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• Gobbledygook

  How is this for Gobbledygook? Your home banking access code is expired! You must change your access code at this time. Your access code:

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  ...

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• Lean Management in Policing

  Hiring of school crossing guards made more expedient. “This one’s amazing,” Sheriff Rutherford chuckles. “It was taking us 68 days to hire someone from our eligibility list because we were sending candidates all over for different parts of the interview process. Now it takes us just three days to make a decision because we’re practicing ‘one-stop hiring.'”

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• Don’t Do What Your Users Say

  You must focus on customers but you must bring thought into how you react. Just doing what they say is likely a bad idea. Ignoring them is also bad. But listening and learning and then adjusting is good.

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• Toyota Winglet – Personal Transportation Assistance

  The Winglet consists of a body that houses an electric motor, two wheels and internal sensors that constantly monitor the user’s position and make adjustments in power to ensure stability. Meanwhile, a unique parallel link mechanism allows the rider to go forward, backward and turn simply by shifting body weight...

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• Individual Bonuses Are Bad Management

  The idea that bonuses are bad management is one of the more difficult management improvement ideas for people to accept. See related post links for much more on the problems with them and what to do instead...

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• How to Develop Thinking People

  “Developing people requires physical endurance.” Frequent follow up is necessary, in person. It is not acceptable to give an assignment and follow up or scold only after three months, during a progress report meeting. Specific actions and detailed follow up are necessary.

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• Multitasking Decreases Productivity

  The problems with multitasking are becoming more and more well know, thankfully. Here is another article on the lower productivity multitasking produces...

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• Do What You Say You Will

  There is the saying “It is better to be thought a fool than speak, and prove it.” Well it is better to be thought a pointy haired boss (PHB) than to ask for feedback, then ignore it, and prove you are a PHB.

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• Amazon S3 Failure Analysis

  Amazon Simple Storage Service (S3) is a service providing web hosting. The cloud computing solution has been used by many organizations successfully. However the solution has experienced some problems including failing for much of the day on July 20, 2008.

  Amazon publically shared their evaluation of the failure and plans to improve.

  During our post-mortem analysis we’ve spent quite a bit of time evaluating what happened, how quickly we were able to respond and recover, and what we could do to prevent other unusual circumstances like this from having system-wide impacts.

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• Keeping Good Employees

  ...What can we do to keep you? What do you enjoy about your job? What do you dislike? What can I do to increase your joy in work? What one thing would you most like to see changed? What do you want to see continue? Would you like help in some aspect of your career development? What can I do better? Am I providing too much oversight, not enough?

  Give honest straight forward answers to questions. If someone wants to move ahead and needs to work harder to advance their career tell them that. If they need to be more cooperative, develop certain skills… tell them. The idea is not just to make the person happy in that meeting...

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• Not Exactly Lean Packaging

  Sadly not. What the überbox did contain was 16 smaller boxes “which in turn [each] contained (wrapped in foam so they wouldn’t get broken) exactly two sheets of A4 paper”

  It is hard to imagine what management system creates such solutions. But it is not hard to image Dilbert’s pointy haired boss fitting right in there. It also isn't surprising the incredibly poorly managed HP is responsible for this instance of idiocy.

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• Some Good IT Business Ideas

  Outsourced IT. In most companies the IT department is an expensive bottleneck.

  ...

  Off the shelf security.

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• “Pay for Performance” is a Bad Idea

  The idea of a merit rating is alluring. The sound of the words captivates the imagination: pay for what you get; get what you pay for; motivate people to do their best, for their own good. The effect is exactly the opposite of what the words promise.

  W. Edwards Deming

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• Outcome and In-Process Measures

  An outcome measure is used to measure the success of a system. For example, the outcome measure could be the percentage of people who do not get polio (the result). An output measure, for example, would be the number of people vaccinated with the polio vaccine (the output). Often we measure inputs (amount of money spent) or outputs (number of people vaccinated). They are usually easy to measure but obviously less valuable proxies for what the objective of the system (reducing the incidence of polio).

  ...

  In-process measures can be valuable in providing actionable information sooner than the outcome measure would allow action...

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• Drucker’s Ideas at Toyota

  Encourage employees to voice their opinions even if they are contrary. The people in top management must be open to hearing critical comments from employees and listening to opposing views if they want to engender new ideas and new ways of doing things.

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