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Topic: Travel
I have posted pictures from my recent trip to the Pacific Northwest: Olympic National Park photos and Mount Saint Helens National Volcanic Monument photos.
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Previous travelogues include: Rocky Mountain National Park, Yellowstone National Park, Paris and Egypt. |
Topic: Management Improvement and Investing
10 Questions for Jeff Bezos, time.com via Lean Manufacturing Blog
Jeff Bezos is the founder and CEO of Amazon.com. He really understand many quality management ideas: customer focus, long term thinking, process improvement, innovation. He also understands finance much better than most. I believe that knowledge is a large part of the reason he is not intimidated into going along with the short term thinking prevalent on Wall Street (as so many CEO’s are). His huge ownership interest in Amazon and his decision to raise large amounts of cash for Amazon (by issuing bonds) during the tech boom, don’t hurt either.
Amazon was one of the 10 companies selected in the 10 stocks for 10 years post. I created a Marketocracy portfolio to track that long term portfolio. The rules, at the time (for a Marketocracy portfolio), required more diversification so I added several stocks to the portfolio. I added positions in YHOO, MSFT, EMF, WMT, and BP. You can track the results of the Sleep Well portfolio.
You can also view results of another portfolio I have managed, through marketocracy, for several years: the Darvamore Fund. This fund is much more aggressive using the ideas of Darvas and Livermore as well as core positions that are selected for long term appreciation. Since the inception, in 2000, it has a annual rate of return 6.55% (655 basis points) higher than the S&P 500 index, as of today.
Topic: Management Improvement
Peter F. Drucker Award for Nonprofit Innovation:
In the years ahead, America’s nonprofits will become even more important. As government retrenches, Americans will look increasingly to the nonprofits to tackle the problems of a fast-changing society. These challenges will demand innovation — in services, and in nonprofit management. The purpose of the annual Peter F. Drucker Award for Nonprofit Innovation is to find the innovators, whether small or large; to recognize and celebrate their example; and, to inspire others.
Applications must be complete and received by the Drucker School no later than August 12, 2005. Read the details on eligibility and how to apply
Topic: Economics - Estate Tax
The estate tax is the most capitalist tax that exists. Capitalism, which some seem to think is based on people inheriting assets from their relatives, is not. Capitalism is based on the concept that each person gets to receive rewards for their work.
Long before Adam Smith, noble rich passed on their wealth to their heirs. It was not Capitalist then and it is not Capitalist now.
Unfortunately many seem to have skipped economics in school and accepted the claim that Capitalism is about protecting the rich. They seem to believe it is a tenant of Capitalism that those that have the gold make the rules. That is in fact a risk that Capitalists must protect the economy from, not something Capitalist approve of. Those who believe in the wealth being passed from those who earn it to those who they like, believe not in Capitalism but in the state not taxing the idle rich but instead taxing those who don’t have millions given to them. While many have come to believe that such idiocy is Capitalist, it is not. People should read the Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith to get a much clearer idea of what Capitalism is about than those in Washington DC have.
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Topic: Management Improvement
Stretching Agile to fit CMMI Level 3 by David J. Anderson.
I highly recommend reading this article. My work happens to straddle both the management improvement and software development areas that this article covers. But, if you are interested in either area, this article offers some great material. And if you are interested in both, you are in for a treat.
Capability Maturity Model Integration (CMMI) is the process developed by the Software Engineering Institute (at Carnegie Mellon) that was heavily influenced by Quality Management. When I first ran across it (then called Capacity Maturity Model) in the mid 1990’s, as I remember, I was struck that the model did a better job of integrating Quality Management ideas than most programs specifically calling themselves Quality programs.
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Tutorials on Lean Production / Lean Manufacturing from the Defense Acquisition University. The site includes five short online videos by James Womack. The site provides a nice introduction to lean ideas.
- Continuous improvement (reducing costs, improving quality, increasing productivity) through dynamic process of change, simultaneous and integrated product/process development, rapid cycle time and time-to-market, openness and information sharing.
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- Long-term relationships between suppliers and primary producers (assemblers, system integrators) through collaborative risk-sharing, cost-sharing and information-sharing arrangements.
We have added several Design of Experiments articles to the Curious Cat Management Improvement Library recently, including:
Vice President Presents Baldrige Awards, press release from NIST (July 20, 2005).
The 2004 Baldrige Award for Quality recipients (links to case studeis):
The Bama Companies, Tulsa, Oklahoma (manufacturing category)
Texas Nameplate Company, Inc., Dallas, Texas (small business category) They also won an award in 1998.
Kenneth W. Monfort College of Business, Greeley, Colorado (education category)
Robert Wood Johnson University Hospital Hamilton, Hamilton, New Jersey (health care category)
The Man Driving Toyota from Business Week:
We should never be satisfied with the current status. In each division, function, or region, we still have numerous problems to cope with. We need to identify each one of those tasks or problems and fully recognize them and pursue the causes. This needs to be done by all the people working for Toyota.
I think, this echoes my recent comment on post, Is Quality Foolproof?, on the Vision Thing blog:
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David Anderson publishes the Agile Management Blog, wrote the Agile Management for Software Engineering: Applying the Theory of Constraints for Business Results, and works for Microsoft. Robert Scoble, technical evangelist, also with Microsoft, has posted an online video interview with David Anderson on Microsoft’s Chanel 9 online.
Quote by David Anderson, from the video: “My work focuses on applying the teachings of two management science gurus, one is Eli Goldratt and the other is W. Edwards Deming“.
Take a look at the video and also the Agile Management Blog for all sorts of great posts on software development and management topics. Such as:
The video and blog post provide great ideas on how to apply Deming and Goldratt’s ideas from someone who is applying them to improve the performance of the organization.
Managing for Creativity by Richard Florida and Jim Goodnight, July-August 2005 issue of Harvard Business Review.
Much management knowledge is not put into practice. I do not agree “managers have known that learning and being challenged motivate workers more than money or fear of disciplinarian bosses.” Maybe good managers know this, but I would wager a vast majority of managers believe the opposite.
Scobleizer, one of the most popular blogs (say in the top 50 most read), posted recently about David Anderson. Robert Scoble is a Microsoft employee with the title, technical evangelist. David Anderson is also a Microsoft employee working on Agile Management for software development. David incorporates a good deal of Deming’s ideas, lean thinking, theory of constraints, etc. in posts to his Agile Management Blog:
I don’t see evidence of the video anywhere. Please let me know if you see it.
Topic: Management Improvement
8 part special report by US News and Word Report on improving the US Health Care system.
I have long felt the Institute of Healthcare Improvement and Don Berwick were the leaders in health care management improvement. The Breakthrough Series is a great white paper on an excellent improvement methodology IHI developed and use. IHI white paper library.
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The first Curious Cat Management Improvement blog post was on the Six Sigma and Deming Philosophies
Recently the Deming Electronic Network has returned to this topic.
The Quality Advisor web site has an article on this topic: Deming and Six Sigma
Perhaps the most striking difference between the approaches is Deming’s focus on the responsibilities of management, outlined in his “The 14 Obligations of Management,” and “The Deadly Diseases.” The Six Sigma approach, by contrast, lays out a more rigid structure of roles and responsibilities throughout an organization, including executive management, a senior champion, deployment champions, project champions, deployment master black belts, project master black belts, project black belts, process owners, and six sigma green belts.
What would Deming do? by David R. Schwinn
The site doesn’t provide links form one part to the next so here those links are:
It is true Deming’s ideas do not get the attention they deserve, in my opinion. However, it is interesting to note the recent BBC radio program on Deming (available online) and Business Week including him in their list of the Top 25: Influential Business Leaders. Our Curious Cat Deming Connections is an attempt to provide quick and easy access to resources on his ideas including many great articles.
The Quality of Lean post on Evolving Excellence.
re: post on prediction on the Deming Electronic Network:
…that intelligence more or less boils down to updating a predictive model of the world. As far as I can see, this is the C.I. Lewis epistemology that Shewhart and Deming based their philosophy upon.
…but is there any kind of operational definition for ‘prediction’ that would explain what Deming means when he uses this word in various contexts?
I think your first point is correct, which I see as: learning by predicting, then looking at the result and then adjusting understanding to this new information is very powerful.
I believe Deming’s thoughts about prediction are most effectively put into action using the PDSA cycle. Specifically, you must predict what the results in the planning phase (prior to piloting improvements). I find that this is rarely done. I don’t think the form of that prediction is critical (narrative with loose numerical guesses, precise numerical prediction…). The critical issue is making the prediction, then comparing the results to that prediction and then figuring out how your original understanding can be improved based on the new data.
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Fast Company Interview: Jeff Immelt, CEO, GE.
GE has always been a believer in leadership development. When the economy was growing 5% a year, when oil was $14 a barrel, and when the world was at peace, the science of management was all about the how-to. That was the how-to generation. You didn’t have to think about the what. Instead, there were management initiatives such as Six Sigma, which was the how.
So most of management literature, certainly for the past 10 years, was all about the how-to. I think we’re now in the what-and-where generation. Global economies are slow and more volatile. Oil is at $50 a barrel. So this ability to pick markets, growth trends, customers, and to do segmentation — that is management today. We have a generation of people who know how to do process flow charts. We have a generation of people who know how to do quality function deployment and things like that, but don’t necessarily know why we’re doing them. What’s the what and the where? I believe that wholeheartedly. Nothing is completely black and white, but we are in a completely different cycle of what good managers know how to do.
I must say this doesn’t make much sense to me, but I am not the CEO of a huge company so maybe I just don’t understand. I don’t see any reason why managers in the past shouldn’t have had the qualities he seems to be saying are needed now. And I don’t see any reason why the qualities needed now were not needed in the past. This sure seems like a bunch of words saying nothing to me: perhaps I just don’t see the wonderful cloths the emperor has on.
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The post, Root Causes of Crunch Mode from the Game Manager blog makes the good point that
A good article on this topic is, Driving Out Fear by Gerald Suarez (who I worked with for several years). There are also 3 videos on this topic by Dr. Suarez, available from Management Wisdom, the producers of the Deming Library tapes. I must admit I didn’t really understand the effects of fear and anxiety on performance until hearing Dr. Suarez speak on the topic many years ago.
From the Driving out Fear article:
Fear also produces questionable data, as people tend to focus on eliminating the threat instead of working to achieve the desired positive outcomes.
See previous post: Targets Distorting the System
re: Thomas L. Friedman: Save us, O Toyota based on Thomas L. Friedman article in the Herald Tribune Save us, O Toyota where he states:
The Lean Manufacturing blog post asks: “if Toyota bought or merged with GM, could Toyota “fix” GM?”
Yes, Toyota could fix GM. Even the right leaders and managers, within GM, could fix GM but it is a huge long term job and it would be harder to do it internally because you will have to do it while competing with Toyota. Also they have some difficult issues to deal with since their previous managers did not tihnk of the long term (20-50 years out from the decisions they were making in the 70s though 90s).
I wouldn’t buy GM if I were Toyota, though. Why bother. (more…)
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