Podcast appearances and mentions of bill cummings

In this episode of What the Fundraising Podcast… Joining Mallory today are Bill Cummings and Todd Hiestand, the co-founder and director of branding and the co-founder and director of web strategy at Liminal, a branding and messaging agency with 50 years of combined nonprofit experience. They specialize in branding, strategy, and engagement.  In the nonprofit landscape, a clear and consistent core message is not a luxury but a necessity. Most of the founders carry the vision in their heads, which leads to staff and board members guessing and external audiences receiving mixed signals unless you codify the message. Having strong core messaging helps nonprofits to communicate their purpose effectively, stand out from others, and build trust. It gives everyone, including the frontline staff members and donors, an easy understanding of what the organization does and why it matters. Messaging will become the foundation of strategy, storytelling, and long-term growth when done well. Listen as Bill, Todd and Mallory go searching for the importance of core messaging and branding in nonprofits In this episode, you will be able to, - Learn the importance of having an ideal external presence. - Discover the relationship between core messaging and strategic planning. - Learn why you need to extract and codify the founder's vision. - Discover the role of clarity and consistency in core messaging.  Get all the resources from today's episode here.  Support for this show is brought to you by Donor Perfect. Our friends at Donor Perfect really understand fundraising on so many levels. Stay aligned while working online with a seamless and secure payments experience for your donors and your team. Empower donors to give where they are, whenever they like, automate data entry, and process online, monthly, and mobile payments, and accept payments over the phone. Connect with me:  Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/_malloryerickson/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/whatthefundraising YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@malloryerickson7946 LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/mallory-erickson-bressler/ Website: malloryerickson.com/podcast Loved this episode? Leave us a review and rating here: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/what-the-fundraising/id1575421652 If you haven't already, please visit our new What the Fundraising community forum. Check it out and join the conversation at this link. If you're looking to raise more from the right funders, then you'll want to check out my Power Partners Formula, a step-by-step approach to identifying the optimal partners for your organization. This free masterclass offers a great starting point

For this episode of Free With This Month's Issue we're joined by Bill Cummings from God Is In The TV Zine & the Show Me Magic podcast to discuss Q Magazine's Essential Chill out from November 2000.  The cd's tracklisting is1 - Moby - Novio2 - Groove Armada - At The River (Radio Edit)3 - Kinobe Ft Ben & Jason - Slip Into Something... (Radio Edit)4 - Fairport Convention - Who Knows Where The Time Goes?5 - John Martyn - Solid Air6 - Underworld - Push Downstairs7 - Moloko - Sing It Back (Album Version)8 - Oasis - Half The World Away9 - Nick Drake - River Man10 - Grandaddy - Underneath The Weeping Willow11 - Garbage - Milk (The Classic Mix by Massive Attack)12 - Goldfrapp - Utopia13 - Talk Talk - Inheritance 14 - Depeche Mode - Useless (The Kruder & Dorfmeister Session Edit)15 - David Bowie - Art Decade16 - Mercury Rev - Holes You can find Bill's webzine here - https://www.godisinthetvzine.co.uk/ & his podcast Show Me Magic here - https://pod.link/1522302142Listen to all available songs on our ongoing Spotify playlist - https://open.spotify.com/playlist/1mzWOWEfQ5LklJyUZkpfs2?si=LbWBi9-oTl-eXjkUJbpx2QYou can buy a copy of the cd from Discogs here - https://www.discogs.com/release/140416-Various-Essential-Chill-Out?srsltid=AfmBOopNZo8qjh-bm7-kZiFy35B1q0g44Kn84pgFDNQrdRGhEmOqumsRHosts - Ian Clarke & Colin Jackson-BrownRecorded/Edited/Mixed/Original music by Colin Jackson Brown for We Dig PodcastsBluesky - https://bsky.app/profile/thismonthsissue.bsky.socialTikTok - https://www.tiktok.com/@freewiththismonthsissueInstagram - https://www.instagram.com/freewiththismonthsissue/Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/freewiththismonthsissue/Find our other episodes, plus We Dig Music & Pick A Disc at www.wedigpodcasts.com

Dr. Deming developed his philosophy over time and in conversations with others, not in isolation. As learners, we tend to forget that context, but it's important to remember because no one implements Deming in isolation, either. In this conversation, Bill Bellows and host Andrew Stotz discuss how there's no such thing as a purely Deming organization and why that's good. TRANSCRIPT 0:00:02.2 Andrew Stotz: My name is Andrew Stotz, and I'll be your host as we continue our journey into the teachings of Dr. W. Edwards Deming. Today, I'm continuing my discussions with Bill Bellows, who has spent 30 years helping people apply Dr. Deming's ideas to become aware of how their thinking is holding them back from their biggest opportunities. Today is episode 20, entitled, System of Profound Wisdom. Bill, take it Away.   0:00:31.6 Bill Bellows: But not just for 30 years. I forgot to say I started when I was 12.   0:00:36.6 AS: Yes. [laughter] Yes. And you've got the hair to prove it.   [laughter]   0:00:43.7 BB: All right. Now, actually, I was thinking the proposal and the title, I thought... I mean, System of Profound Wisdom is cool, System of Profound Questions. Either one of those is good. Let's see which title comes out.   0:00:57.6 AS: Yeah. And I think we'll have to also understand that may some listeners that may not even know what System of Profound Knowledge means, they've been listening. They do. But if today's their first episode, we also gotta break that down, just briefly.   0:01:10.9 BB: Yeah. Okay, let's do that. All right. Well, let me give an opening a quote from Dr. Deming from chapter three, and then we can explain this SoPK, System of Profound Knowledge, thing. But in chapter three of Dr. Deming's last book, The New Economics, the last edition, edition three, came out in 2018. And chapter three, Dr. Deming says, "We saw in the last chapter, we are living under the tyranny of the prevailing style of management. Most people imagine that this style has always existed. It is a fixture. Actually, it is a modern invention a trap that has led us into decline. Transformation is required. Education and government, along with industry, are also in need of transformation. The System of Profound Knowledge to be introduced in the next chapter is a theory for transformation." So you wanna...   0:02:15.4 AS: That's good.   0:02:16.7 BB: So let's say something. Let's just say something about SoPK. How would you explain that?   0:02:23.1 AS: Yeah. Well, actually, I wanna talk very briefly about what you just said, because it's just...   0:02:27.1 BB: Oh, sure.   0:02:29.6 AS: At one point, I thought, "It's a system of knowledge." But he just said it was a system of transformation.   0:02:38.7 BB: It's a theory for transformation.   0:02:40.1 AS: A theory for transformation. Okay, got it. I see. And one of the things that I... I look at Toyota so much just 'cause it's so fascinating and how they've survived all these years, the continuity in the business, the continuity and the profitability of the business, the continued march to become the number one auto producer in the world, and having faced all the ups and downs and survived. And I just think that what they have is a learning organization. No matter what the challenge is, they're trying to apply learning tools, like System of Profound Knowledge, like PDSA, to try to figure out how to solve this problem. And I think that many companies, including at times my companies, [chuckle] we sometimes will scramble and we'll lose knowledge and we won't gain knowledge. And so the System of Profound Knowledge, to me, is all about the idea of how do we build a base of knowledge in our business and then build upon that base of knowledge rather than destroy it when the new management comes in or when a new management idea comes in.   0:04:00.7 AS: And that's something I've just been thinking about a lot. Because I do know a company that I've been doing some work with, and they basically threw away a huge amount of work that they did on System of Profound Knowledge and stuff to go with the prevailing system of management, is like going back. And now, they just produced a loss in the first quarter, and I just think, "Interesting. Interesting."   0:04:27.6 BB: Well, a couple things come to mind based on what you said. One is I would propose that Toyota, I'm in agreement of "Toyota's a learning organization." And that'll come up later. I've got some other thoughts on learning organizations. And we know that they were influenced by Dr. Deming. To what degree, I'm not sure of. Shoichiro Toyoda, who is one of the sons of the founder of the Toyota Motor Car Company, was honored with a Deming prize in 1990. And I believe it came from JUSE, as opposed to the American Society for Quality. One or the other. He was honored with a Deming Prize.   0:05:32.0 AS: Yep.   0:05:33.5 BB: Again, I don't know if it's Deming Prize or Deming Medal. But I know he was honored. What's most important, the point I wanna make is, upon receiving it he said, "There is not a day that goes by that I don't think about the impact of Dr. Deming on Toyota." But, if I was to look at the Toyota Production System website, Toyota's Toyota Production System website, which I've done numerous times, I'd be hard-pressed to find anything on that page that I could say, "You see this word, Andrew? You see this sentence, Andrew? You see this sentiment? That's Deming." Not at all. Not at all. It's Taiichi Ohno. It's Shigeo Shingo. I'm not saying it's not good, but all those ideas predate Deming going to Japan in 1950. Taiichi Ohno joined Toyota right out of college as an industrial engineer in 1933, I believe. The Japanese Army, I mentioned in a previous episode, in 1942, wanted him to move from Toyota's loom works for making cloth to their automobile works for making Jeeps. This comes from a book that I would highly recommend. Last time we were talking about books. I wanted to read a book, I don't know, maybe 10 years ago. I wanted to read a book about Toyota, but not one written by someone at MIT or university. I didn't wanna read a book written by an academic. I've done that.   0:07:15.1 BB: I wanted to read a book by somebody inside Toyota, get that perspective, that viewpoint. And the book, Against All Odds, the... Wait I'll get the complete title. Against All Odds: The Story of the Toyota Motor Corporation and the Family That Changed it. The first author, Yukiyasu Togo, T-O-G-O, and William Wartman. I have a friend who worked there. Worked... Let me back up. [chuckle] Togo, Mr. Togo, born and raised in Japan, worked for Toyota in Japan, came to the States in the '60s and opened the doors to Toyota Motors, USA. So, he was the first person running that operation in Los Angeles. And it was here for years. I think it's now in Texas. My late friend, Bill Cummings, worked there in marketing. And my friend, Bill, was part of the team that was working on a proposal for a Lexus. And he has amazing stories of Togo. He said, "Any executive... " And I don't know how high that... What range, from factory manager, VPs. But he said the executives there had their use, free use, they had a company car. And he said Togo drove a Celica. Not a Celica. He drove a... What's their base model? Not a...   0:08:56.2 AS: A Corolla?   0:08:57.7 BB: Corolla. Yes, yes, yes. Thank you. He drove a Corolla. He didn't drive... And I said, "Why did he drive a Corolla?" Because it was their biggest selling car, and he wanted to know what most people were experiencing. He could have been driving the highest level cars they had at the time. Again, this is before a Lexus. And so in this book, it talks about the history of Toyota, Taiichi Ohno coming in, Shigeo Shingo's contributions, and the influence of Dr. Deming. And there's a really fascinating account how in 1950, a young manager, Shoichiro Toyoda, was confronted with a challenge that they couldn't repair the cars as fast as they could sell them. This is post-war Japan. They found a car with phenomenal market success. Prior to that, they were trying to sell taxicabs, 'cause people could not... I mean, buying a car as a family was not an option. But by 1950, it was beginning to be the case. And the challenge that Shoichiro Toyoda faced was improving the quality, 'cause they couldn't fix them as fast as they could sell them. And yet, so I have no doubt that that young manager, who would go on to become the chairman, whatever the titles are, no doubt he was influenced by Dr. Deming. But I don't know what that means.   0:10:23.4 BB: That does not... The Toyota Production System is not Deming. And that's as evidenced by this talk about eliminating waste. And those are not Deming concepts. But I believe, back to your point, that his work helped create a foundation for learning. But I would also propose, Andrew, that everything I've read and studied quite a bit about the Toyota Production System, Lean, The Machine That Changed The World, nothing in there explains reliability. To me, reliability is how parts come together, work together. 'Cause as we've talked, a bunch of parts that meet print and meet print all over the place could have different levels of reliability, because meeting requirements, as we've talked in earlier episodes, ain't all it's cracked up to be. So I firmly believe... And I also mentioned to you, I sat for 14 hours flying home from Japan with a young engineer who worked for Toyota, and they do manage variation as Dr. Taguchi proposed. That is not revealed. But there's definitely something going on. But I would also say that I think the trouble they ran into was trying to be the number one car maker, and now they're back to the model of, "If we are good at what we do, then that will follow."   0:11:56.8 BB: And I'm gonna talk later about Tom Johnson's book, just to reinforce that, 'cause Tom, a former professor of management at Portland State University, has visited Toyota plants numerous times back before people found out how popular it was. But what I want to get into is... What we've been talking about the last couple episodes is Dr. Deming uses this term, transformation. And as I shared an article last time by John Kotter, the classic leadership professor, former, he's retired, at the University... Oh, sorry, Harvard Business School. And what he's talking about for transformation is, I don't think, [chuckle] maybe a little bit of crossover with what Dr. Deming is talking about. What we talked about last time is, Deming's transformation is a personal thing that we hear the world differently, see the world differently. We ask different questions. And that's not what Kotter is talking about. And it's not to dismiss all that what Kotter is talking about, but just because we're talking about transformation doesn't mean we mean the same thing.   0:13:10.6 BB: And likewise, we can talk about a Deming organization and a non-Deming organization. What teamwork means in both is different. In a Deming organization, we understand performance is caused by the system, not the workers taken individually. And as a result of that, we're not going to see performance appraisals, which are measures of individuals. Whereas in a non-Deming organization, we're going to see performance appraisals, KPIs flow down to individuals. [chuckle] The other thing I had in my notes is, are there really two types of organizations? No, that's just a model. [chuckle] So, really, it's a continuum of organizations. And going back to George Box, all models are wrong, some are useful. But we talked earlier, you mentioned the learning organization. Well, I'm sure, Andrew, that we have both worked in non-Deming organizations, and we have seen, and we have seen people as learners in a non-Deming organization, but what are they learning? [chuckle] It could be learning to tell the boss what they want to hear. They could be learning to hide information that could cause pain. [chuckle] Those organizations are filled with learners, but it's about learning that makes things worse. It's like digging the pit deeper. What Deming is talking about is learning that improves how the organization operates, and as a result, improves profit. In a non-Deming organization, that learning is actually destroying profit.   0:14:51.8 BB: All right. And early, spoke... Russ, Russ and Dr. Deming spoke for about three hours in 1992. It got condensed down to a volume 21 of The Deming Library, for which our viewers, if you're a subscriber to DemingNEXT, you can watch it in its entirety. All the Deming videos produced by Clare Crawford-Mason are in that. You can see excerpts of volume 21, which is... Believe is theory of a system of education, and it's Russ Ackoff and Dr. Deming for a half hour. So you can find excerpts of that on The Deming Institute's YouTube channel.   0:15:37.0 BB: And what I wanted to bring up is in there, Russ explains to Dr. Deming the DIKUW model that we've spoken about in previous episodes, where D is data. That's raw numbers, Russ would say. I is information. When we turn those raw numbers into distances and times and weights, Russ would say that information is what the newspaper writer writes, who did what to whom. Knowledge, the K, could be someone's explanation as to how these things happened. U, understanding. Understanding is when you step back and look at the container. Russ would say that knowledge, knowledge is what you're using in developing to take apart a car or to take apart a washing machine and see how all these things work together. But understanding is needed to explain why the driver sits on the left versus the right, why the car is designed for a family of four, why the washing machine is designed for a factor of four. That's not inside it. That's the understanding looking outward piece that Russ would also refer to as synthesis. And then the W, that's the wisdom piece. What do I do with all this stuff? And what Russ is talking about is part of wisdom is doing the right things right. So, I wanted to touch upon in this episode is why did Dr. Deming refer to his system as the System of Profound Knowledge? Why not the System of Profound Understanding? Why not the System of Profound Wisdom? And I think, had he lived longer, maybe he would have expanded. Maybe he would have had...   0:17:28.4 BB: And I think that's the case. I think it's... 'Cause I just think... And this is what's so interesting, is, if you look at Dr. Deming's work in isolation and not go off and look at other's work, such as Tom Johnson or Russ, you can start asking questions like this.   0:17:45.7 AS: One thing I was going to interject is that I took my first Deming seminar in 1989, I believe, or 1990. And then I took my second one with Dr. Deming in 1992. And then soon after that, I moved to Thailand and kind of went into a different life, teaching finance and then working in the stock market. And then we set up our factory here for coffee business. But it wasn't until another 10 years, maybe 15 years, that I reignited my flame for what Dr. Deming was doing. And that's when I wrote my book about Transform Your Business with Dr. Deming's 14 Points. And what I, so, I was revisiting the material that had impacted me so much. And I found this new topic called System of Profound Knowledge. I never heard of that. And I realized that, it really fully fledged came out in 1993, The New Economics, which I didn't get. I only had Out of the Crisis.   0:18:49.9 BB: '93.   0:18:49.9 AS: Yeah. And so that just was fascinating to go back to what was already, the oldest teacher I ever had in my life at '92, leave it, come back 10, 15 years later and find out, wait a minute, he added on even more in his final book.   0:19:10.4 BB: Well, Joyce Orsini, who was recruited by Fordham University at the encouragement of Dr. Deming, or the suggestion of Dr. Deming to lead their Deming Scholars MBA program in 1990. Professor Marta Mooney, professor of accounting, who I had the great fortune of meeting several times, was very inspired by Dr. Deming's work. And was able to get his permission to have an MBA program in his name called the Deming Scholars MBA program. And when she asked him for a recommendation, "Who should lead this program?" It was Joyce Orsini, who at the time I think was a vice president at a bank in New York. I'm not sure, possibly in human resources, but I know she was in New York as a vice president.   0:20:10.0 BB: And I believe she had finished her PhD under Dr. Deming at NYU by that time. And the reason I bring up Joyce's name, I met her after Dr. Deming had died. Nancy Mann, who is running a company called Quality Enhancement Seminars with, a, at the beginning one product, Dr. Deming's 4-Day seminar, when Dr. Deming died, and I had mentioned, I was at his last seminar in December '93, she continued offering 4-day seminars. And I met her later that year when she was paired with Ron Moen and they were together presenting it, and others were paired presenting it. And at one point, as I got to know Joyce, she said, "His last five years were borrowed time." I said, "What do you mean?" She said, "He started working on the book in 19'" evidently the '87, '88 timeframe, he started to articulate these words, Profound Knowledge.   0:21:11.0 BB: And I know he had, on a regular basis, he had dinner engagements with friends including Claire Crawford-Mason and her husband. And Claire has some amazing stories of Deming coming by with these ideas. And she said, once she said, "What is this?" And he is, she took out a napkin, a discretely, wrote down the, "an understanding of the difference between intrinsic motivation and extrinsic motivation. Difference between understanding special causes versus common causes." And she just wrote all this stuff down, typed it up. When he showed up the next week, she greeted him at the door and said, and she said, he said, This is Claire. And Claire said, he said, "What's that?" He says, "Well, I took notes last week."   0:21:54.2 BB: And he says, "I can do better." [chuckle] And so week by week by week. And as he interacted with the people around him, he whittled it down. And I'm guessing it put it into some, there's a technique for grouping things, you, where on post-it notes and you come up with four categories and these things all go over here. There's one of the elements of that, one of the 16 had to, or 18 or so, had to do with Dr. Taguchi's loss function. So that could have gone into the, maybe the variation piece, maybe the systems piece. But Joyce said, basically he was frustrated that the 14 Points were essentially kind of a cookbook where you saw things like, "cease dependence on inspection" interpreted as "get rid of the inspectors." And so he knew and I'd say, guided by his own production of a system mindset, he knew that what he was articulating and the feedback were inconsistent.   0:23:01.9 BB: And I've gotta keep trying. And she said, "His last five years on borrowed time as he was dying of cancer, was just trying to get this message out." So I first got exposed to it 19, spring of '90 when I saw him speaking in Connecticut. And I was all about Taguchi expecting him to, I didn't know what to expect, but I knew what I was seeing and hearing from Dr. Taguchi when I heard Dr. Deming talk about Red Beads. I don't know anything about that, common cause and special cause, I didn't know anything about that. And so for me, it was just a bunch of stuff, and I just tucked it away. But when the book came out in '93, then it really made sense. But I just had to see a lot of the prevailing style of management in the role I had as an improvement specialist, become, [chuckle] a firefighter or a fireman helping people out.   0:24:01.5 AS: I noticed as I've gotten older that, I do start to connect the pieces together of various disciplines and various bits of knowledge to realize, so for instance, in my case, I'm teaching a corporate strategy course right now at the university. Tonight's, in fact, the last night of this particular intake. And my area of expertise is in finance, but now I see the connection between strategy and finance, and how a good strategy is going to be reflected in superior financial performance relative to peers. And of course, I know how to measure that very well. So I can synthesize more and more different areas of things that I know things about, that I just couldn't do when I was younger. So I can see, and he was always learning, obviously. So I can see how he, and also I can also see the idea of, I need bigger principles. I need bigger as you said, theory for transformation. I need, I need to be able to put this into a framework that brings all that together. And I'm still feeling frustrated about some of that, where I'm at with some of that, because I'm kind of halfway in my progress on that. But I definitely can see the idea of that coming later in life as I approach the big 6-0.   0:25:37.3 BB: The big 6-0, [chuckle] Well, but a big part, I mean, based on what you're talking about, it ended up... Previously we spoke about Richard Rumelt's work, Good Strategy/Bad Strategy, and I mentioned that I use a lecture by Richard Rumelt, I think it was 2011 or so. It was right after his book, Good Strategy/Bad Strategy came out. He spoke at the London School of Economics, and our listeners can find it if you just did a Google search for Richard Rumelt, that's R-U-M... One M. E-L-T. Good Strategy/Bad Strategy. LSE, London School of Economics. Brilliant, brilliant lecture. And I've seen it numerous times for one of my university courses. And he is like Deming, he doesn't suffer fools. And, it finally dawned on me, Deming organizations, if we can use this simple Deming versus non-Deming or Red Pen versus Blue Pen, and as, George Box would say, all models are wrong, some are useful. If we can use that model, I think it's easy to see that what frustrates Rumelt is you've got all these non-Deming companies coming up with strategies without a method.   0:27:00.0 BB: What Rumelt also talks about is not only do you need a method, but you have to be honest on what's in the way of us achieving this? Again, Dr. Deming would say, if you didn't need a method, why don't you're already achieving the results? And so it just dawned on me thinking the reason he's so frustrated, and I think that's one word you can use to describe him, but if he is talking to senior staff lacking this, an understanding of Deming's work, then he is getting a lot of bad strategies. And organizations that would understand what Dr. Deming's talking about, would greatly benefit from Rumelt's work. And they would be one, they'd have the benefit of having an organization that is beginning or is understanding what a transformation guided by Dr. Deming's work is about. And then you could look up and you're naturally inclined to have good or better strategy than worser strategies.   0:28:02.2 BB: And then you have the benefit of, profit's not the reason, profit is the result of all that. And, but next thing I wanna point out is, and I think we talked about it last time, but I just wanted to make sure it was up here, is I've come across recently and I'm not sure talking with who, but there's this what's in vogue today? Data-driven decisions. And again, whenever I hear the word data, I think backed in Ackoff's DIKUW model, I think data-driven. Well, first Dr. Deming would say, the most important numbers are unknown and unknowable. So if you're doing things on a data-driven way, then you're missing the rest of Dr. Deming's theory of management. But why not knowledge-driven decisions, why not understanding-driven decisions And beyond that, why not, right? How long... [laughter] I guess we can... Part of the reason we're doing these Andrew is that we'd like to believe we're helping people move in the direction from data-driven decisions to wisdom-driven decisions, right?   0:29:13.1 AS: Yeah. In fact, you even had the gall to name this episode the System of Profound Wisdom.   0:29:24.0 BB: And that's the title.   0:29:24.9 AS: There it is.   0:29:28.9 BB: But in terms of, I'll give you a fun story from Rocketdyne years ago, and I was talking with a manager in the quality organization and he says, "you know what the problem is, you know what the problem is?" I said, "what?" He says, "the problem is the executives are not getting the data fast enough." And I said, "what data?" He says "the scrap and rework data, they're just not getting it fast enough." So I said, "no matter how fast they get it, it's already happened."   [laughter]   0:30:00.0 BB: But it was just, and I just couldn't get through to him that, that if we're being reactive and talking about scrap and rework, it's already happened. By the time the... If the executives hear it a second later, it's already happened. It's still old news.   0:30:14.7 AS: And if that executive would've been thinking he would've said, but Bill, I want to be on the cutting edge of history.   0:30:23.1 BB: Yeah, it's like...   0:30:24.6 AS: I don't want information, I don't want old information, really old. I just want it as new as it can be, but still old.   0:30:32.9 BB: Well, it reminds me of an Ackoff quote is, instead of... It's "Change or be changed." Ackoff talked about organizations that instead of them being ready for what happens, they create what's gonna happen, which would be more of a Deming organizational approach. Anyway, we talked about books last time and I thought it'd be neat to share a couple books as one as I've shared the Against All Odds Book about Toyota.   0:31:08.8 AS: Which I'll say is on Amazon, but it's only looks like it's a used book and it's priced at about 70 bucks. So I've just...   0:31:16.2 BB: How much?   0:31:16.8 AS: Got that one down? 70 bucks? Because I think it's, you're buying it from someone who has it as a their own edition or something. I don't know.   0:31:23.8 BB: It's not uncommon. This is a, insider used book thing. It's not uncommon that you'll see books on Amazon for 70, but if you go to ThriftBooks or Abe Books, you can, I have found multi-$100 books elsewhere. I don't know how that happens, but it does. Anyway, another book I wanted to reference in today's episode is Profit Beyond Measure subtitle, Extraordinary Results through Attention to Work and People, published in 2000. You can... I don't know if you can get that new, you definitely get it old or used, written by, H. Thomas Johnson. H is for Howard, he goes by Tom, Tom Johnson. Brilliant, brilliant mind. He visited Rocketdyne a few times.   0:32:17.1 BB: On the inside cover page, Tom wrote, "This book is dedicated to the memory of Dr. W. Edwards Deming, 1900-1993. May the seventh generation after us know a world shaped by his thinking." And in the book, you'll find this quote, and I've used it in a previous episode, but for those who may be hearing it first here and Tom's a deep thinker. He's, and as well as his wife Elaine, they're two very deep thinkers. They've both spoke at Rocketdyne numerous times. But one of my favorite quotes from Tom is, "How the world we perceive works depends on how we think. The world we perceive is the world we bring forth through our thinking." And again, it goes back to, we don't see the world as it is. We see the world as we are. We hear the world as we are. I wrote a blog for The Deming Institute. If our listeners would like to find it, if you just do a search for Deming blog, Bellows and Johnson, you'll find the blog. And the blog is about the book Profit Beyond Measure. And in there, I said, “In keeping with Myron Tribus' observation that what you see depends upon what you thought before you looked, Johnson's background as a cost accountant, guided by seminars and conversations with Dr. Deming, prepared him to see Toyota as a living system,” right? You talk about Toyota.   0:33:53.9 BB: He saw it as a living system, not a value stream of independent parts. And that was, that's me talking. I mean, Tom talked about Toyota's living system. And then I put in there with the Toyota Production System, people talk about value streams. Well, in those value streams, they have a defect, good part, bad part model that the parts are handed off, handed off, handed off. That is ostensibly a value stream of independent parts 'cause the quality model of the Toyota Production System, if you study it anywhere, is not Genichi Taguchi. It's the classic good parts and bad parts. And if we're handing off good parts, they are not interdependent. They are independent. And then I close with, "instead of seeing a focus on the elimination of waste and non-value added efforts, Johnson saw self-organization, interdependence, and diversity, the three, as the three primary principles of his approach, which he called Management By Means." And so what's neat, Andrew, is he, Tom was as a student of Deming's work, attending Dr. Deming seminars, hearing about SoPK, System of Profound Knowledge, and he in parallel developed his own model that he calls Management By Means. But what's neat is if you compare the two, there's three principles. So he says self-organization.   0:35:31.0 BB: Well, that's kind of like psychology and people. So we can self-organize interdependence, the other self-organized, but we're connected with one another. So that's, that's kind of a systems perspective there as well. And the third one, diversity. So when I think of diversity, I think of variation. I can also think in terms of people. So that what I don't see in there explicitly is Theory of Knowledge. But Tom's developing this model in parallel with Dr. Deming's work, probably beginning in the early '80s. And part of what Tom had in mind, I believe, by calling it Management By Means, is juxtaposing it with that other management by, right? You know the other one, Andrew, management by?   0:36:33.8 AS: You mean the bad one or the good one, Management By Objective?   0:36:37.8 BB: Or Management By Results. Or Dr. Deming once said, MBIR, Management by Imposition of Results. But what's neat is, and this is what I cover and with my online courses, Tom is really, it's just such insight. Tom believes that treating the means as the ends in the making. So he's saying that the ends are what happen when we focus on the means, which is like, if you focus on the process, you get the result. But no, MBIR, as we focus on the result, we throw the process out the window. And so when I've asked students in one of my classes is, why does Tom Johnson believe that treating the means as an ends in the making is a much surer route to stable and satisfactory financial performance than to continue as most companies do? You ready, Andrew? To chase targets as if the means do not matter. Does that resonate with you, Andrew?   0:37:44.1 AS: Yes. They're tampering.   0:37:46.8 BB: Yeah. I also want to quote, I met Tom in 1997. I'm not sure if this... Actually, this article is online and I'll try to remember to post a link to it. If I forget, our listeners can contact me on LinkedIn and I'll send you a link to find the paper. This is when I first got exposed to Tom. It just blew me away. I still remember there at a Deming conference in 1997, hearing Tom talk. I thought, wow, this is different. So, Tom's paper that I'm referencing is A Different Perspective on Quality, the subtitle, Bringing Management to Life. Can you imagine? “Bringing Management to Life.” And it was in Washington, DC, the 1997 conference. And then Tom says, this is the opening. And so when Tom and his wife would speak at Rocketdyne or other conferences I organized.   0:38:44.0 BB: Tom read from a lectern. So he needed a box to get up there and he read, whereas Elaine, his wife, is all extemporaneous. Both deeply profound, two different styles. So what Tom wrote here is he says, "despite the impression given by my title, Professor of Quality Management, I do not speak to you as a trained or a certified authority on the subject of quality management. I adopted that title more or less casually after giving a presentation to an audience of Oregon business executives just over six years ago. That presentation described how my thinking had changed in the last five years since I co-authored the 1987 book, Relevance Lost, the Rise and Fall of Management Accounting, and the talk which presaged my 1992 book, Relevance Regained." And this is when he... After he wrote, Relevance Lost, he went on the lecture circuit, he met the likes of Peter Scholtes and Brian Joiner, got pulled into the Deming community.   0:39:45.4 BB: And then he wrote this scathing book called Relevance Regained and the subtitle is... I think our audience will love it, From Top-Down Control to Bottom-Up Empowerment. Then he goes on to say, "in that I told how I had come to believe that management accounting, a subject that I had pursued and practiced for over 30 years." Over 30 years, sounds familiar. Then he says, "could no longer provide useful tools for management. I said in essence that instead of managing by results, instead of driving people with quantitative financial targets, it's time for people in business..." And this is 30 years ago, Andrew. "It's time for people in business to shift their attention to how they organize work and how they relate to each other as human beings. I suggested that if companies organize work and build relationships properly, then the results that accountants keep track of will what? Take care of themselves."   0:40:50.8 AS: It's so true, it's so true.   0:40:54.1 BB: Yeah, it sounds so literally Tom was writing that in 1999, 2000. Well, actually no, that was 1997, that was 1997, but the same sentiment.   0:41:03.4 AS: It just makes me think of the diagram that we see and that Deming had about the flow through a business, it's the same thing as of the flow from activity to result.   0:41:20.6 BB: Yes.   0:41:21.9 AS: And when we focus on the result and work backwards, it's a mess from a long-term perspective, but you can get to the result. It's not to say you can't get to the result, but you're not building a system that can replicate that. But when you start with the beginning of that process of how do we set this up right to get to that result, then you have a repeatable process that can deliver value. In other words, you've invested a large amount in the origination of that process that then can produce for a much longer time. Um, I have to mention that the worst part of this whole time that we talk is when I have to tell you that we're almost out of time 'cause there's so much to talk about. So we do need to wrap it up, but, yeah.   0:42:09.3 BB: All right. I got a couple of closing thoughts from Tom and then we'll pick this up in episode 21.   0:42:21.3 AS: Yep.   0:42:22.9 BB: Let me also say, for those who are really... If you really wanna know... I'd say, before you read The New Economics... I'm sorry, before you read Profit Beyond Measure, one is the article I just referenced, “Bringing Quality to Life” is a good start. I'd also encourage our readers to do a search. I do this routinely. It shouldn't be that hard to find, but look for an article written by Art Kleiner, Art as in Arthur, Kleiner, K-L-E-I-N-E-R. And the article is entitled, Measures... The Measures That Matter. I think it might be What Are The Measures That Matter? And that article brilliantly written by Kleiner who I don't think knows all that much about Deming, but he knows a whole lot about Tom Johnson and Robert Kaplan, who together co-authored "Relevance Lost" and then moved apart. And Tom became more and more Deming and Kaplan became more and more non and finally wrote this article.   0:43:35.6 AS: Is this article coming out in 2002, "What Are The Measures That Matter? A 10-year Debate Between Two Feuding Gurus Shed Some Light on a Vexing Business Question?"   0:43:46.4 BB: That's it.   0:43:47.2 AS: There it is and it's on the...   0:43:47.4 BB: And it is riveting.   0:43:50.8 AS: Okay.   0:43:50.8 BB: Absolutely riveting. Is it put out by...   0:43:54.0 AS: PwC, it looks like and it's under strategy...   0:43:58.5 BB: Pricewaterhouse...   0:43:58.8 AS: Yeah, strategy and business.   0:44:00.2 BB: PricewaterhouseCooper? Yeah.   0:44:01.3 AS: Yeah.   0:44:03.1 BB: And 'cause what's in there is Kleiner explaining that what Tom's talking about might take some time. You can go out tomorrow, Andrew, and slash and burn and cut and show instant results. Now what you're not looking at is what are the consequences? And so... But... And then... But Kleiner I think does a brilliant job of juxtaposing and trying to talk about what makes Kaplan's work, the Balanced Scorecard, so popular. Why is Tom so anti that?   0:44:37.9 BB: And to a degree, it could be for some a leap of faith to go over there, but we'll talk about that later. Let me just close with this and this comes from my blog on The Deming Institute about Profit Beyond Measure and I said, "for those who are willing and able to discern the dramatic differences between the prevailing focus of systems that aim to produce better parts with less waste and reductions to non-value-added efforts," that's my poke at Lean and Six Sigma, "and those systems that capitalize on a systemic connection between parts. Tom's book, Profit Beyond Measure, offers abundant food for thought. The difference also represents a shifting from profit as the sole reason for a business to profit as the result of extraordinary attention to working people, a most fitting subtitle to this book."   0:45:35.9 AS: Well, Bill, on behalf of everyone at The Deming Institute, I want to thank you again for the discussion and for listeners, remember to go to deming.org to continue your journey. If you wanna keep in touch with Bill, just find him on LinkedIn. This is your host, Andrew Stotz, and I'll leave you with one of my favorite quotes from Dr. Deming, "People are entitled to Joy in work" and I hope you are enjoying your work.    

Automotive brake system technical questions are among the most common questions fielded by the tech team at Summit Racing. So we brought in the braking experts to cover some of the most recurring tech questions and answers. In this episode, Bill Cummings and Dan DeKruger of LEED Brakes join us to talk brake system anatomy, braking questions, and brake system troubleshooting.

Bill Cummings is the founder and past president and chairman of Cummings Properties, one of the New England region's most prominent private real estate investment firms. Since its founding in 1970, Cummings Properties has amassed a staggering portfolio of over 11 million square feet across 11 cities and towns north of Boston, and has built a reputation as a value-oriented, long-term holder of well-located real estate. While Bill is widely associated with this impressive collection of commercial properties (all owned debt-free), he now focuses most of his time and energy on The Cummings Foundation, the charitable juggernaut he oversees with his wife Joyce. Bill and Joyce made headlines as the first Massachusetts family to sign The Giving Pledge, a campaign started by Warren Buffet and Bill and Melinda Gates to encourage billionaires to give away at least half of their fortune to charity. Until then, the Cummings family had been largely flown under the radar, and this news led to many headlines with a “billionaire next door” theme.Our conversation with Bill starts with his upbringing in Medford and he shares with us anecdotes of the early entrepreneurial bug which never left him. We hear about his career start in sales, his successful journey in the fruit juice business, and his first forays into the real estate investment arena.He got his start in commercial real estate with just one small building, which he built next door to Old Medford Foods, and then led Cummings Properties' expansion into an 11 million-square-foot portfolio, now managed by more than 350 team members.In 1986, Bill and his wife, Joyce, established Cummings Foundation, which has grown to be one of the three largest private foundations in New England. The Cummings family today is known widely for their remarkable philanthropy and dedication to improving the communities around them.Among Bill's many honors are Real Estate Entrepreneur of the Year for New England from Ernst & Young, Edward H. Linde Public Service Award from the National Association of Industrial and Office Properties (NAIOP), and Real Estate Visionary of the Year from Boston Business Journal. He and Joyce were also inducted into the Greater Boston Chamber of Commerce's Academy of Distinguished Bostonians.In 2020, Bill released the latest edition of his self-written memoir, Starting Small and Making It Big: An Entrepreneur's Journey to Billion-Dollar Philanthropist, which includes thoughtful reflections on the lessons he has learned about business, entrepreneurship, and philanthropy.Bill's incredible generosity is legendary in the Boston area, and we feel privileged to have him join us for an episode of Good Dirt.Tom Greeleyhttps://www.linkedin.com/in/thomasgreeley/tom.greeley@nmrk.comMike Greeleyhttps://www.linkedin.com/in/michaelgreeley1/michael.greeley@nmrk.com

WBZ's Jordan Rich says there's a lot more to philanthropist Bill Cummings.

Today, we have Bill Cummings on the show. Bill is a Merced-based real estate developer and CEO of Legacy Construction which is focused primarily on healthcare and mixed-use development projects. At Legacy Construction, Bill serves as the visionary for the company and manages the day to day operations. Bill moved from Washington, D.C. to Fresno, California in 2006 and created Legacy Construction. In addition to Legacy Construction, Bill co-owns Legacy Realty and Development (LRD), Legacy Commercial (LCRE), First Resource Consulting (FRC) and Soccer City 1852 Visalia. He is a licensed California real estate broker and holds an active California General A & B Contractor’s License. We cover a wide variety of topics in this conversation, and you will walk away with a much better understanding of the state of construction and development in the central valley. Legacy Construction Website Books The Five Love Languages Gary Chapman

Cairns Economist Bill Cummings chats about a federal government announcement about a transcontinental route upgrade to seal a 1000km stretch of highway which will ultimately connect Cairns with the Red Centre and beyond into Western Australia.  $678 million has been promised, with a share of $154 million to be allocated for the Queensland sections of the road.  Bill Cummings has been one of the inland rout's top supporters, ever since the first studies were conducted in 2006.

Episode: 2178 Liaison airplane in WW-II: modest swords made from plowshares.  Today, peacetime airplanes at war.

On this week's episode of A Modern Nonprofit Podcast, CEO Tosha Anderson of The Charity CFO invites Bill Cummings, the CEO . Bill Cummings is the Founder and Consultant of Groundswell. Groundswell serves impact-focused organizations with supportive coaching, clear messaging, and compelling design that moves people to action. They work in collaboration with an incredible group of freelance designers, developers, and writers to make life better for you, your organization, and the communities you serve. Bill speaks will Tosha today about his experience in both the for-profit and nonprofit sectors, and what he thinks is similar and what is unique to the world of nonprofits. Bill has led and supported nonprofit organizations, he explains two things that consistently stand out as opportunities for improvement/growth in the nonprofit industry. Nonprofit leaders are very busy, often overwhelmed, running organizations with limited budgets/staffing. Tosha and Bill share ways that leaders can rise above to be more effective and impactful. Bill touches on the balance of leadership, messaging, and design and why these things central to his work. While wrapping up the episode Bill gives the listeners three things that nonprofit leaders could implement in the next few weeks that would immediately add value to their work. Please listen and learn from these two influential leaders in the nonprofit world. Find Bill Cummings @ meetgroundswell.com bill@meetgroundswell.com or on LinkedIn- Bill Cummings

Radio Glamorgan Volunteer Bill Cummings, chooses his 10 favourite songs and talks about his love of music. Here's his 10 1 Karma Chameleon – Culture Club 2 Life On Mars – David Bowie 3 Good Times – Chic 4 It's My Life – Talk, Talk 5 Talking About A Revolution – Tracy Chapman 6 Just Like Heaven – The Cure 7 Motorcycle Emptiness – Manic Street Preachers 8 So, Central Rain - REM 9 Northern Lights – Super Furry Animals 10 Are You Ready To Be Broken – Camera Obscura More about the award winning Music was my first love at www.radioglamorgan.com

This episode's guests: Bill Cummings and Emily Serrano of Legacy Construction. You can find them on Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn.Mike and Brian are joined by Bill Cummings and Emily Serrano, President and Director of Human Resources, respectively, of Legacy Construction. Starting in 2007 right before the world fell apart with the Great Recession, their first commercial project was for a Diabetes and Endocrine Specialty Medical group at $44 per square foot (would be close to $120 per square foot today)! Starting with just 5 people back then, Legacy Construction has grown to close to 40 people specializing in Design / Build in the retail and healthcare space! With an emphasis on challenging norms and established structures, Legacy Construction is revitalizing and changing the retail and healthcare space as we know it!

After 50 years at the helm of Cummings Properties, billionaire and philanthropist Bill Cummings is winding down his roles at both the family business and foundation that he built. How should the management team move the company forward? Harvard Business School professor Christina Wing and protagonist Bill Cummings discuss the case, “Bill Cummings: The Cummings Way.”

Today I spoke to Bill Cummings, a Cairns economist from Cummings Economics, about the jobless figure in Cairns expected to among the highest in the country.  

Katie Harvey has been coaching for more than 18 years. In that time, she has racked up more than 14,000 hours of coaching which, she says, is more than any other coach she has met over that time. She was part of the vanguard of coaches in the UK and for more than 12 years has worked to support other coaches: supervising and mentoring coaches and training new coaches, including through CoachU.In this episode, we talk about:- How she racked up more than 14,000 hours of coaching.- The advantages and disadvantages of being part of the vanguard of coaching.- The question of 'niche' and why Katie calls herself a generalist coach.- What business and pricing model Katie has settled on after 18 years of experimentation.- And how a trying a coaching sales technique on a photographer.... ended up with them getting married!For more information about Katie, email her at katie@katieharveycoaching.co.uk.For full show notes, an extended biography of Katie and more about the podcast's host, Robbie Swale, The Coach's Journey podcast as a whole and The Coach's Journey group programme, visit www.thecoachsjourney.com.For information about Robbie's wider work and writing, visit www.robbieswalecoaching.com.Music by My Good Man William: listen on Spotify at https://open.spotify.com/artist/4KmeQUcTbeE31uFynHQLQgThings and people we mentioned (that you might be interested in):~13 minutes: CoachU - http://www.coachinc.com/CoachU/~25: Vegard Olsen – https://coachingpartner.net/cp/en/vegard-olsen-2/~26: Laura Burkey - https://www.facebook.com/LauraBurkeyCoaching/~35: The Prosperous Coach by Rich Litvin and Steve Chandler - https://richlitvin.com/the-prosperous-coach/~46: Clare Pedrick - https://www.3dcoaching.com/claire-pedrick-mcc/~46: Bill Cummings - https://www.theboothbyinstitute.org/~70: Robbie's video about how his coaching fees evolved over time - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j-BSI5Cb8mU~80: Katie's website - http://katieharveycoaching.co.uk/~96: Michael Neill - https://www.michaelneill.org/~99: Local International Coaching Federation Chapters: https://coachfederation.org/why-icf/chapter-map~99: Local Association for Coaching events: https://www.associationforcoaching.com/page/EventsOverview

My friend Bill Cummings asked me a powerful question that I don't get every day; "How has faith and spirituality shaped who I am today?" This was my kind of question! Spirituality is very much at the core of who I am, it is a compass for my life, and it's based on a lot of the great teachings - mainly Love. Give this episode a listen - I'd love to know your thoughts!

Bill Cummings and his wife Joyce move philanthropy through the Cummings Foundation, one of the largest charitable foundations in New England. The foundation has given away more than $200 million in the Greater Boston area and also manages several subsidiaries, including the nonprofit New Horizons retirement communities. The couple are Giving Pledge signatories. Bill Cummings graduated from Tufts University. In the 1960s, Cummings paid $10,000 for his first business, a company that supplied fruit punch to colleges and health care institutions, and eventually sold it for more than $1 million. He was the publisher of several community newspapers. Cummings went on to create Cummings Properties in Woburn, Massachusetts, outside Boston. That commercial real estate business, which began in 1970 with one small building, now boasts 11 million square feet in nearly a dozen communities north and west of Boston. Nearly all the buildings managed by Cummings Properties are owned by and operated for the benefit of the Cummings Foundation, which Bill and Joyce Cummings established in 1986. When the couple established the foundation, they pledged to give 10 percent of their income each year to it. Over time, however, they committed most of the family's commercial real estate holdings to the foundation. With nearly $2 billion in assets, it's now one of the largest foundations in New England. The foundation has a strong focus on Greater Boston and about a dozen communities north or west of the city. Grants go to charities aiding the community through education, healthcare, human services, and social justice programs.Grantees include Brazilian Worker Center, Artists for Humanity, Boston Shakespeare Project, Boston Area Rape Crisis Center, The Children’s Center of Methuen, Boys and Girls Clubs of Dorchester, Catholic Charities of Boston, and Winchester Music School. Cummings has been a major donor to his alma mater Tufts University, home to the Cummings School of Veterinary Medicine. The foundation runs several subsidiary programs. The Institute for World Justice supports the "post-genocide recovery and rebuilding of Rwanda," and uses "education to help prevent future genocides and other intercultural violence and injustices there and elsewhere." The foundation also developed New Horizons retirement communities in Massachusetts. Cummings is in his 80s and his giving is going strong. Through the years, the foundation's circle of leadership has broadened beyond family members and now two-thirds of the foundation's trustees come from outside the family or business. Look for even more community involvement down the line. Please do NOT hesitate to reach out to me on LinkedIn, Instagram, or via email mark@vudream.comLinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/mark-metry/Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/markmetry/Twitter - https://twitter.com/markymetryMedium - https://medium.com/@markymetryFacebook - https://www.facebook.com/Humans.2.0.PodcastMark Metry - https://www.markmetry.com/Humans 2.0 Twitter - https://twitter.com/Humans2Podcast

Bill Cummings and his wife Joyce move philanthropy through the Cummings Foundation, one of the largest charitable foundations in New England. The foundation has given away more than $200 million in the Greater Boston area and also manages several subsidiaries, including the nonprofit New Horizons retirement communities. The couple are Giving Pledge signatories. Bill Cummings graduated from Tufts University. In the 1960s, Cummings paid $10,000 for his first business, a company that supplied fruit punch to colleges and health care institutions, and eventually sold it for more than $1 million. He was the publisher of several community newspapers. Cummings went on to create Cummings Properties in Woburn, Massachusetts, outside Boston. That commercial real estate business, which began in 1970 with one small building, now boasts 11 million square feet in nearly a dozen communities north and west of Boston. Nearly all the buildings managed by Cummings Properties are owned by and operated for the benefit of the Cummings Foundation, which Bill and Joyce Cummings established in 1986. When the couple established the foundation, they pledged to give 10 percent of their income each year to it. Over time, however, they committed most of the family's commercial real estate holdings to the foundation. With nearly $2 billion in assets, it's now one of the largest foundations in New England. The foundation has a strong focus on Greater Boston and about a dozen communities north or west of the city. Grants go to charities aiding the community through education, healthcare, human services, and social justice programs.Grantees include Brazilian Worker Center, Artists for Humanity, Boston Shakespeare Project, Boston Area Rape Crisis Center, The Children's Center of Methuen, Boys and Girls Clubs of Dorchester, Catholic Charities of Boston, and Winchester Music School. Cummings has been a major donor to his alma mater Tufts University, home to the Cummings School of Veterinary Medicine. The foundation runs several subsidiary programs. The Institute for World Justice supports the "post-genocide recovery and rebuilding of Rwanda," and uses "education to help prevent future genocides and other intercultural violence and injustices there and elsewhere." The foundation also developed New Horizons retirement communities in Massachusetts. Cummings is in his 80s and his giving is going strong. Through the years, the foundation's circle of leadership has broadened beyond family members and now two-thirds of the foundation's trustees come from outside the family or business. Look for even more community involvement down the line. Please do NOT hesitate to reach out to me on LinkedIn, Instagram, or via email mark@vudream.comLinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/mark-metry/Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/markmetry/Twitter - https://twitter.com/markymetryMedium - https://medium.com/@markymetryFacebook - https://www.facebook.com/Humans.2.0.PodcastMark Metry - https://www.markmetry.com/Humans 2.0 Twitter - https://twitter.com/Humans2Podcast

Bill Cummings and his wife Joyce move philanthropy through the Cummings Foundation, one of the largest charitable foundations in New England. The foundation has given away more than $200 million in the Greater Boston area and also manages several subsidiaries, including the nonprofit New Horizons retirement communities. The couple are Giving Pledge signatories. Bill Cummings graduated from Tufts University. In the 1960s, Cummings paid $10,000 for his first business, a company that supplied fruit punch to colleges and health care institutions, and eventually sold it for more than $1 million. He was the publisher of several community newspapers. Cummings went on to create Cummings Properties in Woburn, Massachusetts, outside Boston. That commercial real estate business, which began in 1970 with one small building, now boasts 11 million square feet in nearly a dozen communities north and west of Boston. Nearly all the buildings managed by Cummings Properties are owned by and operated for the benefit of the Cummings Foundation, which Bill and Joyce Cummings established in 1986. When the couple established the foundation, they pledged to give 10 percent of their income each year to it. Over time, however, they committed most of the family's commercial real estate holdings to the foundation. With nearly $2 billion in assets, it's now one of the largest foundations in New England. The foundation has a strong focus on Greater Boston and about a dozen communities north or west of the city. Grants go to charities aiding the community through education, healthcare, human services, and social justice programs.Grantees include Brazilian Worker Center, Artists for Humanity, Boston Shakespeare Project, Boston Area Rape Crisis Center, The Children’s Center of Methuen, Boys and Girls Clubs of Dorchester, Catholic Charities of Boston, and Winchester Music School. Cummings has been a major donor to his alma mater Tufts University, home to the Cummings School of Veterinary Medicine. The foundation runs several subsidiary programs. The Institute for World Justice supports the "post-genocide recovery and rebuilding of Rwanda," and uses "education to help prevent future genocides and other intercultural violence and injustices there and elsewhere." The foundation also developed New Horizons retirement communities in Massachusetts. Cummings is in his 80s and his giving is going strong. Through the years, the foundation's circle of leadership has broadened beyond family members and now two-thirds of the foundation's trustees come from outside the family or business. Look for even more community involvement down the line. Please do NOT hesitate to reach out to me on LinkedIn, Instagram, or via email mark@vudream.comLinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/mark-metry/Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/markmetry/Twitter - https://twitter.com/markymetryMedium - https://medium.com/@markymetryFacebook - https://www.facebook.com/Humans.2.0.PodcastMark Metry - https://www.markmetry.com/Humans 2.0 Twitter - https://twitter.com/Humans2Podcast

My autobiography is not a Horatio Alger story, or maybe it is a little bit. Born during the Great Depression, I grew up poor but first tried my hand at being an entrepreneur when I was six or seven years old. I sold bottles of soda pop each afternoon at a neighborhood construction site, and there are still so many similar opportunities for kids today.A decade later, I talked my way into college, though perhaps I did not really belong there. I was able to pay all of my tuition and expenses by always working and by being forever frugal. Soon after graduation, I made a point of paying back a single $50 scholarship award by making a $50 contribution to my alma mater, and I have continued giving to the university—and many other recipients—ever since.I became a serial entrepreneur in earnest, and then a philanthropist, after first working all over the country with two national consumer-products firms. In 1964, I spent $4,000 to purchase my first real business, a hundred-year-old manufacturer of fruit-juice-beverage bases, which I quickly expanded by providing refrigerated dispensers and drinks to several hundred colleges and universities.With the million-dollar proceeds from the sale of that business in 1970, I founded a suburban-Boston commercial real estate firm. Cummings Properties quickly grew from one small building to a portfolio of more than 100 modern buildings today. Along the way, we accumulated uncommon wealth, much of which my wife, Joyce, and I have been actively disbursing through Cummings Foundation, which we established together in 1986.Joyce and I were the first Massachusetts couple to join the Giving Pledge, an international philanthropic organization founded by Bill and Melinda Gates and Warren Buffet. We have been honored to receive dozens of community honors and accolades, including those from Ernst & Young, the Irish International Immigrant Center, the Archdiocese of Boston, and NAIOP, the association for the commercial real estate development industry. We have both received several honorary doctoral degrees and have three times served as college commencement speakers. In 2012, the Boston Globe named Joyce and me runners-up as Greater Bostonians of the Year.We also received a Friend of Israel award, and Boston Business Journal named me the Real Estate Visionary of the Year in 2014. More recently, in 2017, the Greater Boston Chamber of Commerce named Joyce and me to its Academy of Distinguished Bostonians. We have lived together in Winchester, Massachusetts, for fifty years.bc@cummings.comtamiexit@aol.com

Bill Cummings has transformed lives through business and charity. He built a real estate giant in Cummings Properties and successfully trained and onboarded his successor. When he exited the company, Bill had accrued billions of dollars to his name. Then, he decided to give everything back. He founded the Cummings Foundation, a charitable organization that now has $2 billion in assets, and signed the Giving Pledge, an initiative led by Bill Gates and Warren Buffet where business owners pledge to give away their fortunes to philanthropic causes. Bill sat down with host Robert Glazer to talk about his career, the importance of developing talent and why successful people have a responsibility to give back. Bill is the author of the 2018 book Starting Small and Making It Big.

Bill Cummings - Billionaire, Philanthropist, Entrepreneur, Founder of Cummings Properties, and author of “Starting Small and Making it Big”, shares his experiences from his early career to his current passion of giving away his fortune.This show is broadcast live on Monday's at 4PM ET on W4CY Radio – (www.w4cy.com) part of Talk 4 Radio (http://www.talk4radio.com/) on the Talk 4 Media Network (http://www.talk4media.com/).

Happy Holidays from The Hennessy Report! In this episode, Dave speaks with Bill Cummings, founder of Cummings Properties and member of The Giving Pledge. Bill's spirit of giving, and humble attitude shines through as he talks with Dave about building his business and his immense charitable contributions. Enjoy!

Have a seat at our table for some end-times parenting lessons. Go on location for CCR's birthday. Cheer him on as he berates adults. EPISODE SPONSORS: Frigart-Bell Heaven's Gate Memorial Charter School (8:45) & Bill Cummings for School Board (12:34)

Guiding Principles Series

Pastor Terry Brock - Tuesday, October 3, 2017

T.J. Gentle, CEO of SmartFurniture.com and member of the President's Small Business Advisory Board shows how his firm converted customers at approximately 10x the rate of typical website visitors while increasing the average order amount by 27% on a site where average order size is over $700. Bill Cummings talks about the 13 most common mistakes business owners make. He points out pitfalls that lead to a higher tax bill. Among them are some of the following: Selecting the wrong business entitySelecting the wrong retirement planMissing real estate deductionsMissing the many allowed deductions available to business ownersNot maximizing personal wealth when cashing out. Mark Faggiano, CEO and Founder of  TaxJar, offers tips on how small businesses can avoid the backlash of states trying to tax online sales. States are looking for revenue by way of taxes, and have found more ways to implement nexus rules for business who sell online. Something as simple as having a link to your site, on an affiliates site in another state, now establishes nexus and you must collect sales tax.

Bill Cummings talks about the differences between bad luck and bad businesss. His easy-to-understand advice stresses tax planning long before tax prep, and it covers pitfalls such as selecting the wrong business entity or retirement plan and missing the many allowed deductions available to business owners. Cummings also helps readers get over their fear of being audited through data showing audits at a historic low and with strategies on how to audit-proof tax returns. Eric Granof is Chief Marketing Officer for AIA, a bail bond insurance company. He taslks about maintaining pubic awareness while combattng numerous negative stereotypes opeople have towards bail. Granof offers tips on buildiing a brand even in an industry most people have a negative opinion about. His strategies can work for any small business. Sean Caasstrina talks about what are the keys to successfully starting and growing a small business. He offers eight unbreakable rules to success. Among them are do research; find or partner with good people. Most importantly, he believes small businesses should not be started out of passion but hard headed analysis....but don't create a business plan....create a simple document that spells out the business, why it is competitive, and stay focused.