The management blog carnival is published 3 times a month with select recent management blog posts. Also visit the Curious Cat Management Library for online management improvement articles.
- Why C level executives don’t engage in lean by Steven Spear – “Either they’ve been led to believe that it is the work of the shop floor technocrats for which their responsibility is hiring and funding, or they’re unprepared to lead, engaged in discovery and development, as is actually required.”
- A Systems Approach to Business by Gregg Stocker – “Coach and mentor people to increase the level of understanding throughout the company regarding how each job supports other areas in the achieving the fundamental purpose.”
- Toyota to Reduce Span of Control in Engineering by Jon Miller – “Shoichiro Toyoda, the father of current Toyota CEO Akio Toyoda, who is leading this latest reorganization towards smaller span of control for engineers.”
- Some Bosses Live in a Fool’s Paradise by Bob Sutton – “It turns out that followers, peers, superiors, and customers consistently provide better information about a boss’s strengths, weaknesses, and quirks than the boss him or herself.”
- Effective root cause analysis techniques by Gojko Adzic – “After the initial set of problems is identified, start popping the why stack and get to the “fifth why”. Every moment you should be either writing down why something happened or asking ‘Why?’. This keeps the discussions short and focused.”
- The Theory of Constraints: The Fundamentals by Pete Abilla – “The rate of throughput is determined by the system’s constraint… If Internal: eliminate waste at the constraint; place inspection steps upstream from the constraint; and other methods to free-up the constraint from non-value activities.”
- Motivation, Insight, and Introspection by Mike Cottmeyer – “To maintain passion and enthusiasm for my craft, I have to contribute, I have to feel like I am making a difference, and I can’t feel like every interaction is something to be monetized.”
- The Role of Middle Management in Toyota or a Lean System by Tracey Richardson – “The traditional mindset of most management (all levels) is that the team member ‘works for them’ on a daily basis. The paradigm shift in thinking comes when the mindset becomes – ‘I work for them’.”
- Using LinkedIn for Employer Branding by Chris Ferdinandi – “So if your organization is known for great training and development, talk about what makes for good T&D programs. But don’t just talk about yourself. Link to other organizations who do it well, too.”
- A Paradox of Lean: Job Control Rises and Falls at the Same Time by Jeff Hajek – “The challenge many companies face, especially early in their Lean journey, is that frontline employees haven’t yet embraced the culture of improving processes they don’t like, but very quickly bound by their Standard Work.”
- Act Your Way To A New Culture by Jeff Liker – “I think it is safer to think of culture as an outcome… of leadership behavior, of what people experience daily, off who the organization selects into employment positions, and of the work environment.”
- Gotta Get Their Heads Out Of The Buckets by Bill Waddell – “Niki Tait from the UK – looking at the same overall situation – but seeing the situation holistically, rather than in neat little buckets. She is worrying about profits, contemplating the entire forest, while her financial counterparts previously mentioned have their nose pressed so tightly against the bark they can’t even see the whole tree.”
- Frugal Innovation by John Hunter – “By talking a new look at the situation and attempting to find solutions with significant price constraints new markets can be opened. Often this requires thinking similar to disruptive innovation (products that serve a similar need but less completely than current options).”
