https://christaburger.com/tags/operational-excellence/Recent content in Operational Excellence on Christa BurgerHugoen-usWed, 17 Jun 2026 00:00:00 +0000https://christaburger.com/blog/ai-productivity-is-too-vague/Wed, 17 Jun 2026 00:00:00 +0000https://christaburger.com/blog/ai-productivity-is-too-vague/<p>&ldquo;AI improves productivity&rdquo; is true and also not very useful.</p> <p>Productivity where?</p> <p>Which burden got lighter?</p> <p>What changed?</p> <ul> <li>Did we reduce rework?</li> <li>Did we prevent something from being forgotten?</li> <li>Did we make decisions cleaner?</li> <li>Did we improve evidence?</li> <li>Did we reduce manual reconstruction?</li> <li>Did we make the next step obvious?</li> </ul> <p>That is what I care about.</p> <p>Not vague productivity.</p> <p><strong>Specific relief with receipts.</strong></p> <p>This is how AI use cases should be explained.</p>https://christaburger.com/blog/unnamed-work-becomes-weather/Mon, 08 Jun 2026 00:00:00 +0000https://christaburger.com/blog/unnamed-work-becomes-weather/<p>Unnamed work becomes weather.</p> <p>It just happens.</p> <p>People feel it. People complain about it. People plan around it. Nobody owns it.</p> <p>This is true in teams, households, operations, governance, and AI workflows.</p> <p>The first act of control is often <strong>naming</strong>.</p> <ul> <li>Name the recurring burden</li> <li>Name the decision point</li> <li>Name the review</li> <li>Name the handoff</li> <li>Name the risk</li> <li>Name the evidence trail</li> </ul> <p>Once something has a name, it can have an owner.</p>https://christaburger.com/blog/accountability-should-not-require-archaeology/Mon, 18 May 2026 00:00:00 +0000https://christaburger.com/blog/accountability-should-not-require-archaeology/<p>If accountability requires archaeology, the system is under-designed.</p> <p>People should not need to dig through inboxes, Slack threads, meeting notes, and the memory of whoever was least distracted at the time.</p> <p>That is not a process.</p> <p>That is a scavenger hunt with legal exposure.</p> <p>AI should make this better.</p> <p>Every meaningful AI-assisted workflow should be able to answer:</p> <ul> <li>What did it do?</li> <li>What inputs did it use?</li> <li>What changed?</li> <li>What did it recommend?</li> <li>What did a human approve?</li> <li>Where is the evidence?</li> </ul> <p>This is not just a security or compliance concern.</p>https://christaburger.com/blog/i-think-we-talked-about-this-is-not-a-control/Fri, 15 May 2026 00:00:00 +0000https://christaburger.com/blog/i-think-we-talked-about-this-is-not-a-control/<p>The worst time to document a decision is after something goes wrong.</p> <p>Everyone is calm. Everyone remembers clearly. No one is searching email for &ldquo;final_final_ACTUAL_USE_THIS_ONE_v7.&rdquo;</p> <p>Obviously.</p> <p>AI can help us stop doing this.</p> <p>It can capture decisions as they happen:</p> <ul> <li>What was known?</li> <li>What was decided?</li> <li>Who decided it?</li> <li>What changed later?</li> <li>What evidence existed at the time?</li> </ul> <p>That is incredibly valuable.</p> <p>But only if we design for it.</p> <p>Otherwise AI just helps us create more outputs with less traceability.</p>https://christaburger.com/blog/heroics-are-a-design-problem/Fri, 08 May 2026 00:00:00 +0000https://christaburger.com/blog/heroics-are-a-design-problem/<p>I used to be more impressed by heroic effort.</p> <p>The late-night push. The last-minute save. The frantic deck rescue. The spreadsheet that emerges from the ashes wearing a tiny cape.</p> <p>Now I mostly see heroics as a signal: a broken system relying on the goodwill of one person — or their insecurities — to keep functioning.</p> <p>Sometimes heroics are necessary. Workloads can fluctuate wildly.</p> <p>But that is also a lazy acceptance.</p>