Curious Cat Management Improvement Web Site

Posted on February 28, 2007  Comments (0)

The Curious Cat Management Improvement site includes a wide array of resources for management professionals (and has been growing and improving, I hope, since 1996). Our calendar now includes several interesting opportunities including Performance Measures and Statistics Workshop in Richland, Washington, USA by Stephen Prevette. This workshop looks interesting. We have mentioned the presenter in previous posts.

Our management improvement job board currently lists jobs including: Six Sigma/Technical Specialist, Supply Chain Project Manager (Google), Quality Control Specialist (Toyota) and Quality Engineer. The service is free, both to those posting and those responding to jobs. If you are looking to fill a management improvement position or for a position please give it a try.

In addition to the blog we also offer an links to hundreds of articles on management topics we have selected, a dictionary of management terms, annotated directory to management resources and recommened management books.

Please let us know what you like and what we could improve.

Six Sigma City Government

Posted on February 28, 2007  Comments (1)

A recent report from the Brookings Institution, Reconnecting Massachusetts Gateway Cities, has some good words on the efforts of Fort Wayne, Indiana:

In a short time, the city reduced water main replacement costs by 18 percent, cut pothole response time by 86 percent, and slashed the waiting time for building permits from 51 days to 12 days. And because the Six Sigma process permeates all functions of the city’s government, these productivity enhancements have piled up, generating more than $10 million in cost savings over the last five years.

In this time, Fort Wayne’s first-in-the nation municipal foray into Six Sigma practices has proven that statistical analyses and stringent quality control standards do not lose their power outside the boardroom. Such data-centric attention to detail, in fact, is making all the difference.

Related: Doing More With Less in the Public Sector: A Progress Report from Madison, Wisconsin (pdf) – Public Sector Management – Lean Government – Quality Best Practices in Government (pdf) – Six sigma management resources

The Georgetown Kentucky Way

Posted on February 27, 2007  Comments (0)

The Scott County Way by Jillian Ogawa:

It seemed only natural that Toyota’s corporate culture would influence the local schools, said Superintendent Dallas Blankenship. He estimated that one in three students in the school district have one or more parents that work for either Toyota or a Toyota supplier. The school district has had several partnership programs with Toyota in Georgetown. “Simply over time, we learned a lot of practices that have helped us to become a better school system,” he said.

Center for Quality People and Organizations:

The QUEST process consists of teaching students teamwork philosophies to learn current curriculum in all different subject areas. We provide a safe environment (parameters/ground rules) and a process for the students to conduct their groups using problem-solving techniques (PDCA: Plan Do Check Act)

Great. The Education area does require special care but management improvement concepts can work very well in education. David Langford has done some great work in this area as has Alfie Kohn. They are not focused on the Toyota Way but their principles and lean thinking go together well and there expertise in the education area is very important.

via: Scott County Schools Trying Out the Toyota Way

Related: K-12 (kindergarten though high school) improvement resources – articles on quality education – posts on Toyota management methods – quality learning books

Firing Workers Isn’t Fixing Problems

Posted on February 26, 2007  Comments (1)

I commented on a post on Evolving Excellence that Jim Jubak is a wall street guy who has good ideas. He has posted another good article: Firing workers isn’t fixing problems

Both CEOs, Edward Zander at Motorola and Jeffrey Kindler at Pfizer, of course, kept their jobs and their paychecks. According to Motorola’s latest proxy statement, Zander received a salary of $1.5 million, a $3 million bonus and $2.3 million in restricted stock in 2005.
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For this kind of money, investors — let alone the workers who are being fired — deserve something a little more imaginative as a turnaround strategy. Cutting jobs has become a reflex, not because it works especially well at fixing the real problems at companies like these but because firings produce the kind of immediate earnings improvements that help CEOs keep their jobs. Getting rid of workers, you see, lets a company forecast the kind of immediate cost savings and surging profit margins that keep shareholders from marching on the executive suite.

Right. Wall street is not incapable of seeing past short term “thinking.” Even if many on wall street can’t seem to understand. I am far from convinced short term thinking is Wall Street’s fault, it seems to me many executives have this problem and blame “Wall Street.” I believe short term thinking is mainly management’s fault.

Short term thinking is part of the management system. Exorbinant executive pay exacerbates the problem. A failure to understand variation exacerbates the problem. Read more

Dell Innovation

Posted on February 25, 2007  Comments (3)

Dell has been taking some interesting actions recently. Several months ago they started blogging and interacting with bloggers. Those steps have been interesting since few other companies of their size have taken such action (nothing amazing, but seem much beyond the common corporate, totally out of touch attempts to adopt new technology – they seemed to be committed to actually try to learn about interactive web thinking).

They recently created IdeaStorm to Turn Up the Volume of Customer Voice (quite an innovative attempt at customer focus). There are issues with the method they are using, but innovation is about trying to find new ways of doing things there often are questions about the new methods. The simple view is they are using the a tool of the social web (Digg, Reddit) to discover what the users of IdeaStorm want from Dell (obviously this is only a subset of Dell potential customers – and a small one I would imagine). Essentially users can post ideas and then others promote those they support.

Dell has now announced some actions they are taking based on the results thusfar.
Read more

Interview with Mary Poppendieck

Posted on February 24, 2007  Comments (1)

Lean for Software: Interview with Mary Poppendieck:

We start by asking people to draw a Value Stream Map. You start with a customer problem-need request, and you go to where that request is filled. So, you put on “customer glasses”, and now I want to watch what happens to that problem until it is back and the customer problem is solved. You draw a map or a timeline of everything that happens from the time the customer request comes in the organization until the customer has their problem solved. You lay out the activities there and how much of the time are you really adding customer value and how much of the time is just sitting there contending with other work that has to happen.

New book – Implementing Lean Software Development: From Concept to Cash by Mary and Tom Poppendieck.

Related: Competing On The Basis Of Speed (webcast) – Problems Caused by Performance Appraisal

Talking with Toyota’s CEO

Posted on February 23, 2007  Comments (0)

Talking with Toyota’s Top Man

But there’s still more work to be done?
The scariest symptom of “big-company disease” is that complacency will breed in the company. To be satisfied with becoming the top runner, and to become arrogant, is the path we must be most fearful of. There are so many challenges and issues that we need to address. Each individual [needs] to have the mentality to challenge those problems. Problems must be made visible. Not just in Japan but in all affiliated activities around the world.
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That’s a very good point and a key element of my own management: how we make sure our own DNA is transferred to the younger generation at Toyota. So long as certain things are achieved, this will be ensured. Going and seeing for oneself is the key. It’s very easy to understand. When there’s a problem, one should drill down and [see] what’s taking place and why a certain problem has occurred. [The key thing is to] teach the method of identifying a problem and implementing the resolution.

Related: New Toyota CEO’s Views – Why Toyota Is Afraid Of Being Number One – Interview with Toyota President – Could Toyota Fix GM – TPS – Take 2

Transformation and Redesign

Posted on February 23, 2007  Comments (0)

Here is an excellent article from 1999: Transformation and Redesign at the White House Communications Agency (WHCA) (pdf link) by March Laree Jacques

This article describes an organizational transformation effort undertaken at the White House Communications Agency. It shares the Agency’s efforts through the period of 1992-1998, beginning with a Deming-based approach to continuous quality improvement through implementation of a total organizational redesign using systems thinking precepts. It describes the
obstacles to implementing quality concepts in a high visibility, high security organization and examines the influence of Agency’s organizational culture on quality performance and improvement. The discussion examines the applicability of several broadly accepted quality concepts to the “ultimate command-and-control” organization.

The article is informative and interesting, enjoy. A couple years after this article I I went to work for Gerald Suarez at the White House Military Office (WHMO). WHCA is one of seven operational units of WHMO, others include: Air Force One, Camp David and the White House Medical Unit.

See more management improvement articles including in the Curious Cat Management Improvement Library.

Related: articles and podcasts by Russel Ackoff – Deming on Management – Deming related blog posts – Public Sector Continuous Improvement Site

New Zealand Creativity

Posted on February 22, 2007  Comments (1)

Saving money by thinking creativity and leanly. $10 wok keeps TV station on air:

Why pay $20,000 for a commercial link to run your television station when a $10 kitchen wok from the Warehouse is just as effective? This is exactly how North Otago’s newest television station 45 South is transmitting its signal from its studio to the top of Cape Wanbrow, in a bid to keep costs down.

45 South volunteer Ken Jones designed the wok transmitter in his spare time last year when he wanted to provide wireless broadband to his Ardgowan home. “A group of us wanted to connect our computers to each other and then we worked out a way to get of getting the signal between two points,” he said.

“The $20,000 for a commercial link was just money we didn’t have, so we bought several woks from The Warehouse instead which was convenient and cheap,” he said. Pre-recorded clips at the studio are fed through a computer and beamed to Cape Wanbrow where they are relayed off to television sets around North Otago.

Related: Why Fix the Escalator? – Toyota Shops At Wal-Mart

Performance Appraisals Performance

Posted on February 21, 2007  Comments (0)

Appraising the Performance Of Performance Appraisals by Harry Goldstein:

The traditional annual review covers a lot of ground: coaching and guidance for the employee, feedback and communication, compensation, staffing decisions and professional development, legal documentation, and ultimately, improvement for both the employee and the organization.

According to Jenkins and Coens, all of the above can be done better and far less painfully by untangling these functions and designing a process for each. First, they argue, companies should decouple compensation decisions from feedback about how the employee is doing. The point is that outside, or extrinsic, motivators such as money do not really work for the vast majority of employees.

One company that found that to be true is Brighton, Mich.-based Peaker Services, which rebuilds locomotive diesel engines and does application engineering work for control systems. In the past, Peaker relied on merit raises linked to annual evaluations, according to president Ian Bradbury.

Related: Deming on Management: Performance Appraisal – Righter Performance Appraisal – Performance Appraisal Problems – Eric Christiansen Podcast – Performance Without Appraisal – Performance Appraisal Alternative – So What’s System[s] Thinking by Ian Bradbury (pdf)

Seven Steps to Remarkable Customer Service

Posted on February 20, 2007  Comments (2)

Once again Joel Spolsky spins a great post with, Seven steps to remarkable customer service. Read it.

It’s crucial that tech support have access to the development team. This means that you can’t outsource tech support: they have to be right there at the same street address as the developers, with a way to get things fixed.

This idea is powerful yet ignored by most companies. Management must look at the best way to improve the entire system not to lower the cost per support call.

Many qualified people get bored with front line customer service, and I’m OK with that. To compensate for this, I don’t hire people into those positions without an explicit career path. Here at Fog Creek, customer support is just the first year of a three-year management training program that includes a master’s degree in technology management at Columbia University.

Related: Customer Service is Important – Ritz Carlton and Home Depot – Quality Customer Focus – Management Training Program – posts on Spolsky

More Positive Press for Toyota Management

Posted on February 19, 2007  Comments (0)

via NY Times Magazine on Toyota, a very good article: From 0 to 60 to World Domination

Certainly the most obvious example of Toyota’s long view is the Prius hybrid.

I don’t think so, that is an example of their medium term thinking. Personal Robot Aids, biotechnology, housing and environmental development – that is long term thinking. More on Non-Automotive Toyota.

And yet deconstructing Toyota means breaking down a corporation that uses all its resources, and more than 295,000 employees worldwide, to construct things that are not meant to come apart.

Exactly, they have a system of management. Related: Systemic Thinking – Excessive CEO Pay – Lean is Harmony – Purpose of an Organization – Ackoff, Idealized Design and Bell Labs

Toyota is as much a philosophy as a business, a patchwork of traditions, apothegms and precepts that don’t translate easily into the American vernacular. Some have proved incisive (“Build quality into processes”) and some opaque (“Open the window. It’s a big world out there!”). Toyota’s overarching principle, Press told me, is “to enrich society through the building of cars and trucks.”

Read more

What Job Does Your Product Do?

Posted on February 19, 2007  Comments (2)

via: Free Clay Christensen, MIT Sloan Management Review, Article – Finding the Right Job for Your Product by Clayton M. Christensen, Scott D. Anthony, Gerald Berstell and Denise Nitterhouse (available online for a limited time only). The article has a very simple point. Customers buy your product or service to fill some specific need or desire. Knowing what need the customer is filling can help you improve your offering. Knowing what job the customer is using your product for lets you focus on improving your product for that market. The article provides several examples.

The basic idea is familiar: customer focus, specifically see how your customers uses your product (there might well be several market segments that use your products in different ways – to do different jobs in the words of the article).

Related: articles by Clayton Christensen – Customer Un-focus – What Could we do Better? – Genchi Genbutsu is the lean term for the concept going to see with your own eyes: go and see the customer actually use the product, don’t just listen to what they say – Quality Conversation with Gary Convis – management improvement articles

SWAT Raids – Systemic Failures?

Posted on February 18, 2007  Comments (2)

I have mentioned Reddit (an online community that is highly skewed toward software engineers who are a bit irreverent) before: Dell, Reddit and Customer Focus. The site highlights stories voted up by the community and so the makeup of the community has a huge impact on what is highlighted. The users are very willing to challenge authority (and in fact anxious to do so I think). So some topics are common: criticizing DRM, science, criticizing the United States’ role in the war in Iraq, programming, iconoclasts, xkcd, criticiszing stupid corporate behavior, Paul Graham, criticizing Fox.

Lately there have been a large number of stories on people being killed in raids by police on the wrong house: police in full swat gear storming the wrong house by accident and then killing occupants. The media in general sees these as “special causes” – isolated incidents. So while tragic the strategy is then to examine what mistake in this unique situation lead to tragedy. I believe that the readers of Reddit sense this is a systemic problem and therefore see the proper examination to undertake is to look at the whole system. That is, to use the common cause improvement strategy – when the tragedy is seen not as an isolated incident but the result of a system.

It seems to me the Reddit readers are right – I think the users natural tendencies (a willingness to question authority and a trained sense of what is a special cause and what is a common cause, even if they don’t use those terms) result in the stories gaining traction within Reddit. To limit future tragedy the system as a whole needs to be examined. Do not seek to find the special cause that led to the problem in one instance. Look to the system and see why this trend has increased. I don’t actually have good data – I am making a guess that this trend has increased in the last 20 years (getting some decent data on what is really going on is obviously one of the first things to do in looking at this issue).
Read more

Management Improvement Carnival #5

Posted on February 16, 2007  Comments (0)

  • New Directions, Bad Lean Strategies and Leading Lean by Jamie Flinchbaugh – “Throughout my travels, I continue to be frustrated with the lack of creative thinking that is going into lean transformation strategies… When you begin convincing yourself that you are on the journey, when you really are not, you will get disappointed in the results and not really learn what should be different.”
  • Start with the Customer, and Work Backwards by Peter Abilla – “Describe in precise detail the customer experience for the different things a customer might do with the product. For products with a user interface, we would build mock ups of each screen that the customer uses.”
  • Customer service gone shockingly right by Saska – “So this is my Valentine to Nintendo. That was the most awesome customer service experience I ever, ever had.”
  • The Most Important Trait? by Frank Patrick – “It’s management’s responsibility to determine the priorities, either by edict or, preferably, by some systematic process, and to provide processes to minimize re-prioritization as much as possible.”

    • Read more

Toyota Institute for Managers

Posted on February 15, 2007  Comments (2)

The ‘Toyota Way’ Is Translated for a New Generation of Foreign Managers

“For Americans and anyone, it can be a shock to the system to be actually expected to make problems visible,” said Ms. Newton, a 38-year-old Indiana native who joined Toyota after college 15 years ago and now works at the North American headquarters in Erlanger, Ky. “Other corporate environments tend to hide problems from bosses.”
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It is the Toyota Institute, charged with preparing executives to enter the leadership class at Toyota by inculcating in them some of the most prized management secrets in corporate Japan. The institute sends off its executives to offices around the world as missionaries of sorts for the Toyota Way.

Related: People: Team Members or Costs – What makes Toyota tick? – Trust: Respect for People – Toyota Land – Origins of the Toyota Production System

Kaizen Online

Posted on February 15, 2007  Comments (1)

Kaizen, That Continuous Improvement Strategy, Finds Its Ideal Environment by Hal R. Varian

Kaizen doesn’t just mean a business should keep trying new things. Rather, it refers to a disciplined process of systematic exploration, controlled experimentation and then painstaking adoption of the new procedures. In the original formulation, kaizen was applied to manufacturing, where experimentation could determine whether a new process resulted in quality improvements or cost savings in a matter of months.
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The most successful online businesses are built on kaizen, though few of those who carry out the testing would recognize the term, since many of those who created these online businesses were in grade school in the 1980s.

Old media just do not understand online kaizen. Their perceptions are tied to the print world, where design changes are costly. The Wall Street Journal spent years planning its recent redesign of the print edition and millions of dollars rolling it out. Yet it will be months before it becomes clear how successful these changes were.

The advantages to experimentation on web applications are huge. I am also reminded of my paper from 1999: Using Quality to Develop an Internet Resource.

Via: Kaizen for Web Pages

Related: Be Thankful for Lean Thinking – Management Consulting web sites (like the old media he mentions) – Our Policy is to Stick Our Heads in the Sand – Patent Review Innovation – Planet Kaizen – kaizen definition

Scientific Thinking – the Modern Way

Posted on February 14, 2007  Comments (1)

“Scientific thinking” the modern way by Bill Harris:

What does this all mean? It simply means that Fisher’s designed experiments give us better and faster means to extract insight from tests on system dynamics models than the old one-factor-at-a-time approach.

I thank Deb Schenk, then (and perhaps now) statistician at Hewlett-Packard Company, for teaching me and others about the design of experiments using Statistics for Experimenters: An Introduction to Design, Data Analysis, and Model Building back in 1981-82.

I admit to a bit of bias, in seeing my father’s book (Statistics for Experimenters 2nd edition was published last year by the way), referenced but Bill Harris is exactly right in the power of design of experiments. The most recent post discusses Ackoff’s excellent f-Laws and a previous post discusses Deming (titled, It’s the process) so I couldn’t resist adding a post myself.

Related: design of experiments posts – Ackoff’s New Book: Management f-Laws

Danaher – Lean Thinking

Posted on February 14, 2007  Comments (1)

A Dynamo Called Danaher

DBS, as it’s called, is a set of management tools borrowed liberally from the famed Toyota Production System. In essence, it requires every employee, from the janitor to the president, to find ways every day to improve the way work gets done. Such quality-improvement programs and lean manufacturing methods have been de rigueur for manufacturers for years. The difference at Danaher: The company started lean in 1987, one of the earliest U.S. companies to do so, and it has maintained a cultish devotion to making it pay off.

Short term lean thinking payoffs are nice, but the long term benefits are much more powerful.

Over 20 years, it has returned a remarkable 25% to shareholders annually, far better than GE (16%), Berkshire Hathaway (21%), or the Standard & Poor’s 500-stock index (12%).Over 20 years, it has returned a remarkable 25% to shareholders annually, far better than GE (16%), Berkshire Hathaway (21%), or the Standard & Poor’s 500-stock index (12%).

Related: Danaher’s Low Profile Lean Excellence – Lean Blog – lean manufacturing articles – 10 Stocks for 10 years update (Danaher was in serious consideration)

Sustaining Lean Momentum

Posted on February 13, 2007  Comments (0)

Sustaining Lean:

“It is an unfortunate fact that most companies are unable to sustain the gains made during their lean journeys,” said Andy Carlino, Lean Learning Center partner. “In fact, less than 37 percent of lean improvements and training actually produce meaningful and measurable results unless there has been a complete corporate culture change to lean thinking.”

Smith added, “Sustaining lean is very difficult. And, let’s clarify what sustaining means – it is NOT maintaining what you have, but sustaining continuous change. People need to understand that lean is a way of thinking, it’s a life changing event. It’s not the tools, the rules or the principles. It’s all of that added together.”

Related: Long Term Lean Payoffs – Holding Improvement Gains – Lexus: Long Term Thinking – How to Improve – management improvement articles

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