Funny things

Management Improvement Blog Carnival #159

March 1, 2012 By David M. Kasprzak 1 Comment

March 2012 marks the 2-year anniversary of My Flexible Pencil. Although I’m certain he was unaware of that, I am still honored that John Hunter of the Curious Cat Management Improvement blog is helping me to celebrate this milestone, by asking me to host the Management Improvement Blog Carnival #159.

The Carnival, begun by in 2006, is published 3 times a month and serves to provide a selection of links to posts on a number of blogs. The carnival covers management improvement: Deming, lean manufacturing, six sigma, innovation, customer focus, leadership, systems thinking, continuous improvement, respect for people… [Read more]

Filed Under: Behavior & Culture, Business Management, Continuous Improvement, Funny things, Operational Excellence, Planning & Measurement, Uncategorized Tagged With: Continuous Improvement, Family, Lean, measurement, project management, ROWE, value, waste

Guest post on A Lean Journey, and the weekly rewind

February 27, 2012 By David M. Kasprzak Leave a Comment

Today, I have a guest post appearing on Tim McMahon’s A Lean Journey Site. The Topic: ROWE in the context of the Shingo model. When Tim asked if I’d like to do a guest post on his site, I jumped at the chance. I also reached out to Mark Hamel, a blogger, an award-winning author for his book: The Kaizen Even Fieldbook, and a Shingo Prize examiner, for input. Mark wrote a complete post of his own which will appear on Tim’s site tomorrow. Mark dives even deeper into how ROWE aligns with the Shingo, and how it does not. [Read more]

Filed Under: Behavior & Culture, Business Management, Continuous Improvement, Funny things, Operational Excellence, Random observations, Team Building & Human Capital, Uncategorized Tagged With: attitudes, Business strategy, Continuous Improvement, Corporate Culture, Leadership, Lean, Management, operational excellence, performance, ROWE, value, waste

Last Week’s Top Tweets

February 20, 2012 By David M. Kasprzak Leave a Comment

In case you missed it, here are some tweet & re-tweets of articles & other things that caught my eye last week: MUST READ: From Dan Markovitz (@timeback): Respect for people — treating them more like machines. bit.ly/zVyKew From Others: From Boston College Center for Work & Family (@BCCWF): Need more leadership support + manager training: Flexible [...]

Filed Under: Behavior & Culture, Business Management, Family, Funny things, Operational Excellence, Random observations, Uncategorized Tagged With: Management, operational excellence, ROWE, Systems

Last week’s tweets

February 6, 2012 By David M. Kasprzak Leave a Comment

In case you missed it, here are some tweet & re-tweets of articles & other things that caught my eye last week: From Others: From @tedcoine: YES!! RT @shawmu: Actually give a S### about the development of individuals.ow.ly/8SkuB via @kris_dunn From @ShingoPrize: Robert Miller said Shingo Prize focuses on more than just culture, it focuses on how [...]

Filed Under: Business Management, Funny things, Operational Excellence, Other stuff, Project Management, Random observations, Useful Tools Tagged With: Corporate Culture, Lean, operational excellence, project management, reflection, twitter

Understanding why: Developing Critical Thinking in kids

December 5, 2011 By David M. Kasprzak 3 Comments

When faced with information that contradicts our understanding of the way things are supposed to be, we revert back to what we already know, claiming disbelief in the rightness of what we’re seeing and failing to examine the situation in order to develop a new understanding. We are told to follow the rules, even if we don’t understand them, and we insist on following the rules even when it is pointed out that those rules were based on false assumptions. [Read more]

Filed Under: Family, Funny things, Random observations Tagged With: attitudes, BeFlexible, Critical and Creative Thinking, Family, teaching

The management lessons of angry birds

October 11, 2011 By David M. Kasprzak 5 Comments

Angry Birds, that time-draining app that has spawned a cult phenomenon and a slew of stuffed toys at Walmart, might seem like an odd place to look for wisdom on accomplishing tasks. Nonetheless, the game offers several highly useful examples of how to manage yourself and others in order to get things accomplished: [Read more]

Filed Under: Behavior & Culture, Business Management, Featured Posts, Funny things, Project Management, Useful Tools Tagged With: Creative Problem Solving, Management

Process Improvement and the free flow of laundry

September 12, 2011 By David M. Kasprzak 2 Comments

Around the house, we’ve always had a problem with laundry. There’s always a heap waiting to be ironed, hampers are overflowing, and many morning a search for clean socks would necessitate a trip to the basement to dig out a fresh pair from a laundry basket that was washed a week ago but still waiting to be folded.

While a lot of folks might point to large-scale factory-wide process improvement efforts that take months to design and implement, I’m pretty content knowing that I was able to take all those concepts and apply them right here…….at home…..where it counts. [Read more]

Filed Under: Continuous Improvement, Family, Featured Posts, Funny things, Operational Excellence, Useful Tools Tagged With: Continuous Improvement, Creative Problem Solving, Family, Lean, Systems

Practice talking to yourself

August 15, 2011 By David M. Kasprzak 1 Comment

I’m spending a lot of time talking to myself these days. And no, while the ins and outs of daily life sometimes make me crazy, I’m not quite losing it just yet. Thanks to the recent purchase of a smart phone, I found a pre-installed voice recorder app. So, while I am driving to and [...]

Filed Under: Funny things, Random observations, Team Building & Human Capital, Useful Tools Tagged With: BeFlexible, Creative Problem Solving, Critical and Creative Thinking

Matt Damon, master of intrinsic motivation

August 5, 2011 By David M. Kasprzak Leave a Comment

Thanks to Time Magazine’s Megan Gibson (@MeganGibson) I stumbled across this video of Matt Damon explaining to a reporter just how intrinsic motivation works: Atta boy, Matt. I will now watch the Bourne and Ocean’s 11 reruns on TNT without feeling guilty. I’m going to sidestep the education debate on this one, partly because [...]

Filed Under: Behavior & Culture, Education, Featured Posts, Funny things, movies, music, tv, entertainment, Team Building & Human Capital Tagged With: learning, motivation, performance, teaching

NFL’s return to work spells disaster for improvement initiatives

July 26, 2011 By David M. Kasprzak Leave a Comment

Thanks to a new Collective Bargaining Agreement between the NFL and its Players Union, we can all rest comfortably knowing that American-style football will return to the gridiron this Autumn. That spells disaster for managers in any workplace looking to take advantage of the lockout and push through some difficult initiatives. Clearly, all those out-of-work [...]