Deming Philosophy

Avoiding Fires Rather Than Fighting Fires

By John Hunter / August 11, 2021 / 1 Comment

Guest post by John Hunter, author of the Curious Cat Management Improvement Blog (since 2004). In order to build strong companies that are resilient and able to prosper even in challenging times, it is best to create reliable and robust systems. It is easy to be misled by what is flashy if we don’t think […]

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The Existing Management Conditions Limit How Effective New Strategies Will Be

By John Hunter / June 28, 2021 / 0 Comments

Guest post by John Hunter, author of the Curious Cat Management Improvement Blog (since 2004). Over time, I have learned that one of the challenges in implementing Deming and Ackoff’s ideas are the underlying expectations for the organizations that are missing. What happens is, people take ideas from Ackoff and Deming and decide that using […]

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Learning with the Science of Improvement during COVID-19 with Rocco Perla and Lloyd Provost

By John Hunter / April 9, 2021 / 2 Comments

Guest post by John Hunter, author of Management Matters: Building Enterprise Capability. This embedded video is a webcast with Rocco Perla and Lloyd Provost: Learning with the Science of Improvement during the COVID-19 Pandemic. The presentation is from April 2020 which is useful to keep in mind given the rapidly changing COVID-19 situation. Their explanations […]

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Addressing Dysfunctional Company Culture

By John Hunter / February 2, 2021 / 0 Comments

Guest post by John Hunter, founder of CuriousCat.com. When a company’s culture rots, eventually everyone pays: customers, employees, stockholders, and suppliers. Yet, when the focus is on the short term, the long-term consequences are easy to ignore, even though everyone eventually suffers. Once those consequences are realized, there is interest in addressing the consequences of […]

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Emotions In The Workplace

By John Hunter / December 7, 2020 / 0 Comments

Guest post by John Hunter, founder of the CuriousCat.com. This interview on NPR, How To Harness The Power Of Emotions In The Workplace, provides some good thoughts on psychology in the workplace. There is often much more focus on the data part of W. Edwards Deming’s ideas, and while using data to understand and improve […]

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I See You

By Guest Post / December 3, 2020 / 11 Comments

Guest Post by Dr. Doug Stilwell, Drake University. During this time of COVID-driven isolation and loneliness, and the accompanying challenges to mental health, finding and operationalizing systematic methods to help people belong and recognize their sense of belonging – even after COVID is over – may be more important than ever for leaders to address.

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Who’s Got Profound Knowledge?

By Guest Post / September 11, 2020 / 7 Comments

Professor Doug Stilwell of Drake University discusses Dr. Deming’s System of Profound knowledge and its potential to transform our educational system.

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Seeking Systemic Improvements: Root Cause

By John Hunter / September 7, 2020 / 4 Comments

Guest post by John Hunter, author of Management Matters: Building Enterprise Capability. The idea of looking beyond the most visible problem when seeking to improve is important. If you just address the most visible issue, you often fail to improve the system and instead just add some work to smooth things over if that problem […]

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Restoring Joy in Mudville

By Guest Post / July 24, 2020 / 85 Comments

Professor Doug Stilwell of Drake University examines the connection between intrinsic motivation and joy in learning and how the systemic structures in our educational system can hinder it.

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Avoid Doing the Wrong things Righter… But, “By What Method?”

By Guest Post / July 23, 2020 / 1 Comment

Doug Stilwell shares insights into how you can make the “right” decisions for your organization.

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