Ackoff Podcast

Posted on January 19, 2006 by John Hunter

I found this great podcast via the post – School Architecture: Doing the Wrong Thing Right.

As usually Ackoff provides great ideas, in an interesting and entertaining manner. This talk focuses on learning (and education and teaching) and doing the right things (effectiveness). In talking to educators Ackoff criticizes the educational system. Throughout the speech he does his normal excellent job of explaining system thinking. Enjoy.

Russell Ackoff Talk at Great Schools By Design Summit (mp3 podcast)

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Improving Communication

Posted on January 18, 2006 by John Hunter

How to Communicate with Me [the broken link was removed] by David Anderson. A nice post, with practical advice on improving communication.

He understood that service goes downward in management and he encouraged us to communicate to him, how he could be of service to us. I’ve used the template I developed for communicating with John as a way to train my staff to better up-manage. It’s important not to expect people to do this intuitively. Generally, their only up-management training came when as a child they learned how to manipulate parents to get what they wanted. Manipulation isn’t the result we’re after. Understanding the correct level to make decisions and how to ask for senior intervention, is what we are looking for. Here is the template…

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Effective Innovation

Posted on January 17, 2006 by John Hunter

Overcoming the barriers to effective innovation [the broken link was removed] by Pierre Loewe and Jennifer Dominiquini

The top six obstacles to innovation identified by respondents were consistent across industries:

  1. Short-term focus.
  2. Lack of time, resources or staff.
  3. Leadership expects payoff sooner than is realistic.
  4. Management incentives are not structured to reward innovation.
  5. Lack of a systematic innovation process.
  6. Belief that innovation is inherently risky.

Related posts:

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Management Improvement Leaders

Posted on January 17, 2006 by John Hunter

Who’s Driving Quality Today by Laura Smith, Quality Digest.

Ten years ago, in our March 1995 issue, we profiled 45 “New Quality Gurus.” Although it was one of our more popular articles, some of the “gurus” and their causes have faded into obscurity. Other gurus chased the latest fads into oblivion. A few have shown remarkable staying power.

When we decided to revisit the quality gurus issue, one thing was immediately apparent: There isn’t any one guru who stands out above the rest. In fact, the quality profession is remarkably free of fads at the moment. Six Sigma has settled into the mainstream, and ISO 9001 has become firmly entrenched in Corporate America. So while we wait for the “Next Big Thing,” we’re also waiting for the next big guru.

Who does Quality Digest select this time? Dennis Arter, Paul Borawski, Joe Bransky, Michael Carmody, Subir Chowdhury, Joe De Feo, Ellen Domb, H. James Harrington, Mikel Harry, Harry Hertz, Robert H. King, Denise Robitaille, Ola Rollen, Shin Taguchi, Jack West and Donald J. Wheeler.

Who would I select, as the leaders of management improvement (lean thinking, six sigma, systems thinking, continual improvement, customer focus, innovation, leadership, quality management, theory of constraints…) thought and practice today? Answering this question leaves me open for criticism (for those I leave off, which might well just be due to the limits of those I am familiar with, and those I include), but I think it is worthwhile. I think those attempting to improvement management will be more successful if they follow the ideas expressed by those I see as having valuable insight.

Continue reading →

Posted in Management, Popular, quote | Tagged , | 7 Comments

Books: Blink, Freakonomics and more

Posted on January 16, 2006 by John Hunter

I finished reading two very popular books this weekend: Freakonomics and Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking by Malcolm Gladwell. While both books were enjoyable and interesting, they really seemed to offer a few good or interesting ideas stretched to fill a book. That is the same thought I had after reading The World is Flat by Thomas L. Friedman. I found all of them fine. I found them to be worth reading, but I don’t know they warrant as much attention as they have received.

All of these books are in Amazon’s top 30. The only other book I have read, that is ranked so highly, is The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference, also by Malcolm Gladwell, which I would recommend more highly.

I also plan on reading Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap… and Others Don’t (25th on the list) which I have been told is very good. I have just started reading: Search: How Google and Its Rivals Rewrote the Rules of Business and Transformed Our Culture (“only” number 377 on Amazon).

The freakonomics blog is excellent. And, as I mentioned in a previous post, Malcolm Gladwell – Synchronicity, the podcast of Malcolm Gladwell is very interesting.

Posted in Books, Economics, Fun | Tagged | 1 Comment

What Should GM Do?

Posted on January 16, 2006 by John Hunter

GM must take back concepts that Toyota has capitalized on [the broken link was removed] by W. Harrison Goodenow:

It still doesn’t have to be this way. The solution lies in better manufacturing engineering and not in Machiavellian marketing. Concurrent engineering, hard prototyping, management by planning, real process control and Deming’s analytic-studies approach to design of experiments are proven approaches to designing and building a quality car competitively. Just ask Toyota.

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Lean Accounting

Posted on January 15, 2006 by John Hunter

Lean Accounting (Lean Beans) [broken link was removed] by Sue Sondergelt

We must get rid of Standard Cost and Absorption Accounting for managing the business. This is 1930’s thinking, when business was all labor, little material, and very little overhead. Today business is all material, very little labor, and moderate overhead.

A nice short article introducing accounting issues which influence organizational behavior in the counter-productive ways.

Accountants today need to change the way they think! We need to lose old paradigms! We need to think in terms of processes, not transactions. We need to think Cost Management, not Cost Accounting. We need to be leading Teams, not reporting history.

  • More lean thinking articles
  • Profit Beyond Measure: Extraordinary Results Through Attention to Work and People by H. Thomas Johnson and Anders Broms. This book details how two extremely profitable manufacturers, Toyota and the Swedish truck maker Scania, have rejected the traditional mechanistic mindset of managing by results.
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Improved Web Search

Posted on January 14, 2006 by John Hunter

In my recent post on improving Google one suggestion I made was:

Let me remove web sites from my default searches.

Today while using Yahoo they provided this option (named “block” by Yahoo). Good. Using Yahoo Search I can now block site that hide content behind pay, or registration, walls and spam sites. Obviously it would be better if they blocked the spam sites themselves but this is a useful feature for those that sneak through.

I would also prefer if Yahoo would let me block all pages that don’t display the content (that content that prompted Yahoo to suggest the link for the terms entered) without going through some paid or registration wall. But this block feature is useful in the case that they don’t do so. They seem to be starting down that path (looking on the preference page but I still get many sites that are returned as matches that don’t go directly to the content that was matched against).

Posted in Customer focus, Google | Comments Off on Improved Web Search

Public Management II

Posted on January 12, 2006 by John Hunter

Public Management-The Bush Administration II by Paul Soglin:

Since that time, John Hunter posted a comment in reference to W. Edwards Deming:

Newt Gingrich is also a supporter of Deming’s ideas: “I’m a disciple of Edwards Deming. I really believe in a culture and system of quality.”

Any time I find myself in the company of Newt Gingrich, I become a little concerned, especially since he tends to bounce around and not ‘drill down’ to learn how things work. In addition, I don’t accept all of Deming’s teachings as universal truth. If anything I am more a student of Peter Scholtes, a Deming student who wrote the invaluable The Leader’s Handbook: Making Things Happen, Getting Things Done

Paul Soglin also stated:

Deming did not have an appreciation for the democratic nature of government, and did not acknowledge that the kind of decision making that takes place in the public sector may have both legal and ethical requirements to slow down the advance of ‘quality.’

My response to his post:

Continue reading →

Posted in Deming, Management, Public Sector, quote, Systems thinking | Tagged , , | 7 Comments

Lean Consumption

Posted on January 12, 2006 by John Hunter

Lean Consumption [the broken link was removed] by James P. Womack and Daniel T. Jones, Harvard Business Review. An excellent article on the topic of their book: Lean Consumption.

The Principles of Lean Consumption

The concepts underlying lean consumption boil down to six simple principles that correspond closely with those of lean production. (For more on these principles, see our book Lean Thinking.)

  1. Solve the customer’s problem completely by insuring that all the goods and services work, and work together.
  2. Don’t waste the customer’s time.
  3. Provide exactly what the customer wants.
  4. Provide what’s wanted exactly where it’s wanted.
  5. Provide what’s wanted where it’s wanted exactly when it’s wanted.
  6. Continually aggregate solutions to reduce the customer’s time and hassle. This approach has been pursued brilliantly

A very good article. Read it and then get the book.

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