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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 would 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 Jan Gillett, from Meriden, England, to lead our eleventh Ongoing Discussion conference call of 2015 on November 19th and 20th and also our 191st session since we began in January 2000. As for a topic, Jan has selected ISO 9001:2015 supports Dr.Deming's approach: let's take advantage in his first time with us as a Thought Leader.
If my memory serves me right, Jan and I crossed paths in 2000 at the UK Deming Transformation Forum in Birmingham and Brighouse, likely through an introduction by Alan Winlow, MBE. We likely met on annual basis as these Forums shifted from the Earth Centre to Wyboston. We reconnected earlier this year, at which point he accepted my invitation to lead this month's Ongoing Discussion and share his diligent efforts to express his views on the potential for the revised ISO9001 to enable corporate transformations.
According to Jan: With the 2015 revision ISO 9001 has just joined the transformation movement. That's a remarkable statement if true. Most of us have not taken Quality Management Systems too seriously. The basic ISO 9001 seemed to have about box ticking, in spite of several constructive revisions, and even if the TS 16949 supplement had some powerful components it still didn't really demand transformation.
But the 2015 revisions to ISO 9001 are big, demanding optimisation of the whole system in its context, and focused on the customer. Assessing the management of the quality system, not just auditing the quality management system.
A long time Deming enthusiast, Jan thinks that the changes mean that the revised standard needs to be taken into all transformation work from now on. And, he also hopes that at least some of the 1.1 million registered organizations will be spurred to look again (or for the first time?) at Dr. Deming's approach. Read some of his ideas in his Thought Piece, co-authored by Paul Simpson, one of the TC 176 committee members, and blessed by Professor Iizuka, the former chair of the International TC176.
Link here to download Jan's Thought Piece
Link here to register to attend
Contact Jan by e-mail at Jan.Gillett@pmi.co.uk with any questions or comments you would like to share with him in preparation for this OD session.
Biography
Born in 1946, Jan took a degree in Geology at Manchester University, England, in 1968, but then changed direction, got married and joined the Pilkington Group's Fibreglass Insulation Division. This was a big engineering business, driven by clever people who had little interest in customers and marketing. Through the 70s, he worked in sales, marketing and customer services, learning some good things-about technical and commercial product and market development-and some not-so-good-how to take advantage of and exploit customers and staff. In this capacity, Jan also learned a fair bit about leadership, also good and not-so-good, and led one of the first applications of Quality Circles in the UK.
In 1983, Jan became Managing Director of Pilkington subsidiary Kitsons Insulation Products Limited: a nationwide, multi-branch distributor. Here Jan learnt that success depended on customer reputation, and in turn that depended more on how they were dealt with than the technical aspects of what they used.
In 1986, Jan changed industries and become Managing Director of Sketchley Textile Services. When Ford "invited" to take up Deming's approach to "Total Quality Management," Jan thought they had nothing to lose. After a couple of hours of Dr Henry Neave with my board, Jan was determined to lead the consequent company-wide transformation. None initially had any idea of what to do, and even after meeting Dr. Deming several times during this work it was still pretty obscure.
Jan became a founder member of the British Deming Association, and learned lots more through that. But he never did understand, and still don't, why he was only one of three or four CEOs of maybe 400 Ford suppliers who took personal leadership of the quality transformation. It seemed obviously necessary for leaders to lead then, and it still does, but is still vanishingly rare.
Jan became a Director of the British Deming Association in 1989, and also Chair of the Alliance of Deming Consultants. He attended several of Dr Deming's Four-Day seminars, and provided contingency cover for Deming's last event in Europe, in Zurich in 1993.
In 1990, Jan had the opportunity to help establish PMI in the UK-to do as his main job that theme which so far had only been incidental to his employer. During the 90s, he built PMI, and, together with Jane Seddon in the mid-1990s, bought the UK PMI business from the Americans. Jan believes PMI is the largest organisation in the world to explicitly base their practise on the System of Profound Knowledge. He's retired from active consulting, but there's no stopping the learning and writing.
Books include "Working with the Grain" with Jane Seddon, (2009), "Making your work work" (2014), and "Implementing ISO 9001:2015" with Paul Simpson and Susannah Clarke (Nov 2015).
Jan is a Fellow of the Chartered Management Institute and a Member of the Chartered Quality Institute. He's been a non- executive director in several organisations and has presented at many conferences across Europe, Asia and the United States, and also serves as a visiting lecturer to the University of Warwick's WMG faculty.
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. |
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 week's Podcast features Dr. Lisa Snyder, Superintendent of the Lakeville (Minnesota) 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 Ron Moen and Cliff Norman, 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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November 19th-20th 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, November 19th, 12:00-1:00pm
2 - Thursday, November 19th, 1:00-2:00pm
3 - Friday, November 20th - 12:00-1:00pm
4 - Friday, November 20th - 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, November 18th 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-2015-11, Aerojet Rocketdyne, Canoga Park 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
Class #CP-2016-01, Aerojet Rocketdyne, Canoga Park Part 1 - 28-Jan - 7:00-11:30am (Pacific Time) Part 2 - 29-Jan - 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-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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