October 2010 Ongoing Discussion, Reflections on W. Edwards Deming

W. Edwards Deming was born in Sioux City, Iowa on October 14th, 1900, ten years to the day before legendary basketball coach John Wooden. One-hundred ten years later, the focus of our Ongoing Discussion will be to reflect on what we've learned from Dr. Deming and what we're still unsure of regarding his theory of management. While their paths likely never crossed, Dr. Deming and John Wooden, also a mid-western native, left us with messages about team work and leadership that will live long after their deaths; Dr. Deming's in 1993 and John Wooden's earlier this year on June 4th. While Dr. Deming advised organizations, large and small, from the worlds of industry, government, education, and healthcare, to name a few, John Wooden influenced the world of colleagiate sports and the many who saw the connection between team work on a basketball court and teamwork in organizations. Both realized the vast implications for positive synergy and developed theories of management to express their visions to others. In addition, both were accomplished learners and lived their lives according to a spirit of continuous improvement summarized by a maxim from John Wooden, "It's the things you learn after you know it all that count." As such, neither would agonize over the pursuit of optimization, if such an attainment, like perfection, is attributed to a solution that cannot be further enhanced.

Following a career at the Department of Agriculture, building upon his expertise as a mathematical physicist, Dr. Deming was invited to Japan in 1950, where, as borrowed from his wikipedia page, "...he taught top management how to improve design (and thus service), product quality, testing and sales (the last through global markets)through various methods, including the application of statistical methods." Thirty years later, in the summer of 1980, the growing impact of his visits to Japan were summarized in the NBC "whitepaper" (more on wikipedia), "If Japan Can, Why Can't We", produced by Clare Crawford-Mason. With the appeal of Deming's evolving theory of management, first captured by his 14 points (and, later by his "System of Profound Knowledge"), Clare compiled a 32-volume set of videos, known as the Deming Video Library. (Once priced at $10,000, this set now sells for $1,200). Earlier videos, such as his "The Five Deadly Diseases," as alive today as bed bugs, can be viewed on YouTube.

In his last book, The New Economics for Industry, Education, and Government, Dr. Deming opened chapter 1 with a passage that will resonate with many today, especially with elections across the U.S. coming soon. Titled "How Are We Doing?," Dr. Deming wrote;

A new world: Information flows. The people of the world no longer live in isolation. Information flows across borders. Movies, TV, VCR, and FAX tell us instantly about other people, how they live, what they enjoy. People make comparisons. Anybody wishes to live like somebody else. Anybody else lives better, so everybody supposes.

How may people live as other people live? People blame their plight on to the government and its leaders, or to management and its leaders. They may be correct. But will change in leadership assure better living? What if the new leaders are no better? How could they be? How much time have new leaders to demonstrate that they have brought a better life? In other words, how patient are people? What are the criteria that people use for judgment?

By what method could new leaders bring improvement in living? Do they possess knowledge requisite for improvement? What characteristics ought a leader to possess? Will best efforts bring improvement? Unfortunately, no. Best efforts and hard work, not guided by knowledge, only dig deeper the pit we are in. The aim of this book is to provide new knowledge.

Fast forward to today, when a Google search for "W. Edwards Deming," the latest example of how information flows across borders, will result in 151,000+ hits in a mere 0.02 seconds. With lengthy videos (Deming - Part 1, Part 2, and Part 3) on YouTube included, and 1-minutes clips from a 1989 documentary ("The Deming of America") by Priscilla Petty, there's plenty here to review in preparation for this week's conference calls, with the following format to reflect on what participants have learned;

On Thursday, October 14th, the focus of conversation will be "What I learned from Dr. Deming, including how he changed my way of looking at the world and doing my work). Ideally, this conversation can be organized around the components of Profound Knowledge (appreciation for a system, knowledge about variation, theory of knowledge, psychology, and the interactions of these four elements of this system).

The following are some things to think about (with the term organization including industry, government, and education):

The way(s) one perceives the organization
The organization's purpose
The organization's interactions with its environment
The organization's relationships with investors, customers, suppliers, communities, competitors
Executives' activities and responsibilities
Managers' activities and responsibilities
Other individuals' activities and responsibilities
Managers' interactions with the employees they supervise
Assessment of the organization's performance/progress
Improvement of the organization's performance
Improvement of processes
Requirements for good decision-making
Planning horizon
Learning, development of knowledge
Development of people
Assessment of people's performance/progress
Communication in organizations
Interpretation of data

Other things to think about include application of Dr. Deming's ideas to one's family life, life in the community, and life as a citizen.

By way of example, Dartmouth University president Jim Yong Kim (in his 2009 inauguration speech), offered this commentary on what he learned from Dr. Deming,

"Over the years, I've studied the work of W. Edwards Deming, who took Dewey's insights into new territory and enabled some of the greatest economic successes in modern history.

Deming emphasized constant measurement of results and continuous improvement. But he believed that learning and innovation must be understood at their roots as a collective mission - one that requires trust among many members of an organization, the type of trust and mutual respect that I've found very much alive here at Dartmouth. Crucially, Deming then argued that this indispensable foundation of trust and shared commitment must be allied to a rigorous understanding of how complex systems work to produce desired results."

On Friday, October 15th, the focus of the conversation will "What I still don't understand or accept or agree with in his ideas." For example, what are your views on the concepts listed below;

Competition is necessary, productive, and beneficial
Grading gold stars and prizes
Performance appraisals
Relentless root-cause analysis
Striving for "zero defects"
Variation Reduction
Continuous Improvement
The most important numbers are unknown and unknowable
The adage, "If you can't measure it, you can't manage it"
Everything best is not enough
The focus on "Study" and not "Check" in the P-D-S-A cycle

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