Answer: First the main purpose of my blog is in getting enough people to think innovatively to make a difference in government reform. That is why I appreciate reader questions and the chance to respond to unique circumstances which makes my articles more relevant. As to the dogs being used in mines the idea for this come from another article I wrote on Homeland Security. Noting that cargo luggage is still not being screened at most airports I recommended that dogs be used to screen cargo luggage. For two reasons they are searching only for bombs and second they screen more efficiently by going to where the luggage is rather than bringing the luggage to a mechanical screener. My concern in making this recommendation is that Homeland Security is waiting for expensive mechanical screeners to be put in place at airports while the use of dogs is the more obvious better solution. Mechanical screeners work well for screening passengers because you are looking for guns and knives as well as bombs on passengers and in carryon luggage.

In general most innovation comes from taking related situations and activities and reinventing them for their logical use in another application. To make this work the processes for the new application must be visualized and understood. In one of my articles I used the example of a chef at an elegant restaurant. You must think through and visualize all the efficient processes that a chef goes through on a daily basis. When you do this on your own applications you can spot where changes can be made to make the whole process more efficient. This is why the “logical” use of mechanical screeners to screen cargo luggage as is done for passengers fails because the actual processes were not thought out or visualized before arriving at the conclusion.

Before listing some books from my library I would like to note that these are books that I have found to be the most useful. The only down side there is to these books is that it takes a lot time to glean the useful tidbits from them. Which is the reason I try to keep my articles short, detailed and to the point.

When I was on the staff of Hal Yost president of McDonnell Douglas Missile Systems Co. in the early 1980’s. Each week he would return from The corporate staff meeting with a list of books that Sandy McDonnell CEO of the McDonnell Douglass Corp. had recommended. The books that I have listed below are from that time. In fact Sandy McDonnell has a blurb on the jacket recommending the book “A Two-Minute Warning” by C. Jackson Grayson, Jr. and Carla O’Dell. At the time we were implementing a Japanese management technique called“Quality of Work Life” (in my articles I have renamed them “Work Improvement Teams”) but their success could not overcome the fall in business from the Pentagon at the end of the Cold War in the late 1980’s and early 1990’s and the company was purchased by Boeing.

1. “In Search of Excellence subtitled Lessons from America‘s best-run Companies” by Thomas J. Peters and Robert H. Waterman Jr.
2. “A Two-Minute Warning subtitled Ten changes managers must make to survive into the 21st Century” by C. Jackson Grayson, Jr. and Carla O’Dell.
3. “Kaizen subtitled The key to Japan’s Competitive Success” by Masaaki Imai.
4. “Thriving On Chaos subtitled Handbook for Management Revolution” by Tom Peters.
5. “Theory Z” by William Ouchi.
6. “Attaining Manufacturing Excellence subtitled Just In Time, Total Quality. Total People Involvement” by Robert W. Hall.

A comment about management books while those that are on the best seller’s list are very useful many others are written by well meaning professionals who interview top executives in successful companies may be less useful. Note that most top executives don’t know the hands on details of how the efficiency implementations were actually accomplished leaving the reader without the detailed steps in which to proceed on his own. You can find the details of how to implement the changes I recommend in my articles and if you have a question just E-mail me at lawrence2007@embarqmail.com Lawrence Rosier.