Category Archives: Systems thinking

Eliminating Quarterly Earnings Guidance

Posted on May 25, 2007 by John Hunter

It is good to see more people understand the bad practice of excessive short term focus on quarterly profits. It is also a bit amusing to see the Chamber of Commerce pushing an idea Deming was called unrealistic for pushing. The right way to handle a surprise: The U.S. Chamber of Commerce is calling for companies to halt “earnings guidance,” or coaching analysts, toward a precise target for quarterly profit. “The incentive to meet that number is an incentive to … Continue reading →

Posted in Deming, Google, Investing, Management, Systems thinking | 1 Comment

Rethinking the Social Responsibility of Business

Posted on May 17, 2007 by John Hunter

Rethinking the Social Responsibility of Business, a debate on the correct focus of business: Not that we’re only concerned with customers. At Whole Foods, we measure our success by how much value we can create for all six of our most important stakeholders: customers, team members (employees), investors, vendors, communities, and the environment. Great – my previous post on the purpose of a business. John Mackey, the founder and CEO of Whole Foods, closes the debate with: Someday businesses like … Continue reading →

Posted in Deming, Economics, Management, Systems thinking | 1 Comment

Keeping Track of Improvement Opportunities

Posted on May 14, 2007 by John Hunter

The Priority Trap [the broken link was removed – long term reliability of the web page links isn’t a priority I guess] by Dan Markovitz makes some good points: But if it’s not important enough to make the short list, then give yourself license to dump it. Maybe it’s something you would do if you had more time, or more energy, or if your mother would notice — but since you don’t have that time, and since you don’t have … Continue reading →

Posted in IT, Management, Systems thinking | Tagged | 2 Comments

Deming Seminar Update

Posted on April 5, 2007 by John Hunter

Ian Bradbury, President of Peaker Services Inc., will discuss his company’s implementation of Dr. Deming’s theory of management at a seminar in Lansing, Michigan, 23-25 April 2007. As I mentioned previously I will be co-presenting this seminar. Several interesting articles: So What’s System[s] Thinking by Ian Bradbury Improving Problem Solving [the broken link was removed] by Ian Bradbury and Gipsie Ranney. Appraising the Performance Of Performance Appraisals [the broken link was removed] by Harry Goldstein discusses some of the management … Continue reading →

Posted in Career, Deming, Management, Process improvement, Systems thinking | 3 Comments

Joel Barker Podcast

Posted on April 1, 2007 by John Hunter

Innovation with Joel Barker at the Cranky Middle Manager Show: Innovation isn’t necessarily all great. Unintended consequences are something to be considered- what Joel calls “Cascade Thinking”. What are the long-term consequences before you invest. “the answer to the problem is only the beginning of the solution”. Check out www.implicationswheel.com. How do you make sure that checking out the implications doesn’t turn into a reason not to innovate? The implications wheel is a tool you can use. You can identify … Continue reading →

Posted in Innovation, Management, Systems thinking | Tagged , ,

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

Jeffrey Pfeffer on Evidence-Based Practices

Posted on March 11, 2007 by John Hunter

Jeffrey Pfeffer Testifies to Congress About Evidence-Based Practices [the broken link was removed]: In this short statement, I want to make five points as succinctly as possible, providing references for background and documentation for my arguments. First, organizations in both the public and private sector ought to base policies not on casual benchmarking, on ideology or belief, on what they have done in the past or what they are comfortable with doing, but instead should implement evidence-based management. Second, the … Continue reading →

Posted in Books, Data, Management, Performance Appraisal, Public Sector, Statistics, Systems thinking | Tagged ,

Total Quality Software Development

Posted on March 6, 2007 by John Hunter

Total Quality Service podcast by Michael Tiemann, Redhat Software. Do we offshore the problem to somebody else, you know get more bad software cheaper? Or do we fix the problem? I think we fix the problem. Now, in going to Japan and talking about this software quality problem it was pretty obvious I had to go and study Deming… I think the first 10 minutes of the podcast is valuable to anyone. The last 8 minutes might not appeal to … Continue reading →

Posted in Deming, IT, Software Development, Systems thinking, webcast

Write it Down

Posted on March 1, 2007 by John Hunter

Why Write it down? The longer I pursue Lean, the more I am amazed with its fundamentals. I may write more about this in the near future. Like the emphasis to write things down. In meetings, writing down decisions (what is the issue, who is going to do what…) is very helpful. It is very easy for people to think everyone agrees to some somewhat clear statements made in the meeting. Only later it becomes obvious several people have different … Continue reading →

Posted in Management, Process improvement, Quality tools, quote, Systems thinking | Tagged , , , , | 6 Comments

Transformation and Redesign

Posted on February 23, 2007 by John Hunter

Here is an excellent article from 1999: Transformation and Redesign at the White House Communications Agency (WHCA) (pdf link) by March Laree Jacques This article describes an organizational transformation effort undertaken at the White House Communications Agency. It shares the Agency’s efforts through the period of 1992-1998, beginning with a Deming-based approach to continuous quality improvement through implementation of a total organizational redesign using systems thinking precepts. It describes the obstacles to implementing quality concepts in a high visibility, high … Continue reading →

Posted in Deming, Management, Management Articles, Public Sector, Systems thinking | Tagged , , ,

Seven Steps to Remarkable Customer Service

Posted on February 20, 2007 by John Hunter

Once again Joel Spolsky spins a great post with, Seven steps to remarkable customer service. Read it. It’s crucial that tech support have access to the development team. This means that you can’t outsource tech support: they have to be right there at the same street address as the developers, with a way to get things fixed. This idea is powerful yet ignored by most companies. Management must look at the best way to improve the entire system not to … Continue reading →

Posted in Customer focus, Deming, IT, Management, Process improvement, Systems thinking | Tagged , , | 2 Comments

SWAT Raids – Systemic Failures?

Posted on February 18, 2007 by John Hunter

I have mentioned Reddit (an online community that is highly skewed toward software engineers who are a bit irreverent) before: Dell, Reddit and Customer Focus. The site highlights stories voted up by the community and so the makeup of the community has a huge impact on what is highlighted. The users are very willing to challenge authority (and in fact anxious to do so I think). So some topics are common: criticizing DRM, science, criticizing the United States’ role in … Continue reading →

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

Ackoff’s New Book: Management f-Laws

Posted on February 9, 2007 by John Hunter

Russell Ackoff is in London promoting his new book: Management f-Laws (see previous post: Ackoff’s F-laws: Common Sins of Management). A BBC article captures some of some of the great ideas from one of his talks (more articles… by Ackoff). How to avoid the fatal F-Laws by Peter Day: “Companies and organisations get things wrong most of the time,” he said. “The average life of a US corporation is only 11-and-a-half years, the rate of bankruptcy is increasing very year. … Continue reading →

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

3M CEO on Six Sigma

Posted on February 8, 2007 by John Hunter

3M in building spree to end capacity constraints 3M should complete the first of an 18-factory build-out in the third quarter, said its chief executive late Tuesday, as it makes up for years of underinvestment on the factory floor – even in its well-known household products. “Our major challenge will be getting all these plants launched,” said 3M CEO George Buckley at a Lehman Brothers conference. Buckley, who joined the St. Paul, Minn. company just over a year ago, has … Continue reading →

Posted in Management, Manufacturing, quote, Six sigma, Systems thinking | Tagged | 1 Comment

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

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 , ,