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Hospitals, Heal Thyselves

Hospitals, Heal Thyselves by Cal Thomas:

This proven system does not require more staff or expensive consultants and it certainly does not need another bureaucratic, costly and inefficient government agency, which can only make things worse. Improvements can be made, says Mr. Dobyns, starting today and in every hospital in the country. Costs will decline. "So the question now becomes, can we afford not to heal our hospitals? We can, if we want, not do anything. But if we decide not to do anything, we have to accept that every day -- every day -- 500 people will die in hospitals in the United States who did not have to. You and I might be among them."

via Great Exposure for the "Good News" DVD

• PBS Documentary: Improving Hospitals
  
• Management Improvement in Healthcare
  
• Health Care Crisis
  
• High Costs of Broken Health Care System
  

More on Obscene CEO Pay

Study site: CEO-worker pay imbalance grows includes the graph above.

Unfortunately this reverse robin hood (steal from the workers, stock holder, customers...) and give to the CEO tale continues. Hopefully someday soon we can at least turn the momentum in the right direction (stopping these incredibly excessive "pay" packages). Even then it will take quite a deal of reducing these ridiculous "pay" packages to reach some sense of decency. CNN article based on the report: CEO Paycheck: $42,000 a day by Jeanne Sahadi:

Put another way, the average worker -- who earned $41,861 in 2005 -- made about $400 less last year than what the average large-company CEO made in one day. That assumes 260 days of pay (52 weeks x 5 days a week).

The CEO-to-worker pay differential in 2005 was the second highest on record. The highest was 2000, when the average CEO earned 300 times what the average worker made.

In 2002, the differential fell to 143 as the bear market took its toll on stock-related compensation. Nevertheless, between 2000 and 2005, median CEO pay rose 84 percent to $6.05 million on an inflation-adjusted basis, according to EPI.

Missing link: CEO pay and results

Home Depot CEO stifles debate about pay

Excessive Executive Pay - link to a study with even more obscene data than that in the graph above.

CEO Pay: Obscene from Apr 2005

Dr. Shigeo Shingo

Norman Bodek responds to, Shigeo Shingo's Influence on TPS by Art Smalley, with: Dr. Shigeo Shingo - The Greatest Manufacturing Consultant. As the title shows this article focuses on the contributions of Dr. Shingo. I still find the original article interesting and valuable. I don't think the original article denigrates Dr. Shingo. It is true the emphasis is different in the two articles however it seems to me the difference is not that large in truth. The largest difference is to what extent Dr. Shingo's contributions (which it seems to me are stated pretty similarly) are admired, it seems to me.

Both support the idea that Dr. Shingo offered valuable contributions. Norman Bodek obviously believes Dr. Shingo deserves more credit than the original article. At least to me though the differences between the articles is much less than the agreements.

New Lessons on Competition from Mother Nature

Surviving the Fittest: New Lessons on Competition from Mother Nature by Joel A. Barker

As a result of this emerging body of research, we now must reexamine our competitive paradigm and factor in the new information. It is now clear that 'the fittest' not only don't win all the time, but are only a piece of the more complex system. This information can lead to new strategies for small companies and new insights for the big companies that presently dominate their industries.

An interesting short article with some ideas to think about.

• Paradigms: The Business of Discovering the Future by Joel A. Barker, 1993.
  
• Joel Barker - his web site
  
• No Contest The Case Against Competition by Alfie Kohn, 1992.
  

Brainstorming Under Attack

Brainstorming under attack: 8 errors in the WSJ. The WSJ has there content behind a wall so their content is not part of the web and so I have not seen their article.

The blog post makes good points about mistaken impressions of brainstorming:

People do better on their own than they do in brainstorming sessions. This is really daft. I like to think of myself as a pretty creative guy, but I am never more creative than when I am a small piece loosely joined with other small pieces in the generative circumstances of a brain storming group.

I think both have their place. You pretty much can come up with your own ideas all day long (though it is true we often are too busy doing something to take any time to think but that is a time management choice). Brainstorming is about creating an opportunity to bring new ideas the forefront.

There are other useful tools such as the affinity diagram which can serve as another option (or can serve as a tool to work with the results of brainstorming).

And Edward DeBono has excellent creativity tools, like his 6 thinking hats. Brainstorming is a useful tool when applied properly but it is only one tool and other tools should be used.

• Managing Innovation
  
• TRIZ - Managing Creativity
  
• Managing for Creativity
  

Lean Library

Library becomes a lean machine by Morgan Jarema:

"I spent parts of three days looking for that book," Hoyles recalled. "On the fourth day, I found it. I called the patron and he told me he'd gone out and bought it."
...
In November, library employees, who are responsible for checking in from 4,000 to 10,000 returned materials at a time, were asked to help reduce the reshelving time, which could be as long as two weeks.

The average time now is 36 hours, though most materials can be found on rolling carts in the section where they belong the same day they are returned.

Related lean thinking idea: 5s. More lean manufacturing/thinking articles.

Companies in Need of Customer Focus

You should pay ME - 9 Companies That Don't Get It:

I have been having a hell of a time canceling my old web hosting with Burstband. It's been a few months now and I've called, emailed, filled out online forms, and I have never reached a live person or received confirmation that my account was shut down, and I still get charged. I finally had to file a dispute through my credit card company. It's $8.99/month, so they owe me at least $26.97. I got to thinking about it, and I realized they really should pay me for the two hours of my life I have wasted trying to cancel the damn thing. I usually charge $80/hr for consulting so the total comes to $186.97."

My brother has suggested several times I should arrange for companies to pay me to point out their weaknesses (and suggest improvements). I wish I could get them to do so.

Another opportunity for improvement: Why Doesn't Google Invest More in Blogger? - Google is great (in my opinion, of course) but still has plenty of room to improve. And Blogger is one great example of something in need of improvement. In fact in trying to post this I received:

Down for Maintenance
Blogger is temporarily unavailable due to an unexpected problem.
We will be back up as soon as possible.

Update (2:20 pm PDT): We are fixing a database issue. We hope to be back up in a couple of hours.

Related:

• Customer Service is Important
  
• Quality Customer Focus
  

Planning 5s? First Know Why!

Planning 5s? First Know Why! by Jamie Flinchbaugh

he basic principle is that you must know why you want to implement 5S before being concerned about learning how to do it. Most people, when they are asked the purpose of 5S, cite safety, discipline, employee morale, reduced waste of motion and-perhaps the worst reason of all-being tour ready.

All of this is wrong. The true purpose of 5S is to spot problems quickly.

Very clear point. The purpose is to help spot problems and correct them. Making it easy to spot problems, and to correct them, will lead to improved safety and efficiency.

5s definition