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Aim and Stats Now in our sixteenth year of operation for our "OD" sessions and the fourth 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 TTA 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. Contact Bill Bellows with questions, comments, or observations about this article. |
| Aerojet Rocketdyne's InThinking Network welcomes Steve Dightman and Dave Nave, both from Puget Sound, Washington, to co-lead our fourth Ongoing Discussion conference call of 2015 on April 16th and 17th and also our 184th session since we began in January 2000. As for a topic, Steve and Dave have selected Thinking in Community While Framing Your Project - Beyond Playing Nice in their first time with us as Thought Leaders.  
Dave Nave (right) has been a long-time friend in the Deming Community for longer than I can remember, perhaps dating back to the late 1990s, when Rocketdyne was part of Boeing. We were likely introduced by the legendary Al Viswanathan, a retired structural engineer with Boeing and a pioneer in diffusing Dr. Deming's ideas within Boeing. Dave has served as a long-standing member of the Forum Teams for the In2:InThinking Network. As best I can recall, I was introduced to Steve (left) by Dave. As you can read in his biography below, Steve has a passion for individual and organizational excellence, which remains firm well beyond his retirement from Boeing. In addition to serving as our April Thought Leaders, Steve and Dave will be presenting a 3-hour Pre-Conference session, as well as a Weekend Conference presentation, both on the topic of "Thinking in Community While Framing Your Project - Beyond Playing Nice." Steve and Dave begin their Thought Piece with these words, Local Optima It is quite common for people, groups, or business units to optimize their work activities towards the local recognition and financial rewards. This focus drives individual areas to work towards their respective 'goals' and 'objects' without regard to how their activities affect other areas. Each believing and espousing their action are for the benefit of the company as a whole. And why not? The business measurement system demands this localized focus and punishes those who do not conform. What is missing is the focus on the intended performance, value, or worth of what the whole project must do, as opposed to how the project is accomplished. No wonder most business players feel this conflict driven anxiety frustration in their gut, with little hope of resolution. "Being Nice" Training May Help, Conflicts Remain We may say we need to get along with each other better. "We need better listening skills," "We need better team skills," so we spend time and resources in Team Member, Team Leader, and the likes of "Ropes" training. Hopefully some of tensions will subside for a time, but they really won't go away. The core conflicts remain. The underlying issues remain. What if there was a way to address core conflicts while naturally re-skilling leaders and team members to the practice of playing nice with one another and multiplying their creative The Thought Piece continues with these ideas, As a 'community' of people committed to thinking together, the course of action is two fold. First is defining the elements of the project. What we call 'Framing' the project. Second is identifying solutions that will accomplish the goals. Using a series of divergent/convergent or inductive/deductive activities. The approach used is called Value Methodology. It is a suite of tools sequenced in a skillfully moderated process that reliably leads to empathy, insight, truly creative potential, critical thinking, insightful solution sets, by-in by the stake holders and a sense of productivity unlike none ever experienced before. The only real way to come to agreement is to experience it for one's self, focused on a real issue or product. Using the 'job plan' with a multidisciplinary group utilizes a set of tools sequenced so the desired behaviors happen naturally and great creative problem solving on real work happen at the same time. The workshop structure throws some twists such that participants are less likely sway the teamwork to their own vested interests. Link here to download Steve and Dave's Thought Piece.
Link here to register to attend.
dave@davenave.com with any questions or comments you would like to share with them in preparation for this OD session. Biographies Steve Dightman is a principle at RegularGuys Consulting which provides multi-faceted consulting and coaching aimed at improving business performance. Steve has a diverse background which includes many years with The Boeing Co. where he supported manufacturing operations, engineering, facilities, and business process improvement. He managed the Commercial Airplane Co., Education and Training group, supporting real time embedded computer avionics and simulation, engineering applications, operating systems, software engineering development, supply chain software applications and manufacturing equipment maintenance.
While at Boeing, Steve co-led a weekly study group for 13 years in the investigating and implementation of business improvement theories, methods and tools including Continuous Quality Improvement (CQI), W. Edward Deming-Philosophy of Management, Theory of Constraints, Systems Thinking, LEAN, Six Sigma, Value Engineering, TRIZ, NLP-Neural Semantics, Human Performance Technology (HPT) and others.
Steve is Chapter President of APICS-The Association for Operations Management-Puget Sound Chapter and holds certifications as a Certified Professional Coach (CPC), Certified Performance Technologist (CPT), NLP-Neural Semantics Master Practitioner, and received a 'Jonah' certificate from the AGI-Goldratt Institute. Dave Nave is a Management Engineer with a focus on processes and systems in the context of the surrounding organization. With experiences in coaching and mentoring for a variety of improvement efforts, he is known for moving projects forward by investigating complex ideas in terms of business- engineering-operations, build rapport, use critical thinking, and providing new insights in plain, easily understood language.
Dave's experiences include the automotive, defense, and aerospace, microelectronics, and vacuum technology industries, and he has worked as a machinist, CNC Programmer, a variety of operational engineering positions, and support functions.
Dave holds a MBA in Management Systems (Deming Scholars Program) from Fordham University and a BS in Manufacturing Engineering Technology.
In 2004, Dave was one of only 12 people worldwide selected by the W. Edwards Deming Institute® to reconfigure Dr. Deming's famous "Four Day Seminar" into the 2.5 day seminar "Out of the Crisis" and subsequently named as a training representative for The W. Edwards Deming Institute®. He is a member of American Society for Quality and a Certified Manufacturing Engineer, and an internationally published author.
Looking ahead, our next OD session is set for May 11th & 14th, with yours truly as Thought Leader on the topic of "The Good, The Bad, and The Beautiful: A Brief History of Quality." Link here to register to attend this conference call in advance of the announcement in early May. Coming next is our Thinking Together About... (formerly known as Better Thinking About...) webinars next month, with a focus on Thinking, hosted by Graham Rawlinson on Wednesday, May 6th (new date), from 11:30-1pm Pacific Time. Link here to register to attend in advance of the announcement, coming at the end of April.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. Link here to find a 1949 article in the Detroit Times about Wayne University's pending decision to drop Russ Ackoff from their faculty over a dispute within the Philosophy department. |
Podcasts from The W. Edwards Deming Institute This week's Podcast features Gordon McGilton, Director of a Private Equity Fund with investment in multiple industries. Gordon shares the humorous and unique way he was introduced to Dr. Deming's philosophies. He provides an example of a company that is using The Deming System of Profound Knowledge with great success, as well as how one can begin their own journey. Gordon starts with, "every business is just a system and that system delivers some change of state that customers are willing to pay for. Everything else in between is just by what method to do it." Listen as Gordon shares the Jet-Hot, Inc. story, a real example of how he applied the Deming System of Profound Knowledge and systems thinking to a coatings company on the verge of insolvency. After three years, with the same people, the company is prospering and the employees are proud of what they do, the company they work for, and the solutions they provide the customers. We step back and hear how Gordon was introduced to Dr. Deming's philosophies while working in the auto industry in 1980, when the documentary "If Japan Can, Why Can't We" aired on NBC-TV. This is a must listen podcast, as Gordon shares the tale of his initial resistance to attending Dr. Deming's 4-Day Seminar; and his subsequent understanding that everything he had learned in management, up to that point, was wrong. Gordon explores his Aha! Moments, the first of which was, "you can't increase someone's capability by offering them money or by threatening them." This was a huge breakthrough, as he was raised on an intimidation model believing that's how you got things done. The breakthrough came once he saw that providing employees with the instructions, tools, information and support they needed, is what actually improved their performance. Link here to find the podcast with Gordon. Link here to find the previous podcasts, featuring Monta Akins, Keith Sparkjoy, Dick Steele, 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." |
April 16th - 17th 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, April 16th, 12:00-1:00pm 2 - Thursday, April 16th, 1:00-2:00pm
3 - Friday, April 17th - 12:00-1:00pm
4 - Friday, April 17th - 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, April 15th 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 Togther 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):
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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-2015-04, Aerojet Rocketdyne Part 1 - 16-Apr - 7:00-11:30am (Pacific Time) Part 2 - 17-Apr - 7:00-11:30am Class #CP-2015-05, Aerojet Rocketdyne Part 1 - 11-May - 7:00-11:30am (Pacific Time) Part 2 - 14-May - 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-2015-02
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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