Category Archives: Management

Deming Seminar in Singapore: New Philosophy of Management

Posted on December 27, 2010 by John Hunter

The W. Edwards Deming Institute is working with the NTUC LearningHub to offer management seminars in Singapore. I will be co-facilitating at several seminars in Singapore with Kelly Allan and Kevin Cahill next month. The 2 1/2 day Seminar, Deming’s New Philosophy of Management, is open for registration to the public so if you want to join us, sign up (link removed) for the seminar which will be held January 18 to 20, 2011 in Singapore. In the seminar you … Continue reading →

Posted in Deming, Lean thinking, Management | Tagged Asia, Deming, John Hunter, Lean thinking, management, seminar, Singapore, training

The Achilles’ Heel of Agile

Posted on December 14, 2010 by John Hunter

Guest post by Jurgen Appelo When I wrote this, I was working in a big open office space in the Van Nelle Factory in Rotterdam (see photo). About 100 people work in an office that was the first of its kind in Europe, when it was built in 1929. And more than 80 years later, architecture lovers from all over the world still come to admire it, take pictures, and make drawings. I sometimes waved at them. Van Nelle office, … Continue reading →

Posted in Books, IT, Lean thinking, Management, Psychology, Respect, Software Development, Systems thinking | Tagged agile management, Books, guest post, management, Psychology, research, respect for people, Software Development, Systems thinking | 4 Comments

Management Improvement Carnival #118

Posted on December 11, 2010 by John Hunter

Mike Wroblewski is hosting the Management Improvement Carnival #118 on the Got Boondoggle? blog, highlights include: Voice of Customer (VOC): What does it mean? By Mark Wheeler – “Most companies have some type of VOC program in place. Many programs fall short of delivering measurable value. This failure often lies at the definition level of VOC. But how do you actually define it?” He Should Have Seen It by Mark Rosenthal – “We talk about 5S, separating the necessary from … Continue reading →

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

Building Adoption of Management Improvement Ideas in Your Organization

Posted on December 8, 2010 by John Hunter

Continuation of How to Get a New Management Strategy, Tool or Concept Adopted Target something that actually provides a good story. It often helps if there have been failures in attempts to solve a problem in the past. That makes the new success more impressive. Something that is relate-able to the audience you are trying to win over is also useful. Even if senior management cares about an issue, if the solution is so technical they are completely baffled, they … Continue reading →

Posted in Deming, Management, Popular, Quality tools, Systems thinking, Toyota Production System (TPS) | Tagged culture, curiouscat, Deming, lean management, lean manufacturing, Lean thinking, Management, organization as a system, Popular, Quality tools, quote, Systems thinking | 16 Comments

How to Get a New Management Strategy, Tool or Concept Adopted

Posted on December 6, 2010 by John Hunter

Often when learning about Deming’s ideas on management, lean manufacturing, design of experiments, PDSA… people become excited. They discover new ideas that show great promise to alleviate the troubles they have in their workplace and lead them to better results. But how to actually get their organization to adopt the ideas often confounds them. In fact, I believe most potential improvements efforts may well fail even before they start because people can’t get past this problem. I believe the way … Continue reading →

Posted in Deming, Innovation, Lean thinking, Management, Popular, Process improvement, Psychology, Quality tools, Systems thinking | Tagged continual improvement, culture, curiouscat, Deming, leadership, lean management, lean six sigma, management tools, managing people, Popular, Process improvement, Quality tools, quote, uncategorized | 15 Comments

Don’t Treat People Like You Want to be Treated

Posted on December 2, 2010 by John Hunter

I have never understood the logic behind the idea that you should treat people like you want to be treated. I know I am different; I don’t want what lots of other people seem to want. If I treat them how I want to be treated, they are not happy. I understand the sentiment behind the statement. I think it is much more effectively stated as: treat people how they want to be treated. An understanding of psychology will provide … Continue reading →

Posted in Deming, Management, Psychology | Tagged commentary, communication, curiouscat, Deming, John Hunter, managing people, Psychology, tips | 13 Comments

Management Improvement Carnival #117

Posted on December 1, 2010 by John Hunter

Bryan Lund is hosting the Management Improvement Carnival #117 on the Training Within Industry blog, highlights include: Mark Hamel at Gembatales warns us against the danger of serving two masters…I love the caricatures that he develops for the reader – spot on! A great take on muda, muri and mura by David Kasprzak at My Flexible Pencil. The way David applies the 3Ms to cultural behaviors is clever and thought provoking. Although seemingly “intangible” at first, the cultural wastes that … Continue reading →

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

Jason Fried: Why work doesn’t happen at work

Posted on November 26, 2010 by John Hunter

In this TED talk, Jason Fried, founder of 37 signals, discusses how people get work done. When asked where do you go when you really need to get something done, almost no-one says: the office (unless it is early in the morning or late at night)? This is especially for creative people and knowledge workers. They need long stretches of uninterrupted time to concentrate. “The real problems in the office are the managers and the meetings.” The main theme is … Continue reading →

Posted in Creativity, Management, Psychology, Software Development, Systems thinking | Tagged Creativity, management webcast, managing people, meetings, project management, Psychology, respect for people, Software Development, work, workplace improvement | 3 Comments

Management Improvement Carnival #116

Posted on November 20, 2010 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: you can subscribe to an RSS feed for management articles now. Why Google can’t build Instagram – ” 4. Google forces its developers to use its infrastructure, which wasn’t developed for small social projects. At Google you can’t use MySQL and Ruby on Rails. You’ve gotta build everything to deploy on its internal … Continue reading →

Posted in Carnival, Management | Tagged management

Annual Performance Reviews Are Obsolete

Posted on November 15, 2010 by John Hunter

Sam Goodner, the CEO of Catapult Systems, wrote about his decision to eliminate the annual performance appraisal [the broken link was removed]. the most critical flaw of our old process was that the feedback itself was too infrequent and too far removed from the actual behavior to have any measurable impact on employee performance. … I decided to completely eliminate of our annual performance review process and replace it with a real-time performance feedback dashboard.” I think this is a … Continue reading →

Posted in Creativity, Innovation, IT, Management, Performance Appraisal | Tagged Data, feedback, in-process measures, managing people, Performance Appraisal

Management Improvement Carnival #115

Posted on November 10, 2010 by John Hunter

Glyn Lumley is hosting the Management Improvement Carnival #115, adding some new blogs that haven’t been seen on the carnival before, which is always good. Highlights include: Tales of redemption through improvement at work – Roger White concludes a series of posts about what other people have taught him regarding improvement at work. In this conclusion, he summarises the key learning points. Connecting is not enough – Many of us like to think we’re effective networkers. Here, Andy Lopata looks … Continue reading →

Posted in Carnival, Management | Tagged management

Good Process Improvement Practices

Posted on November 8, 2010 by John Hunter

Good process improvement practices include: standardized improvement process (pdsa, or whatever) Going to the gemba – improvement is done where the work is done. You must go to the where the action is. Sitting in meeting rooms, or offices, reading reports and making decisions is not the way to improve effectively. evidence based decision making, data guides decision making rather than HiPPO broad participation (those working on the process should be the ones working on improving it and everyone in … Continue reading →

Posted in Deming, Lean thinking, Management, Process improvement, quote, Respect, Six sigma, Systems thinking | Tagged continual improvement, curiouscat, Deming, gemba, John Hunter, Lean thinking, Process improvement, Quality tools, quote, respect for people, Six sigma, Systems thinking, Toyota Production System (TPS) | 8 Comments

Work and Life

Posted on November 4, 2010 by John Hunter

I believe in efficiency a great deal (it is a big part of the reason I took to Deming and lean manufacturing – I find waste annoying). Vacation sure can seem inefficient. All these people that could be working, not working. But people are not the same as machines. Time away from work can reinvigorate people. Time away from the day to day work can lead to better performance when people are actually at work. Time to enjoy life is … Continue reading →

Posted in Management, Psychology, Systems thinking | Tagged Economics, managing people, Psychology, respect for people, Systems thinking | 3 Comments

Management Improvement Internal Experts

Posted on November 3, 2010 by John Hunter

Having a group of internal experts in Deming, lean thinking, six sigma, etc. can be an good way to help the organization transform but they must 1) practice respect for people and 2) focus on building organizational capacity. Having, for example a few experts that are very focused on lean thinking and can be tapped by others in the organization I think can be very useful. That group might well also serve as “change agents” which can make some people … Continue reading →

Posted in Deming, Lean thinking, Management, Process improvement, Six sigma | Tagged change, Deming, lean six sigma, Lean thinking, management, Process improvement, project management, Six sigma

Management Improvement Carnival #114

Posted on November 1, 2010 by John Hunter

The Curious Cat management blog carnival selects recent management blog posts 3 times each month. Since 2006 the carnival has focused on finding posts to help managers innovate and improve (Deming, lean manufacturing, agile software development, data based decision making, systems thinking…). If Jon Stewart can do it, so can you by Dan Markovitz – “Get it? It’s a process. Even for something as creative as writing jokes, there’s a structure to follow. And by establishing that structure, they can … Continue reading →

Posted in Carnival, Management | Tagged Carnival, management

Respect People: Trust Them to Use good Judgment

Posted on October 28, 2010 by John Hunter

Nordstrom’s employee handbook used to be presented on a single 5 x 8 card: Welcome to Nordstrom We’re glad to have you with our Company. Our number one goal is to provide outstanding customer service. Set both your personal and professional goals high. We have great confidence in your ability to achieve them. So our employee handbook is very simple. We have only one rule: Use good judgment in all situations. Please feel free to ask your department manager, store … Continue reading →

Posted in Deming, Lean thinking, Management, quote, Respect, Systems thinking | Tagged culture, management, managing people, Psychology, quote, respect for people, retail, Systems thinking | 3 Comments