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

• Transformation and Redesign

  ...transformation effort undertaken at the White House Communications Agency. It shares the Agency’s efforts beginning with a Deming-based approach to continuous quality improvement through implementation of a total organizational redesign using systems thinking precepts. It describes the obstacles to implementing quality concepts in a high visibility, high security organization and examines the influence of Agency’s organizational culture on quality performance and improvement. The discussion examines the applicability of several broadly accepted quality concepts to the “ultimate command-and-control” organization.

  A couple years after this article I I went to work for Gerald Suarez at the White House Military Office (WHMO). WHCA is one of seven operational units of WHMO, others include: Air Force One, Camp David and the White House Medical Unit.

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• Long Term Thinking at Toyota

  Certainly the most obvious example of Toyota’s long view is the Prius hybrid.

  I don’t think so, that is an example of their medium term thinking. Personal Robot Aids, biotechnology, housing and environmental development – that is long term thinking.

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• What Job Does Your Product Do?

  Customers buy your product or service to fill some specific need or desire. Knowing what need the customer is filling can help you improve your offering. Knowing what job the customer is using your product for lets you focus on improving your product for that market.

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• Systemic Failures Lead to Many Fatal SWAT Raids in the USA

  ...people being killed in raids by police on the wrong house: police in full swat gear storming the wrong house by accident and then killing occupants. The media in general sees these as “special causes” – isolated incidents. So while tragic the strategy is then to examine what mistake in this unique situation lead to tragedy. I believe this is a systemic problem and therefore see the proper examination to undertake is to look at the whole system. That is, to use the common cause improvement strategy – when the tragedy is seen not as an isolated incident but the result of a system.

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• Illusions – Optical and Other

  Optical illusions provide a simple reminder of how easily we can think we know things that are not so.

  It is important to question what you believe; even when it is as obvious as the A square being darker than the B square. Understanding the ease with which we can reach false conclusions can be a powerful aid in improving management decision making.

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• Lean Six Sigma Efforts

  ...management is the most common and most persistent obstacle, not “shop-floor personnel.” Others can resist yet another effort to adopt the latest management fad but the real challenge is in getting management to change their poor practices.

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• Management f-Laws by Russell Ackoff

  We found that we could improve part of a corporation and destroy the whole by improving the part.

  ...

  Russell Ackoff thinks that, imprisoned in centuries of Western education which values only analytic thought, most people cannot do the “synthetic” thinking that sees an organisation as an intermoving whole.

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• 3M CEO on Six Sigma

  ...the adoption of a newly branded management fad (from MBO to TQM to BPR to Six Sigma to Lean Six Sigma…) as the “solution” to this problem is doomed to fail (just like the last 5 times it was done) and rightfully make managers adopting such a re-branding solution the subject to ridicule by Dilbert readers. Adopt a management system. Make it yours. Incorporate good ideas from the outside but incorporate them into a long term management system that remains stable.

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• Compensation and Executive Pay at Whole Foods (2007)

  the average large corporation in the United States distributes 75% of their total stock options to only 5 top executives with the remaining 25% going to everyone else in the company (actually most of the remaining 25% goes to the next level of executives below the top 5). At Whole Foods, the exact opposite is true: the top 16 executives have received 7% of all the options granted while the other 93% of the options have been distributed throughout the entire company with all Team Members eligible for a grant after 6,000 hours of service to the company.

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• Encourage Improvement Action by Everyone

  Centralizing decision making is not an effective way to manage organizations. Organizations need to encourage improvement by everybody in the organization. We need to create a system where that is encouraged and supported.

  ...

  Without an understanding of systems and interactions sometimes changes are made without an understanding of the consequences those changes. The beer game is a good example of one way this can cause problems (people don’t always understand all the consequences of their actions). To be clear I agree with setting up systems that allow people to make improvements in the workplace. Just be cautious to avoid tampering.

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• Transforming Management: Risks and Importance of Data and Quality Tools

  ...Often measures become the focus and the reason for improvement is obscured. Improvement should eliminate waste and improve value to the customer. Measures should help determine the success along that path but improving the numbers is not the aim, the numbers are merely proxies for that aim.

   

   

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• Top 10 Manufacturing Countries (2007)

  ...The data also shows a stagnation in USA manufacturing output over the last several years, though the USA remains by far the largest manufacturer. The most significant news from this latest data, I believe, is that that manufacturing output growth in the USA has been slower than global manufacturing output growth from 2002-2005. This was not the case prior to 2002.

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• Systems Improvement Example

  Systems thinking allowed the engineers to design a solution that wasn’t about enforcing the existing rules more but changing the system so that the causes of the most serious problems are eliminated.

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• Knowledge Management – Management is Prediction

  ...There are several reason these ideas have not been adopted but one is that they require some effort to document and then evaluate (and often those are missing). So many see any time spent improving the system as waste (based on their actions not that they would say such a thing) – they are only happy when producing today or fire fighting to enable producing today.

  ... A good deal of thought is needed on how to use the technology tools to implement the ideas, but new technical solutions are providing options. Blogs, Wikis, improved search for stored data, the ease of creating intranet applications…. are some additional tools that can be used to improve.

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• Reacting to Product Problems

  Toyota is doing well but as they say themselves, over and over: Toyota still has plenty of room to improve. The key is to not only say so, but act on it (which I believe they are doing, the recalls give one indication of the continued need to improve).

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