Curious Cat Management Improvement Blog

Management Improvement focused on Deming, lean thinking, innovation, customer focus, six sigma, etc.

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Management Improvement Carnival #91

Mar 11, 2010 2:35pm

The Curious Cat Management Blog Carnival provides links to recent articles to help managers improve the performance of their organization. A Mindless Worker is a Happy Worker “when people are given a chance to participate in creating something good, solving a problem, and play a role in adding value through the...

Improving Software Development with Automated Tests

Mar 8, 2010 8:41am

Automated software testing is a mistake proofing (poka-yoke) solution for software development. The way automated testing works is that software code is written that tests the software code of the application. This automated testing code test that business rules are correctly being followed by the code in the application. So for...

Improving Education with Deming’s Ideas

Mar 4, 2010 6:51am

This interview with David Langford discusses how to improve education using ideas from Deming. Along with Alfie Kohn, David have long been the learning and management experts I find most valuable. I have long remembered is his idea that he was the CEO of his classroom. On hearing Deming...

Management Improvement Carnival #90

Mar 2, 2010 9:24am

The Curious Cat Management Improvement blog carnival provides links to recent blog posts for those interesting in improving management of organizations. Leader Standard Work Should Be…Work! by Mark Hamel – “A lean leader’s standard work, among other things, may require him to check a particular work cell once in the morning...

Get Rid of the Performance Review

Feb 25, 2010 7:25am

How Much Do You Hate Performance Reviews? by Bob Sutton Deming emphasized that forced rankings and other merit ratings that breed internal competition are bad management because they undermine motivation and breed contempt for management among people who, at least at first, were doing good work. … If you want to read the...

Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi: Creativity, Fulfillment and Flow

Feb 24, 2010 7:50am

“After a certain basic point, which translates, more or less, to just a few thousand dollars above the minimum poverty level, increases in material well being don’t see to affect how happy people are.” The speech includes, the first purpose of incorporation at Sony: To establish a place of work where engineers...

Management Improvement Carnival #89

Feb 22, 2010 10:22am

The Curious Cat Management blog carnival highlights management blog posts 3 times each month. Also visit the Curious Cat Management Library for online management improvement articles. Three Surprises About Change by Chip and Dan Health (this is actually the full text of the first chapter of their new book, Switch,...

Short Term Investing Focus

Feb 17, 2010 7:27am

Buffett’s New CEO Shows Analysts, Hedge-Fund Managers to Door Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway Inc. completed the buyout yesterday after winning the approval of Burlington Northern investors. The deal, valued at $100 a share, allows Rose to hand out returns of nearly 300 percent, plus dividends, to investors who bought stock the day...

Management Improvement Carnival #88

Feb 15, 2010 9:49am

Since 2006 the Curious Cat Management Improvement Carnival has provided links to interesting blog posts for those interesting in improving the practice of management especially focused on the ideas of Deming, Ohno, Ackoff, Scholtes, McGregor, Womack, Christensen… Putting the Checklist Manifesto to Work by Wally Bock – “Checklists are simple but...

More Reasons to Avoid Layoffs

Feb 11, 2010 8:02am

Lay Off the Layoffs by Jeffrey Pfeffer As its former head of human resources once told me: “If people are your most important assets, why would you get rid of them?” … In fact, there is a growing body of academic research suggesting that firms incur big costs when they cut workers. Some...