Author Archives: John Hunter

Management Improvement Carnival #106

Jon Miller hosts the Management Improvement Carnival #106 on his blog, highlights include: 3 Observations of Healthcare vs. Construction by Mike Lombard. Lombi gives us his fresh view on the differences between construction businesses and healthcare organizations, two months after … Continue reading

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Build an Environment Where Intrinsic Motivation Flourishes

50 years after Douglas McGregor’s classic, The Human Side of Enterprise, too many managers still have not learned that using extrinsic motivation is not an effective way to manage complex human systems (organizations). The issue is important to me because … Continue reading

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Stop Starting and Start Finishing – Jason Yip

Jason Yip explores the value of reducing work in process and reducing context switching costs to optimize throughput. By designing processes to work on projects serially instead of in parallel we reduce context switching, and other costs, of multitasking. Related: … Continue reading

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How to Manage What You Can’t Measure

In Out of the Crisis, page 121, Dr. Deming wrote: the most important figures that one needs for management are unknown or unknowable (Lloyd S. Nelson, director of statistical methods for the Nashua corporation), but successful management must nevertheless take … Continue reading

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Management Improvement Carnival #105

The management blog carnival is published 3 times a month with select recent management blog posts. Also try our collected management articles and blogs posts at: Curious Cat Management articles. Instead of a Layoff by Gregg Stocker – “Everyone has … Continue reading

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Delighting Customers

If you have customers that see you as adequate you will keep customers based on inertia. But you have several big problems awaiting you. Those trying to win your customers business only have to overcome inertia – which can be … Continue reading

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Actionable Metrics

Metrics are valuable when they are actionable. Think about what will be done if certain results are shown by the data. If you can’t think of actions you would take, it may be that metric is not worth tracking. Metrics … Continue reading

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Management Improvement Carnival #104

Wally Bock hosts his first carnival for us, Management Improvement Carnival #104, on the Three Star Leadership Blog. He has long posted his Leadership Reading to Start Your Week and Midweek Look at the Independent Business Blogs that also highlight … Continue reading

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The Problem is Likely Not the Person Pointing Out The Problem

I believe the problem is likely not the person pointing out the problem. Now granted I have often been that person. Part of what I have been tasked with doing in various jobs is finding ways to improve the performance … Continue reading

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Building on Successful Improvement

Do ‘Quick Wins’ Hurt Lean Initiatives? This becomes very difficult, since in many organizations these executives have the strategic attention span equivalent to the life-cycle of a mayfly. When the ‘quick win’ approach is taken, the savings / impact becomes … Continue reading

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