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.
I really enjoyed having the chance to be in Cincinnati yesterday to participate in a Lean Healthcare workshop put on by TechSolve, a non-profit consultancy that teaches process improvement methodologies, including Lean, across multiple industries. We had well over 100…
Hat tip to my friend and fellow Productivity Press author Naida Grunden for pointing out an article she is a co-author on, “Improving Patient Care in Cardiac Surgery Using Toyota Production System Based Methodology,” published in the journal of The…
It’s Super Bowl week in the U.S., which is probably even obvious to many readers from outside of North America. As we watch the game, most fans will be focused mainly on the team outcome, as opposed to focusing on…
There was a really good discussion and story on the ESPN program “Sunday NFL Countdown” today about individual player incentive payments — why are they necessary to motivate players and how do they distort the game in the last week…
Here’s a hilarious, yet somewhat sad, story that will instantly resonate with students of Dr. W. Edwards Deming. From Poland — police officers in the town of Bialogard were given a strict quota of writing one ticket per day, or…
Dan Pink joins me to discuss his book Drive and the science behind what actually motivates people — ideas deeply aligned with Lean thinking and Deming. We explore why “if-then” rewards backfire for complex work, the dysfunctions of incentive schemes…
I received a question from a reader, a retiree from a manufacturing company who is now a volunteer for a healthcare organization. We have exchanged messages before about opportunities to apply Lean thinking in a faith-based mission-driven organization like this,…
I was recently invited by SixSigmaIQ.com to participate by giving a response to the question “How to beat the mid-project blues?” – looking at Lean as a project (or looking at projects in the midst of a Lean transformation. I’m…
On weekends, I like to share videos or fun stuff that gets us thinking. Today, I’m sharing a video with the legendary Dr. Russell Ackoff where he’s speaking at a session moderated by Clare Crawford-Mason, the producer of the outstanding…
I’ve written occasionally about Lean efforts in government (see a list of posts here). There are formal Lean government efforts at varying levels of maturity and formality in a number of states, including Iowa, Jacksonville, Michigan, and Paul Akers’ LeanAmerica.org…
Here’s a video produced by Jim Handyside, embedded here with his permission. More inspirational than educational, there are still some concepts related to Lean and Dr. Deming’s PDSA cycle… Create Value from jim handyside on Vimeo.
I saw a nice article by author Daniel Pink (most recently the author of Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us) called “Think Tank: Fix the workplace, not the workers.” Without directly referencing Dr. W. Edwards Deming, Pink often…
