Photo by John Hunter at Antelope Island State Park, Utah

The management improvement blog carnival is published 3 times a month (though not this month – May 10th was missed) with select recent management blog posts. Curious Cat also collects articles on improving management practices, you can subscribe via RSS to new article additions.
See more photos from my trip to Utah, including Antelope Island State Park in the Great Salt Lake.

• Drive out Fear by Wally Bock – “Fear corrodes morale and team spirit. Fight or flight rules the day, with team members hiding from the rampaging saber-toothed tiger of a boss, throwing blame at each other and hoping, to borrow from Winston Churchill, that the crocodile will eat them last.”
• 8 Ways to Deal with Employee Personal Problems by Harwell Thrasher – “Every employee is an individual with their own personal strengths and issues. You can’t expect to take advantage of an employee’s strengths without occasionally running up against some of the issues.”
• Three Requirements for Managing by Fact by Jon Miller – “1) decision on the criteria of relevance, 2) testing of hypothesis and conversion of opinion into tested fact, and 3) arriving at consensus through clash and conflict of divergent opinions.”
• Rapid PDCA with 3P by Mark Rosenthal – “The idea is to be able to quickly and cheaply try out, and experience, a process (or product) so that problems can be surfaced, opportunities for improvement can be seen, and the PDCA cycle can be turned far more rapidly than would otherwise be possible.” [One important key to excellent results using PDSA is rapid, quick cycles through the PDSA cycle (many organizations turn the PDSA cycle much too slowly) – John]

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The management blog carnival highlights recent management blog posts 3 times each month. The posts generally focus on the areas I have focused on in the Curious Cat Management Improvement guide since 1996 (Deming, lean thinking, agile software development, respect for people, leadership…).

• Autonomy: condition for continuous improvement by Rob van Stekelenborg – “Teams that should take the responsibility over a (part of a) process should at the same time also be given the opportunity to actually improve something within their area of responsibility… That the team is allowed to experiment with suggestions that were put forward…”
• Laying Off Hands, Losing Brains by Kevin Meyer – “Remember, there’s a brain attached to that pair of hands. Value can be created even if the hands aren’t being used at the moment.”
• Lunch by Joel Spolsky – “Ten years ago Michael and I set out with the rather ambitious goal of making a great place to work. Eating together is a critical part of what it means to be human and what it means to have a humane workplace, and that’s been a part of our values from day one.”
• Tools, Rules, Principles, and Lean Wallpaper by Art Smalley – “You need a critical mass of people that have both the right thinking patterns (know what) but also the right technical knowledge (know how)… Unfortunately I don’t see as much advancement on the actual technical “know how” dimension of the equation and until that problem is solved actual performance results will not match up with the associated performance expectations.”
• How to succeed in business by doing nothing by Michael Blastland – “the fashion for corporate dashboards displaying up-to-the-minute information about company performance makes me wonder – will bosses everywhere be staring at the numbers, twitching with every down, feeling the pulse race with every up, on the phone demanding action with every flicker on the dial?” [tampering is a common problem – John]
• Exorbitant Executive Salaries = Resources Wasted On Those Who Don’t Need Them by Aaron Anderson – “The question I raise here is as to if the monies beyond a certain level of salary might not be better spent on developing a pool of resources that can be utilized to generate organizational slack that can invigorate invention, creativity, and lead to new ways of doing in an ongoing way that allows people to break free of the shackles of the long standing tradition or status quo.”

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The beach along Hole in the Wall Trail in Olympic National Park by John Hunter.

The Curious Cat Management Blog Carnival selects recent management blog posts 3 times each month. You may submit a link to the management Reddit to have it considered for inclusion in our carnival

• Let’s Dance by Ron Pereira – “I am supremely confident injecting a little fun with all the seriousness of life and business will do nothing but help.”
• How To Hold A Lean Meeting by Matt May – “In one to three sentences, define the overall purpose of the meeting… Goal #5: Develop a preliminary implementation plan. Who does what by when. Closing: Plan next steps. Decide on key follow-up plan.”
• 5 Wrong Reasons To Apply Kanban – “If you expect that you will replace failed retrospective meetings with a nice and simple ‘stop the line’ rule, you’ll fail, since it is even harder than scheduled regular retrospectives and demands even higher level of self-discipline.”
• 6 Principles for Rebuilding Industry by Jon Miller – “Principle 3. Remember that goods and services are inseparable… Principle 5. Put the focus back on the people on the gemba…
• How to get a real education by Scott Adams “The kids in this brainy group are the future professors, scientists, thinkers and engineers who will propel civilization forward. But why do we make B students sit through these same classes? That’s like trying to train your cat to do your taxes—a waste of time and money. Wouldn’t it make more sense to teach B students something useful, like entrepreneurship?”

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