Bayon temple, Siem Reap, Cambodia by John Hunter
The Curious Cat management blog carnival is published 3 times a month with some recent management blog posts. The posts generally focus on the areas I have focused on in the Curious Cat Management Guide since 1996.
- How Kanban visualisations and conversations enable process improvement by Benjamin Mitchell – “Reviewing the board at the daily stand up meeting provided visual feedback that lead to productive conversations about what might be stopping us and how we could improve. After we implemented new behaviours the board highlighted whether we improved and allowed us to continue to monitor our behaviour.”
- Why Cheap Customers Cost More by Sacha Greif – “So it’s not that cheap people require more support. It’s that people who require more support are more likely to make their decision based on price alone.”
- Would you like to improve your organization’s relationship with your physicians? “It’s about all those things that motivate people that don’t have anything to do with money – the intrinsic motivators. Everybody wants to feel like they’re part of something that matters, something bigger than themselves. And with our mission of transforming health care and putting patients at the top – that’s huge.”
- Perseverance, intelligence and flexibility – 3 things that will never get you past HR by David Kasprzak – “What is needed, instead of ‘Managers’ – is a caste of teachers and mentors who aggressively look for raw material they can shape and inspire into becoming the workers and leaders that companies need.”
Long Term Thinking with Respect for People
Toyota nearly went bankrupt near 1950 and had to lay off a third of their employees. A huge focus of the Toyota Production System as envisioned by Taiichi Ohno was to secure the long term success of the company. The priority of doing so is easier to see when you respect people and are in danger of witnessing the destruction of their careers.
I can’t find the quote (maybe Jon Miller, or someone else, can provide one), but I recall one along the lines of the first priority of management is providing long term viability of the company (my sense is this is first due to the respect of the workers and also for all the other stakeholders). The respect for people principle requires executive put the long term success of employees at the top of their thinking when making decisions for the company. I don’t believe it is a ranked list I believe there are several things right at the top that can’t be compromised (respect for people, safety of society, support for customers…).
This means innovating (Toyota Management System, Toyota Prius, Toyota Robots, Lexus brand, etc.) and seeking growth and profit with long term safety that does not risk the failure of the company. And it means planning for the worst case and making sure survivability (without layoffs etc.) is nearly assured. Only when that requirement is met are risks allowed. You do not leverage your company to put it at risk of failure in dire economic conditions even if that would allow you to be more profitable by various measures today. And you certainly don’t leverage just to take out big paychecks for a few short term thinkers.
The economic situation today is extremely uncertain. The whole eurozone financial situation is very questionable. The government debt burden in the USA and Japan is far too high (and of course Europe). China is still far from being a strong economy (they are huge, fast growing and powerful but it is still fairly fragile and risky).
The failures in the current financial system have not been addressed. Band-aids were applied to provide welfare to the largest 30 financial institutions in the form of hundreds of billions or trillions in aid. The system was left largely untouched. It is hard to imagine a more textbook example of failing to fix the causes and just treating the symptoms. This leaves a huge financial risk poised to cause havoc.
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