The Curious Cat management blog carnival is published 3 times a month with select recent management blog posts. I also collect management improvement articles through Curious Cat Management Articles, you can subscribe via RSS to new article additions.
- Why I can’t convince executives to invest in UX (and neither can you) by Jared Spool “Neither I, you, nor anybody else can convince an executive to invest in user experience… You’ll need to do something custom. Something specific to their current focus. And if that doesn’t work, maybe it’s time for you to find someplace else to work. Someplace where the executives are already convinced and want to make the investment.” [You can substitute “lean, six sigma, customer focus or any other wise management strategy for UX in the quote above. – John Hunter]
- Jeff Bezos on innovation at Amazon – Jeff Bezos: “If you invent frequently and are willing to fail, then you never get to that point where you really need to bet the whole company… We are stubborn on vision. We are flexible on details…. We don’t give up on things easily. Our third-party seller business is an example of that. It took us three tries to get the third-party seller business to work. We didn’t give up.”
- Kanban and Shifting the Burden by Karl Scotland – “The Containment action is the symptomatic solution taken to resolve the problem quickly. Then, after root cause analysis, the Countermeasure action is the fundamental solution to prevent repeated recurrence.”
- The Iceberg That Sinks Performance by Dan Markovitz – “Time management ‘problems’ are really just manifestations of dysfunction in one or more of the following areas: strategy; priorities; internal systems and processes; corporate cultural expectations; or individual skills.”
- About that bus … by Wally Bock – “This is the kind of guru advice where the principle (get the best people you can) is good, but to use it you have to deal with reality that’s a lot messier than it seems in the books. “
- Drucker and Executive Compensation – Are CEOs Paid Too Much? by Robert Swaim – “Few people- and probably no one outside the executive suite – sees much reason for these very large executive compensations. There is little correlation between them and company performance.” Peter F. Drucker, The Frontiers of Management, 1986.
- Taking The Path of Most Resistance: The Virtues by Bob Sutton – “taking the easy way out — expecting instant results; not taking the time to engage with parents, students, administrators, local politicians and other key crucial actors; doing it on the cheap; expecting everything to go smoothly — and a host other easy solutions — simply weren’t realistic or wise for would-be change agents.”
- Lean Maturity and the Four Stages of Competence by Jon Miller – “An organization in the early stages may be thrilled at the improved process and results delivered through kaizen, yet reflect a year later and wonder how they could have seen anything but waste in those ‘after kaizen’ photos.”
- Top 200 Agile Blogs by Peter Saddington – “Some focus exclusively on Agile and coaching, while others are more on leadership, news, consulting, Product Ownership, ScrumMastering, and specific Agile methods. Regardless of how you label them, these are the world’s most popular Agile blogs written by many of today’s most influential Agile leaders, practitioners, coaches, consultants, and hippies.”
- Why Don’t IT Departments Give Employees More Freedom? by Gary Hamel – Nevertheless, IT professionals need to spend less time trying to enforce technology standards and more time trying to make sure that every employee has access to the world’s best tools.”IT professionals need to spend less time trying to enforce technology standards and more time trying to make sure that every employee has access to the world’s best tools.”
- Manufacturing workforce shortfall by Karen Wilhelm – “Advanced technical skills are hard enough to find. Worse, employers consistently report that applicants for job openings lack even the most basic skills. One contract drug maker in Cleveland said it received 3600 job applications for 100 job openings, yet could hire only 47 that fit their needs. The problem — too many fail basic reading and math tests.”
Photo by John Hunter at Clifton Gorge State Nature Preserve in Ohio.
