Category Archives: Psychology

Stop Demotivating Me!

Posted on August 14, 2007 by John Hunter

Esther Derby has the right idea in Stop Demotivating Me!. Some of my previous posts on this topic: Stop Demotivating Employees – Problems Caused by Performance Appraisal – Why Extrinsic Motivation Fails… Esther’s article points out a number of problems with how many managers operate: Empty phrases. It seems like there’s an unending supply of (supposedly) inspirational directives: Just do it! Failure is not an option! Think outside the box! … Employees are not trustworthy. I once worked for a … Continue reading →

Posted in Deming, Management, Psychology, Respect | 7 Comments

Data Can’t Lie

Posted on August 9, 2007 by John Hunter

Many people state that data can lie. Obviously data can’t lie. There are three kinds of lies: Lies, damn lies and statistics – Mark Twain Many people don’t understand the difference between being manipulated because they can’t understand what the data really says and data itself “lying” (which, of course, doesn’t even make sense). The same confusion can come in when someone just draws the wrong conclusion from the data that exists (and them blames the data for “lying” instead … Continue reading →

Posted in Data, Management, Psychology | Tagged , , , | 13 Comments

Google Exceeded Planned Spending on Personnel

Posted on July 19, 2007 by John Hunter

Often people have trouble understanding Dr. Deming’s disapproval of arbitrary numerical targets. What he was trying to prevent is what many see every day, such as managing to quarterly earnings targets. There are several problems with numerical goals but in here lets focus on one. The change from managing for what is best for the business to managing to hit a target. Google Profit Trails Analyst Estimates; Shares Slide: The company hired more people than expected last quarter, Chief Executive … Continue reading →

Posted in Deming, Google, Investing, Management, Performance Appraisal, Psychology, quote | 3 Comments

The Joy of Work

Posted on July 15, 2007 by John Hunter

Comic by Joe Sayers, Wanna play work? A good laugh, but also a reminder of an important idea. We spend much of our life at work: we deserve to have pride in what we do and even enjoy it (shocking I know). Read the respect for people posts for some ideas on how to make your workplace better. If you think a new job might be the answer – find management improvement jobs via Curious Cat Career Connections. People are … Continue reading →

Posted in Career, Deming, Fun, Management, Psychology, Respect | 5 Comments

Respect for People – Understanding Psychology

Posted on July 13, 2007 by John Hunter

Process improvement tools offer great resources to improve results. Dr. Deming included understanding psychology as one of the 4 areas of his management system. He understood organizations where not machines but systems made up of people. Therefore management needs to reflect that reality. -Lee Fried discusses these ideas in It is All About the People: We may organize and teach around the process, but it is the people that we really need to change if we want to show long-term … Continue reading →

Posted in Management, Process improvement, Psychology, Respect | Tagged , , , , , , | 6 Comments

Process Improvement and Innovation

Posted on July 4, 2007 by John Hunter

Every so often an article appears discussing the need to change focus from process improvement to innovation (and recently they are followed with quite a bit of blog talk). I disagree on several grounds. First you have needed to focus on both all the time. Second, it is not an either or choice. Third, the process of innovation should be improved. I do not believe process improvement is bad for innovation. Bad process changes can be bad for innovation. But … Continue reading →

Posted in Creativity, Deming, Innovation, Management, Process improvement, Psychology, Quality tools, quote, Systems thinking | Tagged , , , , , , | 5 Comments

How to Get Ahead

Posted on June 27, 2007 by John Hunter

Deep Thinkers Need Not Apply: How To Get Ahead In the Modern Business World [the broken link has been removed – when will sites be managed with the known wise practices from 1998 (web addresses need to live forever)?]: Fast forward to my first real job out of college. It didn’t take long for me to realize that management’s perception of who should be promoted was heavily biased by who they liked. There was one engineer in particular who was … Continue reading →

Posted in Career, Management, Performance Appraisal, Psychology | Tagged ,

No Excessive Senior Executive Pay at Toyota

Posted on June 23, 2007 by John Hunter

Toyota Boosts Executives’ Bonuses on Record Earnings (link broken by Bloomberg has been removed – why can’t companies with huge IT budgets follow even basic web usability rules like not breaking urls?): Toyota Motor Corp., the world’s biggest automaker by market value, will increase the total amount of executives’ bonuses by 33 percent for the year ended in March after the company posted record earnings. The automaker will pay a total of 970.5 million yen ($7.8 million) in bonuses to … Continue reading →

Posted in Deming, Lean thinking, Management, Psychology, Respect, Toyota Production System (TPS) | Tagged , , , , | 5 Comments

Mistakes in Experimental Design and Interpretation

Posted on June 19, 2007 by John Hunter

Mistakes in Experimental Design and Interpretation Humans are very good at detecting patterns, but rather poor at detecting randomness. We expect random incidents of cancer to be spread homogeneously, when in fact true randomness results in random clusters, not homogeneity. It is a mistake for an experiment to consider a pool of 47,000 possibilities, and then only report on the 7 cases that seem interesting. … A proper experiment states its hypothesis before gathering evidence and then puts the hypothesis … Continue reading →

Posted in Data, Design of Experiments, Management, Psychology, Science, Statistics | 2 Comments

People are Our Most Important Asset

Posted on June 18, 2007 by John Hunter

One of the beliefs I try and get the organizations I work for to adopt is to truly value excellent people. The costs are challenges of hiring great people, to me, makes it critical to do what you can to keep your exceptional people. I probably haven’t written about this because it can conflict with my advice against performance appraisals. I do actually believe it is possible to know certain people are great and contribute greatly to the success of … Continue reading →

Posted in Creativity, Deming, Management, Performance Appraisal, Psychology, Respect | Tagged , , , , , , , | 9 Comments

Tilting at Ludicrous CEO Pay

Posted on June 11, 2007 by John Hunter

I continue to tilt at the robber barron CEO pay packages. Hopefully, at some point, the people approving these obscene pay packages can be shamed into stopping or replaced by people with some sense of decency. I was taught in the days of robber barrons the business world was seen as an amoral place (morality did not belong in this area of human endeavor) but that over time society decided that in fact morality did apply there. It is hard … Continue reading →

Posted in Deming, Economics, Management, Performance Appraisal, Psychology, Respect, Systems thinking | Tagged , , , , , , | 10 Comments

Continuous, Constructive Feedback

Posted on June 7, 2007 by John Hunter

Employee performance: Continuous, constructive feedback yields results [the broken link was removed]: Be specific. If you simply say “Good job, Frank,” Frank won’t know exactly what he did to get that atta boy. Therefore, he can’t consciously work to repeat that behavior. Instead, say something like “Frank, that new procedure you developed for handling service calls has really improved customer satisfaction. Thanks for coming up with it.” Include coaching. Annual reviews often are used as the only performance communication tool. … Continue reading →

Posted in Management, Performance Appraisal, Psychology, Respect | Tagged , , | 4 Comments

Predicting Improves Learning

Posted on May 10, 2007 by John Hunter

The Power of Prediction by Jared Spool: By asking these questions up front, we give the team members something to focus on. When a participant gets stuck somewhere they predicted, it stands out. They can take pleasure in knowing they identified a potential landmine. In our experience, it stands out even more when the participant gets stuck someplace nobody expected. These opportunities allow us a chance to learn something new about how users approach our designs. Great idea. As I … Continue reading →

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

Be Careful What You Measure

Posted on May 9, 2007 by John Hunter

Be Careful What You Measure by Mike Wroblewski: Although this recalculation of productivity had a positive affect, it is not what I would consider a triumph. Ongoing efforts are still required to truly increase productivity, so it’s back to gemba. However, I am modifying the lesson to “Be careful what and how you measure, measurements drive action and behavior” Excellent points. Behavior can be changed by what is measured. The problem with arbitrary numerical targets (to take one measurement related … Continue reading →

Posted in Data, Deming, Management, Process improvement, Psychology | Tagged , , | 6 Comments

Motivating Employees

Posted on March 7, 2007 by John Hunter

No Matter How Badly You Want It: “When it seems easy, it’s like they already wanted to do it in the first place.” Martin paused. “It seems impossible when they didn’t ever want to do it. So, it doesn’t seem to matter what you want, as the manager, or how badly you want it. The only thing that seems to matter is whether your team members want to do it?” The lights were circling in Martin’s head. The whole time, … Continue reading →

Posted in Deming, Management, Psychology, Respect | Tagged , , | 1 Comment

Performance Appraisals Performance

Posted on February 21, 2007 by John Hunter

Appraising the Performance Of Performance Appraisals [the link that IEEE broke was removed] by Harry Goldstein: The traditional annual review covers a lot of ground: coaching and guidance for the employee, feedback and communication, compensation, staffing decisions and professional development, legal documentation, and ultimately, improvement for both the employee and the organization. According to Jenkins and Coens, all of the above can be done better and far less painfully by untangling these functions and designing a process for each. First, … Continue reading →

Posted in Deming, Performance Appraisal, Psychology, Respect | Tagged , ,