Leadership and Management
I don’t think the attempts to separate leadership and management are useful. I read plenty of things that are variations on Peter Drucker’s: “Management is doing things right; leadership is doing the...
View ArticleManagement Improvement Carnival #198
The Curious Cat Management Improvement Carnival has been published since 2006. The carnival, has been published twice a month – but will now be published once or twice a month depending on how things...
View ArticleManagers Are Not Non-Leaders: Managers Need to Practice Things We Classify as...
Saying “Managers care about efficiency and leaders care about effectiveness” is like saying “Doctors care about theory and nurses care about patients.” Managers that don’t care about effectiveness are...
View ArticleSteve Jobs on Quality, Business and Joseph Juran
This webcast shows an interesting interview with Steve Jobs when he was with NeXT computer. He discusses quality, business and the experience of working with Dr. Juran at NeXT computer. The video is...
View ArticleInnovative Thinking at Amazon: Paying Employees $5,000 to Quit
Amazon continues to be innovative not just in technology but with management thinking. Jeff Bezos has rejected the dictates espoused most vociferously by Wall Street mouthpieces and MBAs that encourage...
View ArticleGeorge Box Articles Available for a Short Time
A collection of George Box articles have been selected for a virtual George Box issue by David M. Steinberg and made available online. George E. P. Box died in March 2013. He was a remarkably creative...
View ArticleToyota Post Record Profit: Splits $15 million in Pay and Bonus for top 21...
After posting record profits of $17.9 billion Toyota proposes to increase the pay and bonus for the top 21 executives to $14.9 million. That is not as you might expect just the increase in the bonus to...
View ArticleOut of Touch Executives Damage Companies: Go to the Gemba
When your customer service organization is universally recognized as horrible adding sales requirements to customer service representatives jobs is a really bad practice. Sadly it isn’t at all...
View ArticleGood Startup Ideas from Startup Weekend JB (Malaysia)
I like all these startup ideas from Startup Weekend JB (Malaysia). I can’t figure out how to comment on their blog (I am guessing Tumbler just eliminates commenting?), so I started this post – and...
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10 Most Popular Posts on the Curious Cat Management Blog in 2014
Here is a list of the 10 most popular posts on this blog last year (as measured by views counted by my analytics applications). The posts were published in 2010 (4 posts), 2013 (2), 2014 (2), 2005 (1)...
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Who Inspires Your Management Thinking and Action?
This month Bill Troy, ASQ CEO, asked ASQ Influential Voices bloggers: “who influenced or inspired your management thinking and in what ways?” He discussed Paul O’Neill’s influence on his thinking; I...
View ArticleLessons for Managers from Wisconsin and Duke Basketball
What can managers learn from Duke and Wisconsin’s basketball teams? Duke and Wisconsin are in the college basketball championship game tonight. They reached this stage through a great deal of hard...
View ArticleExecutive Leadership
Senior executives must lead management improvement efforts. When senior executives only give lip service to management efforts the result is normally the same: little happens. When Dr. Deming was...
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Lean Blog Podcast with John Hunter
Mark Graban interviewed me for the Lean Blog podcast series: Podcast #174 – John Hunter, “Management Matters” (listen using this link). Links to more information on what we discussed in the podcast....
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Quality of the Entire Customer Experience
Customer expectations are high in the highly competitive marketplace today. The quality of a product or service alone is no longer a differentiator; instead the overall quality of the experience is now...
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Poorly Stratified Data Leads to Mistakes in Analysis
Getting organization to think of data as critical to making effective decisions is often a challenge. But the very next problem is that while data is used it is actually more misused than used. What is...
View ArticlePeter Scholtes on Teams and Viewing the Organization as a System
In this presentation Peter Scholtes provides an explanation of teams within the context of understanding an organization of a system: We will not improve our ability to achieve our purpose by...
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Effective Change Management Strategies and Tactics
ASQ has asked their Influential Voices to respond to the question: What are some recommended strategies or tactics to help achieve successful change management? See my past blog posts as part of the...
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20 Most Popular Posts on the Curious Cat Management Blog in 2018
These posts were the most popular posts on the Curious Cat Management Improvement Blog in 2018 (as measured by page views, as recorded by my analytics application). The Toyota Way – Two Pillars (2010)...
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Design the Management System with an Appreciation of Confirmation Bias
John Hunter hiking at Fraser’s Hill, Malaysia, when I was a bit younger. To create strong organizations we must create management systems using an appreciation of psychology. We must understand that...
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