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.

Better Metrics & “Understanding Variation” – An Important Topic for Healthcare

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My favorite book, as I've written about before, is not a "Lean book" -- it's Understanding Variation: The Key to Managing Chaos by Donald J. Wheeler, PhD. It might look like a book about statistics...

My Post for the Deming Institute Blog: Why Dr. Deming’s Work...

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I'm extremely honored that The W. Edwards Deming Institute published my first blog post in a series of three that I've written for them, to be published over the next month or so.

Changing the Culture: Cursing Football Coaches, Attacking the Change Agent

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John W. Parks IV, pictured at left, is a Professor of Percussion at Florida State University. He was one of my favorite people during my...

#TBT: What CFO Magazine Wrote About #Lean in 2009

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I first blogged about this article back in 2009 and it's still online: "Keen to Be Lean" The sub headline talks about hospitals being "desperate to...

Part 2: More from the Original 1984 NUMMI Team Member Handbook...

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Here's Part 2 of a post about the original NUMMI Team Member Handbook from 1984 (see Part 1 here). This, and other documents I'll be...

Human Nature Around Incentives & Rewards… Even in North Korea?

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Dr. W. Edwards Deming used to warn against replacing intrinsic motivation with extrinsic rewards and incentives. Brian Joiner (author of Fourth Generation Management), who worked...

Lean People Don’t Say Things Like “Idiot Proofing”

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TL;DR: Lean isn't about "idiot-proofing" work--it's about respecting people. True Lean focuses on improving systems (through mistake-proofing and better design), not blaming or deceiving...

Dr. Deming’s Legacy – Still Relevant Now

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This article caught my eye recently: We Can Still Do It: Dr. Deming’s Legacy (via LInkedIn)

What’s New in the 3rd Edition of Lean Hospitals? [Video]

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Thanks to my friends at the ThedaCare Center for Healthcare Value for putting together this video with me, filmed at the last Lean Healthcare...

Wells Fargo Scandal: How Bad Management and Sales Quotas Drove Gaming...

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tl;dr: Wells Fargo didn't have a "bad apples" problem--it had a bad management system. Unrealistic sales quotas and fear-driven incentives made gaming the numbers...

Deming (Past) and Toyota (Today) Recognize Employees Are Unique Individuals

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I'm always happy to hear current-day Toyota leaders (like Jamie Bonini) or recent  Toyota leaders (like Gary Convis) share perspectives on leadership. It's not that...

The Real Lessons of Dr. Deming’s Red Bead Factory

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I've written a lot about Dr. Deming's famous "Red Bead Experiment." As a follow up to my workshop at February's Society for Health Systems...
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