The Curious Cat Management Improvement Carnival provides links to recent blog posts on improving the management of organizations.

• How Do You Get from Here to Agile? Iterate. by Mike Cohn – “…following an iterative transition process. Making small changes on a continual basis is a logical way to adopt a development process that is itself iterative.”
• What is Lean? by Mike Wroblewski – “Do we measure leanness on the number of lean tools being used? Let’s see, 5-S check, Kanban check, Regular kaizen events check, A3 no, TPM no, VSM no, (add as many tools to your checklist as your experience tells you)….sorry you are not lean…”
• How to Deal with a Bad Boss — 3 Approaches by Harwell Thrasher – “There are basically three approaches to dealing with a bad boss: leave, get rid of the boss, or make the situation better.”
• Defining the Problem Statement by Tim McMahon – “The problem statement should not address more than one problem. The problem statement should not assign a cause. The problem statement should not assign blame. The problem statement should not offer a solution.”
• Hospitals Saving Millions with Staff Suggestions by Mark Graban – “The baseline number that Norman Bodek often cites for companies like Toyota or Canon is that the company saves $4,000 per employee based on employee kaizen suggestions.”
• How Much Time In Gemba? by Lee Fried – “Each leader has very clear standard work which includes checking on local standards, progress of improvements and walking frontline processes.”
• 2 Quick Tips on Meetings by Jamie Flinchbaugh – “First, consider if you even need the meeting to begin with…”
• The Advantages of A1 Thinking Over A3 Thinking by Jon Miller – “The A1 thinking document is four times larger than the A3 document. It is big. You can read it from across the room. The caveat is that you have to write at least four times as big as you would on an A3. Don’t use the extra space to cram in more information!”
• Historical Data on the Largest Manufacturing Countries by John Hunter – The first chart shows the USA’s share of the manufacturing output… at 28.1% in 1990, 32% in 2000, 28% in 2005, and 24% in 2008. China’s share has grown from 4% in 1990, 10% in 2000, 13% in 2005 to 18% in 2008.

Related: Curious Cat management articles – Curious Cat Economics and Investing Carnival