systems thinking
By John Hunter, author of the Curious Cat Management Improvement Blog (since 2004). Dr. Deming didn’t directly address executive pay as far as I know. Executives were paid well and without much detrimental impact on companies historically. In the 1980s many CEOs started treating corporate treasuries as personal bank accounts and problems exploded. Peter Drucker […]
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By John Hunter, founder of CuriousCat.com. Keith Sparkjoy, Cofounder and Culture Coach of Pluralsight discusses his “awakening” on their journey to keep Pluralsight’s healthy culture as they rapidly expanded (download the podcast). Keith started by reading Out of the Crisis and thought it would be tough to use that book as a tool to convince […]
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Fred and Kelly discuss the Deming journey of Finishing Technology, a leader and innovator in metal finishing services and technology.
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By John Hunter, founder of CuriousCat.com. On the Use of Theory is an article W. Edwards Deming published in 1956. It is one of many of his papers we have posted on our web site. Though 58 years old the ideas in the article are very useful today and yet many organizations still have not […]
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Guest post by Michael Ballé (repost from his Gemba Coach column on Lean.org) Dear Gemba Coach, For product development you need creative (maybe even chaotic) people. Are those people suited to follow such a structured method as lean? Like trying to achieve one-piece-flow in product development? Thank you. What an interesting question! As a writer […]
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By John Hunter, founder of CuriousCat.com. We want to chose the best strategy. However, as the image by Randal Monroe (xkcd comic) shows we need to consider the whole system. It isn’t helpful to spend more effort to chose between two options than the difference between them offers. However we can be drawn into such […]
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By John Hunter, author of the Curious Cat Management Improvement Blog (since 2004). Dr. Deming explained the dangers of copying from other organizations: “To copy is to invite disaster.” (page 10 of The New Economics). The proper course of action depends on the system. This, like so much of Deming’s advice, relates to understanding the […]
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By John Hunter, author of the Curious Cat Management Improvement Blog (since 2004). In this short video clip from The Deming Library (volume 14 – Understanding Profound Knowledge) Dr. Deming discusses the importance of understanding the inter-dependence within a system. This idea is fairly easy to accept. But to manage in a way that focuses […]
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By John Hunter, founder of CuriousCat.com. In this episode of the Deming Podcast (download), Steven Haedrich, President of New York Label & Box Works, talks about the Deming journey at the company. Steven also talks about the relevance of the Deming teachings today and the keys to long-term success using the Deming method. Steven Haedrich: […]
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By John Hunter, founder of CuriousCat.com. The supposition is prevalent the world over that there would be no problems in production or service if only our production workers would do their jobs in the way that they were taught. Pleasant dreams. The workers are handicapped by the system, and the system belongs to the management. […]
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