Tag Deming

W. Edwards Deming: Leadership, Quality, and Continuous Improvement

W. Edwards Deming’s ideas about leadership, systems, variation, and psychology continue to shape how organizations pursue quality and improvement. This archive brings together blog posts, podcasts, and reflections exploring Deming’s teachings—and how they apply to Lean, healthcare, management, and continuous improvement today. Many of these posts challenge common misinterpretations of Deming’s work, emphasizing that quality cannot be delegated and that improvement starts with leadership.

How NOT to Improve Patient Flow: Laws, Targets, Blame, and Threats

Let's start by stating the obvious: it sucks to wait 24 hours or more on a stretcher in an emergency department hallway waiting for a real hospital bed. It's sad and frustrating to have a couple of blog readers from Canada send me this story from Quebec:

Quebec wants 24-hour cap for patients waiting on stretchers in ERs
Barrette says there would be consequences for hospital staff, doctors who don't comply

I think there's agreement that waiting 24 hours, 12 hours, or four hours for a bed after an admission is a problem. That's a problem worth working on.

Dr. Don Berwick on Respect, Fear, and Change in Healthcare Leadership

Back in 2012, I blogged twice about aspects of Dr. Donald M. Berwick's 1989 article in the New England Journal of Medicine titled “Continuous Improvement as an Ideal in Health Care.” The full text is only available to subscribers.

As I posted on LinkedIn, another aspect of this article caught my eye when I was reviewing it the other day in advance of my talk at the Studer Group "What's Right in Healthcare" conference next week. 

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Fear-Based Leadership Worked at Volkswagen. Until It Didn’t.
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Peter Pronovost on Leading with Love: What the Checklist Needed All Along
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Creating a Continuous Improvement System in Accounting: Nick Katko on PDCA, Culture, and Psychological Safety
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Why People Stay Silent at Work: My New Psychological Safety Course