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.
Mark’s note — today’s guest post is by my friend Karen Martin, my guest for Podcast #151 where we talked about her latest book The Outstanding Organization: Generate Business Results by Eliminating Chaos and Building the Foundation for Everyday Excellence. Karen…
There is a wonderful two-hour video of Dr. W. Edwards Deming addressing a university in Connecticut back in 1990. There’s so much wisdom in what he says… but some have impatience, hin this fast-paced ADD day and age, for what…
No, this is not a program of Kaizen, or continuous improvement, for babies. Babies naturally grow, try new things, and gain new capabilities. But, we tend to lose that as adults. As Dr. Deming would say the “forces of destruction”…
As we enter the new year, it’s a great time to reflect back on 2012 – what worked and what didn’t work… what do we plan to do differently in 2013? Those are some of the core questions found on…
Reflecting more on my recent Japan tour (see previous posts) one word came up in my notes: artifacts. One dictionary definition of that term is straightforward: “any object made by human beings, especially with a view to subsequent use.” Another…
This week, I was able to drop by the annual Lab Quality Confab event since it was being held in here in San Antonio. There were some things I heard during a few presentations about Lean or change management, such…
Although I don’t get to play much anymore, I used to be a pretty serious drummer (I almost said “musician,” but that invites jokes that drummers aren’t really musicians). I was more of a percussionist — playing everything from timpani…
Mark’s note: Today’s vacation post is from my good friend Dan Markovitz, who normally blogs here. Listen to my podcasts with him here and here. By Dan Markovitz: You’d think by now we’d be past this sort of nonsense that…
When I kicked off the “Lean Memes” contest last month, I had no idea what I was starting… I figured I’d get a handful of entries. Well, I got well over 100 from a number of people, including 5 or…
As the creator of the admittedly awkward L.A.M.E. acronym (meaning Lean As Mistakenly Explained or Lean As Misguidedly Executed), one burden is that I often get emails tipping me off to L.A.M.E. sightings. In a nutshell, it’s L.A.M.E. when a…
Here are two blog posts that my co-author, Joe Swartz, and I were very happy to see about our book Healthcare Kaizen: Engaging Front-Line Staff in Sustainable Continuous Improvements: From the Virginia Mason Medical Center Blog: “Could this new book…
I didn’t have a post yesterday because it was the Labor Day holiday here in the U.S. While I’m not a “worker,” in the sense of an hourly employee or union worker anymore, I still enjoyed the day off with…
