As we start 2012, the 4th Annual Management Blog Roundup continues. Once again some of the most popular management bloggers are taking a look back at the last year in the management blogging world. The following reviews have been added since my last update:

• Jamie Flinchbaugh, on his blog of the same name, took a look at 3 blogs, including this one, Curious Cat Management Improvement, as well as: Old Lean Dude and Brad Power’s posts at the Harvard Business Review
• Mark Anderson, at Stats Made Easy, added another post looking at: Unfolding Leadership.
• Karen Wilhelm, of Lean Reflections, took a look back at the posts on: The Mistake Bank, Lean Thinker and Business 901.
• Ron Pereira, of the LSS Academy provided links to interesting posts from the last year on some more excellent blogs: Dan Pink, Evolving Excellence and Got Boondoggle.
• Mark Hamel, at Gemba Tales, took on the task of the quite prolific Mark Graban’s Lean Blog. Mark Graban is also selling an ebook of his best 2011 blog posts.
• And I reviewed two great management blogs, right here on this blog (the Curious Cat Management Improvement Blog, of course): Gemba Panta Rei and Lean Six Sigma Academy.

These posts provide many great ideas for you to apply in the new year. The 2011 management blog roundup has more great posts coming up in the next week. The home page for this collaborative effort of many management bloggers provides links to all the posts in the 2011 Management Blog Roundup.

Related: 2010 Management Blog Roundup – 2011 Management Blog Roundup Begins – Curious Cat Management Blog Directory

The management blog carnival is published 3 times a month with select recent management blog posts. Since 2006 the carnival has focused on finding interesting posts for managers on improving the performance of organizations (lean manufacturing, Deming, agile software development, leadership, systems thinking…).

• Slow and Steady, and Routine by Jamie Flinchbaugh – “Truly internalizing behaviors and skills cannot be done all at once. It takes repetitive practice, which cannot be compressed into one single experience.”
• Scott Heiferman looks back at Meetup’s bet-the-company moment – “This is going to sound terrible, but the thing I would have done differently is frankly, to have respectfully listened to everyone but, not taken the complaints too seriously.”
• Why Do Some Testers Find The Critical Problems? by Michael Bolton – “Testers, to be successful, must be given the freedom and responsibility to explore and to contribute what they’ve learned back to their team and to the rest of the organization.”
• Lean Lego Game – 4 Rounds to Successful Lean Training – “Covering many Lean concepts including waste (the seven wastes), inventory buffers and kanban, kaizen and workcells, it’s perfect for facilitating your own Lego session, whether you’re implementing Lean in software development or on a manufacturing shop floor.”
• The Hole in the Soul of Business by Gary Hamel – “Apple is in the beauty business. It uses its prodigious software and design talents to produce products and services that are aesthetic stand-outs. There are many within Google who believe their company is in the wisdom business, who talk about raising the world’s IQ, democratizing knowledge and empowering people with information. Sadly, though, this kind of dedication to big-hearted goals and high-minded ideals is all too rare in business.”
• Why Don’t We See More QC Circles? by Jon Miller – “The lean community seems to be largely rediscovering ideas that were developed 100 years ago, abandoned, adopted, rediscovered, abandoned and discovered yet again. Perhaps QC Circles are the next thing for lean?”
• Thinking about Moving to Management by Wally Bock – “Are you willing to make decisions and be accountable for the results? Leaders take the blame and share the credit. Are you OK with that? Do you enjoy helping others succeed? It will be your primary job…”
• Continual Learning by John Hunter – “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: Curious Cat Investing and Economics Carnival – Management and Leadership Quotes – The aim proposed here for any organization is for everybody to gain

Rally to Restore Sanity and/or Fear with Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert, October 30th 2010, Washington DC. Photo by John Hunter.

The Curious Cat management blog carnival selects recent management blog posts 3 times each month. Since 2006 the carnival has focused on finding posts to help managers innovate and improve (Deming, lean manufacturing, agile software development, data based decision making, systems thinking…).

• If Jon Stewart can do it, so can you by Dan Markovitz – “Get it? It’s a process. Even for something as creative as writing jokes, there’s a structure to follow. And by establishing that structure, they can unleash their comedy.” [Process Improvement and Innovation - John Hunter]
• How I (try to) add value as an investor by Gabriel Weinberg – “I’ve been doing this startup stuff for a while now, pretty much all by myself or with one other person. So I’ve done most startup things, i.e. from incorporation papers all the way to an exit and everything in between. Moreover, I want to be closely involved. For most of the companies I’m involved with, we try to have frequent Skype chats (weekly to every few weeks) to discuss whatever is in front of them.”
• Inspired by Shingo Again by Mike Wroblewski – “Mr Shingo suggested that every management person should go to gemba at least once everyday, and stay in one spot for at least 30 minutes to observe. This is every person in management, not just the plant production leaders.”
• 5 Ways to Influence a Culture of Engagement by Trish McFarlane – “2. Provide challenging work assignments… 4. Connect employees to the organization’s mission 5. Be intentional, honest, and interact with integrity”
• You might think with all the good books and blogs on management, pretty soon there really isn’t anything more managers need to help them. But what organizations keep doing, provides evidence there is going to be work to do for a long time. Beyond Crazy by James Kwak – “The ‘star’ example is Texas A&M, which created a report showing a profit-and-loss summary for each professor or lecturer, where revenues are defined as external grants plus a share of tuition professor P&L.” Taiichi Ohno knew about the failures of cost accounting.
• Back to Basics with Kanban – “This list of 5 core practices used in organizations with successful Kanban implementations gives us a definition for how to implement the Kanban Method. These practices represent the seed conditions in any organization that may enable a successful Kanban-based change initiative.”
• Failure to Plan is a Plan for Failure by Orrin Woodward – “Let’s go through each step of the PDCA process starting with the Plan step. What is the Plan and how do I use it to improve? The Plan is a way to test ones hypothesis or models of life.”
• Deming’s long forgotten chain reaction by Gede Manggala – “Too much focus on cost saving will alienate your customers and make your employees unmotivated. This is why, companies which too much rely on cost saving will fall into the ‘doom loop’”

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The Curious Cat Management blog carnival highlights management blog posts 3 times each month. I have also collected hundreds of online management improvement articles in the Curious Cat Management Library.

• Why You Should Never Listen to Your Customers by Mark Cuban – “Your customers can tell you the things that are broken and how they want to be made happen. Listen to them. Make them happy. But they won’t create the future roadmap for your product or service. That’s your job.”
• Pure Genius: Southwest Airlines Baggage Strategy by Eric Joiner – “Consistently sized aircraft, carefully selected destinations and a desire to compete with the big guys only where they can win, has made Southwest profitable where the big guys have failed.”
• Evolutionary operation by Mark J. Anderson – “a manufacturing improvement method called evolutionary operation (EVOP), which calls for an ongoing series of two-level factorial designs that illuminate a path to more desirable conditions.”
• Why do we use Kanban? by David Anderson – “(1) Evolutionary, incremental change with minimal resistance (2) Achieve sustainable pace by balance throughput against demand (3) Quantitative Management and emergence of high maturity behavior in alignment with senior management desire to have a highly predictable business (4) Better risk management (the emerging theme in the Kanban community)”
• MBWA is Not a Gemba Walk by Kevin Meyer – “What if the top executive led groups of people in spontaneous kaizen activities. Teaching, creating, changing. Not just sneaking around and watching.”
• W.L. Gore: Lessons from a Management Revolutionary by Gary Hamel – Terri Kelly: “Our leaders have positions of authority because they have followers. Rather than relying on a top-down appointment process, where you often get promoted because you have seniority, or are the best friend of a senior executive, we allow the voice of the organization to determine who’s really qualified to be a leader, based on the willingness of others to follow.”
• How a Simple Office Kanban System Works by Mark Graban – “In setting up a system like this, you just have to be careful that the 2nd bin has enough inventory to last you until the new stock arrives. If you order weekly and the material arrives the day after, the re-order quantity really needs to be six days worth of supply.”

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