New from the Lean Blog: Jamie Flinchbaugh on Educating Leadership
Previously: Jim Huntzinger on Lean Accounting, Norman Bodek on Toyota’s recent quality issues and lean leadership and Jamie Flinchbaugh on Lean Leadership. As expected these are well worth listening to.
Related: management webcast posts – lean thinking articles and online resources – Toyota production system posts – articles by Jamie Flinchbaugh
Kevin Meyer recaps the ideas of Improving Management Education [the broken link was removed] by M.L. Emiliani in his post – The Lean MBA. I suggest reading his post and the original article.
In the Curious Cat Science and Engineering blog, The Future is Engineering points to 2 great essays on the secret of Silicon Valley. Guy Kawasaki puts it well, though in my opinion far to kind to our current MBA system (the inordinate focus on accounting does actual harm above and beyond the harm of ignoring what managers should learn):
Some previous posts here that talk about similar ideas: The Purpose of Organizations – Management Training Program – Performance Appraisal Problems – Find the Root Cause Instead of the Person to Blame – Respect for People – Management Advice Failures – What is Wrong with MBA’s – Common Data Analysis Problem – Manage what you can’t measure
German utility E.On says major European blackout was caused by human error [the broken link was removed]
Germany utility E.On AG said Wednesday that a European-wide blackout earlier this month that left millions without power was the result of human error and not any technical glitches.
The Duesseldorf-based company said the power outage, which led to blackouts in parts of Germany, France, Belgium, Italy, Portugal and Spain on Nov. 4, was not caused by a lack of proper maintenance or enough investment in transmission grids and facilities.
…
The blackout was caused after a high-voltage transmission line over a German river was turned off in an aborted attempt to allow a newly built Norwegian cruise ship to pass safely under it.That triggered a blackout that briefly left 10 million people without power, stopping trains in their tracks and trapping people in elevators.
Ok, the focus seems to be that we didn’t do anything wrong, just some “human” made an error, which seems to be implied is out of their control. Why would the organization not be responsible for the people and the system working together? Management needs to create systems that work. That system includes people and equipment and process management and suppliers…
E.ON says human error responsible for Nov 4 power outage [the broken link was removed]:
It said that its control centre shut down part of an ultra-high voltage transmission line without checking whether the outage of a second transmission line might overload the power grid.
About half an hour later there was an outage at a second transmission line, which ultimately created a domino effect that led to the temporary disconnection of the European interconnected power grid.
The German utility said that all systems reacted in accordance with standard procedures, effectively preventing a complete blackout across Europe.
It seems obvious the process was not well designed if they believe a mistake was made that led to the tens of millions of people being without power. Failing to admit that the process was designed poorly and needs to be improved is troubling. Blaming “human error” does not help or help improve in the future (and is not a way to develop a culture that respects people). And it reinforces the notion that this event is due to one special cause (or 2…). It seems to me, even with this very little evidence at hand, that this is a system problem.
Very good article – What drives Toyota? [the broken link was removed] by Charles Fishman:
Deceptively simple, like so much of the Toyota Production System. And that simplicity and the action is so important to successful application of the ideas.
Related: Not Innovation but Still Interesting – Trust: Respect for People – 10 Stocks for 10 Years Update
From the “you call this agile?” department by Joel Spolsky:
This is a simple article about basically choosing to sub optimize a part to optimize the whole. One of management’s roles is to determine when to trade a loss to one part of the system for the sake of the overall system. One of the big losses for software development is interruptions which distract developers.
The general consensus is that the loss from interrupting developers is much greater than for interrupting most other forms of work and therefor a great deal of effort is placed on improving the system to allow developers to focus. However, that should not prevent decisions that factor in that loss and conclude that taking that loss is worth the gain (to the rest of the system).
Related: Management Science for Software Engineering – Stretching Agile to fit CMMI Level 3 – post on Joel Spolsky’s ideas – Joel Management
TPS & Jidoka, interview of Tomo “Tom” Harada by Art Smalley:
So when Mr. Ohno came to the automotive company after WWII and saw one man operating one machine tool he thought that it was strange and inefficient. He embarked upon a path of breaking down the notion of one man one machine in the engine shops. Instead of “monitoring” machines the operator was to walk between two machine tools and keep them both up and running. Then three machines and four machines and so on.
Related: TPS v. Lean Manufacturing – Origins of the Toyota Production System – Jidoka description – blog posts on the Toyota Production System
Russ Ackoff once again does a great job of providing insight into management. I highly recommend A Little Book of f-Laws [the broken link was removed] where Ackoff, with Herbert Addison and Sally Bibb, present 13 common sins of management, such as:
See: Deming’s thoughts on unknown and unknowable figures. A book with over 80 management flaws (er I mean f-Laws) will be published in January – you can even submit your own [the broken link was removed].
Related: Ackoff articles and books – blog posts on Ackoff’s ideas – Management Advice Failures
Continue reading
The Life and Death Results of Information Quality by Doug Johnson:
Related: heathcare related posts – posts on how to use data properly – Evidence-based Management
Presentation slides from the joint The Lean Aerospace Initiative [the broken link was removed] and LEAN joint meeting (October 16-18, 2006) are available [the broken link was removed – the links that relied on MIT to retain historical information using technology over the long term failed. It is sad MIT doesn’t understand how to manage information using technology more effectively. They really should learn how to do the extremely basic tasks of combining technology and management if they expect to be respected in that field it seems to me. It is embarrassing they are doing so poorly now.]. From Jim Womack‘s slide:
Related: Lean Education Academic Network Spring Meeting – Lean Education Academic Network
Jeff Bezos’ Risky Bet [the broken link was removed]
In my view Amazon is doing some very interesting innovation. As with most true innovation it is not easy to understand if it will succeed or not. I believe Amazon uses technology very well. They have done many innovative things. They have been less successful at turning their technology into big profits. But I continue to believe they have a good shot at doing so going forward (and their core business is doing very well I think). Innovation often involves taking risks. Bezos is willing to do so and willing to pursue his beliefs even if many question those beliefs. That means he has the potential to truly innovate, and also means he has to potential to fail dramatically.
Related: Bezos on Lean Thinking – Making Changes and Taking Risks – 10 Stocks for 10 Years Update – A9 Toolbar for Firefox Browser
