Day 54 - stats and management

 Today is the 5th day of the 8th week, the 23rd day of the 2nd month, the 54th day of 2023, and:

• Curling is Cool Day
• Diesel Engine Day
• Digital Learning Day
• International Dog Biscuit Appreciation Day - so if you are a dog, and reading this, please eat a doggie biscuit and wag your tail
• Introduce a Girl to Engineering Day
• Iwo Jima Day - that picture of the raising of the flag 78 years ago
• National Banana Bread Day
• National Chili Day - according to Alexa, chili is an oxymoron because good chili is quite hot 
• National Rationalization Day
• National Tile Day
• National Toast Day - actually started in the UK
• Play Tennis Day
• Single Tasking Day - again?  
• The Great American Spit Out - this has to do with chewing tobacco.  I'm afraid my first thought was along the lines of "Frank never did like a spitter"
• Tootsie Roll Day
• World Understanding and Peace Day

Today we are suffering from weird winter weather whiplash.  Today temps locally were forecast to soar to 80°, then drop throughout the day tomorrow with gusty winds howling from the northwest, and a wintry mix hinted out for Saturday.  Wild huh?  So today I came into the office and I dressed light, turned of my heat in the apartment, and cracked open the bedroom window and the balcony door, despite it being a brisk 43° when I left for work.  

OTOH:  so much for forecasts - I'm sitting in the office with the space heater running full blast as the heavy cloud cover refuses to budge and worrying about poor Triscuit shivering at home.  We'll see if the mercury really does soar later

I'm not quite sure I like being able to see the stats on my blog - something that was never available on the old site.  Like the "following" counts on the social platforms I am active on [Facebook, Twitter, Mastodon], it makes you conscious of the number of people who are actually reading or viewing you, and you notice when those numbers change.  I don't think I'm in any danger of sinking to the Chief Twit's level, but it is something to guard against.  It does, however, make me question why I blog.  I know I like journaling, but I also want to be readable and become an actual writer.  Do I note the more popular posts and try to emulate them?  Or do I just chug along being me?  OTOH?  I am tickled that folks in other countries actually have bothered to take a look/see.  You know, it's the little things....

The benefit of stats are myriad.  Altho I never got involved with the Six Sigma movement, back when I was heavy into organizational change and development, I did read a lot of Deming.  In many ways, he is not only considered the "father" of quality control, he is also given a lot of credit for the changeover in Japan goods.  I am old enough to remember when "Made in Japan" meant it was a cheap, tawdry item that was liable to break, or fade, or just fail.  Due to the Japanese wholehearted embrace of Deming's laser focus on continuous improvement, that turned around in the 1950's and the Japanese products became outstandingly engineered..  Like any management theory, however, it has some glaring flaws, and while it works excellently in some cases, in others it can actually result in inertia and very unhappy employees.   I found this often when navigating through different theories - sometimes the reaction to a new insight caused almost a fad in management, with unintentional consequences in the workplace.  Free Agent Nation is a good example of something that we all embraced enthusiastically - but that thinking has led to today's gig economy, which I feel is not to the benefit of the workers no matter how good it is for Wall Street and businesses.   What I did take away from him was the emphasis on being able to break down the different tasks being done into processes, and that has assisted me in everything from training direct reports to documenting procedures for SOX to being able to capture tacit knowledge