This is the third
installment of my favorite management blogs as part of John Hunter’s 2012 Curious Cat
Management Blog Carnival.
Back in 1999, Steven Spear
and H. Kent Bowen wrote the HBR article, Decoding the DNA of the Toyota
Production System. The article has
become one of the most widely read accounts of why and how the Toyota
Production System (TPS) works. It’s one
of those articles that needs to be read over and over as one learns more about
lean and transformation.
Spear has continued to
write about learning and improvement in his blog (The High Velocity
Edge) and his latest books, Chasing the Rabbit and The High
Velocity Edge.
I’ve enjoyed reading the
books and articles written by Spears, as he digs into some fundamental elements
of transformation and why companies like Toyota
and Alcoa are different from traditionally-led organizations.
Rather than review posts
from a few blogs posts, I would rather approach this one with a series of
excerpts that I thought were valuable to those involved in organizational
transformation.
“ . . . there is the ideal as a consistent source of concern . . .
Observed departures from ideal were triggers for the question: what is it we
don’t understand that causes us to have defects, delays, waste, and risk?” Triggers
and Objectives for Processes Change-Shortfalls, failures, and imperfections
“Lean never becomes self
sustaining. Never ever ever. No way, no how. It simply cannot.” Does
‘Lean’ Become Self Perpetuating?
“To focus on trade offs –
that to get more of something means you have to give up something else – means
you assume you are extracting as much cumulative value out of your work as
possible.” Asking
What Quality Initiatives Get Sacrificed Under Budget Pressures Asks the Wrong
Questions
“Often confused are
“continuous improvement” and “innovation, . . . The differences between the two
may have more to do with time frame and scope and less to do with
approach. In either case, the key issue
is deliberating converting ignorance into useful knowledge.” Continuous Improvement
versus Innovation
Spears posts tend to be
fairly short and to the point, which is nice when you have a lot to read and
little time to actually sit down and do it.
Additional information about the Curious Cat Annual Management Blog Carnival is available at http://management.curiouscatblog.net/category/carnival/.
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