Posted on May 15, 2005  Comments (0)

We will use this blog to note blog post, articles and management resources. With this blog we will focus on serving as a central point to keep up with blogs and online articles relating to Management Improvement: Customer Focus, Process Improvement, Deming, Lean Thinking, Six Sigma, Theory of Constraints, Statistical Tools, Quality Tools, Agile Management…

This is the newest edition of the Curious Cat Blog Roster, which also includes:

• curiouscat.com Blog – focused on management improvement, economics, investment, travel, the internet and the curiouscat.com web site. Many of these posts consist of our own commentary.
• Curious Cat Science Blog – post on Innovation, Research and Education in Science and Engineering
• Curiouscat Articles and Links Blog – posts about blog posts, online articles and web resources of general interest (largely focused on the internet, economics, privacy and business).

Posted on May 12, 2005  Comments (2)

I like Google and enjoy reading about the company. Even so I find the number of articles about the minor moves they make strange. At some point this fascination with the minor moves Google makes will stop but for now it is hard to miss stories about Google anywhere I look.

The post on John Battelle’s Searchblog (a great bog) about Google buying Dodgeball was a great example. The entire post:

From the Dodgeball company web site:

Today I read a new article from Paul Graham (his website has great essays – highly recommended): Hiring is Obsolete. As usual he makes many great points in the essay. The point that most strongly connected with me today was his statement:
Read more

Posted on May 10, 2005  Comments (0)

• Michael Porter’s Big Ideas by Keith H. Hammonds
  The world’s most famous business-school professor is fed up with CEOs who claim that the world changes too fast for their companies to have a long-term strategy. If you want to make a difference as a leader, you’ve got to make time for strategy.”

• 3 Six Sigma Articles (link to one document in word format) by Gerry Hahn
• 20 Key Lessons Learned: May 2002
• What Does it Take to be a Master Black Belt: August 2003
• The Future of Six Sigma: May 2004
MBBs provide day-to-day leadership to the Six Sigma effort. Some of the key things they do are to:
• Provide a strategic vision for improvement and work towards its fulfillment.
• Secure continuing commitment and resources from business leaders.
• Develop and organize targeted training of the work force in Six Sigma, and participate in providing this training.
• Serve as a technical and tactical resource to all in implementing Six Sigma.
  …
• The Folly of Merit Pay by Alfie Kohn
  It may be vanity or, again, myopia that persuades technicians, even after the umpteenth failure, that merit pay need only be returned to the shop for another tuneup. Perhaps some of the issues mentioned here can be addressed, but most are inherent in the very idea of paying educators on the basis of how close they’ve come to someone’s definition of successful performance. It’s time we acknowledged not only that such programs don’t work, but that they can’t work.

Find links to more online management resources on the Curious Cat Management Improvement New Articles Page or search for management improvement articles.

Posted on May 9, 2005  Comments (6)

Topic: Management Improvement, Problem Solving

I read, Study: Nation’s Traffic Jams Worsening, today on CNN.com. That same headline could have appeared in newspapers every day for the last few years.

For decades traffic congestion has been a problem in American cities and one that has continued to get worse. The typical proposed solution is to increase the number of roads. The theory behind this solution is not normally stated but, I believe, it amounts to: “if we build more roads then the system will have more capacity which has to decrease congestion.” Unfortunately this theory fails to take into account the past data on the increasing capacity of roads “solution.”

I am not an expert in the area of traffic solutions. However, Russell Ackoff has done some work in this area and I trust his judgment more than almost anybody. I have heard him say increasing capacity does not work (unfortunately I can’t find a citation for that statement). Read more

Posted on May 2, 2005  Comments (1)

Topic: Management Improvement

The Spring 2005 MAQIN newsletter includes an interesting piece on a recent MAQIN event where the life and work of Dr. W. Edwards Deming was celebrated.

Dr. Brain Joiner, author of Fourth Generation Management, gave a toast that included several Dr. Deming quotes:

• Best efforts are not enough, you have to know what to do.
• A numerical goal without a method is nonsense.
• The most useful numbers are unknown and unknowable.
• Where there is fear you do not get honest figures.

Posted on May 1, 2005  Comments (0)

The annual meeting of Berkshire Hathaway is being held this weekend in Omaha (cnn article). Recently the 2004 Berkshire Hathaway Annual Report (by Warren Buffett) was published. The report is excellent reading for anyone interested in investing. Some quotes from the annual report:

• In one respect, 2004 was a remarkable year for the stock market, a fact buried in the maze of numbers on page 2. If you examine the 35 years since the 1960s ended, you will find that an investor’s return, including dividends, from owning the S&P has averaged 11.2% annually (well above what we expect future returns to be – [bold added]). But if you look for years with returns anywhere close to that 11.2% – say, between 8% and 14% – you will find only one before 2004. – page 3
• If only one variable is key to a decision, and the variable has a 90% chance of going your way, the chance for a successful outcome is obviously 90%. But if ten independent variables need to break favorably for a successful result, and each has a 90% probability of success, the likelihood of having a winner is only 35%. In our zinc venture, we solved most of the problems. But one proved intractable, and that was one too many. Since a chain is no stronger than its weakest link, it makes sense to look for – if you’ll excuse an oxymoron – mono-linked chains. – page 5
• Finally, there is a fear factor at work, in that a shrinking business usually leads to layoffs. To avoid pink slips, employees will rationalize inadequate pricing, telling themselves that poorly-priced business must be tolerated in order to keep the organization intact and the distribution system happy…
  To combat employees’ natural tendency to save their own skins, we have always promised
  NICO’s workforce that no one will be fired because of declining volume, however severe the contraction…
  Naturally, a business that follows a no-layoff policy must be especially careful to avoid
  overstaffing when times are good. – page 8
• Like Hell, derivative trading is easy to enter but difficult to leave. – page 11
• Should we continue to run current account deficits comparable to those now prevailing, the net ownership of the U.S. by other countries and their citizens a decade from now will amount to roughly $11 trillion. And, if foreign investors were to earn only 5% on that net holding, we would need to send a net of $.55 trillion of goods and services abroad every year merely to service the U.S. investments then held by foreigners. At that date, a decade out, our GDP would probably total about $18 trillion (assuming low inflation, which is far from a sure thing). Therefore, our U.S. “family” would then be delivering 3% of its
  annual output to the rest of the world simply as tribute for the overindulgences of the past. In this case, unlike that involving budget deficits, the sons would truly pay for the sins of their fathers. – page 20

Comments by Warren Buffet and Charlie Munger and the Annual Meeting (cnn article):

• Munger: “You have a real asset-price bubble in places like parts of California and the suburbs of Washington, DC. “
• On whether pharmaceutical stocks have become bargains

  Buffett: “That industry is in a state of flux right now. It’s historically earned very good returns on invested capital, but it could be well be that the world will unfold differently in the future than in the past. I’m not sure I can give you a good answer on that.”

  Munger: “We just throw some decisions into the “too hard” file and go onto others.”