Monthly Archives: February 2010

Get Rid of the Performance Review

Posted on February 25, 2010 by John Hunter

How Much Do You Hate Performance Reviews? by Bob Sutton Deming emphasized that forced rankings and other merit ratings that breed internal competition are bad management because they undermine motivation and breed contempt for management among people who, at least at first, were doing good work. … If you want to read the most compelling and complete case against the traditional performance evaluation, however,I suggest that you pre-order UCLA Professor Sam Culbert’s new book Get Rid of the Performance Review. … Continue reading →

Posted in Books, Deming, Management, Performance Appraisal | Tagged , , , , , | 3 Comments

Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi: Creativity, Fulfillment and Flow

Posted on February 24, 2010 by John Hunter

“After a certain basic point, which translates, more or less, to just a few thousand dollars above the minimum poverty level, increases in material well being don’t see to affect how happy people are.” The speech includes, the first purpose of incorporation at Sony: To establish a place of work where engineers can feel the joy of technological innovation, be aware of their mission to society, and work to their heart’s content. Excellent books by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi: Flow: The Psychology … Continue reading →

Posted in Books, Creativity, Psychology, Respect, webcast | Tagged , , , , , , ,

Management Improvement Carnival #89

Posted on February 22, 2010 by John Hunter

The Curious Cat Management blog carnival highlights management blog posts 3 times each month. Also visit the Curious Cat Management Library for online management improvement articles. Three Surprises About Change by Chip and Dan Health (this is actually the full text of the first chapter of their new book, Switch, they wrote the great Made to Stick previously) – “we don’t promise that we’re going to make change easy, but at least we can make it easier. Our goal is … Continue reading →

Posted in Carnival, Management | Tagged | 1 Comment

Short Term Investing Focus

Posted on February 17, 2010 by John Hunter

Buffett’s New CEO Shows Analysts, Hedge-Fund Managers to Door [the broken link was removed] Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway Inc. completed the buyout yesterday after winning the approval of Burlington Northern investors. The deal, valued at $100 a share, allows Rose to hand out returns of nearly 300 percent, plus dividends, to investors who bought stock the day he was named CEO in 2000. The problem, he said, is that shareholders with that length of commitment are dwindling in number and influence. … Continue reading →

Posted in Deming, Investing, Management | Tagged , , , , , | 4 Comments

Management Improvement Carnival #88

Posted on February 15, 2010 by John Hunter

Since 2006 the Curious Cat Management Improvement Carnival has provided links to interesting blog posts for those interesting in improving the practice of management especially focused on the ideas of Deming, Ohno, Ackoff, Scholtes, McGregor, Womack, Christensen… Putting the Checklist Manifesto to Work by Wally Bock – “Checklists are simple but powerful tools that can help you improve performance without improving either skill or abilities. Use them to take a load off your memory, assure consistent process performance, and remain … Continue reading →

Posted in Carnival | Tagged | 3 Comments

More Reasons to Avoid Layoffs

Posted on February 11, 2010 by John Hunter

Lay Off the Layoffs by Jeffrey Pfeffer As its former head of human resources once told me: “If people are your most important assets, why would you get rid of them?” … In fact, there is a growing body of academic research suggesting that firms incur big costs when they cut workers. Some of these costs are obvious, such as the direct costs of severance and outplacement, and some are intuitive, such as the toll on morale and productivity as … Continue reading →

Posted in Deming, Health care, Lean thinking, Management, Management Articles, Psychology, Respect | Tagged , , , , , , , | 1 Comment

Circle of Influence

Posted on February 9, 2010 by John Hunter

In, The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, Steven Covey discusses the circle of control, circle of influence and circle of concern. This provides a good framework from which to view issues as you look for improvement strategies. Within your circle of control you have much more autonomy and have less need to win others over to your plan. However, in practice, even here, you benefit from winning over those who are involved (for example you are their boss). Our … Continue reading →

Posted in Career, Creativity, Deming, Management, Popular, Psychology, quote, Respect, Systems thinking | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | 9 Comments

Observations of a New Googler

Posted on February 6, 2010 by John Hunter

Some interesting thoughts from a new Google engineer, Things I’ve learned at Google so far I would describe Google’s culture as “creative chaos”. There was some confusion about where I was supposed to be when I started. This resulted in the following phone call, “Hello?”, “Hello Ben, this is Conner (that’s my new manager), where are you?” “Mountain View.” “Why are you there?” “Because this is where the recruiter said to go.” “Good answer! Nice of them to tell me. … Continue reading →

Posted in Creativity, Google, Innovation, IT, Management, Software Development | Tagged , , , , | 2 Comments

Understanding Psychology: Slogans – Risky Tools

Posted on February 3, 2010 by John Hunter

Slogans mainly are bad. But like most things they can be used in ways that help or hurt. The main problem is when they substitute for a method to achieve the aim (most of the time). If the slogan serves like a mission statement to focus people on something useful to focus on and it is one minor part of a system to achieve a result it can be fine and even useful. The issue, to me, is not so … Continue reading →

Posted in Deming, Management, Psychology, Quality tools, quote, Respect | Tagged , , , , , , , , | 2 Comments

Management Improvement Carnival #87

Posted on February 1, 2010 by John Hunter

The Curious Cat Management Improvement Carnival provides links to recent articles to help managers improve the performance organization. Lean in Sweden: Tools < Thinking by Mark Graban – “Tools have some value, but only in context of lean thinking and the lean management philosophy. Tools aren’t value-less, but thinking is better.” Manufacturing starts to come home by Dan Markovitz – “NCR sees domestic manufacturing as key to increasing sales as well. It enables them to make higher value-added products that … Continue reading →

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