History

Posts selected fromManagement Blog - Engineering Blog - Investing Blog and other blogs

• Remembering Brian Joiner

  I knew Brian Joiner as a child growing up in Madison, Wisconsin. He and my father worked together and our families spent time together. As I grew I interacted with Brian in my professional life and that relationship made my life better.

  ...

  His book, Fourth Generation Management, is one of the top handful of books I most recommend for those interested in improving the practice of management in their organization.

  continue reading: Remembering Brian Joiner
• Society fails to invest in long-term solutions to long-term problems

  I respect John Green and his brother, Hank. Their Vlogbrothers YouTube Chanel is a regular, enjoyable and educational part of my online activity. I recommend watching a few of videos and seeing if they should also be part of your online activity. Here is a screenshot from when John liked one of my tweets :-)

  continue reading: Society fails to invest in long-term solutions to long-term problems
• 2023 William G. Hunter Award to Dr. James Cochran

  ...It is also meaningful because of the distinguished, accomplished, highly regarded recipients who previously received this award. Dr. Hunter continues to have profound impact on our discipline and on my career - in service, in teaching, and in research. Dr. Hunter has influenced me by example, primarily through his vision and efforts to improve the lives of others by applying our discipline to complex and consequential problems.

  continue reading: 2023 William G. Hunter Award to Dr. James Cochran
• Expand the View of the System to Find Ways to Improve Results

  By expanding the system view and looking at the results of the entire system it is often possible to find improvements that are not possible by only looking at “your” system. These changes can sometimes be more challenging to accomplish as they may require convincing others to make changes.

  continue reading: Expand the View of the System to Find Ways to Improve Results
• We Should Put Solar Panels Above Parking Lots

  It is more expensive to build the solar arrays and infrastructure above existing parking lots (compared to an empty field) but it is a great use to space. We should be encouraging such development.

  continue reading: We Should Put Solar Panels Above Parking Lots
• Annual Performance Evaluations are a Poor Management Practice

  When you understand the challenges with evaluating a complex system it isn’t hard to know that evaluating individuals is not easy. Much of the evidence of individual “performance” is so dependent on impacts within the system that are totally out of even the individual’s influence. Yet it is easy to find numbers within a complex system that can be used to argue for or against an individual’s performance.

  The contributions any individual brings to an organization is largely dependent on the system in place (see: 94% Belongs to the System).

  continue reading: Annual Performance Evaluations are a Poor Management Practice
• Interview of Bill Hunter by Peter Scholtes on Statistical Variability and Interactions

  For some processes it is enough to know a couple important variables and have an understanding of how they interact to impact results. Often though problems are created because the organization doesn’t learn enough about variables that can have a substantial impact on results and therefore feels blindsided by poor results. In some of those cases they were blindsided not by unforeseeable random factors but by variables they should have learned about. And then based on that knowledge designed their processes to take into account the potential impact of variations in that variable...

  continue reading: Interview of Bill Hunter by Peter Scholtes on Statistical Variability and Interactions
• Profound Podcast with John Hunter – Curious Cat

  In this podcast I discussed a bit of my history with management improvement. My father introduced me to the ideas as I was growing up.  And that became formal during high school, when I attended a class for City of Madison employees (during the summer) on management improvement (Deming included a couple pages on those efforts in Out of Crisis).  I also discussed: Design of Experiments, Peter Scholtes, W. Edwards Deming, PDSA cycle and six sigma.  This podcast is part one of the interview.

  continue reading: Profound Podcast with John Hunter – Curious Cat
• Using Customer Feedback to Drive Continual Improvement

  That impact of creating systems that continually improve the value provided to customers is still very much under appreciated. The Deming Chain Reaction is such a powerful concept that allows us to create more value and reduce costs over the long term.

  ...

  Long term thinking with an appreciation for systems allows managers to focus on improving value over the long term while many of their competitors focus on reducing current costs no matter how much damage they do to their customers and the long term success of their business.

  continue reading: Using Customer Feedback to Drive Continual Improvement
• Profound Podcast with John Hunter, Part Two

  In this podcast I discussed my thoughts on management improvement, Deming, respect for people, systems thinking and more.
  

  continue reading: Profound Podcast with John Hunter, Part Two
• Alzheimer’s and the Complex Scientific Inquiry Process

  Medical research is complex. Once we figure out what is most critical and discover effective treatments often the explanations can then make it seem fairly simple. But that process is often decades of efforts that include years of frustration and confusion.
  
  For long term medical impacts we often need to guess at important biomarker indications that may be closely related to health outcomes. But that process often isn’t as easy as it sounds.

  continue reading: Alzheimer’s and the Complex Scientific Inquiry Process
• The Growing Use of Apprenticeships in the USA

  Apprenticeships are a great option for many people. For one thing you don’t have to take on a huge debt burden (previous post: Personal Finance Considerations for Going into Debt for Education). Also for many careers and apprenticeship is what is needed, not a college degree.

  continue reading: The Growing Use of Apprenticeships in the USA
• Confusing Improving A Proxy Measure with Actually Improving the System

  The more experience you gain trying to improve, the better you become at improving. That journey is not easy, but it is very rewarding. I find keeping your sight on the long term is a great help. If you focus too much on the short term (which is very easy to do), it is easy to become so invested in achieving a short-term success that you seek to find numbers that let you claim victory. That is the death of efforts to improve.

  It is just so easy to find some numbers that can be used to declare victory no matter how badly things are really going. Instead, accept that there will be many short-term failures and short-term successes, but each of those are fairly minor data points on the long term journey to create an organization that continually improves day after day, week after week, month after month, and year after year.

  continue reading: Confusing Improving A Proxy Measure with Actually Improving the System
• Interview of Bill Hunter, Brian Joiner and Peter Scholtes on Better Management Practices

  That kind of experience could not have happened if management wasn’t willing to listen to the workers and wasn’t willing to say to the workers “you have brains and you have ideas and why don’t you go out and see if you can solve it and I will back you up. And that is what they did

  Bill on creating jobs people want to do:

  If they are going to work with the attitude that part of my job is to figure out how we can make things work better around here it adds another challenge to the job which makes the work more fun and more enjoyable. It all points in the same direction it seems to me. These methods do feed into making jobs more interesting and morale going up and the job being better.

  continue reading: Interview of Bill Hunter, Brian Joiner and Peter Scholtes on Better Management Practices
• Photo from the top of Borobudur

  I have been adding some photos to Curious Cat Photos including this one from Borobudur in Indonesia.

  Also see photos of Mount Rainier National Park in Washington state and others from the USA.

  continue reading: Photo from the top of Borobudur