Tag Archives: leadership

Transforming a Management System – A Case Study From the Madison Wisconsin Police Department

Posted on March 10, 2015 by John Hunter

This post in an excerpt from The Quality Leadership Workbook for Police by Chief David Couper and Captain Sabine Lobitz (buy via Amazon). Transformational Steps A Case Study Madison, Wisconsin (1981-1993) Step 1: Educate and inform everyone in the organization about the vision, the goals, and Quality Leadership. This step must be passionately led by the top leader. Begin discussion with top management team and train them. Discuss and ask employees; get feedback from them. Share feedback with the chief … Continue reading →

Posted in Customer focus, Data, Deming, Management, Respect, Statistics | Tagged Books, case study, change, continual improvement, Customer focus, Data, Deming, leadership, Madison, management, organization as a system, Public Sector, respect for people, TQM, transformation | 6 Comments

Who Inspires Your Management Thinking and Action?

Posted on January 22, 2015 by John Hunter

This month Bill Troy, ASQ CEO, asked ASQ Influential Voices bloggers: “who influenced or inspired your management thinking and in what ways?” He discussed Paul O’Neill’s influence on his thinking [the broken link was removed – so many websites have no evidence of long term thinking]; I agree that Paul has done some very impressive work in health care. I have written about my management influences in the past: Active Management Improvement Leaders (2006) and Who Influences Your Thinking? (2005). … Continue reading →

Posted in Management | Tagged curiouscat, George Box, John Hunter, leadership, Madison, management, William Hunter | 6 Comments

The Importance of Leadership by Those Working to Improve Management

Posted on November 25, 2014 by John Hunter

This month Bill Troy, ASQ CEO, asked ASQ Influential Voices bloggers to explore the importance of leadership for every quality management professional. Leadership is important but also something that often is difficult to understand what exactly is meant by the person using the term. In Bill’s case he provides some guidance with: “Leadership encompasses… business savvy, people skills, and decisive action all are required to get results in the world.” The ability to find solutions and move forward efforts in … Continue reading →

Posted in Management | Tagged ASQ Influential Voices, business, Investing, leadership, quality | 1 Comment

A Strong Management System Handles the Transition of Leaders With Ease

Posted on October 29, 2014 by John Hunter

Part three (of three) of an interview of me with Bill Fox has been published. Leadership While Viewing the Organization as a System …So if I see the weak management system as the problem, the solution is not nearly as easy as coming up with a new CIO. I don’t really think the problem is so much the CIO not being a good manager – because the system shouldn’t allow a new manager to come in and ruin a good … Continue reading →

Posted in Deming, Systems thinking | Tagged Deming, interview, John Hunter, leadership, organization as a system | 1 Comment

Revolutionary Management Improvement May Be Needed But Most Management Change is Evolutionary

Posted on August 26, 2014 by John Hunter

This month the ASQ Influential Bloggers were asked to respond to the question – will the future of quality be evolutionary or revolutionary? I think it has been and will continue to be both. Revolutionary change is powerful but very difficult for entrenched people and organizations to actually pull off. It is much easy to dream about doing so. Often even revolutionary ideas are adopted in a more evolutionary way: partial adoption of some practices based on the insight provided … Continue reading →

Posted in Deming, Lean thinking | Tagged ASQ Influential Voices, change, commentary, continual improvement, leadership, Lean thinking, Toyota Production System (TPS) | 1 Comment

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 bad management, business, commentary, curiouscat, Customer focus, customer service, Economics, executives, gemba, Google, government, internet, leadership, management, Psychology, regulation, respect for people, sales, targets

Toyota Posts Record Profit: Splits $15 million in Pay and Bonus for top 21 Executives

Posted on June 2, 2014 by John Hunter

After posting record profits of $17.9 billion Toyota proposes to increase the pay and bonus for the top 21 executives to $14.9 million. That is not as you might expect just the increase in the bonus to the CEO. That is the entire pay and bonus for the top 21 executives. That places all 21 together below the top 50 CEO paydays in the USA. Toyota’s net income for the year surged 89.5%. While the profits are partially due to … Continue reading →

Posted in Competition, Deming, Investing, Management, Popular, Respect, Toyota Production System (TPS) | Tagged executive pay, executives, leadership, Management, overpaid executives, Popular, respect for people, Toyota | 3 Comments

Bad Weather is Part of the Transportation System

Posted on January 6, 2014 by John Hunter

The job of managers is to create a robust system that delivers value to customers. A system that fails constantly (fails during the continual variation the system faces) is a failed system. Bad weather is part of the variation airlines face. Any management system has to cope with the variation that it faces. The management system must be designed and managed so that the organization successfully delivers value to customers under the conditions the organization will face. The air travel … Continue reading →

Posted in Customer focus, Management, Systems thinking | Tagged airlines, bad customer service, Customer focus, engineering, leadership, poka yoke, process thinking, respect for people, robust, Systems thinking, travel, USA | 8 Comments

Taking Risks Based on Evidence

Posted on November 14, 2013 by John Hunter

My opinion has long been that football teams are too scared to take an action that is smart but opens the coach to criticism. So instead of attempting to make it on 4th down (if you don’t understand American football, just skip this post) they punt because that is the decision that is accepted as reasonable. So instead of doing what is wise they do what avoids criticism. Fear drives them to take the less advantageous action. Now I have … Continue reading →

Posted in Competition, Creativity, Data, Innovation, Management, Psychology | Tagged Creativity, evidence based management, experiments, fear, Innovation, leadership, Psychology, risk, sports | 3 Comments

Managers Are Not Non-Leaders: Managers Need to Practice Things We Classify as Leadership Traits

Posted on October 14, 2013 by John Hunter

Saying “Managers care about efficiency and leaders care about effectiveness” is like saying “Doctors care about theory and nurses care about patients.” Managers that don’t care about effectiveness are lousy managers. Leaders that don’t care about the gemba are lousy leaders. Doctors that don’t care about patients are lousy doctors. Nurses that don’t care about theory are lousy nurses. Your role in the organization (and for the particular situation in question) and training and the situation will impact how you … Continue reading →

Posted in Lean thinking, Management, Popular, quote | Tagged commentary, curiouscat, leadership, Lean thinking, Management, Popular, Systems thinking | 5 Comments

Leadership and Management

Posted on June 4, 2013 by John Hunter

I don’t think the attempts to separate leadership and management are useful. I read plenty of things that are variations on Peter Drucker’s: “Management is doing things right; leadership is doing the right things.” A manager that is not concerned about doing the right things is a lousy manager. And a leader that doesn’t care about doing things right is a lousy leader. Another theme of this contrasting type quote says some version of: “Managers care about efficiency and leaders … Continue reading →

Posted in Lean thinking, Management, quote, Systems thinking | Tagged commentary, curiouscat, John Hunter, leadership, lean manufacturing, management, quote, system thinking | 7 Comments

Executive Leadership

Posted on May 21, 2013 by John Hunter

Senior executives must lead management improvement efforts. When senior executives only give lip service to management efforts the result is normally the same: little happens. When Dr. Deming was working with companies after the 1980’s NBC white paper, If Japan Can Why Can’t We, he wouldn’t work with companies if the CEO wasn’t attending the meetings and learning how to manage the organization better. Dr. Deming had seen far too many CEOs want improvement but wanted to delegate the effort … Continue reading →

Posted in Deming, Management, Psychology, Systems thinking | Tagged ASQ Influential Voices, business, Deming, executives, leadership, management, productivity | 7 Comments

Quality Processes in Unexpected Places

Posted on March 25, 2013 by John Hunter

This month Paul Borawski asked ASQ’s Influential Voices to explore the use of quality tools in unexpected places. The most surprising example of this practice that I recall is the Madison, Wisconsin police department surveying those they arrested to get customer feedback. It is obvious that such “customers” are going to be biased. Still the police department was able to get actionable information by seeking the voice of the customer. Certain of the police department’s aims are not going to … Continue reading →

Posted in Creativity, Customer focus, Data, Innovation, Management, Process improvement, Public Sector, Respect | Tagged ASQ Influential Voices, Creativity, Customer focus, customer service, leadership, Lean thinking, Madison, Process improvement, Public Sector, respect for people, Systems thinking | 5 Comments

The Market Discounts Proven Company Leadership Far Too Quickly

Posted on January 28, 2013 by John Hunter

Developing a strong executive leadership culture is not a short term effort. It isn’t based on one person. It almost never deteriorates quickly. Yet markets continually overact to minor blips on the long term success of companies. I think this is mainly due to a failure to appreciate systems and a failure to appreciate variation along with plenty of other contributing factors. The market’s weakness does provide investment opportunities. Though taking advantages of them is much more difficult than spotting … Continue reading →

Posted in Data, Economics, Investing | Tagged business, commentary, Investing, leadership, stockholders, Toyota | 1 Comment

Leanpub Podcast on My Book – Management Matters: Building Enterprise Capability

Posted on January 23, 2013 by John Hunter

I recently was interviewed for a podcast by Len Epp with Leanpub: Leanpub Podcast Interview #9: John Hunter. I hope you enjoy the podcast (download the mp3 of the podcast). In the podcast we cover quite a bit of ground quickly, so the details are limited (transcript of the interview). These links provide more details on items I mention in the podcast. They are listed below in the same order as they are raised in the podcast: John Hunter’s professional … Continue reading →

Posted in Books, Data, Deming, Management, Systems thinking | Tagged Books, Data, Deming, John Hunter, leadership, management, Management Matters, overpaid executives, podcast | 2 Comments

Using Incentives to Guide Social System Improvements

Posted on December 5, 2012 by John Hunter

When confronted with the challenge of managing a social system (or market) I like to find ways to use a few simple rules that will guide the system to find improvements. I favor allowing participants in complex social system to determine how to adapt. So I support, for example, a carbon taxes where the market can decide where it is most effective to invest to reduce carbon use (both to reduce our depletion of the resource and to reduce pollution … Continue reading →

Posted in Creativity, Economics, Public Sector, Systems thinking | Tagged Creativity, Economics, leadership, Systems thinking | 2 Comments