Beyond Deming

A lively preview of Deming's timeless management ideas, from postwar Japan to modern organisations. They tease a hands-on Red Beads demonstration and a look at the 14 Obligations of Management. Stories include a bank case of conflicting departmental aims and why ‘best efforts’ fail without a shared aim. Promises practical, interactive sessions on leadership, systems thinking, and aligning teams.

How can leaders balance relentless change with human-centric values? In this Beyond Deming trailer, James Lawther speaks with Daniel Stane, founder of Inclusion Partners, about the upcoming February event on compassionate leadership. Daniel challenges the notion that compassion is a “nice-to-have,” framing it as a critical tool for tough decisions, cultural transformation, and reducing organisational suffering.The event will cover personal leadership qualities—such as presence and awareness—and a practical framework for embedding compassion into roles, networks, routines, and culture. Drawing on research from Awakening Compassion at Work, Daniel highlights how compassionate leadership fosters psychological safety, collaboration, and talent retention. Ideal for leaders facing pressure to deliver results while nurturing their teams, this session promises actionable tools for 2026.

John Seddon, an occupational psychologist and systems-thinking consultant known for applying Deming’s ideas, tackles why productivity and growth often stall. He discusses failure demand in services, how targets and regulation backfire, the limits of AI as a fix, and why leaders should focus on enterprise-level effectiveness and purpose-driven management.

Frank Devine, an experienced HR and leadership practitioner who created the Cathedral Model, explains his systematic, evidence-based approach to improving leadership quality. He discusses designing shared purpose and local behavior standards, sequencing coaching and feedback, treating root causes not symptoms, and scaling change with Rapid Mass Engagement. Multiple short, practical stories and experiments illustrate the model.

John Bicheno, lean scholar and educator who ran an MSc in Lean and directed research at LERC, unpacks Kingman’s Equation. He discusses how utilisation nonlinearly inflates queues. He illustrates with motorway traffic, a dice game, batching, arrival and process variation, and tactics like scheduling and setup reduction to smooth flow.