If marketing is about distracting your customers from thinking about the actual product or service, you got bigger problems.Popped into my head while looking at the container from a particular fast food franchise.
Via Mark Graban,
Mike Thelan writes about the difference between a true understanding of Lean versus what is typically believed is Lean.
I think it's a worthwhile article and Mike closes with a quote from Konusuke Matsushita which the Poppendieck's are also fond of:
We will win, and you will lose. You cannot do anything because your failure is an internal disease. Your companies are based on Taylor’s principles. Worse, your heads are Taylorized, too. You firmly believe that sound management means executives on the one side and workers on the other, on the one side men who think and on the other side men who only work.So if I reframe this in a positive way...
Your success can be based on an inherently superior philosophy embedded in your internal beliefs. If you firmly base your company on sound management, meaning engaging everyone in thinking about how to work, then you will win... and inevitably so.
DHH blogs about why he likes the constraints that dealing with family people brings.
When you refuse to use the overtime crutch, when you force yourself to acknowledge the other obligations people have outside of work... well then, you actually have to develop some degree of management competence.
I see this as another form of lowering the water level to expose problems that are otherwise hidden.
Saw this Breakthrough Moments in Lean timeline as a poster at the Lean Summit and now I see that's it's available online.
How useful is a message producer that the message consumer cannot accept messages from because the producer refuses to adapt its protocol to interact?
How useful is a message producer that adapts its protocol but corrupts the message so the message consumer can no longer trust the message?
The accuracy of the message is important. A protocol acceptable to both the producer and consumer is also important.
Replace message producer and message consumer with two people.
JAOO is coming to Brisbane, May 29 - 30, and then Sydney, June 2 - 3.
Speakers include:
Ever wanted to have a USB key that looks like a broken USB cable?
Holy crap-- somebody just went and TORE MY FREAKING USB CABLE IN HALF while it was still attached to my laptop!!!Via lifehackerNo-- wait-- sorry. That's just my USB drive. My bad. Never mind.
"Religion kills a lot of people each year but it serves a purpose until positive psychology can replace it... without as many side effects."
Establish and maintain a positive mood (it's more generative)
Confront brutal reality with realistic optimism
Use aspirational goals
Telling stories is good
Sharing stories is better
Sharing best experience stories is best
Is a Safety Check necessary if the activity itself intends to change the mood?
OR
Is a Safety Check valuable because it acknowledges the importance of safety?
Activity is good
Physical activity is better
Activity involving high quality communication is best
Inquiry, not blame
Gather information, not judgment
Vote at most once per item but otherwise unlimited votes
OR
Preferential voting (Rank 1 to (3 or 5)) - 1 is worth 3 votes, 2 is worth 2 votes, etc. - use colour dots
Core affect = Contented, Happy, Alert = 64% of subjective well-being
Due to homeostasis, subjective well-being can be chronically improved by at most 3-4 %.Nothing really to say. I just like that line from a Fast Company article on public disclosure of greenhouse gas emissions.
Just noticed a couple articles by Jared Spool on mistakes when designing account sign-ins.
Part One and Part Two.
Some of the part two "mistakes" start encroaching on security issues so I'd be wary about those depending on what kind of site we're talking about but otherwise, all useful tips.
I've already mentioned the simulated 3D using head tracking but how about a $45 electronic whiteboard? or perhaps multi-touch display?
Via the TEDBlog
As an aside, for any readers in Sydney, Johnny Chung Lee will be presenting at JAOO.
What do you own? vs What do you consider? vs What do you carry? vs What do you use?
Why?
The 100% guaranteed way to not forget anything is to not have to remember anything.
How do illiterate people communicate?
Jan Chipchase asks some pretty interesting questions and looks for answers. As an aside, there's something slightly off with his presentation style but I can't quite put my finger on it...
Via the TEDBlog.
Via Stephanie West Allen,
An old article at strategy+business on The Neuroscience of Leadership:
Every interaction with others at work -- big or small, short or lengthy -- has the potential to create or deplete vital energy.
"Technique without theory quickly becomes quackery."
----
Take a look at The Creation of Adam on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel (Thanks to Sebastian Bergmann and Creative Commons for the picture). Look at God and the outline around him created by the red cloth. Remind you of anything? This is an anatomically accurate picture of the human brain, reflecting Michelangelo's knowledge of human anatomy and suggests a message about how the physical form is given life by the mind.
Stress will improve performance to a point before leading to burn-out. We can achieve low-stress, high performance by increasing attention instead of stress to reach "the zone", also known as Flow.
When asked which picture on the bottom is most like the picture at the top...
People in good moods tend to come up with more ideas. Positive moods are more generative.
... then that makes development and test environments like the factory.
So if the factory keeps shutting down, one would expect the plant manager to consider that quite important. If it happens enough, one would expect the executive management to consider that quite important.
So what kind of reaction do you get when your development and test environments don't work?
The factory shutting down is definitely not as important as the car failing while operating but it's not a minor issue either.
I've always thought of not limiting votes in retrospectives as an idea that could also be applied in wider contexts.
While researching Scruffy, I stumbled upon a post by Brasten Sager about approval voting (he calls it multiple voting) for US elections which essentially describes the same idea.
He also mentions preferential voting, which is the system that Australia uses. I'd think that preferential voting would provide the best information but as Brasten suggests, it's more complicated to implement.
Approval Voting seems to be the appropriate balance between accuracy of intent and ease of implementation for both elections and for retrospectives.
The only variant I might add (and sometimes spontaneously occurs) is the use of the "-1" vote. It's probably easier to use this when we're voting for things and not people.
There's a metaphor used in Lean circles to see inventory to be like the water level. By lowering the water level, you expose rocks (i.e. problems) that you would otherwise not be able to see. You need to be careful not to lower the water level too quickly as you may end up just crashing into the rocks rather than removing them.
I've used this same metaphor when talking about software development but using time instead of physical inventory to be the water level. So reducing time frames (i.e., shorter timeboxes) helps expose problems that would otherwise not be seen. It seems to work quite well as most people agree that with the longer time frame, certain things would never be seen and therefore not addressed.
A somewhat serious joke we've come up with is that by lowering the water level, sometimes you notice that people are standing on previously hidden rocks and you realise that they didn't actually know how to swim. Of course, the response is not to denounce them for that but rather to help them learn to swim.
