Incomplete communication often creates problems. You often don’t have to ask why 5 times to figure out the weakness in communication that lead to trouble. Over and over again most organization would find the problem was created, or grew, because someone that could have helped didn’t know what others knew. Making communication explicit and obvious, [...]
From The Practice of Management by Peter Drucker, The Demands of the Enterprise on the Worker (page 268): The enterprise must expect of the worker not the passive acceptance of a physical chore, but the active assumption of responsibility for the enterprise’s results. This attitude not only is necessary for organizations to prosper today, it [...]
The Improvement Guide is a fantastic book on using the PDSA cycle well. The 2nd edition was published in 2009. The power of applying the PDSA cycle properly is huge. It leads to successful improvements which is important. Using the PDSA cycle also reinforces many aspects of applying Dr. Deming’s principles. Together with Leader’s Handbook [...]
One of the criticisms against process improvement is that it requires stifling innovation. That is not accurate. Process improvement is meant to be continual. Building structure around how change is tested and adopted aids innovation, it doesn’t stifle it. The justified criticism, I have seen, is against bad processes that make change difficult with rigid [...]
Inspection does not improve the quality, nor guarantee quality. Inspection is too late. The quality, good or bad, is already in the product. As Harold F. Dodge said, “You can not inspect quality into a product.” Out of the Crisis, page 29 Inspection can be useful to gather data on the process. Using that data [...]
In Out of the Crisis, page 101, Dr. Deming states the following as one of the seven deadly diseases: Evaluation of performance, merit rating, or annual review… The idea of a merit rating is alluring. the sound of the words captivates the imagination: pay for what you get; get what you pay for; motivate people [...]