January 2010 Ongoing Discussion Announcement, with Gipsie Ranney

Pratt & Whitney Rocketdyne's Enterprise Thinking Network welcomes Gipsie Ranner to lead our first Ongoing Discussion of 2010 on January 28th and 29th (and our 121st session since we began in 2000). Later this year, she will present a pre-conference seminar at the In2:InThinking Network's 2010 Forum (April 15-20) on the topic of "Deming's Ideas in the 21st Century."

Gipsie has selected "The Trouble with Incentives: They Work" as our topic this month. She prepared this scholarly article especially for our Ongoing Discussion, and we are imensely grateful for her contribution. As she says in the beginning of her paper, the title of this discussion might be expanded to say incentives work, but often they work in unintended ways - hence, the trouble with them. The use of incentives, particularly in the arena of executive pay, is of particular interest given the current economic situation.

In this well-researched article, Gipsie connects current events to the thinking and teaching of W. Edwards Deming as well as to later thinkers and writers interested in interrelated ideas about human motivation and the effects of incentives, systems thinking, teamwork and cooperation, short term vs. long term perspective, creativity, and performance. She discusses causes of the financial crisis and our nation's efforts to bring meaningful change to healthcare in terms of the structural effects of incentives in these systems. She discusses theory and application, and will challenge your thinking about what works when it comes to "motivating people".

Here are some questions to consider in preparation for this powerful conversation with Gipsie:

What is your mental model about how people are motivated?
Is your behavior congruent with your stated assumptions?
How might assumptions about motivation be different in a Red Pen Company compared to a Blue Pen Company?
What assumptions about motivation might the two kinds of companies share in common?
What genuine open question would you ask to start a conversation in your organization about motivation and incentives?
Where else in your life, outside of your work environment, do incentives appear to play a role?
What unintended consequences of incentives have you observed in the public education system?
How have you contributed to the use of incentives in the school system?
What other authors would you like to bring into this conversation?

Biography: Gipsie is an international consultant to organizations on management, quality improvement and statistical methodology. She was a member of the faculty of the Department of Statistics at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville for fifteen years. She was a co-founder of the University of Tennessee's Institute for Productivity through Quality, and she developed and conducted numerous seminars on quality improvement. She served as Director of Statistical Methodology for General Motors Powertrain Group from 1988 to 1992. She co-authored Beyond Total Quality Management: Toward the Emerging Paradigm, published by McGraw-Hill, and contributed to Competing Globally Through Customer Value, published by Quorum. She has published papers on quality improvement and statistical methods. Gipsie is a member of the Advisory Board of Fordham University's Deming Scholars Program and a member of the Board of Trustees of the W. Edwards Deming Institute. The American Society for Quality awarded her the Deming Medal for 1996, "for outstanding contribution in advancing the theory and practice of statistical thinking to the management of enterprises worldwide." Gipsie holds a B. S. in Mathematics from Duke University and a Ph.D. in Statistics from North Carolina State University.

Contact Gipsie by e-mail at gbranney@comcast.net with any questions you would like to share with her in preparation for her OD session with us.