Category Archives: Deming

Post Number 1,000

Posted on April 29, 2008 by John Hunter

This is the 1,000th post to the Curious Cat Management Improvement Blog. Here are some highlights: Post number 2: Dangers of Forgetting the Proxy Nature of Data – “We use data to act as a proxy for some results of the system. Often people forget that the desired end result is not for the number to be improved but for the situation to be improved.” Most viewed post: Eliminate Slogans – management by slogan is not an effective management strategy … Continue reading →

Posted in curiouscat.com, Deming, Health care, Management, Manufacturing | Tagged , , , , , | 2 Comments

Deming and Performance Appraisal

Posted on April 22, 2008 by John Hunter

Guest post by Ron Kingen (originally posted to the Deming Electronic Network) Several weeks ago someone in the DEN list ask what did Dr. Deming recommend about this issue, well I ask that very question of Dr. Deming back in the 80’s when I had the good fortune to work with him. I had expressed my concern to Dr. Deming about several of his fourteen points that I either didn’t understand completely or did not fit with my experience and/or … Continue reading →

Posted in Deming, Management, Performance Appraisal, Systems thinking | Tagged , , | 1 Comment

Find Joy and Success in Business

Posted on April 21, 2008 by John Hunter

David Heinemeier Hansson Talk [the broken link has been removed] at Startup School 2008 (Paul Graham‘s Y-combinator school). It is helpful to appreciate the importance of some simple ideas. Working on web focused businesses people often get carried away with the huge potential and sometimes lose touch with reality. While the ideas are more obvious when looking at web related business their is plenty here for many companies (the second half might be more helpful for many). In this talk … Continue reading →

Posted in Customer focus, Deming, Fun, Innovation, IT, Management, Psychology, Respect, Software Development | Tagged , , , | 3 Comments

The Defect Black Market

Posted on April 18, 2008 by John Hunter

The Defect Black Market It all started a week before, when the CTO of Damon’s midsize warehousing and transportation company in Northern California announced an innovative program to motivate employees and boost the quality of their logistics software. For every bug found by a tester and fixed by a programmer, both would get $10. Well, this doesn’t sound very well thought out. Bonuses often distort behavior. Dr. Deming was not against such targets and bonuses because he thought they would … Continue reading →

Posted in Data, Deming, IT, Management, quote, Respect, Software Development | Tagged , , , , , | 9 Comments

Management Seminar in May

Posted on April 7, 2008 by John Hunter

The Deming Institute is sponsoring, How to Create Unethical, Ineffective Organizations That Go Out of Business, 12-14 May, 2008 in Colorado Springs, Colorado. Kelly Allan and I will be presenting the seminar. Please let me know if you sign up. Twenty-seven faulty management and corporate governance practices create most of the problems in any organization. These practices will be identified, and better practices recommended. It will be shown that as better practices are introduced, quality of products and services increases, … Continue reading →

Posted in Career, curiouscat.com, Deming, Education, Management | Tagged , , | 1 Comment

Deming’s 14 Points (for software development)

Posted on March 28, 2008 by John Hunter

Deming’s 14 points (for software development) by Jamie Dinkelacker (Geo/Maps Engineering Program Manager at Google Inc. Focus on lean principles and agile practices for software development): W. Edwards Deming’s work on quality, while widely misinterpreted and misapplied in the USA, was nonetheless a watershed that Japanese companies, especially Toyota, took to heart… Below are Deming’s 14 points accompanied by commentary related to software development. … Design quality in, don’t use inspection to find errors. Mistake proof the system. … In … Continue reading →

Posted in Deming, Google, Management, Software Development | Tagged , , , ,

How Downsizing is Handled When Management Respects People

Posted on March 27, 2008 by John Hunter

Three Amazing PHP/MySQL/Perl Developers Now Available [broken link removed] – Posting on Craigslist. The url will expire so I included everything but the contact info below (follow the link for contact info). Yesterday I had to do one of the more difficult things — lay off three of my good friends, all of whom are talented and professional developers. I’m posting here today in hopes that someone out in the world is looking for some seasoned talent, people who can … Continue reading →

Posted in Deming, Management, Respect, Software Development | Tagged , , ,

Losses Covered Up to Protect Bonuses

Posted on March 24, 2008 by John Hunter

Does it surprise you to learn traders would cover up losses to protect bonuses? It shouldn’t, it happens over and over. Would it surprise you that almost any bonus (or quota) scheme increases the odds that the data will be doctored to meet the goals? It shouldn’t. Intelligent measures to make such doctoring difficult can help reduce the practice. But it is a likely risk of any such goal. As we have quoted Brian Joiner as saying: there are: “3 … Continue reading →

Posted in Deming, Investing, Management, Psychology | Tagged , | 8 Comments

Unconscionable Executive Pay

Posted on March 19, 2008 by John Hunter

WaMu: Skip customers; save the execs [the broken link was removed] Since last summer, the company’s shares have lost nearly 80% of their value. But the bank is a softy when it comes to bonus pay for top brass. After CEO Kerry Killinger and other top executives missed all or a big part of their bonus pay last year, Washington Mutual wasted little time taking steps to apparently make sure it won’t happen again — even if the mortgage market … Continue reading →

Posted in Deming, Management, Respect | Tagged | 6 Comments

Systemic Workplace Experiments

Posted on March 6, 2008 by John Hunter

Workplace Experiments At our company-wide get together last December we decided that 2008 was going to be a year of workplace experiments. Among other things, we discussed how we could make 37signals one of the best places in the world to work, learn, and generally be happy. … Last summer we experimented with 4-day work weeks. People should enjoy the weather in the summer. We found that just about the same amount of work gets done in four days vs. … Continue reading →

Posted in Creativity, Deming, Management, Psychology, Respect, Software Development, Systems thinking | Tagged , , , , , | 1 Comment

Quotas are Not the Answer

Posted on March 5, 2008 by John Hunter

Rich Sharpe posted to his blog on his recent reading of Dr. Deming – The American Who Taught the Japanese About Quality by Rafael Aguayo in Lean Programming and Dr. Deming. And he posted a response he received from Rafael Aguayo with some good points including: But in your case you have a company that demands quotas or targets. Maybe there is a belief within management that this will help the stock. It will not, but that is a different … Continue reading →

Posted in Books, Deming, Management, Systems thinking | Tagged , ,

Customers Get Dissed and Tell

Posted on February 28, 2008 by John Hunter

There are those rare companies where interacting with them is not a dreaded experience: Trader Joe’s, Southwest Airlines, Ritz Carlton, Crutchfield, Cannon, Groovix. There are not many. And even just providing something that just works is seen as a treat. The all too common dis-service, combined with the internet, leads to Consumer Vigilantes: a growing disconnect between the experience companies promise and customers’ perceptions of what they actually get. … A swell of corporate distrust – exacerbated by high executive … Continue reading →

Posted in Customer focus, Deming, Management, Psychology | Tagged , , , , , , , , | 7 Comments

Corporations Do Not Exist Solely to Maximize the Bottom Line

Posted on February 26, 2008 by John Hunter

Do corporations exist solely to maximize their bottom lines? We don’t think so., Forbes Magazine: When Bill Gates suggested recently that corporations should sacrifice profits to the public welfare, practicing what he called “creative capitalism,” he wasn’t the first robber baron with the idea. Henry Ford made a similar proposal in 1916, but he was defeated in court by shareholders who preferred he simply issue dividends. The countervailing view, famously expounded by Milton Friedman, is that the only responsibility of … Continue reading →

Posted in Deming, Economics, Management, Toyota Production System (TPS) | Tagged , , , , , | 3 Comments

USA Spent $2.1 Trillion on Health Care in 2006

Posted on February 20, 2008 by John Hunter

The percent of GDP spent on health care in the USA increased again in 2006 – to 16%. Health care spending reached a total of $2.1 trillion, or $7,026 per person in 2006, up from $6,649 per person in 2005. Related: USA Healthcare Costs Now 16% of GDP – Measuring the Health of Nations – USA Paying More for Health Care

Posted in Deming, Economics, Health care | Tagged , | 5 Comments

Don’t Use Performance Appraisals

Posted on February 11, 2008 by John Hunter

I like to continue to push for some things that might not seem achievable to many. It is too easy to accept that things have to stay the way they are. Several of Dr. Deming’s list of Seven Deadly Management Diseases are now accepted as serious problems by most. Performance appraisal is a strange disease: most people agree performance appraisals are not effective and indeed are harmful. Yet, most still don’t think anything can be done about it. But we … Continue reading →

Posted in Deming, Management, Performance Appraisal, Psychology, Respect | 5 Comments

New – Different – Better

Posted on February 8, 2008 by John Hunter

Comment on New or Different? by Matthew May: So don’t worry about new and different. Ask yourself: Is this clearly better than what’s out there now? And if you think about it, that’s a question you should never stop asking. Because new and different isn’t always better, but better is always new and different. I wrote a similar post on my blog awhile back: Better and Different: The answer, as I see it, is to be better and different (when … Continue reading →

Posted in Deming, Innovation, Management, Process improvement | Tagged , , , | 4 Comments