Tag: management
Management Books
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Ackoff's Best: Timeless Observations on the Life of Business
by
Russell L. Ackoff
From managing teams, maximizing the effectiveness of information systems, and problem solving, to creativity, crime, and the role of the corporation in a democratic society, these writings are a cornucopia of insights, observations, and powerful lessons that will help you improve the effectiveness of your organization.
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The Deming Dimension:
by
Henry R. Neave
An excellent overview of the Deming philosphy that is easier to follow that Deming's own books. Provides a valuable historical perspective. Does a good job of explaining the underlining principles of Deming's philosophy.
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Workplace Management: Taiichi Ohno
by
Taiichi Ohno
"If you insist on blindly calculating individual costs and waste time insisting that this is profitable of that is not profitable, you will just increase the cost of your low volume products. For this reason there are many cases in this world where companies will discontinue car models that are actually profitable, but are money losers according to their calculations. Likewise, there are cases where companies sell a lot of model that they think is profitable but in fact are only increasing their loses." page 32
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Toyota Talent: Developing Your People the Toyota Way
by
Jeffrey Liker, David Meier
Toyota Talent walks you through the rigorous methodology used by this global powerhouse to grow high-performing individuals from within. Beginning with a review of Toyota's landmark approach to developing people, the authors illustrate the critical importance of creating a learning and teaching culture in your organization. They provide specific examples necessary to train employees in all areas-from the shop floor to engineering to staff members in service organizations-and show you how to support and encourage every individual to reach his or her top potential.
Toyota Talent provides you with the inside knowledge you need to
* Identify your development needs and create a training plan
* Understand the various types of work and how to break complicated jobs into teachable skills
* Set behavioral expectations by properly preparing your workplace
* Recognize and develop potential trainers within your workforce
* Effectively educate non-manufacturing employees and members of the staff
* Develop internal Lean Manufacturing experts
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Rework:
by
Jason Fried, David Heinemeier Hansson
Great book by the founders of 37 signals on how to get to work and avoid the distractions of bad management practices. Take a new look at how to work without the outdated traditions.
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Kanban: Successful Evolutionary Change for Your Technology Business
by
David Anderson
The book provides specific and useful guidance to those attempting to adopt kanban management in software development.
The books is very well written and presents the material in a very easy to digest manner. It is so packed with information it is very difficult to mine even a significant portion of the value in one read. The organization allows for easy reference as you need to focus on any specific topic to find that topic and get an excellent review in minutes.
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Delivering Happiness: A Path to Profits, Passion, and Purpose
by
Tony Hsieh
"Pay new employees $2000 to quit. Make customer service the entire company, not just a department. Focus on company culture as the #1 priority. Apply research from the science of happiness to running a business. Help employees grow both personally and professionally. Seek to change the world. Oh, and make money too.
Sound crazy? It's all standard operating procedure at Zappos.com, the online retailer that's doing over $1 billion in gross merchandise sales every year."
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Toyota Kata: Managing People for Improvement, Adaptiveness and Superior Results
by
Mike Rother
"Toyota Kata gets to the essence of how Toyota manages continuous improvement and human ingenuity, through its improvement kata and coaching kata. Mike Rother explains why typical companies fail to understand the core of lean and make limited progress—and what it takes to make it a real part of your culture."
—Jeffrey K. Liker, bestselling author of The Toyota Way
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Buy-In: Saving Your Good Idea from Getting Shot Down
by
John Kotter
The book presents a fresh and amusing fictional narrative showing attack strategies in action. It then provides several specific counterstrategies for each basic category the authors have defined.
How to win the support your idea need to deliver valuable results? Understand the generic attack strategies that naysayers and obfuscators deploy time and time again. Then engage these adversaries with tactics tailored to each strategy. By "inviting in the lions" to critique your idea--and being prepared for them--you'll capture busy people's attention, help them grasp your proposal's value, and secure their commitment to implementing the solution.
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Leading Change:
by
John Kotter
Kotter emphasizes a comprehensive eight-step framework that can be followed by executives at all levels. Kotter advises those who would implement change to foster a sense of urgency within the organization. "A higher rate of urgency does not imply everpresent panic, anxiety, or fear." Twenty-first century business change must overcome overmanaged and underled cultures.
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Systems Thinking for Curious Managers: with 40 New Management f-Laws
by
Russell L. Ackoff, Herbert J. Addison, Jamshid Gharajedaghi
Finished just before Professor Ackoff's death late in 2009, Systems Thinking for Curious Managers opens the door to a joined up way of thinking about things that has profoundly influenced thinkers and doers in the fields of business, politics, economics, biology, psychology.
Although Systems Thinking was 'invented' early in the 20th century, even Peter Senge's best-selling "The Fifth Discipline" (Systems Thinking is the fifth discipline) failed to popularize the term. But now, in business and academia, in the public sector and in the search for solutions to the environmental problems we face, Systems Thinking is being talked about everywhere.
This timely book presents 40 more of Russ Ackoff's famously witty and incisive f-Laws (or flaws) of business - following on from his 2007 collection "Management f-Laws". All those in this collection are new and previously unpublished. Andrew Carey's extended introduction ties these f-Laws into the rest of Ackoff's work and gives the reader new to Systems Thinking a practical guide to the implications of Systems Thinking for organisations and managers.
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Gemba Walks:
by
Jim Womack
This book complies Womack's essays on the practice of lean and adds some additional context to the essays.
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Maslow on Management:
by
Abraham Maslow
In 1962, Maslow spent the summer at an electronics factory that was one of the first to try giving workers a say in organizing production. He watched and kept a journal. The book was republished with extensive commentaries as Maslow on Management in 1998.
Some of Maslow on Management is, as Warren Bennis writes in the foreword, "hilariously innocent."
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The Lean Startup:
by
Eric Ries
Great book that is also very popular in general management circles and software development circles (the software development and startup areas overlap so much today that this is no surprise). The book focuses on applying lean thinking ideas in an entrepreneurial setting. So the book focuses on quick success and customer focus.
Eric Ries defines a startup as an organization dedicated to creating something new under conditions of extreme uncertainty. This is just as true for one person in a garage or those in a Fortune 500 boardroom. What they have in common is a mission to penetrate that fog of uncertainty to discover a successful path to a sustainable business.
The Lean Startup approach fosters companies that are both more capital efficient and that leverage human creativity more effectively. Inspired by lessons from lean manufacturing, it relies on “validated learning,†rapid scientific experimentation, as well as a number of counter-intuitive practices that shorten product development cycles, measure actual progress without resorting to vanity metrics, and learn what customers really want. It enables a company to shift directions with agility and quickly.
Rather than wasting time creating elaborate business plans, The Lean Startup offers entrepreneurs - in companies of all sizes - a way to test their vision continuously, to adapt and adjust before it’s too late. Ries provides a scientific approach to creating and managing successful startups in a age when companies need to innovate more than ever.
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Good Boss, Bad Boss: How to Be the Best... and Learn from the Worst
by
Bob Sutton
If you are a boss who wants to do great work, what can you do about it? Good Boss, Bad Boss is devoted to answering that question. Stanford Professor Robert Sutton weaves together the best psychological and management research with compelling stories and cases to reveal the mindset and moves of the best (and worst) bosses.
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Management Matters: Building Enterprise Capability
by
John Hunter
The book provides an overview for viewing management as a system. It is largely based on those of Dr. Deming, along with natural outgrowths or extensions of his ideas such as lean manufacturing and agile software development.
To achieve great results there must be a continual focus on achieving results today and building enterprise capacity to maximize results over the long term. Managers have many management concepts, pactices and tools available to help them in this quest. The challenge is to create and continually build and improve a management system for the enterprise that leads to success.
The book provides a framework for management thinking. With this framework the practices and tools can be applied to build enterprise capacity and improve efficiency and effectiveness.
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The Essential Deming: Leadership Principles from the Father of Quality
by
W. Edwards Deming, Joyce Orsini
The book is filled with articles, papers, lectures, and notes touching on a wide range of topics, but which focus on Deming's overriding message: quality and operations are all about systems, not individual performance; the system has to be designed so that the worker can perform well.
Published in cooperation with The W. Edwards Deming Institute, The Essential Deming captures Deming's life's worth of thinking and writing. Dr. Orsini provides expert commentary throughout, delivering a powerful, practical guide to superior management. With The Essential Deming, you have the rationale, insight, and best practices you need to transform your organization.
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An Accidental Statistician: The Life and Memories of George E. P. Box
by
George E. P. Box
From early childhood to a celebrated career in academia and industry, acclaimed statistician George E.P. Box offers personal insights and a first-hand account of his professional accomplishments in this insightful memoir. It features thoughts from more than a dozen researchers and practitioners on how Box shaped their careers; previously unpublished photos from Box’s personal collection; and Forewords written by two of Box’s closest colleagues and confidants. An Accidental Statistician is a charming, intimate account of a great intellect’s life that will appeal to math and engineering professionals.
Management Articles
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Small Business Guidebook to Quality Management
The aim of this guidebook is to help small businesses make the transition to a quality culture. While the focus of the guidebook is small businesses the information is helpful to anyone transforming and continually improving their organization.
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Dee Hock on Management
by
M. Mitchell Waldrop, Dee Hock
Absolutely great - definitely read the article. Hire and promote first on the basis of integrity; second, motivation; third, capacity; fourth, understanding; fifth, knowledge; and last and least, experience. Without integrity, motivation is dangerous; without motivation, capacity is impotent; without capacity, understanding is limited; without understanding, knowledge is meaningless; without knowledge, experience is blind. Experience is easy to provide and quickly put to good use by people with all the other qualities.
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Dee Hock on Organizations
by
M. Mitchell Waldrop, Dee Hock
"An organization's success has enormously more to do with clarity of a shared purpose, common principles and strength of belief in them than to assets, expertise, operating ability, or management competence, important as they may be."
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The Next 25 Years in Statistics
by
William Hill, William G. Hunter
(with contributions by Joseph W. Duncan, A. Blanton Godfrey, Brian L. Joiner, Gary C. McDonald, Charles G. Pfeifer, Donald W. Marquardt, and Ronald D. Snee). A transformation of the American style of management has already begun; in order for it to succee
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Dr. Demings 1950 Lecture to Japanese Top Management
"In 1950, Dr. Deming gave a lecture to 80% of the top management people in Japan. What follows is a English translation of the original Japanese transcript. John Dowd made this happen a few years back and has agreed to share it with the Deming Community."
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A Day with Dr. Russel L. Ackoff
by
Russell L. Ackoff
Highly Recommended - Video of presentation to the Chicago-Kent College of Law.
"Among the topics Dr. Ackoff discussed during the workshop were:
- The history and application of systems thinking
- How do social systems allow us to understand and overcome long term problems in today's environment?
- How can you effect change within the system in which you play a role?"
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A Brief Guide to Interactive Planning and Idealized Design
by
Russell L. Ackoff
"Interactive planning is directed at creating the future. It is based on the belief that an organization's future depends at least as much on what it does between now and then, as on what is done to it. Therefore, this type of planning consists of the design of a desirable present and the selection or invention of ways of approximating it as closely as possible. It creates its future by continuously closing the gap between where it is at any moment of time and where it would most like to be."
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Improving Problem Solving
by
Ian Bradbury
A good overview of common problem solving practices. The report also includes advice on how to improve results in you organization though problem solving and system improvement.
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TPS vs. Lean and the Law of Unintended Consequences
by
Art Smalley
"In every piece of TPS literature from Toyota, this stated aim is mixed in with the twin production principles of Just in Time (make and deliver the right part, in the right amount, at the right time), and Jidoka (build in quality at the process), as well as the notion of continuous improvement by standardization and elimination of waste in all operations to improve quality, cost, productivity, lead-time, safety, morale and other metrics as needed. This clear objective has not substantially changed since the first internal TPS training manual was drafted over thirty years ago."
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Thinking About the Future
by
Russell L. Ackoff
"My preoccupation is with where we would ideally like to be right now. Knowing this, we can act now so as constantly to reduce the gap between where we are and where we want to be. Then, to a large extent, the future is created by what we do now."
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The Role of Leadership in Software Development
by
Mary Poppendieck
"In this 90-minute talk from the Agile2007 conference, Lean software thought leader Mary Poppendieck reviewed 20th century management theories, including Toyota and Deming, and went on to talk about 'the matrix problem', alignment, waste cutting, planning
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The Top 10 Titans of TPS
by
Jon Miller
"1. Henry Ford was the founder of the Ford Motor Company. He revolutionized repetitive manufacturing of automobiles through standardization of parts, the moving assembly line and continuous improvement or product and process. Inspired imitation by Toyoda.
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Lean Thinking and Management
by
John Hunter
"The biggest thing I think we need to learn from this is that improving management is not easy. The concepts may seem simple but most of us can look around and see much more Dilbert Boss behavior than lean thinking behavior. And the gap between those two types of behavior seems to rise as you go 'up' the organization chart."
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The Trouble with Incentives: They Work
by
Gipsie Ranney
"There may be cases in which incentives work only as intended, but I suspect they are relatively rare. The trouble is that we are usually dealing with complex systems (people and organizations) that may behave not at all like our myths would predict...
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Dangers of Forgetting the Proxy Nature of Data
by
John Hunter
"We use data to act as a proxy for some results of the system. Often people forget that the desired end result is not for the number to be improved but for the situation to be improved. We hope, if the measure improves the situation will have improved..."
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The Relentless Contrarian
by
Peter Drucker
what's absolutely unforgivable is the financial benefit top management people get for laying off people. There's no excuse for it. No justification. No explanation. This is morally and socially unforgivable, and we'll pay a very nasty price.
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Jeff Bezos Interview
by
Jeff Bezos
"I think one thing I find very motivating -- and I think this is probably a very common form of motivation or cause of motivation is, I love people counting on me, and so, you know, today it's so easy to be motivated, because we have millions of customers...
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Bring Lean to Your Sales Team
by
Jamie Flinchbaugh
"Another example is experimentation and reflection. By teaching the fundamentals of Plan-Do-Check-Act, the sales team can test out new ideas, messages and techniques with rigor. They can establish a common means by which to experiment, and ultimately to share best practices.
The third step is to work on processes that cross boundaries. Many processes that go into product development, manufacturing or finance begin in sales at some point. These process are often broken, or at least inefficient. Lean can connect them, but it will require collaboration."
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Why I Sold Zappos
by
Tony Hsieh
"Amazon tries to deliver a great customer experience is by offering low prices, whereas at Zappos we don't try to compete on price. If Amazon gets a lot of customer service calls, it will try to figure out why -- maybe there's something confusing about the product description -- and then it will try to fix the problem so that it can reduce the number of phone calls, which keeps prices low. But at Zappos, we want people to call us...
But as I talked to Jeff, I realized that there were similarities between our companies, too. Amazon wants to do what is best for its customers -- even, it seemed to me, at the expense of short-term financial performance. Zappos has the same goal. We just have a different philosophy about how to do it."
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12 Things Good Bosses Believe
by
Bob Sutton
"My success — and that of my people — depends largely on being the master of obvious and mundane things, not on magical, obscure, or breakthrough ideas or methods."
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Jeff Bezos's mission: Compelling small publishers to think big
by
Jeff Bezos
"I would hope people would say that Amazon is earth's most customer-centric company, and that we work backwards from customers. Many companies sort of look at what their skills are and they work forward from their skills. They say this is what we're good at, and this is what we'll do. It's a very different approach from saying here is what our customers need, and we will learn whatever skills we need.
...
the key is that the company has to experiment, and what you want to try and do is reduce the cost of experimentation so you can do as many experiments per unit time as possible
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and they're not experiments if you know they're going to work."
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Metrics and Software Development
by
John Hunter
"I find looking at outcome measures (to measure overall effectiveness) and process measures (for viewing specific parts of the system 'big picture') the most useful strategy.
The reason for process measures is not to improve those results alone. But those process measures can be selected to measure key processes within the system..."
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Maker's Schedule, Manager's Schedule
by
Paul Graham
"There are two types of schedule, which I'll call the manager's schedule and the maker's schedule. The manager's schedule is for bosses. It's embodied in the traditional appointment book, with each day cut into one hour intervals.
...
When you're operating on the maker's schedule, meetings are a disaster. A single meeting can blow a whole afternoon, by breaking it into two pieces each too small to do anything hard in."
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Comparing Lean Principles to the 14 Toyota Principles
"Toyota Principle #1: Base Your Management Decisions on a Long-Term Philosophy, Even at the Expense of Short-Term Financial Goals.
...
Stopping to fix problems puts an organization in a systematic problem solving method (Lean Principle #4) so that bad quality is not passed on and variation is reduced from the system."
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William Considine embraces Lean Six Sigma to improve Akron Children’s Hospital
"before it brought out the hammers, it asked members of the department and of the hospital's Lean Six Sigma team to review the problem. Turns out, a simple redesign of the processes and space solved the problem. No space added, no employees added, and $3.5 million saved.
...
f your child needed an MRI two years ago, the waiting list at Akron Children’s was about 25 to 28 days. Through discussion with department employees and dissection of the workload, the hospital was able to add 35 MRI tests a week, dropping the wait time to three days or less."
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Who Really Cooks the Books?
by
Warren Buffett
"For many years, I've had little confidence in the earnings numbers reported by most corporations. I'm not talking about Enron and WorldCom - examples of outright crookedness. Rather, I am referring to the legal, but improper, accounting methods used by chief executives to inflate reported earnings.
The most flagrant deceptions have occurred in stock-option accounting and in assumptions about pension-fund returns. The aggregate misrepresentation in these two areas dwarfs the lies of Enron and WorldCom."
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Inside the secret world of Trader Joe's
"All of that can lead to a better customer experience. A ringing bell instead of an intercom signals that more help is needed at the registers. Registers don't have conveyor belts or scales, and perishables are sold by unit instead of weight, speeding up checkout. Crew members aren't told the margins on products, so placement decisions are made based not on profits but on what's best for the shopper. Every employee works all aspects of the store, and if you ask where the roasted chestnuts are he'll walk you over instead of just saying 'aisle five.' Want to know what they taste like? He can probably tell you, and he might even open the bag on the spot for you to try."
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Nutrifood Indonesia: Manufacturing an Ethical Workplace
"we reviewed a set of 22 video tapes about the Deming Management method. My daughter, Yul (Julianti Darmawan Swecker), who was working at Nutrifood at the time as corporate secretary and HRD manager, translated and summarized the content of this series and produced leadership training material for our managers."
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Innovation Democracy: W.L. Gore's Original Management Model
by
Gary Hamel
"Was it possible to build a company with no hierarchy—where everyone was free to talk with everyone else? How about a company where there were no bosses, no supervisors, no managers and no vice presidents?... Could you create a company with no 'core' business, one that was as focused on creating the future as on preserving the past? The answers to each of these questions was an emphatic "Yes!" And Gore quickly became a model for both organizational and product innovation (not to mention a remarkable business success)."
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Create a System That Lets People Take Pride in Their Work
by
John Hunter
"Using the term implies that it one person empowers another person. This is not the correct view. Instead we each play a role within a system. Yes there are constraints on your actions based on the role you are playing. Does a security guard empower the CEO to enter the building?
...
You don't need to think about empowering people if you have a system that lets people take pride in what they do. If you think you need to empower staff, instead fix the system that requires you to think they are in need of empowerment."
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How do you know when do to an A3, and when to just solve the problem
by
Tracey Richardson
"If there was a defect that got past an area/department and to the customer, this is unacceptable and should be counter-measured temporary (stop the bleeding) to ensure nothing else 'flows out' as well as finding the permanent countermeasure (using PDCA) (again this is all initiated by the plant manager--they should be responsible at this level and gather the resources necessary, and involving their people to ensure this will not happen again and learn from it for the the next A3)."
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Putting Performance Reviews On Probation
by
Samuel Culbert
Article and NPR radio show (30 minutes). "It's time to finally put the performance review out of its misery.
This corporate sham is one of the most insidious, most damaging, and yet most ubiquitous of corporate activities. Everybody does it, and almost everyone who's evaluated hates it. It's a pretentious, bogus practice that produces absolutely nothing that any thinking executive should call a corporate plus."
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The Equally Important “Respect for People†Principle
by
Bob Emiliani
"The 'Respect for People' principle encompasses all key stakeholders: employees, suppliers, customers, investors, and communities. Thus, rather than representing a single dyad, the 'Respect for People' principle is a multilateral expression of the need for balanced, mutually respectful relationships, cooperation, and co-prosperity with these key stakeholders."
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Knowledge workers are the new capitalists
by
Peter Drucker
"knowledge workers are highly mobile within their specialism. They think nothing of moving from one university, one company or one country to another, as long as they stay within the same field of knowledge. There is a lot of talk about trying to restore knowledge workers' loyalty to their employing organisation, but such efforts will get nowhere. Knowledge workers may have an attachment to an organisation and feel comfortable with it, but their primary allegiance is likely to be to their specialised branch of knowledge."
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Respect for People
by
Art Smalley
"The fifth item of my list pertains to development of employee talent over time. Respect for people means developing their latent skills in both on the job and off the job training. It is easy to invest money in new technology, software, or equipment. It takes time, effort, and planning to invest in employee skills development. Canned training programs and Powerpoint slide presentations do not do the job."
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Leading vs. Managing: A False Choice
by
Bob Sutton
"I am not rejecting the distinction between leadership and management, but I am saying that the best leaders do something that might properly be called a mix of leadership and management. At a minimum, they lead in a way that constantly takes into account the importance of management. Meanwhile, the worst senior executives use the distinction between leadership and management as an excuse to avoid the details they really have to master to see the big picture and select the right strategies."
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Operational Excellence: From Fragmented Vocation to Principle-Driven Profession
by
Steven Spear
"Be it lean, six sigma, lean six sigma, business process excellence, reengineering, or TPS, the common objective is creating substantial and sustainable competitive advantage by managing the internal operations of organizations—across the spectrum of development, design, and delivery—to create exceptional differentials in performance across the dimensions of quality, cost, reliability, responsiveness, security, and agility."
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Jim Womack on How Toyota Rose and Fell
by
Jim Womack
"He argued that rapid expansion was leaving Toyota short of experienced managers, and it would fail if they reverted to modern-management mentality and didn't learn lean principles. If that happens, 'Toyota will become just another company.'"
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Actionable Metrics
by
John Hunter
"Metrics are valuable when they are actionable. Think about what will be done if certain results are shown by the data. If you can't think of actions you would take, it may be that metric is not worth tracking."
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Resist your machine thinking!
by
Jeffrey Liker
"To maintain consistent output, one must continually adjust the
system to changing environmental conditions. This is called dynamic
homeostasis in systems thinking, or running to stay in place.
...
Maintenance comes from having clearly defined standards, observing
carefully for deviations from those standards, and then developing
and implementing countermeasures to eliminate the deviations."
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Why Lean Programs Fail
by
Jeffrey Liker, Mike Rother
"a large survey conducted by Industry Week in 2007 found that only 2 percent of companies achieved their anticipated results... When we look at lean in this way it is not only a set of techniques for eliminating waste, but a process by which managers as leaders develop people so that desired results can be achieved, again and again. That means coaching people in practicing an improvement kata every day."
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Why I Run a Flat Company
by
Jason Fried
"At 37signals, however, we have a different position on ambition. We're not big fans of what I consider 'vertical' ambition—that is, the usual career-path trajectory, in which a newbie moves up the ladder from associate to manager to vice president over a number of years of service. On the other hand, we revere "horizontal" ambition—in which employees who love what they do are encouraged to dig deeper, expand their knowledge, and become better at it. We always try to hire people who yearn to be master craftspeople, that is, designers who want to be great designers, not managers of designers; developers who want to master the art of programming, not management."
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Interview of and by Dr. Ackoff and Dr. Deming
by
Russell L. Ackoff, Clare Crawford-Mason, W. Edwards Deming
Great stuff. The transcript spells Dr. Ackoff's name wrong (Akoff). They discuss the important of viewing organizations as systems and a fair amount of time on the problems with business school education in the USA. And they touch on a huge number of management topics. Dr. Deming "When one understands who depends on me, then I may take joy in my work." Dr. Ackoff "If there isn't join in work, you won't get productivity, and you won't get quality."
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An Interview with Donald Wheeler
by
Donald J. Wheeler
"All profound ideas are timeless. While the details may change, the underlying principles remain the same. Deming’s fundamental ideas came, in part, from his association with Shewhart and his concept of an operational definition...
For years I observed managers telling Deming all the good things that they were going to do and heard him respond with one of two questions: 'By what method?' or 'How will you know?' It is just that basic. Until you can answer these two questions, all you have is wishful thinking."
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Deming's14 points are not a menu you can pick and choose from.
by
David Joyce
"Everyone should search continually for problems in order to improve every activity in the company, to improve quality and productivity and thus to constantly decrease costs.
Finding what’s wrong is not improvement. Plugging leaks is not improvement. Don’t look at outcomes or defects, instead look at what produces the defects."
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Teachers Cheating and Incentives
by
Dan Ariely
"they began to do anything that would improve their performance on that measure even by a tiny bit—even if they messed up other employees in the process. Ultimately they were consumed with maximizing what they knew they would be measured on, regardless of the fact that this was only part of their overall responsibility."
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Stop Ignoring the Stalwart Worker
"Perhaps the defining characteristic of Stalwarts is their aversion to calling attention to themselves — even when they need to. They are like the proverbial wheel that never squeaks — and, consequently, gets no grease.
...
The other signature trait of Stalwarts is their deep loyalty to the organization. They are responsible and care deeply about the organization's values, and they generally steer clear of risk. Stalwarts are intrinsically motivated by the service they can render for the good of the organization, and they let their own careers take a backseat to the company's well-being. They feel that they have accomplished something if the company is running like a well-oiled machine."
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Jobs made Apple great by ignoring profit
by
Clayton Christensen
"When the pressure is on and the CEO of a big public company has to choose between doing what’s best for the customer or making the quarter’s numbers… most CEOs will choose the numbers. Apple never has...
Profitability isn’t at the center of every decision. Apple's focus is on making truly great products — products so great that its own employees want to use them. That philosophy has made Apple one of the most innovative companies in the world."
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How Do We Know What We Know? - Deming’s SoPK Part IV
by
John Hunter
"If we can break from such beliefs that are not useful in modern organizations, we can improve our decisions. Having a Deming-based theory of knowledge will help us break from those beliefs and it will help us be more thoughtful as we learn to question other management beliefs we hold –many of which simply are not useful –or cause harm.
Understanding the theory of knowledge within the context of the Deming’s System for Managing helps us more effectively and consistently learn and improve the processes and systems we work with. "
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The Gemba Walk
by
Norman Bodek
"the plant manager got up from behind his desk. He asked me to join him on his daily walk; in fact he told me that he walked the plant twice a day every day and that it was the most valuable part of his day...
The plant manager asked those questions and you could see the excitement on the face of the supervisor as he was answering the questions. I learned that there’s enormous power in the leader asking questions and then just listening – yes; this is the key to ask the question and then to just listen carefully, not judgmentally."
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How to Get a New Management Strategy, Tool or Concept Adopted
by
John Hunter
"Often when learning about Deming’s ideas on management, lean manufacturing, design of experiments, PDSA… people become excited. They discover new ideas that show great promise to alleviate the troubles they have in their workplace and lead them to better results. But how to actually get their organization to adopt the ideas often confounds them..."
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Eight guidelines for closing the knowing-doing gap
by
Jason Yip
"Why before How: philosophy is important. Focus on Why (philosophy, general guidance) before How (detailed practices, behaviours, techniques)
...
Action counts more than elegant plans and concepts. Ready, fire, aim. Act even if you haven't had the time to fully plan the action..."
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How An Aeron Chair Gets Built Every 17 Seconds
"At Herman Miller, they average 1,200 'plan-do-check acts'--that is, little proposed changes to the assembly process--ever year.
...
A decade ago, an Aeron took more than 600 seconds in total to build. Today, it’s about 340. Meanwhile, safety metrics have improved by a factor of 6. Quality metrics have improved by a factor of 10. A single Aeron takes one fifth of the labor to make that it once did. The actual factory itself is 10 times smaller.
Today, Herman Miller is doing far more with the same labor force that was once producing a sum total of five different office chairs. Today, they produce 17, using roughly the same number of people. And all the while, lead times have shrunk from two months to as little as 10 days."
"
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Keys to the Effective Use of the PDSA Improvement Cycle
by
John Hunter
"The PDSA cycle is a learning cycle based on experiments. When using the PDSA cycle prediction of the results are important... The plan stage may well take 80% (or even more) of the effort on the first turn of the PDSA cycle in a new series. The Do stage may well take 80% of of the time - it usually doesn't take much effort (to just collect a bit of extra data) but it may take time for that data to be ready to collect."
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Transcript of Speech by W. Edwards Deming to Japanese Leaders in 1950
by
W. Edwards Deming
"The knowledge and brains applied to statistics by the Japanese are an essential national resource; it is important in the same way as water power, forests, and railroads. And that statistical knowledge, much like water power, is not useful at all unless it has an impact on work opportunity and work. With water power, if one were to get rid of turbines and generator machines, no power would emerge."
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Manage Better by Managing Less
by
John Hunter
It can be tempting to cram your days full of activity to show how hard-working and vital you are. Finding time to think is hard enough; maxing out your capacity makes it next to impossible. Everyone agrees taking time to think is wise. But I have rarely seen managers make it a priority. Managers will say they value it, but they cram schedules so full that they can’t really spend time thinking.
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The Promise of Lean in Health Care
by
John Toussaint
and Leonard L. Berry, PhD. "When well executed, Lean transforms how an organization works and creates an insatiable quest for improvement. In this article, we define Lean and present 6 principles that constitute the essential dynamic of Lean management: attitude of continuous improvement, value creation, unity of purpose, respect for front-line workers, visual tracking, and flexible regimentation. Health care case studies illustrate each principle. The goal of this article is to provide a template for health care leaders to use in considering the implementation of the Lean management system or in assessing the current state of implementation in their organizations."
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That World (Still) According to Peter Drucker
Rick Wartzman, executive director of The Drucker Institute: "
1) Have a strong mission and a cogent answer to the deceptively difficult question, “What business are we in?”
2) Always remember that 'there is only one valid definition of business purpose: to create a customer' while accepting that 'quality in a product or service is not what the supplier puts in. It is what the customer gets out and is willing to pay for.'
3) Push responsibility and accountability as far down into the organization as possible and follow this basic communications strategy: Listen down, talk up.
4) Embrace the fact that every organization develops people--“it either helps them grow or it stunts them”--and so you do everything you can to help them grow.
..."
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The Promise of Lean in Health Care
by
John Toussaint
"Health care cases reveal that Lean is as applicable in complex knowledge work as it is in assembly-line manufacturing. When well executed, Lean transforms how an organization works and creates an insatiable quest for improvement. In this article, we define Lean and present 6 principles that constitute the essential dynamic of Lean management: attitude of continuous improvement, value creation, unity of purpose, respect for front-line workers, visual tracking, and flexible regimentation.
...
Lean is a journey, not a destination. Unlike specific programs, Lean has no finish line. Creating a culture of Lean is to create an insa- tiable appetite for improvement; there is no turning back."
Management Web Sites and Resources
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W. Edwards Deming Institute
by
W. Edwards Deming
Founded by W. Edwards Deming the institute carries forward his philosophy. The site includes information on the institutes annual conferences and offers newsletters online.
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Curious Cat Management Improvement Articles
by
John Hunter
Hundreds of useful management articles hand selected to help managers improve the performance of their organization. Sorted by topic including: Deming, lean manufacturing, six sigma, continual improvement, innovation, leadership, managing people, software development, psychology and systems thinking.
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Curious Cat Management Improvement Blog
by
John Hunter
Blog by John Hunter on many topics to to improve the management of organizations, including: Deming, lean manufacturing, agile software development, evidence based decision making, customer focus, innovation, six sigma, systems thinking, leadership, psychology, ...
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Toyota Production System
Site on Toyota.com. "The Toyota Production System (TPS) was established based on two concepts: The first is called 'jidoka'(which can be loosely translated as 'automation with a human touch') which means that when a problem occurs, the equipment stops immediately, preventing defective products from being produced; The second is the concept of 'Just-in-Time,' in which each process produces only what is needed by the next process in a continuous flow."
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Deming Cooperative
The Deming Scholars MBA Program at Fordham University, New York City, aims to build a foundation for leadership in the new economic age. It provides a small group of highly motivated students with a unique opportunity to develop expertise in Dr. Deming's teachings and to build leadership skills.
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iSixSigma
Site with large amount of material on six sigma.
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Institute for Healthcare Improvement
IHI works to accelerate improvement by building the will for change, cultivating promising concepts for improving patient care, and helping health care systems put those ideas into action.
White papers available online on topics such as: Planning for Scale: Going Lean in Health Care, A Guide for Designing Large-Scale Improvement Initiatives, A Framework for Spread: From Local Improvements to System-Wide Change, and Seven Leadership Leverage Points for Organization-Level Improvement in Health Care.
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Daily Kaizen
by
Lee Fried
Blog by Lee Fried tracking the journey of a world-class health care system as it continuously improves to serve its members. He works for Group Health Cooperative non-profit care system in Seattle, Washington.
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Jamie Flinchbaugh
by
Jamie Flinchbaugh
Blog on lean culture, transformational leadership, and entrepreneurial excellence. Jamie is a consultant and co-author of The Hitchhiker.s Guide to Lean: Lessons from the Road.
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Jurgen Appelo
by
Jurgen Appelo
Jurgen is primarily interested in software engineering, quality improvement and complexity theory, from a manager's perspective.
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Signal vs. Noise
Blog on design, business, experience, simplicity, the web, culture and software development.
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Performance Improvement
Blog by Glenn Whitfield focused on business management, lean, strategy, and related topics.
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French Deming Association
"Our purpose is to help our members and to coordinate their studies, in order to promote a way of management which respects human dignity."
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Beyond Lean
Blog by industrial engineering with the theme of reflecting on lean management and the idea that business units should be educated on lean thinking and principles.
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Madison Area Quality and Innovation Network
Community based quality improvement network founded in Madison, Wisconsin in 1987. "Our vision is to be a driving force behind positive economic and social change by promoting widespread application of customer-driven continuous improvement methods throughout the community"
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Lean Enterprise Institute
by
Jim Womack
"We carefully develop hypotheses about lean thinking and experiment to see which approaches work best in the real world. We then write up and teach what we discover, providing new methods for organizational transformation. We strive to answer the simple question of every manager, "What can I do on Monday morning to make a difference in my organization?" And, by creating a strong Lean Community through our website and public events we try to give managers the courage to become lean change agents."
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Got Boondoggle
by
Mike Wroblewski
"My lean experiences include learning directly from the original lean leaders including Dr. Shigeo Shingo. As a certified Six Sigma Black Belt, I believe quality is a cornerstone of all improvement actions. By sharing these experiences and insights, my hope is that you may benefit on your lean journey."
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PQ Systems
Software and services provider related to SPC tools. The site includes a blog.
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Life and Legacy of William G. Hunter
by
John Hunter, William G. Hunter
George Box, Stuart Hunter and Bill wrote what has become a classic text for experimenters in scientific and business circles, Statistics for Experimenters.
Bill also was a leader in the emergence of the management improvement movement. George Box and Bill co-founded the Center for Quality and Productivity Improvement at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Bill Hunter was also the founding chair of the ASQ statistics division.
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Management Innovation eXchange
"an open innovation project aimed at reinventing management for the 21st century. The premise: while "modern" management is one of humankind's most important inventions, it is now a mature technology that must be reinvented for a new age.
Current management practices emphasize control, discipline and efficiency above all else — and that's a problem. To thrive in the 21st century, organizations must be adaptable, innovative, inspiring and socially accountable. That will require a genuine revolution in management principles and practices."
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Curious Cat Management Improvement Connections
by
John Hunter
The aim of Curious Cat Management Improvement Connections is to contribute to the successful adoption of management improvement to advance joy in work and joy in life.
The site provides connections to resources on a wide variety of management topics to help managers improve the performance of their organization. The site was started in 1996 by John Hunter.
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Lean Edge
by
Michael Ballé, H. Thomas Johnson, Daniel T. Jones, Art Smalley, Steven Spear, Jeffrey Liker, Mike Rother
"Lean management is a method to dramatically improve business performance by teaching people how to improve their own processes. The two main dimensions of lean management are continuous process improvement (going and seeing problems at the source, challenging operations and improving step by step) and respect for people (developing and engaging employees by developing teamwork, problem solving and respect for customers, employees and all other partners).
...
The aim of the discussion [on the site] is to share different points of view and to collectively build a vision of lean management."
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Steven Spear
by
Steven Spear
Five-time winner of the Shingo Prize for research excellence and a senior lecturer at MIT and former assistant professor at Harvard. A senior fellow at the Institute for Healthcare Improvement, he is the author of numerous articles appearing in academic and trade publications, including the Harvard Business Review, Annals of Internal Medicine, Academic Medicine, The Boston Globe, and The New York Times.
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Not Running a Hospital
by
Paul Levy
Advocate for patient-driven care, eliminating preventable harm, transparency of clinical outcomes, and front-line driven process improvement.
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ITSM Professor
Blog on IT Service Management by Lisa Schwartz, Jayne Groll and Ross Wise.
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in2in
by
Bill Bellows
Offer an annual conference along with ongoing learning opportunities focused on the management ideas of Deming and Ackoff. Recommended
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Managers Are Heroes
"In our world, the Manager is the Hero. Bringing justice to the world: Decreasing Conflict, Increasing Productivity – and Enhancing the Lives of all that cross their path... This blog is written by Mike Brown – who like all of you – is a manager, fighting the good fight."
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Gemba Walkabout
by
Mike Stoecklein
“Gemba walk” (lean thinking term) to go to the actual place where value is added + “walkabout” (Australian aborigine) a short period of wandering bush life engaged as an occasional interruption of regular work.
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Quantum Shifting
Vision: People all over the world enjoy meaningful and satisfying work by thinking bigger about themselves, their work and the world.