Tag Archives: organization as a system

Transformation and Redesign

Here is an excellent article from 1999: Transformation and Redesign at the White House Communications Agency (WHCA) (pdf link) by March Laree Jacques This article describes an organizational transformation effort undertaken at the White House Communications Agency. It shares the … Continue reading

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Ackoff’s New Book: Management f-Laws

Russell Ackoff is in London promoting his new book: Management f-Laws (see previous post: Ackoff’s F-laws: Common Sins of Management). A BBC article captures some of some of the great ideas from one of his talks (more articles… by Ackoff). … Continue reading

Posted in Books, Deming, Management, Systems thinking | Tagged , , , | 4 Comments

Ritz Carlton and Home Depot

Don MacAskill writes of his great service from Ritz-Carlton and horrible service from Home Depot. Neither result is surprising, see related posts below… Ritz-Carlton’s motto is “We are ladies and gentlemen serving ladies and gentlemen.” And they actually turn those words into reality… Continue reading

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What is Wrong with MBA’s

Two interesting posts from Compound Thinking: What is Management? [the broken link was removed – this is one of many examples of a good blog’s domain lapsing and being bought by someone to promote unrelated items.]: Management is helping others … Continue reading

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

Righter Performance Appraisal

Speaking of “doing the wrong things righter” Microsoft has eliminated forced rankings in performance appraisal: to do performance appraisals righter. Microsoft exec puts her stamp on human resources: The forced curve was company policy. And it climbed up a list … Continue reading

Posted in Data, Management, Performance Appraisal, Psychology, Systems thinking | Tagged , , , , | 1 Comment

Excessive CEO Pay

Overpaid CEOs and Underpaid Managers: Fairness and Executive Compensation by James B. Wade, Charles A. O’Reilly, III and Timothy G. Pollock: We also find evidence suggesting that CEOs serve as a key referent for employees in determining whether their own … Continue reading

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Incentive Programs are Ineffective

Reward and Incentive Programs are Ineffective — Even Harmful by Peter Scholtes The greatest management conceit is that we can “motivate” people. We can’t. Motivation is there, inside people. Our people were motivated when we hired them and everyday, when … Continue reading

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Thoughts on Hospital Management by Deming

The latest newsletter from the W. Edwards Deming Institute [new link since the old link was broken] includes the photo of Dr. Deming from 1951 and: Some notes on management in a hospital by W. Edwards Deming, Ph.D.: Fifteen hours … Continue reading

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Distort the System

From our post: Targets Distorting the System, Dr. Brian Joiner: spoke of 3 ways to improve the figures: distort the data, distort the system and improve the system. Improving the system is the most difficult. Another example of this in … Continue reading

Posted in Data, Deming, Management, Systems thinking | Tagged , , , , , | 6 Comments

Competition

Why I hate programming competitions [the broken link was removed] by Mike Vanier Most aspects of Deming’s thinking seemed natural to me from the start. Some ideas have taken longer (it took me awhile to be won over to the … Continue reading

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