Category Archives: Psychology

Customer Friendly Terms of Use Language

The Aviary web site provides a very nice example of customer focus. They provide the legalese version of the terms of use and then explain what this actually mean in is simple terms. Good job. Legalese example 2. SITE CONTENT. … Continue reading

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Hire People You Can Trust to Do Their Job

How great companies turn crisis into opportunity The right people don’t need to be managed. The moment you feel the need to tightly manage someone, you’ve made a hiring mistake. The right people don’t think they have a job: They … Continue reading

Posted in Deming, Management, Management Articles, Psychology, Respect, Systems thinking | Tagged , , , , , | 4 Comments

Negativity

Don’t be negative. Most people agree with that statement. We see being negative as bad. If you don’t have something good to say, don’t say anything. Well, I don’t agree. While presenting your ideas in a constructive way is helpful, … Continue reading

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Checklists Save Lives

Checklists are a simple quality tool that have been used widely for decades. Pilots use them, without fail, to save lives. Some surgeons have been using them and the evidence is mounting that checklists can save many more lives if … Continue reading

Posted in Deming, Health care, Management, Process improvement, Psychology, Quality tools, Systems thinking | Tagged , , , , , , , | 3 Comments

What to Wear to an Interview

Response to What to Wear for an IT Job Interview?. Is this just a huge bit stereotypical? Who can blame them for not wanting to bother with their wardrobes? Fashion is fickle. Fashion is expensive. Fashion requires imagination and inspiration, … Continue reading

Posted in Career, IT, Psychology, Software Development | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , | 6 Comments

Managing Passionate Employees

Passion vs. Productive There are actually few organizations that can support passionate employees – even if they say they want them. That’s because the original industrial revolution was designed to support productivity. Productivity means you produce. That’s how you’re measured. … Continue reading

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What’s the Value of a Big Bonus?

What’s the Value of a Big Bonus? by Dan Ariely To look at this question, three colleagues and I conducted an experiment. We presented 87 participants with an array of tasks that demanded attention, memory, concentration and creativity. We asked … Continue reading

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6 Leadership Competencies

At the recent Annual W. Edwards Deming Institute Annual conference (this year held in Madison, Wisconsin) Peter Scholtes gave an excellent speech on the 6 Leadership Competencies from his book: The Leader’s Handbook. Those competencies are: The ability to think … Continue reading

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Righter Incentivization

Incentive schemes to get people “motivated” often backfire. Why can’t we figure out how to incentivize the behavior we desire and have it not backfire on us? What is the righter way to dangle incentives in front of our employees … Continue reading

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Appropriate Management

Thinking about why appropriate technology is so effective, but underutilized (though things are much better now than they were several decades ago) can help anyone improve the solutions they adopt. I would especially encourage people to stop looking for the newest management book and actually read and adopt and re-read adopt… the excellent management books from the last 50 years Continue reading

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