management.curiouscatblog.netCurious Cat Management Blog

-Home Curious Cat suggested posts Popular posts Curious Cat blog network About About this blog About John Hunter Honors for this blog Management Improvement Curious Cat management guide Quotes Subscribe This Blog’s RSS feed Feeds by category ← Older posts Quality is a Journey to Excellence Posted on May 7, 2024 by John Hunter I recently uncovered this 2 day management seminar that Bill Hunter (my father) recorded in 1985 in Green Bay, Wisconsin. The embedded clip shows the first section of a the seminar. There is a bit of presentation that is outdated (mainly about general economic conditions and specific business conditions from the 1980s). If you don’t have the patience to sit through that (I find it useful but I can understand some people won’t want to listen to that part) just skip to about 21 minutes in and you will get great ideas of improving the management of our organizations today. You may even want to skip to about 36 minutes into the video if your attention span is less open to taking in a bit of background material. In the section of the talk included here Bill discusses: Bigger Picture (economic conditions and history) Introducing Deming (as a person) Quality Improvement as Driver US companies seem to be like a train. Up at the front there is the engine and that is where the motor is and this is what pulls the train along. The big bosses tell everyone what to do and then everybody does it… In Japan, we like to run things differently. The engine is not just up in front and we all follow. We want to have all the employees have their own motors, start their own engines and that is much more powerful. One would hope the model of designing business to treat employees with respect and enable everyone to think and act based on their knowledge and function would be widespread 40 years after this presentation. While I do think some businesses have learned to be less driven by a few bosses telling everyone how things must be done, overall USA businesses still fail to use the brains and drive all of their employees possess . See: Managing Our Way to Economic Success by William Hunter . Business and Labor—from Adversaries to Allies by Donald Scobel was published in 1982 (I believe this is the article Bill referred to in the talk, though I could be wrong about that). In response to the article Russell Schrader, field representative AFL-CIO, wrote: The present system in the US has not provided for any meaningful contribution from the workers themselves to improve the methods of production and the quality of work life. They have no opportunity to exercise their judgement, imagination, creativity or versatility in ways that could contribute to their productivity and sense of dignity. It is no surprise that they undergo frustration and discouragement, feelings certainly not apt to contribute to their efficiency. The solution to our productivity problem is the necessity for management and labor to recognize the intrinsic value of the human being. In a response to that quote, Donald Scobel wrote: In the last 4 years while researching the article, I have heard employees say over and over again in their own vernacular: I want to contribute more than the organization will let me.” Links to items mentioned in the presentation: text of the 1950 Dr. Deming talk in Japan – My First Trip to Japan by Peter Scholtes – Building a Quality Movement,” with E. Chacko, August, 1972, Quality Progress (Bill mentioned talking to Deming about building a country-wide quality effort before bill spent a year and half as a professor in Singapore) When the Japanese talk about quality control a better translation into English would be excellence. It is a much more all encompassing idea than what we think of as quality control. … When the Japanese talk about quality, it means not only the quality of the product, the quality of the processes producing the product, the quality of the designs that go into processes and the product, quality people, quality systems, quality everything. Quality service, just quality through and through everywhere. What they are really talking about is a new way to manage and run organizations. Ishikawa talks about it as a thought revolution for managers. And that is what a lot of visitors to Japan have just missed. Bill ends this portion of the presentation by saying Quality is a journey, not a destination.” Related : Interview of Bill Hunter, Brian Joiner and Peter Scholtes on Better Management Practices – Deming and innovation – What is Total Quality Control the Japanese Way by Kaoru Ishikawa – Bill Hunter and the Quality Movement (by George Box) Posted in Deming , Management , Respect , Systems thinking , webcast | Tagged Bill Hunter , Data , Deming , Innovation , management , respect for people , Systems thinking | Leave a comment Remembering Brian Joiner Posted on October 16, 2023 by John Hunter I knew Brian Joiner as a child growing up in Madison, Wisconsin. He and my father worked together and our families spent time together. As I grew I interacted with Brian in my professional life and that relationship made my life better. Brian Joiner, 1984 by Bill Hunter We often saw things similarly. We could see things that we thought should improved and liked to focus on actually making improvements. Doing that is quite a bit more difficult than just pointing out all the problems that exist (in management and in society in general). Brian was one of the people that best captured the desire and ability to make positive change, in my experience. Sometimes that means making compromises that will lead to actual improvements. I really enjoyed talking about ideas with him. He and Peter Scholtes were very similar to my father in their desire to improve people’s lives and the willingness to do the work to realize those improvements. It is very difficult to do. His book, Fourth Generation Management, is one of the top handful of books I most recommend for those interested in improving the practice of management in their organization. I have posted about Brian previously on this blog including: Interview of Bill Hunter, Brian Joiner and Peter Scholtes on Better Management Practices Dangers of Forgetting the Proxy Nature of Data Distorting the System, Distorting the Data or Improving the System (my post on The W. Edwards Deming Institute blog) Distort the System My life is much richer for having known Brian. Many people’s lives are better due to the work Brian did during his lifetime. And more people’s lives will be better as his ideas, in Forth Generation Management and elsewhere, are applied in the future. Continue reading → Posted in Data , Management , Statistics , Systems thinking | Tagged blame , Brian Joiner , Data , Deming , John Hunter , Madison , management , Systems thinking | 1 Comment Expand the View of the System to Find Ways to Improve Results Posted on January 10, 2023 by John Hunter Here is an example of improvement made possible by expanding the view of the system (and viewing the results from the perspective of the customer instead of just looking at internal process measures). I was working to improve the processing time for court orders of child support (in the retirement system for the USA federal government). The time to process the court orders was taking far too long (longer than legally allowed). The first process improvements took place in the office (there were many easy ways to improve the process). In a few months things we finally starting to be under control and it was obvious the results were still far from acceptable. Looking at the whole process the time delay due to our office had been nearly entirely eliminated. However the total time was still far too long. That time was not under our control, so how could it be our problem? Just because you do not control a portion of the process does not mean you cannot influence those results. By using a system that was already in place (but was used very rarely) to...