Acting and thinking

I while ago I was waiting for the Reading to Heathrow bus and I got chatting to a very interesting lady called Suzanne from Germany whose son also has Aspergers Syndrome. For some reason I mentioned the Buckminster Fuller quote which goes something like:

It is is easier to act your way into thinking differently than to think your way into acting differently.

She said that thinking is a frontal cortex activity which is a relatively recent part of our brain, and that acting is done by much older parts of the brain. She also said that when there is fear the frontal cortex shuts down - we act using the older parts of our brain.

The deming route to quality

is an excellent book edited by William W. Scherkenbach (isbn 1-85252-363-8). As usual I'm going to quote from a few pages:

Anyone who stops learning is old, whether at 20 or 80. [Henry Ford]

There is real waste when people are always expected to have an answer.

The operational definition of any procedure is what you get when it is carried out, not what is written down on a piece of paper.

Someone must manage by the decade.

As with any process, if you focus on the outcome, you will not be competitive. You must focus on the process.

Management works on the system, people work in the system.

All models are wrong. Some models are useful.

The questions are always more important than the answers.

Dr. Deming frequently received calls from managers imploring him to 'come, spend a day with us and do for us what you did for Japan'.

Time and again I see the benefits of using a team.

Teamwork characteristics ... cannot be determined if you interview ... one at a time.