By John Hunter, author of the Curious Cat Management Improvement Blog (since 2004). Eric Budd’s presentation at the 2016 Annual Deming Institute Conference: An Exercise in Operational Definition. The exercise Eric uses in the presentation shows how much variation can show up in data – just from how the data is collected. And in this […]

"While many in the business world associate the word 'theory' with something purely academic or abstract, nothing could be further from the truth. Theories that explain causality are among the most important and practical tools business leaders can have." - Clayton Christensen

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 […]

By John Hunter, author of the Curious Cat Management Improvement Blog. Here are the most popular videos on The W. Edwards Deming Institute You Tube channel in the last year. Unsurprisingly, those with W. Edwards Deming in them are very popular. The videos with the most views in the last year: W. Edwards Deming: The […]

By John Hunter, author of the Curious Cat Management Improvement Blog. One of Dr. Deming’s 7 deadly diseases is: Emphasis on short-term profits: short-term thinking It is easy to focus on short term goals and use a somewhat simple short term figure to measure success. But just because it is easier to look at the […]

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 […]

By John Hunter, author of the Curious Cat Management Improvement Blog (since 2004). Tim Higgins provided the Deming 101 presentation at our 2016 annual conference – Curiosity, Learning, Knowledge, and Improvement: Tim starts off by saying that some people think Deming’s life was about variation but Deming’s purpose for understanding variation was to learn. This […]

By John Hunter, founder of CuriousCat.com. The 20 most popular post on our blog this year (by page views reported by our analytic tool): Myth: If You Can’t Measure It, You Can’t Manage It (2015) A Bad System Will Beat a Good Person Every Time (2015) Minimal Viable Product (2014) 2015 Deming Prize Awardees (2015)* […]

By John Hunter, author of the Curious Cat Management Improvement Blog (since 2004). Skip Steward, Chief Improvement Office (CIO) for Baptist Memorial Health Care Corporation in Memphis, Tennessee is the latest guest on the Deming Podcast (download the podcast). Dr. Deming’s thinking continues to influence me, not only in things like PDSA thinking, but also […]

By John Hunter, author of Management Matters: Building Enterprise Capability. The greatest obstacle to discovery is not ignorance; it is the illusion of knowledge. – Daniel J. Boorstin After you decide that Deming’s ideas seem valuable you must act to adopt new methods in order to benefit from what you have learned. This takes many […]