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: It’s great to welcome Andy Wagner back to the blog. Read his older posts here. General Motors, Chrysler, and Toyota have been dominating the headlines in recent months with their financial and, now, quality troubles, while some surprising…
Here’s one to ponder and comment on – does putting a pharmacist in jail for six months and ruining his career and life do anything to bring back a two year-old girl? Does it do anything to make future patients…
The final keynote talk at the recent Society for Health Systems / ASQ Healthcare conference was given by Dr. Barry Silbaugh, a former hospital executive and the current CEO of the ACPE – The American College of Physician Executives. Silbaugh…
I’m about conferenced out! First was the excellent SHS/ASQ conference on healthcare operations improvement (read my posts), then the HIMSS conference focused on heathcare information systems, now the LEI Lean Transformation Summit that starts today (follow our tweets). As a…
Continuing my series on re-reading Dr. W. Edwards Deming’s book Out of the Crisis, I’m posting a series of tweets from the Chapter along with my thoughts and comments. At about 70 pages, it’s a long, dense chapter, including Deming’s…
As I’ve been re-reading Dr. Deming’s Out of the Crisis, stuff like this jumps out at me more and more. I saw similar signs at Heathrow Airport last month bragging about the airport exceeding targets for customer service. This is,…
A new season of Gordon Ramsay’s “Kitchen Nightmares” show has started on Fox. This show is still my favorite “business” show on TV, as there are often many important lessons about management, quality, and leadership. The episode about the “Hot…
For a number of reasons, I’ve decided to re-read my copy of one of the most influential books I’ve ever read: Out of the Crisis by the late, great Dr. W. Edwards Deming. In the light of Toyota’s recent quality…
TL;DR: Data is what gets recorded. Facts are what’s actually happening. Confusing the two is how leaders get fooled by faked reports, broken sensors, and decorated dashboards. Deming and Ohno both warned about this in different ways. The fix is…
A few random thoughts from being on the couch all day Sunday, catching up on work and watching a bit of NFL football. One, a thought about Jay Leno, Conan O’Brien and the “PDCA” cycle, the other about a pizza…
Update (1/7/10): Turns out the TSA agent walked away from his post. I’d certainly hold someone accountable for that, since it was a conscious choice, unless there were VERY extenuating circumstances. After seeing the news on CNN last night (video…
Language that undermines Lean, respect for people, and real improvement TL;DR: The words Lean leaders use matter–some common phrases quietly reinforce command-and-control thinking, fear, and misunderstanding rather than learning and improvement. If Lean is truly about respect for people and…
