Business on Vince Veselosky

Take heed, managers: your 'best practices' are killing your company

Tue, 22 Jan 2013 11:00:00 +0000

If you are a manager, you need to understand the ideas of W. Edwards Deming. Deming wrote several books about management, in which he chastised American business schools and American corporate management for perpetuating a failed philosophy and failed management techniques.

Deming proposed a new philosophy of management motivated by quality and grounded in systems theory. The Deming philosophy is too deep, too broad, and too rich to be explained in a mere blog post. Volumes have been written about it, and as I read those volumes I am sharing my thoughts through this venue (with apologies to Mr. Deming if I misrepresent anything, I am still learning.)

A Framework for Innovation

Mon, 14 May 2012 10:00:00 +0000

How does a large company create an environment that encourages and leverages internal innovation? Here is my checklist of prerequisites for "enterprise" innovation:

Great people. You may think this goes without saying, but it cannot be emphasized enough. You cannot hire drones who put in 8 hours for a paycheck and then head out the door. You need passionate, creative people, people who love their work, people who are impatient with "getting by" and want to be the best at what they do. These are the Innovators. Without them, innovation does not happen.

Efficiency: Enemy of Innovation?

Thu, 19 Jan 2012 11:00:00 +0000

The science of management in the industrial age was all about efficiency. It had to be. The whole concept of capitalism is based on efficiency. An entrepreneur acquires capital at a cost, and that capital must be made to produce profit at a rate higher than the cost of capital. If you borrowed money at 10% to start your business, you had to make it earn 11% at least. That meant controlling costs ruthlessly and milking every bit of productivity from every penny's worth of capital.