As a manager, don’t you just sometimes wish all problems will go away? Wouldn’t it be nice if everybody in the company agreed with you? Having been a production manager myself, I agree that indeed, yes, that would be nice. At the same time, this would be one of the most dangerous situations your company could be in. Simply said, a company will always have problems and disagreements; that is just the nature of companies. Continuous improvement is solving these problems, resolving the disagreements, and tapping the potential that your company has. Not having any problems merely means that you DON’T KNOW these problems, and a lack of disagreements is merely PEOPLE NOT TELLING YOU about problems. And those are the biggest problems you can have in your company…
Management
The Evolution of Strategic Management—Management by Objectives
Strategic management is the art of planning, monitoring, analyzing, and assessing all that is necessary for an organization to meet its goals and objectives. This is the third post in my series on the evolution of strategic management, and we will be looking in more detail at management by objectives (MBO).
The Evolution of Strategic Management—Managing Large Corporations Before World War II
In this series of posts I will talk about how strategic management developed (i.e., how to have a big-picture view of where your company is and where it should be, and especially how to get there). In my last post, I looked at the situation before there was any strategic management. This posts looks at the time between roughly 1900 and World War II. It will be mostly about managing money and operational efficiency, but there are already a few big-picture view companies popping up.
The Evolution of Strategic Management—Before Strategic Management
Running a company is not easy. A lot of lean tools help you with the small details and fuel the continuous improvement process. However, you should not neglect the big picture. How do you make not only small or large operational changes (i.e., the tactics), but also actually use a strategy to win the war (i.e., to lead a company to success)? That is strategic management. This series of posts will look at how strategic management evolved over time, with particular focus on its use in manufacturing. And yes, Hoshin Kanri will (eventually) be part of this short post series.
How to Look Good at the Cost of Your Successor (Please Don’t!)–Part 3
This is the last of my three posts on how to benefit at the cost of your successor. And again, please don’t. This is more of a warning on how to damage the plant for the benefit of the manager. And again, I hope rather than someone using this as a to-do list, someone uses it to see dangers. This last post looks at the worst “trick” of them all, burning the goodwill of your employees for a quick buck. It also looks at the one easiest to see, selling the plant and renting it back.
How to Look Good at the Cost of Your Successor (Please Don’t!)–Part 2
This is the second post in this short three-post series on how to look good while driving the plant into the ground. Again, the following is intended more of a warning on how NOT to do it, even though I fear some may use it as a checklist. My hope is that even more see the signs and can stop it, or at least not reward the person in question for this type of skullduggery. I will also talk briefly about how to recognize and counteract this type of behavior for the long-term health and success of your plant.
How to Look Good at the Cost of Your Successor (Please Don’t!)–Part 1
This post series will be an unusual one. I will tell you how to look good in manufacturing at the cost of your successor. Of course, I do NOT want you to do that. Not only will there be no improvement, but instead the plant will be worse in the long run at the cost of a short-term benefit. This is a somewhat sarcastic post on the dirty tricks you can use to look good, while at the same time driving your (future) plant into the ground. The responsible managers of course will be somewhere else before the inevitable happens. Even though the approaches below are bad for the plant, I am sure some managers will use this as a checklist. But I hope that even more people will see it as a list of warnings for bad managers.
American Factory – Documentary of a Chinese Automotive Factory in the USA
A good manufacturing documentary on Netflix is American Factory. This movie follows an American automotive plant that closed some time ago, and was reopened by a Chinese car glass manufacturer. It documents the differences and problems between employees and management in general and the cultural clashes between Chinese management’s and American workers’ expectations in particular. It is in fact very similar to the 1986 movie Gung Ho, except Gung Ho is a fictional comedy, whereas American Factory is as real as it gets. Good to watch! It also won the Oscar for “Best Documentary” in 2020.