Management Improvement Blog Carnival #186

The Curious Cat management blog carnival began in 2006 and it is published twice a month. I also publish a collection management improvement articles on the Curious Cat Management Articles site.

Posts #184 and #185 were summaries of the progress of the 5th annual Curious Cat Management Carnival roundup.

• We agree… but only because we don’t understand each other by Jason Yip – “By making our understanding explicit, we can highlight our disagreements and come to a resolution and real agreement.”
• This is a little story about how I learned the right way to manage people (on my first job, age 14) by Woody Zuill – “Lesson Two: Continuous Improvement. Mr. Smith: ‘However, another part of the job is for you to think about what you are doing, and look for better ways to do things. Keep track of your hours, and next Saturday when I pay you for the week I want you to tell me one way to do things better. Look for problems, and think about how we could deal with them.'”


Dragonfly, at the Banteay Srei temple in Cambodia, by John Hunter

• Here’s what I learned hanging out with Jason Fried by Dan Shipper – “When a lot of people think of marketing or sales they think of tricks that fool people into buying something. But great marketing doesn’t do that. Great marketing comes from understanding exactly what the customer needs on an emotional level, and showing how your product will satisfy those needs.”
• User Gemba by John Hunter – “It isn’t enough to know how you intend that customers will use your products or services; you have to get out to the gemba of actual customer use and learn what problems your customers use your products to solve.”
• Reactions to MIT article comparing Lean, TQM, Six Sigma, “and related enterprise process improvement methods” by Michel Baudin – “It cannot be done rigidly or dogmatically. It requires us to be open-minded and evaluate ideas on their own merits from wherever they may come. We operate under a flag or label but, whatever its orthodoxy is, we are always heretics.”
• How Zappos Validated Their Business Model With Lean – Ries calls this the Build-Measure-Learn cycle, and the faster and more times you complete this cycle the sooner you’ll find out what the market wants most
• Kanban At Home by Steve Rogalsky – “Once the board is populated each person has a clear view of their expectations and can make their own decisions about when to do chores and when to play. On most Saturdays our kids (ages 7, 9, 11) do their chores earlier in the day so that they can spend the rest of the day relaxing without worrying that more chores will be added to their list.”
• Leanpub Podcast with John Hunter on Management Matters: Building Enterprise Capability by John Hunter – In this podcast I discuss ideas presented in my book.