Quality Leadership Weblog :-)

BOOK REVIEW: The Rise of the Creative Class: And How It’s Transforming Work, Leisure, Community and Everyday Life, by Richard Florida, Copyright 2002.
Creative Class Exchange
Florida classifies occupational categories as consisting of the: Creative Class (30%), Working Class (26.1%), Service Class (43.4%), Agriculture (0.4%).
Reinforces the importance of creativity at all levels in the workplace … “ensuring [...]

POST: The competitive landscape inside the States: How dire the picture? by Thomas P.M. Barnett on December 22, 2008
BUSINESS: “Innovation in America: A gathering storm? Confronted by Asia’s technological rise and the financial crisis, corporate America is losing its self-confidence. It should not.” The Economist, 22 November 2008.
Growing consensus says America’s technological lead is [...]

POST: Tough love for the Pentagon, by Thomas P.M. Barnett on December 22, 2008
OP-ED: How to Pay for a 21st-Century Military, New York Times, December 20, 2008
You want some tough love on the Pentagon budget to pay for the interventions (overwhelmingly SysAdmin in nature) we’re still waging and are likely to wage in [...]

The Planned Change principle generally includes three courses of action: Maintain/sustain the current system/process, evolutionary/incremental improvement or revolutionary improvement through re-design.  The higher degree of change, the higher the risk. Risk can be minimized through use of the concept of Technology Readiness Levels (TRLs).  FCS incorporates all three approaches and a strategic assessment will help [...]

First time I can recall seeing a reference to a Control (process behavior) chart in the local paper.  Expect that it will be more common over the next 25 years.
Test you knowledge in assessing “scores and trends” ?
ISTEP+ Scores: It Depends, On How You Look at Them, by Jeff Abbott, Ph.D., J.D., published in [...]

US Seeks Answers From Russia On Missile Sales To Iranians, (Boston Globe)…Lolita C. Baldor, Associated Press, Dec 23, 2008.
US officials said yesterday that they want answers from Russia on whether it is selling advanced surface-to-air missiles to Iran, a move the United States insists could threaten American troops in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Taliban Taunts US Over 30,000 Extra Troops, (London Daily Telegraph)…Ben Farmer, Dec 22, 2008.
Plans to double the number of US troops in Afghanistan will see them suffer the same defeat as the Soviet army, the Taliban claims.

Admiral Mike Mullen, chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, said Washington could send up to 30,000 more [...]

Give US Afghan Backup: NATO, New York Post, December 22, 2008, By Reuters
BRUSSELS - Fellow NATO members must follow the United States in committing additional forces to Afghanistan, the alliance said yesterday.
Washington plans to send 20,000 to 30,000 extra troops to the area by the beginning of next summer to combat a growing Taliban insurgency, [...]

Two  articles in the local paper.  The first one on education and the challenge of identifying indicators for measuring success. The second article recognized a company for successfully applying the Baldrige criteria which provides a model for identifying critical performance measures.
Problem Resolution?  Use the Baldrige criteria to develop the consensus on how to measure the [...]

Toyota projects first operating loss since 1941, By YURI KAGEYAMA, AP Business Writer, Dec 22, 2008.
Toyota forecast an operating loss of 150 billion yen ($1.66 billion) for the fiscal year ending March 2009. Toyota has never reported an operating loss since it began disclosing such figures in 1941. But it did have an operating loss [...]