Monthly Archives: June 2010

The Illusion of Knowledge

Posted on June 28, 2010 by John Hunter

The greatest obstacle to discovery is not ignorance; it is the illusion of knowledge. – Daniel J. Boorstin Great quote on a topic I discussed in, How We Know What We Know. Dr. Deming included the theory of knowledge as one of the 4 pillars of his management system. When you do not question what you think you know, and conventional thinking, that will keep you from discovery. Now much of conventional wisdom is right, so you often do well … Continue reading →

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

Management Blog Posts From June 2006

Posted on June 26, 2010 by John Hunter

Management Advice Failures – It is amazing to me how often we accept non-solutions. If someone objects that we have tried that “solution” and it didn’t work they are often shut down with a version of: “don’t be negative” or “I don’t want to hear we tried that before and it didn’t work” (we are different now) or “we need team players” or “if you are not part of the solution you are part of the problem”… Edward Tufte’s new … Continue reading →

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Trust Your Staff to Make Decisions

Posted on June 22, 2010 by John Hunter

The failure to give your organization the flexibility to serve customers is a big mistake. Many companies make this mistake. Often the basic problem is managers don’t trust that their systems to hire and develop people that will make good decisions. The solution to this problem is not to give your staff no authority. The solution is to manage your systems so that you can trust your people. This is not as easy to do as it is to say, … Continue reading →

Posted in Customer focus, Management, Respect, Software Development | Tagged , , , , | 8 Comments

Management Improvement Carnival #101

Posted on June 20, 2010 by John Hunter

The management blog carnival is published 3 times a month with select recent management blog posts. Also visit the Curious Cat Management Library for online management improvement articles. Why C level executives don’t engage in lean by Steven Spear – “Either they’ve been led to believe that it is the work of the shop floor technocrats for which their responsibility is hiring and funding, or they’re unprepared to lead, engaged in discovery and development, as is actually required.” A Systems … Continue reading →

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Problems With Student Evaluations as Measures of Teacher Performance

Posted on June 16, 2010 by John Hunter

Dr. Deming was, among other things a professor. He found the evaluation of professors by students an unimportant (and often counterproductive measure) – used in some places for awards and performance appraisal. He said for such a measure to be useful it should survey students 20 years later to see which professors made a difference to the students. Here is an interesting paper that explored some of these ideas. Does Professor Quality Matter? Evidence from Random Assignment of Students to … Continue reading →

Posted in Deming, Education, Performance Appraisal, Psychology, Science | Tagged , , , , , , , , | 2 Comments

Southwest Not Delta or United

Posted on June 14, 2010 by John Hunter

One of the posts highlighted in the last post was one example of how Southwest behaves. It wasn’t a one time thing. It was a common result of the system Southwest has in place where they treat customers like human beings that should be respected (as Southwest does with employees). Then you have the typical horrible treatment the other airlines practice. Like this example where Delta damages this guys bike and refuses to accept responsibility. That is until they suffered … Continue reading →

Posted in Customer focus, Management, Systems thinking | Tagged , , , , | 2 Comments

Management Improvement Carnival #100

Posted on June 10, 2010 by John Hunter

I started the management improvement blog carnival in 2006. At the time the number of blogs posting useful management ideas had already grown to a large number. It took years after I started my Curious Cat Management Improvement site, in 1996, to have even a handful of consistently useful web sites for those interested in improving the management of organizations. Blogs really started the explosion of good management content online. Now we have more great blogs nearly every month. This … Continue reading →

Posted in Carnival, Management | Tagged , , , , | 7 Comments

Frugal Innovation

Posted on June 9, 2010 by John Hunter

First break all the rules The device is a masterpiece of simplification. The multiple buttons on conventional ECGs have been reduced to just four. The bulky printer has been replaced by one of those tiny gadgets used in portable ticket machines. The whole thing is small enough to fit into a small backpack and can run on batteries as well as on the mains. This miracle of compression sells for $800, instead of $2,000 for a conventional ECG … Frugal … Continue reading →

Posted in Creativity, India, Innovation, quote | Tagged , , , , , , | 1 Comment

Classic Management Theories Are Still Relevant

Posted on June 7, 2010 by John Hunter

Good management is good management: it doesn’t matter if someone figured out the good idea 100 years ago or last week. Are “Classic” Management Theories Still Relevant? It did make me wonder about the staying power of management models, processes, skills, and conventional wisdom… There are way too many people in our field that are not true professionals – they don’t do their homework, and rely too much on their own personal experience. They’re the ones who tend to jump … Continue reading →

Posted in Deming, Management, quote, Systems thinking | Tagged , , , , , | 6 Comments

Statistical Engineering Links Statistical Thinking, Methods and Tools

Posted on June 3, 2010 by John Hunter

In Closing the Gap Roger W. Hoerl and Ronald D. Snee lay out a sensible case for focusing on statistical engineering. We’re not suggesting that society no longer needs research in new statistical techniques for improvement; it does. The balance needed at this time, however, is perhaps 80% for statistics as an engineering discipline and 20% for statistics as a pure science. True, though I would put the balance more like 95% engineering, 5% science. There is a good discussion … Continue reading →

Posted in Science, Six sigma, Statistics | Tagged , , , , , , , | 1 Comment

Management Improvement Carnival #99

Posted on June 1, 2010 by John Hunter

Mark R. Hamel is hosting Management Improvement Carnival #99 on the Gemba Tales blog, highlights include: The Downside of Automation by Dan Markovitz – “…When I see companies leaping at technological solutions for time and attention management, I have a feeling that they’re in for a big disappointment.” Inefficiency through Default Meeting Times by Tim McMahon – “…Who decided meetings should be 30 or 60 minutes?” Fake Lean and the Spotting Thereof by Jon Miller – “…While lean is journey … Continue reading →

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