Blog posts on organization as a system

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

• Sustaining Management Improvement Through Personnel Changes

  Executives can't just have whims (usually driven by a desire to "make their mark") that throw out the principles used to manage the company if there is actually a strong management system.
  
  Most organizations just float with whatever fads are going on, so in most they can flip flop as new executives come into place.

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• Interview on PDSA, Deming, Strategy and More

  A really big key between people that use PDSA successfully and those who don’t is that the ones that do it successfully turn the cycle quickly.

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• Root Cause, Interactions, Robustness and Design of Experiments

  A single root cause is rare. Normally you can look at the question a bit differently see the scope a bit differently and get a different “root cause.” In my opinion “root cause” is more a decision about what is an effective way to improve the system right now rather than finding a scientifically valid “root cause.”

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• Out of Touch Executives Damage Companies: Go to the Gemba

  The very first thing that needs to happen is executives need to go the gemba and actually understand what their business units are doing. Only amazingly out of touch executives could sit unconcerned in their offices while Comcast practices are creating results so obviously horrible.

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• Revolutionary Management Improvement May Be Needed But Most Management Change is Evolutionary

  Revolutionary change is powerful but very difficult for entrenched people and organizations to actually pull off. It is much easy to dream about doing so.

  Often even revolutionary ideas are adopted in a more evolutionary way: partial adoption of some practices based on the insight provided by the revolutionary idea.

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• Strategy Based on Capability and Integrated with Execution

  “Strategy” without a thorough understanding of the organization as a system or an understanding of the capabilities of the organization is little more than dreams. Planning and strategy without the capability in the organization or a process to turn strategy into action are not much use.

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• The Importance of Leadership by Those Working to Improve Management

  There is a need to communicate with executives in a language they understand in order to make big changes. That requires an understanding of business and an appreciation for the importance of actually delivering value over talking about good plans.

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• Making Your Case to Senior Executives

  My advice is to grow your circle of influence and build the capability of the organization to adopt a customer focused continual improvement management system. Once that is done, speaking to the c-suite is easy. Before that is done, speaking to them is still easy, unless you want them to change their short term financial focus.

  As with all people, CEOs are influenced by good stories. So if your goal is to “make a sale” (for whatever you are selling) putting in stories that speak to their way of seeing things is always wise. By looking at the rhetoric they use and actions they have taken you should be able to see what they have a soft spot for in stories and use that to craft the stories you will tell to make your case.

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• Change and the Management System

  The most important thing though is the entire management culture. Tactics can help change efforts be more successful. But if the culture is hostile to continual improvement (fear based, performance appraisal based, target based, blame based, imposing from on high...) the tactics are working in a difficult situation. Still a good idea, but no matter what tactics are used it will be a challenge.

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• What is a Lean Program, Deming Program?

  Lean has evolved away, IMO, from just being able to say anything Toyota does is by definition lean. Lean and Deming are more about a philosophy of managing - continual improvement, respect for people, etc. than prescriptions. So you can't really have a checklist and say that if your org can check off all these things they are lean or Deming.
  
  The fact that the management systems can't be reduced to a checklist is a necessary given the long lasting power they offer.

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• How to Start Applying Deming’s Ideas on Management

  There are many different ways to start applying W. Edwards Deming’s ideas on management. There isn’t a cookbook on what should be done first. This is helpful in that you can avoid trying things that would be very difficult given the current state of your management system. However, it is also very challenging in that you have to decide what to do yourself instead of just following a recipe.

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• A Bad System Will Beat a Good Person Every Time

  So what was Dr. Deming trying to convey with this quote? It wasn’t an attempt to get people to give up trying because failure was certain. It was a attempt to get people to understand the importance of the system and the futility of trying to focus on blaming people for failures.

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• Building a System to Reduce Interruptions for Software Developers

  I feel strongly about the damage done by interruption to maker's focus. My appreciation for this damage to system performance was greatly enhanced as I became a software developer.
  
  In my work prior to software development I could see that interruptions were not ideal but they were not so damaging to my work and they do also have value. But work that requires extra focus, and software development sure did for me, the damage increasing greatly.

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• Why do you hire dead wood? Or why do you hire live wood and kill it?

  The common objection to seniority pay is, "It’s rewarding dead wood!” My response is, “Why do you hire dead wood? Or why do you hire live wood and kill it?”

  Peter Scholtes, The Leader’s Handbook, page 331

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• Businesses Need to Capture Potential Information and Use the Creativity of Employees

  My father wrote an article a long time ago on how to use ~"two resources, largely untapped in American organizations: potential information and employee creativity."
  
  I think it provides worthwhile ideas.

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