Getting and Keeping Great Employees
Posted on November 29, 2007 Comments (1)
I am not convinced of the premise of The new war for talent: that there will be a great shortage of talent soon. But the article makes some interesting points.
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If we neglect to engage our own employees, those who are frustrated can surf hundreds of job boards to see what other opportunities await
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A cumbersome and complex ERP system will not suit the masses of young talent joining today’s workforce.
I think the main thing to do is to respect employees (and have that visible in the management decisions made in the organization). Stopping the demotivation would be a big step for many organizations. And to manage your organization with the understanding that the organization’s purpose should be to benefit the various stakeholders (shareholders, customer… and employees).
Related: People are Our Most Important Asset – How to Improve – What is Wrong with MBA’s – soul crushing work (comic)
Arbitrary Rules Don’t Work
Posted on November 28, 2007 Comments (1)
Procedurally Enforcing Workflow by Michael Salamon:
You can’t force people to follow directions they deem arbitrary.
I bet if that gate spit out $100 bills people would use it.
Why matters. You can’t just expect people to act in a way that seems arbitrary. As I stated in Poka-Yoke Assembly, Do you Read Instructions Carefully Before Assembly? Nope, I don’t. I expect I can make a quick judgment if I really need to or I basically get it and can put things together well enough. I expect the supplier to make very obvious anything critical. It is not ok to expect people to think the way you want them to. You have to understand how people will react and create solutions based on that.
We have discussed similar ideas: Why Isn’t Work Standard? – Visual Work Instructions – Visual Instructions Example – European Blackout: Human Error-Not – Find the Root Cause Instead of the Person to Blame
A similar example I learned long ago. Many schools try to force students not to walk on the lawn and create ugly paths through the grass. A smart alternative. Wait for the students to wear a path. Then pave that. If you are frustrated because people won’t follow your rules your rules are probably bad. Fix the rules (or procedures…). Don’t expect telling people in a loud voice (or stern memo or…) that they must follow your rules.
Joy in Work – Software Development
Posted on November 25, 2007 Comments (11)
This wonderful cartoon shows the all too common despair in work. Software programmers are more likely to really enjoy what they do. There are many reasons for this not the least of which is that they have a fair amount of control over their careers. If they don’t like what they are asked to do, the tools they are asked to work with… they will (more than others) leave for another job. Some managers get frustrated that such people are not willing to put up with the normal bother everyone else seems willing to accept (programmers are often “unreasonable”). But I see an occupation that is more focused on joy in work than most. And creating joy in work is what managers should be worrying about – not getting troublemakers to fall into line.
Why I Program In Ruby (And Maybe Why You Shouldn’t):
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Don’t program in Ruby because you want power or efficiency. Don’t program in Ruby because you think you “should”, either. Program in Ruby because you like it. And if you don’t like it, don’t program in it.
I enjoy programming using Ruby on Rails.
Related: Hiring Software Developers – posts on improving software development – Don’t ask employees to be passionate about the company! – A Career in Computer Programming – IT Operations as a Competitive Advantage – Reddit, a living example of how software coders think – Focus on Customers and Employees – Signs You Have a Great Job… or Not
Tags: John Hunter,Joy in Work,programming,Psychology,Ruby,Software Development
Toyota’s Effort to Stay Toyota
Posted on November 22, 2007 Comments (1)
Toyota’s All-Out Drive To Stay Toyota
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Just in case St. Angelo forgets any of his Toyota training, he has someone watching his back. His retired predecessor, Gary Convis, still gets paid to advise him. That’s an idea Toyota imported from Japan, where the company asks retiring engineers to stick around to mentor young employees. The ranks of these old-timers are growing rapidly as the company tries to safeguard its culture. Last year, Toyota rehired 650 of the 1,200 skilled workers eligible for retirement in Japan, and will soon have 3,000 of these folks on its payroll.
Related: lean manufacturing portal – Toyota management posts – Toyota IT Overview – New Toyota CEO’s Views
Insights from Jim Womack
Posted on November 21, 2007 Comments (0)
Jim Womack provides great insights in a recent interview, Thought Leaders — Lean On Me:
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Toyota has a supplier management system that is still the best-in-class, and a good part of Toyota’s recent quality issue has been bringing in a whole bunch of non-Toyota traditional suppliers and trying to teach them the Toyota Management System, and they’re struggling because it turns out — and I should know this better than anybody, it’s what I’ve been doing for the last 20 years — it’s hard to get people to change old ways of thinking.
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We’ve got now a nation full of kaizen consultants doing kaizen, and almost all of that kaizen would be unnecessary if the production process had been laid out the right way the first time, which is what Toyota does.
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What we see is a lot of partially lean businesses but not much to show in the way of totally lean businesses, and I would say that Danaher probably comes the closest. So the prize is still out there to be gotten by somebody, and of course Toyota as they try to continue this breakneck ramp-up, which in some ways is not all that different from Boeing in 1998, except the problem here is the constraint is not suppliers but management. Can Toyota train enough young managers to understand its management methods to keep managing the way it’s managed that’s put it on top?
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Most managers think that their greatest contribution to the business is doing workarounds on broken processes rather than doing the hard work to get the process right so it never breaks down so you don’t need to do workarounds.
Other posts discussing some of these ideas, and more: Management Improvement – From Lean Tools to Lean Management – Articles by James Womack – Transforming With Lean – Deming’s thoughts on Management by John Hunter – Danaher Expands Lean Thinking One Acquisition at a Time – posts mentioning Womack – No More Lean Excuses – Better and Different – Management Training Program
Management Improvement Carnival #23
Posted on November 17, 2007 Comments (0)
Please submit your favorite management posts to the carnival. Read the previous management carnivals.
- Assessing Results vs. Reflection by Mark Rosenthal – “Your plan for the year consisted of a designed experiment. ‘If we do these things, we expect this results.’ Then do that thing, and check that you actually did it. Compare your actual result with the expected result. Explain any difference. Learn.” – This process is key to improving, see my previous post: Predicting Improves Learning John
- Leadership and Systems Thinking by George Reed – “Success in the contemporary operating environment requires different ways of thinking about problems and organizations…It is insufficient and often counterproductive for leaders merely to act as good cogs in the machine.”
- “Heightened Vigilance” is Not Enough by Mark Graban – “Instead, we blame, we punish, and we say “be careful.” No wonder we have such problems. Being careful helps, but it is not enough.”
- Top 10 Problems with Problem Statements by Jon Miller – “1. Assign a cause 2. Contain the solution 3. Are based on conjecture or belief rather than fact 4. Are too long”
- Root Cause Customer Service by Kevin Meyer – “Why are customers calling? What is wrong with the design, quality, intuitiveness, or use of the product that creates problems? With few exceptions, having to answer a call from a customer is a band-aid on a problem.”
3M Cuts Back on Six Sigma for Research and Development
Posted on November 14, 2007 Comments (2)
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Under McNerney’s successor, 3M CEO George Buckley has de-emphasized Six Sigma in R&D. At the same time, R&D spending in 2007 has been increased by 11 percent over 2006. “3M is a technology company so it’s essential that we keep investing in and creating new technology and product platforms
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“George is throttling back in the laboratory and in R&D. At the same time, he’s a very strong proponent of lean Six Sigma in manufacturing and our supply chain,” according to Wendling. “Six Sigma has a place, but more in what I’d call transactional activities as opposed to basic research and product development. The key is to selectively use what makes sense in R&D, but not let Six Sigma become the end. For instance, we use (Six Sigma) design of experiments routinely in basic research
My previous posts on the proper use of six sigma: Process Improvement and Innovation – Six Sigma Outdated? No. – 3M CEO on Six Sigma – Will Six Sigma Fix Bad Management? – New Rules for Management? – Quality and Innovation
Six Sigma for Erie County Government
Posted on November 12, 2007 Comments (1)
Chris Collins proposed bringing six sigma to Erie County government in his campaign for county executive. He won the election. From his web site:
As County Executive, Chris Collins will reform county government to make sure it serves its customers: the taxpayers. He will implement new management techniques – Total Quality Management, Continuous Improvement, ISO, Six Sigma and more – to focus on making every government agency and worker more efficient and accountable. These are the same techniques he’s used to turn around failing companies.
Chris Collins will also choose a business management expert as Deputy County Executive – and then make their only duty to fight everyday to make sure taxpayers get the value we deserve for our tax dollar
Where did he pick up this interest in six sigma? He is the founder, owner, Chairman and CEO of Audubon Machinery:
Audubon Machinery is one of the fastest growing companies in the United States and will be recognized on the INC 500 list this year as well as the new Business First list of the fastest growing companies in Western New York.
I wish him luck in bringing management improvement practices to Erie County.
Related: Bringing Deming to the Public Sector – Public Sector Continuous Improvement Site – Six Sigma City Government
Engineering Innovation for Manufacturing and the Economy
Posted on November 11, 2007 Comments (4)
Editorial: Engineering Innovation, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel:
Or Werner Zobel, a Modine Manufacturing engineer working in Germany who hatched the idea for a new cooling system that the Racine-based company believes could be revolutionary. The system uses ultra-thin layers of aluminum to dissipate heat, a breakthrough that has potential for car and truck radiators and air conditioning condensers.
Intellectual candlepower will fire the regional economy, the Milwaukee 7 regional economic development group believes. Its strategic plan relies on innovation-driven manufacturers that are heavy with engineers. But across the region, those companies say they can’t recruit enough engineers, and they worry that shortages will worsen as baby boomers retire. Complicating the picture is a shortage of visas for foreign-born engineers and increased competition from rapidly developing economies in China and India for those students even when they complete their studies in the United States.
The University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, Marquette University and the Milwaukee School of Engineering are racing to fill the pipeline. Marquette and UWM are promising expansive new buildings and increased enrollment of both undergraduate and graduate students.
The USA continues to be by far the largest manufacturing in the world. And one important reason is the contributions provided by science and engineering (fed by strong science and engineering schools). In addition to other smart economic policies (The World Bank’s annual report on the easiest countries to do business in ranks the USA 3rd – after Singapore and New Zealand). Wisconsin manufacturing continues to get good discussion on various lean blogs for good reason(More Wisconsin Lean, Wisconsin Continues to Lead in Lean Government, History repeats itself). The success Wisconsin is enjoying is not due to one single factor but the efforts of many actors including companies, universities, government, the press… and groups like the Wisconsin Manufacturing Extension Partnership and the Madison Quality Improvement Network (I have managed MAQIN’s web site since it was created – John Hunter).
Related: Best Research University Rankings – 2007 – S&P 500 CEOs – Again Engineering Graduates Lead – Invest in New Management Methods by William G. Hunter, Commentary to the Milwaukee Journal, 1986
Tags: Economics,engineering,Manufacturing,Wisconsin
Good Customer Focus Idea for Banks
Posted on November 8, 2007 Comments (0)
Why Your Bank Needs a Free Coin-Counting Machine
And here’s the crazy part: The Penny Arcade is free for anyone, whether they have an account at Commerce or not. It seems like an act of corporate generosity–and, actually, it sort of is–but having Penny Arcades in a branch also benefits the bank, as I discovered when I went to use one about a month ago. In rapid succession, I noticed three things:
1. I was in the bank on a Sunday afternoon. I’ve never been in a bank on a Sunday afternoon, because no other bank I know of is open on a Sunday afternoon.
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3. I was on a line about seven people long. In addition to two tellers, there was a greeter at the entrance and a manager who walked around. About a minute into my wait on line, the manager directed the greeter to leave her post and open up a new teller window. Three minutes after that (and after about four more people joined the line) the manager himself opened up a new window.
The opportunities to improve are everywhere. It is a shame so many banks seem to focus on tricking customers into paying big fees. The idea of actually serving customer well and making a fair profit just doesn’t seem to be very common.
Related: Good Customer Service Example – What Could we do Better? – Poor Customer Service from Discover Card – Credit Card Tips
Win a 2 day visit from Norman Bodek
Posted on November 7, 2007 Comments (0)
Shingo Sweepstakes: The grand prize is a 2 day visit of your organization by Norman Bodek, 2 Free admissions to the 20th Annual Shingo Prize, 5 copies of Dr. Shigeo Shingo’s latest book and more.
Related: Zero Defects – Constant Change and Growth – 2007 Shingo Prize for Excellence in Manufacturing – Lean Podcast with Bodek – Toyota Production System History
The Problem with Targets
Posted on November 6, 2007 Comments (0)
Targets can seriously damage your health by Simon Caulkin
To focus on the individual parts and ignore the whole always makes things function worse at a system-wide level. Thus, to meet financial and waiting-time targets, Maidstone drove up bed occupancy rates. But that compromised cleaning. At the system-wide level, the cost was making the hospital more dangerous to patients than staying at home.
And if enough pressure is applied, people will meet targets – even if they destroy the organisation in doing so. As quality guru W Edwards Deming put it: ‘What do “targets” accomplish? Nothing. Wrong: their accomplishment is negative.’
These are systemic faults, which is why such regimes can’t be refined by setting ‘better’ or fewer targets. Deming added: ‘Management by numerical goal is an attempt to manage without knowledge of what to do’. This is what makes it so attractive to bad managers. Unfortunately, in absolving them from the effort of thought, it is also junk management
Great insight on the problem of targets. Brian Joiner provides another reason why targets are harmful: there are “3 ways to improve the figures: distort the data, distort the system and improve the system. Improving the system is the most difficult.” And so most often targets results in distortion of the data (faulty data) or distortion of the system (meet target by shifting resources and effort from other parts of the system). Both of those actions are harmful to the system.
Related: Be Careful What You Measure – Measuring and Managing Performance in Organizations – Targets Distorting the System
“2007 has been a difficult year for Toyota”
Posted on November 5, 2007 Comments (1)
I find the quote “2007 has been a difficult year for Toyota” found in The Dings and Dents of Toyota a bit amusing. Toyota has had some problems as the article notes like product recalls and losing a handful of employees to Ford and Chrysler. They are about even with GM in worldwide sales and posted a profit of nearly $14 Billion (I believe maybe 20 companies have ever earned that much in any year) in the year ending March 2007 and continue to make huge profits this year (Toyota reported their best quarter ever in August). With difficulty like this who needs success 
He is right that the problems are exaggerated. I agree that Toyota has to maintain a laser-like focus on improvement. I don’t agree that they need to rethink their purpose in life (I have a feeling that is taken out of context). They need to maintain and maybe even increase their commitment to their purpose in life.
In our post New Toyota CEO’s Views in 2005, we quote the new CEO, Katsuaki Watanabe:
He was right then and that is true now.
Related: Reacting to Product Problems – Jim Press, Toyota N. American President, Moves to Chrysler – Toyota Homes – Respect for People at Toyota
The Lazy Unreasonable Man
Posted on November 5, 2007 Comments (4)
“The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man.”
– George Bernard Shaw, Man and Superman
That quote sprang to mind when I read the great post – In praise of the lazy employee
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As one demonstrably highly effective manager I knew has said (my paraphrase), “The effective people are those who put in a solid six hours a day working on the right things and then spend another couple of hours listening to people and to ideas; they typically are much more effective than those who work late into the evening.”
My view of myself places me in both of these camps (lazy and unreasonable). But, honestly, I have become more reasonable over time and while it makes me less difficult to put up with I think I am less effective (my performance appraisals are more positive so maybe I am wrong or maybe my opinion of performance appraisals is right).
Design of Experiments in Operational Testing
Posted on November 3, 2007 Comments (0)
Edwards looks toward future of testing
In a recent Benefield Anechoic Facility test, the 412th Electronic Warfare Group used Design of Experiments methodology to cut a two-month program to three weeks. This schedule reduction translated directly into savings and helped reduce the concept-to-fielding cycle time while still ensuring the system was thoroughly tested. While building these capabilities is critical, the most critical piece of the puzzle is our people. We must continue to develop engineers, pilots, navigators, program managers and maintainers to test these systems and “find stuff so the warfighter doesn’t.”
It is hard to tell if they really are using Design of Experiments or just using the term but it seem possible they are really using it. As I have said a number of times it is a powerful and under-utilized tool for improvement. Related: Using Design of Experiments – design of experiments articles – posts on public sector management – Why Use Designed Factorial Experiments?
Management Improvement Carnival #22
Posted on November 2, 2007 Comments (0)
Please submit your favorite management posts to the carnival. Read the previous management carnivals.
- How Many People Did You Cut? by Mike Wroblewski – “As lean thinkers, we should focus on our growth strategy. With a growth strategy, we reassign people from kaizen to perform other tasks that add value to our customer.” (this is so important – lean companies do not have layoffs, companies lead by poor mangers do- John)
- Do You Understand the System of Profound Knowledge? by Jon Miller – “People will perform as well or as poorly as the system will allow them to, and this is a major reason that why-based problem solving organizations will increasingly trump who-based problem solving organizations.”
- Deployment Strategy and Knowledge Exchange by Matt LeVeque – “The cultural benefit to applying a catchball mentality is that by keeping everyone on the team engaged in the process and the ideas flowing freely between online marketing channels, you begin to develop a learning organization”
- Lean Transport: Buses vs. Light Rail by Dan Markovitz – “30% fewer cars? Less traffic? Fast, cheap, mass transit? Public money freed up for other, more productive uses? Sounds lean to me.”
- “Packaging” is spelled M-U-D-A by Mark Rosenthal – “In other words, set up a barrier that contains the waste so that your value-adding operation sees the result of a perfect supplier.”
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