Shipulski On Design

Archive for the ‘Most Popular Posts’ Category

Here are the top blog posts (in descending order) from the previous twelve months.  The short descriptions give some context for the posts and my intentions for writing them.

Thanks for reading.

Mike

When You Have Enough… The post describes behaviors that demonstrate you have enough and the benefits of having enough.  And it calls out some problematic consequences when you don’t think you have enough. The main point of the post can be summarized in one sentence – When you have enough, it’s because you’ve decided you have enough. Enough of what, you ask?  Well, I left that up to you.

Overcoming Not Invented Here (NIH), The Most Powerful Blocker of Innovation.  With innovation, sometimes the novelty threatens which causes the Establishment to reject new ideas.  The post described what NIH looks like so you could spot it at twenty paces.  Here’s a summary of the post in three sentences.  If you can’t understand why a novel idea never made it out of the lab, investigate the crime scene and you may find NIH’s fingerprints.  If customers liked the new idea yet it went nowhere, it could be NIH was behind the crime. If it makes sense, but it doesn’t make progress, NIH is the prime suspect.

Is The Timing Right? I was surprised that this post was popular.  The idea behind the post was to give examples of being too late and being too early so you could dial in the timing of your work.  I thought the bias toward accelerating everything, pulling in projects, and doing everything in parallel would contradict the idea of a right time to do the work.  But, people liked this one.

Stop, Start, Continue Gone Bad.  This post was intended to poke fun the fundamental problem that we start far too many projects and finish too few or finish too slowly.  I introduced the dangerous variant of Stop, Start, Continue called Start, Start, Continue and described its consequences.  To battle that variant, I introduced the powerful antidote called Stop, Stop, Stop.

When you say yes to one thing, you say no to another.  In the heat of battle, we want to make progress but we forget that our and our company’s capacity is limited.  With this post I wanted to describe “opportunity cost” with straightforward yes-no language to help us remember to say no when yes is not the right answer. And I proposed a system to help do just that.  Here’s the first step — Open your work calendar and move one month into the future.  Create a one-hour recurring meeting with yourself.  You just created a timeslot where you said no in the future to unimportant things and said yes in the future to important things.

How To Grow Talent. The objective of this sparse post was to give examples of how to use the work itself to help people grow and to show what a natural progression of growth can look like.

Image credit — Mike Beales

Today is a celebration – three years of Shipulski On Design!

I get lot’s of great feeback, but the best is when you tell me my writing touched you and helped you do your work differently. You may see this as my gift to you, but I see it as your gift to me.

Thank you for reading and commenting.

Below are some highlights for 2012:

Accomplishments in 2012

• Third year of weekly blog posts without missing a beat or repeating (203 posts in total).
• Second year of daily tweets – 1520 in all (@mikeshipulski).
• Top 40 Innovation Bloggers – Innovation Excellence, the web’s top innovation site.
• Sixth consecutive year as Keynote Speaker at International Forum on DFMA.
• Started Pinterest page – cool engineering pictures  and video content – (ShipOnDesign).
• Third year of LinkedIn working group – Systematic DFMA Deployment.
• Second year writing a column for Assembly Magazine (6 columns this year).

Top 5 Posts

1. Why it’s tough to decide — how to spot unmade decisions – gremlin style.
2. Choose your path — the three paths explained – short and good.
3. Impossible — well, almost.
4. What is Design for Manufacturing and Assembly — the basics – video style.
5. When It’s Time For a New Cowpath — great photo

I look forward to a great year 4.

This week marks two years of blog posts, delivered every Wednesday night (or Thursday morning for those that sleep in), whether you want it or not.  I’m proud to say I have not missed one in two years.

Here are the top 5 posts over the last 12 months (for direct visits to my website):

1. The Most Popular Posts of 2010 – seems circular, doesn’t it?
2. Upcoming Workshop on Systematic DFMA Deployment – a great time in Providence, RI – June 2011.
3. Obsolete Your Best Work – lot’s of great feedback on this one, and a great photo of a guy smashing a Lambo.
4. The Obligation of Knowing Your Shit – written after reading a great passage from Post Captain Jack Aubrey standing on the quarterdeck of HMS Surprise (from Patric O’Brian’s famed 21 volume Aubrey–Maturin series on early 19th century British Navy).
5. Improve the US Economy, One Company at a Time – I’m part way there.

For those that subscribe to my blog posts, you have different tastes.  Here are your top 5:

1. Learning Through Disagreement – written after a physics-based discussion with two talented colleges. A great photo of Tip and Reagan – two masters of working across the aisle.
2. Pushing on Engineering – how to influence an engineer, written by an engineer.
3. Improve the US Economy, One Company at a Time – the only overlap between the lists. I’m still only part way there.
4. It’s All About Judgement – innovation is 90% judgement and the other half perspiration.  Good luck trying to manage it like a manufacturing process.
5. Voice of Technology – who knew listening to Technology could be so sexy.

You thought these posts were important – you voted with your mouse.  So, please retweet, email, or send this post to those that matter to you. Pay it forward.

I look forward to another great year.  Thanks for reading.

Mike

This week is an anniversary of sorts.  So, I thought I’d share the most popular posts over the last twelve months.  Here are the top 5:

1. Who Owns Cost
2. The Dumb-Ass Filter
3. DFA Saves More Than Six Sigma and Lean
4. Fasteners Can Consume 20-50% of Assembly Time
5. DFMA Won’t Work

If over the last twelve months a post helped you with your thinking, please take a minute to submit a comment and share your learning.  Or, pay it forward and share your learning with a friend.

Thanks for reading.