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.
Here is about five minutes of video (no longer available, sadly) of Paul O’Neill (former CEO of Alcoa and former Treasury Secretary) talking about the power of Lean healthcare on CNBC. O’Neill talks about leading organizations like Virginia Mason, Intermountain,…
Last week, I had a chance to see one of the “Deming Library” videos (on loan to me by Claire Crawford-Mason). BTW, I’ll be interviewing Claire soon about her reflections on working closely with W. Edwards Deming for the production…
In this 2012 conversation, Mike Stoecklein reflects on nearly a decade of learning directly from Dr. W. Edwards Deming — attending and helping with the famous four-day seminars, exchanging letters, and watching Deming consult with clients. Mike also tells the…
Last week, I blogged about the 1989 New England Journal of Medicine article by Dr. Donald M. Berwick, “Continuous Improvement as an Ideal in Health Care.” Dr. Berwick wrote that kaizen (as continuous improvement) is not alien to healthcare, as…
Hat tip to Mike S. for pointing out this HBR article “Why “I’m Sorry” Doesn’t Always Translate.” The piece talks about the differences in cultural norms about apologies in countries ranging from Japan, China, India, and the United States. I’m…
TL;DR: Long before Lean and Kaizen became common language in healthcare, Don Berwick argued in a 1989 New England Journal of Medicine article that improvement requires leaders to stop blaming “bad apples” and start fixing systems. His message–replace fear with…
One thing I have enjoyed in the past few years is meeting and working with more people with direct experience working at Toyota (including here in San Antonio, my new home). There are always gems and brilliant nuggets that come…
MD Anderson Cancer Center shares a lot of great material online and at conferences. here is an audio presentation (with slides) by Doris Quinn, PhD, Director, Process Improvement and Quality Education titled: W. Edwards Deming: The Man and the Message.…
Preventable medical mistakes remain one of the most serious challenges in healthcare, yet many hospitals still struggle with learning from medical errors and preventing them from happening again. From emergency departments to pathology labs, the same types of errors continue…
In this month’s ASQ blog post, their CEO Paul Borawski writes a new post “The Intersection of Quality and Social Responsibility,” where he defines Social Responsibility succinctly as “Doing well by doing good.” One reason I have always been attracted…
Many leaders in healthcare (including John Toussaint, Paul Levy, and others) are working to eliminate the “name, blame, and shame” culture that often exists in hospitals. This push (in my mind) started with W. Edwards Deming, who taught that 94%…
Saw this in the most recent Fast Company: Is Your Manager A Creativity Killer? If the manager is something like a case study from the book The No A**hole Rule: Building a Civilized Workplace and Surviving One That Isn’t,…
