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Tag Archives: John Hunter
Peter Scholtes
Peter Scholtes died peacefully this morning [11 July 2009] in Madison, Wisconsin. His family was with him. My father wrote about the First Street Garage project in W. Edwards Deming’s Out of the Crisis (pages 245-247). Peter (who was working for the City of Madison at the time) and he became good friends working on that project together. Peter went to work for Joiner Associates afterwards and was a primary author of the Team Handbook. And Peter spent many years … Continue reading
Posted in Deming, Management, quote, Systems thinking
Tagged Bill Hunter, Deming, John Hunter, Madison, management, Peter Scholtes
34 Comments
Leadership
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 curiouscat, John Hunter, leadership, management, Systems thinking
4 Comments
How We Know What We Know
Dr. W. Edwards Deming’s management philosophy is a system of management composed of four interdependent areas: knowledge about variation, understanding psychology, systems thinking and the theory of knowledge. The theory of knowledge is the least understood, and the least adopted in the various other management improvement theories (lean manufacturing, six sigma, theory of constraints…). A recent op-ed in the New York Times touches on the ideas behind how we learn: Learning How to Think The actor was introduced as “Dr. … Continue reading
Posted in Deming, Management, Psychology, quote
Tagged Deming, John Hunter, management, Psychology, quote, theory of knowledge
8 Comments
Out of the Crisis Seminar
I will be co-presenting an Out of the Crisis seminar for the W. Edwards Deming Institute next month, April 20-22, in Philadelphia. Companies around the world are on the brink of destruction. When they get bailed out, or economies improve, they won’t survive if they continue to make products and provide services the same way as before, with the same style of management. They need to change. It was the ideas of an American, W. Edwards Deming, that transformed Japanese … Continue reading
Posted in Career, Deming, Management
Tagged Deming, Education, John Hunter, management, seminar
1 Comment
Management Blog Posts From December 2005
One of my long time campaigns is to raise awareness of the huge problems caused by massively excessive executive pay. As I said in my December 2005 post: The executive pay excesses are so great now they will force companies to choose to: take huge risks to justify such pay and then go bankrupt when such risks fail (and some will succeed making it appear that the pay was deserved rather than just the random chance of taking a large … Continue reading
Posted in Management, Management Articles
Tagged blogs, John Hunter, overpaid executives
Mount Timpanogos Trail, Utah Photos
In 2007, I kept failing to plan for a vacation, finally I just booked some tickets to Utah without much of a plan. And still had done little to plan as I departed. So I bought some travel books and started on the trip while I was figuring out where I should go. I did know Utah offers amazing hiking options and I found many great hikes that made for a great trip. The first day of the trip began … Continue reading
Posted in Travel photos
Tagged John Hunter, photos, Travel photos
Federal Government Chief Performance Officer
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 change, commentary, curiouscat, Deming, government, John Hunter, management, Public Sector, quality, quote
1 Comment
What to Wear to an Interview
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 Career, commentary, curiouscat, hiring, jobs, Joel Spolsky, John Hunter, productivity, programming, Software Development, tips
6 Comments
Managing Passionate Employees
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 commentary, curiouscat, John Hunter, management, managers, productivity, Psychology, quote, respect for people, Systems thinking, tips
Online Management Resources
Since long before I started this blog I have maintained the Curious Cat Management Improvement web site. In fact, that web site has been online since 1996; the blog started in 2004. I feel the web site has tremendous resources for managers looking to improve the performance of their organization (or course I am a bit biased). The Curious Cat Management Improvement library includes hundreds articles, reports, training guides, blog posts… that I have selected. It is a great resource, … Continue reading
Posted in curiouscat.com, Management
Tagged Curious Cat Links, Deming, John Hunter, lean manufacturing, management, Management Articles, management history, quote, Six sigma
Information Technology and Business Process Support
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
6 Leadership Competencies
At the recent Annual W. Edwards Deming Institute Annual conference (this year held in Madison, Wisconsin) Peter Scholtes gave an excellent speech on the 6 Leadership Competencies from his book: The Leader’s Handbook. Those competencies are: The ability to think in terms of systems, and knowing how to lead systems. The ability to understand the variability of work in planning an problem solving Understanding how we learn, develop and improve. Leading true learning and improvement. Understanding people and why they … Continue reading
Posted in Deming, Management, Psychology, Systems thinking
Tagged Deming, John Hunter, Madison, Peter Scholtes, quote, tips, variation
8 Comments
Righter Incentivization
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 curiouscat, Deming, Douglas McGregor, extrinsic motivation, John Hunter, motivation, quote
7 Comments
Flaws in Understanding Psychology Lead to Flawed Management
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 commentary, curiouscat, Deming, John Hunter, Psychology, quote, respect for people
5 Comments
Six Sigma v. Common Sense
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 commentary, curiouscat, John Hunter, Quality tools, quote, Six sigma, Systems thinking
2 Comments
Community Banks Ask Why They Must Pay for Wall Street Greed
Minnesota Bank Asks Why It Pays for Wall Street Greed TCF is among more than 8,300 banks and lenders insured by the FDIC facing increased fees and a one-time “emergency” charge designed to raise $27 billion this year for the agency’s depleted coffers. … Community banks rely more on deposit funding, so they suffer a “much heavier burden” as a result of deposit insurance proportionate to size than peers such as New York-based Citigroup Inc. and Wells Fargo & Co., … Continue reading →