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Blog Carnival Annual Roundup: 2010 – Curious Cat Management Improvement Blog

Each year, as led by John Hunter, many of the lean bloggers contribute to the Carnival Annual Roundup. Last year I reviewed three bloggers, and Jon Miller reviewed mine. This year I will be reviewing four bloggers, one each day until Thursday.

Today I am starting the man who started all of this community collaboration, John Hunter’s Curious Cat Management Improvement Blog. John blogs about Dr. Deming, lean, innovation, and generally all things continuous improvement related.

John clearly blogs because he loves sharing, learning, and generally contributing to the conversation. His topics are wide and varied, from customer focus to executive pay.

Here is a sampling of some of my favorites that I would like to share with you:

How to Get a New Management Strategy, Tool, or Concept Adopted offers a fairly straightforward view on change strategy.

As a frequent air traveler (OK, frequent is an understatement), Airport Security with Lean Management Principles interests me. Having made several trips to Israel, I believe it’s not as efficient as it’s made out to be. However, everything there has a purpose, which is the real contrast to the system in the U.S.

I’m a firm believer that you can’t measure everything. Much more decision making, improvement, and direction-setting happens outside the purview of measurement. I read with interest How to Manage What You Can’t Measure . It even includes a link to a LinkedIn discussion on the same topic.

Problems with Student Evaluations as Measures of Teacher Performance both relates to the very clearly stated title, but also points to problems where doing the right thing might make others lives more difficult. We can’t always take the customer’s word as feedback.

Like many of us, John also added his own unique perspective to Toyota’s problems earlier this year with Toyota Stops Lines- Lots of Lines.

And of course, these Annual Roundups are born out of the Management Improvement Carnival that John started. You can see all of them tagged here.

I hope you’ll check out John’s blog. And return tomorrow where I’ll review Karen Wilhelm’s Lean Reflections.