Management Matters
Last updated on 2020-06-29
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
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- 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
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