Tag Archives: curiouscat

Financial Market Meltdown

The financial market meltdown has grown to the point where it has profound ramifications for everyone. The common wisdom for financial market variation, for most of us, is just to focus on the long term and don’t worry about short … Continue reading

Posted in Economics, Management, Toyota Production System (TPS) | Tagged , , , , | 9 Comments

Motivate or Eliminate De-Motivation

A huge failure I still see is managers thinking in a theory x way, 50 years after McGregor’s The Human Side of Enterprise. Continue reading

Posted in Deming, Management, Psychology, Respect | Tagged , , , , , , , | 5 Comments

Agile PDSA

Dr. Deming encouraged the use of the Plan-Do-Study-Act cycle to improve. Agile Management encourages a similar mindset – to test out ideas in practice and adapt quickly. A key to both strategies is to quickly iterate over possible solutions. Tesco … Continue reading

Posted in Creativity, Deming, Management, Process improvement, quote | Tagged , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Agile PDSA

New Management Truths Sometimes Started as Heresies

‘New’ management truths sometimes started as heresies by Cecil Johnson “The most effective management ideas follow a life cycle — from heresy to outlier (championed by a small group of people) to ingrained practice to conventional wisdom,” Kleiner writes. “In … Continue reading

Posted in Deming, Management, Management Articles, quote, Toyota Production System (TPS) | Tagged , , , , , | 1 Comment

Do What You Say You Will

In Keeping Good Employees I talked about asking some simple questions. The biggest mistake I see managers make is to fail to deliver on what they say in such meetings. There is the saying “It is better to be thought … Continue reading

Posted in Management, Process improvement, Respect, Systems thinking | Tagged , , , , , | 3 Comments

Outcome and In-Process Measures

An outcome measure is used to measure the success of a system. For example, the outcome measure could be the percentage of people who do not get polio (the result). An output measure, for example, would be the number of … Continue reading

Posted in Data, Deming, Management, Process improvement, quote | Tagged , , | 2 Comments

Better Meetings

Meetings are perennial problems. People sit through meetings and then complain about how big a waste of time it was. Here are a couple very simple tips to try and actually improve (instead of just agreeing that meetings are wasteful, … Continue reading

Posted in Deming, Management, Process improvement, Psychology, quote, Systems thinking | Tagged , , , , | 4 Comments

Continual Improvement

Dr. Deming used the term continual improvement (rather than continuous improvement) later in his life because that would include continuous and dis-continuous improvement (innovation, etc.). I use continual improvement for that reason also. I think the improvement process must be … Continue reading

Posted in Deming, Innovation, Management, Process improvement, quote | Tagged , , , | 19 Comments

Deming Companies

I get asked for examples of Deming managed companies fairly often. And recently I have had a number of such requests. So I figured I would provide an answer as a blog post. First, Dr. Deming would respond to such … Continue reading

Posted in Deming, Management, Popular, Toyota Production System (TPS) | Tagged , , | 7 Comments

Capital Crescent Trail Photos

I have posted some photos from my walk last year on the Capital Crescent Trail in Washington DC. The Capital Crescent Trail goes along the Potomac River in Washington DC (on the C&O towpath). I hiked first along the Arlington, … Continue reading

Posted in curiouscat.com, Travel photos | Tagged , | 2 Comments