In Fourth Generation Management (I highly recommend this book, by the way), Brian Joiner provided an excellent summary of the options to get better “results” (as measured by the data used). The options are to: distort the system distort the data improve the system Obviously we hope to improve the system; and we would like [...]
Dr. Deming included the 14 points for management in Out of the Crisis. The 14 points provide some specific obligations that managers adopting a Deming management system must follow. Over time Dr. Deming realized these points were not as effective at communicating his management system and he favored using the system of profound knowledge (SoPK) [...]
We are posting several short videos to provide everyone an opportunity to hear directly from Dr. Deming. It is remarkable how well the ideas he spoke of have aged even while the world has been changing rapidly. This video offers several questions that challenge us to think more deeply about current practices and perhaps help [...]
Joe Dager has posted another Business 901 podcast with a leading Deming management authority, this time with Brian Joiner, author of Fourth Generation Management, co-author of the Team Handbook and long time colleague of Dr. Deming. Early in Brian’s career he shared an office with Dr. Deming’s wife; and that led to Brian getting to [...]
Martin Fowler offers insightful details on the problems with using sales commissions (click on the right arrow button at the very top middle to see the next slide). Some quotes from his presentation: there are serious problems with the sales commission model, problems that led ThoughtWorks to get rid of all sales commissions in 2013 [...]
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 [...]
Guest post by Mike Stoecklein I had the good fortune to get to know Dr. Deming beginning in 1986. I call it a “correspondence relationship”. We wrote letters (these were the days before e-mail, and I doubt that Dr. Deming would ever send an e-mail even if it had existed). I played a small role [...]
Deming’s First Theorem: Nobody gives a hoot about profit People spend a great deal of time worrying about profits and claiming credit or diverting blame for profit results. So why did Dr. Deming say “Nobody gives a hoot about profit?” He looked at the actions senior executives take and he looked at the actions that [...]
Gemba is a Japanese term for “the real place” or in management terms “where the important action takes place.” The most common use of the term “gemba,” in a management context, is with respect to define where the important work is done within an organization. Deming organizations, and lean organizations, have managers that spend their [...]
Dr. Deming explained that paying sales commissions to staff introduced distortions into the organization that damaged overall performance. Each topic has different connections to Deming’s system of profound knowledge, as he laid it out in the New Economics. The problems with sales commissions heavily touch on all of the four areas of the management system. [...]