Ten commandments of Manufacturing excellence

1. Pull production stingily through the factory pipeline instead of mindlessly pushing material and labor into it.
2. Build and ship rapidly to improve manufacturing productivity, rather than storing and moving inventory.
3. Squeeze time out of the cycle from order recepit through shipment by eliminating redundant taks and tasks that do not contribute directly to output or quality.
4. Improve product design to enhance manufacturability and provide increased functionality and reliability to the customer.
5. Reduce per-unit consumption of purchased material and supplies.
6. Refine the production process to promote simplicity and decrease resource consumption.
7. Identify and Eliminate manufacturing errors at point of commission.
8. Simplify information and control systems; integrate them efficiently with design and production.
9. Cooperate and Coordinate with suppliers and service providers to share knowledge and increase joint effectiveness
10. Strive continually for incremental improvements in all activities involved with design and delivery of the product to the customer.

Sense from Nonsense

A Jamaican guy claimed to me that "one can learn a lot (i.e. make sense) from people that speak nonsense". Interesting.

Management confusion

"Management often confuses what it wants to achieve and what it wants to be. " - A targeted 20% growth rate won't tell you if you are doing the right thing.

Control Theory

The general believe how to lead or change other people's believe follows the "control theory":

1. I know what's right for you
2. I have a right to tell you what is right for you
3. I have a right to punish you if you don't do what is right for you

In contrast, "choice theory" seems to be more appropriate and ethical than control theory.

Reinforcement Theory

We learn through rewarded behaviors - if an organizations rewards the "command-control" leader then he'll keep exhibiting that behavior.

Diamond Model

A framework from my leadership class:
1. Leader
2. Others
3. Tasks
4. Organizations

Important are all the part and the relationships between the four parts.

Choice theory

The book choice theory from is part of the reading seminar for the 2nd year. The take-aways are as follows:

1. The only person whose behavior we can control is our own.
2. All we can give another person is information.
3. All long-lasting psychological problems are relationship problems.
4. The problem relationship is always part of our present life.
5. What happened in the past has everything to do with what we are today, but we can only satisfy our basic needs right now and plan to continue satisfying them in the future.
6. We can only satisfy our needs by satisfying the pictures in our Quality World.
7. All we do is behave.
8. All behavior is Total Behavior and is made up of four components: acting, thinking, feeling and physiology.
9. All Total Behavior is chosen, but we only have direct control over the acting and thinking components. We can only control our feeling and physiology indirectly through how we choose to act and think.
10. All Total Behavior is designated by verbs and named by the part that is the most recognizable.

Strategy vs. operative effectiveness

Operatitve effectiveness means performing similar activities better than rivals perform them. In contrast, strategic positioning means performing different activities in different ways.

Source: Michael Porter, HBR, December 1996.

Core

Develop your "core", not only in your business but also in yourself.

"Develop your professionalism", Ming-Jer Chen, 2006.

Strategy Take-away

Strategy = Formulation + Execution

Do it with Determination and Persistency

3 Magic Questions

1) Why are we here? (Who am I?)
2) Why should we care? (What do I want?)
3) How and where do we apply? (Where do I begin?)

Source: my Strategy professor at Darden, Ming-Jer Chen, 2006.

The span of immediate memory

Let me summarize the situation in this way. There is a clear and definite limit to the accuracy with which we can identify absolutely the magnitude of a unidimensional stimulus variable. I would propose to call this limit the span of absolute judgment, and I maintain that for unidimensional judgments this span is usually somewhere in the neighborhood of seven.

George A. Miller

Miller's law

Miller's Law (from psychologist George Miller) goes like this:

"In order to understand what another person is saying, you must assume that it is true, and try to imagine what it could be true of."

(In an interview with Elizabeth Hall; Hall 1980)

That is: The proper response when someone says, "My toaster is talking to me!" is "What is your toaster saying?", followed by very careful and attentive listening.

Three kinds of people

From Strategy class: There are people who...

1. Make things happen.
2. See things happening.
3. Wonder what happens.

Decision Traps

In decision making, one is subject to several decision traps:

1. Overconfidence
2. Shortsighted shortcuts
3. Overconfidence your judgement
4. Confirmation bias

E.g. there is a basis to overestimate the true value of people who are "sure", i.e. confident of their opinion. It might be a better idea to believe and trust people who are not sure and who are able to research the true result.

From 'Decision Traps', J. Edward Russo and Paul J.h. Schoemaker, Doubleday.

How difficult can execution be?

Leadership class:
"You can listen to a music piece and read the notes, it will still be very difficult to play the music piece on an instrument although you have all the information."

Execution is still the most difficult part, even if you have the exact instructions. That's especially true in dealing with other people.