John Hunter

How to Improve Employee Morale and Engagement

By John Hunter / May 9, 2022 / 0 Comments

The way to improve morale and engagement is to improve the work. Eliminate things that drive workers crazy by making their work more difficult and by creating work that should never have to be done if the system were designed better. (Guest post by John Hunter.)

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xkcd comic strip looking at variation in left hand blood volume

A Humorous Look at Variation

By John Hunter / April 29, 2022 / 0 Comments

Thinking that variation in the data must be important is often a mistake, as this cartoon makes painfully clear. (Guest post by John Hunter, author of the Curious Cat Management Improvement Blog.)

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A white piece of paper crumpled with a paper airplane to the right, indicating one is transformed into the other.

Deming on Management: Innovation

By John Hunter / April 8, 2022 / 0 Comments

This guest post by John Hunter, author of the Curious Cat Management Improvement Blog, is part of our Deming on Management series that aims to provide resources to help those transforming their management system to one based on Deming’s management ideas.

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Understanding Data and Appreciating the Implications for the System

By John Hunter / January 31, 2022 / 0 Comments

Guest post by John Hunter, founder of CuriousCat.com. Working with data is something that doesn’t come naturally to many people. But it is important to develop your understanding of data to manage well within an organization, applying the Deming management system. In this post, I take a look at how understanding data is important with […]

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Seeking Creative Solutions Using an Appreciation for Systems

By John Hunter / January 6, 2022 / 0 Comments

Guest post by John Hunter, founder of CuriousCat.com. Want to reduce wildfires and drought? Leave it to beavers. A dry California creek bed looked like a wildfire risk. Then the beavers went to work. “It went from dry grassland… to totally re-vegetated, trees popping up, willows, wetland plants of all types, different meandering stream channels […]

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Knowing What Your Customers Think Requires Proactive Effort

By John Hunter / December 19, 2021 / 0 Comments

Guest post by John Hunter, author of the Curious Cat Management Improvement Blog (since 2004). Don’t think customers will let you know if there are problems. Some will, most won’t. Even internal customers are often quiet. Learning the voice of the customer requires proactive effort. Doing so also requires designing your organization to seek out […]

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Confusing Improving A Proxy Measure with Actually Improving the System

By John Hunter / December 7, 2021 / 0 Comments

Guest post by John Hunter, author of Management Matters: Building Enterprise Capability. Using data to access and guide improvement efforts is extremely useful. Data must be used appropriately, however. Thought must be given to understand the systems being studied and what the data actually indicates. It is easy to be misled if you are not […]

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2021 Deming Prize Winners

By John Hunter / November 16, 2021 / 2 Comments

Guest post by John Hunter, founder of CuriousCat.com. The Union of Japanese Scientists and Engineers (JUSE) has announced the 2021 Deming Prize winners. 2021 Deming Prize Toyota Boshoku, Kariya Plant and Unit Production Engineering Center (Japan) From the 2020 Toyota Boshoku annual report We are now tackling the challenge of winning the Deming Prize, but […]

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Deming on Management: Data

By John Hunter / November 10, 2021 / 0 Comments

Guest post by John Hunter, author of the Curious Cat Management Improvement Blog (since 2004). This post is part of our Deming on Management series that aims to provide resources to help those transforming their management system to one based on Deming’s management ideas. Many people link Deming’s management ideas to only the use of […]

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Lean Blog Podcast with Balaji Reddie, Founder of the Deming Forum of India

By John Hunter / October 20, 2021 / 0 Comments

Guest post by John Hunter, author of Management Matters: Building Enterprise Capability. Lean Blog Interview with Balaji Reddie, Founder of the Deming Forum of India.  “So when I told him about profound knowledge, and when we started all of that, the next day he was eyes and ears, and it was, it was really mind-bending. […]

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