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Category Archives: Deming
An Introduction to Deming’s Management Ideas by Peter Scholtes (webcast)
An Introduction to Deming’s Management Teaching and Philosophy by Peter Scholtes – webcast from the Annual W. Edwards Deming Institute conference in Madison, Wisconsin, November 9th, 2008. My previous post on this speech: 6 Leadership Competencies. Next month, the Annual Deming Institute conference will be held at Purdue on Oct 10th, 2009. Related: Peter Scholtes’ Life – Curious Cat’s Deming on Management – The Leader’s Handbook – Performance without Appraisal
Posted in Creativity, curiouscat.com, Deming, Education, Innovation, Lean thinking, Management, Performance Appraisal, Popular, Process improvement, Psychology, quote, Respect, Science, Systems thinking, webcast
Tagged curiouscat, Deming, Innovation, management, management webcast, Performance Appraisal, Peter Scholtes, Popular, quote, respect for people, Systems thinking, webcast
4 Comments
Dr. Deming Webcast on the 5 Deadly Diseases
The W. Edwards Deming Institute has posted Dr. Deming’s 1984 video on the 5 deadly diseases of western management. Lack of constancy of purpose Emphasis on short term profits – “creative” accounting, focus on quarterly profits Annual Performance Appraisals – management by objective, management by fear Mobility of management – [see Toyota for a great example of a company that operates on different principles – where the leadership has been with Toyota for decades] Running a company on visible figures … Continue reading
Blame the Road – Not the Person
The system is responsible for 90, 92, 94, 97% of problems – W. Edwards Deming. Fix the system, don’t blame the people. When you seek system fixes you approach situations differently than if you search for people to blame. By the way, I am often asked about the data supporting Deming’s contention that the system was responsible for 97% of the problems. This statement was not based on a set of data but on Dr. Deming’s decades of experience. And … Continue reading
Posted in Creativity, Data, Deming, Economics, Health care, Management, Systems thinking
Tagged Creativity, Deming, Economics, Health care, health care system, Innovation, Systems thinking
5 Comments
Baking in Quality to Software Development
One of the reasons my organizations switched to Ruby on Rails for software development was the great integration with automated testing. We always wanted to have good test coverage on our software applications (which are web applications – some used only inside our organization) but didn’t actually find the time to do so. Since we adopted Ruby we have been doing much better in this regard. It isn’t just the switch to Ruby, of course, but the switch to Ruby … Continue reading
Bogus Theories, Bad for Business
The Wall Street Journal has a book review of The Management Myth by Matthew Stewart. The book flushes out the ideas Matthew Stewert explored in a previous article in the Atlantic about the failure of management to mature as a discipline. Mr. Stewart quotes Bruce Henderson, the founder of the Boston Consulting Group, who describes consulting as “the most improbable business on earth” and who goes on to ask: “Can you think of anything less improbable [sic] than taking the … Continue reading
Posted in Books, Deming, Lean thinking, Management, Science
Tagged Deming, Lean thinking, management, management experts, management research, managing people, Systems thinking
When Performance-related Pay Backfires
When Economic Incentives Backfire by Samuel Bowles, Sante Fe Institute Dozens of recent experiments show that rewarding self-interest with Economic incentives can backfire when they undermine what Adam Smith called “the moral sentiments.” Punished by Rewards, by Alfie Kohn, is a great book on this topic. The area of “motivating” employees is one it is often hard for managers to learn. Even managers that have been studying Deming, Ackoff, Ohno… for years still have trouble with the idea that trying … Continue reading
Lean Manufacturing Webcast from India
This lean thinking webcast from India actually does a pretty decent job of providing an overview (for a business TV channel) even if they get some things a bit confused. The discuss TQM in India preceding lean which is an accurate view in my opinion – quality management shared many lean principles. They even talk of lean at Ford doing lean first. But they get the decades for that a bit off. They seem to mash together the “quality is … Continue reading
Posted in Deming, India, Lean thinking, Management, Toyota Production System (TPS), webcast
Tagged India, Lean thinking, Toyota Production System (TPS), webcast, Womack
1 Comment
Akio Toyoda’s Message Shows Real Leadership
Speech by Akio Toyoda Since the birth of Toyota, the company’s philosophy has always been to “contribute to society.” … “Contributing to society” at Toyota means two things. First, it means, “to manufacture automobiles that meet the needs of society and enrich people’s lives.” And second, “to take root in the communities we serve by creating jobs, earning profits and paying taxes, thereby enriching the local economies where we operate.” … Toyota has overcome many challenges during its seven decades … Continue reading
Zappos and Amazon Sitting in a Tree…
Amazon is acquiring the unique company – Zappos: we have written about Zappos previously: Paying New Employees to Quit. Jeff Bezos uses the webcast above to talk to the employees of Zappos. Excellent job. The letter from Tony Hsieh, the Zappo’s CEO, to employees is fantastic. This is a CEO that respects employees. These are leaders I would follow and invest in (and in fact I am glad I do own Amazon stock). First, I want to apologize for the … Continue reading
Posted in Creativity, Customer focus, Deming, Fun, Innovation, Investing, Management, Respect, Systems thinking
Tagged Amazon, Bezos, Customer focus, customer service, Innovation, Investing, long term thinking, respect for people
7 Comments
Peter Scholtes
Peter Scholtes died peacefully this morning [11 July 2009] in Madison, Wisconsin. His family was with him. My father wrote about the First Street Garage project in W. Edwards Deming’s Out of the Crisis (pages 245-247). Peter (who was working for the City of Madison at the time) and he became good friends working on that project together. Peter went to work for Joiner Associates afterwards and was a primary author of the Team Handbook. And Peter spent many years … Continue reading
Posted in Deming, Management, quote, Systems thinking
Tagged Bill Hunter, Deming, John Hunter, Madison, management, Peter Scholtes
34 Comments
The Trouble with Performance Reviews by Jeffrey Pfeffer
The Trouble with Performance Reviews [the broken link was removed] by Jeffrey Pfeffer Managers don’t like giving appraisals, and employees don’t like getting them. Perhaps they’re not liked because both parties suspect what the evidence has proved for decades: Traditional performance appraisals don’t work. But as my colleague and fellow Stanford professor Bob Sutton and I pointed out in our book, Hard Facts, Dangerous Half-Truths, and Total Nonsense: Profiting from Evidence-Based Management, belief and conventional wisdom often trump the facts. … Continue reading
Toyota Develops Thought-controlled Wheelchair
Toyota has developed a thought-controlled wheelchair (along with Japanese government research institute, RIKEN, and Genesis Research Institute). Honda has also developed a system that allows a person to control a robot through thoughts. Both companies continue to invest in innovation and science and engineering. The story of a bad economy and bad sales for a year or two is what you read in most newspapers. In my opinion the more important story is why Toyota and Honda will be dominant … Continue reading
Community Medical Care Successes
The Cost Conundrum by Atul Gawande, New Yorker (The Power of a Checklist was published there in 2007 by the same author) For example, Rochester, Minnesota, where the Mayo Clinic dominates the scene, has fantastically high levels of technological capability and quality, but its Medicare spending is in the lowest fifteen per cent of the country—$6,688 per enrollee in 2006, which is eight thousand dollars less than the figure for McAllen. Two economists working at Dartmouth, Katherine Baicker and Amitabh … Continue reading
Posted in Customer focus, Deming, Economics, Health care, Systems thinking
Tagged Deming, Health care, health care system, Systems thinking
1 Comment
CEOs Want Health-Care Reform
Decades ago Dr. Deming emphasized the deadly disease of excessive health care costs in the USA. Since then, year after year, the situation has become worse (reaching $2.2 trillion in spending in 2007 – 16.2% of GDP). During that time senior executives has put forth very little serious effort (in comparison to the huge cost) to fix this problem. Finally, in the last few years, more and more senior executives are actively moving to address the ever worsening crisis (including, … Continue reading
Posted in Deming, Economics, Health care
Tagged Deming, Economics, government, Health care, health care system, leadership
6 Comments
Revealed Preference
Revealed Preference: the preference consumers display by their action, in contrast to what they may say they prefer. While surveys may be useful people often say they will do one thing and actually when given the choice to do so, don’t. Normally what matters is not what people say they want but what they actually will choose. For that reason revealed preference is a better measure than stated preference. Stated preference is often used as a proxy for actual preference … Continue reading
Posted in Data, Deming, Management, Psychology, Statistics
Tagged Customer focus, Data, Psychology, Statistics
1 Comment
Dr. Russell Ackoff Webcast on Systems Thinking
Dr. Ackoff is one of two management thinkers that any manager, that is serious about improving management results in their organization, should study (the other is Dr. Deming). There are plenty of others that are also great resources. From part 2 of his talk: “Why-questions, about objects called systems, cannot be answered by the use of analysis… The product of explanation is understanding… The product of analysis is how things work, never why they work the way they do. Explanations … Continue reading
Posted in Creativity, Deming, Management, quote, Science, Systems thinking, webcast
Tagged Ackoff, Creativity, quote, Systems thinking, theory of knowledge, webcast
4 Comments