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Nice talk on fear of looking foolish. The speakers discuss the idea that visibility is good. Don’t hide. Make everything visible and the benefit from many people’s ideas. The talk focuses on software development but is true for any work.
“criticism is not evil” - Very true. “At Google we are not allowed to submit code until there is code review.” At the bottom line they are repeating Deming’s ideas: improve the system - people are not the problem, bad systems are the problem. Iterate quickly.
Related: 10x Productivity Difference in Software Development - The Software Engineering Manager’s Lament - Respect for People, Understanding Psychology
Google Wave is a new tool for communication and collaboration on the web, coming later this year. They are developing this as an open access project. The creative team is lead by the creators for Google Maps (brothers Lars and Jens Rasmussen). A wave is equal parts conversation and document. People can communicate and work together with richly formatted text, photos, videos, maps, and more. You really have to watch to understand what it is.
This is a long webcast (1 hour and 20 minutes) and likely will be best only for those interested in internet technology solutions. But it also provides useful insight into how Google is managing the creation of new tools. But the ideas are not explicit (the demo was meant to present the new product Google Wave, not explain the thought behind producing useful technology solutions), so you have to think about how what they are doing can apply in other situations.
For software developer readers they also highly recommended the Google Web Development Kit, which they used heavily on this project. They also have a very cool context sensitive spell checker that can highlight misspelled words that are another dictionary word but not right in the context used (about 44:30 in the webcast). And they discuss using Wave to manage bug tracking and manage information about dealing with bugs (@ 1 hour 4 min point).
Very cool stuff. The super easy blog interaction is great. And the user experience with notification and collaborative editing seems excellent. The playback feature to view changes seems good though that is still an area I worry about on heavily collaborative work. Hopefully they let you see like all change x person made, search changes…
Related: Eric Schmidt on Management at Google - Joel Spolsky Webcast on Creating Social Web Resources - Great Marissa Mayer Webcast on Google Innovation - Google Should Stay True to Their Management Practices - Amazon Innovation
Dr. Ackoff is one of two management thinkers that any manager, that is serious about improving management results in their organization, should study (the other is Dr. Deming). There are plenty of others that are also great resources. From part 2 of his talk: “Why-questions, about objects called systems, cannot be answered by the use of analysis… The product of explanation is understanding… The product of analysis is how things work, never why they work the way they do. Explanations always lie outside the system, never inside it.”
Synthesis (thinking about systems) involves 3 steps: 1) what is this system of which this is a part of; 2) understanding the behavior of the containing whole; 3) identify the role of function of the system in question within the containing system. Every system is defined by its role in the larger system.
Related: posts on Russ Ackoff’s ideas - Ackoff’s New Book: Management f-Laws - Write Down Predictions - Knowledge Management - Management is Prediction
Joel Spolsky webcast on creating Stack Overflow (with the goal of providing answers to professional programmers) using ideas from anthropology. Once again he provides great information. This is particularly interesting for software development but also just a good presentation for understanding the importance of customer focus and systems thinking.
What they focused on and did:
Related: posts related to Joel Spolsky - Dell, Reddit and Customer Focus - Information Technology and Management - What Motivates Programmers?
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
Related: Fooled by Randomness - Performance Measures and Statistics Course - Performance without Appraisal - Exploring Deming’s Management Ideas - Eliminate Slogans
The popular ER TV show highlighted the importance of using checklists in surgery yesterday.
Such powerful quality tools, like the checklist, are just waiting to be used. But far too many fail to use these simple improvement tools. And in health care those failures are potentially critical.
Related: Checklists Save Lives - The Power of a Checklist - management improvement dictionary - Articles on Improving the Health Care System
The Innovator’s Prescription: A Disruptive Solution to the Healthcare Crisis
The push for widespread healthcare reform must come from employers, who in spite of their declared intent to cut healthcare costs also know “they profit when their employees are healthy and productive.” Affordable healthcare, he concludes, “doesn’t come by expecting high end, expensive institutions or expensive caregivers to become cheap, but by bringing technology to lower cost providers and venues of care, so they can become more capable.”
Clayton Christensen is the rare management thinker that I feel real provides profound insights into thinking about management. There are many other good management thinkers that offer valuable idea, just most of them (in my opinion) really are presenting material in ways that offer managers a good way to take action on all the long known good management ideas that we fail to adopt successful for decades.
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Related: Honda has Never had Layoffs and has been Profitable Every Year - Inside Honda’s Brain - Curious Cat Engineering Blog
Nice webbast of CNN clip on Japan Airlines CEO cutting his pay to less than that of the pilots. He really seems to understand the company does not exist for him to plunder (unlike so many CEOs in the USA).
Related: Japan Airlines using Toyota Production System Principles - Under Nishimatsu, Japan Airlines Tries to Rise Above Legacy - Respect for Employees at Southwest Airlines - posts on executive pay - Honda executives not overpaid either
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Eric Schmidt speaks at the Management Lab Summit on May 29, 2008 in Half Moon Bay, California. Conversation with Professor Gary Hamel.
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Related: Eric Schmidt Podcast on Google Innovation and Entrepreneurship - Interview with Google CEO Eric Schmidt - Innovation at Google - Google: Experiment Quickly and Often - Marissa Mayer Webcast on Google Innovation - Google Management by Gary Hamel - Larry Page and Sergey Brin Interview Webcast
Brazil’s Camaçari plant is model for the future
Here is an interesting video on the plant. It is sad how poor management at GM, Ford and Chrysler has created such a bad situation for those working at those companies, their suppliers, the communities that support their production… GM and Ford had the advice they needed to succeed from Deming in the 1980’s but they chose to focus on the short term, large executive payments, accounting gimmicks instead of continual improvement…
They each have improved over the years, but the standard is not just improving but doing so effectively and enough and they failed at that. The UAW shares some responsibility for failing to successfully lead their workers to a promising future but management is much more responsible for the failure in my opinion (the video and article try to say Ford wants to be innovative in the USA but the UAW won’t let them). It is management’s jobs to focus the organization on cooperation and success for all stakeholders. When management is more concerned with getting themselves huge payoffs (from the pockets of the other stakeholders) and then try to blame one of those other stakeholders for fighting management is disingenuous. Executive’s contempt for other stakeholders leads to the other stakeholders feeling that they should be just as greedy as management.
Related: Ford’s Wrong Turn - Ford and Managing the Supplier Relationship - Global Manufacturing Data 2007 - Toyota’s New Texas Plant - Womack Podcast on GM - VW Phaeton Manufacturing plant
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Kenji Hiranabe talks about Toyota’s development process (webcast). Kenji shares a presentation he attended earlier this year by Nobuaki Katayama, a former Chief Engineer at Toyota, and the lessons he learned from him.
The webcast takes awhile to get going. If you are impatient you might want to start at the 6 minute mark. Some thoughts from the talk:
The webcast includes a nice (though short) discussion of agile management in software development and lean manufacturing (the different situation of manufacturing versus software development). Kenji Hiranabe has also translated several agile and lean books into Japanese including Implementing Lean Software Development.
Related: Kenji Hiranabe’s blog - Marissa Mayer Webcast on Google Innovation - Articles and webcasts by Mary Poppendieck - Future Directions for Agile Management - Interview with Toyota President
Malcolm Gladwell presented at the New Yorker conference on the Challenge of Hiring in the Modern World. As usually, he provides some great thoughts. I wrote on Hiring the Right Workers
Malcolm Gladwell doesn’t use the same language but I think he says many of the same ideas: “Insisting on managing by the numbers even when the most important figures are unknown and maybe unknowable.” etc. This idea he frames as a mismatch problem.
Related: Hiring: Silicon Valley Style - People are Our Most Important Asset - Malcolm Gladwell Synchronicity - Hiring, Does College Matter? - Interviewing and Hiring Programmers - Gladwell (and Drucker) on Pensions
| Training new employees and then paying them to quit, sounds pretty bizarre; Zappos is not afraid of doing things differently. Why Zappos Pays New Employees to Quit - And You Should Too:
Zappos sells shoes—lots of them—over the Internet. The company expects to generate sales of more than $1 billion this year, up from just $70 million five years ago…
Zappos has also mastered the art of telephone service - a black hole for most Internet retailers. Zappos publishes its 1-800 number on every single page of the site - and its smart and entertaining call-center employees are free to do whatever it takes to make you happy. There are no scripts, no time limits on calls, no robotic behavior, and plenty of legendary stories about Zappos and its customers. This is a company that’s bursting with personality, to the point where a huge number of its 1,600 employees are power users of Twitter so that their friends, colleagues, and customers know what they’re up to at any moment in time. But here’s what’s really interesting. It’s a hard job, answering phones and talking to customers for hours at a time. So when Zappos hires new employees, it provides a four-week training period that immerses them in the company’s strategy, culture, and obsession with customers. People get paid their full salary during this period. |
About 10% of employees take them up on the offer.
Do any of you readers want to convince Zappo’s to buy a couple airlines (Jet Blue and Southwest don’t seem to go where I need to go, too often) a cell phone company, an internet service provider and a credit card company? I could appreciate the good service in those areas 
If I were them I would start with the credit card company - I really don’t understand why someone doesn’t provide good service in that area - with the huge profits it provides and competitors that treat customers like rubes to be fleeced. Airlines you have to be crazy to buy (so don’t try to convince them of that one first).
My friend, Sean Stickle, went to work for custom ink a few months ago. I don’t think they offer to pay new employees to leave but they are devoted to customer service and to not just saying customer service is important but focusing attention on delivering it. They publish “Uncensored Customer Reviews” on their home page. There are some companies that really do value customer service even while most companies do everything they can to provide horrible service.
Related: Respect for People - Understanding Psychology - Starbucks: Respect for Workers and Health Care - Company Culture - Enhancing Passion in Employees - Respect for Workers - Mistreated Customers Let the World Wide Web Know
The webcast shows Jeff Bezos, Amazon.com founder and CEO, speaking at TED on the internet boom. He compares the boom to the gold rush highlighting the similarities. But then he compares the internet to the development of industry around electricity. I think he is exactly right on the internet: “there’s more innovation ahead of us than behind us.”
Related: Bezos on Lean Thinking - Amazon Innovation - Amazon’s Amazing Achievement - Innovation Thinking with Christensen - management webcasts
Illustration of how 2-Bin Systems work, by Bill Hanover.
Related: Overall Equipment Effectiveness (OEE) video by Bill Hanover - Messiness is Bad - Drum-Buffer-Rope Example - lean manufacturing resources
Jim Press and Toyota, Setting Sights on No. 1 former president of Toyota Motor North America
The Purpose of an Organization as stated by W. Edwards Deming described the purpose of an organization in New Economics, on page 51, as:
This is obviously not the view most people have, but I believe Dr. Deming was right.
Related: Jim Press, Toyota N. American President, Moves to Chrysler - No Excessive Senior Executive Pay at Toyota
New Erie County Government Executive, Chris Collins, discusses the director of six sigma position that will drive their new six sigma efforts.
Related: Six Sigma for Erie County Government - Public Sector Management Improvement Site - Posts on improving management in the Public Sector - management webcasts
Mary Poppendieck on The Role of Leadership in Software Development, very nice 90 minute webcast:
via, Leadership is not Obsolete for Self-Organizing Teams!
Once again Mary provides a great resource. This is a great overview. Lean Software Development by Mary Poppendieck and Tom Poppendieck is an excellent book on these topics.
Related: articles and webcasts by Mary Poppendieck - posts on software development - more management webcasts
Peter Pande adds his thoughts on how six sigma and innovation can work together. In his podcast, Innovation vs. Efficiency, he makes the argument that innovation and efficiency can work together. As I have stated many times, while bad six sigma efforts may harm innovation but there is no reason good six sigma efforts would. In fact good six sigma efforts help innovation.
Related: Six Sigma Outdated? No. - Fast Company Interview: Jeff Immelt - Better and Different - New Rules for Management? No! - Six Sigma Success
via: Peter Pande’s Take on Six Sigma and Innovation
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