Category Archives: Respect

Standard Prepaid Cell Phone Policy

Posted on June 21, 2007 by John Hunter

I ran across a specific example of standard policy that I found amusing (related to the post earlier today on Why Isn’t Work Standard). Like the authors, I can’t really see a reason for why you would want a policy that no more than two prepaid cell phones can be purchased. But if it is important, couldn’t you design a much better system to assure this policy was followed. And, at the very least, let customers hear your reasoning (so … Continue reading →

Posted in Customer focus, Management, Process improvement, Respect | 1 Comment

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

Bad Management Results in Layoffs

Posted on June 3, 2007 by John Hunter

In response to Is Laying People off Really Anti-Lean? [the broken link was removed]: Let’s say you, a Lean enthusiast, are named CEO of a mid sized manufacturing company. Let’s also assume your market has turned down and the constraint is clearly the market. Let’s also assume you need to improve operating income above all else. The final assumption is the company you inherited is not even good at mass production. They just stink at everything. If you come into … Continue reading →

Posted in Deming, Lean thinking, Management, Popular, quote, Respect, Toyota Production System (TPS) | Tagged , , , | 18 Comments

Exposing CEO Pay Excesses

Posted on March 23, 2007 by John Hunter

The politics of pay from The Economist: Although barely one-tenth of the 2,000 biggest American companies have yet reported under the new rules, the tally of negative headlines is already mounting. “There are already plenty of examples of firms reporting chief-executive pay packages of millions of dollars more than expected,” says Paul Hodgson of the Corporate Library, a research firm. He reckons that the firms that have already reported are a representative sample likely to provide a good indication of … Continue reading →

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

Best Buy Rethinks the Time Clock

Posted on March 15, 2007 by John Hunter

Best Buy Rethinks the Time Clock [the broken link was removed]: With a classic flextime structure, workers arrange their schedules with their boss in advance. But under a program called Rowe, for “results-only work environment,” the boss has no say in scheduling and can judge employees only on tasks successfully completed – even if none were done in the office. The five-year-old plan now covers 60 percent of the employees at Best Buy’s corporate headquarters near Minneapolis. And by all … Continue reading →

Posted in Creativity, Respect | Tagged ,

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 , ,

Don’t ask employees to be passionate about the company!

Posted on February 7, 2007 by John Hunter

Don’t ask employees to be passionate about the company! People ask me, “How can I get our employees to be passionate about the company?” Wrong question. Passion for our employer, manager, current job? Irrelevant. Passion for our profession and the kind of work we do? Crucial. If I own company FOO, I don’t need employees with a passion for FOO. I want those with a passion for the work they’re doing. As we discussed in Stop Demotivating Employees Douglas McGregor … Continue reading →

Posted in Creativity, Management, Psychology, Respect, Software Development

Compensation at Whole Foods

Posted on February 6, 2007 by John Hunter

Compensation at Whole Foods Market [the link that Whole Foods broke was removed] Most large companies also pay their executives large amounts of stock options in addition to large salaries and cash bonuses. However, this is not the case at Whole Foods Market. As the chart below indicates, the average large corporation in the United States distributes 75% of their total stock options to only 5 top executives with the remaining 25% going to everyone else in the company (actually … Continue reading →

Posted in Management, Psychology, Respect, Systems thinking | Tagged , , , | 1 Comment

Motivating People to Change

Posted on February 4, 2007 by John Hunter

Don’t miss a nice series of posts by Jon Miller: How to Motivate People to Change – part 1, part 2, part 3. [links broken, so removed 🙁 ] Success may come in the short term when motivation is through a combination of fear and reward centering on financial safety and security, belonging to a group and achievement of status… There is some question as to whether this type of approach to motivation is sustainable, and at the very least … Continue reading →

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

Encourage Improvement Action by Everyone

Posted on January 31, 2007 by John Hunter

Centralizing decision making is not an effective way to manage organizations. Organizations need to encourage improvement by everybody in the organization. We need to create a system where that is encouraged and supported. However, there can be problems with just making improvements individually. We tend to overreact to variation. Therefore we tend to tamper with systems which actually increases variation and reduces performance. Also there can be effects on other parts of the system due to a change that are … Continue reading →

Posted in Management, Process improvement, Respect, Systems thinking | Tagged , ,

Why Extrinsic Motivation Fails

Posted on December 20, 2006 by John Hunter

Why Motivation by Pizza Doesn’t Work This completely changes the role of the manager as motivator. Rather than being the source of motivation (kind of a ludicrous idea in itself), the manager must help employees to find their own intrinsic motivation. Lean thinkers understand this idea as respect for people. Dr. Deming talked about joy in work. Douglas McGregor talked about theory x and theory y thinking. All of these perspectives incorporate an understanding of workplace systems and human psychology. … Continue reading →

Posted in Deming, Management, Psychology, Respect | Tagged , , , , | 5 Comments

Starbucks: Respect for Workers and Health Care

Posted on December 16, 2006 by John Hunter

Starbucks Corp. CEO Howard Schultz interview on Marketplace [the broken link was removed] I grew up in Brooklyn, New York. I guess it’s been well documented, many times, in federally subsidized housing known as the projects. My dad never made more than $20,000 a year and I saw first-hand what it was like to kind of live on the other side of the tracks … the company is deeply-rooted in a sensibility and trying to build the company with a … Continue reading →

Posted in Deming, Economics, Health care, Management, Respect | Tagged , , | 2 Comments

How to Improve

Posted on December 12, 2006 by John Hunter

My management philosophy is guided by the idea of seeking methods that will be most effective.* There are many ways to improve. Good management systems are about seeking systemic adoption of the most effective solutions. What this amounts to is learning about the ideas of Deming, Ackoff, Ohno, Chirstensen, Scholtes, Womack… and then adopting those ideas. In doing so learning about management tools and concepts as they are applied to your work. Here is a simple example. Years ago, my … Continue reading →

Posted in Deming, Management, Process improvement, Quality tools, Respect, Systems thinking | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , | 12 Comments