Monthly Archives: April 2015

The Value of Professional Conferences. Also Why Has There Been So Little Innovation?

Posted on April 28, 2015 by John Hunter

In the most recent ASQ Influential Voices post, Julia McIntosh takes a look at the costs and benefits of professionals attending conferences. I still remember being in high school and George Box talking about the primary value of conferences was talking to colleagues in the hallway. This seemed very odd to me, as it seemed that the reason for going to a conference was to learn from the talks. I also didn’t really understand the value in catching up with … Continue reading →

Posted in Career, Customer focus, Education | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | 5 Comments

Lessons for Managers from Wisconsin and Duke Basketball

Posted on April 6, 2015 by John Hunter

What can managers learn from Duke and Wisconsin’s basketball teams? Duke and Wisconsin are in the college basketball championship game tonight. They reached this stage through a great deal of hard work, skill, training and coaching. Raw talent matters to mangers and even more to college basketball coaches. But raw talent alone won’t succeed (for college basketball teams a great system starved of raw talent would also fail). The lesson many people miss is that college teams are mostly about … Continue reading →

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