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Fun A4 Paper Art - unrelated to an A3 report. Another innovative use of paper: Teaching Engineers Experimental Design With a Paper Helicopter by George Box.
Goodbye Quarterly Targets?, Business Week:
On March 14 the Commission on the Regulation of U.S. Capital Markets in the 21st Century, a project of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, urged executives to stop issuing their short-term goals. The practice is a “self-inflicted wound by American CEOs,” says commission member Robert Pozen, chairman of MFS Investment Management, a Boston fund manager.
Debate over this issue has simmered for years. Indeed, dozens of companies, including Coca-Cola and McDonald’s, have quit publicizing quarterly earnings targets. Now the issue has become urgent, the Chamber argues, as U.S. companies face growing long-term competition from overseas, where such projections are not widely made.
Learning that a fixation on short term profits is bad for the organization is a good step. Deming talked about this problem over twenty years ago in seven deadly diseases of western management one of which was: the emphasis on short term profits.
Related: Life Beyond the Short Term - Dell Falls Short - Constancy of Purpose
In Myths About the Developing World, Hans Rosling shows some great graphics to display data on health care outcomes. This is one of the talks from the great TED conference that we have mentioned before. They really have some great webcasts available on their site.
The presentation also gives a concrete example of faulty knowledge (people thinking things which are not so - related to theory of knowledge). He also makes good points on stratifying data at the 14 minute mark. See gapminder.org for good additional material.
Related: Great Charts - Open Access Education Materials
Lean-based Metrics for Agile CM Environments by by Brad Appleton, Robert Cowham and Steve Berczuk:
I agree measuring individuals is normally not an effective way improve. And “measuring up” can often be valuable. Often a fixation on small process measures can result in improvements that don’t actually improve the end result. But rather than the measure up view, I find looking at outcome measures (to measure overall effectiveness) and process measures (for viewing specific parts of the system “big picture”) the most useful strategy.
The reason for process measures is not to improve those results alone. But those process measures can be selected to measure key processes within the system. Say finding 3 process measures that if we can improve these then this important outcome measure will improve (using PDSA to make sure your prediction is accurate - don’t fall into the trap of focusing on improving that measure even after the data shows it does not result in the desired improvement to the overall results that was predicted).
Also, process measures are helpful in serving as indicators that something is going wrong (or potentially going better than normal). Process measures will change quickly (good ones can be close to real time) thus facilitate immediate remedies and immediate examination of what lead to the problem to aid in avoiding that condition in the future.
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Web anonymity can sink your job search:
And it’s not just about technology, Bray says. “Most companies would rather have somebody who has demonstrated the propensity to contribute, and one [sign] of that is going out and getting involved, joining in the discussion.”
I think that is exactly right. For certain jobs the need for an online presence is not as critical, however, knowledge workers can really help out their prospects with a good online presence. Creating such a presence can be a big job or it can be a fairly simple site with a few articles with your ideas on topics that interest you. Creating your own blog can also be an effective strategy. Guest blog posts on another blog can also be useful. Having one home page that can serve as the long term address is a very good idea (and getting a web site with your name is a good idea, if possible, even if you don’t use it right away, for example: johnhunter.com). Then you can link to various efforts (guest posts on blogs, articles at various sites, podcast…).
Related: Blogging is Good for You - Your Online Identity - Curious Cat Career Connections - Curious Cat Management Improvement Articles
Made in China, an article exploring the new GM LaCrosse:
I wonder how much value there is to designing cars to be world cars? Occasionally that might make sense and standardizing parts and even design processes… makes sense to me (as much as practical). The key it seems to me is “so well targeted” and local manufacturing.
I don’t like that idea. As much as possible they should cooperate with each other.
Computer Science 101: A Case Study In Google Applications:
The cost to ASU: zero. The university had been spending a half-million dollars a year on servers and storage for its open source e-mail system, including administrative support costs. More important is the faster pace of innovation. “Now we’re on Google’s development curve, not ours,” Sannier says.
Google’s efforts with Google Apps have fairly quietly become quite significant. I find gmail excellent (and Google talk and Google calendar are good but hopefully will be improved significantly). I must say I find Open Office very good and so don’t quite see the value in Google docs but maybe I am missing something (for those few documents that benefit from collaboration Google’s model sounds interesting - though a wiki seem like the best option in that case). Seems very possible Google Apps are an example of Clayton Christensen’s concept of disruptive innovation.
The politics of pay from The Economist:
Thankfully, more of the ludicrous pay packages details are being made public and shame will force some changes (those approving these pay packages have to justify such reckless spending). Of course, some feel no shame no matter how egregious the situation. As I mentioned earlier, I would add excessive executive pay to Deming’s seven deadly diseases of western management. We need to drastically role back the luducrous pay packages.
Related: More on Obscene CEO Pay - Excessive Executive Pay - Toyota’s CEO pay under $1 million - Warren Buffett on Excessive CEO Pay - Compensation at Whole Foods - Bloated CEO salaries, subsidized by taxpayers, undermine American values - CEO Compensation: A Problem That Just Gets Worse
Abboud says its sales are about $400 million a year. The company is doing fine, but management says the U.S. factory has to improve constantly to justify the higher salaries its workers make, compared with foreign rivals. The average wage in the factory is $12 an hour, plus union benefits. That’s three or four times what workers in Mexico make, Sapienza said.
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“It’s one thing to do it in 2007,” he said. “Are we going to be able to do it in 2010? In 2012? … In the final analysis, if Toyota can make a car in 13 hours, there’s no reason we shouldn’t be able to make a suit in a much reduced period of time.”
Related: Made in the USA - Joseph Abboud: Lean Manufacturer - More on Joseph Abboud
iinnovate podcast interview with Eric Schmidt, the CEO of Google.
“Normal sales quotas” - oops maybe Google can learn from others in this area. I found it interesting that Eric Schmidt teaches at Standford even while being the CEO of Google, because as he says he learns from students questions. The podcast series, done by 2 Stanford students, has quite an impressive list of, I guess, visiting speakers at Stanford: Andy Grove, Alex Counts, David Kelley…
via: Eric Schmidt Interviewed On Entrepreneurship, Management and More
Related: Innovation at Google - Google Shifts Focus - Chaos Management (by design) at Google
The Doctor’s In, But Is He Listening?, text and podcast from NPR:
“Usually doctors are right, but conservatively about 15 percent of all people are misdiagnosed. Some experts think it’s as high as 20 to 25 percent,” Groopman tells Steve Inskeep. “And in half of those cases, there is serious injury or even death to the patient.”
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Errors in thinking: We use shortcuts. Most doctors, within the first 18 seconds of seeing a patient, will interrupt him telling his story and also generate an idea in his mind [of] what’s wrong. And too often, we make what’s called an anchoring mistake - we fix on that snap judgment.
An understanding of theory of knowledge is helpful to counteract errors in thinking. How we think is not perfect, and an understanding the weaknesses and faulty conclusions we are susceptible to making is helpful. That can help avoid jumping to conclusions that are faulty and to design systems that counteract such behavior.
Related: Epidemic of Diagnoses - Write it Down - The Illusion of Understanding - Illusions - Optical and Other - health care improvement posts
Read an exceprt from the book: How Doctors Think by Jerome Groopman .
Experimenting with milkshakes?
Experiments are useful and underused. PDSA and design of experiments are two concepts that aid in experimenting successfully.
Related: Google: Experiment Quickly and Often - Why Use Designed Factorial Experiments? - Using Design of Experiments - theory of knowledge
The Deming Institute is sponsoring, How to Create Unethical, Ineffective Organizations That Go Out of Business, 23-25 April, 2007 in Lansing, Michigan. I will be co-presenting the seminar. Let me know if you sign up.
Learn how governance practice leads to the heaviest losses, how inconsistencies between policy and strategy create sub-optimal outcomes, how mismanagement of people leads to unethical and ineffective behavior, and how to overcome these problems. Study the theory and practice of management. Not quality management, not good management, not excellent management, not knowledge management, not risk management, not process management, not performance management, not supply or asset management, not technology management, not time management, not emergency management, just plain management.
Related: Curious Cat Management Improvement Calendar - Deming Seminar and Conference - Deming Institute Conference
Best Buy Rethinks the Time Clock:
And by all accounts, it’s working. Employee productivity has increased an average of 35 percent in departments covered by the program. Rowe “has forced managers and employees to be really clear about what needs to be accomplished,” says spokes-woman Dawn Bryant.
In defense of bosses from hell
Flush with the success of Rowe in its white-collar world, Best Buy is about to start testing the program in select retail stores. The company won’t release any details on this pilot project, and skeptics abound. “It’s pretty tough to ‘phone it in’ or work on your own independent schedule in retail,” says Susan Seitel, president of Minnesota-based Work Life & Human Capital Solutions.
Quite a contrast to: Wal-Mart Scheduling and Respect for People - One More Reason Not to Shop at Wal-Mart. I can see some challenges trying to make this work, in fact it seems like the wrong way to do it to me but I support trying creative ideas even when I am skeptical (just pilot it on a small scale and assess the results). Why can’t you trust your managers to be sensible when they approve a schedule?
In trials in Wales and Manchester, says Moon, patients not only recovered faster but noticed less smell and felt less pain from their rotting flesh when maggots were allowed to eat it. “Maggots are highly precise,” she says. “Unlike surgeons, they remove only the rotting tissue. Surgeons have to cut out healthy tissue to clear the wound, thereby creating a larger wound and more bleeding.”
I can believe we would avoid such a simple solution even it is more effective (the health care system seems perfectly capable of avoiding simple effective solutions to me). I hope we pursue scientific study of the most effective solutions - even if they don’t fit with the current way of thinking. It seems to me the health care system needs to find creative and cost effective solutions.
Related: USA Health Care System Costs Reach 16% of GDP - Lean UK Hospitals - Management Improvement in Healthcare - Maggot Therapy Project - Maggots make medical comeback
Once again I have created a group on the ESPN NCAA Basketball Tournament Challenge for curiouscat basketball fans. To participate, go to the curiouscat ESPN group and make your picks.
Go Badgers and Go Davidson,
Jeffrey Pfeffer Testifies to Congress About Evidence-Based Practices:
Great stuff. Read the entire document. via: Bob Sutton’s Work Matters
Related: Evidence-based Management - Illusions - Optical and Other
Books: The Knowing-Doing Gap by Jeffrey Pfeffer and Robert Sutton - Hard Facts, Dangerous Half-Truths And Total Nonsense: Profiting From Evidence-Based Management by Jeffrey Pfeffer and Robert Sutton
He Pointed Firms To Quality by Kirk Shinkle:
In the introduction to his 1983 book “Out of the Crisis,” Deming called hostile takeovers and leveraged buyouts “a cancer in the American system.” “Fear of takeover, along with emphasis on the quarterly dividend, defeats constancy of purpose,” he wrote. He also derided a focus on short-term profits that comes with traditional benchmarks used by many corporations.
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“Back in 1980 when he talked about working with your suppliers, people would just back up against the wall. That was heresy,” Orsini said. “Now we’re teaching courses in supply chain management, and most people have no idea the roots of it are in Deming’s thinking.” Deming opposed protectionist laws and policies, calling trade between nations “an essential component of peace and prosperity.” Deming’s influence on managing people’s skill was built on a solid foundation of quantifiable fact.
Related: Deming on Management - The purpose of an organization - distorting the system - Management: Geeks and Deming - Curious Cat Deming Connections - Red Bead Experiment - Curious Cat Investment Blog - Willam O’Neil (Investor’s Business Daily founder) - not exactly a Deming based investing approach
Another interesting application of management improvement concepts in software development by David Anderson.
Related: Management Science for Software Engineering - Microsoft CMMI - Innovation in Software Development Process - Lean and Theory of Constraints - Kanban definition
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