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 Comes to City Hall (Madison) – Managing Our Way to Economic Success: “Two resources, largely untapped in American organizations, are potential information and employee creativity”
• Design of Experiments: Statistics for Experimenters – Teaching Engineers Experimental Design with a Paper Helicopter – 101 Ways to Design an Experiment, or Some Ideas About Teaching Design of Experiments – One factor at a time (OFAT) Versus Factorial Designs – Factorial Designed Experiment Aim
• PDSA improvement cycle: Keys to the Effective Use of the PDSA Improvement Cycle – Resources for Using the PDSA Cycle to Improve Results
• Peter Scholtes (including They Will Know We are Christians by our Love) – NPR Interview with Bill Hunter, Brian Joiner and Peter Scholtes on Deming Management Practices – The Leader’s Handbook
• I mentioned the first Deming Institute blog post, in which I discussed: “Dr. Deming’s personal aim was to advance commerce, prosperity and peace.” I also mentioned that I have seen software developers, more than any other group, seek out the original source of management ideas. I think in this post (Management Advice Failures) I explained why that matters, better than I did on the podcast: “We often accept pale copies of good old ideas instead of going to the good old ideas – which will often lead to a much richer source of knowledge.” John Willis mentioned this speech by W. Edwards Deming to Japanese Leaders in 1950.

We also talked about six sigma a bit on the podcast. While I believe six sigma falls far short of what I think a good management system should encompass I am less negative about six sigma than most Deming folks. I discussed my thoughts in: Deming and Six Sigma. In my opinion the biggest problems people complain about with six sigma efforts are about how poorly it is implemented, which is true for every management system I have seen. I have discussed the idea of poor implementation of management practices previously also: Why Use Lean (or Deming or…) if So Many Fail To Do So Effectively.

I will add another blog post for part two of the interview when I get a chance.

Listen to more interviews with me.