# QULTURUM
A remarkably successful community-scale, whole sector, improvement system in Jönköping County, Sweden.
There is an almost magical county in Sweden where an enzyme-like place was designed and built in 1998. The building is named Qulturum. People meet there and learn how to learn. They “act into knowing” according to Göran Henriks, the director of Qulturum since its inception. Their health system results have become famous. Healthcare and government leaders make the pilgrimage here from across the world. Many try to imitate it. I have traveled there four times, a week at a time, to understand what the dynamics are around this place—Qulturum.
As successful as Jonkoping County Council and Qulturum have been, they only attract the medical sector—they are indelibly labeled with their original mission, to improve the medical system. The thirteen municipalities that have jurisdiction over schools, transport, eldercare, social services, and more, have not yet been attracted to the place or its methods. This problem with **branding must be dealt with at the inception** as it is very difficult to change people minds or adapt methods to different cultures when they feel left out.
They use a simple diagram to make sense of their philosophy and methods. They call it the Diamond.
The driver for them is learning. A-F are main domains of focused learning and improvement.
The constraint (not the goal) is finance. They view finance as matters of affordability and sustainability, not profit and growth.
digraph { layout=dot rankdir=TB overlap=false concentrate=false bgcolor=lightblue // splines=" " node [shape=box style=box style=filled] label="\n \nInnovation\n& Learning\nWithin\nConstraints" "Innovation\n& Learning"-> {A B C D E F} -> "Good\nFinance" }
They explicitly use Deming's model a business as a system to understand how to integrate learning and change with strategy, operations, and support.
An elaboration on Deming's famous "Model of a System."
The massively important fact is that Deming's model of a system is isomorphic with Stafford Beer's Viable System Model. Experience with one informs experience with the other.