Management Books

• Management Matters: Building Enterprise Capability by John Hunter
  The book provides an overview for viewing management as a system. It is largely based on those of Dr. Deming, along with natural outgrowths or extensions of his ideas such as lean manufacturing and agile software development. To achieve great results there must be a continual focus on achieving results today and building enterprise capacity to maximize results over the long term. Managers have many management concepts, pactices 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. The book provides a framework for management thinking. With this framework the practices and tools can be applied to build enterprise capacity and improve efficiency and effectiveness.

Management Articles

• Lean Thinking and Management by John Hunter
  "The biggest thing I think we need to learn from this is that improving management is not easy. The concepts may seem simple but most of us can look around and see much more Dilbert Boss behavior than lean thinking behavior. And the gap between those two types of behavior seems to rise as you go 'up' the organization chart."

• How Do We Know What We Know? - Deming's SoPK Part IV by John Hunter
  "If we can break from such beliefs that are not useful in modern organizations, we can improve our decisions. Having a Deming-based theory of knowledge will help us break from those beliefs and it will help us be more thoughtful as we learn to question other management beliefs we hold (many of which simply are not useful - or cause harm). Understanding the theory of knowledge within the context of the Deming's System for Managing helps us more effectively and consistently learn and improve the processes and systems we work with. "

• Profit = Market Price - Actual Cost or Price = Cost + Desired Profit by John Hunter
  "Apple would probably sell very few iPhones for $2,000 more than they cost today. How many they would sell at $100 more or $100 less may change significantly but they would still be huge sellers at either of those prices. So that "market sets the price" idea is not 100% accurate (I don't think anyway). ... Pricing decisions also have big long term versus short term considerations. Apple has started pricing many things in a way which makes it hard for competitors to undercut them. Apple, almost for sure could charge more for the laptops they sell and the iPad and iPhone. But if they did they make it easier for a competitor to compete on price. This pricing decision is an Apple decision not a market decision."

• Create a System That Lets People Take Pride in Their Work by John Hunter
  "Using the term implies that it one person empowers another person. This is not the correct view. Instead we each play a role within a system. Yes there are constraints on your actions based on the role you are playing. Does a security guard empower the CEO to enter the building? ... You don't need to think about empowering people if you have a system that lets people take pride in what they do. If you think you need to empower staff, instead fix the system that requires you to think they are in need of empowerment."

• Actionable Metrics by John Hunter
  "Metrics are valuable when they are actionable. Think about what will be done if certain results are shown by the data. If you can't think of actions you would take, it may be that metric is not worth tracking."

• How to Get a New Management Strategy, Tool or Concept Adopted by John Hunter
  "Often when learning about Deming’s ideas on management, lean manufacturing, design of experiments, PDSA… people become excited. They discover new ideas that show great promise to alleviate the troubles they have in their workplace and lead them to better results. But how to actually get their organization to adopt the ideas often confounds them..."

• Keys to the Effective Use of the PDSA Improvement Cycle by John Hunter
  "The PDSA cycle is a learning cycle based on experiments. When using the PDSA cycle prediction of the results are important... The plan stage may well take 80% (or even more) of the effort on the first turn of the PDSA cycle in a new series. The Do stage may well take 80% of of the time - it usually doesn't take much effort (to just collect a bit of extra data) but it may take time for that data to be ready to collect."

Management Web Sites and Resources

• Life and Legacy of William G. Hunter by John Hunter, William G. Hunter
  George Box, Stuart Hunter and Bill wrote what has become a classic text for experimenters in scientific and business circles, Statistics for Experimenters. Bill also was a leader in the emergence of the management improvement movement. George Box and Bill co-founded the Center for Quality and Productivity Improvement at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Bill Hunter was also the founding chair of the ASQ statistics division.

• Curious Cat Management Improvement Articles by John Hunter
  Hundreds of useful management articles hand selected to help managers improve the performance of their organization. Sorted by topic including: Deming, lean manufacturing, six sigma, continual improvement, innovation, leadership, managing people, software development, psychology and systems thinking.

• The W. Edwards Deming Institute Blog by John Hunter
  

• Curious Cat Management Improvement Blog by John Hunter
  Blog by John Hunter on many topics to to improve the management of organizations, including: Deming, lean manufacturing, agile software development, evidence based decision making, customer focus, innovation, six sigma, systems thinking, leadership, psychology, ...

• Curious Cat Management Comments by John Hunter
  Blog by John Hunter - currently used mainly to collect comments made on other blog posts in one place.

• Curious Cat Management Improvement Connections by John Hunter
  The aim of Curious Cat Management Improvement Connections is to contribute to the successful adoption of management improvement to advance joy in work and joy in life. The site provides connections to resources on a wide variety of management topics to help managers improve the performance of their organization. The site was started in 1996 by John Hunter.