Tag Archives: Deming

Quality is a Journey to Excellence – Improving the System

Posted on July 22, 2025 by Curiouscat

Quality is a Journey to Excellence is a 2 day management seminar that Bill Hunter (my father) recorded in 1985 in Green Bay, Wisconsin. The embedded clip shows the third section of a the seminar on improving the system. Deming has this pithy way of putting a lot of the problems along those lines and what he says is: “Lets play American industry and we’ll make toast. I’ll burn and you scrape.” These links provide more details on ideas he … Continue reading →

Posted in Data, Deming, Management, Systems thinking, webcast | Tagged , , , , , , , ,

Design Your Organization to Serve Customers Well

Posted on June 26, 2024 by John Hunter

Quality is a Journey to Excellence is a 2 day management seminar that Bill Hunter (my father) recorded in 1985 in Green Bay, Wisconsin. The embedded clip shows the second section of a the seminar discussing customers and how to organize your systems to serve customers well. See part one of the seminar, and the full seminar. Some aspects of managing an organization well are quite challenging. But some aspects really are not and yet we still often fail to … Continue reading →

Posted in Customer focus, Deming, Management, webcast | Tagged , , , , , , | 2 Comments

Quality is a Journey to Excellence

Posted on May 7, 2024 by John Hunter

I recently uncovered this 2 day management seminar that Bill Hunter (my father) recorded in 1985 in Green Bay, Wisconsin. The embedded clip shows the first section of a the seminar. There is a bit of presentation that is outdated (mainly about general economic conditions and specific business conditions from the 1980s). If you don’t have the patience to sit through that (I find it useful but I can understand some people won’t want to listen to that part) just … Continue reading →

Posted in Deming, Management, Respect, Systems thinking, webcast | Tagged , , , , , , | 3 Comments

Remembering Brian Joiner

Posted on October 16, 2023 by John Hunter

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 life better. We often saw things similarly. We could see things that we thought should improved and liked to focus on actually making improvements. Doing that is quite a bit more difficult than just pointing out all the problems that … Continue reading →

Posted in Data, Management, Statistics, Systems thinking | Tagged , , , , , , , | 1 Comment

Annual Performance Evaluations are a Poor Management Practice

Posted on December 6, 2022 by John Hunter

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 are constantly paying free agents tens of millions that completely flop. Others hire someone no-one else wanted for the league minimum and they become a big contributor. Yes, it isn’t hard to figure out Stephen Curry is a far better … Continue reading →

Posted in Career, Deming, Performance Appraisal, Systems thinking | Tagged , , , ,

Profound Podcast with John Hunter, Part Two

Posted on March 10, 2022 by John Hunter

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 Hunter presenting at Deming Institute management seminar in Hong Kong This post provides links to more information on what we discussed in the podcast. Hopefully these links allow you to explore ideas that were mentioned in the podcast that you … Continue reading →

Posted in Deming, Management, Psychology, Respect | Tagged , , , , , , ,

Profound Podcast: John Hunter – Curious Cat

Posted on February 18, 2022 by John Hunter

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 in the podcast. Hopefully these links allow you to explore ideas that were mentioned in the podcast and that you would like to learn more about. Bill Hunter (my father): Quality In The Community One City’s Experience (Madison) – Quality … Continue reading →

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Don’t Expect Short Quotes to Tell the Whole Story

Posted on July 25, 2017 by John Hunter

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 organizations needed to change and use data effectively in order to thrive over the long term. He believed that greatly increasing the use of data in decision making would be useful. He also believed there were specific problems with how … Continue reading →

Posted in Data, Management, quote, Statistics, Systems thinking | Tagged , , , , , | 4 Comments

Lead by Building Organizational Capability

Posted on September 13, 2016 by John Hunter

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 helping other people grow their careers is the idea of helping other people to solve their problems. Again, this starts with a clear understanding of your sphere of influence. “It determines what strategies you can pursue, and building your sphere … Continue reading →

Posted in Deming, Management | Tagged , , , , | 1 Comment

Software Testing and the Impact on Quality

Posted on May 9, 2016 by John Hunter

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 is too late. The quality, good or bad, is already in the product.” W. Edwards Deming I agree with those ideas. Software testing is a bit different (at least some of it is) from the inspection mentioned above. You are … Continue reading →

Posted in IT, Software Development | Tagged , , , , | 2 Comments

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

Posted on March 30, 2016 by John Hunter

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 cancer drug than much of the rest of the world Xtandi, a prostate cancer drug co-licenced by Japan’s Astellas Pharma and Medivation Inc. was developed at a U.S. university with grants funded by taxpayer dollars. That gives the federal government … Continue reading →

Posted in Competition, Economics, Health care | Tagged , , , , , | 3 Comments

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

Posted on March 10, 2015 by John Hunter

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 about the vision, the goals, and Quality Leadership. This step must be passionately led by the top leader. Begin discussion with top management team and train them. Discuss and ask employees; get feedback from them. Share feedback with the chief … Continue reading →

Posted in Customer focus, Data, Deming, Management, Respect, Statistics | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 6 Comments

A Strong Management System Handles the Transition of Leaders With Ease

Posted on October 29, 2014 by John Hunter

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 easy as coming up with a new CIO. I don’t really think the problem is so much the CIO not being a good manager – because the system shouldn’t allow a new manager to come in and ruin a good … Continue reading →

Posted in Deming, Systems thinking | Tagged , , , , | 1 Comment

Remembering Peter Scholtes

Posted on October 14, 2014 by John Hunter

Guest Post by Fazel Hayati [the broken link was removed] Fall always reminds me of my friend Peter Scholtes. It was during 2008 annual Deming Institute fall conference in Madison, Wisconsin when Peter said farewell to his friends and colleagues. He gave a keynote titled Deming 101 (that full speech can be watched online). Although inactive for many years and managing numerous health challenges, he was sharp, witty and very happy to be talking about Dr. Deming, systems thinking, problems … Continue reading →

Posted in Deming, Psychology | Tagged , , , | 1 Comment

Agile Software Development and Deming

Posted on October 2, 2014 by John Hunter

Part two of three of an interview of me with Bill Fox has been published. See part one: John Hunter on PDSA, Deming and Strategy. From part two, Lean, Agile, Deming, Leadership and Management Systems: I see that agile is very consistent with Deming. Agile has all sorts of variants, so to different extents, they fit in. But one of the things I find really interesting is the agile folks, and of course the lean software folks, they much more … Continue reading →

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Cognition: How Your Mind Can Amaze and Betray You

Posted on May 27, 2014 by John Hunter

The webcast above is from the excellent folks at Crash Course. This webcast provides another view into the area of Deming’s management system on the theory of knowledge (the one most people forget), how we know what we know and how that belief isn’t always right. Two of the four components of Dr. Deming’s management system were about our brains (psychology is the other) which makes a great deal of sense when you think about how focused he was on … Continue reading →

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