By John Hunter, founder of CuriousCat.com. Dr. Deming was constantly learning from others. He also pointed out that we can be led astray by failing to understand data. This quote, included in Out of the Crisis (page 394), shows both of those traits and illustrates a common trap of performance appraisal – using evidence that […]

By John Hunter, author of Management Matters: Building Enterprise Capability. The only thing you can do as a manager is de-motivate people. When you start thinking like that you starting thinking about how am I operating, what am I doing that’s causing people around me to be de-motivated. Am I preventing them from thinking? Manager’s […]

By John Hunter, author of the Curious Cat Management Improvement Blog (since 2004). The 20th Annual International Deming Research Seminar will be held 3-4 March 2014 in New York City. Dr. W. Edwards Deming created a revolutionary Theory of Management that is applied in the best-run organizations in the world. He integrated knowledge from psychology, […]

By John Hunter, founder of CuriousCat.com. David Langford quotes Dr. Deming as saying “Change has to start from the top.” As David says in the video he struggled trying to get the top of his organization involved in management improvement. And then he realized: You are the top of your system. Change your thinking, change […]

Guest post by Dennis Stevens When I show the Kanban board, a tool that is borrowed from Lean, I hear, “Well, software development is an artistic process – you can’t apply manufacturing principles to it.” Or, “I was involved in a Six Sigma (or TQM) project that was devastating – Lean doesn’t translate to software […]

By John Hunter, author of the Curious Cat Management Improvement Blog (since 2004). Mobility of management, job hopping was one of the practices Dr. Deming included in his list of 7 Deadly Diseases. To understand why we can look at the underpinnings of Deming’s management system. Two of the four elements that comprise the management […]

By John Hunter, founder of CuriousCat.com. One of the mistakes people make, who have a very superficial understanding of Deming, is to believe that Dr. Deming’s publications and seminars focused on process improvement. Deming’s ideas on management focused on creating a management system that changed how the entire organization worked. Deming’s ideas on management weren’t […]

By John Hunter, author of the Curious Cat Management Improvement Blog (since 2004). In my opinion Deming’s ideas and lean thinking share many similarities. I do see plenty of weaknesses in lean manufacturing efforts at organizations. Most of the weaknesses are due to bad implementation of lean manufacturing rather than lean thinking missing fundamental elements […]

By John Hunter, founder of CuriousCat.com. People are part of the system; they need help… Many people think of machinery and data processing when I mention system. Few of them know that recruitment, training, supervision, and aids to production workers are part of the system. – W. Edwards Deming on page 366 of Out of […]

By John Hunter, founder of CuriousCat.com. I suggest reading this excellent paper on Improving Problem Solving by Ian Bradbury and Gipsie Ranney. As they note, problem solving is not a substitute for innovation and improvement as solving a problem solving only returns you to the status quo. The paper also considers the relationship between problem […]