Tag Archives: ASQ Influential Voices

Management Improvement System Flavors

Posted on September 27, 2019 by John Hunter

ASQ has asked their Influential Voices to explore the question “Is Agile the new Lean?” I have participated with the program since 2012: see my past blog posts as part of the ASQ Influential Voices program. No Agile is not the new Lean. On this blog, in 2008, I wrote about Future Directions for Agile Management: As I learned about agile software development, what I saw was a great implementation of management improvement practices focused on software development that was … Continue reading →

Posted in Lean thinking, Management | Tagged , , , | 4 Comments

How to Successfully Lead Change Efforts

Posted on June 24, 2019 by John Hunter

ASQ has asked their Influential Voices to explore the question “How can an individual become a successful Change Leader?” I have participated with the program since 2012: see my past blog posts as part of the ASQ Influential Voices program. In order to lead efforts to improve the management of an organization understanding how people will react to change is critical. For that reason I have written about change management often on this blog since I started publishing it in … Continue reading →

Posted in Management, Psychology | Tagged , , , | 2 Comments

Effective Change Management Strategies and Tactics

Posted on September 18, 2018 by John Hunter

ASQ has asked their Influential Voices to respond to the question: What are some recommended strategies or tactics to help achieve successful change management? See my past blog posts as part of the ASQ Influential Voices program (I have participated since 2012). I have explored the idea of how to create a culture that promotes effective change management in several previous posts on the Curious Cat Management Improvement Blog. Change Management: Create a Culture Seeking Continual Improvement or Use Band-Aids? … Continue reading →

Posted in Creativity, Management, Psychology, Systems thinking | Tagged , , , , , , , | 3 Comments

Quality of the Entire Customer Experience

Posted on March 14, 2018 by John Hunter

There is a difference in the way many organizations are managed today and managing with an understanding of your organization as a system aligned toward customer focused continual improvement. The ability to create great customer experiences is much easier with a management system based on customer focused continual improvement principles than one without. Continue reading →

Posted in Customer focus, Management, Psychology | Tagged , , , , , , ,

Technological Innovation and Management

Posted on June 7, 2017 by John Hunter

Technological innovation brings great opportunity for improving results and our quality of life. But transforming potential benefits into real results comes with many challenges. ASQ has asked their Influential Voices to explore the idea of the fourth industrial revolution: “this new era is founded on the practical use of technological innovations like artificial intelligence, big data, robotics, and the Internet of Things (IoT).” For many years GMs huge investment in robotics in the 1980s ($billions) has been an example of … Continue reading →

Posted in Data, Innovation, Systems thinking | Tagged , , , , , | 2 Comments

Continually Improving Using a Focus on Delighting Customers

Posted on December 1, 2016 by John Hunter

ASQ asked the ASQ influential voices to respond to this question: What is the best way to ensure quality and customer integration grow together? When I first got involved in the quality field that name (quality) seemed to vague for me. And different people and organizations seemed to have vastly different meanings in mind for efforts they all grouped under the heading of quality. What I came up with to capture what I was interested in was customer focused continuous … Continue reading →

Posted in Customer focus, Management, Process improvement, Systems thinking | Tagged , , , , | 1 Comment

Integrating Technical and Human Management Systems

Posted on July 6, 2016 by John Hunter

ASQ has asked the Influential Voices on quality management to look at the question of integrating technical quality and human management systems. How do different systems—technical or human—work together? How should they work together? My view is that the management system must integrate these facets together. A common problem that companies face is that they bring in technical tools (such as control charts, PDSA improvement cycle, design of experiments, kanban, etc.) without an appreciation for the organization as a system. … Continue reading →

Posted in Management, Psychology, Systems thinking | Tagged , , , , , , , , | 2 Comments

Culture Change Requires That Leaders Change Their Behavior

Posted on December 28, 2015 by John Hunter

This month The ASQ Influential Voices are reacting to Luciana Paulise’s post: Facing Cultural Barriers by Leaders to Strengthen a Culture of Quality [the broken link was removed]. As Luciana stated: leaders need to change their behavior first if they want to change the entire company culture W. Edwards Deming wrote in The New Economics: The first step is transformation of the individual. This transformation is discontinuous. It comes from understanding of the system of profound knowledge. The individual, transformed, … Continue reading →

Posted in Deming, Management | Tagged , , , , | 3 Comments

Making Your Case to Senior Executives

Posted on November 24, 2015 by John Hunter

This month Dr. Suresh Gettala writes about the Talking To the C-Suite About Quality in the monthly ASQ Influential Voices post. My take is a bit different than Dr. Gettala (and most others) in that I believe CEOs are so wedded to short term financial measures that if you are speaking to them you need to both appeal to this bias while also fighting to move the organization away from being led by such a bias. That task isn’t easy, … Continue reading →

Posted in Management | Tagged , , , | 2 Comments

Teaching Students How to Use Better Management Practices

Posted on October 27, 2015 by John Hunter

This month Edwin Garro writes about the Quality and Productivity Technical Program for high school students that has been adopted in Costa Rica. 5 high schools joined in the first year and 7 more will join in the next 2 years. The ASQ Influential Voices are commenting on this idea this month. I was glad to see the point Edwin makes about the teaching critical thinking. I wrote a blog post about critical thinking perhaps being the most important catalyst … Continue reading →

Posted in Education | Tagged , ,

The Mission Statement Must Guide Action In Order To Matter

Posted on September 30, 2015 by John Hunter

Does Mission Matter? [the broken link was removed] That is the question raised this month by Pat La Londe for the ASQ Influential Voices. I have discussed a similar topic in a previous post: Vision can be a Powerful Driver but Most Often It is Just a Few Pretty Words. I believe that post captures exactly how I feel about the question “does mission matter?” It doesn’t matter if it is just words on paper that has no impact on … Continue reading →

Posted in Systems thinking | Tagged , , | 2 Comments

Using Technology to Improve The Sharing of Knowledge

Posted on August 4, 2015 by John Hunter

This month the ASQ is asking Influential Voices to discuss methods to aid in sharing knowledge. Manu Vora kicked the discussion off with his post on The Gift of Knowledge Transfer Through Technology. My career has been largely shaped by the pursuit of better ways to communicate. I grew up surrounded by those seeking to improve management (Bill Hunter, George Box, Brian Joiner, Peter Scholtes…). When I was in grade school that focus was largely on statistics and the value … Continue reading →

Posted in Management | Tagged , , , , , | 3 Comments

Applying Improvement Concepts and Tools to Your Daily Life

Posted on July 7, 2015 by John Hunter

This month the ASQ Influential Voices is taking a bit different approach. This month we are looking at applying quality tools in our personal life based on the post from other influential voice, Sunil Kaushik: How Lean Helped Me Travel To Egypt With Just $500. Sunil is on a nomadic trip around the world to learn and enjoy the experience while also helping others applying lean thinking. I just returned from my own nomadic adventure. I have experience applying quality … Continue reading →

Posted in Quality tools, Travel photos | Tagged , , , | 2 Comments

The Future of Quality is to Actually Do What People Talked About Decades Ago

Posted on June 3, 2015 by John Hunter

In the current ASQ Influential Voices post, Laurel Nelson-Rowe, ASQ managing director, asks: What’s the Future of Quality? The report they link to is hidden behind a register-wall. Hopefully in the future ASQ will have better User Experience (Ux) practices in place on the web site. But it is a good example of the failures to adopt well known, decades old recommended practices. This failure to just do what the best experts have suggested for a long time is an … Continue reading →

Posted in Management | Tagged , , | 4 Comments

The Value of Professional Conferences. Also Why Has There Been So Little Innovation?

Posted on April 28, 2015 by John Hunter

In the most recent ASQ Influential Voices post, Julia McIntosh takes a look at the costs and benefits of professionals attending conferences. I still remember being in high school and George Box talking about the primary value of conferences was talking to colleagues in the hallway. This seemed very odd to me, as it seemed that the reason for going to a conference was to learn from the talks. I also didn’t really understand the value in catching up with … Continue reading →

Posted in Career, Customer focus, Education | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | 5 Comments

Encouraging the Next Generation of STEM Professionals

Posted on March 23, 2015 by John Hunter

In the most recent ASQ Influential Voices post, Bill Troy, ASQ CEO, asks: how should we encourage the next generation of STEM Professionals? I addressed a similar question in: Future Engineers and Scientists, which provides many details on this question. The advantages of gaining science, technology, engineering and math skills (STEM) are fairly well known. However, even so, that is something to emphasize in order to encourage the next generation. While it is fairly well known it still helps to … Continue reading →

Posted in Career, Science | Tagged , , , | 2 Comments