Tag Archives: long term thinking

Factfulness – The Importance of Critical Thinking

Factfulness by Hans Roling (of TED talks and Gapminder charts fame) is an exceptionally good book. It provides great insight into how to think more effectively and how to understand the reality of the world we live in (versus the … Continue reading

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The Best Form of Fire Fighting is None at All

The best form of problem solving is to avoid problems altogether. At the point you have a “fire” in your organizaiton you have to fight it. But it is better to create systems that avoid fires taking hold in the … Continue reading

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Good Project Management Practices

I find myself working as a project manager, or a program management consultant more frequently in the last few years. As would be expected by those reading the Curious Cat Management Improvement blog, my project management views are based on … Continue reading

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Robots for Health Care from Toyota

Japan has an extremely rapidly aging population. This increases the need for health care and for assistance with everyday tasks from the elderly. Japan is also among the leading countries for developing robots for health care and living assistance. I … Continue reading

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A Good Management System is Robust and Continually Improving

Imagine a big clock, the big and little and sweeping second hands moving with absolute accuracy for years and years. Then, imagine various people working within it, somehow swapping out gears and cogs without the clock stopping or slowing down … Continue reading

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Jiro Dreams of Sushi

Jiro Dreams of Sushi is a documentary on a Japanese sushi restaurant, Sukiyabashi Jiro, that is full of great quotes for those interested in continual improvement. Throughout the film people discuss a never ending focus on doing better and better … Continue reading

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How to Sustain Long Term Enterprise Excellence

This month Paul Borawski asked ASQ’s Influential Voices to explore sustaining excellence for the long term. There are several keys to pulling sustained long term excellence. Unfortunately, experience shows that it is much easier to explain what is needed than … Continue reading

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Jeff Bezos: Innovation, Experiments and Long Term Thinking

Jeff Bezos, bought the Washington Post. He has long showed a willingness to take a long term view at Amazon. He is taking that same thinking to the Washington Post: In my experience, the way invention, innovation and change happen … Continue reading

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Peter Senge on Systems Thinking

People must be willing to challenge their mental models in order to find non-obvious areas of high leverage – which allow significant improvement. System thinking is a term that is often confusing to people. From my perspective it is important … Continue reading

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Indirect Improvement

Often the improvements that have the largest impact are focused on improving the effectiveness of thought and decision making. Improving the critical thinking in an organization has huge benefits over the long term. My strategy along the lines of improving … Continue reading

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