Guest Post

Deming’s Principles of Professional Practice

By Guest Post / September 28, 2017 / 0 Comments

This guest post is an excerpt from Ed Baker’s book (pages 104-105), The Symphony of Profound Knowledge, which was created in partnership with Aileron.org. The distinction between the meanings of the words ethical and moral is not always clear, and often they are used interchangeably as synonyms. Ethics has been used to refer to a system of […]

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Anyone Can Cut Costs, Look Good and Go Out of Business

By Guest Post / July 27, 2017 / 0 Comments

Guest post by Edward Martin Baker.   A version of this post originally appeared on Aileron.org. Years ago, a “friend” who thought he was a mechanic, as did I, offered to improve my car’s performance. He removed parts of the engine, fiddled around with them, and reassembled them. When he finished, I saw some of the […]

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Tree climbing or life-long learning – what’s the real AIM of our education system?

By Guest Post / July 13, 2017 / 0 Comments

In our schools, targets and rankings cause cheating, focus on achievement, and drive in fear and suck the joy out of learning.

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Manage the System to Score a Whole in One: A Golf Lesson

By Guest Post / June 22, 2017 / 0 Comments

Guest post by Edward Martin Baker.   A version of this post originally appeared on Aileron.org. In a previous blog, “Leaders can make music,” I used the analogy of the leader as orchestra conductor who follows a score to orchestrate people playing together. The score to which I referred was Deming’s System of Profound Knowledge. Another […]

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Leaders Can Make Music

By Guest Post / May 25, 2017 / 0 Comments

“An example of a system, well optimized, is a good orchestra.” – W. Edwards Deming

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Reflections on Dr. Deming’s Hospital Notes – What Has Changed Since 1990?

By Guest Post / January 30, 2017 / 0 Comments

Guest post by Mark Graban About ten years ago, somebody sent me a PDF file of Dr. Deming’s “Some Notes on Management in a Hospital.” I felt like somebody had shared a bootleg tape of my favorite band, as I wasn’t sure the article had ever been formally published anywhere. Since I wasn’t sure if […]

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The Failure of “The Livonia Philosophy” at my GM Plant

By Guest Post / January 16, 2017 / 1 Comment

Guest post by Mark Graban As I wrote about in my first post, my first job out of college was at the GM Livonia Engine Plant, outside of Detroit. General Motors wasn’t my ideal workplace after having read Deming’s Out of the Crisis and learning a bit about Lean manufacturing in college. If possible, I […]

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Why Dr. Deming’s Work is So Important to Me

By Guest Post / January 5, 2017 / 0 Comments

Guest post by Mark Graban,  founder and lead blogger and podcaster at LeanBlog.org, While my work is usually associated with the term “Lean” and the lessons from the Toyota Production System, some of my earliest learning and inspiration for improvement came from the work of W. Edwards Deming. I don’t think I learned anything about […]

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Specification-based Management is Not Sufficient

By Guest Post / July 4, 2016 / 1 Comment

Guest post by Bill Bellows (originally written as a comment about the question of how Dr. Deming viewed Six Sigma Quality). While Dr. Deming was known for his appreciation of continuous improvement, he was also know for encouraging us to think of variation and improvement from a systems perspective. As such, I do not believe […]

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Quality Improvement in Maternity Services: How Deming Can Help

By Guest Post / May 31, 2016 / 0 Comments

Guest post by Victoria Morgan The quality of maternity services in England is in the spotlight. National audits have shown that whilst outcomes have improved significantly over the last decade there is marked variation in outcomes that cannot be explained by clinical and social risk factors (Mothers and Babies: Reducing Risk through Audits and Confidential […]

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