Category Archives: Deming

Post Number 1,000

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 … Continue reading

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

Deming and Performance Appraisal

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 … Continue reading

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

Find Joy and Success in Business

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 … Continue reading

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

The Defect Black Market

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 … Continue reading

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

Management Seminar in May

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. … Continue reading

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

Deming’s 14 Points (for software development)

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, … Continue reading

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How Downsizing is Handled When Management Respects People

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 … Continue reading

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Losses Covered Up to Protect Bonuses

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 … Continue reading

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

Unconscionable Executive Pay

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 … Continue reading

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

Systemic Workplace Experiments

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 … Continue reading

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