continuous+improvement category archives
Believing in the inherent value and quality of people comes out in how you challenge them and what you expect of them. It has much less to do with your direct personal style.
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Creativity and productivity are both enhanced by acknowledging and working with full understanding of the operating constraints. An HBR article from Matthew E May reminds me of the idea once again, "How Intelligent Constraints Drive Creativity."
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PEX Network has some useful thoughts on best practices and benchmarking. Best practices are only indicators of what you really want - results. Don't confuse the two.
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Thanks to Mark Graban's recent Leanblog podcast with Steve Bell, I found a long list of "information wastes" that serve as an appendix to Bell and Orzen's _Lean IT: Enabling and Sustaining Your Lean Transformation_ (2010).
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Thomas Corbett's _Throughput Accounting_ is a quick read and very familiar for someone who has been in the Theory of Constraints world. I wonder if anyone comes to TOC via this route, rather than through The Goal and some of the other business novels.
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I came across a pair of articles that compare Lean, Theory of Constraints and several other process improvement approaches. Both decide that Lean is the best, but the authors appear to emphasize Lean in their work as well. TOC doesn't get a very good hearing.
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"The High-Velocity Edge" was given to the attendees at the Lean Software & Systems Conference this year, as Steven J. Spear was one of the keynote speakers. I enjoyed the book and have dog-eared pages and underlined throughout.
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I've written about the common focus on efficiency several times here. This time it's inspired by an HBR blogs article by Casey Haksins and Peter Sims, "The Most Efficient Die Early.'
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The 2012 World's MAKE has been announced with Apple as the overall winner.
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Our definition of "good" is tied up in our values and the contexts in which we work. If you want "better" outcomes, then think about what you value in your work. Thanks to Dan Ward for putting these things together in my head.
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Sometimes we focus a little too much on just getting stuff done or starting the exciting new projects. We forget to stand back and think about how it worked last time, how we could do things better, or how our understanding has changed.
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John Hagel has a great piece on "The Paradox of Preparing for Change" that talks about the importance of planning for what DOESN'T change, along with the stuff that does.
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JP Rangaswami's "Continuing to muse lazily about sharing at work" blog post from last week had a useful differentiation between the tools and behavior that I liked.
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This Saturday's (20 Oct 2012) Boston Globe business section had one of those articles that is guaranteed to blow your mind. A company made 10x improvements in turnaround times, but they were only doing it for a week and then back to normal.
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Strategy+Business has an interview with Jeffrey Liker, one of the academics who have studied the Toyota Production System in great detail. "Jeffrey Liker: The Thought Leader Interview."
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Portia Tung has a choose-your-own adventure version of a business novel, this time about going into a client as an Agile Coach (consultant) with five days to turn things around.
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A nice reference source of Drucker thinking from the Process Excellence Network. "Making Knowledge Workers More Productive: Insights from the Works of Peter F. Drucker"
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Interested in personal effectiveness? What about how people work together? One seemingly simple aspect of this is the design of the workplace itself - the space, the technology, the tools. Sometimes these simple things get in the way of our being more effective. A Dan Morris article has me thinking, "Most overlooked place for efficiency improvement? It's right in front of you!"
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The idea of standard work applies to the management of knowledge work, rather than to the specifics of the work.
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Make it easy to improve or fix the system! Ask question like "what makes it hard to do your work better?" or "How can we do this differently?"
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On the one hand, we want people to be involved and participating in the operation and improvement of their business. On the other hand, we also want to make sure those improvements make a real difference to the bottom line and to the people.
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All but the most basic tools require experimenting and learning how they work in your environment. Very few things work as advertised immediately. Good reminder for anyone involved in knowledge work.
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Some curious research results from Ethan Bernstein showing that in some environments, having some privacy from management can actually be a source of improvements. I suggest that maybe management is the problem.
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Good stuff from Harold Jarche on learning organizations and how the idea of net work relates to the topic.
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I attended an interesting talk by Dan Vacanti last week at the monthly Agile New England meeting. I enjoyed the talk overall, and I particularly enjoyed his emphasis on the Cumulative Flow Diagram as a key diagnostic tool - it's predictive.
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Interesting definition of slack from Jim Benson: The gaps between work that make flow possible and define cadence
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Overview of Tuesday and Wednesday at the Lean Software & Systems Conference. Communication. Learning. Many interesting people.
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A summary of my first day at the Lean Software & Systems Conference in Boston. Bill Fox, David Anderson, Nigel Dalton, portfolio management, non-IT Kanban.
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Competitive advantage has nothing to do with the toys (and techniques). It has to do with how you learn together.
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What is your span of control? How can companies change narrow roles into wider roles? These questions bedevil social business projects, just as they do with continuous improvement efforts. Thanks to Rawn Shaw for inspiring some thinking for me.
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Interesting post by James Lawther on benchmarking (best practices) and the two options on doing the work. I love that he pokes all sorts of holes in the "easy way" of benchmarking.
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Santiago Velasquez has posted an interview he did with Bill Waddell on continuous improvement (Lean), and what it takes to make that journey.
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Joe Ely has a nice, brief meditation on continuous improvement. Circles upon circles upon circles of improvement
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Be careful what processes you are looking at when doing improvement work. Improving a system that isn't operating to begin with isn't going to get you very far.
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OODA and other improvement cycles are everywhere. I came across another in discussion of the ever-expanding landscape of social media.
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Dilbert cannot possibly focus on 25 things. Neither can you!
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Are you starting your change effort with a focus on evolution or on revolution? How does this impact your way of thinking about the change you need to create? How does it impact your thinking about other change efforts?
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Bill Dettmer has a new article on how management tools fit into the Cynefin framework. This builds on ideas I've heard directly from Dave Snowden as well as those discussed elsewhere by people interested in Cynefin as applied to various approaches.
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If change is so constant, why do we take the tried-and-true techniques to change management? Dave Gray suggests something a little different.
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Pay attention to what you are doing. Think beforehand, and then take action. And of course, check that your actions are taking you in the right direction and correct course as needed.
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I attended Kanban training last week and very much enjoyed it. I've used the concept in some consulting engagements, and this training is helping me solidify my understanding and see areas for improvement.
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I read Tom DeMarco's _Slack_. Short review: read the book, even if it is ten years old. Long review: read this entry.
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It is a complete myth to believe that keeping everyone busy will result in success.
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Rather than asking how we do things, we need to learn from how we think about things. That is the way to translate "best practices" from one place to another.
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Riffing off of a great piece by Kevin Jones / vinJones on dealing with the right problems. Might want to check out his other pieces too.
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Reading about Co-Creation makes me think that there are many places where organizations need to stop and listen in order to grow.
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I came across something in my personal life that connects back to my business life. Use experience to get better.
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Pierre Khawand has a simple, short video that looks at interruptions from a slightly different angle. Not multitasking but the results of the effort.
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If you or your business are trying to get more done, focus on the mechanisms for getting things done and getting them done quickly. Don't simply push more into the system.
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A nice interview with Donald Wheeler in Quality Digest reminds us that one size does not fit all.
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Note: Only the most recent 50 articles are listed. For more in this category, please search or look through the date archives.
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