S5 E7 - Dr. Bill Bellows - Thinking About Thinking and the In2:InThinking Forum 2025

I have a deeply insightful conversation with Dr. Bill Bellows in this episode of the Profound Podcast. We dive into the heart of what it means to think about thinking—a concept that lies at the core of the In2:InThinking Network, a community Dr. Bellows co-founded to carry forward the transformational work of W. Edwards Deming and other systems pioneers.

At the center of our discussion is the 2025 In2:InThinking Forum, happening this June 20–22 in Santa Clarita, California, and also available virtually for free via live stream. It's a gathering of minds, where humility, curiosity, and collaboration take center stage. If you're in DevOps, digital transformation, or operations—and especially if you're exploring how Deming's ideas apply in modern contexts—this is the event for you.

Dr. Bellows takes us on a journey through the origins and evolution of the In2:InThinking Network, which emerged in the early 2000s as a response to the declining presence of Deming-centered conferences. Recognizing the need for a West Coast community of deep thinkers and doers, Dr. Bellows and his colleagues created a space where engineers, IT professionals, healthcare leaders, and educators could unite in their pursuit of better systems thinking and action.

We explore how systems thinking applies far beyond manufacturing, touching software delivery, digital infrastructure, education, and even AI. Dr. Bellows shares why this kind of egoless, psychologically safe environment is essential for innovation, allowing both newcomers and veterans to engage deeply without pretension.

We also touch on the Red Bead Experiment, Deming’s ideas on variation, and the costs of overlooking systemic thinking in today’s organizations. Dr. Bellows reminds us that better systems start with better conversations—and that starts with communities like In2:InThinking.

You can sign up for the event on In2:InThinking Network’s website: https://www.in2in.org

Transcript

John Willis: [00:00:00] Hey, this is John Willis. This is another one of those profound podcasts. We've got a guest that I think everybody who's stuck around long enough to listen. This podcast is one of my best guests. You know, I say that to all my guests, but like I kind of like Bill quite a bit. So Bill, welcome back to this show.

Dr. Bill Bellows: John. Great to be back. 

John Willis: Yeah. Yeah. So I think most of you, like, again, know Bill pretty well. We'll, we'll sort of close up with some stuff like where he is at now. And, but we got a big event coming up, up and, you know, we, we Bill graciously invited me was it two years now? I don't, when was it Year?

It was a year. I was, time flies. Yeah. You know, and, and it was, you know, I didn't realize, I didn't know. I took a chance and I, I will tell you what, I'll let Bill give you the background and all, but like it was. It was an incredible event for me, and I, I'll give you some of my reasons after Bill goes through the sort of what it is, where it came from, but, and then I'll give you a little bit of why I think if you're in DevOps or if you're a system thinker, if you're a system thinker [00:01:00] and you're listening to this it, it's a must.

We'll have a really good time. So Bill, take it away. 

Dr. Bill Bellows: Yeah. With the end-to-end thinking network is, a nonprofit then I was a co-founder of in roughly 2000. And a little bit of background I was going to, at that time in the late nineties, there were three Deming, three big Deming conferences a year.

Two hosted by the Deming Institute, A a spring and a fall. And then the summary event was the Ohio Quality and Productivity Forum, otherwise known as OQPF, which started in 86, 87. Timeframe of Dr. Deming was a regular attendee, and I didn't find out about OQPF until after he had died, and I heard stories that when he was alive, there'd be.

Seven, 800 people attending every year. [00:02:00] Once he died, the attendance dropped, you know, a hundred or so a year. In fact, the very first time I went, I think it was 1997, they said this could be our last event. I was there with, met a few people we're just discovering that I said, oh wow, you can't stop. We're just finding out about this.

And it was a bunch of people that were, you know, worked, had, worked closely with Dr. Deming. But also when, when he was alive, he was a regular. And then the Deming Institute conferences started in the. After Dr. Deming died. So anyway, within a short period of time, I found out, became a regular attendee of these three events.

And then but just to find out that OQPF was looking at dying. And then but the other thing that was interesting is I bumped into, I, there were, there was a regular group of people there that I got to know. And and they would hand out the roster and [00:03:00] you could see who's coming from California. I was coming from Los Angeles and, and you know, happened to stumble upon that.

A couple others also coming from the west coast, and we were kind of kidding that, you know, three times a year we were going east of the Mississippi to these Deming events and it'd be nice if there was something on the west coast. Well then in I think 1999 was the last. Deming conference in the Springs.

Now we're down to two events. And then meanwhile, the OQPF people every year were saying this is gonna be it. And we were pleading with them, you know, keep this going. And then in the summer of 2000, yeah, it was, it was August, 2000, they said this is the last OQPF event. And in each of these events, you know, I was there with, with Dan Robertson also from, he was from San Jose.

And, and after we heard the news that OQPF was over Dan and I just looked at each other and he said, [00:04:00] Hey, that's our, that's our queue. And, and so I still have the original email that Dan sent me shortly thereafter saying, essentially just confirming that we're up for this. I said, absolutely, we're gonna go do this.

And so Dan and I became the co-founders. We put together a board of directors of five folks. Marshall Dasho, who is from, from the San F from the Bay Area, Deming user group with Dan Dan Ock, and then Bill Cooper and, and Phil Monroe from San Diego who were, the senior citizens in the Deming se, senior members of the Deming community in San Diego where there was a a, a San Diego Deming community.

So anyway, the five of us became, the board pulled together coworkers within Rocket D and we had a next thing you know, we got a planning team of, you know, three to four dozen people. And, we launched the very first end-to-end forum. We scheduled for over a year [00:05:00] down the road. We gave ourselves over a year to put this all together.

The very first one was April of 2002, and our big concern was was after nine 11. 

John Willis: Oh yeah. I wonder, I I just saw, I'm thinking, you know, I think most people probably get it, but what, how'd you land on, I mean, In 2 In thinking? 'cause it's a sort of a, I mean, mo most people don't. I know you do. You know, 'cause we, we've had plenty of podcasts on it and I've listened to almost all your podcasts on the Deming Institute.

Your a systems thinker. But I, a lot of people, I, I don't think that's the first thing they think about when, when they're thinking about Deming, about system thinking. So how'd you guys land on end-to-end thinking? 'cause I think it's a clever name. I. 

Dr. Bill Bellows: Well, what's interesting is a Racine colleague in the early nineties when I was doing the Gucci training at Rocketdyne got me really excited about thinking about thinking, 

John Willis: right?

Dr. Bill Bellows: His name is Ruter Hernandez manufacturing engineer and and then another close colleague who you met at last year's. [00:06:00] Reunion event was Tim Higgins and Tim was a close colleague and so they were on the, so, so within Rocketdyne we were already thinking about thinking and, and this term, in thinking Rudy coined and in the 2000 timeframe before this In2In thinking network organization existed, the, the concept of thinking about thinking.

Was was, was something we were, we've been doing for four to five years within Rocketdyne, which was, you know, becoming aware of our thinking patterns, you know, paradigms but heavily steeped in Deming's, Dr. Deming's ideas, ginche Taguchi's ideas and then later Russell KO's ideas. Also Ed Edward de Bonos.

So we were all things thinking about thinking. Not, not just Deming. And so when we formed this, you know, when Dan and I had the idea of we're gonna have a West Coast conference [00:07:00] the, originally we called it the West Coast X Forum. And, and, and it. We didn't have the X yet. We knew, we had in Mind forum after the Ohio Quality Productivity Forum, but in the original emails for the one, you know, the placeholder name was WCXF.

Wow. We formed the team, Rudy and a couple other colleagues from Rocket Rocketdyne were on the team to give us a name. Well, so Rudy comes back a couple of days later and says, we're gonna call it the In Thinking Network. And I just did a, a palm print. I thought, but of course we already have the name. 

John Willis: Now.

We had 

Dr. Bill Bellows: to explain this concept of thinking about our thinking to the others. And then when we filed to become a a legal organization and we put in the name, in thinking. Network and the state of California came back and said, there's other organizations with a name [00:08:00] similar to that. Why don't you think about putting something ahead of that?

Or Can you put some words? And so we went back to Rudy and the others working on the naming team, and they came back with IN. The number two, you know instead of INTO, it was IN and then Colon. And so Rudy, Rudy and some others from Rocketdyne were on that team. But a big thing is. We were already thinking about thinking that that was embedded in what we were doing at Rocketdyne.

So it wasn't so all along. It wasn't just Dr. Deming's ideas. I mean, Dr. Deming was, I mean, Dr. Deming's ideas, as you discovered in your research for the book, came from many people. So we didn't see it as just dimming. And, and so what we had in mind was a place where people would come and, and, and. Maybe know nothing about Dr.

Deming's work. Maybe they're coming in because they've heard of Dr. Taguchi, or, or maybe they've [00:09:00] not heard of any of this, but what they were gonna get every year. Was presentations by people who worked closely with Dr. Deming. Dr. Deming's, eldest daughter. Diana was a regular attendee for the first half dozen or so.

Kevin Cahill, who is the president, the Deming Institute, was a regular attendee and his wife Judy. So we had people in the, in there that were very deep and very steeped and Deming. But we also invited people from. The Systems Dynamics community. We had the president of Pegasus Communications, which was a, a huge conference organizer every year.

We had their president speak on a regular basis. Peter Senge at MIT , he had another thinking organization. We connected with them. So what was awesome was we had a, a Deming Foundation, but it wasn't just Dr. Deming's ideas, it was Deming's ideas plus [00:10:00] others. But what we wanted to create. It was a, a place where people can come together, become more aware of their thinking, but then learn what to do with it.

So it wasn't, what we didn't want to do is, is have people think, oh, those are a bunch of people that just get around and think, no, it's thinking plus action. 

John Willis: That was, that was the thing that, and you know, I still want you to go through some, like where did we, you know, where'd you go through the years?

What happened? 'cause I've heard like great stories of different people you brought in. But that was the thing to me is, you know, for like me, I come into, and Johnny come lately in the Deming game as they say. And I. You know, and I'm, I'm trying to figure out, and all this stuff makes sense 'cause I've been in operations, infrastructure, I, you know, I've been, you know, in fact, you know, I think I even said in my book, I was probably hovering around it at GE Capital and, you know, in my early Exxon days, I mean, I probably just didn't know.

You know, I, I definitely not, I think about it, were control charts flying all over the place in my early days, Exxon. But but the, the thing [00:11:00] that I think was, you know, as a lot of people struggle who come in from the outside are not in manufacturing, it's hard to find people like you and the people that are the, In2In Thinking network.

And because, so I'm sitting around and I'm, you know, kind of keeping my mouth shut, which is hard for me to do. And and I'm listening to these conversations. And, and their conversations reminiscing. Oh, yeah. Well, you know, we were building the triple seven. We had to do this, and, and then we brought Peter in, and then we bought, like, and then we got, you know, we brought in and they, and they're using first names.

And I'm like, whoa, whoa, hold on. Did you just say you, you worked with Peter Senge? Like, yeah, well, who else? You know, like, and then I'm like, now I was able to dig in like, what, what, what was the. You know, 'cause everybody was sort of speaking the same language. Yeah, I remember that. You know, it's like you ever go to a, a dinner with a bunch of government people, they use a bunch of words.

Unless you ask questions, you have no idea what they're talking about. Right. And you know, so I'm like, okay, now [00:12:00] I'm gonna open my mouth. 'cause I wanna know and like it telling me like, these queuing problems and really hard problems for how to, you know, how to do supply chain. And it was, it was really for the first time I saw a little bit of a light in.

And I think a lot of what you do on your podcast and what we've done on podcasts together, I think that opens up a lot like what Taguchi can mean for it and software delivery. We've had these conversations, but I mean to me to sit around and be able to ask people who literally did, you know, high consequence manufacturing.

You know, rockets and aircraft and, and be able to say, oh yeah, no, this is exactly how we implemented Deming's idea. Here's exactly how we implemented Taguchi's ideas. That was, that was so eye-opening and helpful for me to be able to just see people who doesn't just write about the theory or talk about the theory.

Or, or, or I guess [00:13:00] the other thing is, or if you read somebody and you're not connected. You can't ask that stupid question, right? They're like, what does that acronym mean in a government dinner? You know? You know, so, yeah, I mean, that to me, that was, it was like, you know, like, and that's why I say, as we put, when we get to the end of this, we'll talk about the dates and all that stuff, but like, it, like, if you think like me and you, like the way I think you need to be at this event, I'm just telling you because you know, I, I, I can guarantee you you'll be very happy you came.

So, 

Dr. Bill Bellows: well, I'm saying is it's an opportunity if you're a newcomer and you're, I mean, one thing that comes to mind, John, is, and one of the last podcasts I did in my second series with Andrew Stotz, I mentioned that I, I think when, when we, you go to work in an organization. You know, having studied finance or engineering or [00:14:00] whatever it is we're studying and, and get a job in an organization, we're excited to have a job, excited to be on our own.

We're excited to go from doing these problems and studying these things and getting paid to do things. We studied in school and it's, it's a thrilling experience, but I think it, what I commented on is I think it takes. Four to five years of, of that excitement where it's heads down and your boss says, Hey we need some help with this.

We need go work on this, go work on this. And then at some point in time, I think we, we look up and we hear those lunchtime conversations with the, the more senior people that we work with. And we hear them. Maybe for the first time challenging decisions that are being made in the company, 

John Willis: right? That, 

Dr. Bill Bellows: that we, that we heard earlier, but we didn't have a reason to say, to think, you know, why are they commenting about this?

But now we're [00:15:00] beginning to realize maybe there's something to what they were saying that's starting to make sense. And I say that because I remember. Working on, on a master's degree working summers. Then with my PhD working and it was all technical and it, and it was a number of years before I started to pay attention to how the organization operated.

And I say that because for those that are becoming aware. , of, you know, starting to question how decisions are being made, how resources are being allocated. Then the in, In2In thinking network is a great place to, to, you know, the Forum is a great place to come to meet people like yourselves that are questioning and then come across people that are challenging those things and, 

learning, you know, having learned from Deming and Ackoff and others how are organizations operating and how might they operate? [00:16:00] And, and a very simple thing to add to that from Dr. Deming's Red Beat experiment. It is, I. What I so admire about the simplicity of the Red Beat Experiment, which you could, if you just do a Google search for, you know, Deming Red Beat Experiment the, the Deming organization, Deming Institute deming.org has some videos you can watch and, and what Dr.

Deming demonstrates is that the work. The performance of an organization as measured by, you know, number of widgets being delivered, lines of code being delivered how well things integrate, all those things within, within an organization. Our measures of the system, not the individuals that, that, and, and, and just to expand upon that, we're so used to going to school at the earliest stage, taking an exam and, and going home and telling mom and [00:17:00] dad, this is how I did on the exam.

Well, one of the things I learned from Dr. Deming years ago is how well I did on the exam. It was not just a measure of me, it had to do with John as a classmate asking questions that I learned from. Mm-hmm. It had to do with how good or bad the instructor was. And, and, and so if you're, if, if you're waking up to Dr, if you're new to Dr.

Deming's ideas imagine the possibility. That your grade is not a measure of you alone. That what the grade is a measure of is you, the education system that includes you and, and so you contribute to the grade, but the grade is not just you alone. And when you have that mindset. You know, it's, it's no longer all the burdens on me.

Now I'm beginning to realize that maybe I take longer. Maybe I need other examples, and, and, [00:18:00] and we're so used to thinking that I perform badly on the exam. Yeah, yeah. Now it's like, well. Well wait a minute. It's all the burden's no longer on me. And to that I'd say, John, where is the teamwork? If it's all about me?

Teamwork is the realization that how I am doing depends on, on how you are doing. And your question yesterday in the lecture was brilliant and, and now we began to think together and learn together and work together. 

John Willis: Now you've given a whole bunch of fodder here. Well, one is one of the things I liked about the In2:In thinking is the same reason I love DevOps days.

We didn't get all you guys come to DevOps days too at some point. But, but because it, it's always been, and I always try to wonder like why I. Why is like this conference so different than so many other conference one, it was sort of nonprofit like, like into thinking, but, but also it sort of, it was a ground floor.

It came out of like really just a couple of people, including myself. But, but it was, what it sustained is people there, I [00:19:00] always say that it's an egoless environment, right? And, and an egoless environment. Open up some environment where junior people can ask questions. Well, that's psychological safety, right?

. And then I was certain, well, is that just happenstance where we just got it right or we just smarter than the average? Bear it it, I think it is because most people that show up at a DevOps days, even if you don't walk in the door with the mindset that you want to learn, aggressively learn, you're out of place.

You're not like that, so you either sort of leave or, or hang out and like sort of morph into the culture. And I, I think that that's a lot of what I saw in, In2:In thinking it was very easy for me to be the IT guy who, nobody, you know, it was, it was almost like when I moved in eighth grade, like I knew nobody.

I knew you and you were busy, you know, but, but it was very cing and like, because like. Long as you were, you know what they say about Dr. Deming, right? They say like if you asked stupid questions, he was gonna scream at you or yell at you or like cut you off. But [00:20:00] if you were at, if he saw, this is what I understand, I never met the man, but that if he saw that you truly were struggling to learn.

Yes. You bent over backwards. The only other thing I wanted to say about the psychological safety, I think our organizations just do a terrible job. Like you talk about that student coming out and having to wait four or five years, you know, a psychological safe mindset would really focus on like allowing 'cause in most organizations, right?

You've been here like a year, why are you asking that question? Right? And, and so it sort of pushes you down Yes. As opposed to trying to like, like let's create an organization that immediately embraces. And there are, there definitely a, a fair amount that do understand this, that realize it's a system and, and actually when you understand it's a system, and I'll shut up here in a second.

It is that new blood and a new idea. It's like a new doctor. You know, every once in a while new doctor's like, hasn't had been calcified a young doctor. They're like, well, you know what? I just read a paper about, you know, and so [00:21:00] anyway, yeah, I think we, we just in general do a real disservice of not trying to get our organizations.

To create a psychological, safe environment for many reasons, but they're definitely the one where, why should we wait five years for our talent to feel comfortable to be able to question the system? 

Dr. Bill Bellows: Yeah. What, I mean, what's exciting about the, I mean, what, what you experienced at last year's into an event which we called a reunion, it was not a, a typical forum where we have.

Workshops and seminars and plans, presentations. And we did that beginning in 2002 and ran until 2017. Attendance for the first 10 years, we had, you know, 140 plus or minus 10 people and ended up with a. 40 to 50 that were regulars. 

And for a number of reasons, it, we paused in 2017 and [00:22:00] then a few of the planning team members reached out to me a couple summers ago and said, Hey what did I think about getting people back together?

But instead of. Going into the depth of a presentations and organizing all that, which is a lot of work, 

The idea was let's just get together for conversations. We're only gonna invite past attendees and then if, if they wanna invite others, they have to explain to them what to expect. And, but, but the energy you saw.

Is the energy that's always been there. There there's a sense of, of warmth that, people are very welcoming. I remember one year we had the director of planetary sciences very high up within NASA headquarters. And, and what we always did when we did this event in the early years when we were at a hotel venue, then we had a, a master suite upstairs, we'd invite everybody up to the room and we'd have.

So all the presenters [00:23:00] would be up there, you know, dozens of the attendees are up there and we're serving drinks and, and the director of planetary sciences from NASA headquarters is in the living room area explaining, you know, space science to people that were just wowed. And, and that went on for a couple hours.

And so we had people like him, we had, I mean, people that you've interviewed for your podcast. Barbara Lawton was a keynote speaker. She worked very close with Dr. Deming. Mike Twy was a keynote speaker. He, he, he was very close with Dr. Deming, did a atu, Beth Blankenship, who you had on a podcast attended at least, several times. Dave Nave was a regular, so, so it was a, a wide range of people that are just passionate about learning and, and passionate about doing something with it. 

And, but, but what you saw was from the, the receptivity you experienced as a newcomer is the [00:24:00] receptivity that's been there from the very beginning.

That whether 

you're, next thing you know, you're talking with, I think it was Jim. Jim Green was the, was the senior NASA guy. You're talking with him. We had senior people from nasa on the rocket engine side. Oh. But, but to a person, they're there to learn. Bill Sheba was a keynote speaker several times, worked very closely with Dr.

Deming, and it was just so exciting to be part of a community where people were there. Rarely pretentious. I mean, we selected the speakers.  

 And, and so as the co-president, I would get inquiries from people, you know, promoting people that are, you know, want a speaker at our event.

And there were two things I would say that would, give 'em a, a, a perspective one is that we don't, we don't pay speakers to appear. Everybody appears pro bono. 

John Willis: That's common common with DevOps days. But yeah, that's, 

Dr. Bill Bellows: and, and so then you get the, okay, and then the other thing is that we're looking for content which is relevant to what our community is about.[00:25:00]

And, and people would say, well, you know, my person. That I'm supporting has written a book and I would go in and say, I don't, I don't see anything on here that is similar. I mean, I don't, we, there was never a litmus test, right. That in order to speak In2:In, you must have read the new economics three times.

There was no such thing. What we were looking for is something. And the presenters, if we invited someone to speak something that spoke to us is very well aligned implicitly, if not explicitly. And, and we ran with that. So, so you may so, so in that regard, it wasn't. All things, Deming, all things, it was, we, we were looking for people that were kindred spirits to one attend, and, and, and if we felt they had a message that was valuable then to present.

John Willis: Yeah. No again, very much like [00:26:00] devs, I mean, again, devs days now has become sort of an industry, so it's a little more you know, , the early days it was exactly like that. A lot of us would sit around and think, okay, who would be great? And, and I think that the thing about like pretentious to like, if the norm is to not be pretentious, then, you know, I always say this like, if you're sort of, pretension, you're, you're not in the norm and you look, you stand out, right? So that, so cultures that have this sort of like, where the, the thing, the behaviors that you sort of cherish are the norm, which unfortunately, in a lot of cases, especially. Most corporations and organizations, it's not the case. But like if you could flip that in your organization or have an organization like that where if somebody comes in, I, I do this thing where I'd go to Vail every summer with it's a financial thing where they bring in industry experts for all this stuff, and I.

I usually get on the, there's a bus they pick up at Denver Airport and there'll be some young hot shot that was invited and brilliant young person, you know, and they'll just be ready gearing about how they're gonna tell the world [00:27:00] how smart they were. And the next thing you know, they're in the reception with the guy who created Amazon EC2, the guy who basically built the cloud infrastructure for net Netflix, I mean, in the room.

And like you just wa I, I, I get to watch them just kind of, and most collapse into the norm. Which is they stop talking about their stuff and they start going asking questions. Few get, you know, don't get the read, they don't read the room, they don't get invited back. But, but yeah, tho those kind of cultures where it's just, you're, it is just it, you're gonna seem odd and beautiful.

Dr. Bill Bellows: Yeah, we, we, what we looked for in presenters were people that were not coming looking for clients. They were coming to learn and share and, and, and, and two things. When, when the invite does not include a speaker fee, that that changes who's willing to appear. 

John Willis: Yeah, yeah. Oh yeah. No, absolutely. 

Dr. Bill Bellows: And we had a handful of people that would [00:28:00] otherwise, you know, charge, you know, four or five figures.

But from the very beginning we said , we don't pay, we don't pay speaking fees. We didn't wanna get into that race. I mean, so, and, and, and what that does is it, it allows registration fees. Which are pretty modest by comparison. So when you go to a conference and spend two or $3,000 a day or for multi-day event, which you're paying speaking fees.

So we took that off the table. 

And the, for this year's event the, I think for, for the first month or so, the registration fee is, I think $250 for for two and a half days. It's all day Friday, June 20th, all day Saturday, June 21st and a half day Sunday. We've got low cost venues. We're.

We have two venues. One is a multipurpose room at a junior high school here in Santa Clarita, California. The other is an Episcopal church and we're using their multipurpose room. And why are we there and not in a [00:29:00] hotel? We wanna keep the prices down. 

We, we wanna make this highly accessible.

I mean, we want content, which is remarkable, but we want to be able to share it with attendees at a, at an incredible price. 

John Willis: One of the things I, so I, I, I'm gonna, this gonna sound outta the left field and I'm gonna land it back on the runway. The, a friend of mine you might, I dunno, if you haven't heard, you should totally listen to some of the podcasts I've done with Jabe Bloom.

He's a brilliant man and he's so aligned with a lot of the things we think about. But he pinged me a few weeks ago and they were running, and he's in Pittsburgh and the University of Pittsburgh. They were running a, a pragmatism for measurement conference. I'm like, yeah, man, this sounds good. All academia, right?

All analytical philosophers, right? So, so we're sitting there the whole day and we're hearing over and over about, there's no sort of there's really no evidence of using pragmatism and, you know, like all theory and, and like, and, and we're just looking at each [00:30:00] other like, okay, when do we stand up and start screaming and yelling and and you know, the yeah, there's no, so I heard if I hadn't heard.

No empirical. And they'd be talking about operational definitions. They wouldn't, Deming never came up, but they talked about bridgeman, they talked about Pierce, right? All this stuff, right? And so at the end of the first day, I'm like, the, the, one of the gurus gets up there. He's, he's like from Cambridge and he's, you know, 80 Billion degrees in philosophy and brilliant, brilliant, very entertaining man too.

I'd heard earlier, like a presentation on the CPI index, and this woman is struggling to say, you know, the problem is you have, she's done deep pragmatism analysis of the measurement of the CPI and she's literally screaming Taguchi, but she doesn't know who Taguchi is, right? And so at the end of I said, Hey, you know, I'm just a nobody, nobody, but I gotta ask the question.

Seems like you guys got a firewall. Built in against engineering because every time I'd mentioned something, oh, that's engineering, right? [00:31:00] And I, I sort of laid it out and then he sent me an email. I thought it was pretty cool for me. I gave my card and, and he said I gave him a list of like, the stuff we know, like there is empirical evidence all over the place, you know you know, these brilliant people just in this like silo.

 Anyway, for me, my ego got most when he replay to me, Dr. Willis, you know, like, yeah, I don't remember like a college degree. So, but but the, the point is, so now I'm gonna land the page, like I see the opportunity of your, the people that you've been involved with to learn from. Like, we're gonna learn a lot from the, like, the way I learned from the people at Boeing and all the people I met.

But I want, I want you all to see. The, the Rob Parks and the, like, these people that are literally struggling to run some of the largest infrastructure in government in large, you know, e-commerce and now even ai. I, I really want you guys to, I wanna see that like boundary crashing opportunity. You know, that, that was so [00:32:00] it, I'm not saying it is calcified in this group, but was certainly.

Ridiculously calcified in a place where like, you know, if I could get all those analytical philosophers in a room with my people, like I'd love to have them say, you, well, you know, here, here, here's Taguchi loss function. Like that explains what you were looking for. Anyway, so, but to this point, like, you know, I think I want the people that I'm met.

I was just one person. There was a lot of conversations going on. There wasn't a lot of oxygen for me, just not because anything other than it was a reunion and everybody was, but I now, I like when we talked about the planning when that Sunday we got together on the planning, I'm like, I want my people in here and I want them to hear from you, but I also want y'all to hear from, wow, okay.

I didn't realize Google was running stuff based on, you know, you know, that kind of, those kind of, I think it, it will just create a wealth, you know, learning. It's just gonna, like really create an [00:33:00] unbelievable learning environment. 

Dr. Bill Bellows: Well, what you just said reminds me of going to a systems thinking conference 15, 20 years ago.

And, and people were commiserating over their, you know, the, the state of the world at the time. 

And 

John Willis: we tend to do that periodically again. 

Dr. Bill Bellows: And, and when I said it one point was, and they're wondering, you know, what, what, what can we do? What can we do? And, and one of the things I share with them is.

Stop thinking you're the only group that has these feelings. I said the, you, you're acting as if you're the only ones that wanna save the world. There's others out there. But, but I, what I found is these communities where very insular. Yeah. , and I found of those communities, I, one of the things that excited me about the Deming community, to me it was.

It was far more open to others. You know, I tried to bring Deming people that I knew. I mean, people that work with Dr. Deming. I tried to introduce them [00:34:00] into these other communities as presenters. 'cause I, as you're mentioning, I heard them talking about things and I thought they need to know about Dr.

Deming's work. And so I was proud that within the Intu and thinking network. We were going to great lengths to it to bring in people from these different communities to say, Hey you, you're, writing about, talking about would benefit from what John is doing. But I just found that there was a natural isolation thing going on where these communities were talking to themselves and I, all I kept thinking was.

These, what you're going through is not unique to you. And you know, there's others out there trying to do similar things. One wake up to that, reach out to them. But what we were doing within end to end was inviting, leading people from these communities to crosstalk. So I likened it to, you may come to the In2:In thinking network forum, having.[00:35:00]

Maybe you're not aware of any of these ideas, or maybe you come in from the Ackoff community and you learn how you leave. Having learned about Dr. Tag gci or Edward, Deb Bono, or any of the others. But it was, it was a very deliberate attempt to create a space for cross fertilization. 

With the idea that, our ability to work together, right? That, I mean, what is together? Is that just a word? Is it should be about relationships. And so our fascination was bringing together people that were, that wanted to do something to improve our appreciation of together. You mentioned operational definitions. Which in, in short, is how do we know we're having a conversation?

I mean, we're using the same words, but 

Words have the same meanings. No, then, then we're really not having a conversation. 

John Willis: Right. I mean, there's so many layers to that, right. One is, you know, if I've done anything effective, my career, I, I boundary span.

 I think I, you know, again. I always sort of fantasize [00:36:00] that if I would've met Dr. Deming, I think he would've yelled at me for saying something stupid. But if I could have got past that and sounded reasonably smart, I mean, one of the things I like about what I think he was about is he was clearly a boundary spanner.

You know, even the sort of letters he'd write to people, he'd hear, he'd read something and he'd write a letter in very sort of detailed, like, I'd like to know more. Yeah. And I think the, , the upside of boundary spanning right is. Like, you know, recognizing your sort of your memory muscle for recognizing patterns becomes incredibly increased.

Like, like in other words, I. Me having like five generations of technology and then starting to try to understand like Dr. Deming and, and a little bit of ov and, and through you certainly Taguchi. But when I'm sitting listening to these discussions about like, what we did at Boeing and we brought Peter in and we did this, I was able to sort of recognize there was a, there, there, you know what I mean?

Like in other words like, like if I didn't ha, if I wasn't sort of constantly trying to [00:37:00] learn from other. Like stepping out. I'm not sure I would've been sort of isolated. Oh, it's kinda like the, the analytical philosopher saying, oh, that's engineering. Eh, you know, done for me. I might've been, oh, that's just aircraft engineering.

I, that's not me. Right. Like, anyway, I, I sort of long way of saying that, I think that like, sort of that idea of the more you can sort of step out of your realm. And embrace those, the more, the better you get at your memory muscle for, I mean, you, you see the ability to be able to recognize more patterns than you could. 

Dr. Bill Bellows: You mentioned the patterns and that, I mean, the awareness of our mental models, our paradigms, our thinking patterns, which becoming aware of them and they're always gonna be there. 

But the idea is, I mean, our, our excitement was becoming more aware of how these patterns are so limiting.

And the idea is what can we do to try to one, recognize the patterns, share this awareness with [00:38:00] others that we can improve, you know, our conversations. And, and solution space in a work environment, 

John Willis: Yeah. Yeah. No, and, and again yeah, I think all that, and then I think what you said is the, the other problem is if we're not having those conversations, if we're not actively trying to sort of you know, to, to throw you know, almost like a hydrogen collide, let's throw different people in the same conversation, then we're more likely to walk away.

Completely, maybe completely agreeing, but having no idea. We agreed or have to like, like operational definitions. Like those are not hard to understand. If you can get common terminology 

Dr. Bill Bellows: well then the, the, I mean the reality is the lacking, the appreciation we're talking about We keep doing what we're doing.

John Willis: Yeah. Yeah. Over and over. Yeah. 

Dr. Bill Bellows: And which is, which is unknowingly, unwittingly working on solutions that. May not be as positively impacting others as, as they could be. 

John Willis: I mean, for ourselves too, right? Yeah. I [00:39:00] mean, we're not getting the impact we could get 

Dr. Bill Bellows: well, in that regard. I remember there's a, an hour and a half lecture by Peter Senge that I, I saw live in 1999.

And if anyone wants to find it, they just search for, Bellows Deming, Senge. Then they can find a blog that I wrote about this lecture that Peter gave in 1999. And one is you get my notes on the video on, on the lecture, and then there's a link in there you can watch it. And I've, I've watched it dozens of times, but somewhere in there Dr.

Deming says, the prevailing system of management. He St. Peter's quoting Dr. Deming and he says you, Dr. Deming, Dr. Deming would say the prevailing system of management has destroyed our people. And I remember, you know, playing that lecture in a class at Rocketdyne years ago. And, and someone said commented on that and, and the comment was, the prevailing system has destroyed our people.

He says, we put man on the moon 20 years ago. So this might've been, you know, 2000, yeah, 1999, whatever it was. When they were going back to [00:40:00] 1969, we put men on the moon, you know, decades ago, what is this has destroyed our people. I said, well, perhaps what Dr. Deming is saying is,, is suggesting, is. In fact, what he would say is, anyone could accomplish anything if you don't count the cost.

So yeah, we put man on the moon in 19 69, but maybe what he's saying is at what cost to humans, at what cost to marriages, at what cost to families, at what cost to society. And so, so the prevailing system of management, which Dr. Deming describes, you know, this belief that. The grade is caused by the student, you know, the home run in the bottom of the ninth, won the game all by itself.

Nothing else mattered. Now if you missed the field goal, then you alone lost the game. All that, looking at things in isolation, which is, you know, that's an engineering problem, that's a manufacturing problem. So our language is so, can be so unwittingly, so divisive. Well, that the prevailing system [00:41:00] has given us.

Much of what we have. So, so I said to people let's first realize that it's given us everything we have. What's missing is what could we have? 

John Willis: Yeah. And just because you, like, again, that's you know, going back to Kahneman, right? Like, I can't remember what the phrase is, but it's, it'll always go back to the mean. In other words, you know, some basketball player comes in for a tryout and he hits eight outta 10 shots, but his mean is like normally four or five, right? And outta 10, and then another guy comes in, just has a bad day.

And so my, my meta point is we, if we measured by like we got to the moon. Then like, we're missing all the other signals, right? Like 

Dr. Bill Bellows: yeah. 

But it's, but that is the, with the In a couple things. You, you met Dave Nave Yeah. You've had Dave on your podcast, and Dave described the In2:In thinking Network forum as the, the best conference you've never heard of.

I used to call it [00:42:00] a an oasis of sanity and a sea of madness. But it, but it's for people that are excited by the possibilities of what organizations could be. Again, not, not to cast them aside, they are what they are, but they keep doing what they're doing. And if you're in an organization and you're wondering, you know, heard a little bit about Dr.

Deming's work and you're. Or not. But what he is proposing is, is you keep referencing is and, and proving how we work together by improving how we think together and how we learn together. Which all goes back to this thing called together. Together is not separate. Yeah. But the belief that Great is caused by me alone, that's separatism, not got nothing to do with unity.

And if we could challenge that, then. The ambition, you know, what we have in mind is people coming to the end and thinking network forum. you know, with, with some interest in challenging their thinking patterns you know, towards the end of improving, you know, our, our [00:43:00] time and organizations and our, you know, what we can accomplish in a lifetime.

John Willis: You know, and I guess, you know, I would say like if you've been listening to some of my podcasts, , you know, Dave Nave and you know, I mean, again, one thing I love about podcasting is I get to talk to brilliant people who are willing to talk to me for about an hour. And like, you know, I don't have to pay for it or anything.

And you know what I think about Bill, I mean, so just get to hang out with Bill. Probably is worth the price submission, but I, I would guarantee you if you're listening to this and if you've gotten this far, like, you know, I, what I used to tell people, if you, if you buy a copy of Beyond the Goal, it was one of my favorite Goldratt, like 20 years after he wrote the goal.

He did this audio only thing, and, and I, I would tell people if, you know, I, I get to know who they were and I'd say, if you buy this book and you tell me don't like it. I will pay for a dinner for you. And I've never had one time somebody call me on that bet. So I'm like, I don't know if I wanna do this at this scale now that I've got all these listeners and all, but I will, I will, [00:44:00] I will tell you that you know, I, you know, like I know who you are.

'cause if you're here listening to this and you've listened to podcasts and you follow me, I, you know, I can pretty much as close as I can guarantee anything that you'll have a blast at this event. 

Dr. Bill Bellows: and and another thing I'd say is we just found out yesterday, I had a call yesterday with some of the planning team members and we got the agreement by a teacher at a local junior high school who has a video team that 

 For years now, they have the morning news show. When our kids were in the elementary, in the junior high school, they were part of this production team. Oh, wow. You know, and then they would go to the, to the high school and film plays and things like that. And, and, and, and watching our, our son and daughter participate in this.

I met the, the teacher who runs, who still runs this program and beginning our second at our second forum, we had a a deal where we, we covered the expense of the [00:45:00] students, you know, a team of his students coming to the hotel, wherever we were in Los Angeles. And we covered their registration and their meals.

They did all the videotaping. We turned it into content and. Not much of it is online, but some of it's an online and anyway met with a teacher on yesterday and he's on board with resuming the relationship we have. So this year for those who do attend live you'll see the junior high school team there.

If you cannot attend live, then through our partnership with the this kid Flix production team at the junior high school, we're going to be live streaming entire weekend. 

For free. And so definitely our very first year we are committed that people that wanna watch 

Our 

presentation, all the others can watch it on a live stream. And if you, you can register right now, if you go to, www in two NIN, the number two in.org. Then you can register one to attend live or, [00:46:00] and if that doesn't work, then you can attend remotely and we'll have it set up with Zoom. We will have the people online able to submit questions and, and participate as best we can engage them.

With our volunteer team. 

John Willis: Yeah, we'll get all the links up and you know, I'm going so you know, like you wanna just hang out with me. I'm gonna be there. Bill, this is gonna be great. I'm, I'm really excited about all this. Like I said, I have high hopes for seeing this sort of the thinking about thinking community expand. You know, we said this, you know, when I told you when we sat down on Sunday and I was invited to some of the planning discussions, I said, I, I just can't imagine having the people I know.

Even my book club, those people, if I can get, you know, half of them to show up, they just these are the kind of people who will just absorb and interact and add to the volume of, of thinking. So it's gonna be great. 

Dr. Bill Bellows: That's gonna be terrific. It's gonna be Absolutely. It's terrific. We have, we're nearing completion of the design of the entire weekend.

We've got a marketing [00:47:00] communications committee. Working on getting that word out. But for the time being, if people go to go to the website, they can register they can be added to our mailing list by going to the website register for live or online participation. The details will be coming in the coming weeks.

We're gonna ramp up our social media, our use of constant contact, and then, you and me and others will be replicating that on LinkedIn and Facebook and look at the word out. 

John Willis: Yeah, it's gonna be great. Alright, my friend I think we, we definitely need a, i it sort of catch up podcast. I, I just wrote a I just finished the epilogue for my book and it's called The Philosophy of ai and it, and includes, I'll send you a copy of it, but it, it includes like dentist, surgeon asked me a question.

And I was literally struggling to finish the, this epilogue 'cause I, I knew I wanted it to be about epistemology and AI and, and sort of like breakout. And I've had a lot of conversations with people about different ways of thinking about how [00:48:00] AI thinks, how human thinks, anyway. But he asked me the question, you know, how would Deming be relevant to ai?

And, and I've been struggling with that, but it was just the perfect timing when he asked it. And I was able to really sort of build it into not a forced way. In Toho, I think how people are sort of having to deal with, you know what I'm calling, just another form of thinking, an alien cognition. So anyway, so, but I want you to read that and I'd love to go, I think there's a lot of like opportunity for operational definitions.

I hadn't really thought about that until I sort of stepped back and maybe macro level operational definitions for why are we doing things, why are people using certain ai? And so, and, and I'd love to sort of, you know, get your thoughts on that. 

Dr. Bill Bellows: Always a pleasure. Glad we can get together and, and we're excited to have you present at our 

Our, at our reboot. 

John Willis: Yeah, I can't wait. It's gonna be great. All right, Bill. Thanks so much.