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  • Building Adoption of Management Improvement Ideas in Your Organization - Favor efforts that will help you build organizational capacity to do more of what you want going forward (adopt lean thinking, use design of experiments, etc.). Some of this is about building expertise in the organization. It is also about building your circle of influence.
  • Top Countries for Science and Math Education: Finland, Hong Kong and Korea - Results for the Science portion 1) Finland 2) Hong Kong 3) Japan 4) Korea 5) New Zealand...
  • How to Get a New Management Strategy, Tool or Concept Adopted - I believe the way to encourage adoption of management improvement tools, methods and ideas is to solve people's problems (or give them new opportunities). Instead of trying to convince people by talking about why they need to adopt some new ideas, I think it is much better to show them that it works.
  • Don't Treat People Like You Want to be Treated - You should treat people how they want to be treated, not how you want to be treated.
  • No True Lean Thinking or Agile Software Development - The value depends on your operational definition. Once you operationalize management ideas in a real organization it necessarily should have differences from how it is operationalized elsewhere.
  • Why work doesn't happen at work - When asked where do you go when you really need to get something done, almost no-one says: the office (unless it is early in the morning or late at night).
  • Good Process Improvement Practices - Good process improvement practices include: 1) a standardized improvement process (pdsa...) 2) Going to the gemba - improvement is done where the work is done. You must go to the where the action is. Sitting in meeting rooms, or offices, reading reports and making decisions is not the way to improve effectively...
  • Government Debt as Percentage of GDP 1990-2009: USA, Japan, Germany, China... - Gross debt is not the only important figure. Government debt held within the country is much less damaging than debt held by those outside the country. While Japan has by far the largest Debt to GDP ration, they also own much of the debt themselves.
  • Science and Optical Illusions - Normally out brains do a fantastic job of guiding us through our day, but they have weaknesses that can lead us to mistaken conclusions.
  • More Kiva Entrepreneur Loans: Kenya, Honduras, Armenia... - When looking for loans I give preference to loans that improve productivity and increasing capacity of the entrepreneur. If they use the proceeds of the loan to increase their capacity to produce they can pay off the loan and find themselves much better off.
  • Helping People Take Joy in Work - Fundamentally it is about taking pride in what you do and eliminating the practices in so many organizations that dehumanize people.
  • Create a System That Lets People Take Pride in Their Work - What managers need to do is eliminate de-motivation - not to motivate. Manager's don't need to "empower" employees they need to fix the system to treat employees with respect and allow them to do their jobs well.
  • Oil Consumption by Country 1990-2009 - The USA consumed 18.7 million barrels of oil a day in 2009. Only China was also over 5 million barrels, they reached 8.2 million in 2009. Japan is next at 4.4 million...
  • 401(k) Options - Seek Low Expenses - "The .47% added expense isn't much to miss for 1 year... It isn't very sexy to get .47% extra every year but it is extremely rewarding. $200,000 at 6% for 25 years grows to $858,000 while $200,000 at 6.47% for 25 years grows to $958,000 - a $100,000 difference.
  • Build an Environment Where Intrinsic Motivation Flourishes - 50 years after Douglas McGregor's classic, The Human Side of Enterprise, too many managers still have not learned that using extrinsic motivation is not an effective way to manage complex human systems (organizations)
  • How to Manage What You Can't Measure - "when the data is lacking it is even more important to take a systemic approach to making management decisions. Falling back into using the numbers you can get to drive decision making is a recipe for trouble."
  • Auto Manufacturing in 2009: USA 5.7 million, Japan 7.9 million, China 13.8 million - In 2007 the USA produced 10.8 million cars and light trucks, Japan 11.6 million, China 8.9 million. In 2008 USA 8.7 million, Japan 11.6 million, China 9.3 million.
  • The Problem is Likely Not the Person Pointing Out The Problem - I believe the focus should be on "broken systems are unacceptable." I would prefer problem solving to address the issues but a culture of ignoring issues and seeing those that don’t as being negative is often the real problem (not the person that points out the problems).
  • Wind Power Capacity Up 170% Worldwide from 2005-2009 - Wind power is now generating 2% of global electricity demand. The countries with the highest shares of wind energy generated electricity: Denmark 20%, Portugal 15%, Spain 14%, Germany 9%.
  • Building on Successful Improvement - "I firmly believe you learn lean best by doing lean. So getting quick successes is great training - better than classroom training. But in doing so, you do want to focus on making sure people understand how the quick fix is a process they can repeat to improve other areas."
  • Involve IT Staff in Business Process Improvement - "I don't think organizations should cram their processes into designs required by off the shelf software. Instead I believe they should design processes optimal for their organization and using off the shelf software often does the opposite..."
  • Backyard Wildlife: Hawk - My view today was quite nice as this large hawk landed on my deck outside my study...
  • The Illusion of Knowledge - One of the challenges is that you need to be willing to question your beliefs but at the same time you need to make many decisions every day based on your beliefs. And I don't think it is wise to assume nothing. You need to make a huge number of assumptions everyday or you won’t even be able to get out of bed...
  • For the 14 biggest manufacturing countries in 2008, the overall manufacturing GDP percentage was 23.7% of GDP in 1980 and dropped to 17% in 2008. chart of manufacturing output as percent of gdp by country 1980-2008

    You may use this chart with attribution.

    USA manufacturing output has grown substantially: over 300% since 1980, and 175% since 1990. Still, the proportion of manufacturing output by the USA (for the top 14 manufacturers) has declined from 31% in 1980, 28% in 1990, 32% in 2000 to 24% in 2008.
  • Personal Finance Basics: Avoid Debt - "Many aspects of personal finance can get a bit confusing or require some study to understand. But really much of it isn’t very complicated. Debt is often toxic to personal financial success. The simple step you can take to avoid the problems many face is to just not buy things until you save up for them."
  • Trust Your Staff to Make Decisions - Often managers don't trust that their systems to hire and develop people that will make good decisions. The solution to this problem is not to give your staff no authority. The solution to this problem is not to give your staff no authority. The solution is to manage your systems so that you can trust your people.
  • 67 Is The New 55 - "We have not raised retirement age along with our increasing longevity. That is workable, if you save enough extra during your work life to enjoy a longer retirement. However, we are not saving even enough to retirement properly even if the life expectancy had not increased over the last 50 years."
  • Statistical Engineering Links Statistical Thinking, Methods and Tools - There is huge waste in not applying statistics tools. Good tools exist to help organizations improve results. We need to focus on getting those tools used and statistical thinking adopted by managers and senior executives.
  • Home Engineering: Bird Feeder That Automatically Takes Photos When Birds Feed - During a trip to the Smithsonian last week I found this great home engineering project. Kayty Himelstein and Amy Darr were frustrated: birds came to their bird feeder while they were away at school, so the girls never got to see them. They decided to build a bird feeder that automatically takes pictures of all the birds that came to the feeder.
  • Incentivizing Behavior Doesn't Improve Results - But the evidence continues to pile up against some outdated management practices. And good managers have to learn and adapt their practices to what is actually effective. "3 factors lead to better performance: autonomy, mastery and purpose"
  • Mistake Proofing Deployment of Software Code - Mistake-proofing a process both improves it (many poka-yoke solutions make the process easier to use) and prevents an error in case you still try something wrong.

John Hunter has experience with quality management, management improvement, customer focused continual improvement, process improvement and related areas. Since 1995, I have used the internet and internet technology to improve the results of management improvement efforts.

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