Posted on August 30, 2008  Comments (3)

Kiva is a great charity and example of how to use the web effectively. Kiva has added a fellows blog – which is a great idea. The fellows are funded by Kiva (fellows are unpaid) to go to spend time in the countries Kiva facilitates loans for working with the local partners. This post is about Rita Bashnet (in photo) an entrepreneur from Nepal:

Great story, and exactly my hope for using capitalism to improve the standard of living for people around the globe.

I notice a few days ago, for the first time, some of those seeking loans are about to have their listings expire unfunded. Kiva gives listings 30 days to be funded. Yesterday Kiva announced they were providing funds to lenders as soon as the entrepreneur has made a payment (it used to provide the funds to lenders only once the loan was closed out). My guess is they were smart to create a backlog of available loan options before flooding the Kiva market with lots of extra capital (I, for example, now have over $500 available to lend. If they didn’t have a backlog when this change took place they would have created a situation whee lenders could log in to lend money and can’t find anyone to lend to.

I have no problem if some loans are not funded (I want to help entrepreneurs by providing funding to build a business – some loans are for things like adding a room onto their house, which is fine but not what I want to support with interest free loans from me). A significant number of the unfunded loans where for pubs (I think Kiva lenders might not have the same criteria as banks .

If you haven’t loaned money through Kiva, please consider it now. If you do, send me your Kiva lender link and I will add it to Curious Cat Kivans. We have a couple readers that have provided links (including fellow bloggers Kevin Meyer and Tom Southworth) but I really would like to see more.

Related: Using Capitalism to Make the World Better – Millennium Development Goals – Appropriate Technology – Provide a Helping Hand with Kiva

Posted on August 28, 2008  Comments (0)

• Purpose of an Organization – New Economics, page 51: The aim proposed here for any organization is for everybody to gain – stockholders, employees, suppliers, customers, community, the environment – over the long term.
• Going Lean in Health Care – Lean ideas will not work, as they should, without changes to the way the organization makes decisions. Failing to understand this factor is one reason some organizations are frustrated with the results they experience when trying to apply lean thinking.
• The Impact of Six Sigma – I think Six Sigma has been a success. Do I think it the best option? No, I would prefer a Deming based approach. But I think Six Sigma can be a successful improvement strategy. Like most any management strategy, many applying it do so poorly (hacks as Deming would say).
• Design of Experiments in Advertising – It is great to see the application of Designed Experiments increasing… I am also reminded of a fun article I ran across a few years ago: Three Romeos and a Juliet: – Our early brush with Design of Experiments.
• Deming’s Seven Deadly Diseases – 1) Lack of constancy of purpose; 2) Emphasis on short term profits (Overreaction to short term variation is harmful to long term success. With such focus on relatively unimportant short term results focus on constancy of purpose is next to impossible.) 3) Evaluation of performance, merit rating or annual review…
• Gap web site down for days – It baffles me that they think it is acceptable to go offline for days to make a change, even a major one.

Posted on August 25, 2008  Comments (4)

Agile management (agile software development specifically) is something that makes a big difference in my work life. David Anderson consistently provides great ideas on agile management and he does so again in this 90 minute presentation on the future directions for agile. As I learned about agile software development, what I saw was a great implementation of management improvement practices focused on software development that was very compatible with Deming’s management philosophy and lean thinking practices. The Agile manifesto:

The first line can seem to be at odds, but I think in practice it is not – though I admit it may seem that way based on the importance placed on process by Deming (I think you have to read on agile to understand why this is the case). For my use of agile software develop, a highlight of the most important ideas is:

• Deliver working systems quickly (with limited features, add features based on user needs) – [management improvement practice: PDSA, pilot ideas on a small scale, go to the gemba (don't sit in conference rooms talking about what might be an issue for the computer application you want to see in 6 months, create working systems and then continually improve it)]
• Build systems that cope well with uncertainty and allow for constant continuous improvement of processes (with IT systems that can adjust as needed to changing business conditions and desires) – [continual improvement - what is good enough today is not good enough next year]

Important concepts addressed by agile management: highly collaborative, risk tolerance, systems thinking, customer interaction, craftsmanship ethic [joy in work], eliminate waste. Great quote from the webcast:

Related: Kanban In Software Engineering – Management Science for Software Engineering – Improving Communication – webcast of David Anderson talking about applying Agile and Deming’s ideas at Microsoft – What is Agile Software Development?

Posted on August 22, 2008  Comments (0)

You have done pretty well when you can get people to post your ads on their blogs for the enjoyment of their readers. Enjoy this creativity and have a nice weekend.

While on sports I also will mention Usain ‘Lightning’ Bolt’s performances in the Olympics: they were amazing. In contests (100 and 200 meter dash where the victor is usually a few hundreds of a second faster he won the 100 by 20/100s and 200 by 66/100s officially [52/100 but that runner and the next were disqualified for running outside of their lanes]). Both were new world records.

Both the margins of victor seem to be the greatest ever (some news reports have said so, at least one I ready said matched the largest in an Olympic 100 final over the last 40 years – others say “the largest since Carl Lewis won by the same time at the 1984 Olympics”). It was very impressive. At the last Olympics he was 5th in the 200 (he didn’t start running the 100 until this year).

Related: Davidson Students Get Free Sweet Sixteen Trip – Science and Sports

Posted on August 21, 2008  Comments (1)

How is this for Gobbledygook? Your home banking access code is expired! You must change your access code at this time. Your access code:

* may be between 4 and 20 characters in length
* must not have been changed within the last 0 days
* may not be one of 3 previously used access codes
* must not repeat the same character more than 0 times
* must not contain 0 characters from previous access code
* must contain at least 0 non-alphabetic character(s)
* may contain the following special characters: !”#$%&()+,-/;<=>?[\]^_`{|}*’
* must contain at least 0 alphabetic character(s)

1) What does “must not have been changed within the last 0 days” mean?
2) How about “must not repeat the same character more than 0 times” ?
3) Or “must not contain 0 characters from previous access code” ?

This kind of stuff is what makes people think computer programmers are crazy. I am sure the software allows users to set criteria. Then this screen is suppose to explain the criteria to users. It seems to me, if the selection is 0, then the correct procedure is to not display anything about it to the user.

Really I am not sure how “must not contain 0 characters from previous access code” is even to be applied if an positive integer were used. I guess you could not allow using any characters from the last access code, which seems crazy to me to begin with, but setting a number seems totally bizarre. I could see setting a requirement that says no repeat of the same sequence of x characters. I think that would probably not work well, but at least I understand what it would mean.

Related: Change Your Name – Bad Software Visual Controls – Complicating Simplicity – web usability resources – Schneier on Security

Posted on August 20, 2008  Comments (0)

The power of small teams by Avi Muchnick

Amazon and Google do a lot with small teams and I think they have it right. I have worked on small IT teams for several years now and find it great. Combine with agile management methods small teams allow for great focus (you are naturally guided toward appropriate project sizes instead of huge monster projects), great results and joy in work. I have no desire to work in large teams.

Related: Team Handbook – Measuring and Managing Performance in Organizations – Keeping Track of Improvement Opportunities – Curious Cat Management Articles

Posted on August 19, 2008  Comments (1)

I am not sure, IT needs to get lean on manufacturing, does the clearest job of explaining some things, but it does state some things well:

What the article is really talking about IT departments providing the proper tools for organizations to manage. IT should also adopt lean methods for their operation (many in IT that are practicing lean are doing so with agile software development methods). Toyota, not surprisingly does well at using IT to support lean manufacturing.

ERP stand for Enterprise Resource Planning and in IT circles referrers to amazingly complex IT systems to manage the organization. Some people think they are useful, I think they are overly complex, poor management implementations that end up having organizations conforming processes to the IT system instead of having an IT system that support the organization. And they are far too complex – web 2.0 type applications should be the focus not ERP. IT should liberate people to be more flexible with designing processes, PDSA… not act to enforce rigid rules.

Related: lean manufacturing articles – Information Technology and Management – Agile Management

Posted on August 18, 2008  Comments (1)

Justice served up Jacksonville–style is all lean by Joe Jancsurak:

This reminds me of the first efforts I know of for such efforts in policing (from the 1980s): Quality Improvement and Government: Ten Hard Lessons From the Madison Experience by David C. Couper, Chief of Police, City of Madison, Wisconsin.

Via: Upcoming Podcast: Lean Law Enforcement

Related: Failure to Address Systemic SWAT Raid Failures – LA Jail Saves Time Processing Crime – The Public Sector and Deming – Curious Cat Management Improvement Search Engine

Posted on August 16, 2008  Comments (0)

Please submit your favorite management posts to the carnival. Read the previous management carnivals.

• Could Microsoft’s Windows Be Disrupted? by Scott Anthony – “as Clayton Christensen pointed out in his seminal book The Innovators’ Dilemma, market leadership isn’t just an insufficient buffer against disruption, in some cases it is the root cause of failure.”
• Learning to say no by Dan Markovitz – “The CFO says no when the president want to renovate the offices or hire new people, and the company can’t afford it — that’s part of her fiduciary responsibility. You have a responsibility, too — you have to set expectations about what can be accomplished with the resources (time and people) available.”
• Connecting to the Customers by Lee Fried – “It is amazing how much you can learn in a short period of time by spending time listening to the voice of the customer. What is just as amazing is how much you can learn from talking to the people who spend forty hours a week listening to the customer”
• Remembering the Model T by Jon Thompson – “So on the 100th anniversary of the Model T, it seems worth tipping the Toyota hat to Henry Ford and the production techniques he so cleverly harnessed. Those techniques put us all on wheels.”
• The Hard Sell for Cells by Jon Miller – “The cell brings processes together, thereby bringing people together. The basic unit for natural work teams to form work zones that connected physically and in terms of work flow. When the person working to either side of you directly depends on the work you do to be successful, team spirit can take root.”
• Why my oil company can’t deliver by “They could make fewer, or at least better timed visits to the customer… I’m guessing because they can’t predict my oil use that well and if they targeted a refill at a 1/4 tank, I’d run out of oil sometimes… And what’s horrible about it is a little extra free information is all they’d need to cut visits and still not have anyone run out of oil.”
• Systemic problems in US healthcare? by Bill Harris – “Treating the symptoms might make things better in the short term, but we shouldn’t be surprised when they return if the disease remains present. That’s where the systemic approaches come in: they can help us find the structures at work creating our problems, and they can help us test our theories about proposed solutions.”
• Be Careful with Copying by Mark Graban – “Unfortunately, there are no short cuts to this process. Copying someone else’s layout may end up being suboptimal for your needs.”
• Interactions and Systems by John Dowd – “Successful managers understand these interactions, how they work and they manage them as well as the main effects.”

Read more

Posted on August 11, 2008  Comments (0)

In, Don’t do what your users say, Hanford Lemoore, provides a nice illustration of why customer focus is important but must be done with care.

This is a great example of looking for the root cause and going to the gemba. You must focus on customers but you must bring thought into how you react. Just doing what they say is likely a bad idea. Ignoring them is also bad. But listening and learning and then adjusting is good.

Related: Pleasing Customers – Confusing Customer Focus – What Could we do Better? – Good Customer Service Example – Find the Root Cause

Posted on August 10, 2008  Comments (0)

Toyota has a long term vision. The population of Japan is aging rapidly. Toyota has invested in personal transportation and personal robotic assistance for quite some time. I must admit this new Winglet doesn’t seem like an incredible breakthrough to me (their earlier iUnit seems much better to me – though I am sure much more expensive too). The interest to me is in their continued focus on this market which I think is a smart move. The aging population worldwide (and others) will benefit greatly from improved personal mechanical assistance.

The Winglet is one of Toyota’s people-assisting Toyota Partner Robots. Designed to contribute to society by helping people enjoy a safe and fully mobile life, the Winglet is a compact (you stand just above the wheels and it reaches about the level of your knees) next-generation everyday transport tool that offers advanced ease of use and expands the user’s range of mobility.

The Winglet consists of a body that houses an electric motor, two wheels and internal sensors that constantly monitor the user’s position and make adjustments in power to ensure stability. Meanwhile, a unique parallel link mechanism allows the rider to go forward, backward and turn simply by shifting body weight, making the vehicle safe and useful even in tight spaces or crowded environments.

Toyota plans various technical and consumer trials to gain feedback during the Winglet’s lead-up to practical use. Practical tests of its utility as a mobility tool are planned to begin in Autumn 2008 at Central Japan International Airport (Centrair) near Nagoya, and Laguna Gamagori, a seaside marine resort complex in Aichi Prefecture. Testing of its usefulness in crowded and other conditions, and how non-users react to the device, is to be carried out in 2009 at the Tressa Yokohama shopping complex in Yokohama City.

Toyota is pursuing sustainability in research and development, manufacturing and social contribution as part of its concept to realize “sustainability in three areas” and to help contribute to the health and comfort of future society. Toyota Partner Robot development is being carried out with this in mind and applies Toyota’s approach to monozukuri (“making things”), which includes its mobility, production and other technologies.

Toyota aims to realize the practical use of Toyota Partner Robots in the early 2010s.

On a personal note, I bought some more Toyota stock two weeks ago. The stock had declined a bit recently. Toyota is one of the companies in my 12 stocks for 10 years portfolio.

Related: Toyota Develops Personal Transport Assistance Robot ‘Winglet’ – No Excessive Senior Executive Pay at Toyota – More on Non-Auto Toyota

Posted on August 7, 2008  Comments (1)

Gojko Adzic provides a nice post on Mary Poppendieck’s presentation at Agile 2008 on bonus, compensation and motivation: Paying programmers: are bonuses bad and what to do about it?

As usually Mary Poppendieck provides good advice: Mary Poppendieck webcast on Leadership in Software Development. The idea that bonuses are bad management is one of the more difficult management improvement ideas for people to accept. See related posts for much more on the problems with them and what to do instead.

Related: Interview with Mary Poppendieck – The Defect Black Market – Deming on the problems with targets or goals – Incentive Programs are Ineffective – Problems with Bonuses – Measuring and Managing Performance in Organizations

Posted on August 6, 2008  Comments (0)

Toyota’s Top Engineer on How to Develop Thinking People

Excellent advice.

And more wisdom. Great stuff from Taiichi Ohno, Nanpachi Hayashi and Jon Miller’s translation and great blog.

Related: Respect for People and Taiichi Ohno – Toyota IT for Kaizen – Management Improvement – Workplace Management by Taiichi Ohno – Posts on Respect for People

Posted on August 4, 2008  Comments (0)

India’s Economic Times has an interview with James Womack, Now is the time for lean management, with an interesting quote:

I have discussed TVS several times in the past; TVS has won several Deming Prizes.

Related: TVS Group Director on India – Manufacturing, Economy… – Deming Prize 2007 – Indian Deming Prize Winner Expanding – Toyota Chairman Comments on India and Thailand – Curious Cat Lean Manufacturing

Posted on August 1, 2008  Comments (1)

Mark Graban is hosting the Management Improvement Carnival #40. Mark recently authored a new book, Lean Hospitals. Health care highlights from this carnival include:

• Hospital Error – Heparin in the news again (The Lean Thinker Blog): “I am reasonably certain that the two workers who went on “voluntary leave” (yeah, right) will absorb more than their share of blame as the system solves the problem by asking the “Five Who?” questions.”
• Management 101, 201, 301, and 401 (Paul Levy – Running a Hospital): “The only role of management is to create an environment where people left to their own devices and unsupervised are most likely to engage in behavior that advances the goals of the organization.”
• Why I Work In Healthcare (Lee Fried – Daily Kaizen): “Great people that were trying to work in a broken system.”
• Competing Podcast Interview with Mark Graban (Dwight Bowen – Lean Thinking Network): “Most everyone has been aware of the increasing costs of healthcare – the general public is recently becoming more aware of the patient safety and quality risks they face in a hospital. And these are all problems that can be addressed with Lean.”
• 5S, Poka-Yoke, and Visual Controls (Bryan Lund – TWI Blog): “I need a visual control to tell me if the standard is met, in order to avoid mistakes or failure.”

Related: previous management carnivals – Curious Cat health care article library – Curious Cat Management Improvement blog Health Care posts – improving health care links

Posted on August 1, 2008  Comments (1)

The problems with multitasking are becoming more and more well know, thankfully. Here is another article on the lower productivity multitasking produces – Multitasking Madness Decreases Productivity by Barbara Bartlein:

Related: The Siren Song of Multitasking – Multi-Tasking: Why Projects Take so Long – Flow (the opposite of multitasking)