Implications of Technology:"

What is the benefit of hard time:

Generally speaking, we operate in autopilot mode. If unusual circumstances arise, we switch out of autopilot and over to manual mode. And it is in this manual mode that we develop or modify our mindsets. We will need to spend a good amount of time in manual mode, with System 2 fully engaged, in order to change an established mindset. But there’s a problem: System 2 is slow. It takes much longer than System 1 to make decisions and get things done. In addition, System 2 is lazy; its preferred approach is to turn as much work as possible over to System 1. So modifying a mindset takes deliberate effort and considerable time—
Poppendieck, Mary (2013-09-19T22:58:59). The Lean Mindset: Ask the Right Questions (Addison-Wesley Signature Series (Beck)) . Pearson Education. Kindle Edition.

How to energize workers:

Chapter 2: Energized Workers is based on the work of Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, who found that the most energizing human experience is pursuing a well-framed challenge. Energized workers have a purpose that is larger than the company and a direct line of sight between their effort and achieving that purpose. They strive to reach their full potential through challenging work that requires increasing skill and expertise. They thrive on the right kind of challenge—a challenge that is not so easy as to be boring and not so hard as to be discouraging, a challenge that appeals to aspirations or to duty, depending on the “regulatory fit.”
Poppendieck, Mary (2013-09-19T22:58:59). The Lean Mindset: Ask the Right Questions (Addison-Wesley Signature Series (Beck)) . Pearson Education. Kindle Edition.
"he will not let you be tempted beyond what you can bear. But when you are tempted, he will also provide a way out so that you can endure it."

The pitfall of competitiveness:

1.We don’t believe you will give your best effort voluntarily—in fact, we expect you to hold back and avoid doing anything unless it increases your incentive pay.
Poppendieck, Mary. The Lean Mindset: Ask the Right Questions (Addison-Wesley Signature Series (Beck)) (p. 20). Pearson Education. Kindle Edition.

2.Since independent decisions are assumed to be biased toward the best interests of the decision maker, workers are discouraged from making changes to their work practices, and their work is usually measured against a standard.
Poppendieck, Mary. The Lean Mindset: Ask the Right Questions (Addison-Wesley Signature Series (Beck)) (p. 20). Pearson Education. Kindle Edition.

What are the values of Association and fellowship? --- the positive peer pressure.

Sampson measured a characteristic of neighborhoods that he calls collective efficacy, a combination of two mechanisms: social cohesion and shared expectations for control.31 So what is collective efficacy? It is the extent to which cohesive groups control bad behavior through self-enforcing group norms and expectations; or, to put it more simply, it is the judicious use of peer pressure by a like-minded group of people. Sampson found that some Chicago neighborhoods have high collective efficacy and some have much lower collective efficacy; further, he found that high collective efficacy is a key contributor to community well-being. In other words, communities that control bad behavior through peer pressure are better off than communities where people expect outsiders to make and enforce the rules.
It doesn’t seem like much of a leap to think of companies as neighborhoods and to consider the collective efficacy of an organization. To see how a company with high collective efficacy might operate, let’s consider a well-known example: W. L. Gore & Associates. This $2.5 billion chemical products company has never failed to make a profit in its 65 years of existence—yet it operates without a management hierarchy. At Gore: People choose their own work. Leaders are those who attract followers. Individual business units are small, self-governing, and self-supporting. How can this possibly work? At Gore, the prosperity of individual workers is determined by the economic success of their small (less than 150 people) business unit. Because of this, people in every department—from engineering to manufacturing to sales—work together to ensure the success of their business unit. People at the company have come to believe that “peer pressure is much more effective than a concept of a boss. Many, many times more powerful.”32
---Poppendieck, Mary. The Lean Mindset: Ask the Right Questions (Addison-Wesley Signature Series (Beck)) (p. 28). Pearson Education. Kindle Edition.

How can higher labor costs result in higher profits?

It’s a virtuous circle: High labor budgets result in good quality and quantity of labor, which result in good operational execution, which results in high sales and profits.26 Ton’s exemplary retail chains provide full-time jobs with benefits, reliable scheduling, higher staffing levels, and much more training. These factors make it possible for employees to keep the shelves stocked and help customers when they need it. Employees are often buyers for their departments and can fill in at many different jobs. They are expected to act on customer feedback and help improve their processes. Overall, valued employees and effective work practices combine to create stores where customers find what they want and are pleased with the experience. It all adds up to sustainable profits.
---Poppendieck, Mary. The Lean Mindset: Ask the Right Questions (Addison-Wesley Signature Series (Beck)) (pp. 22-23). Pearson Education. Kindle Edition.

How to void the problem of eating from the same pot? and what is the tool for this problem?

Dunbar proposed a theory: The human mind evolved to be capable of tracking the social relationships among approximately 150 people. To check out this theory, he and other researchers started looking at the size of social groups of people in preindustrial societies, especially hunter-gatherers. They found several common sizes: 1. An “inner circle” of about three to five very close friends or family members 2. A “sympathy group” of 12 to 15 close friends who care about each other’s fate 3. A “hunting group” of 30 to 50 colleagues who cooperate to accomplish a task 4. A “clan” of 150 people who maintain stable interpersonal relationships 5. A “tribe” of about 500 to 2,500 people who speak the same language or dialect Voilà! Dunbar’s Number appeared to be the size of a “clan,” a group of people who know each other well, help each other out, and share important ceremonies.
Dunbar believes that the size of the neocortex in a monkey or baboon or person determines the number of social relationships it can track at one time, and hence the size of the group within which generalized reciprocity will work. Humans can track the social relationships of about 150 people; when you get more than 150, you start to need authority and policing to enforce good behavior. But below 150, everybody knows everyone else, and social relationships are adequate to keep the reciprocity tally in balance.
---Poppendieck, Mary. The Lean Mindset: Ask the Right Questions (Addison-Wesley Signature Series (Beck)) (p. 30). Pearson Education. Kindle Edition.

I think the tool for this problem is Kanban and Lean.

Common strategies of companies that were truly successful: Let the workers do valuable tasks and pay them the Competitive salary.

Michael Raynor and Mumtaz Ahmed of Deloitte found approximately the same thing. They studied the performance of more than 25,000 companies from 1966 to 2010, looking for common strategies of companies that were truly successful over the long term. In the end, they could find only two:24 Better before cheaper—compete on value rather than price. Revenue before cost—prioritize increasing revenue over reducing cost. In other words, profits that come from delivering more products that customers value are better than profits that come from cutting costs.
Poppendieck, Mary. The Lean Mindset: Ask the Right Questions (Addison-Wesley Signature Series (Beck)) (p. 22). Pearson Education. Kindle Edition.

Do you believe IQ?

IQ scores can also be a self-fulfilling prophecy. Carol Dweck—whose work we will look at next—showed that when junior high students believe their intelligence cannot be changed, it doesn’t change. When they believe—or are taught—that intelligence can be improved through hard work, their math scores rise.2
---Poppendieck, Mary. The Lean Mindset: Ask the Right Questions (Addison-Wesley Signature Series (Beck)) (p. 42). Pearson Education. Kindle Edition.

What Fixed mindset and Growth mindset do:

Dweck was determined to figure out what was going on with these children, “to understand the kind of mindset that could turn failure into a gift.” Decades of research by Anders Ericsson, Carol Dweck, and many others have discredited the myth that talent is fixed. Natural talent might help people sail easily through the early stages of learning math or music or martial arts. But inevitably the work gets hard, and at this point those with the fixed mindset are likely to stop trying, while those with a growth mindset work with increasing diligence and keep on improving.
---Poppendieck, Mary. The Lean Mindset: Ask the Right Questions (Addison-Wesley Signature Series (Beck)) (pp. 43-44). Pearson Education. Kindle Edition.

Challenge the kid, I found he became more disciplined.

Escalante turned a group of kids who were well below average by all objective standards into a group of kids who excelled at the kinds of things that would change their lives: 1. They had developed learning strategies and habits that would last a lifetime. 2. They were experts in the basic language of science and technology. 3. They had learned to thrive on challenge rather than avoid it.
Poppendieck, Mary. The Lean Mindset: Ask the Right Questions (Addison-Wesley Signature Series (Beck)) (pp. 44-45). Pearson Education. Kindle Edition.

How is a growth mindset related to a lean mindset?

M&T: A company with a lean mindset does not waste time trying to sort out who has more or less talent. It has hiring policies that seek people with ganas. It has systems in place that challenge everyone to continually get better at what they do. If you take a look at Southwest Airlines, a company that has historically had a lean mindset, you will probably find many teams that call to mind the team spirit found in Escalante’s classrooms.
---Poppendieck, Mary. The Lean Mindset: Ask the Right Questions (Addison-Wesley Signature Series (Beck)) (p. 44). Pearson Education. Kindle Edition.

Who would like to embrace failures?

In a comparative study of perseverance in Japan and North America,17 Steven Heine and his colleagues found that culture has a lot of influence on what motivates people to persevere at challenging tasks. In North America in particular, and Western cultures in general, people tend to persevere in working on tasks that they are good at. Failure tends to cause them to abandon a task. In Japan, and by extension in other East Asian cultures, they found the opposite—failure tends to increase motivation and cause people to work harder. By now you might have guessed the reason behind this. The researchers note that North Americans tend to have a promotion focus—they are likely to pursue gains—while a Japanese heritage tends to value a prevention focus—a focus on living up to expectations.
---Poppendieck, Mary. The Lean Mindset: Ask the Right Questions (Addison-Wesley Signature Series (Beck)) (p. 62). Pearson Education. Kindle Edition.

How to use optimists and pessimists in the digital world?

In the digital world, we tend to have the optimists developing software and the pessimists running the data centers—for good reason.
---Poppendieck, Mary. The Lean Mindset: Ask the Right Questions (Addison-Wesley Signature Series (Beck)) (p. 56). Pearson Education. Kindle Edition.

Columbia University researcher Troy Higgins would say that optimists are people with a promotion focus—they care about the presence and absence of gains—while pessimists are people with a prevention focus—they worry about the presence and absence of losses.11 The focus people have at any point in time will depend on their goal. For example, an aspirational goal turns on a promotion focus in people—they become eager to work for the goal and are strongly motivated by progress. A goal that involves duties and obligations turns on the prevention focus in people—they become vigilant and are strongly motivated by a desire to avoid doing the wrong thing.
---Poppendieck, Mary. The Lean Mindset: Ask the Right Questions (Addison-Wesley Signature Series (Beck)) (p. 56). Pearson Education. Kindle Edition.

Higgins’s theory says, to give aspirational goals to people with a habitual promotion focus, while those with a chronic prevention focus will do better with goals focused on safety and security. Of course, this is not an absolute rule.
---Poppendieck, Mary. The Lean Mindset: Ask the Right Questions (Addison-Wesley Signature Series (Beck)) (p. 56). Pearson Education. Kindle Edition.

The important thing to remember about regulatory fit is that for people who have a promotion focus, aspirations are strong motivators; for people who have a prevention focus, meeting obligations and fear of failure are strong motivators.
---Poppendieck, Mary. The Lean Mindset: Ask the Right Questions (Addison-Wesley Signature Series (Beck)) (pp. 56-57). Pearson Education. Kindle Edition.

Thus, one very likely cause of innovation problems in large companies is that the regulatory fit is wrong. These companies have developed a strong prevention focus, but significant innovation cries out for a promotion focus. The dissonance is deafening. Unless the prevention-focused company can internalize the very real threat of sticking with the status quo, isolated and timid innovation efforts might get started, but they are unlikely to thrive. There are three approaches to deal with a regulatory fit problem: 1. Leaders at the top of the company change its regulatory fit (i.e., culture). 2. People in the company see the very real threat of failing to innovate and internalize the fact that innovation is a survival strategy. 3. The company splits into two camps: one with a chronic prevention focus and one with a habitual promotion focus. The first option, changing the culture, is really hard. The second option, innovating because it is a survival issue, is somewhat easier. But the easiest approach is often to isolate innovation efforts in a separate organization where goals and metrics are promotion focused, which is more or less the equivalent of creating an internal startup company. We will discuss this further in Chapter 5.
---Poppendieck, Mary. The Lean Mindset: Ask the Right Questions (Addison-Wesley Signature Series (Beck)) (p. 59). Pearson Education. Kindle Edition.

The Science of Expertise: deliberate practice with the coach.

Think about musicians and athletes: How do they become virtuosos or champions? They practice. Decades of research, initiated by the work of Anders Ericsson, has led to consistent findings: Expertise is developed through hours upon hours of deliberate practice. What is deliberate practice? Think of those musicians and athletes. They 1. Decide to pursue a challenging goal 2. Practice under the guidance of a coach 3. Push their limits, fail, and receive immediate feedback 4. Repeat this over and over again, many times a day, for years The elements necessary for organizational mastery are not much different. Excellent organizations that are masters in their field follow an equation something like this: Expertise = Challenge + Coaching + Progress + Perseverance
---Poppendieck, Mary. The Lean Mindset: Ask the Right Questions (Addison-Wesley Signature Series (Beck)) (p. 55). Pearson Education. Kindle Edition.

What is the biggest motivator for knowledge workers?

After analyzing thousands of diary entries, they came to the conclusion that the biggest motivator for knowledge workers on a day-to-day basis is making progress in meaningful work.
---Poppendieck, Mary. The Lean Mindset: Ask the Right Questions (Addison-Wesley Signature Series (Beck)) (p. 61). Pearson Education. Kindle Edition.

Amabile and Kramer asked over 600 managers to rank the importance of five factors for motivating employees: recognition, incentives, interpersonal support, support for making progress, and clear goals. The managers ranked recognition first and support for making progress dead last.16 What do you think would have happened if they had asked the same question of music teachers? Martial arts instructors? Athletic coaches? Research advisers? These kinds of mentors learned long ago that people will work hard day after day as long as they keep getting better, keep making progress. They know that occasional recognition is a good thing, interpersonal support helps, clear goals must be paired with feedback, and incentives are poison. And they realize that none of these factors will keep students motivated over time unless they experience steady progress.
---Poppendieck, Mary. The Lean Mindset: Ask the Right Questions (Addison-Wesley Signature Series (Beck)) (pp. 61-62). Pearson Education. Kindle Edition.

Don’t think of measuring progress as a control mechanism; think of it as a motivation mechanism and you will create a completely different atmosphere.
---Poppendieck, Mary. The Lean Mindset: Ask the Right Questions (Addison-Wesley Signature Series (Beck)) (p. 62). Pearson Education. Kindle Edition.

What book, experience and hobby can do:

The Wright brothers had been encouraged from childhood to read widely and learn as much as possible, but their formal education ended after high school. They ran a print shop and then a bicycle shop, which fueled their love of books and gave them a lot of practical mechanical experience. The brothers were passionate about flying and considered it a hobby, so they dedicated all of their spare time to learning everything they could about it.
---Poppendieck, Mary. The Lean Mindset: Ask the Right Questions (Addison-Wesley Signature Series (Beck)) (p. 75). Pearson Education. Kindle Edition.

One of the things that drove the brothers to ask the right questions was that they didn’t have a lot of money, so they couldn’t afford the random trial-and-error experiments that were common at the time.
---Poppendieck, Mary. The Lean Mindset: Ask the Right Questions (Addison-Wesley Signature Series (Beck)) (p. 75). Pearson Education. Kindle Edition.

Great problem solvers start by developing a deep understanding of the situation through direct experience. They collaborate with people who have different perspectives and knowledge. They are creative, efficient, and highly disciplined in uncovering the essential problems and designing possible solutions. They test multiple ideas and focus on learning as much as they can. They ask a lot of questions and challenge assumptions, even their own assumptions. They regularly step back and reframe the situation to be sure they are solving the right problem.
---Poppendieck, Mary. The Lean Mindset: Ask the Right Questions (Addison-Wesley Signature Series (Beck)) (p. 77). Pearson Education. Kindle Edition.