“All Models Are Wrong But Some Are Useful” -George Box
A great quote. Here is the source: George E.P. Box, Robustness in the strategy of scientific model building, page 202 of Robustness in Statistics, R.L. Launer and G.N. Wilkinson, Editors. 1979.
See more quotes by George Box.
Related: Dangers of Forgetting the Proxy Nature of Data – articles by George Box – Quotes by Dr. W. Edwards Deming
Management Improvement ideas from around the web:
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 understandings of what was agreed to. Sometimes this is even really known in the meeting but it is easier to let things slide instead of confronting the disagreement. But this is not helpful, it just means the issue is not properly addressed. It might make the meeting easier but that should not be the goal.
Writing down decisions greatly reduces the chance of miscommunication. In a meeting clearly writing down decisions (action items etc.) for everyone to see (on a flip chart for example) is a vey useful tactic to improve communication.
Russell Ackoff also has some great stuff on the importance of documenting decisions – both to serve as guide posts to future action and to serve as documentation that can be examined over time to find historic weaknesses and strengths with decision making in the organization. The Team Handbook is a very good book for improving team meetings and team performance.
Evolving Excellence – the book takes posts from the excellent Evolving Excellence blog by Keven Meyer and William Waddell. Those familiar with their work know that the authors provide great insight and take strong positions – they are not timid. The book is an enjoyable read and packed with great ideas focused on lean manufacturing and lean management thinking. I enjoyed the different format of reading the material presented in the blog (though I like the blog even better, linking to other resources…, but books have advantages in certain ways).
Another nice feature is since the material is from a living blog, you can visit the blog and find out new thoughts they have posted on areas that you find especially interesting in the book. The blog also includes comments others have shared on the thoughts expressed in the book and links to online resources.
The Curious Cat Management Improvement site includes a wide array of resources for management professionals (and has been growing and improving, I hope, since 1996). Our calendar now includes several interesting opportunities including Performance Measures and Statistics Workshop [the broken link was removed] in Richland, Washington, USA by Stephen Prevette. This workshop looks interesting. We have mentioned the presenter in other posts.
Our management improvement job board currently lists jobs including: Six Sigma/Technical Specialist, Supply Chain Project Manager (Google), Quality Control Specialist (Toyota) and Quality Engineer. The service is free, both to those posting and those responding to jobs. If you are looking to fill a management improvement position or for a position please give it a try.
In addition to the blog we also offer links to hundreds of articles on management topics we have selected, a dictionary of management terms, annotated directory to management resources and recommended management books.
Please let us know what you like and what we could improve.
A recent report from the Brookings Institution, Reconnecting Massachusetts Gateway Cities [the broken link was removed], has some good words on the efforts of Fort Wayne, Indiana:
In this time, Fort Wayne’s first-in-the nation municipal foray into Six Sigma practices has proven that statistical analyses and stringent quality control standards do not lose their power outside the boardroom. Such data-centric attention to detail, in fact, is making all the difference.
Related: Doing More With Less in the Public Sector: A Progress Report from Madison, Wisconsin – Public Sector Management – Lean Government – Quality Best Practices in Government [the link that ASQ broke was removed] – Six sigma management resources
The Scott County Way [the broken link was removed] by Jillian Ogawa:
Center for Quality People and Organizations:
Great. The Education area does require special care but management improvement concepts can work very well in education. David Langford has done some great work in this area as has Alfie Kohn. They are not focused on the Toyota Way but their principles and lean thinking go together well and there expertise in the education area is very important.
via: Scott County Schools Trying Out the Toyota Way [the broken link was removed]
Related: K-12 (kindergarten though high school) improvement resources – articles on quality education – posts on Toyota management methods – quality learning books
I commented on a post on Evolving Excellence that Jim Jubak is a wall street guy who has good ideas. He has posted another good article: Firing workers isn’t fixing problems [the broken link was removed]
Right. Wall street is not incapable of seeing past short term “thinking.” Even if many on wall street can’t seem to understand. I am far from convinced short term thinking is Wall Street’s fault, it seems to me many executives have this problem and blame “Wall Street.” I believe short term thinking is mainly management’s fault.
Short term thinking is part of the management system. Exorbinant executive pay exacerbates the problem. A failure to understand variation exacerbates the problem.
Dell has been taking some interesting actions recently. Several months ago they started blogging and interacting with bloggers. Those steps have been interesting since few other companies of their size have taken such action (nothing amazing, but seem much beyond the common corporate, totally out of touch attempts to adopt new technology – they seemed to be committed to actually try to learn about interactive web thinking).
They recently created IdeaStorm to Turn Up the Volume of Customer Voice [the broken link was removed] (quite an innovative attempt at customer focus). There are issues with the method they are using, but innovation is about trying to find new ways of doing things there often are questions about the new methods. The simple view is they are using the a tool of the social web (Digg, Reddit) to discover what the users of IdeaStorm want from Dell (obviously this is only a subset of Dell potential customers – and a small one I would imagine). Essentially users can post ideas and then others promote those they support.
Dell has now announced some actions they are taking based on the results thusfar.
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Lean for Software: Interview with Mary Poppendieck:
New book – Implementing Lean Software Development: From Concept to Cash by Mary and Tom Poppendieck.
Related: Competing On The Basis Of Speed (webcast) – Problems Caused by Performance Appraisal
