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Join us in our rebellion against the modern bureaucracy.


Ends of the Earth Learning Group was organized in 1998 with the intent of helping people via the Internet to share ideas and raise issues relative to changing organizations. Our products include books, simulation techniques, consulting, and assistance. As readers join us in our rebellion, we will include short biographies of them below.

Ron Turner and Linda Turner

Ron Turner







WE BELIEVE IT IS POSSIBLE TO MAKE THE WORLD A BETTER PLACE.







AS HUMANISTS, WE BELIEVE THAT PEOPLE HAVE THE POWER TO CHANGE THEIR LIVES.







THINGS ARE GETTING BETTER IN THE WORLD AND NOT WORSE.







LEARNING NEW THINGS IS LIFE ITSELF.







MAKING MISTAKES IS A GOOD THING AND NOT A BAD THING BECAUSE IT MEANS PEOPLE ARE LEARNING.







WE ARE STUDENTS AS WELL AS TEACHERS. DO YOU HAVE SOMETHING TO TEACH US?

Former Maine Senator William Hathaway once commented that Maine is at the Ends of the Empire. Sometimes, it does indeed feel like we are on the outer edges of American life. That's not so bad. Trees make good company. The air is clean. Crime is low. We work out here on the outer limits in relative peace and quiet.

We were in our youth part of the counter-culture who opted for the slow life of Maine over the fast life of urban America. Like many Maine people, we have not had a traditional work life. I started life as a construction laborer working on nuclear power plants and eventually ended up managing my own residential construction company. In 1981 at the ripe old age of 31, I became a non-traditional student and entered the University of Maine where I eventually earned a Bachelor's Degree and Master's Degree in economics.

Since then, I have worked as Administrator of a medical practice, a Social Science Instructor at Eastern Maine Technical College in Bangor, ME., a business consultant, and an Academic Dean. (For the uninitiated, we pronounce the "or" in Bangor like the word "or" and not the sound "er.")

Temporarily I left teaching to attend Yale University's School of Organization and Management as a doctoral student in the Economics of Organizations. We so disliked the urban environment of New Haven that we left Connecticut after a single semester and returned to Maine where I got my teaching job back and started a "moonlighting" career as a management consultant.

In 1990, Champion Paper Company asked me to deliver some workshops on teamwork and Total Quality Management. The research I did for those workshops so excited me about the potential of TQM for changing the world that I spent the next year talking to over 50 organizations involved in Total Quality initiatives.

Begining in 1991, I shifted all my consulting work to Total Quality applications. My clients have been diverse including large manufacturers like Champion as well as smaller organizations including computer software developers, multi-physician medical practices, retailers, wholesalers, grocers, police departments, public works departments, hospitals, K-12 educators, and colleges.

My consulting roles outside of teaching led me to a change in my roles at Eastern Maine Technical College (EMTC). Starting in 1992, I began offering courses on Total Quality Management to the general business community. In 1996, I was appointed Quality Coordinator to EMTC which is in the beginning baby steps of adopting a Total Quality philosophy. In the summer of 1998, I was appointed Academic Dean.

I have taken an active role in Maine attempting to encourage organizations to change their management philosophies. I am a past-Chair of the Dirigo Section of the American Society for Quality (ASQ), past-Senior Examiner and Trainer for the Margaret Chase Smith Maine State Quality Award, and in 1997, I was an examiner for the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award.

I have published several papers on TQM in a variety of journels and newsletters. I have also made many presentations on Total Quality before school boards, business groups, and at conferences.

Resumes sometimes give a sterile portrait of someone. I am married to my high school sweetheart (we were both teenagers when we married way back in 1969). We have one son who is as rebellious as his parents. Because he is a wiz at computers, he won't ever lack a job. I love Maine in spite of the long winters and black flies in the spring.

The writers who have most influenced me include W. Edwards Deming, Kaoru Ishikawa, Peter Senge, Alfie Kohn, James Belasco, Oliver Williamson, Abraham Maslow, and Stephen Covey.

We created Ends of the Earth Learning Group in March 1998. Our hope is that the internet will provide a reach that will make it possible for us to interact with the rest of the world from our home in Maine.


Linda Turner









LIFE IS DIFFICULT.

M. Scott Peck







WE HAD PROBLEMS WITH BEARS STEALING OUR CORN, BUT WE NEVER HAD PROBLEMS WITH PEOPLE.









OUR SMALL MEDICAL OFFICE IS INTERNATIONALLY KNOWN.











I WANT PEOPLE TO HAVE A DECENT WORKPLACE

I have traveled a fair amount over the years with my best friend, my husband, Ron. We hitch-hiked through Europe, backpacked in Alaska, and camped on the beaches of Hawaii. When first married, like many of our generation, we wandered across America in a Volkswagon van. During that journey we spent six months in Maine. We arrived on a sub-zero December day in 1969 and left before it warmed up the following July. In spite of the cold long winters and short summers, we liked Maine and promised outselves that when we were ready to start a family, we would return. We came back in 1976, arriving when our baby was three months old.

I helped build a house with my own hands. I thought that the four months we spent camping on our land, while we roughed in our house, would be what we'd remember as the "tough times." Instead, the next eight years of life in the Maine woods was a mixture of hard times and glorious ones. I remember clearly the cold winter nights when our house, lit by kerosene lamps, was a haven in the dark. We walked a mile from where we parked our car, sometimes when it was 15 below zero and pitch black outside. The wind in the tree tops sounded like surf on the ocean. The day we got electricity is one of the high points in my life. There is nothing like doing without to make people appreciate the little things in life. After eight years, we left the woods for an easier life and moved into town.

In my early years, I worked in a greenhouse tending plants, in a department store as a clerk, in a hospital office as a clerk-typist, and as a carpenter-helper and gutter hanger. I know what it means to work at the bottom of an organization. I know how tough life can be when incomes are low and prospects are thin.

In 1981, I started working for a group of physicians filing charts two hours a day. Over the years, my responsibilities gradually increased. Today I work in Dr. Charles Burger's office where my title is Operations Coordinator. Our medical office is considered on the cutting edge, regularly visited by doctors and staff from around the world. The McNeil-Leherer Report and ABC's World News Tonight with Peter Jenning both have done feature reports on our office and our use of computer Problem Knowledge Couplers developed by Dr. Larry Weed of Vermont. Clinicians use the computer "couplers" in order to reduce their dependency on memory, to gain greater utilization of available data, and to access a medical library that is updated quarterly by the University of Vermont Medical School library. The strength of the "couplers" program is also routinely used to triage phone calls so that appointments are scheduled appropriately for symptoms, urgency and the amount of time needed for patient problems.

We adopted Total Quality Management as a philosophy in 1991. Today, all employees are part of self-directed teams who have the authority to make major decisions about how they do their jobs. My role is coordinator and coach.

Besides my role in helping the office become a model medical practice, my personal goal has been to make the office a good place to work. People spend more waking hours with their co-workers than with their families. Before our TQM days began, it was not unusual to have staff leave their work stations in tears. I am pleased to say that this is no longer the case. We have been successful in giving our employees the skills and empowerment they need to make their jobs enjoyable and something about which they can take well deserved pride.

I have been an examiner for the Margaret Chase Smith Maine State Quality Award. I have also made presentations before civic and medical groups explaining how we have re-engineered our office both to utilize computers in new ways as well as to apply Total Quality Principles. In 1998, our office was was asked to participate in the Idealized Clinical Office Practice (ICOP), an international effort to reform health care. This has led me to participate and present at national conferences in Boston and Washington D.C. I have also acted as a consultant for medical practices in and outside of Maine.

Many of the tools you will discover on our website were developed and tested by me in our office. I hope to hear plenty of new ideas from readers who will, like us, choose to share their experiences. I also hope to hear how well some of our tools worked out for people trying them for the first time.

I am a lifelong learner. I take classes at local colleges and universities as they interest me. I have attended many workshops on building teams, facilitator training, data analysis, as well as specialized workshops with medical office applications.

Links Free
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Ends of the Earth Learning Group is dedicated to transforming bureaucracies into organizations that remember why they were created in the first place.