I am returning to publishing the Curious Cat management carnival twice a month; from the schedule of three times a month that has been the case recently. The posts selected for the carnival focus on the areas of management improvement I have focused on in the Curious Cat Management Improvement Guide since 1996.
- Delegate or die: the self-employed trap by Derek Sivers – “Because my team was running the business, I was free to actually improve the business!”
- Why You Must Stop Putting Out Fires: the Urgent Disrupts; the Important Erupts – “Firefighting, sadly, is a lot easier than fire preventing. It takes comparatively little thought. You just get into “action mode” and can be really busy. Busy resembles productive. And you feel like a hero. But, when you really stop to ponder the matter, wouldn’t it be better if you allowed the important, planful, preventive work to erupt from the constraints you’ve placed on it so those fires never occurred?”
- via, Innovation is Nothing but ECRS by Jon Miller – “The letters ECRS stand for a work analysis and redesign method originating in industrial engineering and commonly used as part of kaizen. The work is observed and the observer looks for opportunities to improve by taking steps to eliminate, combine, rearrange or simplify each step.”
- Provoking Punches the Fight for Customer Service by Shad Connelly – “Make a concentrated effort to change the current landscape of customer service. Don’t force your customers put up their dukes to get a positive resolution. Every customer you pick a fight with will cost you in the long run.”
- Nemawashi is about genuinely being interested in the ideas of others by Jeff Liker – “It is checking every stage of the plan-do-check-act process to get a broad range of ideas to prevent being blind sided by your own personal biases. It is also engaging others to build a team that will execute the plan with enthusiasm.”
- Characteristics of Lean Leaders by Mark Graban – “We need more than managers (people who can oversee an existing process), we also need leaders (people who can get others to move in a new direction or try new things)… effective leaders help people see that change is possible, not just necessary.
- New Deadly Diseases by John Hunter – “The new deadly diseases are: extremely excessive executive pay and systemic impediments to innovation. In my view these 2 diseases are more deadly to the overall economy than all but the broken USA health system.”