S4 E26 - An Important In2:In Thinking Announcement

In this short episode, I reconnect with Dr. Bill Bellows, a frequent guest and advocate for W. Edwards Deming's principles. The conversation focuses on reviving the In2:In Thinking Network, a nonprofit Dr. Bellows co-founded to improve how individuals and organizations work, learn, and think together. Dr. Bellows discusses the origins of the network and its 16-year legacy of bringing together diverse voices inspired by Deming, Russell Ackoff, and others to explore innovative ways of collaboration.

We also reveal exciting plans for a 2025 In2:In Thinking Network Conference in Santa Clarita, California. This event aims to merge communities from software development, systems thinking, and various industries to foster cross-pollination of ideas. The goal? An "oasis of sanity in a sea of madness," where passionate learners share experiences and challenge conventional approaches to problem-solving.

If you want to learn more or get on the mailing list, reach out to either of us.

Transcript

John Willis: [00:00:00] Hey, it's John Willis again, another Profound Podcast with repeating guest Dr. Bill Bellows hey, Bill, how's it going, man? 

Dr. Bill Bellows: Hey, John. 

John Willis: Hey, quickly we're going to do something really special in June 2025, right? We've been talking about this, you want to tell people about what, the event we're going to try to get together?

You're bringing, I would say bringing your folk and my folk into An atom smasher sort of event. But you want to talk about that quickly? 

Dr. Bill Bellows: Sure. What you experienced in March of this year was the reunion, a very special edition reunion. We refer to it of the. Into InThinking Network, which is a non profit I co founded in 2000, summer of 2000 with Dan Robertson.

Dan and I were the, got together at some Deming conferences, and then we had this idea of creating our own event. And then we had a board of directors with Marsha Dasho bill Cooper and Phil Monroe, and we put together an [00:01:00] annual event that lasted for 16 years. We held them in greater Los Angeles.

And the, the theme, I would say the, not the theme, but the yeah, the theme. The theme, the, our fundamental theme was improving how individuals and organizations. work, learn, and think together. And what's behind that emanating from, you know, what I was inspired by and Dan was inspired by from Dr. Deming and ACOF and others is improving how we work together in, in an organization and any type of organization.

And I just started more and more and more. I just thought we were. You know, we have these mental models and the question is, are they shared and, and, and not. And so it was that was our starting point. So it wasn't just Dr. Deming's work, just Dr. Taguchi's work. It was generally [00:02:00] we were attracting presenters and audiences that wanted to explore the whole idea that if we can improve how we think together which is again, you know, the idea of shared mental models, so we can improve how we learn and work together.

And then based on the excitement from that event that you attended, we have plans to renew these events. We ran the events from 2002 through 2017. For a number of reasons, we paused. There was excitement. And getting the band back together. So we had a very low key gathering out of that was a projection for what do we do from here?

There was a lot of energy towards let's. Let's try to do what we used to do. And so we're planning our, our first following event is going to be in June, June 20th through [00:03:00] 22nd, 2025. It'll be here in Santa Clarita, California, not far from where I work where I live Santa Clarita is about 40 miles due north of Los Angeles international airport.

We'll have a website. Up and going and announcements. I would say if people are interested in being on our mailing list to have them contact you or contact me, we get them on the mailing list. And then as we begin to roll out the announcements and create our social media presence, we'll have those those details.

But again, the audience isn't as as you found in the spring people that that work closely with Dr Deming with Dr Taguchi with others and and and we come together. They what we used to refer to it as is an oasis of sanity 

John Willis: in a 

Dr. Bill Bellows: sea of madness. 

John Willis: Yeah, that's pretty much. 

Dr. Bill Bellows: And you saw the energy.

John Willis: Yeah, no, it was you know, and I felt almost guilty being like the only sort of software DevOps person in the room. And that's when I started like in my goodness. [00:04:00] You know, what if half the room where, you know, people, you know, like the, the kind of people that sort of follow me or been in my book, people will be listening to this podcast right now, right?

Like, if we all have this sort of like, and you've met a good handful of these people who've like, they don't wait on me. They, they, they heard you a couple of times on podcasts on my podcast and they reach out directly to you. Right. And, you know, bringing those kinds of people and having this cross pollination of like, you know.

You know, my good friend, Jay Bloom always uses, and I think it's a clever way to talk about industrial economy work and, and, and, and knowledge economy work, right? And not that like, you guys don't do knowledge economy, but like, in general software delivery, although, and, and I just think that the aggregate of that, putting those 2 groups together in a place where there's so much passion.

And again, like, you know, I was telling you before we started recording here is like. I'm sitting around and I'm listening to a group of people talk about, yeah, you know, we had Peter come in, then we had Eliyahu come in, and then, you know, then something went, you know, and I'm [00:05:00] like, whoa, wait a minute, like Peter Senge?

Eliyahu Goldratt? Like, yeah, why, who else? You know, like, whoa, you know, like, so that was, you know, just a, to have these conversations with people that literally work with Dr. Deming, you know, like not just having stories about him, but like telling one gentleman told the story of something that they couldn't get even Deming or I think definitely Goldratt.

They went through like a couple of sort of these frameworks and they still couldn't solve the problem. And then, like, found the MIT beer game, I think, like, solved the problem, right? Like, it's, like, my, you know, that's mind blowing, just have people tell experiential stories like that. So, yeah. So, what, like I said, ping me.

We'll get you on the mailing list. We'll certainly make it aware, like, when the, but, like, I would pencil. If you're listening to this podcast or you're a big fan, I'm certainly the The conversations I've had with Bill and, and I, you know, I've had, you've probably noticed I've had a couple of pockets with some of the people I met there.

Oh yeah. Oh yeah. Want to have conversations with those people directly, [00:06:00] you know, penciling. You know, 

Dr. Bill Bellows: the people I've listened to on your podcast Mike Beck, not only will be there, but he's part of the planning team. Mike has presented at end to end Barbara Lawton. Oh, 

John Willis: that's worth the price of admission right there.

He's incredible. 

Dr. Bill Bellows: Now, David carriage who you've spoken about, did not attend, but he associates of his came over from Scotland. 

John Willis: Okay. 

Dr. Bill Bellows: This was a I mean, we attracted people literally from around the world. We had a professor from Siberia, who is a expert in Russell Aikoff's work came over. In fact, his presentation was entitled from, from Russell Aikoff from Russia with love, because because Russ is, is Russian by by nationality.

Okay. But anyway, it was a it was a very eclectic place. Every, every year we used to have you know, one or two speakers in that were international. [00:07:00] We attracted people from city government, nonprofits. All over very, very broad participation. So it wasn't just rocket people that I worked with at Rocketdyne.

It was a very broad mix of people interested in sharing their experiences and their respective organizations and, and people looking for inspiration. 

John Willis: Yeah. Yeah. Everybody was a learner, right? Like every, like that was the common there that I got that, like, you just want to be around people who have this insatiable appetite to learn, right.

And like, you know, like just, you can't. You know, again, I, I think if you listen to my podcast, you're, you're already there. 'cause why would you waste your, not waste your time? Like, you like this. There's, there's value in having conversation. Like I always say, like, I have one of the greatest jobs. I get this sort of turn on a recorder and let, like brilliant people teach me a bunch of stuff.

Right. So you know, doing podcasts. So yeah. It's, it's yeah, I, I, I [00:08:00] can't tell you, you don't want to miss it. And that's . Oh yeah. 

Dr. Bill Bellows: In our, in our early days for the first. 10 years Dr. Deming's eldest daughter, Diana Deming Cahill, who's chairwoman of the board of the Deming Institute.

She was a regular attendee. And I remember when the first time she attended, she came over to me just prior to dinner and she said I am so excited though, to tell you that I'm sitting next to your daughter and our daughter was like all at 14 at the time and our daughter, I think just prior to come over to me and she said, dad, I'm sitting next to Dr.

Deming's daughter. We had the dean, academic dean of West point one year, who was a one star general. We had the director of A director from NASA headquarters responsible for all of NASA's science work Jim Green, and We had one year husband and wife. He was one of the leading cosmologists in [00:09:00] the world studying galaxies, and his presentation was about his research.

So just an amazing eclectic group of people. People and one thing we took great pride in is we attracted people from different communities. We attracted people that worked closely with Russell, Russell Ackoff appeared twice. We had students of his, we had people that work with Dr. Taguchi, Dr. Deming, obviously, Peter Senge, associates.

It was always, always exceptional. And Again, we took a pause. There was a lot of energy about this reunion, and now we're looking to get back, get back online, so to speak. 

John Willis: Yeah, yeah, no, this is great. Well, good. All right, well, we'll have to keep people posted, and like I said, reach out to me, and we'll get you on the mailing list, and as soon as we get more concrete information.