The Curious Cat Management Improvement Carnival provides links to recent blog posts for those interesting in improving management of organizations.

• Journey from Agile To Lean by Kenji Hiranabe – “Agile is a connector between business and software engineering…. From the business perspective, IT or software development is just one activity in the value stream of a company.”

• Planning Managerial Capacity by Dan Markovitz – “While it’s very easy to take on more projects and responsibilities, it’s *stopping* work that’s critical to getting out of the office and meetings, and into the gemba where the learning happens.”

• The Problem With Planning by Kelly Waters – “Rather than a detailed plan, I prefer to see a strong vision, a strategy, goals, and a roadmap (high level outline plan). The tactics to achieve this, for example the precise features and all the tasks to deliver them, can vary along the way and are best not articulated up-front.”

• Enterprise Methods: Stop Tampering with the System of People by Marc Hersch – “Give everyone the job of systematically improving methods constantly so that all can experience joy and pride in workmanship.”

• Lean thinker Paul O’Neill by Jamie Flinchbaugh – “to understand why you have a problem, you must understand the process or the means. Bad systems beat good people – manage the system.”

• Innovation Is as Innovation Does? by Mark Graban – “More than rewarding “experimentation” (which is necessary for ‘kaizen’ or continuous improvement), does your organization manage to not punish ‘failure?’”

• How to Be Lean in a Batch Production Industry by Jon Miller – “Engage people. This is really a basic condition for whatever lean and continuous improvement system you apply within a process industry. If you do nothing else, do this.”

• Production Planning: What is it, and why should I care? by Connor Shea – “Establish a set time (weekly?) to go through Production Planning steps and to implement countermeasures when necessary. Creating a set time will ensure it becomes a regular part of your role and isn’t slowly displaced by the tyranny of the urgent.”

• Level 5 Leadership by Ron Pereira – “be humble while holding fast to the path you feel is best for the organization no matter how difficult it may be”