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- Encouraging Curiosity in Kids - The biggest difference I see between adults and kids is not maturity or responsibility but curiosity (or lack thereof in adults) and joy (versus adults who seem to be on valium all the time - maybe they are).
- Epigenetic Effects on DNA from Living Conditions in Childhood Persist Well Into Middle Age - you may carry genes in your DNA for processing food in different ways. If you have very limited diet the way your body reacts could be to express genes that specialize in maximizing the acquisition of nutrition from food. And it could be that your body sets these expressions based on your conditions when young; if later, your diet changes you may have set those genes to be expressed in a certain way.
- "Rethinking" or "Moving Beyond" Deming Often Just Means Applying More of What Dr. Deming Actually Said - If the issue is one of the system performance (no indication it is a special cause) the most effective strategy to get better results is to improve the system, rather than approach it as a special cause issue (examining individual data points, to find special items in that event to be improved).
- Don't Neglect Your Dreams: Strive to Make Your Dreams Come True - "Deferring your happiness to the future is a terrible idea..."
- Anti-Market Policies from Our Talking Head and Political Class - When people get the message that collusion, anti-competitive markets, political special interest driven policies... are what free market capitalism is we risk losing more of the benefits free markets provide. That so few seem to care about the benefit capitalism can provide that they willingly undermine capitalism, to pay off political backers by supporting anti-market policies, is dangerous.
- Disability Insurance is Very Important - An office worker should have a very low risk of something happening that qualifies you for receiving benefits (even with fairly serious injuries for a hunter-gatherer or farmer they can earn a living). That is actually the perfect situation for insurance. Insurance should be cheap when the risk is small. You want insurance for unlikely but very costly events. You don’t want insurance for likely and inexpensive events (paying the middle man just adds to the cost).
- The Need to Improve Management While Building Organizations Fit For Human Beings - I return to this theme frequently. We don't need many new ideas. We just need to adopt the good ideas that have been proven for decades. The new ideas are mainly just a bit of flavoring to tweak the good ideas we have had available and just chosen to ignore...
- Looking for Dividend Stocks in the Current Extremely Low Interest Rate Environment - There are actually quite a few attractive high yield stocks now. I would strive for a very large amount of diversity in high yield stocks that are meant to take a portion of the bonds place in a balanced portfolio...
- Faster Than Light Speed Anomaly Reported by CERN - This is great stuff, wether it turns out to be an amazing result that changes our understanding of physics or even if it doesn't. It is great to see us striving to learn. My guess is that we find some explanation for the anomaly that does avoids something traveling faster than the speed of light.
- The Moral Consequences of Your Decisions - "I give to charity but I could give much more if I just chose to do so. I just don't. That is a selfish choice that as a person I am entitled to make. But it is fraught with moral consequences."
- Many Good Employees Want to Continue to Do Their Current Job Well - People do not all want the same thing out of work. A manager should know what their employees want and help them move in that direction... Many of those striving to get ahead can't really conceive of the idea that others don't have the same driving goals...
- When Companies Can Treat You Like an ATM, Many Will Do So - Your organization has to focused not on your quarterly profit (and if you are think kind of company, probably your personal bonus targets) but in serving your customers well, and in continually improve the value you provide to customers.
- How Efficient is the Stock Market? - I believe that the market does a decent job of factoring in news and conditions but that the "wisdom of crowds" is far from perfect. There are plenty of valuing weaknesses that can lead to inefficient pricing and opportunities for gain. The simplest of those are spotted and then adopted by enough money that they become efficient and don’t allow significant gains.
- Visual Management with Brown M&Ms - if they didn't have the bowl of M&Ms, or if the brown M&Ms were not removed, they could distrust the thoroughness of the contractors. And they would check to see what other, actually important, contractual requirements were not followed.
- Economic Consequences Flow from Failing to Follow Real Capitalist Model and Living Beyond Our Means - The corporations are suppose to not have "market power" in real capitalism. They have huge and growing market power. To me the main problem is that power disruption to the functioning of capitalist free markets... There is also the problem that we have been living far beyond our means...
- The Economy is Weak and Prospects May be Grim, But Many Companies Have Rosy Prospects - Companies that have very good prospects at staying profitable, even getting more profitable going forward are hardly the type of investment I want to sell. Especially not to put it in the bank and get 0%, or a money market fund and pay someone for the privilege of having my money.
- We Are In Big Trouble If the Overuse of Antibiotics Decreases Their Effectiveness - Antibiotics lose potency when they are overused. The overuse of anti-biotics on humans is bad (especially the huge amount of just lazy, not scientific use). But the massive overuse in livestock is much worse, it seems to me.
- Maslow on Dealing with Authoritarians - unfortunately we have far too few people willing to stand up to the bullies ripping apart our companies. Respect for people, doesn't mean letting people get away with bad behavior.
- Experimenting to Discover - Statistics for Experimenters: Design, Innovation, and Discovery shows that the goal of design of experiments is to learn and refine your experiment based on the knowledge you gain and experiment again. It is a process of discovery. That discovery is useful when it allows you to make improvement in real world outcomes. That is the objective.
- Society is being shaped for us while we are busy making other plans - "It is not that we need to eliminate the legal system. We need to fix it so it works to make society better and not so often to do damage to society instead."
- Evaluate Advice on Merit Not Whether the Advisor Follows It - Just because someone else doesn't follow good advice doesn't me you shouldn't follow the advice. Good advice is good advice whether the person follows it or not. And bad advice is bad advice whether the person giving the advice follows it.
- Avoiding Tragedy of the Commons for Software Development - "If people can just treat a resource as though it was suppose to just serve them and the resource is overwhelmed I see that as tragedy of the commons."
- The aim of leadership is not merely to find and record failures of men - "Far too many leaders think their role is to hold people accountable. Such thinking shows much that is wrong with those that seek simple answers instead of improvement."
- Respect People by Creating a Climate for Joy in Work - Creating a climate where people can take pride in what they do everyday is the key. It isn't being "nice" to everyone. What matters is providing a workplace where intrinsic motivation flourishes.
- Gravity and the Scientific Method - Science is not about current beliefs. Science is about seeking knowledge. If the search for knowledge leads to evidence that old ideas were wrong those ideas are overturned. Since people are involved that process isn’t as clean as it sounds above.
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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.
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