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A Pillar of Deming’s Profound

Knowledge
Human Development &
Leadership Division
APPRECIATION OF A SYSTEM
A Pillar of Deming’s Profound Knowledge

By Paul Armstrong, MS; C. A. “Charlie” Barton PhD;

and Michael Yergeau

Copyright ASQ Human Development and Leadership Division

Why should you understand and appreciate systems? We offer you three
reasons. First, we are all part of many systems. Deming (2000) offered a
model for making changes to our world by understanding the systems that
surround us. He called this model (or theory) the System of Profound
Knowledge. It consists of four pillars: (a) appreciation of a system, (b)
knowledge of variation, (c) theory of knowledge, and (d) understanding of
psychology. In this primer, we will focus on the first pillar. However, you
will encounter aspects of the other three pillars as we discuss appreciation
for systems. Deming used schools, family life, even an orchestra as
examples of systems outside of a business setting. Systems in an
organization cannot exist independently of the people in the organization
(Deming, 2013). Furthermore, the experiences of people throughout the
organization, from the frontline worker to the leaders in the C-suite
determine whether or not changes to organization systems succeed or fail
(Barton, 2017). Deming (2000, 2013) argued that senior managers and
leaders cannot successfully change the processes in their organizations if
they do not understand human psychology.

Second, if we do not have an appreciation for systems, then our continuous

improvement activities may result in unexpected outcomes. Appreciation
for a system enables us to look beyond quick fixes and find points of
maximum leverage when we want to eliminate problems and improve any
system. Systems thinking helps us see past the latest news items of the day,
to see the danger in the instant fix, to see over a horizon and to better grasp
all the elements that are at play and how they interact with each other over
time. Deming reminds us, “No number of successes in short-term problems
will ensure long-term success. Short-term solutions must have long-term
effects” (2000, p. 25). Here’s another way to put this requirement. Short-
term successes must support the long-term goals of the area or
organization. While we crave the satisfaction of short-term wins, we must
be careful to align those wins with the overall objectives. Thus, long-term
success, the development of stable systems that support the work of the
organization, takes time.

The third reason is tied to learning. We must not stop learning if we want to
improve the world we live in. Improving our lives and the lives of the
people around us means we must be aware of the systems that we are a
part of. We must also seek to understand how our choices affect those
systems.

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 What is a System and What is Systems Thinking?

Many definitions of system exist. Lepore and Cohen define a system as “a

network of interdependent components, which work together to achieve
the goal of the system” (1999, p. 17). Deming (2013) used several
definitions for a system. He identified a system as “a series of functions or
activities (sub-processes, stages—hereafter, components) within an
organization that work together for the aim of the organization (2013, p.
72). He also described a system as “an interconnected complex of
functionally related components, divisions, teams, platforms, whatever you
call them, that work together to accomplish the aim of the system” (2013, p.
151). Senge et al. (1994, p. 90) said “A system is a perceived whole whose
elements “hang together” because they continually affect each other over
time and operate toward a common purpose.” All three definitions indicate
that a system has many parts that (ideally) work together to produce a
specific outcome.

The concept of systems thinking is well documented. The Baldrige

Excellence Builder framework (U.S. Department of Commerce, National
Institute of Standards and Technology, 2017) lists systems perspective as the
first item in the section on core values and concepts. Deming (2000)
appears to have taken the concept of systems thinking as a given. Goldratt’s
Theory of Constraints (Goldratt & Cox, 1992; Lepore & Cohen, 1999) is
about understanding any organization as a set of systems. All organizations
have someplace where bottle necks occur. Later, we will talk about Senge’s
(1990) use of cycles to identify the way systems behave. After reading this
primer, you may want to read about Senge’s work (1990; 1994) and about
Goldratt’s Theory of Constraints (TOC) (Goldratt & Cox, 1992; Lepore &
Cohen, 1999) and see how these resources can work in tandem to help you
improve your organization’s systems. Gharajedaghi (2006) saw systems
thinking as the key to removing the veil of complexity or chaos because the
viewer understood the interdependencies of the systems being observed.
Whether your organization uses TOC, Deming’s approach, or a business
excellence framework, appreciating and understanding systems lies at the
core of continuous improvement.

Why is Systems Thinking Critical?

To look at why system thinking is critical, let’s put off the academic
approach for a bit and start with a story.

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 There is a man and a woman. They are happily going about their
single lives, enjoying life and by happenstance, they meet one night in
a cozy café. They share a drink and some conversation. That leads to
an exchange of phone numbers and that happenstance meeting
becomes a few planned meetings that later become official dates. The
dates become a romance and the romance becomes an engagement
(don’t worry, the romance is still there). The engagement becomes a
marriage and with marriage comes some realities of family life: a
mortgage, some little ones, many dirty diapers, and barely balanced
work-home-life schedules. One day there’s a sock on the floor and
there is an eruption of emotion about that SOCK! Words are
exchanged…. “You don’t appreciate me anymore! You don’t
understand!” The other person may want to counter that verbal
explosion with an explanation about how the sock got on the floor,
how it was going to be put away later…but, is this REALLY about the
sock on the floor? A systems thinker would know that this is not
about the sock at all. A systems thinker would begin to wonder, “how
did a sock come to endanger this beautiful relationship that started
with a glance and became a romance?” The sock is an event…just one
event in a system that has been playing out, albeit quietly, almost
undercover, for quite a while. That sock isn’t really an event at all. It
is a visible trigger that now reveals that the reinforcing loop of
romantic relationship has some counteracting balancing, or even
negating effects at play.

And just when you thought that the ASQ was all about statistics, process
maps and quality audits, now we’re ready to improve the quality of
marriages. Okay, maybe we’re exaggerating there, but let’s unpack how we
could go about getting beyond the sock on the floor.

Peter Senge, in his best-selling work, The Fifth Discipline (1990), defines
systems thinking as a “conceptual framework, a body of knowledge and
tools that has been developed to make the full patterns clearer, and to help
us see how to change them effectively.” (1990, p. 7) Take note that systems
thinking is both a body of knowledge and a set of tools, sharing a clear
purpose. That purpose is to make effective changes. Effective is the key
adjective. Gharajedaghi (2006) argued that systems thinking rested on four
foundations: (a) holistic thinking - structure, function, and process, (b)
operational thinking - the dynamics of multi-loop feedback systems, chaos,
and complexity, (c) self-organization – moving toward a socio-cultural

3
model, and (d) interactive design – redesigning the future and inventing the
ways to reach that future (p. 107). As you can see, systems thinking,
provides us a way to look beyond the events and search for underlying
patterns or dynamics that help us to find ways that may have been hidden
or counterintuitive so that we can change the system.

Here’s another way to say this. Systems thinking acknowledges that the
sum is greater than the parts. For example, an orchestra is more than just a
lot of instruments. You do not improve a symphony by individually
improving each instrument and each player. When the brass section is too
strong, do you think that you will hear the string section clearly? So in a
business setting, when production is rewarded by pushing product out the
door while sourcing is rewarded by finding the cheapest materials, do you
think the organization will thrive? That push to ship coupled with flawed
material is likely to lead to a higher defect rate, rework, and for the
organization as a whole – a financial loss. There is an effective system for
reducing material cost and producing material for rapid shipment. Is that
the outcome desired by the organization? Or is the organization interested
in profitability: defined as the amount of money it gets to keep after
expenses?

Deming had a wonderfully concise view of a simple system that he

presented as a centerpiece of his initial teaching of business leaders in
Japan. He included it in The New Economics (Deming, 2000, p. 58) and in Out
of the Crisis (Deming, 1986, p. 4), as well. It would look like this:

Figure 1. System view of organization processes for creating products and

services. Used with permission: W. Edwards Deming, Out of the Crisis,
Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, figure 1, page 4.

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The beauty of Deming’s (1986) almost cartoon like simplicity is that it
makes it obvious that all the parts of any enterprise, from distant supplier
to future customer, are somehow linked together. And, when feedback is
added, it is then obvious that the system is not a static, one-shot picture, but
rather a frame out of a movie.

Process thinking, especially when someone uses process maps, encourages

a stop action view. While process maps are immeasurably more valuable
than a verbal description of a process (yes, a picture is worth a thousand
words), they tend to be a snapshot view. Systems thinking attempts to
elevate that process map perspective into a motion picture, one that
considers what happens when that snapshot occurs over and over, like
frames in a movie. To stretch the analogy, a movie, which may seem like
nothing more than a thousand pictures, results in dynamics such as
character development and plot evolution. So, you see how one small part
of a single picture may have enormous impact on the movie storyline.

A simple process map shown in Figure 2 illustrates a common

organizational activity: creating a product or service.

Figure 2. How inputs are transformed into outputs.

It reveals how inputs are altered into tangible outputs for the purpose of
satisfying customers. The process map allows process data to be
understood in their context of the flow of inputs, the capability and capacity
of the transformation, or the efficiency or effectiveness of products that
satisfy customers. What the process map doesn’t do is show the
interrelationships, the systems that reach between each process point.

Let’s take a look at the boxes in Figure 2. Together the boxes show the
process of producing a service. Yet, each box is linked by underlying
systems. A good systems diagram would show how the various parts of a
system work together to help a system to be self-sustaining, or where the
system is improving or worsening (Figure 1). Let’s go back to our earlier
example about materials quality (suppliers), production
(Process/transform), and customers. The system that rewards the sourcing

5
team for buying cheap material and the production floor for moving
product out the door penalizes the organization when the customer returns
the product and asks for rework, for a refund, or requires warranty service
for the product. System diagrams fill a void where process maps are
inadequate. Similar to process maps, system diagrams can always have
more detail, but unlike process maps, that detail doesn’t add density. The
detail reveals more complexity, usually dynamic complexity.

What are the Components of Systems Thinking?

This may all start to sound very Harry Potter-ish, with talk about
mysterious systems diagrams that delve into the mysteries of life.
Sometimes it feels that way. Remember the definition we used earlier: a
system is a “a body of knowledge and a set of tools” (Senge, 1990)? Let’s
take a look at the tools.

While the Deming (2000) approach in Figure 1 is classic and elegantly

simple, it is an introductory tool. We will build on the major features. The
major features are the arrows that show interdependency and
connectedness between the components of the system, and the direction of
their impact.

Senge (1990) offers two simple building blocks upon which we can build
system diagrams that help us see the dynamics in even the most complex
systems. These blocks are the reinforcing loop and the balancing loop.

The Reinforcing Loop

Reinforcing Loops describe dynamics that build upon themselves, either in
a growing sense or in an eroding sense. Its major features are that it builds
(or erodes) on itself, usually imperceptibly at first and then with significant
results over time.

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 A real-life example of a
negative reinforcing loop is
the USS Challenger’s
destruction due to O-ring
failure (Tufte, 1997). It
represents a dramatic
example of how reinforcing
loops perform. Tufte
examined how information
presented in 13 charts faxed
to NASA the night before the
launch was disregarded by a
high-level NASA official. The
charts contained information
about O-ring damage during
cool weather launches,
Figure 3. NASA managers dismiss
physics of resiliency, and
vendor engineers’ concerns about
experimental data.
the USS Challenger launch.

The Morton Thiokol (MT)

engineers, who recommended that the Challenger not launch, were
overruled by NASA officials. When NASA officials disputed the information
in the charts, the MT managers withdrew their support from their
engineers. This is an example of a
negative reinforcement loop.

A positive reinforcement loop example

would be the virtuous cycle set up by
an effective continuous improvement
program. Frontline operators may
know what causes a defect because
they are the ones creating items or
serving customers. In a manufacturing
environment, a frontline operator
might suggest a way to remove a
recurring defect. If the managers and

Figure 4. When frontline operator

suggestions are used to improve
processes, the organization achieves
higher productivity and reduced
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costs.
supervisors listen to the operator and put the change into practice, then
other operators can become confident enough to share what they know
about improving processes and systems.

The Balancing Loop

Not all dynamics build upon themselves. Some systems have a natural
balancing mechanism that prevents the runaway nature of the reinforcing
loop. A simple illustration of this dynamic is when you turn on the water in
the shower.

You put your hand in the flow

Figure 5. Setting the perfect
shower temperature requires
adjusting the faucets.
and feel the temperature. Whoa!!
Ice cold, so you increase the hot
water. It takes some time and
you may even add more hot
water, but as the water
temperature starts to warm up
and then get hot, you taper back
on how much you open that hot
water valve, and may even start
turning the valve down. You are
the regulator that prevents the runaway in hot water.

There are many engineering principles that reflect this sort of balancing
dynamic. Fans, generators, ships, pumps all have mechanical properties that
increase exponentially the force needed to make them go faster. A more
common example is your car’s shock absorbers, which provide increasing
resistive force with increasing severity of the bumps; i.e. the faster you try
to compress the shock absorber, the more it pushes back. Some would think
that we are describing getting a rebellious teen to clean their room, which
does provide an illustration of a complex system at work.

Like reinforcing loops, balancing loops happen so naturally that we usually

don’t even see them at work. Think of a leader of youngsters on a camping
trip, say in Boy or Girl Scouts. Some activities are inherently riskier than
others: such as using a knife and axe, or fires and cooking. It is easy for the
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leader to get absorbed in the activity of the moment and to lose sight of the
bigger picture of ensuring safety. Systems thinking leaders may realize this
beforehand and assign a dedicated adult whose sole job is to be the
designated “Safety Officer.” This choice provides a balancing loop just in
case the leader gets too caught up in the moment.

This dynamic, wherein a system has a mix of increasing and decreasing

components, is depicted with a balancing loop. The balancing loop’s main
feature is that it steadies itself over time, or, the growth (or erosion)
component has a counter-effect somewhere in the same system. Like the
reinforcing loop, that balancing effect is frequently unseen or unnoticed,
acting imperceptibly at first (like our first attempt to adjust the hot water)
and then seemingly inexplicably altering the behavior of the loop.

Ok, we skipped one HUGELY key ingredient in any system diagram. We

have arrows, we have components…and we have DELAYS. The delays are a
critical part of understanding systems. The delay helps us to realize that
many of the effects of components in the system do not happen
immediately; there is a delay between the cause and the effect. Imagine if
putting your hand on a stove didn’t result in a hot sensation immediately,
but rather hours or days later. It would take us a long time to learn that
putting your hand on a hot stove results in a burned hand. That could
explain why so many people will suffer through sunburn more than once in
their life; the delay between cause and effect makes the cause almost
invisible at the time. The delays are simply drawn but their presence on a
system diagram helps us to realize that we can’t just react to events. We
need to step back, sometimes way back, to understand what is happening.

How Do We Accomplish Systems Thinking?

Building Blocks

Our goal in this section is to whet your appetite; we will look at common
combinations of reinforcing loops, balancing loops, and delays. These
combinations reveal some complex realities so that you can find points of
leverage to make effective changes in your systems and organizations. We
can put these three elements - two loops and the delay - together in
limitless ways. Just like a mere four molecules can be combined in millions
of ways to define the human genome, these loops can be assembled to
explain very complex dynamics.

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Archetype Examples

Peter Senge and his team (Senge, 1990; Senge et al., 1994) compiled a set of
combinations that describe fairly common situations. They have given them
names that provide an easy way to recall them and to see if one of them
describes the system situation that you and your organization find yourself
in. They gave these common situations the title of archetype. It’s a cool word
that works well with academics, but you’d be just as well served by saying
“I’ve seen this situation before.” While we recommend that you take some
time to grab a copy of The Fifth Discipline Fieldbook (Senge et al., 1994) to
learn about these archetypes in more depth, we will provide a bit of an
overview here. Based on their years of experience, Senge et al. developed
the Situations described below. While they may be written as fictional, these
are quasi-realistic situations and represent ways to not only explain the
archetypes, but help to see common situations in which they are found.

Situation: I thought that this new process or initiative would catch on.
We went after the low hanging fruit and we had great successes but
now a year down the road, we seem to have stalled.

This is an example of a Limits to Growth (Senge et al., 1994) archetype,

which is a reinforcing loop, (usually the part we see easily). This archetype
has a balancing loop adjacent to it (usually the part we don’t see because of
the delay from things like market saturation, lack of capacity, etc.).

Situation: We were running into a problem and we couldn’t seem to

fix it, so we called in a consultant. That worked really well and we
were up and running, but then the problem happened again even
worse, and we had to call in that consultant again. We can’t seem to
get off our consultant addiction.

This archetype, Shifting the Burden, demonstrates an addiction loop. It

happens when we try to band-aid or go around solving the problem
ourselves and fix the problem just enough to get by, only to find the
problem is worse the next time it appears. This is a classic example: work
long hours, get stressed, have a drink, calm down, work longer hours, have
a bigger drink…ergo, an addiction loop.

Situation: We decided to beef up the web presence in our department

because the IT folks have been really super helping us. They like the

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 work and we like the new capability, (meanwhile, in another
department or two or three, the exact same decisions are being
made). Weeks later...The first department says, “We can’t seem to get
anything out of our IT folks, they used to be so responsive and
creative; now all we get are forms that ask us to justify why we are
asking for these new web features.”

This Tragedy of the Commons archetype gets its name from those colonial
villages that were built with the houses forming a common area (the
commons) in the middle where animals would graze. But who owns the
commons? And what happens when citizen Smith thinks, “Hey, lots of grass,
I’ll increase my flock a little” and then citizen Kane thinks the same, then
citizen Lopez…and so on. Pretty soon, the commons are barren because it
has been overgrazed. This situation happens slowly…the deterioration is
imperceptible at first. This archetype reflects a very common situation
when two or more entities are drawing on what appears to be a very large
resource...and they decide to draw a little more, until eventually, there is no
more resource.

Situation: We, the city of Manypeople, decided to build a bridge to the

city of Lotsofpeople. They liked the idea. We settled on a design and a
contractor. We are in this together. On our end, we decided to make it
a bit easier, so we incorporated some changes on how we deal with
the contractor. The contractor then makes changes that are reflected
in how they deal with the other city. That city, confused by the
changes, makes some changes to make it easier to deal with the
contractor on their end. The contractor adjusts and then we are
confused…so we make some more changes. Over time, we begin to
think that the city of Lotsofpeople are out to get us because they keep
changing. Similarly, the folks in Lotsofpeople are thinking the same
about the city of Manypeople. We have slowly changed from allies to
adversaries, not on purpose, but quite accidentally.

Here is an example of the Accidental Adversaries archetype: Senge’s team

(1994) stated that they see this archetype play out in nearly every
organization where silo walls go up between departments or in
organizations that on the surface are jointly pursuing a common goal. The
key to understanding this archetype is that each entity is working to make
its own life a bit better but doesn’t see how their changes impact the other
player(s). If the IT Group gets everything it wants, some other departments

11
are likely to be shortchanged. This is a classic example of how optimizing
one area negatively impacts another area: a situation that could have been
avoided by using systems thinking. Over time, these little changes build on
each other and erodes the performance of the system, and in this case the
system is the company.

When to Use Systems Thinking

Actually, it’s probably easier to say when you should NOT use systems
thinking. Here are a couple of examples. One, when you are still in the cast
the glance stage of a relationship…One, you might not want to explain how
systems theory predicts that you may end up in a stupid argument about
socks.
Two, when you are in a bar and you knock over the beer belonging to the
lead gang member, this is not a good time to talk about accidental
adversaries. Otherwise, systems thinking, as one of the four elements of
Deming’s (2000) System of Profound Knowledge or, as one of the five
disciplines (actually, it IS the Fifth Discipline) of a learning organization
(Senge, 1990; Senge et al., 1994), is
valuable whenever you want to Deming’s System of Profound
Knowledge
change and improve any system.
· Knowledge of Psychology
· Understanding Variation
We are not going to kid you. Systems · Appreciation for a System
thinking is not easy. It is not like · Theory of Knowledge
algebra with a fairly well-known
way to plow through a set of Five Disciplines of a Learning
equations. It is probably more art Organization
· Personal Mastery
than science, and the diagrams are
· Shared Vision
never complete. Yes, you heard that · Mental Models
right, they are never complete. · Team Learning
There is no way we will ever know · Systems Thinking
every component at play. Deming
expanded on Dr. Lloyd S. Nelson’s quote “The most important figures for
management are unknown”, when Deming said “that the most important
losses and gains are not even under suspicion” (2013, p. 83). But systems
thinking is as good a tool as any at helping you peel back the onion layers
and see what is at play. The diagrams, while never complete, provide a safe
foundation for creating a learning dialogue, for you and your team to
expose and test your assumptions about what is making the system do what
it’s doing, and to test your assumptions about how effective various changes
could be.
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It’s messy. The learning lies in drawing the diagrams and in sharing them
and then fine-tuning them. This process gets folks away from reacting to
events and toward thinking about cause and effects over time. And there
are many, many occasions and reasons for doing that.

Summary

System thinking is the foundation for continuous improvement. One of the

tools for developing a systems thinking mindset is Deming’s System of
Profound Knowledge (2000; 2013). In it, Appreciation for a System stands
alongside the Theory of Knowledge, Understanding Variation, and
Knowledge of Psychology as the model’s pillars. Appreciation for a System
is the pillar that promotes the ability to think beyond experience, recent
events and quick fixes, thereby contributing a view over the horizon.
Senge(1990) identified two components found in all systems: the
reinforcing loop and the balancing loop. Systems thinking is used to create
the building blocks harnessed by successful organizations as they align
interdependent components to work together to achieve the organization’s
goals. While systems thinking is considered to be more art than science, this
chapter offers tools and techniques to promote conversation and
appreciation for system dynamics. You will open up avenues for counter-
intuitive innovations that improve the physical, interpersonal and cultural
systems in which we work.

References

Barton, C. (2017). Employee lived experiences and initiative success in

Arkansas quality award recipient organizations (Doctoral
dissertation). Walden University. Retrieved from
http://scholarworks.waldenu.edu/dissertations/3277/
Deming, W. E. (1986). Out of the crisis. Cambridge, MA: Massachusetts
Institute of Technology, Center for Advanced Engineering Study.
Deming, W. E. (2000). The new economics: For industry, government,
education (2nd ed). Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Deming, W. E. (2013). The essential Deming: Leadership principles from the
father of total quality management. New York, NY: McGraw-Hill.
Gharajedaghi, J. (2006). Systems thinking: Managing chaos and complexity: a
platform for designing business architecture (2nd ed). Amsterdam ;
Boston: Elsevier.

13
Goldratt, E. M., & Cox, J. (1992). The goal: A process of ongoing improvement
(2nd rev. ed). Great Barrington, MA: North River Press.
Lepore, D., & Cohen, O. (1999). Deming and Goldratt: The theory of
constraints and the system of profound knowledge. Great Barrington,
MA: North River Press.
Senge, P. M. (1990). The fifth discipline: The art and practice of the learning
organization (1st ed). New York, NY: Currency/Doubleday.
Senge, P. M., Kleiner, A., Roberts, C., Ross, R. B., & Smith, Bryan J. (1994). The
fifth discipline fieldbook: Strategies and tools for building a learning
organization. New York: Currency, Doubleday.
Tufte, E. R. (1997). Visual explanations: Images and quantities, evidence and
narrative. Cheshire, CN: Graphics Press.
U.S. Department of Commerce, National Institute of Standards and
Technology. (2017). Baldrige Excellence Builder (p. 18). Retrieved
from
www.nist.gov/sites/default/files/documents/baldrige/publication
s/Baldrige_Excellence_Builder.pdf

The Authors in Alphabetical Order

Paul Armstrong

Paul Armstrong, PE, CQM/OE, LSSBB, has been involved in process

improvement for over 20 years. Mr. Armstrong has a BS in Marine
Engineering from the US Merchant Marine Academy and a MS in Industrial
Engineering from the University of Pittsburgh. A frequent speaker at quality
and business conferences, Paul brings an enthusiastic approach with his
systems thinking to help organizations solve cultural issues and improve
technical processes. Working across all types of organizations, he has a
depth of experience with engineering teams in the power industry. In 2006,
Mr. Armstrong founded eNthusaProve, LLC to provide enthusiastic
improvement consulting. His long study on Deming’s mandate to managers
to enable joy in work has helped many groups unpack how to apply this
powerful advice. Mr. Armstrong’s top priority is being with his bride at their
small farm in Lancaster, PA, with his three grown children and a handful of
giggling grandchildren.

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C.A. “Charlie” Barton

Dr. Barton has been involved in quality initiatives since her days in the US
Navy where she learned the value of forward thinking solutions, skillfully
delivered. She is fascinated by the question: Why do most quality initiatives
fail? In Northwest Arkansas, she helped set up sustainable job analysis
audits and job leveling processes at Walmart and developed reliability
models for assessing safety and compliance reports from the field for Sam’s
Club. Dr. Barton earned her doctorate in Management studies with a focus
in Leadership and Organization Change from Walden University. In 2017,
she received the inaugural Leadership Excellence Award from the College of
Management and Technology, Walden University for Distinguished
Leadership, Scholarship, and Mentorship. She also holds an MBA, is an ASQ
Certified Quality Auditor, and a 2017 Examiner for the Arkansas Governor’s
Quality Award program. She has worked in industries as diverse as retail
and manufacturing and in organizations of all sizes. Her research interests
include business excellence and organization change management,
especially storytelling and organizational stories.

Michael Yergeau

As a Utilities and Energy Management Leader at the University of Rochester

Mike is responsible for all aspects of high voltage electrical distribution to
over twelve million square feet of university medical, research, and
academic campus infrastructure. His 36+ years of energy industry and
organizational behavior experience includes the nuclear power industry
and having held the title of Director of Quality & Safety and establishing a
Quality Management System in a mid-sized engineering and construction
management firm. Throughout his career, Mike has endeavored to provide
an effective blend of innovative compliance and continuous improvement
strategies, including reducing work product error and improving
professional service efficiency. Mike has a Bachelor of Science in Mechanical
Engineering from the University of New Hampshire. He lives in Rochester,
NY with wife Robin and has three children and four grandchildren.

15
ASQ Human Development and Leadership Division
www.ASQHDANDL.ORG