts what the data is telling them. Cody Fisher with Surgence joined me for a 3-part series on transforming the healthcare supply chain. Part 1 is about the real challenges the industry is quietly ignoring, and why most fixes don't stick. Catch the full conversation here: thecrysler.club/transforming…

Here's a fun one we're building... Estimating engine for a custom manufacturer with a bot front end that can have a conversation with prospects for preliminary project pricing.

If you added an ERP or MIS and left accounting as its own separate system, you already have a way to check your data. You just have to ask both of them the same question.

When I was a young leader, I was sure most of my problems were people problems. These people don't want to work hard. This person is in the wrong seat. It was a while before I actually looked in the mirror.

Who's got a favorite commercial insurance broker? Please tag them... need to do some shopping.

When I tell owners to push decisions down, I hear the same thing almost every time: we can't just let everybody make all of these decisions. I totally agree. Then I ask them one question.

You can say whatever you want about your culture. But think about how the people doing the work feel on Sunday night and what your customers actually experience… that’s the real measure of your culture.

Where are my @Apple guru's? Actively considering moving to a MacBook from PC for work. What should I know? Biggest gripe about my current XPS is my fan runs nonstop with the amount of apps and work I'm doing.

I worked with a company full of really bright people who did a lot of root cause analysis, and every time they started testing, the problem went away. How do you investigate something that might not show up again for a year?

Three people, one CRM, and all I asked was one question: how do you mark a contact as new in an existing company account? One puts the year after the last name. One puts it in the job function field. One says never do either, it wrecks every import. The two adding contacts had done it their way for years. The tool already stored the date. Their view just wasn’t setup to show it.

Operator error, operator retrained isn't an effective corrective or preventative action. But I do think it’s a great predictor of a future recurrance.

Two most improved plant awards. 400% return for a client. Advising multiple F1000 companies. Zero of those wins came from implementing a tool. Empathy, communication, and teamwork are the things that move mountains… which is a sentence I would have rolled my eyes at for the first half of my career.

"There's just no way to know. You just have to know." A customer service rep said that about one of the quirks in their order entry system, during a session on how the work really gets done. She knew because a coworker happened to tell her once. Every new hire at that desk is one missed conversation away from getting it wrong. Write the quirk down the first time someone has to explain it.

"Do we really need a work instruction for every little thing? Because we'll have a million of them and it still won't cover everything." A leader stopped me mid meeting with that one. He was right to ask. You can't document your way to complete. The question was never how much. It's what each thing actually needs.

Is there someone on your team you've been dropping hints to about their performance, hoping they'd pick up on it? Before you finally sit down with them, there's a question you have to answer about yourself.