This edition of the Management Improvement Carnival is #121 (editions 119 and 120 were the annual 2010 blog reviews part 1 and part 2). Also try Curious Cat Management Articles for online management improvement articles: you can subscribe to an RSS feed for management articles now.
- Managing Nerds – “Until you’ve experienced the solving of a seemingly impossible problem, it’s hard to understand how far a nerd will go to protect his problem solving focus and you can help. The road to either High is a mental state traditionally called the Zone. There are three things to know about the Zone: 1. The almost-constant quest of the nerd is managing all the crap that is preventing us from entering the Zone as we search for the Highs. Meetings, casual useless fly-bys…”
- Jeffrey Liker on Toyota’s Challenges and His New Books by Mark Graban – “Toyota didn’t react very quickly because the engineers in Japan didn’t see these problems as defects with the car. Engineers in Japan are pretty isolated from the gemba and they don’t understand how Americans would use the car… ‘The ultimate root cause was not listening to customers well enough and they took too a long time to investigate and respond.’ That was the problem they needed to solve.”
- What being in a band taught me about management by Neil Johnson – “Limit work in progress – Getting a song to a performable state is massive step. It brings the group together and feels like progress. It’s better to have three presentable songs than nine nearly finished ‘things’, not least because it then provides a means for feedback from outside of the group.”
- We Need Less FAKE Lean, More FAIL Lean by Jon Miller – “What we need is less FAKE lean and more FAIL lean: the type of lean that stretches, bends and turns things inside out to the point where were are forced to look at the mental, business and organizational models and challenge our dogma that what worked in the past is still valid today.”
- Experience agile in an accelerated form and focus on innovation at the same time by Yuval Yeret – ” During the sprints we worked on elaborating our ideas, using Agile User Stories and techniques such as story mapping, as well as started implementation and delivery of “Working Software”. It proved a real challenge to deliver on such short sprints, especially for those of us who didn’t have a somewhat formed idea at the starting point.”
- Industry in Crisis by Lee Fried – “One comment she made I have reflected on often over the last couple of days, because in many ways it reflects my own experience. She stated that five years ago if you really boiled it down as a member of the senior team they had 2-3 ‘make or break the company’ type of decisions they needed to make each year. Now, she feels like she is making 2-3 a month!”
- Change the system, not the staff by Peter Honey – “Processes and systems, not the people caught up in them, are the real villains. Change the process to change the behaviour.”
- Bangkok Airways and the Power of People by Kevin Meyer – “But no. In 10 minutes we were all boarded, settled in, and the plane left the gate 5 minutes early. Not just any plane – a fairly new, spotless, brightly-colored, A320. It then happened the same way on each of the four other short hops we took with Bangkok Airways.”
- Organizational ADD by Wally Bock – “One important, effective change every few years beats jumping from one new initiative to another every few months. “
- Understanding the impact of developing your people by Jamie Flinchbaugh – “What I’m suggesting is that the increase in developing people come from coaching and experimentation. These two sources of development are very powerful when done consistently and for the long-term.”
- My Take on Lean and Six Sigma Certifications by Ron Pereira – “So, no matter if you choose to seek certification or not… I encourage you to do something. In the end I really believe that if you constantly seek knowledge with a humble heart while working to help others… you will not go wrong.”
- Respect for People Doesn’t Mean Avoiding Any Hint of Criticism by John Hunter – “A fundamental aspect of evidence based management is the ability to have thoughtful discussion, debate and criticism of ideas, methods and performance, that people do not take personally.”
Related: Jeffrey Liker’s books and articles – Management Web Sites and Resources – post on lean manufacturing
