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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.
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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
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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.
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International Participants
Our conference call sessions are toll-free within the U.S. and Canada.
Link here to find your time zone in comparison to the Pacific Time zone, where the Ongoing Discussion conference calls are hosted every month from 12-2pm.
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.
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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.
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Aerojet Rocketdyne's InThinking Network welcomes Friends and Family of Myron Tribus, from across the US and UK, to lead our tenth Ongoing Discussion conference call of 2015 on October 29th and 30th and also our 190th session since we began in January 2000. As for a topic, we have selected "A Tribute to Myron Tribus" as the focus of our conversation with them.
I almost met Myron when he visited Aerojet Rocketdyne (then a division of Rockwell International) in the Summer of 1995, when he was invited to speak at our National Management Association chapter dinner. In a style of exploration I came to appreciate, Myron asked to be taken on a "walk" through our entire facility, starting with Receiving and ending with Shipping. Later that night, as the after-dinner speaker, he gave his impressions, pulling no punches, which was also his style. While I was on business travel during this visit, I have an audio tape of this session, which I will post when I find it in my archives. Link here if you would like to be notified when it is available for use.
Myron will celebrate his 94th on October 30th, the second day of this month's Ongoing Discussion. Sadly, he was diagnosed with short-term memory loss some 10 years ago, which has slowly progressed to Alzheimer's Disease. He lives in Pensacola, Florida, with his daughter, Kammy, and her family and spends his days watching television, with a fondness for baseball.
I met Myron for the first time while attending the UK Deming Forum in 2000, during which time we met with David Train and my family was introduced to "Bell Boating." As explained on his website, David credits Myron with the inspiration for this "Paddle for Life" pursuit.
Several years later, in 2002, Myron was the opening keynote speaker at the In2:InThinking Network's Inaugural Forum, with the title, Creating New ROIs. Link here to download his slides, for a presentation titled "IOU or ROI."
Myron is an organizational theorist, who was the director of the Center for Advanced Engineering Study at MIT from 1974 to 1986. He is known as leading supporter and interpreter of W. Edwards Deming, for popularizing the Bayesian methods, and for coining the term "thermoeconomics".
Born in San Francisco, Myron graduated from UCLA in 1942, and received his Ph.D in 1949. Later, he served as a captain in the army during World War II, and worked as a design-development officer at Wright Field.
Myron joined General Electric and became a gas turbine design engineer, but was unhappy in industry, and went back to academia, joining the faculty of UCLA where he taught thermodynamics, fluid mechanics, and heat transfer.
In 1961, he was named dean of Dartmouth College's Thayer School of Engineering, where he led the faculty in developing a new curriculum based on engineering design and entrepreneurship. He saw hands-on engineering design as being essential at all levels of the curriculum, saying, "Knowledge without know-how is sterile."
In 1969, Myron accepted a post in the Nixon administration as Assistant Secretary of Commerce for Science and Technology. On November 23, 1970, he left the Department of Commerce after 18 months to become Senior V.P. for Research & Engineering in Xerox Corp. From 1974 to 1986 Myron directed the Center for Advanced Engineering Study at MIT.
In addition, Myron is a co-founder of Exergy Inc., a company specializing in the design of advanced, high-efficiency power production systems. In his later years, Myron focused on the theory of structural cognitive modifiability of Dr. Reuven Feuerstein, an Israeli psychologist.
Concepts attributed to Myron include the "Perversity Principle":
"If you try to improve the performance of a system of people, machines, and procedures by setting numerical goals for the improvement of individual parts of the system, the system will defeat your efforts and you will pay a price where you least expect it."
Quotations include:
"What you see depends on what you thought before you looked."
"Management works on the system, people work in the system."
Participants in this month's Ongoing Discussion have two Thought Pieces to review in advance of the conference call. The first is to watch a 15-minute presentation from a 1994 conference hosted by Clare Crawford-Mason and Lloyd Dobyns. The second is to read his 11-page article, titled "The Germ Theory of Management."
Here's an excerpt from the opening paragraphs:
Doctors administer to the needs of their patients according to what they learn in school and in their training. They also learn by experience. They can only apply what they know and believe. They have no choice. They cannot apply what they do not know or what they disbelieve. What they do is always interpreted in terms of
what they understand is "the way things work". As professionals they find it difficult to stray too far from the common knowledge and understanding of their profession. They are under pressure to follow "accepted practice". In this regard, Doctors are no better and no worse than the rest of us. We are all prisoners of our upbringing,
our culture and the state of knowledge of our teachers, mentors and fellow practitioners.
Today we smile when we read that after sewing up a wound with silken thread, the surgeons of 150 years ago recommended
to leave a length of the thread outside the wound. This was done to draw off the pus that was sure to follow the insertion of
unsterilized thread by unwashed hands using an unsterilized needle.
Link here to register to attend and join Friends and Family of Myron Tribus in a tribute to him.
Cheers... Bill
Associate Fellow and Lead
InThinking Network
Aerojet Rocketdyne
Canoga Park, California
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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. |
The W. Edwards Deming Institute's
First Education Conference, November 6-8
Out of the Education Crisis
November 6-8, 2015
Cedarbrook Lodge
Seattle, Washington
Featured Speakers: Alfie Kohn and David Langford
Aim: Create awareness and desire to learn more on how exceptional learning environments are created that ignite passion and intrinsic motivation in our students and education leaders.
I wonder if anything is more important than children and their education.
- Dr. W. Edwards Deming
A Dynamic Force for
Improvement
Join in for an education conference like no other. The Deming In Education Conference will shatter the existing beliefs that are perpetuating our education crisis. Hear the stories of leaders who are challenging the status quo to create exceptional learning environments that preserves our children's natural curiosity and "yearning for learning". Learn how the systems approach of Dr. W. Edwards Deming will liberate fear and ignite passion in students and educators alike. Come discover the true potential and future of education in our country.
Link here to find out more.
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Podcasts from The W. Edwards Deming Institute
Beginning in 2014, 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.
This month's Podcast features Dr. Lisa Snyder, Superintendent of the Lakeville Public Schools. Lisa shares how the work of Dr. Deming is influencing her as a superintendent and the rewards and challenges of adopting his philosophies. Lisa's Deming journey began 23 years ago, when in a new job, she was sent to listen to Dr. Deming via satellite. The experience had a huge impact on Lisa as she connected Deming's philosophy to her own belief systems. She thought - this is the framework that public schools are desperately lacking. It was then that she became a Deming follower.
What resonated for Lisa, was the idea of systems thinking rather than evaluating and blaming people. When she started to think about abandoning the "blame game" and looking instead at flaws in the system, it was very powerful.
Listen as Lisa talks about shifting the "mindset" in public schools from working in silos to working in collaboration through systems thinking. And how, as a district seeking to create meaningful change in the public school system, they adopted a policy to lead their organization through a continuous improvement philosophy.
Lisa explains that it was both exciting and challenging to find where schools should have high levels of autonomy and where there should be more systems alignment for efficiency and effectiveness. But the process brought more people to the leadership table and broader sense of empowerment to those who would help change the philosophy of the district.
Link here to find the podcast with Lisa.
Link here to find the previous podcasts, featuring Alfie Kohn, Jim Benson, Louis Altazan, 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.
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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." |
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October 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, October 29th, 12:00-1:00pm
2 - Thursday, October 29th, 1:00-2:00pm
3 - Friday, October 30th - 12:00-1:00pm
4 - Friday, October 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, September 30th 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
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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):
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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):
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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
Class #CP-2015-10, Aerojet Rocketdyne, Canoga Park Part 1 - 29-Oct - 7:00-11:30am (Pacific Time) Part 2 - 30-Oct - 7:00-11:30am
Class #CP-2015-11, College of the Canyons, Santa Clarita
Part 1 - 19-Nov - 7:00-11:30am (Pacific Time)
Part 2 - 20-Nov - 7:00-11:30am
Class #CP-2015-12, Aerojet Rocketdyne, Canoga Park
Part 1 - 17-Dec - 7:00-11:30am (Pacific Time)
Part 2 - 18-Dec - 7:00-11:30am
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The New Economics Study Session
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-2015-3
Starting on 14-Sep, seven sessions on Mondays and Wednesdays, from 3:00-5:00pm, Pacific Time (ending on 5-Oct)
Class #CP-2016-1
Starting on 11-Jan, seven sessions on Mondays and Wednesdays, from 3:00-5:00pm, Pacific Time (ending on 3-Feb and skipping 18-Jan)
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