Appreciation for a System

Huge Payments to Executives for Good Luck

By John Hunter / October 3, 2016 / 0 Comments

By John Hunter, author of the Curious Cat Management Improvement Blog (since 2004). A recent Harvard Law School Forum on Corporate Governance and Financial Regulation article on the finding that: 90 Cents of Every “Pay-for-Performance” Dollar are Paid for Luck. I agree that mainly we award senior executives huge pay based on luck and the […]

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Finding Joy In Learning: Applying Deming’s Theory to Schools

By John Hunter / September 6, 2016 / 0 Comments

By John Hunter, founder of CuriousCat.com. Presentation by Michael King and Jane Kovacs at the 2015 Deming in Education conference – Finding Joy In Learning: Applying Deming’s Theory to Schools. The speakers work for Quality Learning Australasia (QLA). QLA’s website has quite a bit of useful information. One of the tools they used in the […]

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The Real Lessons of the Red Bead Factory

By John Hunter / August 15, 2016 / 0 Comments

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 […]

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Specification-based Management is Not Sufficient

By Guest Post / July 4, 2016 / 1 Comment

Guest post by Bill Bellows (originally written as a comment about the question of how Dr. Deming viewed Six Sigma Quality). While Dr. Deming was known for his appreciation of continuous improvement, he was also know for encouraging us to think of variation and improvement from a systems perspective. As such, I do not believe […]

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Statistical Techniques Allow Management to do a Better Job

By John Hunter / May 5, 2016 / 0 Comments

By John Hunter, author of the Curious Cat Management Improvement Blog (since 2004). In this post I discuss another wonderful paper by Dr. Deming. The W. Edwards Deming Institute makes this paper, and many more, available on our website. As you would expect from a non-profit focused on promoting the application of his ideas these […]

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Systems Thinking: Feedback Loops

By John Hunter / April 28, 2016 / 0 Comments

By John Hunter, author of the Curious Cat Management Improvement Blog. Appreciation for a system is one of the four components of Deming’s management system. In this context, the most common item to think of is Deming’s diagram of an organization as a system. That is a powerful diagram. When thinking of appreciation for a […]

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“Our Problems Are Different” – Not Really

By John Hunter / March 31, 2016 / 0 Comments

By John Hunter, author of the Curious Cat Management Improvement Blog (since 2004). It is very common for people to see their situation as special and so different that they can only learn about management from some situation identical to the one they face. But this is a misunderstanding of what learning about better management […]

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Lean Blog Podcast with Kevin Cahill

By John Hunter / January 12, 2016 / 0 Comments

By John Hunter, founder of CuriousCat.com. Lean Blog Podcast #238 – Kevin Cahill, on his Grandfather, W. Edwards Deming (download). Quote from Kevin in the podcast: Somebody at any level does have some sphere of influence that they can impact… by just thinking from a systems standpoint, by looking at the organization differently than some […]

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Current Neuroscience Understanding Related to Psychology and the Theory of Knowledge

By John Hunter / November 12, 2015 / 0 Comments

By John Hunter, author of the Curious Cat Management Improvement Blog. Presentation by Ed Chaplin MD at our 2015 Deming Institute annual conference – It Takes An Enterprise: Current Neuroscience and Knowledge of Psychology This is really a great talk that does a great job of illustrating the importance of understanding how our brains work […]

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Standardization Doesn’t Stamp Out Creativity

By John Hunter / October 5, 2015 / 0 Comments

By John Hunter, author of the Curious Cat Management Improvement Blog. I understand that some of the ideas Dr. Deming expressed challenge people’s beliefs and are difficult to accept. I can accept that. Certain exclamations I have more trouble accepting. One of the things I find annoying, in this way, is that reducing variation and […]

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