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.
You might recall that I posted back in January about a “Deming impersonator” who was presenting Thank to that post, I was contacted by Mike Micklewright, the creator and performer of the impersonator (in addition to being President of his…
The W. Edwards Deming Institute This has to be the best title for a seminar ever: How to Create Unethical, Ineffective Organizations That Go Out of Business(Many Organizations Do It, But Do You Know How You Do It?) The Deming…
Employee’s suit: Company used waterboarding to motivate workers – Salt Lake TribuneThis isn’t a “Lean” article, but holy moley, you have to read the linked story and think about how a company culture gets that far off the rails. First…
Time for a low-carb Lean Six Sigma?: Stuff like this irritates me to no end: “Lean Manufacturing has us analyzing process flow and delay times at each activity within a process. And while Lean Manufacturing principles help speed things up,…
Cemetery full, mayor tells locals not to die Maybe this mayor has consumed too much Bordeaux wine. But this story is a wonderfully comical illustration of how ineffective management mandates, targets, quotas, and the fear of punishment can actually be.…
ABC News: Airport Security To Be Easier for Families? I am probably giving the Transportation Security Agency waaaaaay too much credit here, but this story made me think of the “PDCA” cycle of “Plan Do Check Act” (known as the…
If there was any value to the Industry Week commentary that tried to link Deming and Obama, it was that it prompted me to re-read some of Deming’s work, namely the “management of people” chapter from The New Economics. There’s…
The OODA Loop & You I love examples of lean thinking that come from unexpected angles. Mike Gardner at the TPM Log recently brought up one of my favorite figures from the world of folks who embody lean without knowing…
Breaking: Deming Endorses Obama – IndustryWeek Forums A few people have emailed me about this and it’s easier for me to comment here than it is to register for the IW forums. An interesting idea is posed by Brad Kenney:…
To borrow a theme from Kevin Meyer, here’s some “fun with statistics,” or at least this kind of thing is fun to me, being a big proponent of Statistical Process Control (SPC) and the methods taught by Deming and Wheeler…
Saginaw Valley Quality Source – Beta » What Would Dr. Deming Say?: Has anyone ever heard of or seen Mike Micklewright, a “Deming impersonator?” Interesting idea, I wonder how well he pulls it off? Subscribe via RSS | Lean Blog…
Postbulletin.com: Harvey Mackay: Work for the love of it all – Mon, Oct 15, 2007 For all of the complaining we do about the airlines and for all of the lousy attitudes we often run across, here’s a positive story…
