Management Blog Posts From November 2005

Posted on December 16, 2008 by John Hunter
photo of John Hunter at Glacier National ParkPhoto of John Hunter at Glacier National Park.
  • Management Improvement – Management concepts should evolve and improve over time. We should build upon the good ideas of yesterday and build in new innovations as they are shown to be effective. It is difficult to do so when consultants try to make their “solutions” proprietary methodologies that are sold in that way.

    Luckily working with the ideas of Deming, Ohno, Drucker, Ackoff, Shingo, Scholtes, Womack, Box, etc.. and building upon them is what is needed to be successful.

  • Google: Experiment Quickly and Often – this is basically piloting changes on a small scale, analyzing the results and doing that quickly and often. That quick, frequent experimentation is something organizations should strive to achieve.
  • Government Lean Six Sigma – Once the political decision has been made to eradicate polio then that desire can be carried out: politics really has little impact. Other examples are not as simple. A political decision to eliminate AIDS runs into political controversies in selecting the best strategies to accomplish the goal.
  • Management Guru Peter Drucker 1909-2005 – “There is only one valid definition of business purpose: to create a customer,” he said 45 years ago. Central to his philosophy was the belief that highly skilled people are an organization’s most valuable resource and that a manager’s job is to prepare and free people to perform.
  • Innovation and Research and Development – A company could innovate with an ideas like the remote control for televisions (or microlending or air bags). That innovation may not contribute in any way to manufacturing televisions more productively… Many innovations will provide a combination of both benefits. Both innovation and productivity improvement are important.
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