{"id":182,"date":"2011-08-20T21:14:24","date_gmt":"2011-08-20T21:14:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/benjaminmitchell.wordpress.com\/?p=182"},"modified":"2011-08-20T21:14:24","modified_gmt":"2011-08-20T21:14:24","slug":"management-improvement-carnival-140","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/techpeoplethrivi-i2tkeoduos.live-website.com\/management-improvement-carnival-140\/","title":{"rendered":"Management Improvement Carnival #140"},"content":{"rendered":"

I\u2019m hosting this edition of Jon Hunter\u2019s Curious Cat Management Improvement Carnival<\/a>. It\u2019s been published three times a month since 2006. Here\u2019s my round-up of interesting management-related posts from the last month with a focus on the psychology of change and software development philosophies.<\/p>\n

Change Artist Challenge #7: Being Fully Absent<\/a> by Gerald Weinberg<\/h3>\n

For managers who want to create systems that allow people to do great work, one solid test is to see if the systems works without you there:<\/p>\n

Your challenge is to take a week away from work, and when you get back, notice what changed without you being there. \u2026 Do you think you can’t do this? Then you have a different assignment \u2026 “If you’re going on a week-long vacation and feel the project cannot do without you, then take a two-week vacation.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Forecasting misunderstood<\/a> by David M. Kasprzak<\/h3>\n

David writes well about understanding the purpose of forecasting and reporting to avoid counter-productive fire-fighting management behaviour:<\/p>\n

Forecasting has to do with long-term vision and strategy, measurement, and learning.\u00a0 Focusing on reporting without planning leads to delayed information and chronic \u201chot buttons\u201d that require immediate attention.<\/p>\n

When this occurs, the PDCA cycle is simply broken.\u00a0 The end result is a system where the people in the organization are in a constant state of \u201cDo!\u201d and \u201cAct!\u201d without any sense of why they are doing anything, or if their efforts have actually caused an improvement.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Matt Damon does it again<\/a> by Ben Decker<\/h3>\n

One of the challenges for managers is how to present their views in a persuasive way. Ben Decker analyses the techniques Matt Damon used in a recent presentation to a rally against standardised test-score based funding for schools:<\/p>\n

[Damon uses a story -] he weaves the point of his speech around his experiences in public schools. This personalizes the message, gives him credibility, and is memorable. When listing out all the growth he experienced in school, he brought it back to the point by saying, \u201cNone of these qualities that have made me who I am can be tested.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

This links in my mind with W. Edwards Deming\u2019s statement that \u201cthe most important figures that one needs for management are unknown or unknowable \u2026, but successful managers must nevertheless take account of them<\/a>\u201d<\/p>\n

Is Thinking Allowed?<\/a> by Tobias Fors<\/h3>\n

Continuing the theme of managers focussing on what is easy to see, and not what is important, Tobias writes about a manager challenging him for not typing (even though typing is not the bottleneck<\/a>):<\/p>\n

When we sit and think, it looks like we\u2019re doing nothing. This makes it hard to think in many organizations.<\/p>\n

Doing<\/em> is what it takes to change the world, but if we don\u2019t think<\/em> a little first, how can we know if we\u2019re about to change it for the better or the worse?<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Leadership Coaching Tip: A Process for Change<\/a> by Barbara Alexander<\/h3>\n

Starting with a reference to Deming\u2019s famous quote<\/a> \u201cIt is not necessary to change. Survival is not mandatory\u201d, Barbara writes a summary of the work of Robert Kegan and Lisa Laskow Lahey including their focus on uncovering the competing commitments and underlying assumptions which keep us \u201cimmune from change\u201d:<\/p>\n

One example from Immunity To Change <\/em>that many of us may relate to is the leader whose goal is to be more receptive to new ideas. As you might imagine the behaviors he\u2019s doing instead of his goal include talking too much, not asking open-ended questions and using a curt tone when an employee makes a suggestion. His hidden competing commitments? You guessed it . . . to have things done his way and to maintain his sense of self as a super problem solver<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Why progress matters: 6 questions for Harvard\u2019s Teresa Amabile<\/a> by Daniel H. Pink<\/h3>\n

Dan Pink reports on research behind \u201cThe Progress Principle<\/a>\u201d (affiliate link) which finds that \u201cpeople\u2019s \u2018inner work lives\u2019 matter profoundly to their performance \u2013 and what motivates people the most day-to-day is making progress on meaningful work\u201d. The research showed that support for making progress is more potent than other motivators (incentives, recognition, clear goals, interpersonal support) although surveys have found that it isn\u2019t rated highly by most managers.<\/p>\n

Why Is Failure Key to Lean Success?<\/a> by Michael Balle<\/h3>\n

In contrast to the support for making progress, Michael Balle defends Lean Sensei\u2019s who leave teams feeling let down by focussing on more on what was not achieved than celebrating what was. Balle talks about improvements\u00a0made without challenging underlying assumptions (similar to single-loop learning) represent “pretending to learning” and not \u201creal learning (acknowledging and understanding why we were wrong about something)\u201d (similar to double-loop learning).\u00a0 I\u2019m hopeful that a \u201csensei\u201d could learn to act in ways that could help teams meet the desired higher-order learning\u00a0 without having the potentially de-motivating impact described.<\/p>\n

Agile Vs. Lean Startup<\/a> by Joshua Kerievsky<\/h3>\n

Whilst the \u201cX vs Y\u201d style is unnecessarily combative, Joshua has done an interesting job contrasting the different practices and approaches between Agile Software Development and the Lean Startup approach (which uses Agile Software Development approaches to \u201cbuild things right\u201d alongside the Customer Development process focussed on finding what the \u201cright thing to build\u201d is).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I\u2019m hosting this edition of Jon Hunter\u2019s Curious Cat Management Improvement Carnival. It\u2019s been published three times a month since 2006. Here\u2019s my round-up of interesting management-related posts from the last month with a focus on the psychology of change and software development philosophies. Change Artist Challenge #7: Being Fully Absent by Gerald Weinberg For […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,7,9,13],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/techpeoplethrivi-i2tkeoduos.live-website.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/182"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/techpeoplethrivi-i2tkeoduos.live-website.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/techpeoplethrivi-i2tkeoduos.live-website.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/techpeoplethrivi-i2tkeoduos.live-website.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/techpeoplethrivi-i2tkeoduos.live-website.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=182"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/techpeoplethrivi-i2tkeoduos.live-website.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/182\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/techpeoplethrivi-i2tkeoduos.live-website.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=182"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/techpeoplethrivi-i2tkeoduos.live-website.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=182"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/techpeoplethrivi-i2tkeoduos.live-website.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=182"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}