John Hunter - management consulting, investing, economics, software development, science and engineering.

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Management Matters
by John Hunter

Selected posts from my blogs:

Business 901 Podcast with John Hunter: Deming's Management Ideas Today
Respect for Everyone - I value changing the system to build the capability of the enterprise. As part of that, I realize, it is important to create a system that at its core respects people.
Long Term View of Manufacturing Employment in the USA - In 1980 manufacturing jobs accounted for over 22% of USA jobs; by 1990 that fell to 17%, by 2000 to 14% and by 2010 to 10%. Manufacturing output grew a great deal while employment total decreased.
Withdrawing Huge Amounts of Cash From Companies You Saddle with Debt is Despicable Behavior - These are smart people. They know how to use public apathy and rhetoric to keep from discussing the important issues. It is going to take us to stop the corrupting cronyism that has taken over our political parties.
Capuchin Monkeys Don't Like Being Paid Less - Monkey's share our frustration at seeing what we perceive as unfair treatment.
Manufacturing Output as Percent of GDP from 1980 to 2010 by Country - For the 10 largest manufacturing countries in 2010, the overall manufacturing GDP percentage was 24.9% of GDP in 1980 and dropped to 17.7% in 2010. The manufacturing share of the USA economy dropped from 21% in 1980 to 18% in 1990, 15% in 2000 and 13% in 2010. Still, USA manufacturing output has grown substantially: over 300% since 1980, and 175% since 1990.
Build Systems That Allow Quick and Effective Action - Don't Just Try and Run Faster - Any attempt to be faster internally or respond to a faster marketplace should first put the principle of sustainable workload as a requirement. And next build the capability of the enterprise to respond quickly and keep increasing how quickly it can respond effectively.
New Deadly Diseases for Business - The new deadly diseases are: extremely excessive executive pay and systemic impediments to innovation due to the broken patent and copyright systems. In my view these 2 diseases are more deadly to the overall economy than all but the broken USA health system (from Dr. Deming's list of 7 deadly diseases).
What is a Project Manager? - To me the main PM roles are #1 manage the existing system to achieve the result for the project, #2 improve the existing system.
Customer Focus by Everyone - here are many critical elements to a management system. One that is fundamental, yet still poorly executed far too often, is creating a system where all staff can focus on enhancing value to the customer every day.
If You Create a System That Includes The Perfect Conditions for Scandals, Expect Scandals to Happen - Other leaders abolished child labor, created universal education, sent us to the moon. Ours are busy justifying massively unjust payments to a few at the cost of the well being of the country and the citizens of the world. The too big to fail welfare banks have been practicing this behavior for a couple of decades. And, like clockwork, huge scandals occur.
Leadership: Taking Action When Others Are Unsure - if there is a group people often become more passive; thinking the non-action by others means they are over-reacting. So they then don't react (thus re-inforcing everyone else decision not to act). This is one of those times leadership really matters: someone not afraid to take action and potentially criticized for going against the consensus group decision to not act.
Action Is More Important Than Sympathy - Waiting until leadership has amassed the power of something like the House Committee on Un-American Activities is very dangerous. Once that happens much more spectacular heroic action is required to save us than is required in stopping the dramatic, Orwellian (just look at the name of that committee, and the name of some of the recent acts of Congress), anti-liberty actions of government.
Profit = Market Price - Actual Cost or Price = Cost + Desired Profit - Apple would probably sell very few iPhones at $3,000 above the current price. How many they sell at $100 more or $100 less may be significant but they would still be huge sellers at either of those prices. So that "market sets the price" idea is not 100% accurate (I don't think anyway).
Corporate Social Responsibility - It is no wonder those people, that are suppose to be leading the organization, instead are just bleeding the organization for whatever they can get away with. That result is very likely when you fail to encourage systems thinking and respect for people (inside and outside the company).
Working Less: Better Lives and Less Unemployment - Also the USA standard of living is partially based on long hours (it is but one factor). We also have to work quite a few hours (about 5% of the total hours) to just bring us equal with other rich countries, in order to pay for our broken health care system.
Our Dangerous Antibiotic Practices Carry Great Risks - Our continued poor antibiotics practices increase the risk of many deaths. We are very poor at reacting to bad practices that will kill many people in the future. If those increased deaths happened today it is much more likely we would act.
Customer Focus - If the decision makers in a company are not experiencing the company's products and services as a customer would that is a big weakness.
Stock Market Capitalization by Country from 1990 to 2010 - The USA was 32.5% of the total in 1990. The USA grew to 46.9% as the tech, finance and housing bubbles were all underway (also Japan was stagnating and the Chinese stock market hadnâ€™t started booming to a significant extent). In 2010 the USA was back down to 31.4%. This will likely continue to decrease (at a much slower pace - I wouldn't be surprised to see the USA at 25% in 2020) as the rest of the world's markets continue to grow more quickly.
Pay Attention to the Results that Matter - Maintenance is known to be the primary issue (along with some competition from corruption) with failures of clean water projects. For decades the failure of project has been do to poor maintenance (often a situation created by failing to consider maintenance issues so putting in place poorly designed solutions). Failing on the known largest issue is again extremely disappointing.
Leading Improvement and Enjoying the Rewards - As a manager your primary responsibility is to improve the system: both the systems within your sphere of control and those outside of it. The more effectively you do so, the less firefighting you have to do.

previously listed entries

John Hunter has experience in management improvement (customer focused continuous improvement, process improvement, systems thinking) and related areas. Since 1995, I have used the internet and internet technology to improve the results of management improvement efforts.

Consulting by the minute with John Hunter
New Book Management Matters: Building Enterprise Capability

Six Sigma portal - management improvement portal - lean manufacturing articles and news

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