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.
This one got stuck in the “stuff to blog about” pile for a few months, but HBR published a gem of an article called “How To Stop the Blame Game.” Dr. Deming always talked about how destructive blame could be,…
TL;DR: Time and motion studies haven’t been discredited–the Taylorist mindset behind them has. When used as an expert-driven tool to control workers or set quotas, they cause harm. When used the Lean way–by teaching people to study and improve their…
TL;DR: W. Edwards Deming taught that organizations don’t need to motivate people–they need to stop demotivating them. Practices like rankings, merit pay, numerical targets without methods, and competition between people crush intrinsic motivation, dignity, and joy in learning over time.…
It’s alphabet soup Saturday, as this IHI PDSA video comes from a PhD, Robert Lloyd. A great basic overview (or refresher course) for anyone involved in improvement or problem solving. From the IHI Open School’s online course: QI102 Lesson 4…
I heard a story on NPR last week profiling New York Jets head coach Rex Ryan, “In Football And Life, Ryan Plays Like He Means It.” I was reminded of some Lean leadership concepts right away during the interview.
Are We 84.7% Certain We’re in the 90th Percentile? Of course, hospitals should focus on patient satisfaction. That’s important but is often a vague and uncertain thing to measure. But, as Dr. Deming said: “The most important figures that one…
As I’m going through revisions of my book, Lean Hospitals, a theme jumps out at me in Chapter 2…. it’s all about trust. The first excerpt says: Gary Convis, a retired Toyota senior vice president who had been one of…
TL;DR: Samuel Culbert argues that performance reviews are subjective, political, and harmful to results. Instead of judging people once a year, leaders should coach continuously and take responsibility for system performance. Episode #117 is a conversation with Prof. Samuel A.…
When an organization sets a target for the number of kaizen ideas employees should submit, it usually gets exactly what it asked for — a number. What it doesn’t get is genuine improvement. The ideas come in to hit the…
Today, I am recording a podcast interview with Prof. Samuel Culbert from the UCLA Anderson School of Management. He is author of the recent NY Times piece “Why Your Boss Is Wrong About You” and the book Get Rid of…
So Monday’s blog post was about preventable medical errors – namely errors involving pharmacies giving the wrong meds or wrong doses to patients. That’s not rocket science – it’s a clearly preventable error. But it’s also something to not blame…
I had the most amazing morning a few weeks ago when I was in Cincinnati for the TechSolve lean healthcare event. Thanks to a friend of my sister’s, I was able to spend a few hours at Cincinnati Children’s Hospital…
