Tag Archives: Deming

Remembering Brian Joiner

I knew Brian Joiner as a child growing up in Madison, Wisconsin. He and my father worked together and our families spent time together. As I grew I interacted with Brian in my professional life and that relationship made my … Continue reading

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Annual Performance Evaluations are a Poor Management Practice

Sports provides visible examples of the futility of accurate performance appraisal. We have athletes who thousands of people devote a huge amount of time to dissecting their strengths and weaknesses and those evaluations are constantly shown to be wrong. Teams … Continue reading

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Profound Podcast with John Hunter, Part Two

John Willis interviewed me for his Profound podcast series, this posts is about part two of the interview (listen to part two of the podcast, John Hunter – Curious Cat). See my post on part one of the interview. John … Continue reading

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Profound Podcast: John Hunter – Curious Cat

John Willis interviewed me for his Profound podcast series (listen to part one of the podcast, John Hunter – Curious Cat) John Hunter, Hurricane Ridge Trail, Olympic National Park This post provides links to more information on what we discussed … Continue reading

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Don’t Expect Short Quotes to Tell the Whole Story

When people try to use a short quote as an accurate encapsulation of a management concept they will often be disappointed. It is obvious that Dr. Deming believed that organizations failed to use data effectively to improve. He proposed that … Continue reading

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Lead by Building Organizational Capability

The result of a recent interview with me has been posted: How to Lead From Any Level In the Organization [broken link replaced by new link to content hosted on this site] 2. Help people solve their problems. Similar to … Continue reading

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Software Testing and the Impact on Quality

My response to a question on Reddit. “Software quality does not come from testing” Does anybody have any thoughts on the validity of the above statement? That statement is similar to the idea you can’t inspect in quality. Basically “Inspection … Continue reading

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Decades Later The USA Health Care System is Still a Deadly Disease for Our Economy

Decades ago W. Edwards Deming named 7 deadly diseases of western management. One of those was excessive health care costs. Sadly that deadly disease has become much worse in the last several decades. Americans pay 300% more for this prostate … Continue reading

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Transforming a Management System – A Case Study From the Madison Wisconsin Police Department

This post in an excerpt from The Quality Leadership Workbook for Police by Chief David Couper and Captain Sabine Lobitz (buy via Amazon). Transformational Steps A Case Study Madison, Wisconsin (1981-1993) Step 1: Educate and inform everyone in the organization … Continue reading

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A Strong Management System Handles the Transition of Leaders With Ease

Part three (of three) of an interview of me with Bill Fox has been published. Leadership While Viewing the Organization as a System …So if I see the weak management system as the problem, the solution is not nearly as … Continue reading

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