Pathfinding

A case study of implementing systematic improvements

Bryan Pflug — Mon, 26 May 2008 14:38:20 -0500

The term health care reform has diverse meanings for the many stakeholders involved in the US health care system. The underlying issues associated with implementing such reforms are quite complex, but pressures for reform are high. In 2005 alone, the United States spent more than two trillion dollars on health care, or over $7,100 per person, and are growing at over twice the rate of growth of our overall economy. Government and private insurance fund about 80 percent of those costs, and the rest largely comes directly (rather than indirectly) out of our pockets. About a third of these expenditures occur within hospitals; clinicians get another third, and the rest is spread across nursing homes, prescription drugs, and the costs of administering our insurance system. read more »

Playbooks and fishing lessons, instead of more laws and sermons

Bryan Pflug — Sat, 09 Feb 2008 10:18:59 -0600

Processes are as difficult to develop as products, and when considering cultural issues, can be even more difficult. Unfortunately, developing or improving a process often isn't taken as seriously as a product development effort is... and as a result, the quality of the outputs from such process improvements can have very detrimental impacts on users, who have to try to muddle on, and may find themselves having to build products and fix proceses at the same time. read more »

Identifying opportunities for developing effectiveness

Bryan Pflug — Wed, 26 Dec 2007 09:55:21 -0600

In becoming more effective, either as an individual or a business, should one only focus on the business results that are desired, or are the means to those ends equally important? Is it enough to care passionately about goals and be able to clearly articulate their importance and why they matter to customers, or is it equally important to chart an efficient path which will reach those goals, navigate and anticipate risks along the way, and respond effectively to issues as they arise? Which of these two types of criteria - results vs means - is best for our use in evaluating performance? Which is more important as leverage to enable improvements? I'd like to tackle these questions indirectly, by showing how they relate to an important current problem at the national level. read more »

Management innovation

Bryan Pflug — Tue, 04 Dec 2007 09:20:09 -0600

In The Future of Management, Gary Hamel challenges traditional thinking on the practice of management. He argues that management innovation is needed since more traditional approaches - centered on control and efficiency - no longer work in a world where adaptability and creativity are increasingly crucial to business success. He argues that current management challenges most frequently are focused around how to accelerate change, get everyone involved in innovation, and engaged to give their best - and none of these goals can be achieved very effectively (or sustainably) in a command and control-oriented environment. I couldn't agree more.

Hamel offers a somewhat traditionalist job description for a manager, which is to: read more »

Becoming competent in managing competency

Bryan Pflug — Thu, 22 Nov 2007 11:08:51 -0600

So what is a way forward, if we are to adopt a competency-based management practice?

Refer to improvement strategies on this site for sources of material.

Pursuing a meaningful definition of competency

Bryan Pflug — Thu, 22 Nov 2007 10:43:25 -0600

No meaningful progress can be made in the effective use of any competency concept without a clear definition of what it means to be competent, and how to separate the wheat from the chaff. read more »

Keeping the customer happy

Bryan Pflug — Tue, 20 Nov 2007 11:59:45 -0600

See this podcast.

How does one learn a lesson?

Bryan Pflug — Sun, 21 Oct 2007 13:46:39 -0500

What is a lesson learned? Simply put, it is is knowledge or understanding gained by experience (whether positive or negative), and which adds significant, valid, and relevant new information that would be useful in accomplishing a business objective. read more »

Re-thinking the problem

Bryan Pflug — Tue, 09 Oct 2007 02:26:21 -0500

(explain about abandoning hope, selecting a new architecture, then stumbling across a fix in the craziest of places - Outlook!)

Cite the many recent MCE patches rolled out. The good - they fixed it. The bad - I got there before they did.

Finally mention (one more time) that XP may be an upgrade. None of this, though, seems to have hurt Microsoft, as they continue to see dramatic growth in revenue and profits (but not stock price). read more »

Watching who is advocating the merits of synergy

Bryan Pflug — Sat, 06 Oct 2007 11:29:55 -0500

Need to worry about who is really big on synergy, and you'll discover it's ususally the groups that will most benefit from it - the implementors of the infrastructure, the designated evangelists of the vision, and the change agents themselves.

It's the content, stupid!