Monthly Archives: June 2007

Funding Google Gadget Development

Posted on June 28, 2007 by John Hunter

Google Gadgets are small tools and toys that integrate with iGoogle. Google is funding developers to work on creating gadgets through Google Gadget Ventures. Great idea. They offer: 1. Grants of $5,000 to those who’ve built gadgets we’d like to … Continue reading →

Posted in Creativity, Fun, Google, Innovation, IT, Management, Software Development | 4 Comments

How to Get Ahead

Posted on June 27, 2007 by John Hunter

Deep Thinkers Need Not Apply: How To Get Ahead In the Modern Business World [the broken link has been removed – when will sites be managed with the known wise practices from 1998 (web addresses need to live forever)?]: Fast … Continue reading →

Posted in Career, Management, Performance Appraisal, Psychology | Tagged , | Comments Off on How to Get Ahead

Lean Health Care Interview

Posted on June 24, 2007 by John Hunter

Nice short interview of Professor of Emergency Medicine, Matthew Cooke, on lean health care in the UK (via the lean blog). He mentions that applying lean thinking to health care gets rid of wasted time for patient, eliminates errors (by … Continue reading →

Posted in Health care, Management, webcast | Comments Off on Lean Health Care Interview

No Excessive Senior Executive Pay at Toyota

Posted on June 23, 2007 by John Hunter

Toyota Boosts Executives’ Bonuses on Record Earnings (link broken by Bloomberg has been removed – why can’t companies with huge IT budgets follow even basic web usability rules like not breaking urls?): Toyota Motor Corp., the world’s biggest automaker by … Continue reading →

Posted in Deming, Lean thinking, Management, Psychology, Respect, Toyota Production System (TPS) | Tagged , , , , | 5 Comments

At Ford, Quality Was Our Motto in the 1980s

Posted on June 22, 2007 by John Hunter

Former Ford President responds to the Wall Street Journal with At Ford, Quality Was Our Motto in the 1980s: I strongly disagree with a statement in “Detroit Pursues Sweeping Cuts in Union Talks” (page one, June 14), that the Big … Continue reading →

Posted in Deming, Management, Manufacturing | 3 Comments

Standard Prepaid Cell Phone Policy

Posted on June 21, 2007 by John Hunter

I ran across a specific example of standard policy that I found amusing (related to the post earlier today on Why Isn’t Work Standard). Like the authors, I can’t really see a reason for why you would want a policy … Continue reading →

Posted in Customer focus, Management, Process improvement, Respect | 1 Comment

Why Isn’t Work Standard?

Posted on June 21, 2007 by John Hunter

Are You Really Asking? by Mark Graban The worst form would be, “Why the hell aren’t you following the standard work??? How many times do I have to emphasize that??” A better approach might be, “It appears that the standard … Continue reading →

Posted in Lean thinking, Management, Quality tools, Systems thinking | 5 Comments

Mistakes in Experimental Design and Interpretation

Posted on June 19, 2007 by John Hunter

Mistakes in Experimental Design and Interpretation Humans are very good at detecting patterns, but rather poor at detecting randomness. We expect random incidents of cancer to be spread homogeneously, when in fact true randomness results in random clusters, not homogeneity. … Continue reading →

Posted in Data, Design of Experiments, Management, Psychology, Science, Statistics | 2 Comments

People are Our Most Important Asset

Posted on June 18, 2007 by John Hunter

One of the beliefs I try and get the organizations I work for to adopt is to truly value excellent people. The costs are challenges of hiring great people, to me, makes it critical to do what you can to … Continue reading →

Posted in Creativity, Deming, Management, Performance Appraisal, Psychology, Respect | Tagged , , , , , , , | 9 Comments

Innovation Thinking with Christensen

Posted on June 16, 2007 by John Hunter

In my opinion Clayton Christensen offers truly insightful ideas on innovation and management. He presents the rare management advice that is not only good but also new – an incredibly rare combination. The current issue of Business Week includes an … Continue reading →

Posted in Customer focus, Deming, Innovation, Management, Management Articles | Tagged , , , , | 3 Comments