Category Archives: Management

Innovation in Thinking and the Web

Posted on March 29, 2011 by John Hunter

Investing time and effort to attract “the right kind” of contributors to a news site He thought we needed to make the same shift with our users – instead of seeing having to engage with them digitally as a time-consuming and resource eating problem, we should be seeing our audience as an asset to the brand. Any online organisation that doesn’t include readers in the production chain is inherently inefficient. I agree. And I think this is a good example … Continue reading →

Posted in Customer focus, Deming, IT, Management, Process improvement | Tagged Creativity, Customer focus, Innovation, internet, Systems thinking

Customer Focus and Internet Travel Search

Posted on March 24, 2011 by John Hunter

The internet should make finding airline flight information easy. Instead it is a huge pain. Hipmunk has taken on the challenge of doing this well, and I think they have done a great job. This video provides an excellent view of both web usability and customer focus. This is a great example of focusing on providing customer value and using technology to make things easy – which is done far to little at most companies. Related: Innovation Example (Farecast – … Continue reading →

Posted in Creativity, Customer focus, Innovation, IT, Management, Process improvement | Tagged Creativity, Customer focus, Innovation, internet, IT, travel, usability, webcast | 4 Comments

Is Using the Words Resources or Assets When Talking About People the Problem?

Posted on March 17, 2011 by John Hunter

I don’t have any problem with the words resource or assets when discussing people (I know lots of people seem to get excited about those words). What I care about is behavior and organizational systems that embody respect for people. I have never seen much correlation between those and the use of the words resource and asset for discussing the role of people in organizations. Maybe others do see the correlation between the use of those words and bad behavior. … Continue reading →

Posted in Deming, Lean thinking, Management, Psychology, Respect | Tagged Deming, lean management, management, managing people, Psychology, respect for people | 3 Comments

Productivity Improvement for Entrepreneurs (and Everybody Else Really)

Posted on March 14, 2011 by John Hunter

The 3 Factors That are Limiting Your Productivity [the broken link has been removed] by Evan Carmichael Elimination is at the core of every successful business. You have to focus on what you’re really good [at], what drives your business forward, and what you’re legally required to do in order to stay in business. Everything else should be eliminated. … Just because everyone else does it or because you’ve always done it that way, it doesn’t mean you have to … Continue reading →

Posted in Career, Management, Process improvement, Systems thinking | Tagged Career, coaching, entrepreneur, leadership, management, Process improvement, productivity, Systems thinking, waste | 2 Comments

Management Improvement Carnival #125

Posted on March 10, 2011 by John Hunter

The Curious Cat Management Blog Carnival selects recent management blog posts 3 times each month. You may submit a link to the management Reddit to have it considered for inclusion in our carnival. More photos from Cypress Gardens, South Carolina. What Next? by David Ing – “The underlying problem is that it seems to come down to having to completely change the culture of an existing business. This can be done internally, and often is done by heroic souls today, … Continue reading →

Posted in Carnival, Management | Tagged agile management, management | 2 Comments

Warren Buffett’s 2010 Letter to Shareholders

Posted on March 3, 2011 by John Hunter

Warren Buffett has published his always excellent annual shareholder letter. His letters, provide excellent investing insight and good management ideas. Yearly figures, it should be noted, are neither to be ignored nor viewed as all-important. The pace of the earth’s movement around the sun is not synchronized with the time required for either investment ideas or operating decisions to bear fruit. At GEICO, for example, we enthusiastically spent $900 million last year on advertising to obtain policyholders who deliver us … Continue reading →

Posted in Data, Investing, Management | Tagged evidence based management, Investing, management, Psychology, Systems thinking, Warren Buffett | 1 Comment

Management Improvement Carnival #124

Posted on March 1, 2011 by John Hunter

The management blog carnival is published 3 times a month with select recent management blog posts. Also try Curious Cat Management Articles for online management improvement articles. Jerry Seinfeld’s Productivity Secret by Brad Isaac – “Think for a moment about what action would make the most profound impact on your life if you worked it every day. That is the action I recommend you put on your Seinfeld calendar.” Employee Engagement by Krista Ogburn Francis – “Meaningful work. Most people … Continue reading →

Posted in Carnival, Lean thinking, Management | Tagged Carnival, Lean thinking, management

Management Improvement Carnival #123

Posted on February 21, 2011 by John Hunter

The Curious Cat Management blog carnival highlights recent management blog posts 3 times each month. The posts generally focus on the areas I have focused on in the Curious Cat Management Improvement guide since 1996 (lean manufacturing, Deming, agile software development, innovation, six sigma, customer focus…). Tradable Quality Hypothesis by Martin Fowler – “Instead it’s vital to focus on the true value of internal quality – that it’s the enabler to speed. The purpose of internal quality is to go … Continue reading →

Posted in Carnival, Management, Systems thinking | Tagged management, Systems thinking

Management Improvement Carnival #122

Posted on February 10, 2011 by John Hunter

The management blog carnival is published 3 times a month with select recent management blog posts. Since 2006 the carnival has focused on finding interesting posts for managers on improving the performance of organizations (lean manufacturing, Deming, agile software development, leadership, systems thinking…). Slow and Steady, and Routine by Jamie Flinchbaugh – “Truly internalizing behaviors and skills cannot be done all at once. It takes repetitive practice, which cannot be compressed into one single experience.” Scott Heiferman looks back at … Continue reading →

Posted in Carnival, Management | Tagged Carnival, management

Management Improvement Carnival #121

Posted on February 6, 2011 by John Hunter

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 … Continue reading →

Posted in Carnival, Management | Tagged Lean thinking, management

Supporting Free and Open Source Software

Posted on January 24, 2011 by John Hunter

Gabriel Weinberg (founder of the great Duck Duck Go search engine) proposed starting a FOSS Tithing movement. Many benefit greatly from free and open source software like: Ruby on Rails, Linux (my favorite version Ubuntu), WordPress, Apache, Ruby, Perl, Nginx, Phusion Passenger. As well as other related efforts Electronic Frontier Foundation, creative commons, PLoS. If we can get people to contribute to this idea that would be great. I have had curiouscat.com give some money to continue the development of … Continue reading →

Posted in Deming, Management | Tagged charity, Creativity, open source, Software Development, Systems thinking

3rd Annual Management Blog Review Part 2 of 2

Posted on January 19, 2011 by John Hunter

The management blog review this year, had 14 management bloggers review close to 50 management blogs. See part one of the roundup. And here are links to the new review posts: Mark Hamel posted his 3rd review (the first 2 are listed in part one) covering John Shook’s Lean Management Column. Karen Wilhelm reviewed Design Thinking, The Lean Edge and Thinking for a Change and posted a diagram showing the links between the blogs involved in the annual review. Wally … Continue reading →

Posted in Carnival, Management | Tagged blogs, Carnival, management

Respect for People Doesn’t Mean Avoiding Any Hint of Criticism

Posted on January 14, 2011 by John Hunter

As I said in a post a few years ago on respect for people and Taiichi Ohno‘s sometimes very aggressive style: The difference between respect and disrespect is not avoiding avoiding criticism. In fact often if you respect someone you can be much more direct and critical than you can with someone you treat as though they don’t have the ability to listen to hard truths and improve. I think we often have so little respect for people we just … Continue reading →

Posted in Deming, Lean thinking, Management, Popular, Psychology, quote, Respect, Toyota Production System (TPS) | Tagged curiouscat, lean manufacturing, Lean thinking, management, managing people, Popular, Psychology, Respect, respect for people, Taiichi Ohno, Toyota Production System (TPS) | 4 Comments

Is Google Failing Too Often?

Posted on January 11, 2011 by John Hunter

I think Google is extremely successful, but they do seem to consistently have problems adding to their portfolio. They did a great job with gmail. Android has been very successful. Google Maps is great. They did well building YouTube. Chrome is very nice. Automatic translation is very nice (as is the integration with Chrome). But so many things just don’t go anywhere. I can’t understand why they can’t take something like Google checkout and make it much more successful (there … Continue reading →

Posted in Google, Management, Software Development, Systems thinking | Tagged disruptive innovation, Google, Innovation, IT, management, managing people, project management, Software Development | 5 Comments

Annual Management Blog Review: Software, Manufacturing and Leadership

Posted on January 9, 2011 by John Hunter

In my contribution to the 3rd annual management blog roundup I will take a look at 3 blogs: Dennis Stevens, How to implement “Lean Thinking” in a Business and the Three Star Leadership Blog. This year 14 management bloggers contributed to highlight over 40 blogs, be sure to check out all the posts. Dennis Stevens writes a blog of the same name focused on agile software development principles with a strong focus on Dr. Deming’s ideas and lean thinking. What’s … Continue reading →

Posted in Carnival, Lean thinking, Management, Quality tools, Software Development, Toyota Production System (TPS) | Tagged agile management, blogs, Carnival, kanban, leadership, lean manufacturing, Lean thinking, management, Quality tools, Software Development | 3 Comments

3rd Annual Management Blog Review Part 1

Posted on January 2, 2011 by John Hunter

This year the management blog review has 14 management bloggers taking a look at close to 50 management blogs. Here are links to the blog roundups published so far: Jamie Flinchbaugh started things off with posts on: Curious Cat Management Improvement Blog, Lean Reflections, A Lean Journey and Beyond Lean. Jamie did a very nice job of including photos of some of the bloggers and seemed to start a nice trend for some of the other review posts. Dan Markovitz … Continue reading →

Posted in Carnival, Management | Tagged blogs, Carnival, lean manufacturing, management | 2 Comments