Tag Archives: curiouscat

Extrinsic Incentives Kill Creativity

Posted on September 21, 2009 by John Hunter

If you read this blog, you know I believe extrinsic motivation is a poor strategy. This TED webcast Dan Pink discusses studies showing extrinsic rewards failing. This is a great webcast, definitely worth 20 minutes of your time. “you’ve got an incentive designed to sharpen thinking and accelerate creativity and it does just the opposite. It dulls thinking and blocks creativity… This has been replicated over and over and over again for nearly 40 years. These contingent motivators, if you … Continue reading →

Posted in Creativity, Deming, Management, Performance Appraisal, Psychology, quote, Science | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , | 5 Comments

An Introduction to Deming’s Management Ideas by Peter Scholtes (webcast)

Posted on September 14, 2009 by John Hunter

An Introduction to Deming’s Management Teaching and Philosophy by Peter Scholtes – webcast from the Annual W. Edwards Deming Institute conference in Madison, Wisconsin, November 9th, 2008. My previous post on this speech: 6 Leadership Competencies. Next month, the Annual Deming Institute conference will be held at Purdue on Oct 10th, 2009. Related: Peter Scholtes’ Life – Curious Cat’s Deming on Management – The Leader’s Handbook – Performance without Appraisal

Posted in Creativity, curiouscat.com, Deming, Education, Innovation, Lean thinking, Management, Performance Appraisal, Popular, Process improvement, Psychology, quote, Respect, Science, Systems thinking, webcast | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , | 4 Comments

YouTube Uses Multivariate Experiment To Improve Sign-ups 15%

Posted on August 17, 2009 by John Hunter

Google does a great job of using statistical and engineering principles to improve. It is amazing how slow we are to adopt new ideas but because we are it provides big advantages to companies like Google that use concepts like design of experiments, experimenting quickly and often… while others don’t. Look Inside a 1,024 Recipe Multivariate Experiment A few weeks ago, we ran one of the largest multivariate experiments ever: a 1,024 recipe experiment on 100% of our US-English homepage. … Continue reading →

Posted in Customer focus, Data, Design of Experiments, Google, IT, Management, Process improvement, Quality tools, quote, Science, Software Development, Statistics | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , | 2 Comments

Leadership

Posted on April 17, 2009 by John Hunter

Leadership is the act of making others effective in achieving an aim. Leadership is not about being great yourself. Leadership does involve more than making others effective. Leaders need to know what needs to be done, and then make others effective, based on that knowledge. As Dr. Deming said about any situation: It is not enough to do your best; you must know what to do, and then do your best. Leadership is not about getting a good performance appraisal. … Continue reading →

Posted in Deming, Management, Systems thinking | Tagged , , , , | 4 Comments

NUMMI, and GM’s Failure to Manage Effectively

Posted on February 25, 2009 by John Hunter

Gipsie Ranney recently sent me an article on her thoughts on NUMMI and the current problems with the Big Three car makers to post to the Curious Cat Management Improvement Library. NUMMI is the plant that Toyota and General Motors run together as a joint venture. The article is excellent. The answer to a question asked by someone else on the tour was stunning to me. The person asked what kind of computerized inventory system they had at NUMMI. The … Continue reading →

Posted in Deming, Lean thinking, Management, Management Articles, Manufacturing, quote, Respect, Systems thinking, Toyota Production System (TPS) | Tagged , , , , , , , , | 2 Comments

Helping Employees Improve

Posted on February 12, 2009 by John Hunter

One aspect of managing people is to provide positive feedback and show appreciation. Doing so is important. People benefit from encouragement and reinforcement. In addition to just telling them, take action to show your appreciation. The Dilbert workplace is alive and well. And even in above average management systems there is plenty of resistance faced by those looking to improve systems. For those employees that are making the attempt to improve the organization go beyond saying thanks: actually demonstrate your … Continue reading →

Posted in Deming, Fun, Management Articles, Popular, Respect, Software Development, Statistics, Toyota Production System (TPS) | Tagged , , , , , , | 2 Comments

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 , , , , , , , , , ,

Information Technology and Business Process Support

Posted on December 3, 2008 by John Hunter

I moved from management improvement work into information technology work (where I continue to practice management improvement). Many IT practices follow quality management guidelines well (agile software development for one). I have found it far easier to design and provide software solutions than convince people to change their processes directly. I found it funny that as I delivered new IT solutions, in which was embedded a redesign of the process, those changes were often accepted without any significant debate. But … Continue reading →

Posted in IT, Management, Process improvement, Quality tools, quote, Software Development, Systems thinking | Tagged , , , , , , , | 6 Comments

Eric Schmidt on Management at Google

Posted on November 24, 2008 by John Hunter

Eric Schmidt speaks at the Management Lab Summit on May 29, 2008 in Half Moon Bay, California. Conversation with Professor Gary Hamel. “The culture can be thought of as a ship and iterate culture with transparency for what people are doing. And that model scales pretty well.” “I have two jobs, two roles. The first is to make sure every issue that is important is really debated to find, not the common outcome, but the best decision… second thing is … Continue reading →

Posted in Career, Creativity, Google, Management, Popular, Software Development, webcast | Tagged , , , , , , | 5 Comments

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

Righter Incentivization

Posted on November 5, 2008 by John Hunter

Incentive schemes to get people “motivated” often backfire. Why can’t we figure out how to incentivize the behavior we desire and have it not backfire on us? What is the righter way to dangle incentives in front of our employees to get them to do what we want? Well aiming at that is a bad strategy. Using extrinsic motivation less badly is possible but the correct answer is just don’t do it. The problems of individual incentives seem to far … Continue reading →

Posted in Deming, Management, Psychology, quote, Respect, Systems thinking | Tagged , , , , , , | 7 Comments

Global Manufacturing Data 2007

Posted on October 30, 2008 by John Hunter

The updated data from the United Nations on manufacturing output by country clearly shows the USA remains by far the largest manufacturer in the world. UN Data, in billions of current US dollars: Country 1990 1995 2000 2005 2006 2007 USA 1,041 1,289 1,543 1,663 1,700 1,831 China 143 299 484 734 891 1,106 Japan 804 1,209 1.034 954 934 926 Germany 438 517 392 566 595 670 Russian Federation 211 104 73 222 281 362 Italy 240 226 206 … Continue reading →

Posted in Data, Economics, India, Manufacturing, quote | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , | 1 Comment

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