John Hunter

Unknown and Unknowable Data

By John Hunter / August 30, 2013 / 0 Comments

Guest post by John Hunter, founder of the CuriousCat.com. From Out of the Crisis, page 121: the most important figures that one needs for management are unknown or unknowable (Lloyd S. Nelson, director of statistical methods for the Nashua corporation), but successful management must nevertheless take account of them. We need to manage systems even […]

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Peter Scholtes on Managing People and Motivation

By John Hunter / August 26, 2013 / 0 Comments

By John Hunter, author of Management Matters: Building Enterprise Capability. Peter Scholtes on understanding people and why they behave as they do; from his presentation at the 2008 Deming Institute conference in Madison, Wisconsin. In the presentation he discussed the 6 leadership competencies from his book, The Leader’s Handbook, which is based on Deming’s ideas […]

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Do We Need to Find Management Ideas from Our Industry?

By John Hunter / August 15, 2013 / 0 Comments

By John Hunter, author of Management Matters: Building Enterprise Capability. Quite often, people are concerned that our industry isn’t the same as some example. And often, this leads to concerns that we can’t use the ideas. Deming’s management system is not prescriptive. There isn’t a recipe for how to implement the ideas in your organization. […]

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Profit and growth come from customers that boast about your products and services

By John Hunter / August 12, 2013 / 0 Comments

By John Hunter, founder of CuriousCat.com. Satisfied customers switch, for no good reason, just to try something else. Why not? Profit and growth come from customers that boast about your product and service – the loyal customer. He requires no advertising or other persuasion, and brings a friend along with him. Dr. W. Edwards Deming […]

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Attributing Fault to the Person Without Considering the System

By John Hunter / August 5, 2013 / 0 Comments

By John Hunter, author of the Curious Cat Management Improvement Blog. Fundamental attribution error: attribute fault or defect to the individual without first considering the systemic effect. When we fall into this trap the system is not improved. What we want to do is when we find poor results is think about how the system […]

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Managers Should Focus on Eliminating De-motivation

By John Hunter / July 29, 2013 / 0 Comments

By John Hunter, author of Management Matters: Building Enterprise Capability. The only thing you can do as a manager is de-motivate people. When you start thinking like that you starting thinking about how am I operating, what am I doing that’s causing people around me to be de-motivated. Am I preventing them from thinking? Manager’s […]

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Change has to Start from the Top – Webcast with David Langford

By John Hunter / July 22, 2013 / 0 Comments

By John Hunter, founder of CuriousCat.com. David Langford quotes Dr. Deming as saying “Change has to start from the top.” As David says in the video he struggled trying to get the top of his organization involved in management improvement. And then he realized: You are the top of your system. Change your thinking, change […]

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Mobility of Management

By John Hunter / July 15, 2013 / 0 Comments

By John Hunter, author of the Curious Cat Management Improvement Blog (since 2004). Mobility of management, job hopping was one of the practices Dr. Deming included in his list of 7 Deadly Diseases. To understand why we can look at the underpinnings of Deming’s management system. Two of the four elements that comprise the management […]

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Don’t Limit Improvements to Low Level Process Improvement

By John Hunter / July 11, 2013 / 0 Comments

By John Hunter, founder of CuriousCat.com. One of the mistakes people make, who have a very superficial understanding of Deming, is to believe that Dr. Deming’s publications and seminars focused on process improvement. Deming’s ideas on management focused on creating a management system that changed how the entire organization worked. Deming’s ideas on management weren’t […]

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Deming and Lean: The Disparities and Similarities

By John Hunter / July 8, 2013 / 0 Comments

By John Hunter, author of the Curious Cat Management Improvement Blog (since 2004). In my opinion Deming’s ideas and lean thinking share many similarities. I do see plenty of weaknesses in lean manufacturing efforts at organizations. Most of the weaknesses are due to bad implementation of lean manufacturing rather than lean thinking missing fundamental elements […]

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