Category Archives: Psychology

Respect for Employees at Southwest Airlines

Posted on June 12, 2008 by John Hunter

“You have to treat your employees like customers” “We’ve never had layoffs,” he told me the day before the annual meeting, sitting on the couch of the single messiest executive office I’ve ever seen. “We could have made more money if we furloughed people. But we don’t do that. And we honor them constantly. Our people know that if they are sick, we will take care of them. If there are occasions or grief or joy, we will be there … Continue reading →

Posted in Customer focus, Deming, Management, Psychology, Respect, Systems thinking

Fairness Matters

Posted on June 9, 2008 by John Hunter

Sense of Fairness Affects Outlook, Decisions Burnout has been long associated with being overworked and underpaid, but psychologists Christina Maslach and Michael Leiter found that these were not the crucial factors. The single biggest difference between employees who suffered burnout and those who did not was the whether they thought that they were being treated unfairly or fairly. … Their research on fairness dovetails with work by other researchers showing that humans care a great deal about how they are … Continue reading →

Posted in Management Articles, Psychology, Respect, Science | Tagged , , | 1 Comment

Well Managed Companies

Posted on May 18, 2008 by John Hunter

If a company is dependent on one (or more) people to perform then it is in danger. Processes should be in place that don’t risk the success of the company on the performance of a specific person. If your organization is dependent on a person start taking actions to place the success of the company in reliable processes instead of individual stars. In many instances the start is as simple as starting to document processes using flowcharts. Another benefit of … Continue reading →

Posted in Management, Process improvement, Psychology | Tagged , | 3 Comments

I Don’t Know

Posted on May 5, 2008 by John Hunter

Guest post by David Kerridge (originally posted to the Deming Electronic Network): This is part of a series in which I recall striking or thought-provoking things that W. Edwards Deming said, but did not put into his books. I remember taking a manager to his first Deming 4-day seminar. Afterwards my friend said to me “I was very impressed with that man. He said ‘I don’t know.’” Something in our culture makes us ashamed to admit ignorance. We expect quick, … Continue reading →

Posted in curiouscat.com, Deming, Management, Psychology | Tagged , | 2 Comments

Find Joy and Success in Business

Posted on April 21, 2008 by John Hunter

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 the huge potential and sometimes lose touch with reality. While the ideas are more obvious when looking at web related business their is plenty here for many companies (the second half might be more helpful for many). In this talk … Continue reading →

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

Packaging Improvement

Posted on April 9, 2008 by John Hunter

McDonald’s Branding Makes Food Tastier for Tots Researchers at Stanford University have found that children tend to rate food that is wrapped up in McDonald’s-branded paper as tasting better than the same food wrapped in plain paper — a finding that suggests that even the youngest consumers are heavily influenced by advertising. The new study was released Monday in the Archives of Pediatric and Adolescent Medicine. The study had 63 children, aged 3 to 5 years old, tasting five pairs … Continue reading →

Posted in Creativity, Customer focus, Management, Psychology, Science | Tagged , | 4 Comments

Losses Covered Up to Protect Bonuses

Posted on March 24, 2008 by John Hunter

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 doctored to meet the goals? It shouldn’t. Intelligent measures to make such doctoring difficult can help reduce the practice. But it is a likely risk of any such goal. As we have quoted Brian Joiner as saying: there are: “3 … Continue reading →

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

Pleasing Customers

Posted on March 10, 2008 by John Hunter

Why is 37signals so arrogant? by Don Norman The Brash Boys at 37signals Will Tell You: Keep it Simple, Stupid. Brash is an understatement. I was quoted in the article because of my article arguing that simplicity is highly overrated: the tasks that we do require tools that match the requirements, and these add complexity. … Yes, they are arrogant — and proud of it: “Arrogant is usually something you hurl at somebody as an insult,” Hansson said. “But when … Continue reading →

Posted in Competition, Creativity, Customer focus, Management, Psychology, quote, Software Development, Systems thinking | Tagged , , , , | 2 Comments

Systemic Workplace Experiments

Posted on March 6, 2008 by John Hunter

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 to work, learn, and generally be happy. … Last summer we experimented with 4-day work weeks. People should enjoy the weather in the summer. We found that just about the same amount of work gets done in four days vs. … Continue reading →

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

Customers Get Dissed and Tell

Posted on February 28, 2008 by John Hunter

There are those rare companies where interacting with them is not a dreaded experience: Trader Joe’s, Southwest Airlines, Ritz Carlton, Crutchfield, Cannon, Groovix. There are not many. And even just providing something that just works is seen as a treat. The all too common dis-service, combined with the internet, leads to Consumer Vigilantes: a growing disconnect between the experience companies promise and customers’ perceptions of what they actually get. … A swell of corporate distrust – exacerbated by high executive … Continue reading →

Posted in Customer focus, Deming, Management, Psychology | Tagged , , , , , , , , | 7 Comments

Losing Consumers’ Trust

Posted on February 24, 2008 by John Hunter

Last week their was a recall of 143 million pounds of beef in the USA. Lets take a short systemic view at what is going on. The public has an interest in a safe food supply which is difficult to enforce through caveat emptor (buyer beware). So this is a natural situation for government regulation (to protect the public interest) – plus it relates to public health which is another natural for government regulation. The USDA regulates the industry and … Continue reading →

Posted in Economics, Management, Psychology, Science, Systems thinking | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | 5 Comments

What Motivates Programmers?

Posted on February 22, 2008 by John Hunter

A fun read on What motivates programmers? I will start with a question, if you have a spare £400 in your development budget do you A) Reward your star programmer with a £400 bonus or B) Buy him a 24 Inch 1920—1200 LCD screen? If you answered ‘A’ then you need to read on. … Programmers see meetings as wastes of time. Most communication between programmers is done via email or by a quick wander to another desk to clarify … Continue reading →

Posted in IT, Management, Psychology | Tagged , | 5 Comments

Don’t Use Performance Appraisals

Posted on February 11, 2008 by John Hunter

I like to continue to push for some things that might not seem achievable to many. It is too easy to accept that things have to stay the way they are. Several of Dr. Deming’s list of Seven Deadly Management Diseases are now accepted as serious problems by most. Performance appraisal is a strange disease: most people agree performance appraisals are not effective and indeed are harmful. Yet, most still don’t think anything can be done about it. But we … Continue reading →

Posted in Deming, Management, Performance Appraisal, Psychology, Respect | 5 Comments

Prediction Markets with Google Employees

Posted on January 10, 2008 by John Hunter

Another interesting experiment from Google: Using Prediction Markets to Track Information Flows: Evidence from Google In Google’s terminology, a market asks a question (e.g., “how many users will Gmail have?”) that has 2”5 possible mutually exclusive and completely exhaustive answers (e.g., “Fewer than X users”, “Between X and Y”, and “More than Y”). Each answer corresponds to a security that is worth a unit of currency (called a “Gooble”) if the answer turns out to be correct (and zero otherwise). … Continue reading →

Posted in Creativity, Data, Economics, Google, Psychology, Statistics, Systems thinking

Bigger Impact: 15 to 18 mpg or 50 to 100 mpg?

Posted on December 24, 2007 by John Hunter

This is a pretty counter-intuitive statement, I believe: You save more fuel switching from a 15 to 18 mpg car than switching from a 50 to 100 mpg car. But some simple math shows it is true. If you drive 10,000 miles you would use: 667 gallons, 556 gallons, 200 gallons and 100 gallons. Amazing. I must admit, when I first read the quote I thought that it must be an wrong. But there is the math. You save 111 … Continue reading →

Posted in Data, Psychology, Science, Statistics | 3 Comments

Great Visual Instruction Example

Posted on December 14, 2007 by John Hunter

This does a great job of explaining what you need to know clearly. While this presentation for Azithromycin doesn’t prevent a mistake it sure makes it much more likely that the process can be completed successfully. We need more effort in creating such clear instructions. Visual clarity is more important than lots of words. Applying that concept is not as easy as it sounds but it is a very important idea for instructions to end use and instructions for processes … Continue reading →

Posted in Health care, Management, Psychology, Quality tools | Tagged , , , ,