systems thinking

Profits, Pragmatism, and the Possibilities of Possessing “Other Eyes”

By Bill Bellows / December 7, 2017 / 0 Comments

Post by Bill Bellows There is little evidence that we give a hoot about profit. W. Edwards Deming On July 22, 2014, Apple announced financial results for its fiscal third quarter, reporting a revenue of $37.4 billion and a quarterly net profit of $7.7 billion.   From sales of iPhones to iPads to computers, Apple executives […]

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Instant Karma! and Instant Pudding!

By Bill Bellows / November 27, 2017 / 0 Comments

Post by Bill Bellows, Deputy Director, The Deming Institute The first step is transformation of the individual.  The individual, transformed, will perceive new meaning to his life, to events, to numbers, to interactions between people. W. Edwards Deming In January 1970, John Lennon returned to the UK from a holiday in Denmark, inspired by a series […]

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Transformation Paradox

By Guest Post / November 23, 2017 / 0 Comments

This guest post is an excerpt from Ed Baker’s book (pages 31-32), The Symphony of Profound Knowledge, which was created in partnership with Aileron.org. Managers in business, school administrators, and teachers may believe that they have to grade, rate, and rank, to manage by numbers and use other traditional methods because these are necessary to do their […]

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More reflections on additivity, including hole reinforcement circles and golf balls

By Bill Bellows / November 13, 2017 / 0 Comments

Post by Bill Bellows, Deputy Director, The Deming Institute. “The efforts of the various divisions in a company, each given a job, are not additive.   Their efforts are interdependent.” W. Edwards Deming, The New Economics In a continuation from a previous blog on what to think when things do not add up…, consider the machinist whose […]

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Book Review – Profit Beyond Measure

By Bill Bellows / September 25, 2017 / 0 Comments

Post by Bill Bellows, Deputy Director, The Deming Institute H. Thomas (“Tom”) Johnson stands at the forefront of a world-wide community of business thinkers who are unveiling the limitations, as well as assumptions, of the old economics that underlie the mechanistic decision making and planning practices of corporations and organizations. Upon co-authoring his 2001 book, Profit Beyond […]

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Improving the Management System with an Understanding of Deming

By John Hunter / July 3, 2017 / 0 Comments

Guest post by John Hunter, founder of CuriousCat.com. In his presentation at the 2015 Deming Research Seminar Joseph Schneider discusses his efforts to apply Deming’s ideas within Siemens. Joseph talks about how they worked to use Deming’s ideas even though much of the management system was not within their control (so they had to accept […]

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It Depends…

By Bill Bellows / June 26, 2017 / 0 Comments

Post by Bill Bellows, Deputy Director, The Deming Institute. “There is not a day I don’t think about what Dr. Deming meant to us. Deming is the core of our management,” proclaimed Shoichiro Toyoda, Toyota’s president between 1982 and 1992 and chairman between 1992 and 1999, at the 1980 Deming Prize Ceremonies in Japan. One year earlier, […]

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Manage the System to Score a Whole in One: A Golf Lesson

By Guest Post / June 22, 2017 / 0 Comments

Guest post by Edward Martin Baker.   A version of this post originally appeared on Aileron.org. In a previous blog, “Leaders can make music,” I used the analogy of the leader as orchestra conductor who follows a score to orchestrate people playing together. The score to which I referred was Deming’s System of Profound Knowledge. Another […]

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Red Beads and Profound Knowledge: Deming and Quality of Education

By John Hunter / April 20, 2017 / 0 Comments

By John Hunter, author of the Curious Cat Management Improvement Blog. Sharon Lohr presented the 2014 American Statistical Association (ASA) Deming Lecture – Red Beads and Profound Knowledge: Deming and Quality of Education (slides with notes and references). Dr. Lohr earned her doctorate in statistics from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where she learned about Deming’s […]

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The Transformation is Everybody’s Job

By John Hunter / April 17, 2017 / 0 Comments

By John Hunter, author of Management Matters: Building Enterprise Capability. W. Edwards Deming’s 14th point is: Put everybody in the company to work to accomplish the transformation. The transformation is everybody’s job. One important point to note is that quotes lose a great deal when taken out of context. You can also find quotes by […]

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