Humor 1. Social-influence. Humor 2. Schumpeter: The cult of the faceless boss. An open letter to micromanagers. Dear Micromanager: Owners of thoroughbreds never stop their horses mid-race, every ten seconds, to remind the horse and jockey how to run, where the finish line is, or that it’d be good to finish first. Why? It would slow them down.
Only an idiot would do this. If you’re a manager, you must assume you have thoroughbreds working for you. Even if you are 30% better at a task than someone who works for you, the time it takes for you to check on them every few hours, and demand approvals over trivial decisions, costs more in lost morale, passion for work, and destruction of self-respect among your staff than the 30% you think you’re adding. Perhaps you don’t think you are managing thoroughbreds and that your horses need lots of help. This is possible. But if you are in fact a micromanager, you started over-managing the first day others worked for you. A healthy, confident, well-adjusted manager knows their job is to do three things: Odds are extremely good the world will not end.
Signed, Case 6-13 W. Online Community Report. Kaizen and Lean Manufacturing thoughts | Gemba Panta Rei. By Jon Miller | Post Date: July 9, 2007 5:41 PM | Comments: 11 1. Ohno Circle Taiichi Ohno was the Toyota executive largely responsible for structuring and implementing the system known today as the Toyota Production System over four decades after World War II. Ohno was known for drawing a chalk circle around managers and making them stand in the circle until they had seen and documented all of the problems in a particular area.
Today the "stand in a circle" exercise is a great way to train one's eyes to see waste and to provide structure for the team leader to do daily improvement or for the busy executive with limited time to go to gemba. When you spend time on the gemba standing in the Ohno Circle, you will see the gap between the target condition and the actual condition. 2. In 1906 Italian economist Vilfredo Pareto simplified the world for us with his 80/20 rule, or what is known as the Pareto principle. 3. It is quite a flexible tool. 4. 5. 6. Genichi Taguchi took the notion of R.A. Life 2.0: Golden Rules from Business Visionaries. Here's a transcript of an article in Business 2.0 where they asked 30 business visionaries, collectively worth over $70 billion, what single philosophy they swear by more than any other -- in business, life, or both.
Here are the secrets of their success. They are a few golden nuggets in here. Surround Yourself With People Smarter Than You Chris Albrecht, CEO, Home Box OfficeSurround yourself with people smarter than you and be comfortable with that. I went to a high school for gifted students and went from being one of the smartest kids in the class to being near the bottom of the pack. I got very comfortable with being in that situation and realizing how much I could learn from people who are as smart as or smarter than I am. George Steinbrenner, owner, New York Yankees This is a rule that my late father, Henry George Steinbrenner II, taught me when I was a young man.
Reinvent Yourself. Treat your customers like they own you, because they do. OVO | Innovation Software and Services. Social computation and creativity » Blog Archive » Problems of b. Recently there had been a lot of discussion about Yahoo and big companies in connection to the Peanut Butter Manifesto. The manifesto was written for Yahoo, but it might have influenced Google as well (see my previous post). Apparently, the problems identified in the manifesto are common to any large organization.
However, the ideas proposed in the manifesto to solve those problems are in no way revolutionary and were “talked” about for a long time as Yumio Saneyoshi noted in his blog. Yumio suggests its not the org structure but the actual leaders who set the tone of an organization. Unless “those” heads roll, I have a hunch that nothing will really change. In my opinion, making heads roll is not the only solution to the big-company problems. Consider Wikipedia as an example. However, the org structure can be determined by the social software even in a larger extent.
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