systems thinking
By John Hunter, founder of CuriousCat.com. Fred Warmbier, owner of Finishing Technology (based outside of Cincinnati, Ohio, USA), and Kelly Allan are writing a blog on the New York Times exploring how Deming’s management ideas are put into practice at Finishing Technology. A comment Fred posted to the blog (The New York Times choses to […]
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By John Hunter, author of the Curious Cat Management Improvement Blog. One of the most powerful aspects of Deming’s management ideas also frustrate some people. Dr. Deming didn’t believe in simple guides telling managers what to do – his ideas are not prescriptive. The challenges of management don’t lend themselves to simple instructions spelling out […]
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By John Hunter, founder of CuriousCat.com. Best efforts are essential. Unfortunately, best efforts, people charging this way and that way without guidance of principles, can do a lot of damage. W. Edwards Deming, Out of the Crisis, page 19 There are many great quotes from Dr. Deming, and this is one of my favorite. To […]
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By John Hunter, founder of CuriousCat.com. Jon Parker learned about Deming’s management ideas while serving in the United States Navy. The Navy had a huge effort to use Deming’s ideas (under the Total Quality Leadership) in order to improve performance, especially during the 1980’s and 1990’s. After leaving the Navy Jon went to work at […]
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By John Hunter, author of the Curious Cat Management Improvement Blog. Mark ‘Puck’ Mykleby, USMC Colonel (Ret.), Senior Fellow, New America Foundation and co-author of A National Strategic Narrative. Mark provided a very large global systems view of where we are and the future we face. From the largest macro systems risks can be seen […]
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By John Hunter, founder of CuriousCat.com. Excerpt from panel discussion on Deming and Sustainability with Andrew KcKeon at the 2013 Deming Institute Fall Conference. Andrew mentions Clayton Christensen’s work with the innovators dilemma which I also think is very worthwhile. Andrew also says: Systems thinking and addressing sustainability is the end of externalities. Because what […]
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By John Hunter, author of the Curious Cat Management Improvement Blog. Randy Harward spoke at the 2013 Deming Institute annual conference on applying Deming management methods and sustainability and Patagonia. It was better because designers and developers went from being just people who bought things, and marketed them, to people who had to understand and […]
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By John Hunter, founder of CuriousCat.com. Randy Harward spoke at the 2013 Deming Institute annual conference on applying Deming management methods and sustainability and Patagonia. I was hired to take care of this huge volume of returns coming back from customers, we had so many quality problems. I was managing customer service and all the […]
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By John Hunter, founder of CuriousCat.com. Support of top management is not sufficient. It is not enough that top management commit themselves for life to quality and productivity. They must know what it is that they are committed to — that is, what they must do. These obligations can not be delegated. Support is not […]
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By John Hunter, founder of CuriousCat.com. In this segment of Ian Bradbury’s talk at the 2013 W. Edwards Deming Institute conference he looks at how your view of the system effects what solutions seem reasonable. If you only view part of the system the solutions you come to can often have negative consequences. And often […]
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