Guest post by John Hunter, who founded curiouscat.com (in 1996)
As our blog ages new readers often don’t go back and read through the previous posts. But those past posts include many thoughts that age well. And while many new readers might not read back through the posts from previous years, many people do read them (following links from other articles or posts and following their online searches that link to the posts from previous years). In fact the 20 most popular posts were all originally published before 2017.
The 20 most popular post on our blog this year (by page views reported by our analytic tool):
- Myth: If You Can’t Measure It, You Can’t Manage It (2015)
- Create Constancy of Purpose (2015)
- Appreciation for a System (2012)
- A Bad System Will Beat a Good Person Every Time (2015)
- Knowledge of Variation (2012)
- The Deming Chain Reaction (2012)
- Dr. Deming Called for the Elimination of The Annual Performance Appraisal (2012)
- Deming’s 14 Points for Management (2013)
- Inspection is too late. The quality, good or bad, is already in the product. (2012)
- Eliminate Slogans, Exhortations and Targets (2016)*
- Lessons From the Red Bead Experiment with Dr. Deming (2014)
- Toyota’s Management History (2016)*
- Institute Training on the Job (2016)*
- Theory of Knowledge (2012)*
- Deming’s System of Profound Knowledge (2012)
- Deming and Lean: The Disparities and Similarities (2013)
- Where There is Fear You Do Not Get Honest Figures (2013)*
- Institute Leadership (2016)*
- Psychology – Managing Human Systems (2012)*
- Systems Thinking: Feedback Loops (2016)*
* These posts didn’t appear on our list of most popular posts in 2016 (the last time we posted such a list). There are 8 posts that didn’t appear on the 2016 list (5 are from 2016, 2 from 2012 and 1 from 2013); 12 repeat from the previous list.
The most read post from 2017 was the 21st most read post overall: The Transformation is Everybody’s Job. The most popular post from 2018 was, 2018 Deming Prize Winners (31st most read overall). In case you were wondering the next most read post from 2018 was Applying Deming’s Management Ideas at the Great Plains Coca Cola Bottling Company (61st overall).
We started publishing The W. Edwards Deming Institute blog in October of 2012; the 20 most viewed posts in 2018 included posts from:
2016: 5
2015: 3
2014: 1
2013: 3
2012: 8
The dominance of posts from previous years on a list of our most read posts (even in what many think of as an ephemeral medium, a blog) illustrates the value of long term thinking. Creating content for a blog is creating content that will be read for many years, if you create content that people value.
Related: Our Most Popular Posts in 2016 – Our Most Popular Posts in 2015 – Most Popular Posts on The W. Edwards Deming Institute Blog in 2014