Tag: Deming
Highlights from a Great Book: “The Leader’s Handbook”
I've been going through the book by the late Peter Scholtes: The Leader's Handbook: Making Things Happen, Getting Things Done. His work builds upon the legendary W. Edwards Deming and Russell Ackoff, among others.
I often quote Scholtes (something also attributed to Peter Senge and others) as saying:
"People don't resist change, they resist being changed."
I think that's very insightful and that thought has led me to study change management, "motivational interviewing" and other related topics. It turns out that having the right answer and pushing it on others isn't the best strategy for effecting sustainable change. I had to learn those lessons the hard way and I'm still learning.
How Are “Quality Posters” Like This Still a Thing?
Back in 2007, I wrote a blog post that highlighted (if not mocked) so-called "quality posters" that are, I suppose, intended to be helpful:
https://www.leanblog.org/2007/04/krazy-kwality-posters/
Ten...
The Joy and the Pain of Overreacting to Metrics
As next week's Lean Startup Week approaches, I'm pretty laser focused on preparation for my:
Facilitation of the famed Deming Red Bead Experiment
My...
Adventures in #Lean Healthcare Hiring, Part 2
I recently blogged about a healthcare improvement job posting that had me scratching my head when the interviewing process included an process improvement exercise...
Great Leaders Aren’t Threatened by Their Employees’ Ideas or Feedback
This Business Insider article caught my eye the other day:
A celebrity chef who owns 26 restaurants explains why he loves when employees shoot down...
Throwback Thursday: Are We Training the Right People on Lean?
I'm teaching a daylong class on Lean healthcare today in San Antonio. It's something I've done twice a year for the past four years...
Has the #Lean Movement Failed to Learn from Dr. #Deming’s Mistake?
One book about the late, great W. Edwards Deming that's been on my shelf for a while is The Deming Management Method, which was written by Mary Walton, a journalist who spent some time with Dr. Deming in the 1980s. There's a section that really made me think about Lean over the past few decades (and it might seem familiar to those who use Six Sigma or other methods).
Stop Wasting People’s Time (in a #LeanStartup or any Organization) by...
As Eric wrote about in The Lean Startup (and as many others say), time is the most precious commodity anybody has. I think that's true in startups and it's true in other organizations. Everybody says they don't have enough time. So, we have to use it wisely.
How NOT to Improve Patient Flow: Laws, Targets, Blame, and Threats
Let's start by stating the obvious: it sucks to wait 24 hours or more on a stretcher in an emergency department hallway waiting for a real hospital bed. It's sad and frustrating to have a couple of blog readers from Canada send me this story from Quebec:
Quebec wants 24-hour cap for patients waiting on stretchers in ERs
Barrette says there would be consequences for hospital staff, doctors who don't comply
I think there's agreement that waiting 24 hours, 12 hours, or four hours for a bed after an admission is a problem. That's a problem worth working on.
Highlights of “Boss Level Podcast” – Gen. Stan McChrystal and the...
I've read most of retired General Stanley McChrystal's excellent book Team of Teams: New Rules of Engagement for a Complex World (I start a lot...
Free Mini-Workshop: Running of the Red Beads in Austin – September...
This year, I have the opportunity to run the W. Edwards Deming "Red Bead Experiment" at Lean Startup Week in San Francisco, with the...
Small Steps are the Best Path to Sustainable Big Results?
I am always happy to see something even vaguely related to the practice of Kaizen in mainstream publications. Here's a recent essay from the...