Posts selected fromManagement Blog - Engineering Blog - Investing Blog and other blogs - Employee Ownership
I have always liked the idea of employee ownership. To me this can be a great help in creating a system where employees, owners, customers, suppliers work together. Alone an Employee Stock Ownership Plan (ESOP) does little. But as part of a system of management it is something I think can be beneficial. continue reading: Employee Ownership - New Look American Manufacturing
Many factors determine whether the USA will continue to lead the world in manufacturing. The USA has to continue to support a dynamic economic system, maintain a transportation system, improve the health care system, improve the educational system, maintain the rule of law, reduce excessive legal costs, improve the management of manufacturers etc.. Each country has to work on these and other systems to stay competitive globally.
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Excessive regulation compared to what countries – China, India, Germany, Japan? If you are talking about environmental regulation, the USA has more than China less than Germany or Japan. If you are talking about permits to get things done I think the National Association of Manufacturers (NAM) needs to go try to do business in Japan, China, India, Thailand, Mexico… and see how easy it is to navigate the undocumented processes.
And does NAM think the USA is good at nothing? Don’t manufacturers here benefit from being the USA? What cost advantages does that give them? I think being a manufacturer in the USA offers huge advantages as well as some challenges. The prospects are good. continue reading: New Look American Manufacturing - Toyota IT for Kaizen
IT often does the opposite of lean management and makes things more complex, more prone to error, less effective, etc.. Often all in search of only one thing – cutting costs. For that people should not be faulted for being skeptical of IT solutions. However, that does not mean that IT cannot play a part in improvements. It can, just be careful.
I find it a good sign when the CIO office is helping people find solutions at the request of the users rather than dictating solutions from on high. Some of the dictating might be necessary to optimize the system of IT (some local sub optimization may be required for the overall good) but in my opinion this is used as an excuse far too often.
Related: The Edge-case Excuse (a post I wrote more recently on the topic of error prone IT solutions) continue reading: Toyota IT for Kaizen - More on Obscene CEO Pay
 Unfortunately this reverse robin hood (steal from the workers, stock holder, customers…) and give to the CEO tale continues. Hopefully someday soon we can at least turn the momentum in the right direction (stopping these incredibly excessive “pay” packages). Even then it will take quite a deal of reducing these ridiculous “pay” packages to reach some sense of decency. continue reading: More on Obscene CEO Pay - Edward Tufte’s new book: Beautiful Evidence (2006)
 Beautiful Evidence by Edward Tufte is now available. Beautiful is the right word. Tufte’s books are an example of what can be created when someone truly loves what they do and takes pride in every detail of their work. His books are excellent.
In Beautiful Evidence, Tufte explores how to best display evidence looking at: mapped pictures; sparklines; links and causal arrows; words, numbers and pictures together; the fundamental principles of analytical design; corruption of evidence; and more. continue reading: Edward Tufte’s new book: Beautiful Evidence (2006) - Health Care Crisis (2006)
The USA health care system is broken and has been for a long time. Symptoms like the huge cost of health care, medical errors, ER problems etc. are all related. continue reading: Health Care Crisis (2006) - Brainstorming Under Attack
Brainstorming is about creating an opportunity to bring new ideas the forefront.
There are other useful tools such as the affinity diagram which can serve as another option (or can serve as a tool to work with the results of brainstorming).
And Edward DeBono has excellent creativity tools, like his 6 thinking hats. Brainstorming is a useful tool when applied properly but it is only one tool and other tools should be used also. continue reading: Brainstorming Under Attack - Lean National Health System
This is an example of focusing on improving the system which will then result in improved measures (cost savings for example). This systems approach contrasts with cutting costs by cutting every budget by 5% across the board which often fails. Without improvements in the system reducing budgets just reduces capability. continue reading: Lean National Health System - Dell Falls Short
Don’t give management a free pass just because they cave in to short term thinking. Management should know better and has a responsibility to do better. It is predictable that if management fails to setup an effective management system that they will fall victim to short term thinking. Still that doesn’t mean they are not responsible for making decisions. They are the managers of the company not some analyst on Wall Street. continue reading: Dell Falls Short - Brainstorming Under Attack
Brainstorming is about creating an opportunity to bring new ideas the forefront.
There are other useful tools such as the affinity diagram which can serve as another option (or can serve as a tool to work with the results of brainstorming).
And Edward DeBono has excellent creativity tools, like his 6 thinking hats. Brainstorming is a useful tool when applied properly but it is only one tool and other tools should be used also. continue reading: Brainstorming Under Attack - The Cat and a Black Bear
A black bear picked the wrong yard for a jaunt, running into a territorial tabby who ran the furry beast up a tree - twice. Jack, a 15-pound orange and white cat, keeps a close vigil on his property, often chasing small animals, but his owners and neighbors say his latest escapade was surprising.
continue reading: The Cat and a Black Bear - Management Advice Failures
I share this frustration with declaring old ideas new: Management Improvement, Better and Different, Quality, SPC and Your Career, Deming and Six Sigma, Management Lessons from Terry Ryan, Everybody Wants It, Toyota’s Got It, Fashion-Incubator on Deming’s Ideas and on and on.
Why does this matter? Two reasons, most importantly to me is that when we fail to value the best ideas, instead valuing the new ideas, we are not as effective as we could be. We often accept pale copies of good old ideas instead of going to the good old ideas – which will often lead to a much richer source of knowledge. When I compare copyrighted versions of management thinking to ideas from people like Ackoff, Deming, Ohno, Scholtes, McGreggor the depth and richness of those I admire is much greater than the packaged solutions as I see it (and they are often more concerned with furthering the practice of management than further their brand). Second, it is often dishonest, or at least sloppy thinkers, that don’t acknowledge the history of management ideas. continue reading: Management Advice Failures - The Cat and a Black Bear
 House cat chases a black bear up a tree. Cats are unpredictable and amazing. continue reading: The Cat and a Black Bear - If Tech Companies Made Sudoku
We often seem to add unnecessary complexity to software; creating fragile code that is frustrating to use.
Unnecessary complexity in internet development has increased greatly since I wrote this in 2006. I can't believe how often simple actions like clicking a link on web sites with huge budgets fail because instead of just being a link it is some complex code that is fragile and fails. The huge downloads needed for many websites today should shame them but the explosion of waste continues unabatted. At some point it will stop, but I am amazed how long the extermely poor management practices have continued.
Related: The Edge-case Excuse
continue reading: If Tech Companies Made Sudoku - Lean Beyond the Factory Floor
Experts (in TQM, Deming’s idea’s, Six Sigma, BPR, Lean…) always stress the importance of involving not just others (when talking to management) but their (managers) work too. But fairly consistently management adopts improvement ideas mostly for others, not for their own work. As organizations apply management improvement ideas on some portion of the work the talk of going beyond “factory floor” improvements becomes more common as improvements are seen where it is applied.
Fast Cycle Change in Knowledge-Based Organizations by Ian Hau and Ford Calhoun, Jun 1997 is a good example of lean thinking, eliminating waste… outside the factory floor. continue reading: Lean Beyond the Factory Floor
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