Posts selected fromManagement Blog - Engineering Blog - Investing Blog and other blogs - System Imposing Burden on Customers Driven by Pointy Haired Boss
The practice of telling your customer they must save you from horrible management is terrible. Managers designing a system that puts a burden on customers to rescue people from harsh treatment is about as lame as management can be. Definite Dilbert's pointy haired boss level idiocy. continue reading: System Imposing Burden on Customers Driven by Pointy Haired Boss - What Is Muda?
And the biggest waste of all is the underutilization of people’s talents. If you just learn to ask people for their ideas and get them to participate in creative problem-solving activities, you will be amazed at what people can do.
Norman Bodek
I agree: "Two resources, largely untapped in American organizations, are potential information and employee creativity. Managing Our Way to Economic Success, William G. Hunter, 1987. Also "The greatest waste in America is failure to use the ability of people." W. Edwards Deming, Out of the Crisis, 1982. continue reading: What Is Muda? - Vacation: A Systems Thinking Perspective
Health care insurance costs are high, if you can get 1900 hours of work a year for the health care premium instead of 1500 hours that can add up to a great deal of savings... continue reading: Vacation: A Systems Thinking Perspective - Interviews with Innovators
The very first thought in my mind was, “I think I signed a document that everything I design belongs to Hewlett-Packard.” Even just on my own time, I thought that they deserved it first. And I wanted Hewlett-Packard to build this. I loved my division. I was going to work there for life. It was the calculator division; it was the right division to move into this kind of a computer.
I went to management, and I had three levels of bosses above me in a room and a couple of other engineers, and I presented the ideas and told them what we could do at what price and how it would work. They were intrigued by it, but they couldn’t justify it as a Hewlett-Packard product for some good reasons. Hewlett-Packard couldn’t do a simple project, which was really what was interesting.
Steve Wozniak, on what became Apple. continue reading: Interviews with Innovators - Dangers of Extrinsic Motivation
Joel Spolsky notes that relying on extrinsic motivation to drive performance is an abdication of management.
Instead of training developers on techniques of writing reliable code, you just absolve yourself of responsibility by paying them if they do. Now every developer has to figure it out on their own.
continue reading: Dangers of Extrinsic Motivation - Competition
Most aspects of Deming’s thinking seemed natural to me from the start. Some ideas have taken longer (it took me awhile to be won over to the harm caused by performance appraisals, for example). Competition is another area that I still struggle with. I have been moved greatly by my experience and the thoughts of people like Alfie Kohn (No Contest: The Case Against Competition).
But I still hold more promise for some aspects of competition and I hold less concern than some about other aspects of competition. Still I agree that there is a good deal to learn about the dangers of competition which often creates havoc within a system. continue reading: Competition - Eliminate Slogans
 Text from the poster: “If a pretty poster and a cute saying are all it takes to motivate you, you probably have a very easy job. The kind robots will be doing soon.”
One of Deming’s 14 obligations of management was to eliminate slogans - Stop Demotivating Employees. continue reading: Eliminate Slogans - Patent Review Innovation
Michael Crichton wrote an essay critical of the current patent law: This Essay Breaks the Law. I believe the US is making significant mistakes in how we are proceeding with the patent system, see: The Patent System Needs to be Significantly Improved.
That’s the basic concept behind a pilot program sponsored by IBM (Charts) and other companies, which the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office appears poised to green-light. The project would apply an advisory version of the wiki approach to the patent-approval process.
continue reading: Patent Review Innovation - How Toyota Management Develops a New Camry
- Cease Mass Inspection for Quality
Deming believed in improving the process, and doing so using process measures (which often may involve sampling) to guide improvement efforts. He did not believe in using inspection to select out the bad products, which is what inspection largely was before Deming.
More on Deming’s thought on Inspection... continue reading: Cease Mass Inspection for Quality - Improving the 401(k) System
Many people don’t even take advantage of a 401(k) to save for their retirement. From a public policy perspective it creates a huge long term problem. The economy will end up with millions of people that didn’t save for retirement and will be a drain on those who did save for retirement and the rest of the economy.
So Congress actually passed a good revision to the law. Employers will now be required to default to having employees save for their retirement in 401(k) plans. The employee still has the option to decline doing so, but now, without such a choice, they will automatically save for retirement. continue reading: Improving the 401(k) System - Distorting the System or the Data is Easier Than Improving the System
3 ways to improve the figures: distort the data, distort the system and improve the system. Improving the system is the most difficult.
When people mistake the data proxy for the thing to improve they focus on improvement of how the data looks not of the system. That is the wrong strategy. The correct strategy is to focus on improving the system and as a way of verifying results you then look at measures. But you must always remember those measures are not the end they are an attempt to measure the end you are trying to achieve. continue reading: Distorting the System or the Data is Easier Than Improving the System - Ackoff, Idealized Design and Bell Labs
“Doesn’t it strike you as odd,” he said, “that the three most important contributions this laboratory has ever made to telephonic communications were made before any of you were born? What have you been doing?” he asked. “I’ll tell you,” he said. “You have been improving the parts of the system taken separately, but you have not significantly improved the system as a whole. The deficiency,” he said, “is not yours but mine. We’ve had the wrong research-and-development strategy. We’ve been focusing on improving parts of the system rather than focusing on the system as a whole. As a result, we have been improving the parts, but not the whole.
We have got to restart by focusing on designing the whole and then designing parts that fit it rather than vice versa.
continue reading: Ackoff, Idealized Design and Bell Labs - Gladwell (and Drucker) on Pensions
The most influential management theorist of the twentieth century was Peter Drucker, who, in 1950, wrote an extraordinarily prescient article for Harper’s entitled “The Mirage of Pensions.” It ought to be reprinted for every steelworker, airline mechanic, and autoworker who is worried about his retirement. Drucker simply couldn’t see how the pension plans on the table at companies like G.M. could ever work.
Pension plans did work well for a short period of time. But recently they (along with the attached retiree health care) are one of the big problems facing large old companies: like GM. Gladwell talks about the dependency ratio for an economy and the dependency ratio of companies. Worsening dependency ratios can cause pension plans to kill companies (if they are not funded when the obligation is incurred) – as the company is forced to pay for more and more retirees with fewer and fewer workers. continue reading: Gladwell (and Drucker) on Pensions - Internet Access at Work (2006)
Providing internet access at work can create some management issues. However, the correct solution to those problems is not to be overly restrictive on access to the internet.
...coach and work with your employees to make sure they behave responsibly. The information available on the internet can aid employees in doing their job in many ways. And it can also aid them in living their lives – don’t discount this benefit. continue reading: Internet Access at Work (2006)
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