John Hunter's blog posts (all time)

The Johor Bahru, Malaysia Luxury Condo Market Needs the MRT to Singapore to be Completed Quickly

Sat, 24 Oct 2026

In 2015 the timeline for extending the Singapore MRT to Johor Bahru was extended to 2020. Now, the latest I have read is that it is being delayed further – until 2022. There is likely no other factor more important to reduce the supply demand imbalance for luxury condos than getting a good MRT solution into operation. Next would likely be a 3rd road link. Next is the need for adding many more high paying jobs in Johor Bahru than has been the case so far. These 3 areas should be the main areas of focus.

Elephants Learn to Cooperate to Reach Their Objective

Sat, 24 Oct 2026

This clip shows elephants learning to work together to achieve what they can’t achieve alone (from BBC’s Super Smart Animals). It is interesting to see what animals are capable of.

Follow me on Twitter @aJohnHunter

Fri, 23 Oct 2026

Follow me on Twitter @aJohnHunter

Also I provide a resource showing how find links to me elsewhere online for those that are interested.

Robots for Health Care from Toyota

Fri, 23 Oct 2026

Most often innovation efforts take the form of understanding the jobs your customers are using your products and service for now and developing new solutions to delight those customers. This is difficult for companies to pull of successfully.

Occasionally innovation involves meeting completely new needs of customers. For example Toyota started as a loom company and is now known as a car company. Making such a radical change is not often successful.

Will Toyota be able to add robots to the products it produces successfully? I believe they have a chance. But it won’t be easy.

Apostle Islands National Lakeshore, Wisconsin

Thu, 22 Oct 2026

Photos from my visit to the Apostle Islands National Lakeshore in northern Wisconsin. The park on the shores of Lake Superior provides some wondeful hikes and boat rides to take in the natural world.

We are Not Us Without The Microbes Within Us

Thu, 22 Oct 2026

Avoiding bacteria is not feasible. Our bodies have evolved with this constant interaction with bacteria for millions of years. When we are healthy bacteria have footholds that make it difficult for other bacteria to gain a foothold (as does our immune system fighting off those bacteria it doesn’t recognize or that it recognized as something to fight).

Human health is a fascinating topic. It is true antibiotics have provided us great tools in the service of human health. But we have resorted to that “hammer” far too often. And the consequences of doing so is not understood. We need those scientists exploring the complex interactions we contain to continue their great work.

Using Scientific Knowledge to Drive Policies that Create a Better World

Wed, 21 Oct 2026

We can’t afford to elect people that don’t have an understanding of how to make wise decisions or how to ensure scientific knowledge forms the basis of policy when it should, such as: overfishing, pollution, global warming, the health care benefits vaccines provide when they are used properly, the dangers of abusing antibiotics, etc..

We need to elect leaders like those that took the steps to have the EPA clean up the incredibly polluted USA. We need to elect leaders that put the policies in place to reduce the overfishing in our waters. We need to elect leaders that care about our country and will learn what they need to from those that know the science.

New International Banking Solution for Small Business and Digital Nomads

Wed, 21 Oct 2026

One of the significant hassles of a the new digital economy is that national borders are largely irrelevant to digital businesses but the banking infrastructure is still stuck in the past. Dealing with international payments is a hassle and can be expensive.

New businesses are disrupting the old banks.

The Transformation is Everybody’s Job

Tue, 20 Oct 2026

There are quotes you can pick to make it seem like executives are responsible for the system and individuals workers have little impact on overall results – “A bad system will beat a good person every time.” This shows the limitation of isolated quotes more than anything else.

Complex systems have many leverage points and can be influenced in many ways. It is unreasonable to have a broken management system and blame those working within it for the naturally poor results than such a system creates. And executives have more authority and thus more responsibility for creating a good management system that is continually improving. But such a management system requires that everyone in the organization is contributing.

Those with authority must modify the management system to allow everyone to contribute. But that doesn’t mean everyone else just sits by waiting for those with more authority to transform the organization. Transformation doesn’t work that way. It is a dynamic, interconnected process. It isn’t as simple as turning on a light (or declaring this is our new transformed management system).

Testing Smarter with Mike Bland

Tue, 20 Oct 2026

This interview with Mike Bland is part of my series of “Testing Smarter with…” interviews: gaining insights and experiences from many of the software testing field’s leading thinkers.

it’s not about defects; it’s about feedback and collaboration. If you arrange incentives to produce an adversarial relationship between team members, e.g. if developers are incentivized to minimize defects and testers are incentivized to report defects, then that’s a house divided against itself.

Mike Bland aims to produce a culture of transparency, autonomy, and collaboration, in which “Instigators” are inspired and encouraged to make creative use of existing systems to drive improvement throughout an organization. The ultimate goal of such efforts is to make the right thing the easy thing. He's followed this path since 2005, when he helped drive adoption of automated testing throughout Google as part of the Testing Grouplet, the Test Mercenaries, and the Fixit Grouplet.

my advice to both developers and testers is to identify the priorities, the social structures and dynamics at play in the organization. How can you work with these structures and dynamics instead of against them—or do you need to create a culture of open communication and collaboration in parallel with (or even before) communicating the testing message?

Testing Smarter with Alan Page

Mon, 19 Oct 2026

This interview with Alan Page is part of my series of “Testing Smarter with…” interviews: gaining insights and experiences from many of the software testing field’s leading thinkers.

The biggest thing I look for in testers is a passion and ability to learn. I've interviewed hundreds of testers... The testers who really impress me are those who love to learn - not just about testing, but about many different things. Critical thinking and problem solving are also quite important.

Alan spent over twenty years at Microsoft working on a variety of operating systems and applications in nearly every Microsoft division and now works at Unity.

Combinatorial testing is actually pretty useful in game testing. For example, consider a role-playing game with six races, ten character classes, four different factions, plus a choice for gender. That's 480 unique combinations to test! Fortunately, this has been proven to be an area where isolating pairs (or triples) of variations makes testing possible, while still finding critical bugs.

Testing Smarter with Dorothy Graham

Mon, 19 Oct 2026

This interview with Dorothy Graham is part of my series of “Testing Smarter with…” interviews: gaining insights and experiences from many of the software testing field’s leading thinkers.

The best way to have fewer bugs in the software is not to put them in in the first place. I would like to see testers become bug prevention advisors! And I think this is what happens on good teams.

Testing Smarter with James Bach

Sun, 18 Oct 2026

This is the first in a series of interviews by me aimed at highlighting insights and experiences by many of the software testing field’s leading thinkers.

I test them using social science methods. That, after all, is how scientists attempt to test their theories about social life. That means an emphasis on qualitative analysis, but bringing in statistical methods whenever applicable.

I agree that the medical world is a good example of where statistical methods and heuristic approaches are also needed. In testing complex things, some of what you need to do includes:

You must use time to your advantage-- observing systems over time the way primatologists observe chimps in the wild.

You must use Grounded Theory, beginning with immersion and observation, until patterns begin to reveal themselves.

Cater to Customers Desires to Achieve Customer Delight

Sun, 18 Oct 2026

Customer delight requires understanding your customers needs and desires. Often even your customers don’t understand these well. Businesses that have a deep appreciation for what their customers, and potential customers, desire and that create systems to deliver solutions that delight those customers benefit greatly from that effort.

To build a sustainable enterprise you must provide value customers will appreciate.

Your customers do not have one unified set of desires. Some customers may want as good an experience as is possible and if that costs substantially more they are happy to pay. Others want to pay the least possible while having an acceptable experience.

Software Code Reviews from a Deming Perspective

Sat, 17 Oct 2026

I think the “inspection” in code reviews is different enough that we can use code reviews as a valuable tool for managing software development. The waste of having processes that create defects and then use inspection to catch them is certainly something to avoid. A significant part of the effort in code reviews should be geared toward capturing learning that can be applied to current processes to improve them so fewer bugs are created in the future.

In my experience this part of code reviews (using it to improve the existing processes) is not given the focus it should be. So I do believe that code reviews should focus more on why did we find something we decided to fix?

Stratify Data to Hone in on Special Causes of Problems

Sat, 17 Oct 2026

One strategy to help identify special causes so they can be studied and addressed is to stratify your data.

By stratifying the data you refine your view to make it easier to identify what is causing the problem. Instead of looking at all vehicles and seeking to find the cause they had stratified the data and learned they could exclude looking at most of the processes (those that don’t impact large vehicles). And they then sought to further refine the scope by stratifying the data to further isolate the scope of the investigation. As you refine the scope you can discover what is common just to the population you have isolated by stratifying the data.

Educate New Managers on Their New Responsibilities

Fri, 16 Oct 2026

Far too often companies promote employees into management positions and expect them to fulfill the obligations of their new position without helping prepare them to meet their new responsibilities. People who excelled at doing their non-supervisory job often have little education or experience to succeed with their new responsibilities.

Managing a software development team is a completely different job from being a great software developer. Most everyone would acknowledge that: but if you look at what actually happens in many organizations the management system is not setup with this fact in mind.

Jobs to be Done

Fri, 16 Oct 2026

If you see your job from the customer’s perspective you may change the scope of your offerings. You can add services that help the potential customer chose you. In the book, they explore the example mentioned in the article in more detail. They also discuss how an online university changed their processes to address the issues their potential customers faced in the “hiring” process. They changed, not the “product” (education), but the processes supporting potential students making the decision to hire Southern New Hampshire University.

Deadly Disease of Management: Emphasis on Short-term Profits

Thu, 15 Oct 2026

The games played to manipulate earnings are enormous (and no surprise to those who understand likely outcome of pressure to meet short term goals is a desire to manipulate the figure rather than improve underlying results). In Profit Beyond Measure by H. Thomas Johnson and Anders Broms, the authors provide many good thoughts on the problems of accounting measures and management.

Use FI/RE to Create a Better Life Not To Build a Nest Egg as Quickly as Possible

Thu, 15 Oct 2026

Financial Independence/Retire Early (FI/RE) is about creating conditions that allow you to focus on what you value. Some people do focus too much on saving money quickly as though the goal is to save as much as quickly as possible. But that isn’t what FI/RE means. FI/RE doesn’t mean make yourself a slave to saving quickly in order to remove yourself from being a slave to a job until you are 65.

To me what is most important about FI/RE is examining the choices you make and taking control of the decisions instead of just floating along as so many people do without considering the choices they make.

Why Do People Fail to Adopt Better Management Methods?

Thu, 15 Oct 2026

It is confusing to know that better methods exist but to see those better methods being ignored. It seems that if there were better ways to manage, people would adopt those methods. But this just isn't the case; sometimes better methods will be adopted but often they won't. People can be very attached to the way things have always been done. Or they can just be uncomfortable with the prospect of trying something new.

Should I be in the Check Phase of PDCA Daily?

Wed, 14 Oct 2026

The check/study phase should be reviewing the results of the experiment done in the Do the experiment phase. "Checking" how things are going during the experiment makes sense but that isn't the check/study phase of PDSA .

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Remember one key to using the PDSA cycle is to turn through the whole cycle quickly. Daily would be exceptionally quick. Moving through the whole cycle in 2-6 weeks is more normal. Organizations successful using PDSA will quickly turn the cycle 4+ times for a specific effort (often the 2nd, 3rd... times through are much faster than the first time through).

Intrinsic Motivation and the Danger of Overgeneralization

Wed, 14 Oct 2026

by creating systems that let people take pride in their work we take advantage of more of their potential and thus create more value

Duoyishu Village, Yunnan, China

Tue, 13 Oct 2026

Duoyishu Village is in Yuanyang County, Yunnan, China. I took a private tour for my travels through Yunnan to make things easy on me (China and Kenya are the only places I have done this – because they are more difficult to travel by yourself than most places are).

Bayon Temple, Angkor, Cambodia

Tue, 13 Oct 2026

Bayon temple was built in the late 12th or early 13th century as the official state temple of the Mahayana Buddhist King Jayavarman VII. The Bayon temple is well know for the many (216 actually) smiling faces adorning the temple.

Guadalupe Peak Trail, Guadalupe Mountains National Park

Mon, 12 Oct 2026

The Guadalupe Peak Trail in Guadalupe Mountains National Park is a 8.4 mile round trip hike with an elevation gain of 2,930 feet.

The hike was fantastic. Lots of great views and interesting plants and insects.

This park is one of the many wonderful, less known but still great national parks.

The Amazing Reality of Genes and The History of Scientific Inquiry

Mon, 12 Oct 2026

The Gene by Siddhartha Mukherjee is a wonderful book. He does a great job of explaining the history of scientists learning about genes as well as providing understandable explanations for the current scientific understanding of genes and how they impact our lives.

As I have mentioned before, I find biology fascinating even though I found biology classes utterly boring and painful. I wish everyone could learn about biology with the insight people like Siddhartha Mukherjee provide.

Pepper – A Social Robot from Softbank

Sun, 11 Oct 2026

Pepper has been designed to identify your emotions and to select the behavior best suited to the situation. Based on your voice, the expression on your face, your body movements and the words you use, Pepper will interpret your emotion and offer appropriate content.

Pepper will also respond personally to the mood of the moment, expressing itself through the color of eyes, tablet or tone of voice.

Don’t Assume All Web Users Have a Fiber-like Connection

Sun, 11 Oct 2026

I have pointed out for more than a decade how poorly many web pages are coded. They often assume a very low latency connection and without it the user experience is poor.

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I can only assume they just test the pages on their fiber connection and if it works they are ok. This is a very bad idea for nearly every website.

Learn to get a deep understanding of your customers and potential customers with focus on the customer’s “Jobs to be Done.” Otherwise organizations find themelves creating solutions that work in test conditions but that don't work for their customers (or potential customers).

Using Deming’s Ideas When Your Organization Doesn’t

Sat, 10 Oct 2026

First, you can transform yourself. You can transform your understanding and how you learn (with an appreciation for the theory of knowledge and what conclusions you can and cannot draw from the data you use). You can transform how you act.

View your organization with an understanding of Deming’s management ideas. Think of the organization as a system. Even if you can’t persuade others to do this, you doing so will help you understand the situation more clearly and allow you to think of solutions that take advantage of this understanding. System thinking will allow you to find leverage points that can be used to multiply the benefits of improvements.

Optimize the Overall System Not the Individual Components

Sat, 10 Oct 2026

The results of a system must be managed by paying attention to the entire system. When we optimize sub-components of the system we don’t necessarily optimize the overall system.

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Optimizing the results for one process is not the same as operating that process in the way that leads to the most benefit for the overall system.

Understanding Data is Often Challenging

Fri, 9 Oct 2026

Using data to understand the system and validate our theories and successful improvements is an important part managing well. In some cases it is fairly easy to understand and collect data that provides a clear and accurate measure of what we care about. But getting data that helps can also be very challenging.

Creating a management system that aims to use data while focusing on continually improving is a great start.

Huge Payments to Executives for Good Luck

Fri, 9 Oct 2026

A recent Harvard Law School Forum on Corporate Governance and Financial Regulation article on the finding that:
90 Cents of Every “Pay-for-Performance” Dollar are Paid for Luck. I agree that mainly we award senior executives huge pay based on luck and the natural result of the organization they are a part of.

It is my personal belief that the excessive pay of executives reached such a harmful level that Dr. Deming would have added it to his list of 7 deadly diseases long ago if he were still with us.

Improving the System to Reduce Costs Isn’t The Same as Cost Cutting

Thu, 8 Oct 2026

Cutting costs by fiat via executive orders reduces the capability of the organization. Those costs are often born by customers. In the short term reducing costs in such a manner improves the financial statements. In the long run those cost reductions harm the companies ability to innovate, improve and delight customers.

If instead we create a continual improvement capability and culture in the organization we will make improvements that in turn reduce costs (the Deming chain reaction).

Using Outdated Management Practices Can Be Very Costly

Thu, 8 Oct 2026

The dangers of strict sales targets are well understood by those that study management and human behavior. Sadly our management practices often fail to advance even as those that do seek to understand how to better manage our organizations make great strides in advancing our knowledge.

Using Outdated Management Practices Can Be Very Costly

Thu, 8 Oct 2026

Looking Back at "Some Notes on Management in a Hospital" by W. Edwards Deming

Wed, 7 Oct 2026

The head nurse returned to say that the nurse that was to give the infusion had recorded the infusion as given. It is possible that she recorded it in advance, with the intention to give it, and did not correct the record. Is this the regular procedure, to record intentions? Who would know? An unsuspecting physician, looking at the record for his patient, would assume that the infusion had been given, and could draw wrong inferences about how the patient had been doing on the drug. In my case, as it turned out, no harm. But how would he know? A nurse, or a physician, has a right to suppose that the medication was delivered as ordered and as recorded.

What is the purpose of the record? To inform the physician about intentions, or to tell him what happened?

It is even more difficult than usual to avoid blaming people when you are being forced to suffer. But even in this situation Dr. Deming understood the problems were a natural result of poor processes not of failures by individuals to do their best.

Unpacking the Components of Hard Work to Design Better Work Conditions

Wed, 7 Oct 2026

“Hard work” is often code for “work I despise doing.” If you create a system where people take pride and joy in their work the same time spent working is not nearly as “hard.” If they are proud of what they accomplish a difficult task is often rewarding, and not seen as working “harder.” As is so often the case “hard work” is really packing together numerous ideas in one phrase.

long hours
difficult tasks (physically, emotionally or intellectually)
unrewarding work
unpleasant tasks
inflexible work (It is a “hard job” if it prevents you from for example, seeing your child’s basketball game. If you were able to see the game and finish up 2 hours of work after they went to bed that is less hard.)

Podcast: Building Organizational Capability

Tue, 6 Oct 2026

From a podcast with me:

Changing how organizations are managed makes a huge difference in people’s lives, not all the time and I understand most of the time it doesn’t. But when this is done well people can go from dreading going to work to enjoying going to work, not every single day – but most days, and it can change our lives so that most of the time we are doing things that we find valuable and we enjoy instead of just going to work to get a paycheck so we can enjoy the hours that we have away from work.

Continually Improving Using a Focus on Delighting Customers

Tue, 6 Oct 2026

A deep appreciation for the long term needs of your customers and potential customers should guide where in the system to continually improve. And my belief on how to continual improve is to create and continually improving management system with principles of experimentation (with the necessary understanding of what conclusion can be drawn from results and what cannot), an understanding of the organization as a system and respect for people as principles to be guided by to achieve continual improvement.

Quality practices of experimentation directed at continually improving management practices and internal processes need to be completely integrated with the efforts to continual improve customer delight. Those efforts should be one process and therefore they automatically grow together.

The success of improvements should be evaluated at the system level (outcome measures not merely efficiency measures). In process measures are useful in adding evaluating improvement and monitoring processes but the end result for the overall system must always remain the primary concern.

Using Checklists to Reduce Process Variation and Improve Results

Tue, 6 Oct 2026

At the core the Checklist Manifesto is about determining the critical process conditions and creating a system to assure that the those process items are properly handled.

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It is critical that checklists be developed at the gemba (where the real work is done) and that they are modified based on experience. A good checklist system integrates continual improvement to adjust checklists based on user experience.

Add Constraints to Processes Carefully

Mon, 5 Oct 2026

Frequently I see unnecessary constraints creating the edge case excuse. By burdening your process with unnecessary constraints you create edge cases that fail and then use the excuse that each of the edge cases is rare and therefore you can’t justify the expense of fixing them.

But if you designed the process sensibly in the first place the edge case never would have failed and you wouldn’t need special work arounds for such “edge cases.” A simple example of this is unnecessarily complex web page code that fails if to submit a button without javascript. Yes, a small number of users won’t have enabled all javascript to run (today anyway) so it is an “edge case” to deal with if you don’t have the form work without javascript. But there is no decent reason to have it fail in most cases.

Bell Labs Designing a New Phone System Using Idealized Design

Mon, 5 Oct 2026

I remember hearing this same story when Russ Ackoff spoke at the Hunter Conference on Quality (which was named in honor of my father) in Madison, Wisconsin.

If you haven’t heard this story you are in for a treat. And if you haven’t heard Russell Ackoff before you get to enjoy a great storyteller.

Watch the video...

Burning Toast: American Health System Style

Sun, 4 Oct 2026

Democrats and Republicans have created a health care system in the USA over the last 40 years that “burns toast” at an alarming rate. As the symptoms of their health care system are displayed they call in people to blame for burning toast.

Their participation in the “you burn, I’ll scrape” system is even worse than the normal burning then scraping process. They create a bad system over decades and ignore the burnt toast just telling people to put up with it. And when some burnt toast can’t be ignored any longer they then blame individuals for each piece of burnt toast.

They demand that those they bring before them to blame, scrape off the burnt toast. And they act shocked that the "toaster" burns toast. It is the same "toaster" they designed and maintain at the behest of those benefiting from burnt toast and of course it burns toast (those results are the natural outcome of the system they designed and maintain).

W. Edwards Deming Discussing the Leadership We Need in Our Organizations

Sun, 4 Oct 2026

He mentions that walking around can be useful but it isn’t effective. Without the proper focus you only see a glossy picture. Going to where the work is done is important. But as with most management practices it must be done within a proper context and sadly it is often done in a superficial way. I discussed these ideas in my blog post, Management by Walking Around...

Better Meetings for Your Organization

Sat, 3 Oct 2026

This is similar to Deming’s ideas on management, I don’t believe their is a recipe to follow. There are principles that are universal. But what specific form they take depends greatly on the specific circumstances and systems in place.

Here are principles I believe will help:

Have a written objective
Document decisions and actions to be taken
Prepare people in advance (and don’t expect people to come if there isn’t a good reason for them to be there)
Talk to those involved in the meetings to learn what is working well, what needs to be improved and if the meetings are worth the effort (should there be fewer meetings or should less time be taken with them)

Better Meetings for Your Organization

Sat, 3 Oct 2026

If meetings in your organization are frustrating and not effective then taking steps to improve the situation is likely wise. There are principles I believe will help:

Have a written objective Document decisions and actions to be taken
Prepare people in advance (and don’t expect people to come if there isn’t a good reason for them to be there)
Talk to those involved in the meetings to learn what is working well, what needs to be improved...

Don't Claim Your Customer's Suffering from Your Management System Results are a "Learning Opportunity"

Sat, 3 Oct 2026

If you force the consequences of mistakes on your customers making up excuses about how this failure is a learning experience for you is only ok if you actually spell out how you are changing to assure you don't fail your customers due to this same management system failure again.

You need to design your systems to minimize consequences to customers when something goes wrong.

Acting as though a problem is due to some specific issue only with the exact circumstances that created the consequences is exactly the message you expect from businesses that have no respect for customers.

Countering Confirmation Bias

Sat, 3 Oct 2026

In most organization we need to introduce changes to the management system that reverse the current pressure to go along and to not question or ask for evidence of current practices. Most management systems would benefit from encouraging the challenging the accepted beliefs. They would benefit from encouraging the testing of beliefs and the examining of the results of those experiments.

How to Improve at Understanding Variation and Using Data to Improve

Fri, 2 Oct 2026

Getting better at using data is a bit tricky, so struggling is fairly common.
Probably the easiest thing to do is to stop reacting to normal variation (caused by the system) as if it were special. This isn’t super easy but it is the easiest step. And it does make a big difference even if it doesn’t seem very exciting.

The idea of actually using data properly provides big benefit but it much trickier. Don Wheeler’s book is a great start. Making predictions and evaluating how those predictions turn out is also valuable. And in doing so often (though not always) it will also spur you to collect data. This process of predicting, figuring out what data to use to help do so (and to evaluate the results) and considering the result of the prediction and how well the predictions overall are working can help.

Examine the Results of Your Testing Practices and Continually Improve Your Methods

Fri, 2 Oct 2026

The idea of delibrately examining your software development and testing practices will be familar to those using agile retrospectives. The power of continually improving the development practices used withing the organization is hard to appreciate but it is immense. The gains compound over time so the initial benefits are only a glimpse of what can be achieve by continuing to iterate and improve.

84% of Software Defects Found in Production Could Have Been Found Using Pairwise Testing

Thu, 1 Oct 2026

Studies show that 84% of defects found in production could have been found by testing every pair of parameter values. Those bugs were the result of interactions between 2 parameters. The complexity of software means there are many interactions and as the data shows often the bugs seen in production are the result of such interactions.

Transforming the Management System of an Organization

Thu, 1 Oct 2026

I don’t think there are simple answers to the questions that take the form of “do this simple thing and you will have the results you wish to see.”

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There are principles that can be fairly easily captured (respect people, improve using iterative experiments, use data to learn and test your understanding when possible but also realize that using data is not always possible…), but doing that does not offer a simple recipe laying out what steps to take. What should be implemented in your organization and what specific steps to take are not obvious, it requires applying the principles to your organization. And doing that also requires building the capability of your organization (including your people) to operate using those principles.

The Psychology of Change is Often the Trickiest Part of Process Improvement

Thu, 1 Oct 2026

The psychology of such efforts is usually much trickier than the process improvement. This point is actually one of the reasons creating a continual improvement culture that has respect for people at the core. When you create such a culture the psychology of change piece becomes much much easier which and as you continually improve processes the most obvious process improvements are made. If you don't create the right culture continuing the continual improvement process gets more and more difficult but if you do create the right culture it gets easier.

Solar Energy Capacity Continues to Grow Rapidly (Chart of Data by Country)

Wed, 30 Sep 2026

The International Energy Agency (IEA) estimates Italy has the largest percentage of electricity needs capable of being produced by installed PV systems at 8%, with Greece at 7.4% and Germany at 7.1%. Japan is ranked 5th at just under 4%, UK is 12th at 2.5%, China is 22nd at 1%, India 24th and the USA 25th at close to .9%. They estimate the total global percentage at 1.3%.

The global percentage is rapidly increasing each year as solar costs have shrunk and the benefits of reducing climate change causing pollution are known to be extremely important for the future of the planet.

USA Health-Care System Ranks 50th out of 55 Countries

Wed, 30 Sep 2026

None of these rankings are perfect and neither is this one. But it is clear beyond any doubt that the USA healthcare system is extremely costly for no better health results than other rich countries (and even more expensive with again no better results than most poor countries). It is a huge drain on the economy that we continue to allow lobbyists and special interests to take advantage of the rest of us...

Wat Mai Suwannapumaram, Luang Prabang, Laos

Tue, 29 Sep 2026

Photo of golden relief wall on temple in Luang Prabang, Laos.

Stone Bridge over River, Yangshuo, China

Tue, 29 Sep 2026

Stone bridge over river (that I was rafting down) in Yangshuo, China.

Hand by John Hunter

Mon, 28 Sep 2026

Art by me when I was in Nigeria (and was 10 years old).

VW Vanlife in Kenya

Mon, 28 Sep 2026

This is a photo (by my father) of my early experience with vanlife. My family took this VW Van in Kenya when I was a kid. We only spent a couple weeks in Kenya before living in Nigeria for a school year.