By John Hunter, founder of CuriousCat.com. Some of W. Edwards Deming’s 14 obligations of management have opponents that argue the reverse is wise. Some believe it is good to “motivate” people by making them fearful, for example. Others believe in selecting suppliers for the moment based on whoever gives the cheapest quote today. But some […]

By John Hunter, author of the Curious Cat Management Improvement Blog. What topics would you like us to explore in future posts on this blog? What questions would you like us respond to? One of the goals for this blog is to engage the community of readers in sharing there thoughts on the ideas we […]

By John Hunter, founder of CuriousCat.com. Most of Dr. Deming’s management work requires no understanding of advanced statistical methods. He was also a statistician and this post takes a look at one of his contributions to the field of statistics: the Deming Regression. In his book, Statistical Adjustment of Data (1943), W. Edwards Deming discussed, […]

By John Hunter, author of the Curious Cat Management Improvement Blog. Cornell Policy Review published a special issue exploring the application of systems thinking to public policy problems. Graduate students were given an introduction to systems thinking and then applied the concepts to address issues their field. Students applied systems thinking to a wide array […]

By John Hunter, founder of CuriousCat.com. The video shows a recorded webinar for the Healthcare Value Network by Mark Graban and Mike Stoecklein. In the video they explore the real lessons of Dr. Deming’s famous red bead factory demonstration and the principle of understanding and managing variation. Mark mentions how Bill Boller, with Hewlett-Packard, created […]

By John Hunter, author of the Curious Cat Management Improvement Blog. We have another Deming Institute podcast with David Langford, to share with you – Where is all the Joy? (download podcast). David explains that when looking to improve the place to begin is to examine your circle of influence and determine where you have […]

By John Hunter, author of the Curious Cat Management Improvement Blog (since 2004). Blogs are a convenient way to stay informed on topics you are interested in. They allow people to easily use an RSS reader to view recent posts that have been published as they have time. One of the weaknesses in how blogs […]

Transformation: How to Apply the System of Profound Knowledge (SoPK) presentation by Tripp Babbit at our 2015 research conference. Tripp also moderates our Deming Institute podcast. Tripp discusses Kurt Lewin’s change model: unfreezing – overcoming “interim” and dismantling the existing midset changing freezing – adopting the new habit/way-of-thinking, the new way becomes what you expect […]

By John Hunter, author of the Curious Cat Management Improvement Blog (since 2004). We used to publish a newsletter. In the Fall 2006 Deming Interaction we published an excerpt from an article by Dr. Deming: Some Notes on Management in a Hospital [the link that we broke has been removed] (published in 1990 in the […]

By John Hunter, founder of CuriousCat.com. Every year the American Statistical Association (ASA) selects an honoree to present a Deming Lecture at their annual conference. The 2009 ASA Deming Lecture by J. Stuart Hunter, Princeton University: the first part of the lecture (20 minutes) is a historical look at W. Edwards Deming’s career and then […]