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.
Dr. W. Edwards Deming always said we need to drive out fear from organizations, as point 8 of the 14 Points said: “Drive out fear, so that everyone may work effectively for the company.” Too many organizations, including hospitals, are…
Since I talk about Dr. Deming a lot, I thought I’d take a little survey and gauge your exposure to Dr. W. Edwards Deming: [polldaddy poll=”3593500″]
Yesterday, my blog post featured a YouTube video that Everett Clinic was kind enough to share with the world, showing their Daily Huddle process (“Video of a Daily Huddle at Everett Clinic“). In that post, I alluded to there being…
If your goal is long wait times and frustrated customers, design your system for 100% utilization. Whether it’s airlines, call centers, or healthcare, the same predictable pattern emerges: full capacity destroys flow. Drawing on queuing theory, Factory Physics, and Lean…
If you’re a regular reader of my Lean Blog, you might know more about preventing Hospital Acquired Infections than many healthcare CEOs do, says a report in the Washington Post: “Hospital infection deaths caused by ignorance and neglect, survey finds.”…
Mark’s Note: Here’s part 3 of a series by our guest blogger, Andy Wagner – a series that started here. Many of us work in an environment that our host, Mark Graban, would characterize as “non-Deming”: LAME more often than…
Mark’s note: I consider myself very fortunate to have met Patrick Anderson during my journeys in the Lean world. Patrick is the executive director of Chugachmiut, a non-profit corporation to advance the overall economic, social and cultural development of the…
Episode #92 brings a returning guest, the always entertaining and thought-provoking Mike Micklewright. He is the author of a batch of two new books: Out of Another @#&*% Crisis! Motivation through Humiliation and Lean ISO 9001: Adding Spark to your…
Last week, I published Part 1 of my notes about a breakfast talk by Dr. Brent James at the Shingo Prize Conference. One of the more interesting things that Dr. James said was something he prefaced as saying it would…
At last week’s Shingo Prize conference, I was very excited to meet Dr. Stephen Covey (my podcast is here), but I was just as excited, if not more so, to meet Dr. Brent James, the noted healthcare quality expert from…
Hat tip to the WSJ for their review of the new book Get Rid of the Performance Review!: How Companies Can Stop Intimidating, Start Managing–and Focus on What Really Matters. Dr. Deming criticized the annual performance review decades ago and…
In an era where it was a “no brainer” to move factories to China, chasing cheap labor, the Lean world has often spoken out loudly against this. Back in the day, people said “Nobody ever got fired for choosing IBM,”…