Meet Beth Thompson, a founding member of both the In2:InThinking Network and Pratt & Whitney Rocketdyne's Enterprise Thinking Network member.

The Facts:
My husband, Paul, and I have been married for nearly 25 years and have three children; Lacey,23 Jessica,20; and John,17. I was recently rehired by the Boeing Co. and relocated to Seattle, where I work on the 737 Program as a Human Resources Integrator. Since 2003, I've attended Fielding Graduate University where I am working on a Ph.D. in Human and Organizational Systems.

Network Participation:
I've attended the In2:IN Forum every year since its inception. I worked with Bill Bellows (we were a dangerous duo) at the time of the first Forum in 2002 and the next two years as well. During that first year, I was inspired and amazed by how all of us made 1 plus 1 add up to WAY more than 2...

Tell us about a recent "a ha" moment.
Of late, I've realized how important my friends are. The very best things in life are measured in human relationships.

What book are you reading now?
I'm currently reading The Power Elite by C. Wright Mills. Although this social science classic was first published in 1956, it's even more significant today - many aspects of what Mills predicted for our democracy in practice have come about...scary stuff...

What recent book have you read that you consider both beneficial and readable?
Hegemony or Survival, by Noam Chomsky, has rocketed up the bestseller list - I found it beneficial - but can't guarantee it will be readable or beneficial for others. It depends, if you know what I mean.

What advice do you have for people new to the In2:InThinking Network?
Everyone can make a contribution and together we can make a difference. Don't sit back, jump in!!

Meet Rick Ladd, another founding member of both the In2:InThinking Network and Pratt & Whitney Rocketdyne's Enterprise Thinking Network.



The Facts:
I spent the first couple decades of my adult life in small business, a large portion of it self-employed. Prior to joining Rocketdyne at 40 years old, I had literally dozens of jobs and a couple of reasonably successful businesses. I have been with what is now Pratt & Whitney Rocketdyne for almost 20 years, and am currently residing in Simi Valley, where I have lived for the past 12 years. I live with my wife and two daughters, who are three and five years old. I used to golf, and may do so again when my girls are a bit older. Currently, I have no life other than my family and that pesky job I do.

Forum Attendance and What Inspired You to Attend:
I have attended every Forum with the exception of 2005. I have been a supporter and sometime accomplice of Bill Bellows' efforts at Rocketdyne since I first met him sometime in the early to mid-nineties. The In2:IN Forum is a wonderful, and logical, extension of that work.

Tell us about a recent "a ha" moment.
Both of our daughters are adopted from the People's Republic of China. We returned with our youngest in early September of this year (2006) and she celebrated her 3rd birthday in early November.

I have experienced numerous "aha" moments with our girls as we struggle to understand and deal with how they have been affected by both their institutionalization and their foster family experiences.

With the younger one, it is a continuous learning experience to try and understand the dynamics of how a nearly three-year-old learns to trust and become close to total strangers who have (in her mind) essentially uprooted and abducted her from the only life she had ever known.

I suppose every word or phrase she learns in English (she only understood and "spoke" Cantonese prior to the adoption) is an "aha" experience.

What book are you reading now?
I am currently reading Clockspeed: Winning Industry Control in the Age of Temporary Advantage, by Charles H. Fine.

What recent book have you read that you consider both beneficial and readable?
Although not recent, there is a book I have read three times - each time experiencing a life changing revelation. I have also frequently referred this book to others. In fact, it is the book I refer to more frequently than any other. I also seek out passages from the book on the Internet occasionally. The book is The Wisdom of Insecurity, by Alan W. Watts.

What advice do you have for people new to the In2:InThinking Network?
Try to keep in mind how easy it is for humans to discount, or completely misunderstand, the cultural lens through which we view our experiences.

Having an open mind is more than a mere intellectual exercise. It also intimately involves emotion and interpretation, both of which are heavily laden with cultural baggage.

This debut seminar has been postponed until 2007.

We continue to be excited about offering a course which differs from the conventional courses on project and program management (PPM) in that, whereas they work from the inside out, this course works from the outside in. It takes a systemic rather than an analytic approach to the process. Rather than work on aspects of PPM taken separately and then trying to synthesize them into an overall approach to the process, this course starts with the effect of the organizational context within which PPM takes place. It shows that without changes in this context, PPM is severely handicapped. The problem then, for those who cannot control the organizational context of PPM, but can control such management itself, is how can they approximate the types of context changes required to make PPM effective? In this seminar, our aim is to show you how to achieve these results.

Visit our website for additional seminar details, including a downloadable brochure .

Schedule: Dates TBD in 2007
Location: TBD

The Four Obsessions of an Extraordinary Executive: A Leadership Fable

Author: Patrick M. Lencioni
Publisher: Jossey-Bass
Length: 184 pages
Reviewer: Dale Deardorff

We have another easy to read book from the author that is written in a fable format containing many simple but effective Leadership and Executive learning points. A fictional story is unique because it can engage the reader in a distant situation and create direct correlations from similarities which do not point directly at people or events in your organizational culture. The 3rd person fable allows the reader to construct new meaning not currently in existence simply by sharing in a story that is definitely not about them.

The first three-quarters of this book consists of a fictional account of the "Telegraph Partners" technology consulting company run by the CEO Rich O'Connor. Mr. O'Connor operates his company according to four personal disciplines which create and reinforce the organization's culture and community of practice. In fact everyone in the company knows and lives the meaning of the disciplines and understands how they drive positive organizational behavior and accountability.

The four disciplines are:

1. Build and Maintain a Cohesive Leadership Team;
2. Create Organizational Clarity;
3. Over-Communicate Organizational Clarity; and
4. Reinforce Organizational Clarity Through Human Systems.

by Beth Blankenship (an excerpt from her paper with Peter Petersen)

The Department of Agriculture - an incubator of ideas

W. Edwards Deming began working at the US Department of Agriculture in 1928. He was hired as a physicist and became involved in statistics. Deming was able both to recognize the value of great thinkers and to integrate their ideas. A decade later, in 1938, Deming organized a series of lectures sponsored by the USDA. At that time in the USDA, Deming wrote that there was "a tremendous interest among agricultural research workers in distribution theory and in statistical testing of hypotheses, as a consequence of which there was grown up a corresponding thirst for knowledge and new methods of inference." The USDA Graduate School has persistently endeavored to supply the requisite academic courses, and to supplement them whenever possible by lectures from other fields and other lands.

These lectures by distinguished speakers had a substantial influence on his thinking. But it was not a passive influence. Deming had both the ability to recognize the value of advanced and complex work and to appreciate its significance. In due course Deming arranged for three people in particular to present at the USDA. They were Walter A. Shewhart, Ronald A. Fisher and Jerzy Neyman. Clarence I. Lewis was also invited. Although Lewis was unable to lecture at the USDA, his influence on Deming was nevertheless significant. The influence of these four men on Deming can be seen in his work at the Department of Agriculture, the Department of Census. the War Standards Board, Statistical sampling work throughout the world, and the Quality management revolution in Japan and in the USA.

Walter Shewhart had the greatest single influence on Deming. While Shewhart was Deming's mentor their relationship was not limited to that of a student and teacher. They were colleagues and friends as well. Deming deeply valued his relationship with Shewhart and found contact with Shewhart inspiring. Shewhart was a deep and original thinker. His work on statistical quality control became known throughout the world, but this represented only a portion of his many contributions. Deming valued Shewhart's ideas and saw how some of them could be applied to new types of problems.

Shewhart used the ideas of C.I. Lewis, a Harvard philosopher, to make his own ideas more precise. The influence of Lewis on Shewhart can be seen in Shewhart's book Statistical Method: From the Viewpoint of Quality Control. This book contains a series of lectures that Shewhart presented at the Department of Agriculture. Lewis's ideas on the theory of knowledge influenced Deming deeply. This influence is evidenced in Deming's writings and his life's work.

Deming also considered Sir Ronald Fisher a brilliant thinker. Fisher's approach towards statistics and statistical theory was based on his scientific background. Fisher insisted on the need to understand statistical theory as something separate from mathematical theory. Fisher's contributions included the development of methods suitable for small samples, He believed more could be learned from multiple experiments under different conditions. Deming recognized this theory as significant, and invited Fisher to speak at the Graduate School of the Department of Agriculture.

Egon Pearson, a rival of Fisher, and his friend and colleague Jerzy Neyman were at University College in London at the same time as Fisher. Pearson and Neyman were mathematical statisticians who perfected the method of random sampling.

Deming recognized the contributions Neyman and Pearson made to sampling and Neyman presented his views on sampling at the Graduate School of the Department of Agriculture. Deming also edited a book containing Neyman's lectures at the Department of Agriculture. The ideas from these lectures were later, at Deming's recommendation, applied to the 1940 census. The results produced a greater precision in sampling techniques and a lower cost of conducting the US census.

The balance of the article expand on the influence of these four men on the views of W. Edwards Deming.

The Ongoing Discussion (OD) for December will feature Ralph Wood, retired corporate director of United Technologies' "Achieving Competitive Excellence" program.

On Thursday and Friday, December 14th and 15th, Ralph will engage us in a dialogue on the topic of "Performance Culture."

This month's OD announcement will be released on or before Friday, December 8th.

For those readers not already on the OD mailing list - click below.

Many of our "Network Members" pride themselves in making a positive difference in the world.

Denise Howard, former Forum speaker, was honored on November 16th in York, England with a "New Business Award" for the New Business of the Year will be Smiles All Round, the new estate agency in Fossgate, York, the first venture run by Denise Howard since she sold YorkBoat, a previous overall winner of this competition.

Check out John Dowd's Asia Times article on Dr. Deming's first visits to Japan in a recent article in the online Asia Times.

Mark your calendars to join us for our Sixth Annual Forum, to be held in Los Angeles, beginning on April 12th and ending on April 17th.

Confirmed conference speakers include Micah Fierstein, Tracy Huston, Ann Majchrzak, Paul Morgan, Joseph Parent, John Pourdehnad, Bob Pratt, Sheldon Rovin, and Lyn Wiltse.

Watch this spot for coming Forum details.

THE 13TH ANNUAL INTERNATIONAL
DEMING RESEARCH SEMINAR
Feb 12-13, 2007
New York City, New York
wedresearch@fordham.edu

The W. Edwards Deming Institute and Fordham University invite your participation in The Thirteenth Annual International Deming Research Seminar, 12-13 February 2007 in New York City. The Annual Research Seminar brings together people from around the world, and from a variety of specialties, to develop an understanding of Dr. Deming's theories in a wide-ranging context. For a list of topics and speakers from the last Research Seminar, click here.

Venue:
Fordham University at Lincoln Center
113 West 60th Street
New York, NY 10023

To register, please visit the Deming Cooperative website.

In consideration of our year-end reflections, this month's idea comes from member Rudy Hernandez...

"Time has no divisions to mark its passage, there is never a thunderstorm or blare of trumpets to announce the beginning of a new month or year. Even when a new century begins it is only we mere mortals who rings bells and fire off pistols."

Thomas Mann

1875-1955, German novelist and social critic

F-Laws: Management Truths We Wish To Ignore

Russell Ackoff has written a new book called F-Laws. What is an "f-law?" According to Russell Ackoff: f-LAWS are truths about organizations that we might wish to deny or ignore - simple and more reliable guides to managers' everyday behaviour than the complex truths proposed by scientists, economists, sociologists, politicians and philosophers. A short version of the book can be downloaded here.