Category Archives: Respect

How to Develop Thinking People

Posted on August 6, 2008 by John Hunter

Toyota’s Top Engineer on How to Develop Thinking People [broken link was removed] Hayashi says, “Developing people requires physical endurance.” Frequent follow up is necessary, in person. It is not acceptable to give an assignment and follow up or scold only after three months, during a progress report meeting. Specific actions and detailed follow up are necessary. Excellent advice. Also, when we are required to deliver results with speed, we only give our subordinates small projects so that even if … Continue reading →

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

Do What You Say You Will

Posted on July 28, 2008 by John Hunter

In Keeping Good Employees I talked about asking some simple questions. The biggest mistake I see managers make is to fail to deliver on what they say in such meetings. There is the saying “It is better to be thought a fool than speak, and prove it.” Well it is better to be thought a pointy haired boss than to ask for feedback, then ignore it, and prove you are a PHB. This behavior is extremely common with a survey … Continue reading →

Posted in Management, Process improvement, Respect, Systems thinking | Tagged , , , , , | 3 Comments

Keeping Good Employees

Posted on July 24, 2008 by John Hunter

Understanding Why Good Workers Quit [the broken link was removed] “What do you need to want to stay?” Most managers, she acknowledges, are afraid to ask this question and that is a reason why their companies have to do plenty of exit interviews. When stay interviews are part of the culture—and this is a practice in very few companies—attrition of the people you don’t want to lose plummets. “Ask them directly: What can we do to keep you?,” urges Kaye. … Continue reading →

Posted in Career, IT, Management, quote, Respect | Tagged , , , | 3 Comments

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

Paying New Employees to Quit

Posted on May 25, 2008 by John Hunter

[the video is no longer available] Training new employees and then paying them to quit, sounds pretty bizarre; Zappos is not afraid of doing things differently. Why Zappos Pays New Employees to Quit – And You Should Too [Harvard broke the link so I removed it – they should pay those responsible (most likely an executive, technical people know better but bad management breaks things) for not maintaining urls to quit]: Zappos sells shoes—lots of them—over the Internet. The company … Continue reading →

Posted in Creativity, Customer focus, Innovation, Management, Respect, webcast | Tagged , | 5 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

The Defect Black Market

Posted on April 18, 2008 by John Hunter

The Defect Black Market It all started a week before, when the CTO of Damon’s midsize warehousing and transportation company in Northern California announced an innovative program to motivate employees and boost the quality of their logistics software. For every bug found by a tester and fixed by a programmer, both would get $10. Well, this doesn’t sound very well thought out. Bonuses often distort behavior. Dr. Deming was not against such targets and bonuses because he thought they would … Continue reading →

Posted in Data, Deming, IT, Management, quote, Respect, Software Development | Tagged , , , , , | 9 Comments

Making a Difference

Posted on April 13, 2008 by John Hunter

Kiva provides loans through partners (operating in the countries) to the entrepreneurs. Those partners do charge the entrepreneurs interest (to fund the operations of the lending partner). Kiva pays the principle back to you but does not pay interest. And if the entrepreneur defaults then you do not get your capital paid back (in other words you lose the money you loaned). They do an excellent job of using the internet to allow people like me to feel connected to … Continue reading →

Posted in Economics, Fun, Respect | Tagged , , | 5 Comments

How Downsizing is Handled When Management Respects People

Posted on March 27, 2008 by John Hunter

Three Amazing PHP/MySQL/Perl Developers Now Available [broken link removed] – Posting on Craigslist. The url will expire so I included everything but the contact info below (follow the link for contact info). Yesterday I had to do one of the more difficult things — lay off three of my good friends, all of whom are talented and professional developers. I’m posting here today in hopes that someone out in the world is looking for some seasoned talent, people who can … Continue reading →

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

Unconscionable Executive Pay

Posted on March 19, 2008 by John Hunter

WaMu: Skip customers; save the execs [the broken link was removed] Since last summer, the company’s shares have lost nearly 80% of their value. But the bank is a softy when it comes to bonus pay for top brass. After CEO Kerry Killinger and other top executives missed all or a big part of their bonus pay last year, Washington Mutual wasted little time taking steps to apparently make sure it won’t happen again — even if the mortgage market … Continue reading →

Posted in Deming, Management, Respect | Tagged | 6 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

Severance Plans to Respect People

Posted on February 21, 2008 by John Hunter

Yahoo’s Severance Plans a Defense Against Microsoft? Yahoo’s board of directors has created an expansive severance package for all full-time employees who are either terminated without “cause” or leave on their own with “good reason” following a “change in control of the company.” The severance packages would extend regular compensation for a period of four months to two years, depending on the employee’s job level. Employees would also receive continued health benefits, financial assistance for finding a new job (up … Continue reading →

Posted in Creativity, Management, Respect

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

Performance Appraisals are Worse Than a Waste of Time

Posted on December 13, 2007 by John Hunter

Appraisals are a waste of Time Most British workers will certainly leave their appraisal fired up and motivated, but only to look for a new job, new research from workplace and HR body Investors in People has concluded. Nearly half of those who had an appraisal did not trust their managers to be honest during it, with a third dismissing the annual chat as a waste of time and a fifth leaving it feeling they had been unfairly treated. The … Continue reading →

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

Getting and Keeping Great Employees

Posted on November 29, 2007 by John Hunter

I am not convinced of the premise of The new war for talent: that there will be a great shortage of talent soon. But the article makes some interesting points. The Conference Board CEO Challenge of 2007 points out that “Cracking the U.S. Top 10 this year is finding qualified managerial talent and top management succession.” … If we neglect to engage our own employees, those who are frustrated can surf hundreds of job boards to see what other opportunities … Continue reading →

Posted in Management, Performance Appraisal, Respect | 1 Comment