Author Archives: John Hunter

Righter Incentivization

Incentive schemes to get people “motivated” often backfire. Why can’t we figure out how to incentivize the behavior we desire and have it not backfire on us? What is the righter way to dangle incentives in front of our employees … Continue reading

Posted in Deming, Management, Psychology, quote, Respect, Systems thinking | Tagged , , , , , , | 7 Comments

Management Improvement Carnival #46

Ron Pereira is hosting the Management Improvement Carnival #46 on the Lean Six Sigma Academy blog, highlights include: I’m never quite sure how he gets these ideas… but Jon Miller managed to tie leadership and mountain goats together in 7 … Continue reading

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Best Places to Work for Six Sigma Professionals

iSixSigma has created a list of the Best Places to Work for Six Sigma Professionals. To be eligible to participate, companies must have been actively engaged in using Six Sigma for at least two years and must employ a minimum … Continue reading

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Lame Move by Google

Google does great things and makes good decisions most often. However a recent move on their part has ended very lamely. As part of what their 10th anniversary celebration they provided a search of the 2001 index (the oldest index … Continue reading

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Global Manufacturing Data 2007

The updated data from the United Nations on manufacturing output by country clearly shows the USA remains by far the largest manufacturer in the world. UN Data, in billions of current US dollars: Country 1990 1995 2000 2005 2006 2007 … Continue reading

Posted in Data, Economics, India, Manufacturing, quote | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , | 1 Comment

Management Blog Posts From October 2005

Box on Quality – Read articles by George Box on quality management principles (SPC, Deming, process improvement, six sigma, etc.). An except from the book provides a table of contents and an introduction. The photos shows George Box and Bill … Continue reading

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Get Rid of the Performance Review

Get Rid of the Performance Review! by Samuel Culbert To make my case, I offer seven reasons why I find performance reviews ill-advised and bogus. … Inevitably reviews are political and subjective, and create schisms in boss-employee relationships. The link … Continue reading

Posted in Deming, Management, Performance Appraisal | Tagged , , | 1 Comment

Appropriate Management

Thinking about why appropriate technology is so effective, but underutilized (though things are much better now than they were several decades ago) can help anyone improve the solutions they adopt. I would especially encourage people to stop looking for the newest management book and actually read and adopt and re-read adopt… the excellent management books from the last 50 years Continue reading

Posted in Books, Innovation, Management, Psychology | Tagged , , , , , | 4 Comments

The Software Engineering Manager’s Lament

The engineering manager’s lament by Eric Ries: In teams that follow the “pick two” agenda [quality, time or price], which two has to be resolved via a power play. In companies with a strong engineering culture, the engineers pick quality. … Continue reading

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CEOs Plundering Corporate Coffers

Pointy haired bosses broke the code they provided on their site for embedding a Dilbert comic, so I removed the broken code. Dogbert: “I am stepping down as CEO so I can spend more time with the money I stole … Continue reading

Posted in Management, Respect, Systems thinking | Tagged , , , , | 17 Comments