Toyota Develops Thought-controlled Wheelchair
Posted on June 30, 2009 Comments (2)
Toyota has developed a thought-controlled wheelchair (along with Japanese government research institute, RIKEN, and Genesis Research Institute). Honda has also developed a system that allows a person to control a robot through thoughts. Both companies continue to invest in innovation and science and engineering. The story of a bad economy and bad sales for a year or two is what you read in most newspapers. In my opinion the more important story is why Toyota and Honda will be dominant companies 20 years from now. And that story is based on their superior management and focus on long term success instead of short term quarterly results.
Yes Toyota can improve their performance, based on the last few years. Does management understand what they need to do? I think so. Does management understand that the system needs to be improved rather than the numbers on the spreadsheets of various managers have to be made better? I think so. Do I think most companies today, with bad results, understand the difference between bad numbers on spreadsheets that are used to judge various managers and a system that needs to be improved? No.
I do not believe the bad earnings for the last year for Toyota are indicative of a failed system. The results do show a weakness in the Toyota system that allowed them to perform this poorly during this credit crisis. The risk to Toyota’s future is that they become too focused on short term results, mistakenly thinking the problem to be fixed in the bad quarterly results recently. They need to focus on improving the system for the long term. And the recent experience likely shows some areas that need to be improved. But in no way do the fundamental tenants of the management system need to be changed. For many other companies today, changing fundamental aspects of their management is what is needed.
Related: Toyota as Homebuilder – Honda’s Robolegs Help People Walk – Honda has Never had Layoffs and has been Profitable Every Year – Toyota’s Partner Robot – NUMMI, and GM’s Failure to Manage Effectively – Toyota iUnit – Invest in New Management Methods Not a Failing Company by William Hunter, 1986
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The Myth of the Genius Programmer
Posted on June 29, 2009 Comments (1)
Nice talk on fear of looking foolish. The speakers discuss the idea that visibility is good. Don’t hide. Make everything visible and the benefit from many people’s ideas. The talk focuses on software development but is true for any work.
“criticism is not evil” – Very true. “At Google we are not allowed to submit code until there is code review.” At the bottom line they are repeating Deming’s ideas: improve the system – people are not the problem, bad systems are the problem. Iterate quickly.
Related: 10x Productivity Difference in Software Development – The Software Engineering Manager’s Lament – Respect for People, Understanding Psychology
Google Innovates Again with Google Wave
Posted on June 25, 2009 Comments (1)
Google Wave is a new tool for communication and collaboration on the web, coming later this year. They are developing this as an open access project. The creative team is lead by the creators for Google Maps (brothers Lars and Jens Rasmussen). A wave is equal parts conversation and document. People can communicate and work together with richly formatted text, photos, videos, maps, and more. You really have to watch to understand what it is.
This is a long webcast (1 hour and 20 minutes) and likely will be best only for those interested in internet technology solutions. But it also provides useful insight into how Google is managing the creation of new tools. But the ideas are not explicit (the demo was meant to present the new product Google Wave, not explain the thought behind producing useful technology solutions), so you have to think about how what they are doing can apply in other situations.
For software developer readers they also highly recommended the Google Web Development Kit, which they used heavily on this project. They also have a very cool context sensitive spell checker that can highlight misspelled words that are another dictionary word but not right in the context used (about 44:30 in the webcast). And they discuss using Wave to manage bug tracking and manage information about dealing with bugs (@ 1 hour 4 min point).
Very cool stuff. The super easy blog interaction is great. And the user experience with notification and collaborative editing seems excellent. The playback feature to view changes seems good though that is still an area I worry about on heavily collaborative work. Hopefully they let you see like all change x person made, search changes…
Related: Eric Schmidt on Management at Google – Joel Spolsky Webcast on Creating Social Web Resources – Great Marissa Mayer Webcast on Google Innovation – Google Should Stay True to Their Management Practices – Amazon Innovation
Tags: Creativity,Google,Innovation,internet,IT,Software Development
Top 10 Reasons Why Employees Leave in IT
Posted on June 23, 2009 Comments (1)
Some of the problems expressed in the post linked to are specific to IT, and some are more important in software development (where as I have said before employees have higher expectations of management than most employees do), but many have truth for many employees. A good manager can create an environment where these problems are eliminated or reduced.
Top 10 Reasons Why Employees Leave in IT
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Boss doesn’t communicate things that affect the team or you as an individual and makes all decisions without your knowledge only you finding about it later through another source
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Managers who fail to promote the very people who deserve it rather than who is popular or who they like
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Bad co-workers who do not get stomped out (let go) and hurt the culture
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Teams work best when they collaborate and are allowed to question what the proposed process or standard is, not just following and doing what is told 100% of the time. If the process suggested or currently ongoing sucks, question it and expect your team to question it!
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Employee comes up with an idea and manager disregards it because “no I’ve always done it my way” even if it’s a 1999 way of doing things
Related: Helping Employees Improve – Information Technology and Business Process Support – Stop Demotivating Me! – The Manager FAQ – Flaws in Understanding Psychology Lead to Flawed Management – posts on managing people
Tags: management,managing people,respect for people,Software Development
Management Improvement Carnival #67
Posted on June 21, 2009 Comments (0)
- Not Invented Here by Nicole Radziwill – “when a NIH culture is observed, perhaps the resources and opportunities that are available to a group or an organization that could use them are truly invisible.”
- Re-th!nk[ing IT strategy] by David Anderson – “if something is not strategic and we are not good at it then we should outsource it and buy the service instead. If we are good or world class at something but it is not strategic then we should spin it out and sell that service to our competitors.”
- Let’s Teach Our Kids about Standard Work by Bryan Lund – “If we are going to nip this standard work thing in the bud, we need to go back to formula and start teaching our kids two things, 1) how to think about processes and 2) how to instruct.”
- It Might Be Bad Design If Instructions Are Required by Mark Graban – “Sure enough, there was a full page sheet of laminated instructions on the desk for operating the lights”
- HR and Innovation “HR must work diligently to make sure that right systems are in place to attract, identify, and capture the best talent to drive innovation.”
- Learning from Community Medical Care Successes by John hunter – “The only way to get as bad results as we do for the huge cost is to keep doing what we are doing”
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Community Medical Care Successes
Posted on June 18, 2009 Comments (1)
The Cost Conundrum by Atul Gawande, New Yorker (The Power of a Checklist was published there in 2007 by the same author)
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I talked to Denis Cortese, the C.E.O. of the Mayo Clinic, which is among the highest-quality, lowest-cost health-care systems in the country. A couple of years ago, I spent several days there as a visiting surgeon. Among the things that stand out from that visit was how much time the doctors spent with patients. There was no churn—no shuttling patients in and out of rooms while the doctor bounces from one to the other. I accompanied a colleague while he saw patients. Most of the patients, like those in my clinic, required about twenty minutes. But one patient had colon cancer and a number of other complex issues, including heart disease. The physician spent an hour with her, sorting things out. He phoned a cardiologist with a question.
“I’ll be there,” the cardiologist said. Fifteen minutes later, he was. They mulled over everything together. The cardiologist adjusted a medication, and said that no further testing was needed. He cleared the patient for surgery, and the operating room gave her a slot the next day.
The whole interaction was astonishing to me. Just having the cardiologist pop down to see the patient with the surgeon would be unimaginable at my hospital. The time required wouldn’t pay. The time required just to organize the system wouldn’t pay.
The core tenet of the Mayo Clinic is “The needs of the patient come first”—not the convenience of the doctors, not their revenues. The doctors and nurses, and even the janitors, sat in meetings almost weekly, working on ideas to make the service and the care better, not to get more money out of patients. I asked Cortese how the Mayo Clinic made this possible.
“It’s not easy,” he said. But decades ago Mayo recognized that the first thing it needed to do was eliminate the financial barriers. It pooled all the money the doctors and the hospital system received and began paying everyone a salary, so that the doctors’ goal in patient care couldn’t be increasing their income. Mayo promoted leaders who focussed first on what was best for patients, and then on how to make this financially possible.
No one there actually intends to do fewer expensive scans and procedures than is done elsewhere in the country. The aim is to raise quality and to help doctors and other staff members work as a team. But, almost by happenstance, the result has been lower costs. [actually the Deming Chain Reaction] Read more
Tags: Deming,Health care,health care system,Systems thinking
If Your Staff Doesn’t Bring You Problems That is a Bad Sign
Posted on June 15, 2009 Comments (5)
– Colin Powell
I discussed my feelings on this in a previous post, Bring Me Problems:
Related: Where to Start Improvement – Stop Demotivating Me! – How to Improve – Leadership quotes
“Having no problems is the biggest problem of all.” – Taiichi Ohno
Management Improvement Carnival #66
Posted on June 12, 2009 Comments (0)
The Curious Cat Management Improvement Carnival began in 2006 with the goal to provide links to interesting blog posts for those interesting in improving the practice of management.
- Jidoka is not just “built-in-quality” by Jason Yip – “Jidoka is not just about stopping and notifying of problems immediately. It also includes the concept of separating human and machine work. Effectively the idea of using machines to free humans.”
- How to Engage People in Kaizen by Jon Miller – “Frame all actions as experiments and not permanent or irreversible changes This allows people to think that they are not really changing something, only “trying it”. In fact if the method is demonstrably better, it may become the new way.”
- To Estimate or Not, That is the Question – “Create your estimates quickly and don’t get paralyzed by precision. Being quick may be the middle ground between estimating and not estimating.”
- Generation Y Deserves No Special Treatment by Chris Young – “Generation Y should not be treated any differently than any other generation. The very same employee performance standards applies to Generation Y as they apply to any other generation.”
- Rapid prototyping in NY’s Times Square by Karen Wilhelm – Experience and observation can determine optimum flow of people (and vehicles now diverted from their usual routes). Just like simulating flow in a full-size cell mockup can allow teams to adjust reality to assumptions. No long meetings, proposals, and computer models can substitute for a simple and quick prototype of a new system.”
- Stop Making Excuses by Nick McCormick – “Refuse to accept any reasons for why things that need to be done can’t be. It’s OK to identify the problems. The important thing is to develop solutions to those problems.”
- Cool Email Mistake Proofing – My main desktop computer runs Ubuntu Linux. The default email client is called Evolution. A recent upgrade introduced a very cool feature. When I hit ‘Send’ it looks for language in the email that might indicate I meant to include an attachment. If there is no attachment, it pops up [a] handy reminder
- Waste and SAP? by Kevin Meyer – “Moral of the story? Be careful of product demos.”
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Penske to Buy Saturn from GM
Posted on June 7, 2009 Comments (1)
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First off, he won’t own any manufacturing plants. Saturn will continue to buy today’s vehicles from GM for at least two years. Penske will talk to other auto manufacturers in Europe and Asia about supplying new products after that. “We are going to be a sales, service, and marketing company, not an OEM [original equipment manufacturer],” he said. Eventually, Penske explained, he wants at least some Saturn vehicles to once again be manufactured in the U.S., though that may not be the case in the short run after the agreement with GM runs out.
I thought Saturn was the worst management failure at GM, among many (NUMMI, and GM’s Failure to Manage Effectively, for example). They really did some great things early on with rethinking the system of manufacturing and selling cars. But GM failed to take care of the innovative division. I hoped that Saturn would gain a new, better, management that build Saturn toward the potential it has. Contracting out manufacturing however, is a horrible idea, I believe. Unfortunately I think this ends the hope for a great Saturn.
Saturn still have the potential to do ok, given how bad the dealership experience is for most other companies. The dealer experience, even for Toyota and Lexus is still not at all congruous with the customer focus principles of lean (for example, motivating sales people to make as bad a deal for customers as they can – paying them more the more they get for the dealership at the expense of the customer). And other car companies have quite a bit to learn from the sales practices of Saturn and Car Max.
Related: Big Failed Three, Meet the Successful Eight – Honda has Never had Layoffs and has been Profitable Every Year – People: Team Members or Costs – Invest in New Management Methods Not a Failing Company, 1986
Tags: cars,management,Management Articles,Manufacturing,Systems thinking
Job Listings Online Filled with Jargon
Posted on June 5, 2009 Comments (2)
The job market is not great, 9.4% unemployment in the USA, and not efficient either. At my full time job, we hired a ruby on rails developer (web programmer) this month, and are looking to hire another.
Job listings online filled with jargon
Job search sites are gaining traffic and providing a great service to the unemployed and unhappily employed. Unfortunately, the inability of corporations and recruiters to provide prospective applicants with sensible job postings threatens to render these sites useless.
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Filling the entire job posting with corporate and industry acronyms, abbreviations, and jargon – By filling the job posting with nonsensical jargon, a recruiter further inflates their false sense of importance and also avoids the issue that they know absolutely nothing about the job. The applicant is left wondering whether they just applied for a job responsible for fixing Boeing 747s or installing Kimberly-Clark toilet paper dispensers. Pretty much a toss up.
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It’s scary to imagine what job postings might look like in 10 years if this trend continues. If anyone is interested in building a Google Translate with a “Recruiter to English” option, I can serve as your Subject Matter Expert.
In the information technology field the standard practice is to include a large number of basically irrelevant skills as requirements. And then managers wonder why they don’t get decent applicants. You need to include the knowledge, skills and experience you really need and not all sorts of details that an employee can easily pick up, if needed, once they are on the job.
Related: Hiring: Silicon Valley Style – Interviewing and Hiring Programmers – IT Talent Shortage, or Management Failure? – Joy in Work: Software Development – Management Improvement Career Connections
Tags: Career,IT,jobs,respect for people,Software Development
Management Improvement Carnival #65
Posted on June 1, 2009 Comments (0)
The Curious Cat Management Improvement Carnival began in 2006 with the goal to provide links to interesting blog posts for those interesting in improving the practice of management. We now publish the carnival 3 times a month.
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- Don’t Shoot the Photographer by Mark Riffey examines how to turn a perceived threat to your business income into an opportunity by focusing on customer service.
- NPR Does a Great Job of Covering Toyota by Mark Graban – “How tough the assembly line is depends in part on its creator. Shigenobu Matsubara has helped design assembly lines from Japan to Georgetown, Ky., which has the biggest in the United States. He says he has always designed the lines with the workers’ welfare in mind.”
- Entrepreneurship Doesn’t Have To Be About The Next Big Thing – “Whatever you decide to do, there’s nothing to be ashamed of as long as you are actively going after your goals. Who cares if you are pursuing a not so glamorous business idea? Who cares if your friends are all trying to create hundred million dollar companies?”
- Lean Team Software Process by Corey Ladas – “The customer’s terms likely do not include any notion of defects-per-KLOC. The producer’s end is profit and reputation, which comes from managing cost and consistency. If TSP, or something related to it, helps us realize our ends, then (and only then) it is meaningful.”
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