Tag Archives: critical thinking

Learning from Customers

Posted on March 2, 2021 by John Hunter

Don’t make it hard for customers to be heard. Provide training and tools to employees to document customers voices. Train employees to learn as much as possible from customers. Value the time employees spend listening to customers and learning from them. Most customers won’t speak up, those that do speak up provide valuable insight. Don’t waste what they offer. Create a management system focused on continual improvement that is engaged in seeking out customer feedback and continually improving the value … Continue reading →

Posted in Customer focus, Management | Tagged critical thinking, culture, Customer focus, customer service, Data, feedback, learning | 1 Comment

Factfulness – The Importance of Critical Thinking

Posted on June 4, 2019 by John Hunter

Factfulness by Hans Roling (of TED talks and Gapminder charts fame) is an exceptionally good book. It provides great insight into how to think more effectively and how to understand the reality of the world we live in (versus the large distortions so common in most people’s view of the world). Today the people living in rich countries around the North Atlantic, who represent 11 percent of the world population, make up 60 percent of the Level 4* consumer market. … Continue reading →

Posted in Books, Data, Systems thinking | Tagged critical thinking, curiouscat, Data, long term thinking, Psychology, Systems thinking | 1 Comment

Design the Management System with an Appreciation of Confirmation Bias

Posted on February 26, 2019 by John Hunter

To create strong organizations we must create management systems using an appreciation of psychology. We must understand that people have tendencies that must be addressed by designing a management system built to take advantage of the strength those people bring and mitigate the risks the weaknesses (such as confirmation bias) that those people also bring. One way to do this is to seek out voices in your organization that question and challenge accepted positions. Often organizations promote those that make … Continue reading →

Posted in Management, Psychology | Tagged critical thinking, culture, management, managing people, organization as a system, Psychology, respect for people, robust | 1 Comment

Poorly Stratified Data Leads to Mistakes in Analysis

Posted on April 18, 2018 by John Hunter

Stratification can help provide insight into the nature of the real world situation. Determining what is a sensible conclusion to draw and what is not is aided by an understanding of statistics and expert knowledge of the situation the data is drawn from. Continue reading →

Posted in Data, Management, Statistics, Systems thinking | Tagged critical thinking, curiouscat, Data, evidence based management, management, Statistics | 2 Comments

The Importance of Critical Thinking and Challenging Assumptions

Posted on July 12, 2017 by John Hunter

There are many factors that are important to effectively practice the management improvement ideas that I have discussed in this blog for over a decade. One of the most important is a culture that encourages critical thinking as well as challenging claims, decisions and assumptions. I discussed this idea some in: Customers Are Often Irrational. There is a difference between saying people wish to have their desires met and people act in the manner to maximize the benefits they wish … Continue reading →

Posted in Data, Management, Process improvement, Psychology | Tagged change, critical thinking, culture, curiouscat, Data, decision making, evidence based management, problem solving, Psychology, theory of knowledge | 4 Comments

Manage Better by Managing Less

Posted on September 5, 2012 by John Hunter

Matt May included “Silhouettes” from selected authors in his new book: The Laws of Subtraction (shipping October 26th). I am honored to be included: the following my silhouette. Early in my career, I had a supervisor ask me why I wasn’t working. I was at from my desk – not reading, not typing on my keyboard, not talking on the phone, not in a meeting, staring off into space, apparently just wasting time. I explained that I was thinking. The … Continue reading →

Posted in Management | Tagged critical thinking, John Hunter, management, Systems thinking | 5 Comments

Customers Are Often Irrational

Posted on May 31, 2012 by John Hunter

Penney Pinching “The first rule is that there are no irrational customers,” Drucker wrote in Management: Tasks, Responsibilities, Practices. “Customers almost without exception behave rationally in terms of their own realities and their own situation.” “in terms of their own realities and their own situation.” is a huge caveat. Essentially plenty of customers behave irrationally – by any sensible definition of rational. I agree, to make them customers and keep them as customers you need to develop theories that can … Continue reading →

Posted in Psychology | Tagged critical thinking, Customer focus, decision making, Drucker, evidence based management, marketing, Psychology, Systems thinking | 6 Comments

Stratification and Systemic Thinking

Posted on January 6, 2008 by John Hunter

I am reading a fascinating book by Jessica Snyder Sachs: Good Germs, Bad Germs. From page 108: At New York Hospital, Eichenwald and infectious disease specialist Henry Shinefield conceived and developed a controversial program that entailed deliberately inoculating a newborn’s nostrils and umbilical stump with a comparatively harmless strain of staph before 80/81 could move in. Shinefield had found the protective strain – dubbed 502A – in the nostrils of a New York Hospital baby nurse. Like a benign Typhoid … Continue reading →

Posted in Creativity, Data, Deming, Health care, Innovation, Management, Quality tools, Science, Statistics, Systems thinking | Tagged critical thinking, Data, evidence based management, Health care, Science, Statistics, Systems thinking | 2 Comments

Errors in Thinking

Posted on March 19, 2007 by John Hunter

The Doctor’s In, But Is He Listening?, text and podcast from NPR: Jerome Groopman (photo) is a doctor who discovered that he needed a doctor. When his hand was hurt, he went to six prominent surgeons and got four different opinions about what was wrong. Groopman was advised to have unnecessary surgery and got a seemingly made-up diagnosis for a nonexistent condition. Groopman, who holds a chair in medicine at Harvard Medical School, eventually found a doctor who helped… “Usually … Continue reading →

Posted in Health care, Management, webcast | Tagged critical thinking, Health care, theory of knowledge

All Models Are Wrong But Some Are Useful

Posted on March 4, 2007 by John Hunter

“All Models Are Wrong But Some Are Useful” -George Box A great quote. Here is the source: George E.P. Box, Robustness in the strategy of scientific model building, page 202 of Robustness in Statistics, R.L. Launer and G.N. Wilkinson, Editors. 1979. See more quotes by George Box. Related: Dangers of Forgetting the Proxy Nature of Data – articles by George Box – Quotes by Dr. W. Edwards Deming

Posted in Fun, quote | Tagged critical thinking, experiments, George Box, prediction, quote, Statistics | 6 Comments

Making Better Decisions

Posted on January 9, 2007 by John Hunter

Comment on: When Times Are Tough, Do You Make Better Decisions? [the broken link was removed] When times are tough you are more likely to do something – take some action, make some decision. When times are good, many are content to let things go: not make any tough decisions or any that might upset someone… When in a bind it is accepted that something has to be done, so you can often get past the “we are doing ok, … Continue reading →

Posted in Management, Process improvement, Psychology | Tagged critical thinking, Process improvement | 1 Comment

The Illusion of Understanding

Posted on November 25, 2006 by John Hunter

The “Illusion of Explanatory Depth”: How Much Do We Know About What We Know? (broken link 🙁 was removed) is an interesting post that touches on psychology and theory of knowledge. Often (more often than I’d like to admit), my son… will ask me a question about how something works, or why something happens the way it does, and I’ll begin to answer, initially confident in my knowledge, only to discover that I’m entirely clueless. I’m then embarrassed by my … Continue reading →

Posted in Deming, Management, Psychology | Tagged critical thinking, Psychology, theory of knowledge | 6 Comments

Distort the System

Posted on August 19, 2006 by John Hunter

From our post: Targets Distorting the System, Dr. Brian Joiner: spoke of 3 ways to improve the figures: distort the data, distort the system and improve the system. Improving the system is the most difficult. Another example of this in practice: Recount helps one university rise in the rankings [the broken link was removed]: Behnke, who says he’s no fan of rankings, said he recently spoke to a provost at another institution who was capping class sizes at 19 to … Continue reading →

Posted in Data, Deming, Management, Systems thinking | Tagged critical thinking, curiouscat, Data, management, organization as a system, Systems thinking | 6 Comments

The Customer Knows Best?

Posted on May 16, 2006 by John Hunter

The Customer Knows Best? Better Think Again by Anthony W. Ulwick It’s important to listen to customers – but not follow their words without skepticism. Ask them to design your next product and you’re likely to miss the mark, suggests this Harvard Business Review excerpt. Excellent point. Some management ideas are pretty easy and straight forward. But many management practices require knowledge and judgment to apply them successfully. Easy solutions may be desired, but, often you must choose between easy … Continue reading →

Posted in Customer focus, Deming, Innovation, Management, Management Articles | Tagged critical thinking, Customer focus, Data, evidence based management, organization as a system, variation

Understanding Data

Posted on May 9, 2006 by John Hunter

Statistics Abuse and Me [the broken link was removed] by Jay Mathews: the Simpson’s Paradox numbers. The national average for the SAT went up only 4 points between 1981 and 2005, but the average for whites went up 10 points, for blacks 21 points, for Asians 37 points, for Mexicans 15 points, for Puerto Ricans 23 points and for American Indians 18 points. How can that be? Is it important? First, yes it is important. Effective use of data is … Continue reading →

Posted in Data, Education, Management, Statistics | Tagged critical thinking, curiouscat, Data, management, Statistics | 9 Comments

Change is not Improvement

Posted on January 25, 2006 by John Hunter

In response to: Why executives order reorgs [the broken link was removed] We trained hard… but it seemed that every time we were beginning to form up into teams we would be reorganized. I was to learn later in life that we tend to meet any new situation by reorganizing; and a wonderful method it can be for creating the illusion of progress while producing confusion; inefficiency, and demoralization. These lines, from the Satyricon of Petronius written 2,000 years ago… … Continue reading →

Posted in Deming, Management, quote | Tagged change, continual improvement, critical thinking, Psychology, quote, teams | 5 Comments