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Aim and Stats Now in our sixteenth year of operation for our "OD" sessions and the third year for our "TTA" sessions, the aim of both is to continue to foster an appreciation of InThinking within an emerging network that is developing inside Aerojet Rocketdyne and beyond. Dates for future "OD" and "TTA" sessions along with additional "thinking" opportunities for 2015 can be found in this announcement. OD + TTA Stats
For an update on OD and BTA statistics, this month's invitation is going out to 2,000+ partners in the U.S., as well as fellow InThinking partners in Australia, Austria, Bosnia-Hercegovina, Brazil, Bulgaria, Canada, China, Chile, Dubai, Ethiopia, Finland, France, Germany, Hungary, India, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Kazakhstan, Kenya, Kuwait, Malaysia, Mexico, Netherlands, New Zealand, Portugal, Romania, Russia, Singapore, Slovakia, South Africa, South Korea, Sweden, Switzerland, Turkey, the United Arab Emirates, and the U.K. Taken together, these individuals represent over 600 organizations in this list of nations, from elementary schools and senior high schools to colleges and universities, from one-person consulting firms to GenCorp, United Technologies, GM, IBM, General Electric, NASA, Bechtel, Kuwait Energy Company, Philips Electronics, and The Boeing Company. |
Welcome First Timers
Your names have been added to this announcement list by virtue of your attendance in our series of InThinking Roadmap seminars, workshops, and overviews within Aerojet Rocketdyne, or attendance at the annual In2:InThinking Network Forum, through a personal request, from you or a friend. Welcome to our thinking networks.
Click either link below to send me the name(s) and e-mail address(es) of anyone you would like to have added to this mailing list, or let me know if you would like to be removed. Thanks!!!
ADDITIONS DELETIONS |
Meeting Notice Service - OD and TTA If you'd like to receive meeting notices on your Microsoft Outlook schedule for upcoming Ongoing Discussion conference calls and Thinking Together About... webinars, reply to Bill Bellows at william.bellows@rocket.com and your name will be added to our meeting notice list. |
International Participants
Our conference call sessions are toll-free within the U.S. and Canada. Several international participants have been able to connect toll-free using Skype for a VOIP connection, which we now recommend to others calling in from outside (or inside) the U.S. and Canada.
First, you'll need to establish a Skype account at www.skype.com. Once Skype is set up and functioning correctly the only thing that is different when connecting with our "InThinking Roadmap" conference call sessions ("OD" or "The New Economics Study Sessions") is the use of a pass code and security code. For our "OD" sessions, these numbers are provided once the "participant survey" is completed. For the "The New Economics Study Sessions," these numbers are provided in an email from Tim Higgins, who hosts these calls. In either case, when prompted by Skype to enter these codes, use the keyboard not voice option and be sure to turn off the computer's microphone, otherwise the numeric keys don't function. If the microphone is left on when the codes are entered, Skype's automated operator will reply with "number not recognized," as no number has been transmitted. Also, please note that the "pound key" in the U.S. (#) translates to the "hash key" in the U.K. New users of Skype are encouraged to perform a conference call test in advance of the scheduled "InThinking Roadmap" conference call. Contact Bill Bellows to arrange for a test call. |
Additional Reading Beginning in 2009, a series of articles have been prepared for the Lean Management Journal (LMJ) to share InThinking insights with the Lean community. This month's feature LMJ article, Contact Bill Bellows with questions, comments, or observations about this article. |
| Good afternoon from the Los Angeles campus of Aerojet Rocketdyne, located in Canoga Park, California, on the western end of the San Fernando Valley. Aerojet Rocketdyne's InThinking Network welcomes Gipsie Ranney, from Brentwood, Tennessee, to lead our first Ongoing Discussion conference call of 2015 on January 29th and 30th and also our 181st session since we began in January 2000. As for a topic, Gipsie has selected Legitimacy and Fairness in Organizations in her seventh time with us as a Thought Leader. 
Gipsie has been a friend and a source of inspiration for making a difference "from where we are" since our paths first crossed in the mid- 1990s. I don't recall where we met, but I do recall attending a 2-day "Walter Shewhart" seminar she co-presented at Fordham University. She's been a mentor ever since. As with mentors Genichi Taguchi and Russ Ackoff, I keep a growing list of questions and topics to explore with Gipsie, from world news to insights from Dr. Deming. Inevitably, our conversation leads to a topic for her next appearance as an Ongoing Discussion Thought Leader, a role she's taken every January since 2010, as the late Russ Ackoff honored us from 2006 through 2009.
In addition to serving as our January Thought Leader, Gipsie contributes to our (renamed) "Thinking Together About..." webinar series every September, with a focus on "Thinking Together About Causes."
Gipsie begins her Thought Piece with these words,
Numerous relationships exist among the individuals who are members of an organization. Those relationships can be beneficial to the individuals involved and to the organization as a whole, or they can damage the ability of the organization to fulfill its purpose. The following discussion is an exploration of what might be done to improve the relationships among an organization's people. The exploration is focused on legitimacy and fairness in organizations. Some frameworks for thinking about legitimacy and fairness are presented.
Legitimacy
In his book, David and Goliath, Malcolm Gladwell writes about the "principle of legitimacy." He argues that "when people in authority want the rest of us to behave, it matters - first and foremost - how they behave."1 Those who give orders are vulnerable to the opinions of those to whom they give orders. Gladwell says that legitimacy of authority is based on three things: people who are asked to obey authority have to feel they have a voice - if they speak up, they will be heard; rules have to be predictable - the rules tomorrow can be expected to be about the same as the rules today; and the authority has to be fair - one group cannot be treated differently from another group.2 In an organizational environment, managers carry the responsibility for these bases of legitimacy. Gipsie's Thought Piece continues with these ideas, To provide for fair decision-making processes, executives should examine whether they routinely ask their reports to provide input on decisions that will affect those individuals and others in the organization. If the executive does ask for input, does he or she receive and respond to the input in a respectful manner? If the executive doesn't ask for input, he/she should explore why he/she doesn't and should probably seek coaching on how to ask for and respond appropriately to the input. Further, executives should see that managers in the organization receive training and/or coaching on involving employees in providing input to the decisions that will affect them. Fairness in the workplace does not require decision by consensus or democracy. What is required is that employees have a chance to voice their opinions and their views are considered carefully. Executives and managers at all levels should explore how to provide adequate explanations of decisions and clearly explain what will be expected as a result. Opportunities for improvement should be identified. Link here to download Gipsie's Thought Piece in an 8.5in x 11in format. Link here to register to attend.
Gipsie Ranney 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 was the first president of the W. Edwards Deming Institute. Gipsie 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. 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. Looking ahead, our next OD session is set for February 26-27, with our Thought Leader and topic not yet confirmed. Link here to register to attend this conference call in advance of the announcement in mid-February. Coming next is our Thinking Together About... (formerly known as Better Thinking About...) webinars next month, with a focus on Leadership, hosted by Doug Krug on Thursday, February 12th, from 11:30-1pm Pacific Time. Link here to register to attend in advance of the announcement, coming the first week in February.Cheers...
Bill |
| Memories of and from Russ Ackoff  The one and only Russ Ackoff served as our "January" Ongoing Discussion Thought Leader on four occasions between 2006 and 2009. In addition to these "visits" with us from his home in Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania, he also traveled to Canoga Park every year, from 2003 through 2007, to deliver half-day and full-day lectures in our Leadership & Learning Center (picture above), as well as in Boeing's Conference Center in nearby Huntington Beach. In doing so, he inspired us with his countless "systems" stories, from his chance visit to AT&T's Bell Labs to experience the account of the "overnight destruction of the Bell telephone system" (and his discovery of their use what came to be known as the Idealized Design process) to the tale of a cost-cutting paper company client, who continued to offer sales of a paltry amount (think "loss leader") of specialty photographic paper to Claire Booth Luce, whose husband's company, Time magazine, was their number 1 customer. One of these stories, plus many more from his career in the U.S. Army, stationed in the South Pacific, to his lengthy career as a management consultant, is told by Russ in the first of two recent posthumous publications by Triarchy Press, titled Memories. Follow this link for more details on this book, in addition to news of the second book, Differences That Make a Difference. To view a 10-minute video of John Pourdehnad's fond memories of Russ, follow this link on YouTube. Link here to download a 90-page transcript of a video with Russ Ackoff and W. Edwards Deming. The conversation took place in l992 and was edited and released as Volume 21 of The Deming Library series in l993. It is called "A Theory of a System for Educators and Managers" and is available from the W. Edwards Deming Institute at this link. |
The W. Edwards Deming Institute's 2015 Research Seminar, March 23-24 This year the Deming Research Seminar moves to a new venue at the Georgetown University Conference Center* in Washington, DC.
Hear innovative new approaches and concepts being tested by others to enhance operations, build trust, foster leadership, promote commerce, create ethical business cultures, and sustain success. The Seminar will present a diverse group of more than 30 presenters from the US, Canada, Australia, China, Mexico, Norway, Poland and Spain, representing a variety of industries, including healthcare, information technology, government, manufacturing, education, and small business. Their research will extend and illustrate Dr. Deming's theories through topics such as leadership, motivation, change process, optimization, personal transformation, sales and marketing, and organizations as a system. Presentation formats will vary, from 18-minute TED type talks, to more in-depth 30 and 50-minute sessions with Q & A. Scholarships Student Scholarships Research Seminar scholarships are available for active students. The scholarships cover $150 of the $200 student registration fee. The application deadline is Monday, March 9. Student Scholarship Application
Military Scholarships
A limited number of Research Seminar scholarships are available for active duty military and veterans. The scholarships cover $225 of the $425 registration fee. The application deadline is Monday, March 9. Military Scholarship Application
Scholarship Application Process
To apply for a scholarship, complete and submit the online application form. You will receive an email advising you of the status of your request once the Scholarship Committee has reviewed your application. Link here for seminar details.
*While the Deming Research Seminar will be held at the Georgetown University Conference Center, the event is not affiliated with Georgetown University. |
Altshuler Institute's
2015 TRIZ Conference, February 10-12 TRIZCON2015 is the 14th annual international conference onTRIZ (Theory of Inventive Problem Solving) and will be on 10-12 February, 2015 in consonance with the Innova-Con in Houston, TX. The joint Conference will be held at Rice University at the BioScience Research Collaborative, 6500 Main Street, Houston. Organizers are planning a 2-day event that will include TRIZ instruction at the introductory and advanced levels. Speakers from industry and academia will relate how TRIZ has positively impacted their organizations. Included in this event, will be a breakout session to solve significant problems that challenge our world using various technics. Also, presenters will share case studies on the advancement of innovation and TRIZ. Link here for conference details. |
Podcasts from The W. Edwards Deming Institute Beginning this year, The W. Edwards Deming Institute has recorded podcasts on a monthly basis, featuring 20 to 30-minute interviews by Tripp Babbitt with members of the Deming Community who are advancing the use and explanations of Dr. Deming's ideas. In this latest episode of the Deming Podcast, Tripp interviews Monta Akin, Assistant Superintendent for Leander Independent School District in Leander, Texas. Monta shares her Deming journey and the compelling story of Leander Independent School District's transformation. It begins when Monta was first introduced to Deming when she came across the PBS series "Quality or Else" featuring David Langford. What caught her attention was his Deming-based systematic approach to education, creating passion in students by engaging them in the practice of improvement.
Serendipitously, the next day Monta picked up an educational magazine with information on a David Langford seminar. She rallied a few Leander colleagues to attend. It totally changed how they looked at instruction and the partnership with students. They realized that to be a great school district they would have to do something different.
As they began adopting the Deming philosophies, Monta and her colleagues discovered how transparency built teamwork and realized the detrimental effect of fear, especially of teacher ratings. This led to a major change in how they conducted evaluations; a pivotal moment in their transformation.
Monta shares the positive results at Leander independent School District, and why after more than 20 years, she is still passionately committed to the Deming philosophy.
Link here to find the podcast with Monta. Link here to find the previous podcasts, featuring Bob Mason and Clare Crawford-Mason, Paula Marshall, Bill Bellows, Bob Browne, Kelly Allan, Kevin Cahill, Andrea Gabor, Steven Haedrich, David Langford, and Dan Robertson. Link here to find these podcasts on iTunes. |
Leader of One, by Gerald Suarez "Endorsements like these are seldom needed. Heed this one, read, study, and learn. Gerald Suarez is the future." Russ Ackoff 
Gerald Suarez, our inaugural "Better Thinking About..." in February 2012 on the topic of Leadership, has released his first book, titled "Leader of One: Shaping Your Future through Imagination and Design." Find it on Amazon at this link. Link on the book image to learn more about Gerald.
With endorsements from two of his mentors, Stephen Covey and Russ Ackoff, Gerald has fulfilled his dream of "writing a book that reflects my philosophy and experiences in the White House, the boardroom, and the classroom and to pay tribute to the major influences in my thinking." This 18-chapter book offers a 4-phase "methodology" that consists of a cycle of activities that "work together in a holistic fashion"; Contemplation, Desire, Design, and Creation.
Gerald offers this advice at the outset:
Becoming a "Leader of One" and taking on the challenge of shaping your future is not easy. Transformative efforts never are. The task ahead will feel overwhelming, but commitment to initiate and sustain action, no matter how small, will move you closer to a new and desired reality.
There are no short cuts. Every building begins its steps upward with a single brick, every marathon race with a single step, and every book with a single word. The same can be said for every minute of your life, so seconds count. The first steps are always the most difficult, but each one will bring you closer to "there." |
January 29th - 30th OD Details Please join us for one or all of this month's series of OD conference calls. As always, you are invited to participate for as long, or as short, as you can in one or more of these sessions, Options 1-4. Note that these conference calls are "conversations, not presentations," which vary from session to session, due to a variety of causes, such as who participates, what questions are asked, and what learning transpires. This diversity is captured every month, as the calls are recorded, with links to these audio files shared with all who register to attend. Option - Date/Time (Pacific Time); 1 - Thursday, January 29th, 12:00-1:00pm 2 - Thursday, January 29th, 1:00-2:00pm
3 - Friday, January 30th - 12:00-1:00pm
4 - Friday, January 30th - 1:00-2:00pm The agenda for each option will be: Opening 15 minutes: Call in and Introductions Next 40 minutes: Ongoing Discussion Last 5 minutes: Farewells and Close
Please reply to this note by noon, Pacific Time on Wednesday, January 28th to confirm your plans to participate in one (or more) of these options. If you do plan to attend, please complete the OD PARTICIPATION SURVEY by using the link below...
PARTICIPANT SURVEY Telecon lines (including a pass code and a security code) have been arranged for those who cannot join us in a conference room at our Canoga Park facility and are provided upon completion of the participant survey.
As always, please forward this announcement to anyone we missed who would also like to participate.
Regards...
Bill |
Future Ongoing Discussion Conference Calls Mark your calendars - future Ongoing Discussion conference calls will be held on the following dates (subject to slight changes), from 12-1pm and 1-2pm Pacific Time.
Month, Dates, Thought Leader(s), Topics (link on each session to register): |
Future Thinking Together About... Webinars
Mark your calendars - future Thinking Together About... (formerly Better Thinking About...) webinars will be held on the following dates, from 11:30-1pm Pacific Time. Details for how to participate in this webinar series are provided upon registering using the participant survey for each event.
Date, Presenter, and Topic (link on each session to register): |
InThinking Together Seminar Description: This seminar explores the philosophies of a variety of management theorist, including but not limited to Russell Ackoff, W. Edwards Deming, Edward de Bono, Tom Johnson, and Genichi Taguchi, among many others; as they apply to the management of organizational resources, including ideas, innovation, knowledge, money, equipment, and space. Among the topics of discussion will be the concepts of "better thinking about thinking" (InThinking) and Purposeful Resource Management as well as Purposeful Resource Leadership. The seminar will introduce you to these ideas through a series of questions that are specially selected to create awareness of a new approach to working together, learning together, and thinking together. Registration Fee: there is NO fee to attend Prerequisites: there are NO prerequisites Format: two 4.5-hour sessions over two days, offered as an in-person event Presented by: Bill Bellows Schedule for InThinking Together classes in Canoga Park, CA for Aerojet Rocketdyne Class #CP-2015-01 (to be hosted by College of the Canyons in Valencia) Part 1 - 29-Jan - 7:00-11:30am (Pacific Time) Part 2 - 30-Jan - 7:00-11:30am
Register to attend InThinking Together |
The New Economics Study Session Description: A group of participants assembles, some in-person and some via teleconference, for this 14-hour series. Participants discuss W. Edwards Deming's last book, The New Economics, in which he introduced his concept of a "System of Profound Knowledge." The group reads specified chapters before each session and discusses the meaning and application of the ideas, as well as personal reactions to the ideas. Supplemental reading material become part of the conversations, as do reactions to video tapes of Dr. Deming. Registration Fee: there is NO fee to attend. In addition, this is a toll-free call from the United States and Canada. International participants are welcome to join in as well, provided they do so at their own expense for the conference call. Aerojet Rocketdyne attendees will be given copies of The New Economics. Non-Aerojet Rocketdyne attendees can purchase copies on Amazon at this link, with used copies selling for $15 and Kindle copies available for $15.95. Prerequisite: there are NO prerequisites
Format: seven 2-hour sessions over three and a half weeks, presented as a teleconference event Presented by: Tim Higgins Schedule for The New Economics Study Session Class #CP-2015-01 Starting on 21-Jan, seven sessions on Mondays and Wednesdays, from 3:00-5:00pm, Pacific Time (ending on 11-Feb)
Class #CP-2015-02
Starting on 11-May, seven sessions on Mondays and Wednesdays, from 3:00-5:00pm, Pacific Time (ending on 3-Jun) Class #CP-2015-03 Starting on 14-Sep, seven sessions on Mondays and Wednesdays, from 3:00-5:00pm, Pacific Time (ending on 5-Oct) |
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