manage naturally

where human nature meets natural law

Beyond Financial Accounting: using simple Operational Reports to manage causes.

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Join us for a Webinar on January 24

Space is limited.

Reserve your Webinar seat now at:

Results can't be managed, only the causes of results. The P&L and Balance Sheet, financial reports as defined by GAAP (Generally Accepted Accounting Practices) are for investors, and banks, to put a value to their investment and not to operate a business. Because they make limited comparisons of single data points, they confuse and make it difficult to find the causes one needs to manage. The solution?  Give the investors and banks their financials, but learn how to transform them into useful Operational Reports. 

You will learn: 
1. How to drive your organizaiton with your eyes on the road, not stuck in the rear view mirror. 
2. How to transform the p&l in a few seconds into an Operational report making the data useful 
3. Real life examples from real companies (names changed to protect the innocent.) 
4. What really drives profit and long term success. 
5. Why "what you need to know may be unknowable" and how to manage it. 

Benefits for you: 
1. An end to the monthly/weekly dance seeking explanations for ups and downs on spreadsheets. 
2. A clear guide when and how to react, and when reacting will only make things worse. 
3. More time to focus on what matters, 
4. Better information helping you understand your business to make more profit both for the short and the long term. 
4. Confidence through understanding 
5. A forward thinking focus. 

Space is limited, act now. 

Dan Strongin is a business consultant and co-founder of the Deming Collaboration. With nearly 4 decades of experience in a wide variety of industries, he began his career as a 5 Star Chef in organizations like the Ritz Carlton, and an Executive in Specialty Retail, subsequently working with producers, manufacturers, retailers, distributors, State Marketing Boards and Innovation Centers. He is certified by the American Society for Quality in management for quality and qrganizational Excellence. (CMQ/OE)

Title: Beyond Financial Accounting: using simple Operational Reports to manage causes.
Date: Tuesday, January 24, 2012
Time: 9:00 AM - 10:00 AM PST

After registering you will receive a confirmation email containing information about joining the Webinar.

System Requirements
PC-based attendees
Required: Windows® 7, Vista, XP or 2003 Server
Macintosh®-based attendees
Required: Mac OS® X 10.5 or newer

Measuring

Knowledge-1
Why would the father of modern quality, Dr. Deming, a statistician, say "the most important things you need to know are unmeasurable and unknowable, but you still need to manage them?" Certainly, managing by feelings is a recipe for failure, but measuring everything can be trouble as well. Working with fixed resources, we have to apply them where they will have best effect. If you are measuring common causes as if special, down the drain. If you are measuring complex, messy social systems, where do you start? Each person is purposeful, unlike machines in a process line. But you still have to manage them. 

To measure what it makes sense to measure, seems a reasonable approach, then apply the SoPK to manage what it doesn't make sense or can't really be done without tampering. Why is it all or nothing? It aint politics

Immortal Soul

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Measuring the Unmeasurable, more rant...

(with thanks to Rafael Aguayo for some key insights)

Karanl305kmadde1ju0

(image from NASA)

First and foremost, is the system one is measuring under control, as you should know, if not, there is nothing that can be learned which can be used for prediction, the essence of process control, management and science, beyond, it is out of control! 

Manipulating data to make an out of control system look in control is always tempting, especially the farther the measurer is removed from the context, from where the events being measured actually take place, and have real world ramifications: Ohno's gemba. 

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Performance Evaluations, Goals, Ranking are for those who Don't Know what to do!

Performance evaluations, goals, ranking, etc. have nothing to do with improving performance, they are tools of power in a command and control structure for those who do not know what to do, but feel they have to do something. The odds of just doing something are 98% that you will only make things worse. And yet we continue in our convictions, despite clear and potent evidence to the contrary.

 

How's that working for us?

Businesssurvivalsmall

Letter sent to CFSCAN in support of Small Family Farmers

Small family farms are important to a free nation, and a safe, secure food supply. (They are not multi-national corporations and cannot afford to have lobbyists or research institutions, so we sometimes forget their importance.)  

Cheese2

They provide real diversity in our agricultural economy. Those that focus on dairy have been able to save their farms, and to a degree their rural communities, by producing artisan cheese as part of the renaissance of artisan cheese over the last 20 years. For the first time in a generation, the loss of family farms has slowed, a bit: people are actually returning to farms to produce artisan cheese. 

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