Post by Bill Bellows, Deputy Director, The Deming Institute. Long before Adele and Lady Gaga spoke their first words, The Beatles and The Beach Boys were music industry leaders in the US and UK, as well as worldwide airwave competitors. While neither group may have heard of Alfred Politz, a pioneer in the field of market research, […]

Guest Post by Bill Bellows Some years ago, I read an article on performance appraisals and was inspired to contact the columnist in response to their invitation for feedback.    While I did not receive a reply, here is my feedback, which may inspire others to seize a moment in the coming months (or years) […]

Guest post by John Hunter, author of the Curious Cat Management Improvement Blog (since 2004). This webcast shows Bjarne Wig’s presentation, The Transformation of Learning, at the 2015 Deming Research Seminar. See Bjarne’s research paper that forms the basis of the talk: The Transformation of Learning at the Work Place. Educational institutions are becoming dinosaurs […]

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 […]

Post by Bill Bellows, Deputy Director, The Deming Institute H. Thomas (“Tom”) Johnson stands at the forefront of a world-wide community of business thinkers who are unveiling the limitations, as well as assumptions, of the old economics that underlie the mechanistic decision making and planning practices of corporations and organizations. Upon co-authoring his 2001 book, Profit Beyond […]

Guest post by John Hunter, author of Management Matters: Building Enterprise Capability. This webcast shows Mike Stoecklein’s presentation, Understanding and Misunderstanding Variation in Healthcare, at the 2015 Deming Research Seminar. The companion research paper that Mike wrote, Understanding and Misunderstanding Variation in Healthcare is packed with additional information on the topics he discusses and includes […]

Guest post by Lori Fry, Principal with Navigator Management Partners, originally featured as a post at https://dignityatworkproject.com/    Follow this link to listen to our first podcast with Lori. The effects of Hurricanes Harvey and Irma will be felt for years. AccuWeather has reported the cost of recovery efforts will exceed $290 billion. That’s BILLION. With […]

Post by Bill Bellows, Deputy Director, The Deming Institute. In the spirit of standardization that is growing in popularity in organizations around the world, is there room for diversity?   That is, is variety really the spice of life, or does it represent a non-value added effort, if not simply waste?    In other words, should variation always be […]

Post by Bill Bellows, Deputy Director, The Deming Institute. A few decades before The Big Bang Theory introduced television audiences to fictional theoretical physicist Sheldon Cooper, with guest appearances by Stephen Hawking, astronomer Carl Sagan was one of the most well-known non-fictional US physicists.   Amongst Sagan’s research interests was the search for extra-terrestrial intelligence, including the odds […]

Guest post by John Hunter, founder of CuriousCat.com. This webcast shows Brian Hwarng’s presentation, The Funnel Experiment, at the 2015 Deming Research Seminar. As Brian says: The purpose [of the funnel experiment] is to demonstrate, by theory, the losses that are caused by tampering. Chapter 9 (“The Funnel”) of The New Economics is a good […]