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

• Analysis Must be Implemented by People to Provide Value

  "The greatest statistical analysis is nothing if it can’t be implemented by people. But people learn in different ways."

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• Refusal to Follow Scientific Guidance Results in Worms Evolving to Eat Corn Designed to Kill The Worms

  An understanding of natural selection and evolution is fundamental to understanding science, biology, human health and life. Scientists create wonderful products to improve our lives: vaccines, antibiotics, etc.; if we don’t use them or misuse them it is a great loss to society.

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• Deming and Software Development

  "Dr. Deming’s ideas are about finding ways to improve the effectiveness and reliability of delivering value going forward. That idea is natural for many software developers. I find that software developers understand the value of designing the process to achieve repeatable success over the long term more than others (including managers)."

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• Students as Customers

  ... I find that normally the "they are not customers" crowd (doctors, government, education) are not doing a decent job of understanding what they disparage.

  It is true that it isn't appropriate for many providers of services to do whatever those who are paying want. That isn't what "customer focus" means.   

  ...

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• Kleptocrat CEOs and Their Apologists

  "These CEOs act like kleptocrat dictators, taking what they can and challenging anyone to do anything about it. As with the kleptocrats they surround themselves with apologists and spread around the looting (from corporate treasuries for the CEO and the countries for the dictators) to those that support their kleptocrat ways.'

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• Bako National Park, Sarawak, Borneo, Malaysia

  Bako National Park is a wonderful location less than an hour outside of Kuching, Sarawak, Borneo.

  I only spent a day in the park. There are several intersecting trails. The “small” loop trail includes the Lintang trail and intersects with Pandan Kecil path, Pandan Basar path and more. I hiked through several trails and completely exhausted myself, actually. It was a wonderful hike.

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• Kleptocrat CEOs and Their Apologists

  CEOs, and their cronies, were well paid decades ago. As their greed about their pay got to be unethical Peter Drucker started to speak out against their ethical failures. As those abuses became more extreme he increased his objections.

  ...

  I want a CEO that is paid well and seeks their reward not by taking from the corporate treasury but by providing great jobs, customer happiness and an improved society.

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• Ex-Toyota Manager Consulting with Porsche in 1994

  While respect for people is an important part of the Toyota Production System, the practice of former Toyota managers were often the "tough love" variety. Today, many people are often too timid, in my opinion, to call out things that need to be improved for fear of making someone uncomfortable. Where that balance properly lies though is based on the culture of the organization (and what needs to be done - occasionally there is a need to "shake people up" in order to make change take place more effectively).

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• The damage caused by "Management" by targets is much larger in dysfunctional organizations

  The damage caused by "Management" by targets is much larger in dysfunctional organizations - they are also more likely to be given more importance by dysfunctional organizations, that is a bad combination. In a great organization with an strong understanding of systems, respect for people, no pay based on "performance," an understanding of data and variation... then damage managing by targets does is much smaller.

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• Manufacturing Outlook and History In the USA and Globally

  The USA manufacturing base is growing and far from crumbling (job losses are deceiving as they are global and not an indication of a USA manufacturing decline). China’s manufacturing growth is incredible. China and the USA are far away the top 2 manufacturing countries.

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• Chart of Net Government Debt from 1980 to 2013 by Country

  Bloomberg converted the data to look at debt load per person (looking at gross debt – estimated for 2014). Japan has ill-fortune to lead in this statistic with $99,725 in debt per person (242% of GDP), Ireland is in second with $60, 356 (121% of GDP). USA 3rd $58,604 (107%). Singapore 4th $56,980 (106%). Italy 6th $46,757 (133%). UK 9th $38,939 (95%). Greece 12th $38,444 (174%). Germany 14th $35,881 (78%). Malaysia 32nd $6,106 (57%). China 48th $1,489 (21%). India 53rd $946 (68%). Indonesia 54th $919 (27%).

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• Modified Cockroach Portfolio

  I think something along the lines of this would make sense today for someone living in the USA (but I would vary it a fair bit depending on the person’s situation and it would change in different market conditions)

  • 35% Total Stock Market Index Fund (VTSMX)
  • 15% Total International Stock Index Fund (VGTSX)
  • 10% Vanguard emerging markets fund (VWO), or something similar
  • 20% high quality “dividend aristocrat” type stocks
  • 10% REIT Index Fund (VGSIX) or direct real estate ownership
  • 5% bonds
  • 5% cash

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• Why Don’t All Ant Species Replace Queens in the Colony, Since Some Do

  There are lots of examples of method is very effective at creating lots of successful offspring but happens to be less than ideal in some situations. Natural selection is pretty amazing and awesome at creating effective genes but we certainly can look at the results sometimes and see improvements that would be useful.

  Likely if losing the queen was very common a good way of dealing with that would be found (or that species would be disadvantaged and at risk). If the queen happens to evolve to being very reliable (and able to produce offspring that produce more - often by leaving to found new colonies) coping with her death becomes less important.

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• Amazon Using a Costco Strategy?

  Amazon Prime is in some ways is similar to Costco’s membership fees. Costco make the vast majority of their profit on membership fees and largely breaks even otherwise.

  Amazon Prime costs $79 a year (in the USA) and provides free 2 day shipping and access to their streaming video content. Amazon doesn’t disclose the numbers of prime members (that I can find anyway) but educated guesses seem to say 20 million (or more). That would be $1.6 billion a year.

  Amazon’s net income for the full year was $274 million. Fees for Prime customers were $1.6 billion

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• Politicians Playing Special Interests and Visa Versa

  the special interest can pay or cajole politicians to give them a benefit that helps them a lot (they can pay the politician a portion of their benefit and still have a huge gain) while society loses, no one loses enough to care enough to try and pay or cajole politicians to save society from a big loss.

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