Management Improvement ideas from around the web:
- Lean Q&A by Jamie Flinchbaugh – “There is no recipe, no three-ring binder approach to lean. If someone brings you an approach and says “here is the best way to implement lean,” please, run away.”
- Seven steps to remarkable customer service by Joel Spolsky – “The superficial and immediate solution is just to solve the customer’s problem. But when you think a little harder you can usually find a deeper solution”
- The Seven Habits of Toyota People by Jon Miller – “2. Think about what is the problem… 5. Discuss things with each other 6. Are thorough about genchi gembutsu“
- Why Write it down? by Joe Ely – “Lean is built on standard work. We write down work instructions. We write down paths for material handlers. We ask associates to write down small improvements. We write down kaizen plans.”
- The Great Lean Consulting Shakeout by Bill Waddell – “Big consulting firms peddling ‘kaizen in a box’ – prepackaged, one size fits all, lean manufacturing through kaizen events – are collapsing as well they should… The best I can do is to teach, coach, and encourage, but you and the people in your company will have to do all of the hard work.”
- Plan, Do, Check and Act in the Deming Wheel by Grigor – “After the solution is developed it is checked against a problem it should solve. If goal is not achieved, we should go back to a planning phase. If goal is achieved solution can be applied widely.”
- “Scientific thinking” the modern way by Bill Harris – “It simply means that Fisher’s designed experiments give us better and faster means to extract insight from tests on system dynamics models than the old one-factor-at-a-time approach.”
- A Deming Company podcast, Mark Graban interviews Eric Christiansen – “Sales commissions were abolished, as well as production bonus plans. OmniLingua has a company-wide profit sharing plan instead.”
- Going to the Gemba in Belize by Kevin Meyer – “They were the town government leaders taking a daily walk through the streets. As a group they stopped and talked with street vendors, taxi drivers, tourists, and business owners.”
- Getting the CEO on a Kaizen Team is Like Pulling Teeth by Jon Miller – “It’s not uncommon to see the CEO in the middle of a kaizen… You might want to print out those words and glue them to your CEO’s door, if your experience with getting the CEO on a kaizen team has been anything like ours. Getting the CEO on a kaizen team is like pulling teeth.”
- A historical post on the Deming Difference (in line with a couple above) quotes Dr. Joyce Orsini – “Everyone wants instant pudding. Then, Dr. Deming stands up and says there is no such thing as instant pudding. That we must learn how to integrate knowledge of people, statistics, and theory of knowledge into a working, breathing organizational system.”
- The Elements of Great Managing: 3 – Matching strengths to jobs by Kent Blumberg – “The third element of great managing is matching each person’s unique talents, skills and knowledge to the needs of the team.”
- Firing Workers Isn’t Fixing Problems – “Short term thinking is part of the management system. Exorbitant executive pay exacerbates the problem. A failure to understand variation exacerbates the problem. Failure to understand systems exacerbates the problem.” by John Hunter
Related: Management Carnival posts
