Blog posts on management

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• SEC chief quotes Deming

  Security and Exchange Chairman William H. Donaldson:

  This approach will, ultimately, better serve investors, and it will also gradually temper the pressures on some corporate executives to fudge the numbers. It would behoove us all to remember the words of W. Edwards Deming: “People with targets, and jobs dependent on meeting them, will probably meet the targets – even if they have to destroy the enterprise to do it.”

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• Google: Good Service not Arbitrage (2005)

  Google, to use a internet bubble phrase, is doing a good job monetizing eyeballs. However, that is not arbitrage it is just doing a good job of maximizing revenue and profits. Yes Google is able to make money because they are paid more by advertisers than it costs them to deliver what the advertisers want. But I don’t see how that is more like arbitrage than Toyota selling a car for more than it costs them to make the car.

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• W. Edwards Deming and the Leander Way

  Often people will say Deming isn’t just the tools. That is certainly true. But using tools and data to make improvement efforts concrete is important. 

  As Deming said, best efforts are not enough, you have to know what to do. But he also said, “Best efforts are essential.” Tools are not enough: and like best efforts, using them without understanding the management system can do damage. But tools are also essential and Leander’s experience shows a long term effort to integrate quality improvement tools into the management system to achieve long term continual improvement.

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• “Our Problems Are Different” – Not Really

  It is very common for people to see their situation as special and so different that they can only learn about management from some situation identical to the one they face. But this is a misunderstanding of what learning about better management practices is about. It isn’t an effort to find practices to copy. It is an effort to learn about managing organizations made up of people so that you can apply those ideas to your specific situation.

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• The Edge-case Excuse

  I have found “edge cases” to actually mean we don’t want to fix it. Often the issue isn’t needing some special code to deal with an “edge case” it is the coding was done poorly and breaks in many different “edge cases.” It isn’t that those edge cases need to be coded for. It is that the code should have been written in a robust way that didn’t break for lots of “edge cases” but the excuse given for not fixing the fundamental coding fragility is the bugs found are just “edge cases.”

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• Inquiring Minds: Improving Elementary Science by Linda Lippe

  This presentation also makes it obvious how well Leander ISD intergrates the use of quality tools into their efforts. Quality tools alone are not sufficient but the effective use of quality tools is extremely important to long term success of efforts to improve the system. And most organizations use quality tools far too infrequently.

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• Don’t Empower

  I believe I learned this from Peter Scholtes, though maybe I am remembering it wrong or explaining it wrong (so give him the credit and if I mess it up it is my fault). I believe there is a problem with using the term empowered. Using the term implies that it one person empowers another person. This is not the correct view. Instead we each play a role within a system. Yes there are constraints on your actions based on the role you are playing. Does a security guard empower the CEO to enter the building?

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• Systems Thinking: Feedback Loops

  A reinforcing loop encourages the system to continue in that direction (e.g. a damn starting to leak, as water flows over the damn wall will further erode the wall which leads to more water flowing over causing more erosion).

  When the reinforcing loop is undesirable it can be referred to as a viscous cycle...

  An example of a positive reinforcing loop is building trust in an organization.  As people gain trust (and fear reduces) people are more willing to be trusting and cooperate, that behavior then encourages more of that behavior and so on.  A positive reinforcing loop can be called a virtuous cycle.

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• Cliff Norman and Ron Moen Discuss the History of the PDSA Cycle

  Ron emphasized the importance of the iterative nature of learning supported by the PDSA cycle. The importance of iterating the PDSA cycle multiple times is something that I find most organizations would benefit a great deal from. Another API consultant spoke on this importance at the 2006 Deming conference.

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• How to Use Data and Avoid Being Mislead by Data

  One of the four areas of Deming’s management system is “understanding variation.” The core principle underlying that concept is using data to improve while understanding what data is and is not telling you.

  The mistakes in interpreting data are very often related to mistaking natural variation in data as meaningful. Combining this with our brains ability to find patterns (even from random data) and confirmation bias this creates problems.

  Data can’t lie, but people can be mislead and they can even mislead themselves by misinterpreting data.

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• Product and Service Innovation is Driven by Customer Focused Organizations

  At the core of W. Edwards Deming’s philosophy is a focus on delighting customers, allowing everyone to contribute what they have to offer and continually improving.

  ...

  An organization must have a deep focus on customers in order to continually improve the value delivered to those customers and to innovate and create new products and services that delight those customers and future customers that the business can win over.

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• Unintended Consequences - distorting the system or distorting the data

  Using data to understand your processes and improve them is very useful.

  But using data often results in unintended consequences. If you don’t have a good understanding on the pressures collecting data will bring to bear on the system you can create pressure for results that damage the delivery of value to customers...

  Distorting the system or distorting the data are often the result, instead of the process improvement that is desired and expected.

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• The Tendency for Lean Experts to Distrust Technology

  ... I think biggest objection is how often and badly technology efforts fail. This makes a knee jerk reaction against jumping to technology fairly wise. I think the second reason is technology expertise is often not found in the same people that have lean expertise (it can be it just isn't super common)...

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• The Value of a Management System Accommodating Remote Work

  Working remotely creates a significantly different system than working all next to each other. There are big advantages to working right next to each other. There are also really bad office designs (which are very common) which detract from success of working next to each other (distractions etc. that cubical farms, "hoteling" create etc.).

  There are challenges to managing a system of work with people not being right next to each other. There are also huge advantages of hiring people that are not within commuting distance of your location...

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• Statistical Techniques Allow Management to do a Better Job

  For all four groups of people [management, statistical administration, research, front-line workers], the statistical method is more than an array of techniques. It is a mode of thought-sharpened thinking. It helps anyone in the four groups, be he a machine operator or an executive, to make better decisions, and to do his work better, than he could do otherwise.

  --- W. Edwards Deming

  Those who continue to thinkW. Edwards Deming was focused on the factory floor alone have missed most of what he proposed. Improving the decision making at the executive level was always Deming’s focus. Continual improvement should be a part of everyone’s job but as executives have more authority the impact of improving their performance multiplies, or stifles, the impact of improvement anywhere else in the organization.

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