systems thinking

Create Constancy of Purpose

By John Hunter / September 21, 2015 / 0 Comments

The purpose of creating constancy of purpose is to maximize the benefits to the organization of the other facets of Deming’s management system. It is not an end, it is the means to an end.

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Building a Sustainable Organization Using Deming’s Ideas on Management

By John Hunter / August 20, 2015 / 0 Comments

By John Hunter, founder of CuriousCat.com. The linked to article that aims to provides an overview of the essence of Deming’s approach to management and its continuing relevance to managers: The Model of Sustainable Organisation by Alan Clark. A manager, said Deming, is primarily a manager of People. This is in line with many thinkers, […]

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Healthcare, Paradigm Shifts and the Influence of W.E. Deming

By Guest Post / July 30, 2015 / 0 Comments

Guest post by Mike Stoecklein I’ve been involved with healthcare most of my life. I blogged about my experience in healthcare back in 2011 and described how my “hope level” for improvement in healthcare has gone up and down like a sine-wave pattern over the last 20-30 years. I described this as “I can’t tell […]

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Adaptation of the 14 Points to Medical Service

By John Hunter / June 9, 2015 / 0 Comments

By John Hunter, author of the Curious Cat Management Improvement Blog (since 2004). Dr. Deming’s 14 points for management have been put into various specific contexts by people over the years. Dr. Paul Batalden and Dr. Loren Vorlicky of the Health Services Research Center translated them into a health care context. Dr. Deming included their […]

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Improving Student Achievement at the Urbandale Community School District

By John Hunter / April 9, 2015 / 0 Comments

By John Hunter, author of the Curious Cat Management Improvement Blog. Dr. Doug Stilwell, Superintendent of the Urbandale Community School District discusses applying Deming management methods in education (download the podcast). As Dr. Deming said “The people are not the problem, it’s the system. Doug talks about how many initiatives (from the state legislature and […]

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Doug Hall on Using Systems Thinking to Power Strategy, Innovation and Growth

By John Hunter / March 16, 2015 / 0 Comments

By John Hunter, founder of CuriousCat.com. In this podcast (download), Doug Hall, CEO and founder of Innovation Engineering and Eureka! Ranch shares his approach for taking Dr. Deming’s ideas systems thinking and applying that to strategy, innovation and growth. Doug shares the story of how his father introduced him to Dr. Deming and systems thinking […]

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Creativity Inc. – Using Deming’s Ideas at Pixar

By John Hunter / March 9, 2015 / 0 Comments

By John Hunter, founder of CuriousCat.com. Ed Catmull co-founded Pixar with Steve Jobs and John Lasseter. In Ed’s book, Creativity, Inc.: Overcoming the Unseen Forces That Stand in the Way of True Inspiration, he discusses how important Deming’s ideas were to his efforts to help make Pixar what it is today. As we struggled to […]

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A Bad System Will Beat a Good Person Every Time

By John Hunter / February 26, 2015 / 0 Comments

By John Hunter, founder of CuriousCat.com. Quote by W. Edwards Deming at a February 1993 Deming Four Day seminar in Phoenix, Arizona (via the notes of Mike Stoecklein). So what was Dr. Deming trying to convey with this quote? It wasn’t an attempt to get people to give up trying because failure was certain. It […]

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Cooperating with Competitors

By John Hunter / February 23, 2015 / 0 Comments

By John Hunter, author of the Curious Cat Management Improvement Blog. W. Edwards Deming included this example of businesses cooperating with competitors in The New Economics for Industry, Government, Education: My automobile, sitting in front of my house, would not start. I called Bill at the Exxon station not far away. When the man from […]

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Deming in Education: Education as a System

By John Hunter / February 16, 2015 / 0 Comments

By John Hunter, founder of CuriousCat.com. In this podcast (download) David Langford becomes the first repeat guest. David is the CEO and founder of Langford International and a Deming Institute Advisory Board member. David continues discussing his thoughts on using Deming’s ideas to improve education. By looking at education as a system and examining what […]

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