Currently browsing the Education Category

Mainly primary, secondary and higher education related but also posts on management improvement learning opportunities. Plus some posts on quality learning and learning organizations topics.
Recommended posts: Improving Engineering Education - Learning, Systems and Improvement - Applying Lean Tools to University Courses - Lean Education Academic Network
Related: articles on education improvement - k-12 quality improvement resources - higher education resources - Education post on our Science and Engineering blog


Pull Consulting: Immediate Management Consulting As You Need It

Posted on February 2, 2012  Comments (0)

I think the potential for consulting as you need it is great. I actually was looking into creating an application to support the ability to provide this service with someone else; but we just had too many other things going on. I have now made myself available for consulting you pull as you need it through MinuteBox. You can get consulting when you need it for as little time as you need.

So if you are trying to apply the ideas I discuss on this blog and run into issues you would like to get some help with connect with me and you can get some immediate coaching on whatever you are struggling with. I am offering a special rate of $1.99 a minute, for now. The graphic on the right of this post (any post on this blog, actually) will show if I am available right now (as does johnhunter.com). If so, you can connect and get started. If not, you can leave a message and we can arrange a time.

I am featured on MinuteBox with this cool graphic, isn’t it nice :-)

home page of MInute Box with John Hunter graphic

John Hunter feature on Minute Box homepage

One advantage of this model is that those of you following this blog have a good idea of what topics you would like to delve into more deeply with me. If you have any questions on a particular topic you would like answered today or arranging coaching on specific topics over a period of time or help planning a project or someone to bounce your ideas off give this consulting as you need it model a try.

For those of you management consultants reading this blog (I know there are many) you can create your own Minute Box account easily and provide this service also. And even if you are not a consultant if you have advice worth sharing (and I know there are many of you also) you can also set up an account.

Related: John Hunter’s professional life timeline – John Hunter online – John Hunter LinkedIn profile – Top Leadership blogs – Top Management and Leadership blogs – Top Management blog

You’ve Got to Find What You Love

Posted on October 5, 2011  Comments (2)

Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven’t found it yet, keep looking. Don’t settle. As with all matters of the heart, you’ll know when you find it. And, like any great relationship, it just gets better and better as the years roll on. So keep looking until you find it. Don’t settle.

- Steve Jobs



Watch this great commencement speech by Steve Jobs at Stanford in 2005.

We lost a great person today, when Steve Jobs died at the age of 56. His words are just as important today: you have got to find what you love to do. Keep looking until you find it. It won’t necessarily be easy to do. But life is too short to waste merely getting by.

My father found what he loved and pursued that throughout his life. He also died young. They both died young, but they both had great lives because they took charge to make the most of their lives. By doing what they loved they made the world a better place for many others, and themselves. Take that message to heart and make your life the best it can be.

Related: Quotes from Steve Jobs – Peter Scholtes – Positivity and Joy in Work – Build an Environment Where Intrinsic Motivation Flourishes – Remembering Bill Hunter

Continual Learning

Posted on January 17, 2011  Comments (1)

There are several things that destroy your ability to be effective. Thinking you have all the answers (which leads to stopping learning) is probably at the top, along with any other reason for stopping learning (more interested in other things, etc.).

How you are taken by people is also very important. If people see you as talking down to them, it is very difficult to have them listen and care about what you say. At the same time I find it even more annoying when people refuse to say something that will annoy anyone (especially in responding to questions). You don’t want to talk down to people, but it is perfectly all right to challenge them. You need to respect them and challenge them to improve how things are being done.

Look at people like Ackoff and Deming. They knew more than pretty much anyone about management. Yet both continued learning until the day they died. They were quick to credit others. They were quick to challenge people but also had an obvious respect and compassion for people.

Related: The Problem with Gurus – Predicting Improves Learning – Learn Lean by Doing Lean – Improving Education with Deming’s Ideas

A Theory of a System for Educators and Managers

Posted on October 25, 2010  Comments (3)

Excerpts from The Deming Library Volume XXI, Dr. W. Edwards Deming, Dr. Russell Ackoff and David Langford demonstrate that educators can begin a quality transformation by developing an understanding of the properties and powers of systems-oriented thinking. You can order the entire video, as well as the rest of The Deming Library.

Great stuff! If you enjoy this blog (the Curious Cat Management Improvement Blog), you definitely should watch this webcast. This video has some great insight into education, learning and systems thinking. It also provides a good explanation of systems thinking compared to analysis. Dr. Ackoff: “You cannot explain the behavior of a system by analysis.” “The performance of the whole is never the sum of the performance of the parts taken separately: but it’s the product of their interactions. Therefore, the basic managerial idea introduced by systems thinking is that to manage a system effectively you must focus on the interactions of the parts rather than their behavior taken separately.”

Dr. Deming: “You may reduce defects to zero and go out of business.”

Dr. Ackoff: “Most discussion of education assume that the best way to learn a subject is to have it taught to you. That’s nonsense… Teaching is a wonderful way to learn. Therefore if we want people to learn we have to make them teach.” If you want more on this see David Langford’s work which provides great advice on how to improve learning and education.

Related: Dr. Deming Webcast on the 5 Deadly Diseases – An Introduction to Deming’s Management Ideas by Peter Scholtes – How to Manage What You Can’t Measure – Marissa Mayer Webcast on Google Innovation – Traffic Congestion and a Non-Solution

Problems With Student Evaluations as Measures of Teacher Performance

Posted on June 16, 2010  Comments (1)

Dr. Deming was, among other things a professor. He found the evaluation of professors by students an unimportant (and often counterproductive measure) – used in some places for awards and performance appraisal. He said for such a measure to be useful it should survey students 20 years later to see which professors made a difference to the students. Here is an interesting paper that explored some of these ideas. Does Professor Quality Matter? Evidence from Random Assignment of Students to Professors by Scott E. Carrell, University of California, Davis and National Bureau of Economic Research; and James E. West, U.S. Air Force Academy:

our results indicate that professors who excel at promoting contemporaneous student achievement, on average, harm the subsequent performance of their students in more advanced classes. Academic rank, teaching experience, and terminal degree status of professors are negatively correlated with contemporaneous value‐added but positively correlated with follow‐on course value‐added. Hence, students of less experienced instructors who do not possess a doctorate perform significantly better in the contemporaneous course but perform worse in the follow‐on related curriculum.

Student evaluations are positively correlated with contemporaneous professor value‐added and negatively correlated with follow‐on student achievement. That is, students appear to reward higher grades in the introductory course but punish professors who increase deep learning (introductory course professor value‐added in follow‐on courses). Since many U.S. colleges and universities use student evaluations as a measurement of teaching quality for academic promotion and tenure decisions, this latter finding draws into question the value and accuracy of this practice.

These findings have broad implications for how students should be assessed and teacher quality measured.

Related: Applying Lean Tools to University Courses – K-12 Educational Reform – Improving Education with Deming’s Ideas – Learning, Systems and Improvement – How We Know What We Know

Improving Education with Deming’s Ideas

Posted on March 4, 2010  Comments (1)

This interview (link broken, so removed) with David Langford discusses how to improve education using ideas from Deming. Along with Alfie Kohn, David have long been the learning and management experts I find most valuable.

I have long remembered is his idea that he was the CEO of his classroom. On hearing Deming discuss how critical it was to have the CEO active in a management improvement effort to achieve success he tried to get those above him in the organization chart to change. Which didn’t work very well. Seeing that method was not successful he took a new look and decided to view the problem in a different way.

He looked for what he was in charge of and decided he could decide how to run his classroom. I think this is a very valuable idea for anyone looking to improve their organization. What is your sphere of control? Focus on how you can improve there. Don’t just try to change others. See how you can change and improve what you can.

The interview provides a good insight into the great ideas David has.

  • “Make changes that let all kids get good grades.”
  • That comes from the theory (incorrect theory) grades motivate students.
  • There is no level of education sub-quality that is acceptable. Success or need to work more, which category are you in. B, C, D does not make sense.
  • People keep trying things we have proven over and over again don’t work, like pay for performance schemes for individual teachers.

Anyone interested in improving education should listen to this interview and search out more ideas from David Langford and Alfie Kohn. I really like David’s capacity matrix.

Related: Orchestrating Learning With Quality by David P. Langford and Barbara A. Cleary – K-12 Educational Reform – Deming on being Destroyed by Best Efforts

Lean Manufacturing Simulation (webcast)

Posted on January 6, 2010  Comments (1)

This webcast, from the MIT Open Courseware initiative, shows a simulation (with legos). And in doing so explores the advantages of lean manufacturing methods.

Related: Red Bead Experiment Webcast – one-piece flow – Applied Quality Engineering Education – The Lean MBA

Learn Lean by Doing Lean

Posted on November 13, 2009  Comments (6)

In response to: Developing Your Lean Education Plan

If you actually let the lean leaders practice lean management you are probably doing more to help them learn than anything else. Reading is great, but 10 times better when reading to find solutions you need to deal with issues you have in place. Same for going to conferences. Consultants can be a huge help, but if you just bring in consultants without allowing the changes needed to improve they are not much use.

Far more damaging than not approving training, or giving the lean leaders any time to learn, is not giving them freedom to adopt lean practices and actually make improvements in your organization. That is what kills learning, and the desire to learn.

A great lean education plan: give them opportunities to apply what they know. As they gain knowledge and have success give them more opportunities. I think often lean leaders (and management improvement leaders) have to spend so much effort fighting the resistance in the organization they don’t have the energy to seek out much new knowledge. If you can reduce the effort they have to spend on fighting the bureaucracy most lean leaders will naturally focus on learning what they need for the current and future challenges.

Related: Building Organizational Capacity – Helping Employees Improve – People are Our Most Important Asset – Respect People by Understanding Psychology

An Introduction to Deming’s Management Ideas by Peter Scholtes (webcast)

Posted on September 14, 2009  Comments (1)

An Introduction to Deming’s Management Teaching and Philosophy by Peter Scholtes – webcast from the Annual W. Edwards Deming Institute conference in Madison, Wisconsin, November 9th, 2008. My previous post on this speech: 6 Leadership Competencies.

Next month, the Annual Deming Institute conference will be held at Purdue on Oct 10th, 2009.

Related: Peter Scholtes’ Life – Curious Cat’s Deming on Management – The Leader’s Handbook – Performance without Appraisal

Unfortunately I cannot actually use the website to watch more than 5 minutes because the site fails to support linux operating system with their solution for longer videos. Google will only allow 10 minute videos without special permission – YouTube has not replied to my request for over 6 months. Update: Twitvid let me upload the whole video.

Red Bead Experiment Webcast

Posted on April 22, 2009  Comments (3)

Dr. Deming used the red bead experiment to present a view into management practices and his management philosophy. The experiment provides insight into all four aspects of Dr. Deming’s management system: understanding variation, understanding psychology, systems thinking and the theory of knowledge.

Red Bead Experiment by Steve Prevette

Various techniques are used to ensure a quality (no red bead) product. There are quality control inspectors, feedback to the workers, merit pay for superior performance, performance appraisals, procedure compliance, posters and quality programs. The foreman, quality control, and the workers all put forth their best efforts to produce a quality product. The experiment allows the demonstration of the effectiveness (or ineffectiveness) of the various methods.

Related: Fooled by Randomness – Performance Measures and Statistics Course – Performance without Appraisal – Exploring Deming’s Management Ideas – Eliminate Slogans

Seth Godin: Intern Program and the Internet

Posted on September 3, 2008  Comments (0)

Learning from a summer intern program:

I was overwhelmed by the quality of what I got back. (The quantity was expected… interesting internships are hard to find). I heard from students on most continents, with a huge variety of backgrounds and life experiences. And these people were smart.

Unable to just pick a PDF or two, I invited the applicants to join a Facebook group I had set up. Then I let them meet each other and hang out online. It was absolutely fascinating. Within a day, the group had divided into four camps:
…
* The leaders. A few started conversations, directed initiatives and got to work.
…
If you’re hiring for people to work online, I can’t imagine not screening people in this way. This is the work, and you can watch people do it for real before you hire them.

Excellent post and the advice echoes his advice on hiring: the End of the Job Interview. We have an internship directory, that helps people find opportunities (and those with internships to offer a way to market it) which includes a list of virtual internships.

Related: Seth Godin on Marketing and the Internet – Internships Increasing – Curious Cat Management SubReddit

Management Seminar in May

Posted on April 7, 2008  Comments (1)

The Deming Institute is sponsoring, How to Create Unethical, Ineffective Organizations That Go Out of Business, 12-14 May, 2008 in Colorado Springs, Colorado. Kelly Allan and I will be presenting the seminar. Please let me know if you sign up.

Twenty-seven faulty management and corporate governance practices create most of the problems in any organization. These practices will be identified, and better practices recommended. It will be shown that as better practices are introduced, quality of products and services increases, costs decline, and you create a globally competitive advantage for your organization.

Learn how governance practice leads to the heaviest losses, how inconsistencies between policy and strategy create sub-optimal outcomes, how mismanagement of people leads to unethical and ineffective behavior, and how to overcome these problems. Study the theory and practice of management. Not quality management, not good management, not excellent management, not knowledge management, not risk management, not process management, not performance management, not supply or asset management, not technology management, not time management, not emergency management, just plain management.

Related: Deming on Management – Curious Cat Management Improvement Calendar – Deming Seminar and Conference – Deming Companies

Learn from Russel Ackoff

Posted on January 21, 2008  Comments (0)

The In Thinking network offers many great ways to learn. This week they have 4 hour long conference call discussions with Russ Ackoff. Thought Pieces (suggested links to review in preparation for the conference call)
Lecture on “Systems Practice” at Open University (audio file)
Transforming the Systems Movement
A Major Mistake that Managers Make
From Mechanistic to Social Systems Thinking

These four resources are great, even if you are not going to participate in the conference calls.

Related: articles by Russel Ackoff – Curious Cat Management Improvement Calendar – Write it Down – Transformation and Redesign – Ackoff’s F-laws: Common Sins of Management
Continue reading →

Dr. Deming 4 Day Seminar

Posted on December 12, 2007  Comments (0)

The W. Edwards Deming Institute is sponsoring a 4 day seminar using videos of Dr. Deming’s seminars and facilitated by Ed Baker, Dave Nave, and Joyce Orsini: Quality, Productivity, and Competitive Position. Ed Baker was the person at Ford responsible for helping Ford apply Dr. Deming’s ideas.

Hear and watch Dr. W. Edwards Deming identify faulty management practices. He will describe how, as better practices are introduced, quality of products and services increases, costs decline, and you create a globally competitive advantage for your organization.

Built on archive videos of Dr. Deming, this seminar blends footage of Dr. Deming presenting his theories with live facilitation by Ed Baker, Dave Nave, and Joyce Orsini to create an interactive learning environment. Facilitated discussion following each film segment will provide opportunity to deepen your understanding of the concepts, and interpret what these ideas might mean for your organization.

This seminar explores simple and powerful principles for anyone who manages people, or holds an executive responsibility in an organization. For more details see: Quality, Productivity, and Competitive Position.

Related: Scoring a Whole in One by Dr. Ed Baker – Deming on Management – Curious Cat Management Calendar – Deming Institute Conference (2006) – Deming Seminar Update – Investors Business Daily on Deming – Where to Start Improvement

Hiring – Does College Matter?

Posted on September 6, 2007  Comments (0)

Another essay by Paul Graham packed with great thoughts – this one on hiring, colleges, measuring performance of people, etc..

Practically everyone thinks that someone who went to MIT or Harvard or Stanford must be smart. Even people who hate you for it believe it. But when you think about what it means to have gone to an elite college, how could this be true? We’re talking about a decision made by admissions officers—basically, HR people—based on a cursory examination of a huge pile of depressingly similar applications submitted by seventeen year olds.
…
No one ever measures recruiters by the later performance of people they turn down.
…
There’s a lot of randomness in how colleges select people, and what they learn there depends much more on them than the college. Between these two sources of variation, the college someone went to doesn’t mean a lot. It is to some degree a predictor of ability, but so weak that we regard it mainly as a source of error and try consciously to ignore it.

Related: Hiring the Right Workers – Malcolm Gladwell, Synchronicity, College Admissions… – Google and Paul Graham’s Latest Essay – Interviewing and Hiring Programmers – What Business Can Learn from Open Source – Google’s Answer to Filling Jobs Is an Algorithm – Hiring: Silicon Valley Style – Curious Cat Management Improvement Career Connections

Improvement Tools and Improving Management

Posted on August 21, 2007  Comments (1)

Tools are just tools by Lee Fried

We have begun to shift away from a tool driven approach to one more centered on improving our management systems. This makes the work far more difficult, yet far more rewarding.

Great post. Great goal; and quite a challenge. My personal belief is while you are trying to make this change (which takes years) to become an organization that acts as a system you must balance education (an investment – one of the best forms of investment often) and improvements gains today (both are needed). And just applying tools effectively can often provide nice gains today (with the right guidance and proper restraint).

Often the two go hand in hand – there is little more educational than actually participating in using quality/lean/improvement tools and concepts to solve your own problems. That is the best way for managers to learn about lean thinking. But I think when you see this dual role of current improvement efforts it changes your measure of success – not just measuring improvement for today (or improvements in the value stream that will pay dividends for years) but also valuing the new knowledge gained by the participants. I have never been able to quantify the benefit of the education but that doesn’t bother me.

Related: Systemic Improvement – Encourage Improvement Action by Everyone – Keeping Track of Improvement Opportunities – Search management improvement sites selected by Curious Cat

Learning Lean: A Survey of Industry Lean Needs

Posted on April 18, 2007  Comments (0)

A draft version of Learning Lean: A Survey of Industry Lean Needs by Gene Fliedner and Kieran Mathieson is now available. This voice of the customer report is product of some of those involved in the Lean Education Academic Network. Conclusions:

We studied what business practitioners think graduates need to know about Lean. Our results showed that practitioners are not concerned about specific technical skills. Instead, they want graduates to possess a systems view of organizations and value streams. Implications for Lean education and a broader systems approach to professional education in general, are considered.

I think it is an interesting read.

Related: Applying Lean Tools to University Courses – Lean Education Academic Network Spring Meeting – Applied Quality Engineering Education – voice of the customer

K-12 Educational Reform

Posted on April 17, 2007  Comments (0)

Educational Reform Failing K-12 Students, Educator Says by Victor M. Inzunza:

Educational reform has failed to substantially increase K-12 student achievement despite a “massive expenditure of resources,” but the system can be improved if some of the concepts of the influential quality-control expert W. Edwards Deming are applied to schooling, said a former New York Department of Education official
…
it’s turned itself into a one-size-fits-all, mass-production system where the individual needs of young people are often overlooked to the detriment of their learning.

Applying Deming’s ideas to education is a challenge (it is not as simple as applying the ideas in another business – some additional thought is needed to see how ideas apply to education systems) but very worthwhile. David Langford has done some great work in applying Deming’s ideas to education.

Related: education related posts – Quality in Our Schools – K-12 (kindergarten though high school) quality improvement links – Applying Total Quality Management Principles To Secondary Education, Mt. Edgecumbe High School, Sitka, Alaska by Kathleen Cotton – Feel Bad Education by Alfie Kohn

Western Trailers – Lean Manufacturing

Posted on April 9, 2007  Comments (0)

Western Trailers improves efficiency – with some help:

Western Trailers President Jerry Whitehead and a couple of other senior managers went through TechHelp’s lean-manufacturing course a few years ago. Now, the company is paying for all of the approximately 50 supervisors at the 225-employee manufacturing plant to go through a new and more intense version. “It’s just good manufacturing, getting the waste out,” Panter said.

There’s a need for greater efficiency, especially as companies get bigger, he said. Western Trailers built a new manufacturing plant in 1998 and expanded it last year. The company has added about 75 manufacturing employees in the past two years, Panter said. “With the rapid growth we had, it was easier to lose focus on the principles because we were trying to get product out,” he said. “This brought us back into focus. And it’s helpful to teach the people on the floor.”

I am much more interested in lean stories where waste is reduced and employment increases than where employment is decreased. The idea is to reduce waste, increase value to customers and grow.

Related: Idaho’s TechHelp – Wisconsin Manufacturing – Applied Quality Engineering Education – Terex Handlers: Lean Manufacturing – La-Z-Boy Lean

Deming Institute Seminar

Posted on March 16, 2007  Comments (0)

The Deming Institute is sponsoring, How to Create Unethical, Ineffective Organizations That Go Out of Business, 23-25 April, 2007 in Lansing, Michigan. I will be co-presenting the seminar. Let me know if you sign up.

Twenty-seven faulty management and corporate governance practices create most of the problems in any organization. These practices will be identified, and better practices recommended. It will be shown that as better practices are introduced, quality of products and services increases, costs decline, and you create a globally competitive advantage for your organization.

Learn how governance practice leads to the heaviest losses, how inconsistencies between policy and strategy create sub-optimal outcomes, how mismanagement of people leads to unethical and ineffective behavior, and how to overcome these problems. Study the theory and practice of management. Not quality management, not good management, not excellent management, not knowledge management, not risk management, not process management, not performance management, not supply or asset management, not technology management, not time management, not emergency management, just plain management.

Related: Curious Cat Management Improvement Calendar – Deming Seminar and Conference – Deming Institute Conference

  • Recent Trackbacks

  • Comments