Management Matters
Management Matters
Building Enterprise Capability
About the Book
The book provides an overview for a systems view of management. My views are largely based on those of Dr. Deming, along with natural extensions of his ideas such as lean manufacturing and agile software development.
To achieve great results a continuous focus on both achieving results today and building enterprise capability to maximize results over the long term is needed. Managers have many management concepts, practices and tools available to help them in this quest. The challenge is to create and continually build and improve a management system for the enterprise that leads to success. This book helps managers do that.
The book provides a framework for management thinking. With this framework the practices and tools can be applied to build enterprise capacity and amplify positive results.
I am proud that Management Matters is one of eight books listed in the 3rd Edition of The New Economics (published in 2018) as resources for further learning. The other book authors include: W. Edwards Deming, Peter Scholtes, Joyce Orsini, Brian Joiner and Ed Baker.
The book builds on the management ideas found in my Curious Cat Management Improvement blog.
Find interviews of the author including the Business 901 podcast of the year.
About the Author
Table of Contents
-
- Introduction
-
Chapter One - Management System
- Management System
- Systems Thinking - Getting a Dog to Wag Its Tail
- Respect People by Creating a Climate for Joy in Work
- The Toyota Way – Two Pillars
- How to Improve
- From Quality Tools to Management Improvement
- Focus on Customers and Employees
- Engage in Improving the Management System
- Encourage Improvement Action by Everyone
- The Importance of Critical Thinking and Challenging Assumptions
- Good Management is Good Management
- Why Use New Management Ideas if So Many Fail To Do So Effectively
- The Purpose of the Organization
- Overpaid Executives
- It Won’t Work Here
-
Chapter Two - Deming Management System
- Deming Management System
- Respect for People - Understanding Psychology
- Being Destroyed by Best Efforts
- Deming on Innovation
- Create a System That Lets People Take Pride in Their Work
- The aim of leadership is not merely to find and record failures of men
- How to Manage What You Can’t Measure
- The Illusion of Knowledge
-
Chapter Three - Management Concepts
- Management Concepts
- Going to the Gemba
- Ignoring Unpleasant Truths is Often Encouraged
- Having no Problems is a Problem
- Habits
- Mistake Proofing
- Continual Learning
- Flaws in Understanding Psychology Lead to Flawed Management
- Data Visualization
- Circle of Influence
- Bad Management Results in Layoffs
- Arbitrary Rules Don’t Work
- Aligning Marketing Vision and Management
- Working with Suppliers
- Sub-Optimize
- Root Cause Analysis
-
Chapter Four - Management Practices
- Management Practices
- Why Do People Fail to Adopt Better Management Methods?
- How to Get a New Management Strategy, Tool or Concept Adopted
- Good Process Improvement Practices
- Good Project Management Practices
- Write it Down
- Making Better Decisions
- Involve IT Staff in Business Process Improvement
- Improving Software Development with Automated Tests
- Firing Workers Isn’t Fixing Problems
- Carve Out Time to Think
- Continual Feeding
- Building on Successful Improvement
- Building Adoption of Management Improvement Ideas in Your Organization
- Job Instructions
-
Chapter Five - Managing People
- Managing People
- Long Term Thinking with Respect for People
- Eliminate Demotivation
- Build an Environment Where Intrinsic Motivation Flourishes
- Interruptions Can Severely Damage Performance
- Maslow on Dealing with Authoritarians
- Respect People: Trust Them to Use good Judgment
- Negativity
- Many Good Employees Want to Continue to Do Their Current Job Well
- Talent Shortage, or Management Failure?
- Hire People You Can Trust to Do Their Jobs
- Helping Employees Improve
- Do What You Say You Will
- Dee Hock on Hiring
- Practical Ways to Respect People
- Don’t Empower
- Respect for People Doesn’t Mean Avoiding Any Hint of Criticism
- Righter Performance Appraisal
- Don’t Treat People Like You Want to be Treated
-
Chapter Six - Understanding and Using Data
- Using Data to Improve
- Outcome and In-Process Measures
- The Proxy Nature of Data
- Distort the System
- Data Can’t Lie
- Common and Special Cause Variation
- Bigger Impact: 15 to 18 mpg or 50 to 100 mpg?
- Be Careful What You Measure
- Actionable Metrics
-
Chapter Seven - Customer Focus
- Customer Focus
- What One Thing Could we do Better?
- The Customer is the Purpose of Our Work
- Kano Customer Satisfaction Model
- Delighting Customers
- Customers Are Often Irrational
- Making Life Difficult for Customers
- Customer Un-focus
- Customers Get Dissed and Tell
- Confusing Customer Focus
- Be Thankful for Customers That Are Complaining, They Haven’t Given Up All Hope
-
Chapter Eight - Management Tools
- Management Tools
- Keys to the Effective Use of the PDSA Improvement Cycle
- What One Thing Could we do Better?
- Checklist
- Checklists in Software Development
- Improvement Tools and Improving Management
- Factorial Designed Experiments
-
Chapter Nine - Ideas for Managers
- Ideas for Managers
- Revealed Preference
- Confirmation Bias
- The Problem is Likely Not the Person Pointing Out The Problem
- Keeping Track of Improvement Opportunities
- Eliminate the Waste of Waiting in Line with Queuing Theory
- Going to the Gemba
- Mistake Proofing Deployment of Software Code
- Errors in Thinking
-
Chapter Ten - Ideas to Inspire
- Ideas for Inspire
- Positivity and Joy in Work
- Paying New Employees to Quit
- Improving the Recruitment Process
- Respecting People Even If Demand Slows
- How Downsizing is Handled When Management Respects People
- Using Visual Instructions
- Innovative Marketing Podcast
- Google’s Answer to Filling Jobs Is an Algorithm
- Giving Away Your Service for Free on Weekends
- Customer Focus in Internet Travel Search
- Combinatorial Testing
- Build Your Business Slowly and Without Huge Cash Requirements
- Acknowledge Failures, Learn, Improve and Share
- Amazon Innovation
- $60 Million Bonus - For all Staff
- 5 Million Lives Campaign
- Respect for People: Optimize for Developer Happiness at Etsy
-
Chapter Eleven - appendix and miscellaneous
- Key Management Concepts, Practices and Tools
- All Models Are Wrong But Some Are Useful
The Leanpub 45-day 100% Happiness Guarantee
Within 45 days of purchase you can get a 100% refund on any Leanpub purchase, in two clicks.
See full terms
Do Well. Do Good.
Authors have earned$10,788,735writing, publishing and selling on Leanpub, earning 80% royalties while saving up to 25 million pounds of CO2 and up to 46,000 trees.
Learn more about writing on Leanpub
Free Updates. DRM Free.
If you buy a Leanpub book, you get free updates for as long as the author updates the book! Many authors use Leanpub to publish their books in-progress, while they are writing them. All readers get free updates, regardless of when they bought the book or how much they paid (including free).
Most Leanpub books are available in PDF (for computers), EPUB (for phones and tablets) and MOBI (for Kindle). The formats that a book includes are shown at the top right corner of this page.
Finally, Leanpub books don't have any DRM copy-protection nonsense, so you can easily read them on any supported device.
Learn more about Leanpub's ebook formats and where to read them
Top Books
- #1
Aprendiendo Git
Miguel Angel Durán GarcíaGit no es complicado... ¡Si lo entiendes! 😜
¿Sientes que sabes usarlo porque has memorizado todos los comandos que necesitas? ¡Pero no entiendes qué hace cada cosa y por qué! Así es normal que, cuando exista un problema, te cueste resolverlo.
¡Con este libro vas a entender de una vez por todas todo lo que es Git y cómo sacarle provecho!
- #2
C++20
Rainer GrimmC++20 is the next big C++ standard after C++11. As C++11 did it, C++20 changes the way we program modern C++. This change is, in particular, due to the big four of C++20: ranges, coroutines, concepts, and modules.
- #3
Introducing EventStorming
Alberto BrandoliniThe deepest tutorial and explanation about EventStorming, straight from the inventor.
- #4
Rector - The Power of Automated Refactoring
Matthias Noback and Tomas VotrubaLearn how to automatically and continuously upgrade and improve your PHP code base
- #5
Atomic Kotlin
Bruce Eckel and Svetlana IsakovaFor both beginning and experienced programmers! From the author of the multi-award-winning Thinking in C++ and Thinking in Java and a Kotlin team member comes a book that breaks concepts into small, easy-to-digest "atoms," along with exercises supported by hints and solutions directly inside IntelliJ IDEA! Full support at www.AtomicKotlin.com.
- #6
Functional Programming Made Easier
Charles ScalfaniA Functional Programming book from beginner to advanced without skipping a single step along the way.
In my 40 years of programming, I've felt that programming books always let me down, especially Functional Programming books. So, I wrote the book I wish I had 5 years ago.
Functional Programming will never be easy, but it can be easier.
- #7
Ansible for DevOps
Jeff GeerlingAnsible is a simple, but powerful, server and configuration management tool. Learn to use Ansible effectively, whether you manage one server—or thousands.
- #8
On Java 8
Bruce EckelBy the author of "Thinking in Java," covering version 8 of the Java programming language. This book is intended for “dedicated beginners.” It doesn’t assume you know anything about programming and takes you through the material step-by-step. However, I assume you are able to figure things out. It’s not a “dummies” or “idiot’s” guide.
- #9
OpenIntro Statistics
David Diez, Christopher Barr, Mine Cetinkaya-Rundel, and OpenIntroA complete foundation for Statistics, also serving as a foundation for Data Science.
Leanpub revenue supports OpenIntro (US-based nonprofit) so we can provide free desk copies to teachers interested in using OpenIntro Statistics in the classroom and expand the project to support free textbooks in other subjects.
More resources: openintro.org.
- #10
Effective Kotlin
Marcin MoskałaEffective Kotlin summarizes the best practices and experiences of the Kotlin community, together with a deep explanation of some lesser-known Kotlin functionalities. All of the best practices are presented as simple rules with detailed explanations.
Top Bundles
- #1
CCIE Service Provider Ultimate Study Bundle
2 Books
Piotr Jablonski, Lukasz Bromirski, and Nick Russo have joined forces to deliver the only CCIE Service Provider training resource you'll ever need. This bundle contains a detailed and challenging collection of workbook labs, plus an extensively detailed technical reference guide. All of us have earned the CCIE Service Provider certification... - #2
Software Architecture for Developers: Volumes 1 & 2 - Technical leadership and communication
2 Books
"Software Architecture for Developers" is a practical and pragmatic guide to modern, lightweight software architecture, specifically aimed at developers. You'll learn:The essence of software architecture.Why the software architecture role should include coding, coaching and collaboration.The things that you really need to think about before... - #3
Modern C++ Collection
3 Books
Get All about Modern C++C++ Standard Library, including C++20Concurrency with Modern C++, including C++20C++20Each book has about 200 complete code examples. Updates are included. When I update one of the books, you immediately get the updated bundle. You can expect significant updates to each new C++ standard (C++23, C++26, .. ) and also... - #4
The Python Craftsman
3 Books
The Python Craftsman series comprises The Python Apprentice, The Python Journeyman, and The Python Master. The first book is primarily suitable for for programmers with some experience of programming in another language. If you don't have any experience with programming this book may be a bit daunting. You'll be learning not just a programming... - #6
"The C++ Standard Library" and "Concurrency with Modern C++"
2 Books
Get my books "The C++ Standard Library" and "Concurrency with Modern C++" in a bundle. The first book gives you the details you should know about the C++ standard library; the second one dives deeper into concurrency with modern C++. In sum, you get more than 600 pages full of modern C++ and about 250 source files presenting the standard library... - #7
10 Books Bundle - A New Career in Tech 🚀
10 Books
Do you want to create yourself a new and profitable skillset - in one year or less? Do you want to position yourself on the right side of change finally? Do you want to work from home and set your own work schedule while choosing fun and interesting coding projects? Software developers and freelance developersearn six figuresin the US, according... - #9
Pattern-Oriented Memory Forensics and Malware Detection
2 Books
This training bundle for security engineers and researchers, malware and memory forensics analysts includes two accelerated training courses for Windows memory dump analysis using WinDbg. It is also useful for technical support and escalation engineers who analyze memory dumps from complex software environments and need to check for possible...
