Tag Archives: commentary

Federal Government Chief Performance Officer

Posted on January 15, 2009 by John Hunter

A Quality Manager for Obama President-Elect Obama has hired a quality manager, and her name is Nancy Killefer. She is the newly appointed “Chief Performance Officer” whose mandate is to manage budget reforms while eliminating waste in government processes, ultimately making it more effective. An MIT & McKinsey alum, Time calls her the “first official waste watchdog.” Previous administrations have had exactly the same thing (regardless what Time magazine says), so I don’t think we should get carried away. Eliminating … Continue reading →

Posted in Management, Public Sector | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | 1 Comment

What to Wear to an Interview

Posted on January 3, 2009 by John Hunter

Response to What to Wear for an IT Job Interview?. Is this just a huge bit stereotypical? Who can blame them for not wanting to bother with their wardrobes? Fashion is fickle. Fashion is expensive. Fashion requires imagination and inspiration, and let’s face it, after a long day spent debugging code or trouble-shooting computer problems, there’s not a lot of creativity left for clothing. But if there’s one professional occasion when a tech worker should think fashion first, it’s the … Continue reading →

Posted in Career, IT, Psychology, Software Development | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , | 6 Comments

Managing Passionate Employees

Posted on December 22, 2008 by John Hunter

Passion vs. Productive There are actually few organizations that can support passionate employees – even if they say they want them. That’s because the original industrial revolution was designed to support productivity. Productivity means you produce. That’s how you’re measured. Passion is difficult to quantify … Managers want passionate employees, but don’t always know how to manage them. Passionate employees question things, probe and push. Who’s got the time to deal with that? Productive employees get things done. No questions … Continue reading →

Posted in Creativity, Management, Psychology, quote, Respect, Systems thinking | Tagged , , , , , , , , , ,

Big Failed Three, Meet the Successful Eight

Posted on December 15, 2008 by John Hunter

Big Three, Meet the “Little Eight” The 1,300-acre plant, in which Toyota has invested $5.3 billion, produces a car roughly every minute. Georgetown’s population has doubled. In fields where farmers once grew tobacco and raised cattle, McMansions, apartment complexes, and condominiums have sprouted. A 150,000-square-foot upscale retail center is rising near the Toyota plant, the better to serve its 7,000 employees. … In San Antonio, the Toyota Tundra plant lay idle for three months this fall, though Toyota hasn’t laid … Continue reading →

Posted in Economics, Manufacturing | Tagged , , , , , | 1 Comment

Invest in New Management Methods Not a Failing Company, 1986

Posted on November 22, 2008 by John Hunter

Invest in New Management Methods Not a Failing Company by William Hunter, 1986 I predict American Motors will stop making cars in Wisconsin in the near future, whether or not the state’s money is used for a temporary propping-up operation. These competitors are beginning to understand how essential it is to take a long-term view of their businesses. Toyota, for example, took its top 40 managers on a two-day retreat to ponder what their corporation will look like in the … Continue reading →

Posted in Management | Tagged , , , , , , , , ,

Tilting at Ludicrous CEO Pay 2008

Posted on November 10, 2008 by John Hunter

I continue to tilt at the robber barron CEO pay packages (2007 post on CEO pay abuses). 2007 pay rank Company CEO Pay 5 Year Pay CEO % of 2007 Earnings 1 Apple Steve Jobs $646,600,000 $650,170,000 18.5% 2 Occidental Petroleum Ray Irani $321,640,000 $509,530,000 5.9% 3 IAC Barry Diller $295,140,000 $512,270,000 Company Lost Money 4 Fidelity National Financial William Folley $179,560,000 NA 138.4% 5 Yahoo! Terry Semel $174,200,000 $432,490,000 26.4% 7 Countrywide Financial Angelo Mozilo $141,980,000 $295,730,000 Company Lost … Continue reading →

Posted in Data, Economics, Management, Respect, Systems thinking | Tagged , , , , , , , | 5 Comments

Appropriate Management

Posted on October 25, 2008 by John Hunter

Thinking about why appropriate technology is so effective, but underutilized (though things are much better now than they were several decades ago) can help anyone improve the solutions they adopt. I would especially encourage people to stop looking for the newest management book and actually read and adopt and re-read adopt… the excellent management books from the last 50 years Continue reading →

Posted in Books, Innovation, Management, Psychology | Tagged , , , , , | 4 Comments

CEOs Plundering Corporate Coffers

Posted on October 22, 2008 by John Hunter

Pointy haired bosses broke the code they provided on their site for embedding a Dilbert comic, so I removed the broken code. Dogbert: “I am stepping down as CEO so I can spend more time with the money I stole from this hellhole.” Unfortunately we still have far too few people that see the obscene behavior of CEOs and their brooks brother bureaucrats as unacceptable. The behavior of many of them has been similar to that of dictators looting the … Continue reading →

Posted in Management, Respect, Systems thinking | Tagged , , , , | 17 Comments

Flaws in Understanding Psychology Lead to Flawed Management

Posted on October 21, 2008 by John Hunter

I people are self interested and somewhat rational. However, self interest, is complex. People want to be liked, people want to be part of something good, people want to feel they are appreciated… Continue reading →

Posted in Management, Psychology, Respect | Tagged , , , , , , | 5 Comments

Six Sigma v. Common Sense

Posted on October 20, 2008 by John Hunter

Response to LinkedIn question [the broken link was removed]: “Whether Six Sigma as a quality tool really delivers the benefits ? How does it makes difference from a common sense approach ? (Where the process wastes and the required solution is known / can be easily identified just by applying common sense)” Six sigma (or another management improvement method) can help in several ways. First, lots of things that are sensible are not done. A method to assure that more … Continue reading →

Posted in Management, Quality tools, quote, Six sigma | Tagged , , , , , , | 2 Comments

Motivate or Eliminate De-Motivation

Posted on October 7, 2008 by John Hunter

A huge failure I still see is managers thinking in a theory x way, 50 years after McGregor’s The Human Side of Enterprise. Continue reading →

Posted in Deming, Management, Psychology, Respect | Tagged , , , , , , , | 5 Comments

Agile PDSA

Posted on September 16, 2008 by John Hunter

Dr. Deming encouraged the use of the Plan-Do-Study-Act cycle to improve. Agile Management encourages a similar mindset – to test out ideas in practice and adapt quickly. A key to both strategies is to quickly iterate over possible solutions. Tesco provides an example of this strategy: This was our first opening since we took our 12 week pause, after we had opened 61 stores at breakneck speed. We used that time to reflect on what customers had told us they … Continue reading →

Posted in Creativity, Deming, Management, Process improvement, quote | Tagged , , , , , , , ,

Our Failed Health-care System

Posted on September 10, 2008 by John Hunter

The bad idea behind our failed health-care system by Malcolm Gladwell One of the great mysteries of political life in the United States is why Americans are so devoted to their health-care system. … Americans spend $5,267 per capita on health care every year, almost two and half times the industrialized world’s median of $2,193; the extra spending comes to hundreds of billions of dollars a year. What does that extra spending buy us? Americans have fewer doctors per capita … Continue reading →

Posted in Deming, Economics, Health care | Tagged , , , | 1 Comment

New Management Truths Sometimes Started as Heresies

Posted on September 7, 2008 by John Hunter

‘New’ management truths sometimes started as heresies by Cecil Johnson “The most effective management ideas follow a life cycle — from heresy to outlier (championed by a small group of people) to ingrained practice to conventional wisdom,” Kleiner writes. “In the process, if they are genuinely powerful management ideas, they distinguish the organizations that adopt them.” One of the management heresies focused upon by Kleiner that has morphed into accepted management wisdom of the highest order is the Toyota Production … Continue reading →

Posted in Deming, Management, Management Articles, quote, Toyota Production System (TPS) | Tagged , , , , , | 1 Comment

Keeping Good Employees

Posted on July 24, 2008 by John Hunter

Understanding Why Good Workers Quit [the broken link was removed] “What do you need to want to stay?” Most managers, she acknowledges, are afraid to ask this question and that is a reason why their companies have to do plenty of exit interviews. When stay interviews are part of the culture—and this is a practice in very few companies—attrition of the people you don’t want to lose plummets. “Ask them directly: What can we do to keep you?,” urges Kaye. … Continue reading →

Posted in Career, IT, Management, quote, Respect | Tagged , , , | 3 Comments

Businesses Tell the IRS They Are Not American but Executives Stay in USA

Posted on June 4, 2008 by John Hunter

I have previously written about the ethically challenged companies that claim they are not American to avoid paying the taxes that they owe. For some reason the executives, often seem to stay in the USA though? It is sad that such behavior is tolerated. 10 Big Businesses That Have Moved Their Headquarters Abroad to Pay Less U.S. Taxes [the broken link was removed] Halliburton: Houston-based Halliburton, which offers a broad array of oil-field technologies and services to upstream oil and … Continue reading →

Posted in Economics | Tagged , , , , | 3 Comments