Blog posts on management

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

• Dell, Reddit and Customer Focus (2006)

  I think most of Dell's users do not notice what Dell is doing, exactly. Reddit readers, however, by and large, do, which is one thing that makes reading Reddit fun. I find Reddit's users can point out, not just problems, but the systemic causes of those problems (so they vote up the links that do exactly this).

  Most customers might not see the chain leading to their frustration but the do know they don't like that the computer is slow and they have to wade through all sorts of software (much of which they don't need or want). I think the author was exactly right that the source of the problem is Dell's monetary incentive is to get paid to add more and more stuff not to give the users what they need.

  ...

  Mainly I think these critical looks at practices are fun reading, but there is also a management issue to understand.  There are many smart people who know how to voice their opinion (and the internet can connect that voice to large numbers of people).   In this day and age, if you think your imperial halo with protect you from the masses you had better hope none of these people get a look at what you offer.  If you are figuratively naked, they will see, and they will shout that fact from the mountain top.

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• Quality and Costs

  Deming explained that increasing quality decreases costs. Page 3 of Out of the Crisis: Improve Quality –> Costs decrease because of less rework, fewer mistakes, fewer delays…

  Like most models this does not explain everything. Achieving some quality desires does cost more. And the article examines how to look at the issue of cost reduction in health care, where the view that higher quality costs more persists to a larger extent than elsewhere. There is significant room in health care for adopting improvement that will improve quality and reduce costs because the systems are so poorly designed they are both increasing costs and decreasing quality over what could be achieved.

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• 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.

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• 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.

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• 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.

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• Why are you afraid of process?

  Process management is necessary for management improvement. That is true in manufacturing, service, government, research and any other environment. The way process management will be done must be modified to be effective. I believe people react negatively to the concept because they see process as the “rules” such as when the explanation for poor service is given as “that is our policy.” Don’t mix up those excuses with proper process management and improvement strategies.

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• Most Meetings are Muda

  Have the PM email the list of resolved and new action items to all the participants.

  This is an important step missed far too often. Doing so helps make sure that everyone leaving the meeting has the same understanding of what has been decided: in addition to reviewing new assignments I would suggest review all significant decisions made. Far too often, people have very different ideas on what happened in previous meetings.

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• Airline Quality (or Rather, Lack Thereof)

  I flew JetBlue Airways last week. The help at the counter was polite and friendly. While this is only one data point (and hardly a “high bar” to meet) it contrasts with most of my flying experience (in my experience Southwest has a good likelihood of providing good service but few other airlines do). It would be nice if more airlines could be like Southwest...

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• Find the Root Cause Instead of the Person to Blame

  Why did they make that error? Why did the process let them make that error? When you follow the why chain a couple more steps you can find root causes that will allow you to find a much more effective solution. You can then pilot (PDSA) an improvement strategy that doesn’t just amount to “Do a better job Joe” or “that is it Joe we are replacing you with Mary.” Neither of those strategies turns out to be very effective.

  But investigating a bit more to find a root cause can result in finding solutions that improve the performance of all the workers. 

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• Respect for People

  “Ohno was absolutely ruthless, employees and suppliers lived in fear of him.” I would say that while Taiichi Ohno was truly remarkable that doesn’t mean he did everything right.

  ...

  The difference between respect and disrespect is not avoiding avoiding criticism. In fact often if you respect someone you can be much more direct and critical than you can with someone you treat as though they don’t have the ability to listen to hard truths and improve. I think we often have so little respect for people we just avoid dealing with anything touchy because we don’t want to risk they won’t be able to react to the issues raised and will instead just react as if they have been personally attacked.

  It may also be that it is easier to train managers to behave in this way than to effectively deal with though issues. But that is not training them to respect people, it is your organization accepting you don’t respect your people (managers and others) so just train people how to behave in a way that avoids difficult areas.

   

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• Managing with Control Charts

  ...if managers mistakenly tamper with a stable process, believing an occurrence is exceptional, they introduce an external cause, which destabilises it. Targets do the same thing.

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• Understanding Data

  Effective use of data is an important part of management improvement. Emphasis is needed on “effective”; data misuse is rampant and creates problems. Use of data by itself is not sufficient.

  To be effective you need to learn to think about not what is printed on the page but what lies behind the numbers you see. The numbers are just proxies for the real situation.

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• Management: Geeks and Deming

  Several of Deming’s 14 obligation of management and 7 deadly diseases are noted in this quote, including: “Remove barriers that rob people of joy in their work” and the disease – “Emphasis on short term profits.” Deming was a physicist so that may explain the similarity of this ideas to geek management culture.

  • “Geeks seek knowledge for it’s own sake” – Deming’s point 13 “Institute a vigorous program of education and self-improvement.” Deming encouraged organizations supporting education of employees – even when unrelated to work in any direct way.
  • “Geeks like to experiment” – many of Deming’s ideas focus on this point, most obviously is the emphasis on PDSA
  • “Geeks openly debate the merits of technical ideas”

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• The Customer Knows Best?

  Some management ideas are pretty easy and straight forward. But many management practices require knowledge and judgment to apply them successfully. Easy solutions may be desired, but, often you must choose between easy and effective (hint, I suggest effective is the better target).

  Listening to customers is important but it is not sufficient.

  ...

  People could assume the numbers at Enron proved what Enron was doing was correct. But it did not prove that. Until we start to evaluate data more accurately we will continue to mistakenly see proof where it does not exist.

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• Six Sigma Won’t Fix Bad Management?

  Like most management concepts how it is applied varies tremendously. If one just uses some tools that are part of the “Six Sigma tool kit” (mostly tools from TQM and the like) then you might improve bad management only marginally.

  But if you read the work of Roger Hoerl, Soren Bisgaard, Forrest Breyfogle III… and learn and apply what they talk about as Six Sigma you will definitely have to address bad management practices...

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