Tag Archives: internet

New JohnHunter.com Website

Posted on June 28, 2017 by John Hunter

I have created a new web site for my personal site. I hope you like it. The home page now shows selected blog posts I have written about management, as well as on other topics: investing, software development, travel, software testing, engineering, personal finance etc.. The site allows you to subscribe to an RSS feed of my posts. The new site makes it easy to find the pages you desire via a drop down menu or using the search option. … Continue reading →

Posted in curiouscat.com | Tagged , | 3 Comments

Functional Websites are Normally Far Superior to Apps

Posted on April 23, 2016 by John Hunter

An email to I just sent to Uber I understand the regular Uber app not having a functional website. Uber Eats not having a functional website is super lame. It strikes me similar to Walmart 15 years ago telling people “we only have stores go to them, we just use the internet for advertising our stores.” Today for Uber: we only have apps, “we only use the web for advertising our apps.” Both you and Walmart want to use a … Continue reading →

Posted in Customer focus, Innovation, IT, Software Development | Tagged , , , , , | 1 Comment

Most Popular Links on Management Sub-Reddit in 2015

Posted on December 15, 2015 by John Hunter

I created the management sub-reddit many years ago. The management sub-reddit provides links to worthwhile management content and the members indicate those links they liked. Here is a list of the most popular links added in the last year. People Don’t Fail, Processes Do by Terry Smith on The Lean Post The common objection to seniority pay is, “It’s rewarding dead wood!” My response is, “Why do you hire dead wood? Or why do you hire live wood and kill … Continue reading →

Posted in Management | Tagged , | 1 Comment

Getting Retweeted by Marc Andreessen Generated a Flood of Retweets

Posted on November 9, 2015 by John Hunter

On Twitter today I was getting more than 30 times the notifications I normally get. So I took a look to see what is going on. One of my tweets was getting retweeted and liked quite a lot (nearly 100 times each, so far). I figure most likely someone with many more followers than I must have retweeted it. A bit more investigation and sure enough that is what happened. Marc Andreessen had retweeted it. He has 432,000 followers (a … Continue reading →

Posted in Innovation, Science | Tagged , , ,

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

Hire Me to Manage Your Blog or Web Presence

Posted on March 2, 2015 by John Hunter

I would like to add a client for my blog and web presence management services. The most obvious fit is for management consultants, in my opinion, though others may also be interested. My blogs have been honored often over the years. As part of managing a blog on management improvement I can also write posts for the blog. If you wish I can create and host a new blog and/or website. If you are interested in learning more please contact … Continue reading →

Posted in curiouscat.com | Tagged , ,

Out of Touch Executives Damage Companies: Go to the Gemba

Posted on August 20, 2014 by John Hunter

When your customer service organization is universally recognized as horrible adding sales requirements to customer service representatives jobs is a really bad practice. Sadly it isn’t at all surprising to learn of management doing just that at our largest companies. Within a system where cash and corruption buys freedom from market forces (see below for more details) such practices can continue. Such customer hostile practices shouldn’t continue. They shouldn’t be allowed to continue. And even though the company’s cash has … Continue reading →

Posted in Customer focus, Data, Management, Psychology, Systems thinking | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Use Urls – Don’t Use Click x, Then Click y, Then Click z Instructions

Posted on August 14, 2014 by John Hunter

In the 1980s software applications had to use click x, then click y, then click z type instructions to get you to a specific location in a software application (or at least they had a decent excuse to do that). Too many web application development organizations forget that they now have urls to direct people exactly where to go: and that they shouldn’t rely on ancient “click here, then there, then in that other place” type instructions. Here is an … Continue reading →

Posted in Customer focus, Software Development | Tagged , , , , , | 2 Comments

Your Online Presence and Social Networks for Managers

Posted on July 17, 2013 by John Hunter

This month Paul Borawski asked ASQ’s Influential Voices which

Posted in Career | Tagged , , , , , , | 1 Comment

Process Thinking: Process Email Addresses

Posted on October 18, 2012 by John Hunter

This is just a simple tip. When providing email address think about what the purpose is. If it is to contact a specific person then an individual’s email address makes sense. But if you are really emailing the software testing manager then it may well make sense to provide people the email address software_testing_manager@ Essentially, I think it is often sensible to break out email addresses for specific functions or processes. Then the email address can just be routed to … Continue reading →

Posted in IT, Process improvement | Tagged , , , | 1 Comment

Engineering Management Thoughts Based on Facebook Experience

Posted on March 8, 2012 by John Hunter

Yishan Wong is the new CEO at Reddit, an excellent social media site I have written about previously. In looking at his background I found some interesting articles he wrote on engineering management based on his experience at Facebook engineering. He starts with “make hiring your number one priority, always.” To me this is a specific knowledge worker issue. Hiring is always important but the importance in knowledge worker settings (especially when there is quite a bit of poaching good … Continue reading →

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

Innovation in Thinking and the Web

Posted on March 29, 2011 by John Hunter

Investing time and effort to attract “the right kind” of contributors to a news site He thought we needed to make the same shift with our users – instead of seeing having to engage with them digitally as a time-consuming and resource eating problem, we should be seeing our audience as an asset to the brand. Any online organisation that doesn’t include readers in the production chain is inherently inefficient. I agree. And I think this is a good example … Continue reading →

Posted in Customer focus, Deming, IT, Management, Process improvement | Tagged , , , ,

Customer Focus and Internet Travel Search

Posted on March 24, 2011 by John Hunter

The internet should make finding airline flight information easy. Instead it is a huge pain. Hipmunk has taken on the challenge of doing this well, and I think they have done a great job. This video provides an excellent view of both web usability and customer focus. This is a great example of focusing on providing customer value and using technology to make things easy – which is done far to little at most companies. Related: Innovation Example (Farecast – … Continue reading →

Posted in Creativity, Customer focus, Innovation, IT, Management, Process improvement | Tagged , , , , , , , | 4 Comments

Net Neutrality, Policy, Economics and Intelligent Engineering

Posted on April 13, 2010 by John Hunter

I believe net neutrality should be championed to prevent decay of the usability of the internet. It seems to me internet connectivity is a natural monopoly that economic theory says should be a regulated monopoly. Smart countries have invested in providing much better internet connectivity that the USA has at much lower prices. Now in the USA we have companies that seek to control internet connectivity and then use that monopolistic control to favor higher margin efforts. So force those … Continue reading →

Posted in Economics, Google, Innovation, IT | Tagged , , , , , | 3 Comments

Workers Allowed Recreational Use of the Internet are More Productive

Posted on August 30, 2009 by John Hunter

Freedom to surf: workers more productive if allowed to use the internet for leisure “People who do surf the Internet for fun at work – within a reasonable limit of less than 20% of their total time in the office – are more productive by about 9% than those who don’t,” … According to the study of 300 workers, 70% of people who use the Internet at work engage in WILB. Among the most popular Workplace Internet Leisure Browsing (WILB) … Continue reading →

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