Management Improvement Carnival #146

The Curious Cat management blog carnival is published 3 times a month with hand picked recent management blog posts. I also collect management improvement articles through Curious Cat Management Articles, you can subscribe via RSS for new article additions.

• PDCA by Lee Fried – “By approaching all work through the Plan, Do, Check and Adjust (PDCA) cycle is incredibly powerful and transferable. It allows everyone to think and talk about their work in a consistent way and it creates a repeatable, data driven approach to improvement.”
• The Death of PDCA – “Our planning cannot be isolated. In fact, we no longer own our standards. They are only validated through customer interaction. The customer cannot be introduced at the end of the cycle, he must be at the beginning and part of the entire cycle. We must share a Co-Destiny with our customer. CDSA may be the replacement for PDSA.” [I don’t actually believe there is any death of PDSA, it is a hugely valuable strategy and will remain one, but this is an interesting post – John]


Arches National Park by John Hunter, Curious Cat Travel Photo Blog

• Going to the Gemba in a Lean Office – “Gemba walks are for a purpose. Initially you are learning to see. The office looks normal to you. But as you start Kaizen, you begin to see the enormous volumes of waste in your office.”
• The Case for Project Management by Mike Cottmeyer – “I’ve been an agile project management guy from the beginning, but I am becoming increasingly convinced that we need to be teaching teams, not just how to self-organize, but how to effectively manage delivery… product or project delivery, I don’t care which.”
• All you really need to know about courage and risk in your career by Jamie Flinchbaugh – “So many individuals want to do more, push harder, say what’s on their mind, and take some risks. But something’s stopping them. But it’s the courage and risk-taking that leads to breakthrough ideas, to fantastic gains, and to overall greatness.”
• Steve Jobs and the Purpose of the Corporation by Ben Heineman – “So, as people reflect on Steve Jobs’ legacy, surely one fundamental issue should be his attitude toward corporate purpose — with his devotion to customers, not shareholders, and his ability to withstand short-term pressures in the name of product excellence.” [this echo’s Dr. Deming’s ideas on the purpose of corporations, which I believe is the correct view – John]
• Is It Sometimes Rational to Select Leaders Randomly? A Cool Old Study by Bob Sutton – “The most entertaining paper we read was by S. Alexander Haslam and a long list of coauthors, called Inspecting the emperor’s clothes: evidence that random selection of leaders can enhance group performance”
• Networking is Valuable But Difficult to Quantify by John Hunter – “Networking works incredibly well. Unfortunately it isn’t as simple as peddling your bike where you want to go. The benefits of networking are unpredictable and not easy to control…”