Almost everyone celebrates something during the winter solstice—Christmas, Hanukkah, Kwanzaa, etc.—which inevitably includes gift exchanging. Following are some suggestions that run the gamut from technical to personal growth to just plain entertainment.

The economy has become a convenient excuse on which to pin the blame for everything—especially job losses. Well, in the case of quality positions, yes… and no. A sobering thought: Will the Pareto principle (the 80/20 rule) inevitably apply to the quality profession? I think so. It’s time to “connect the dots” for executives regarding the integration of quality improvement into organizational culture. How much longer can we as a quality profession wait?

Remember my previous article on the quality pyramid where the very top element emphasizes the concept of “process?” One of the most powerful points to get across in any quality improvement effort is that your current processes are perfectly designed to get the results they are already getting. Most of us are familiar with the fact that 85 percent of the problems in any organization are due to bad processes (and Deming, toward the end of his life, thought it was closer to 97%).

Insights from John P. Kotter’s book “Leading Change” Why do major change initiatives fail? It seems obvious: major change will not happen easily for a long list of reasons. However, if you feel your organization is overmanaged and underled with tendencies toward an inwardly focused culture, paralyzing bureaucracy, parochial politics, a low level of trust, […]

The man is dead, but his teaching continues… often, unfortunately, inaccurately. W. Edwards Deming has been dead for almost 16 years. In my opinion, he and Joseph Juran were the true quality giants of the 20th century. No one seems to talk about Deming much any more except to relate stories from the past and […]