Tag Archives: leadership

How to Lead From Any Level In the Organization

Posted on June 22, 2021 by John Hunter

By successfully helping other people get better results, whether it is your manager, peers, or subordinates, you will grow trust and influence with those around you. “You grow your influence with them by showing them that allowing you to have influence is good for them.” The more you show positive outcomes from your input, the more influence you will have over time. Continue reading →

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

How to Successfully Lead Change Efforts

Posted on June 24, 2019 by John Hunter

ASQ has asked their Influential Voices to explore the question “How can an individual become a successful Change Leader?” I have participated with the program since 2012: see my past blog posts as part of the ASQ Influential Voices program. In order to lead efforts to improve the management of an organization understanding how people will react to change is critical. For that reason I have written about change management often on this blog since I started publishing it in … Continue reading →

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

The New Age of Robots and What it Means for Jobs

Posted on January 23, 2018 by John Hunter

I believe we have reached a turning point in the usefulness and effectiveness of industrial robots. For several decades it was pretty easy to predict wholesale adoption of “the robots will save us” mantra would be followed by failure. I still strongly believe Toyota’s method (thoughtful use of robotics to enhance people is the best strategy). But the ease of using robots to succeed in the long term is much easier today than 10 years ago. Robot-first strategies are going … Continue reading →

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

20 Most Popular Posts on the Curious Cat Management Blog in 2017

Posted on January 9, 2018 by John Hunter

These posts were the most popular posts on the Curious Cat Management Improvement Blog in 2017 (as measured by page views, as recorded by my analytics application). Keys to the Effective Use of the PDSA Improvement Cycle (2012) The Toyota Way – Two Pillars (2010) Continual Improvement (2008) * How to Manage What You Can’t Measure (2010) The Purpose of an Organization (2005) 94% Belongs to the System (2013) One factor at a time (OFAT) Versus Factorial Designs (2011) Stated … Continue reading →

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Organizations as Social Systems

Posted on May 2, 2017 by John Hunter

Organizations are social systems made up of people. Social systems often amplify what happens. If good things happen, more good things often follow. When bad things happen, more bad things often follow. To improve it is wise to this into account and design elements of the management system to encourage the amplification of what is good and that seeks to stop what is bad from being amplified. Building in elements to stop the negatives from reinforcing and creating more negatives … Continue reading →

Posted in Management, Psychology, Systems thinking | Tagged , , | 2 Comments

Why Do People Fail to Adopt Better Management Methods?

Posted on February 2, 2017 by John Hunter

It is confusing to know that better methods exist but to see those better methods being ignored. It seems that if there were better ways to manage, people would adopt those methods. But this just isn’t the case; sometimes better methods will be adopted but often they won’t. People can be very attached to the way things have always been done. Or they can just be uncomfortable with the prospect of trying something new. In this post I will look … Continue reading →

Posted in Competition, Innovation, Management, Psychology | Tagged , , , , , | 5 Comments

20 Most Popular Posts on the Curious Cat Management Blog in 2016

Posted on January 3, 2017 by John Hunter

These posts were the most popular posts on the Curious Cat Management Improvement Blog in 2016 (as measured by page views, as recorded by my analytics application). Toyota Post Record Profit: Splits $15 million in Pay and Bonus for top 21 Executives (2014) Stated Versus Revealed Preference (2013) The Toyota Way – Two Pillars (2010) The Purpose of an Organization (2005) One factor at a time (OFAT) Versus Factorial Designs (2011) How to Manage What You Can’t Measure (2010)* Keys … Continue reading →

Posted in curiouscat.com, Management, Popular | Tagged , , ,

Podcast: Building Organizational Capability

Posted on December 7, 2016 by John Hunter

The Software Process and Measurement Cast 420 features an interview with me, by Thomas Cagley, on Building Organizational Capability (download podcast). John Hunter in the podcast: Changing how organizations are managed makes a huge difference in people’s lives, not all the time and I understand most of the time it doesn’t. But when this is done well people can go from dreading going to work to enjoying going to work, not every single day – but most days, and it … Continue reading →

Posted in Management, Systems thinking | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 2 Comments

Lead by Building Organizational Capability

Posted on September 13, 2016 by John Hunter

The result of a recent interview with me has been posted: How to Lead From Any Level In the Organization [broken link replaced by new link to content hosted on this site] 2. Help people solve their problems. Similar to helping other people grow their careers is the idea of helping other people to solve their problems. Again, this starts with a clear understanding of your sphere of influence. “It determines what strategies you can pursue, and building your sphere … Continue reading →

Posted in Deming, Management | Tagged , , , , | 1 Comment

Giving Executives 40% of Revenue is Insane

Posted on March 21, 2016 by John Hunter

I have previous written on my belief that excessive executive compensation had reached the level of a deadly disease of western management (building on the W. Edwards Deming’s list of 7 deadly diseases). I named excessive executive pay and a broken “intellectual property” system as new deadly diseases in 2007. Here is a graphic from, It’s Twitter’s birthday, and its executives are getting huge stock-based gifts, showing the massive executive give-away at Twitter. Twitter has given executives $2,000,000,000 in just … Continue reading →

Posted in Respect, Systems thinking | Tagged , , , , ,

Transform the Management System by Experimenting, Iterating and Adopting Standard Work

Posted on January 19, 2016 by John Hunter

In this short video, Dr. John Toussaint describes how ThedaCare applied leadership standard work to create a successful management transformation. The changes to the management system were tested by applying standard work for all positions in 2 parts of the organization (including all senior management positions) and learning and adapting and then spreading the new methods to the rest of the organization. Changes to the management system require the same testing and piloting of changes on a small scale as … Continue reading →

Posted in Management, webcast | Tagged , , , , , , | 1 Comment

Most Popular Management and Leadership Quotes on Our Site in 2015

Posted on January 12, 2016 by John Hunter

These were the most popular quotes on the Curious Cat Management and Leadership Quotes web site in 2015 (based on page views). Follow the link on the quote text for the source and more information on the quote. Having no problems is the biggest problem of all. – Taiichi Ohno Managers who don’t know how to measure what they want settle for wanting what they can measure. – Russell Ackoff Don’t look with your eyes, look with your feet. Don’t … Continue reading →

Posted in Management | Tagged , , , | 3 Comments

Culture Change Requires That Leaders Change Their Behavior

Posted on December 28, 2015 by John Hunter

This month The ASQ Influential Voices are reacting to Luciana Paulise’s post: Facing Cultural Barriers by Leaders to Strengthen a Culture of Quality [the broken link was removed]. As Luciana stated: leaders need to change their behavior first if they want to change the entire company culture W. Edwards Deming wrote in The New Economics: The first step is transformation of the individual. This transformation is discontinuous. It comes from understanding of the system of profound knowledge. The individual, transformed, … Continue reading →

Posted in Deming, Management | Tagged , , , , | 3 Comments

Making Your Case to Senior Executives

Posted on November 24, 2015 by John Hunter

This month Dr. Suresh Gettala writes about the Talking To the C-Suite About Quality in the monthly ASQ Influential Voices post. My take is a bit different than Dr. Gettala (and most others) in that I believe CEOs are so wedded to short term financial measures that if you are speaking to them you need to both appeal to this bias while also fighting to move the organization away from being led by such a bias. That task isn’t easy, … Continue reading →

Posted in Management | Tagged , , , | 2 Comments

Change Management: Create a Culture Seeking Continual Improvement or Use Band-Aids?

Posted on November 17, 2015 by John Hunter

Successfully shepherding change within an organization is often a challenge. Often change management strategies are mainly about how to cope with a toxic culture but exclude the option of fixing the toxic culture. Why not address the root causes instead of trying band-aids? The most effective strategy is to build an organizational culture into one that promotes continual improvement. A continual improvement culture is one that is constantly changing to improve (grounded in long term principles: respect for people, experiment, … Continue reading →

Posted in Deming, Lean thinking, Management, Psychology, Respect, Systems thinking | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | 3 Comments

All Data is Wrong, Some is Useful

Posted on September 22, 2015 by John Hunter

From my first blog post on this blog – Dangers of Forgetting the Proxy Nature of Data we often fail to explore whether changes in the numbers (which we call results) are representative of the “true results” of the system or if the data is misleading. Data is meant to provide us insight into a more complex reality. We need to understand the limitations when we look at “results” and understand data isn’t really the results but a representation we … Continue reading →

Posted in Data, Management | Tagged , , , , , | 2 Comments