Management Improvement Carnival #17

Posted on August 16, 2007 by John Hunter

Please submit your favorite management posts to the carnival. Read the previous management carnivals.

  • Take your friends to the Gemba with you by Lee Fried – “Over the last six months we have been developing and refining visual systems to support standard work, communication, leveling and problem solving. The staff and managers have worked hard on their systems and their work is beginning to show fruits of their labor.”
  • Opportunity Calls by Mike Wroblewski – “‘Mike, we have some problems.’ said the VP said with a serious tone. I quickly answered.’ That’s great news!” [curiouscat adds: “Having no problems is the biggest problem of all.” Taiichi Ohno]
  • How Design of Experiments (DOE), and Data Visualization are impacting NASCAR – “Essentially through track testing, wind tunnels, shaker rigs, and simulation exercises, the engineer and crew chief can decide which and how much to change each variable to make their car the best on the track”
  • Transportation Muda by Ron Pereira – “I am not sure where this wing was headed as we were about 60 miles from Fargo… but rest assured no value was being added to this airplane wing or the airplane it was going to be attached to.”
  • Students should be teaching. Schools should be learning. by Jeff Lindsay – “Ackoff then goes on to describe how this used to take place in one-room schools as a necessity, and the success story of having 7 year old kids teach arithmetic to a computer in order to learn it themselves”

    • Continue reading →

Posted in Carnival, Management | Comments Off on Management Improvement Carnival #17

Providing Customer Service – Web Hosting

Posted on August 16, 2007 by John Hunter

Web Hosting how to: Save your server and customer when digg/reddit/slashdot effect hits his/her website

One of your customers gets lucky – a huge burst of traffic hits his website. If you don’t do something quickly, your server will go down pretty soon. What’s your call? “Suspend website, of course”. WRONG!
…
Instead, consider other ways to solve this problem. I will share one method with you, we were successfully using it when I was working in one web hosting company a year back. It’s a very simple method and takes only a minute to do…

Exactly right. Find ways to provide good service – not excuses to explain bad service. Delighted customers drive business success.

Related: Customer dis-service from Discover Card – What Could we do Better? – Customer Service is Important – What Job Does Your Product Do? – Change Your Name – Dell, Reddit and Customer Focus

Posted in Customer focus, IT, Management, Systems thinking | Comments Off on Providing Customer Service – Web Hosting

Cool Workspaces

Posted on August 15, 2007 by John Hunter

Beautiful work spaces acknowledge the people that work in those spaces and show a respect for employees as people.

photo of assembly line

Photo by Michael Moore of the VW Phaeton assembly plant in Dresden (more photos of the plant)

via: 10 Seeeeeriously Cool Workplaces

Related: Why Office Design Matters – 5s

Posted in Creativity, Management, Respect | 2 Comments

Stop Demotivating Me!

Posted on August 14, 2007 by John Hunter

Esther Derby has the right idea in Stop Demotivating Me!. Some of my previous posts on this topic: Stop Demotivating Employees – Problems Caused by Performance Appraisal – Why Extrinsic Motivation Fails… Esther’s article points out a number of problems with how many managers operate:

Empty phrases. It seems like there’s an unending supply of (supposedly) inspirational directives: Just do it! Failure is not an option! Think outside the box!
…
Employees are not trustworthy. I once worked for a company where two people in a department of 800 abused the company policy on cab fare reimbursement. After the incident was discovered, the VP decreed that she had to personally approve all reimbursement requests over $5. Her policy effectively communicated her belief that no one in the organization was trustworthy.

Employees aren’t capable of making good decisions. Layers of signatures, long lead times for standard items, and lag times for signatures and approvals not only slow down work and frustrate people—they communicate that people aren’t capable of making reasonable decisions.

These kind of examples are so sad. Managers reacting to special causes as if they are common causes (or as though talk without action is worthwhile). It is as if Dr. Deming hadn’t talked about this stuff 50 years ago and they shouldn’t know any better. Here are some books to help you learn what every manager should know so you don’t make the same mistakes. If that list is too long start with just one: The Leader’s Handbook.

What should a manager do? Eliminate the de-motivators. Provide coaching (building the capacity or employees and the organization). And manage a system to allow people to take pride in what they do. Holding pizza parties, pep talks, displaying posters and annual performance reviews are not what is needed. But those actions are really easy so that is what some people do – instead of what is needed. How sad.

via: Motivation, Demotivation, and Constructive Conflict

Related: People are Our Most Important Asset – The Joy of Work 🙂 – Motivating Employees. For those that like their learning short and sweet, see this motivational poster.

Posted in Deming, Management, Psychology, Respect | 7 Comments

Six Sigma in Software Development

Posted on August 13, 2007 by John Hunter

Six Sigma makes inroads in software development organizations

“A lot of big companies are developing their own software engineering variance of Six Sigma training,” said Siviy, “putting software-specific examples into the normal Six Sigma curriculum.” However, she said, it’s early in the adoption curve. “In the software world there is a real lack of case studies that show applications of Six Sigma in software engineering,” she said. And those that use Six Sigma in software are often reluctant to share examples because they consider it a competitive advantage.

Still, Siviy said, “At a lot of software conferences now you see a sprinkling of presentations that somehow touch on Six Sigma or Lean, and the quality and depth of questions have evolved tremendously. In general, and not just in Six Sigma, as the [software] industry matures you see a wave of interest in measurement and analytical techniques.”

McKesson is a prime example. “Measurement is key,” Childers said. “What you can’t or don’t measure, you don’t know.”

A couple points. First, you can know what you don’t measure. Do you know your parents? Do you measure them? Manage what you can’t measure.

The Software Engineering Institute at Carnegie Mellon University has great materials. There is a danger in using those materials to become overly bureaucratic but the material was developed out of an excellent understanding of quality management (way back when that was the way this stuff was referred to). David Anderson provides some good insights, see: Stretching Agile to fit CMMI Level 3

Design of experiments is very suited to testing software: Planning Efficient Software Tests – Design Of Experiment For Software Testing.

six sigma does seem to foster a lack of sharing; which is a shame.

Related: six sigma articles and links – six sigma posts – software development posts – design of experiments articles

Posted in Design of Experiments, IT, Management, Six sigma, Software Development | Comments Off on Six Sigma in Software Development

Corporate Blogging

Posted on August 10, 2007 by John Hunter

Good article on the topic of company blogs and the new thinking needed to manage given the new communication system created by the internet, blogs etc.: Company bloggers can help put out fires [broken link has been removed]:

“Our legal people and others were e-mailing and calling and asking me: ‘What are you doing? This is bad. You can’t do that,’ ” Menchaca says of his post on the Direct2Dell blog last August. “But I said: ‘This is what blogs are about. Everything has changed. We have to be transparent and honest. People are talking about this, they’re posting these images, we can’t ignore it. We have to deal with it directly.’ ” With the backing of founder Michael Dell, Menchaca weathered the internal storm and, as it turned out, won accolades not just from Dell customers, but from the business community over how the company managed to stickhandle around a disastrous public relations event.

As I have mentioned before, Dell really has made some good moves in this area. Sun CEO, Jonathan Schwartz, on using blogs to communicate:

Communication is central to leadership – using words, written or spoken, to articulate strategy, guide organizations, engage in dialogue, and … lead. Leading two or 200,000, you can’t do it without communicating. Using technology just leaves more time for everything else.”

Related: Dell, Reddit and Customer Focus – Your Online Presence – Blogging is Good for You

Posted in Creativity, Innovation, IT, Management | 4 Comments

Great Marissa Mayer Webcast on Google Innovation

Posted on August 9, 2007 by John Hunter

Marissa Mayer speech at Stanford on innovation at Google (23 minutes, 26 minutes question and answers). She leads the product management efforts on Google’s search products- web search, images, groups, news, Froogle, the Google Toolbar, Google Desktop, Google Labs, and more. She joined Google in 1999 as Google’s first female engineer. Excellent speech. Highly recommended. 9 ideas:

(inside these are Marissa’s comments) [inside these are my comments]

  1. Ideas come from anywhere (engineers, customers, managers, executives, external companies – that Google acquires)
  2. Share everything you can (very open culture)
  3. You’re Brilliant. We’re Hiring [Google Hiring]
  4. A license to pursue dreams (Google 20% time)
  5. Innovation not instant perfection (iteration – experiment quickly and often)
  6. Data is apolitical [Data Based Decision Making – this is true but as an operating principle requires people that really understand data. See: Data can’t lie.
  7. Creativity loves Constraints [process improvement and innovation]
  8. Users not money [the opposite of what business school’s teach business case]
  9. Don’t kill projects morph them

Continue reading →

Posted in Google, Innovation, Management, Popular, quote, Software Development, webcast | 6 Comments

Data Can’t Lie

Posted on August 9, 2007 by John Hunter

Many people state that data can lie. Obviously data can’t lie.

There are three kinds of lies: Lies, damn lies and statistics – Mark Twain

Many people don’t understand the difference between being manipulated because they can’t understand what the data really says and data itself “lying” (which, of course, doesn’t even make sense). The same confusion can come in when someone just draws the wrong conclusion from the data that exists (and them blames the data for “lying” instead of themselves for drawing a faulty conclusion). The data can be wrong (and the data can even be made faulty intentionally by someone). Or someone can draw the wrong conclusion from data that is correct. But in neither case is the data lying. It is also common to believe the data means something other than what it does (therefore leading to a faulty conclusion).

For a very simple example, believing if the average height for adults in the USA is 5 feet 9 inches that half the people must be taller and half the people must be shorter. You could then draw the conclusion that half the adults must be shorter than 5 feet 9 inches. But that is not what an average height means (it is basically what median means, though if you want to get technical, it doesn’t mean exactly that). You might draw the conclusion that the average height of an adult in California is 5 feet 9 inches but that is not supported by only the data that says what the height of an average adult in the country is. The same hold for drawing the conclusion that 5 feet 9 inches is the average height of a women. Now in this simple example, hopefully people can see the faulty reasoning, but such reasoning often goes on without consideration.

In a great speech by Marisa Meyer she speaks of Google makes decisions using data and that data is apolitical. One benefit of this, she says, is that Google makes decisions on what the data supports not political considerations. The belief that basing decision on what the data supports leads to better decisions can seem false for those that accept the quote about 3 types of lies (or those that see there is some weakness to this point if those supposedly basis decisions on data don’t really understand how to do so).

Continue reading →

Posted in Data, Management, Psychology | Tagged , , , | 13 Comments

Lean Dentist Podcast

Posted on August 8, 2007 by John Hunter

This podcast by Mark Graban with Dr. Sami Bahri, “The World’s First Lean Dentist” is well worth listening to. It offers a wonderful example of how to apply lean ideas (I really appreciate how obvious the focus on learning and thinking has been key to becoming a lean organization). Dr. Bahri does a great job of explaining how he learned and applied lean thinking with a big focus on one patient flow. He worked with Deming’s ideas and TQM… before, in 1993, he really focused on lean thinking in 1993.

It is easier to see this, I believe, when it is not as easy to just copy what some other organization is doing. Trying to copy is never a good idea. Learning the concepts and then applying them to your situation is what is needed. Seeing what others do can be helpful, but you must learn and then adapt the ideas to your organization – copying is not a good idea. Then practicing continuous improvement and use the PDSA improvement cycle.

Related: Going Lean in Health Care – Lean Health Care Works – PBS Documentary: Improving Hospitals – management improvement podcasts

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Workplace Management by Taiichi Ohno

Posted on August 8, 2007 by John Hunter

images of cover of Workplace Management

Workplace Management by Taiichi Ohno is an excellent management book. Taiichi Ohno is known as the father of the Toyota Production System (TPS), also called lean manufacturing. He dictated the text to the Japan Management Association (in a series of interviews in 1982), which gives the book a sense of listening to him talk about the ideas. I found the conversational tone made it very easy to read and reminiscent of Dr. Deming’s tone in many places.

Ohno focused a great deal on the faulty perceptions derived from cost accounting thinking. He discussed the importance of not letting your understanding be clouded by thinking with the accounting mindset. “If you insist on blindly calculating individual costs and waste time insisting that this is profitable of that is not profitable, you will just increase the cost of your low volume products. For this reason there are many cases in this world where companies will discontinue car models that are actually profitable, but are money losers according to their calculations. Likewise, there are cases where companies sell a lot of model that they think is profitable but in fact are only increasing their loses.” page 32

Another area covered in the book is the whole concept of one piece flow (with quick changeovers of equipment, just in time, small lot production…). This is one of the true innovations within the Toyota Production System. I don’t think this book alone can convey how it works and why it is important but this book does a good job of giving another take on these ideas, from the person most responsible for making it work at Toyota.

The book is full of wonderful quotes including:

“There is a sequence for implementing automation that must be followed, even though it is hard. Automation just for its own sake is a problem.” page 81

“If you are observing every day you ought to be finding things you don’t like, and rewriting the standard immediately. Even if the document hanging here is from last month this is wrong.” page 125
Continue reading →

Posted in Books, Deming, Lean thinking, Management, Systems thinking, Toyota Production System (TPS) | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | 3 Comments