What's the difference between education and training? Why is the distinction important? How does the Deming lens offer a new perspective on teacher effectiveness? In this episode, John Dues and host Andrew Stotz talk about why it's important to go beyond skills training and encourage education for personal growth.  TRANSCRIPT 0:00:00.0 Andrew Stotz: Here we go. 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 discussion with John Dues, who is part of the new generation of educators striving to apply Dr. Deming's principles to unleash student joy in learning. This is episode 19 and we're continuing our discussion about the shift from management myths to principles for the transformation of school systems. John, take it away.   0:00:31.2 John Dues: Andrew, good to be back. Yeah, principle 13 today, Institute a Vigorous Program of Education. I'll just start by reading the Principle, "Institute a vigorous program of education and encourage self-improvement for everyone. The school system needs not just good people, but people that are improving with education. Advances in teaching and learning processes will have their roots in knowledge." It's interesting, when I was reading about sort of this particular principle, Dr. Deming took this actually pretty far when he was asked where would you draw the line? And he basically said, I would allow any educational pursuits that people are interested in. So that was his sort of take on this particular principle. But I think it's maybe the first thing is to differentiate between training and education. When he was talking about those things, we talked about instituting training on the job back when we talked about principle six, and he basically said the training is for a skill and a skill is something that's finite because it ends when performance has reached a stable state for a person when thinking about that particular skill.   0:01:51.3 JD: The differentiator with Principle 13 is that it's focused on education and it's meant for growth. And in the Deming philosophy, this is sort of a never ending process of education. So skills, so training is focused on skills, whereas education is focused on knowledge and theory. And this is really an important distinction in my mind, and you need both, training and education are complimentary components I think of an effective school system or really an effective organization in general. So I think, I mean, obviously training is important. It's something that's necessary, especially when you come into a new job. We have lots of new teachers that come to us 'cause we're a relatively young organization. And it's pretty typical for these new teachers to come even if they majored in education many times, they don't have sort of the basic classroom management skills, the basic lesson planning skills, the basic lesson delivery skills that they need to be successful in the classroom.   0:03:00.9 JD: So we have a training program, and in the absence of that training program the teachers would probably flounder or it would take a lot longer time to get their legs under them. So training is important, but we have to sort of shorten that runway. So we have to be good at training 'cause we're like a relatively young organization and we have students that come to us on average that are below grade level. And so they can't wait a long time for these sort of teachers to get up to speed. And I think we've talked about the fact that we have this sort of three week training program before the school year starts for new teachers for that reason. And so training is obviously important, very important. But I think what I've sort of come to appreciate is this idea of... And Deming stressed this, that leaders, systems leaders understand this idea of a stable system.   0:04:00.7 JD: One of the things that he said was that "The performance of anyone that can learn a skill will come to a stable state upon which further lessons will not bring improvement of performance." And this for me, reading Deming at this point in my career was really an interesting revelation because for many years I had heard sort of policymakers, education reform types sort of lament the fact that teachers improvement largely levels off in about year five of their career. Now, there has been some more recent longitudinal teacher research in terms of effectiveness over time. And basically people have found that that's not quite true. And that teaching experience is positively correlated with student achievement gains sort of across the teacher's career. But it's definitely true that the gains and effectiveness are steepest in those initial years.   0:04:55.2 JD: And so when you put those two ideas together that there's sort of this leveling off in about year five with Deming's sort of concept of stable systems, it really sort of dawned on me that it was this perfect explanation for this phenomenon. When a teacher is in their first five years there's a lot of foundational skills like the things I was talking about, like lesson planning, lesson delivery, classroom management, those basic things. There's sort of this period of rapid improvement or growth, and then it sort of levels off after you get the basics of how to be a teacher. And then after that happens, you have this... The potential for improvement sort of lies within the organization, within the system itself and not in the individual. So this really lined up with this thing I had heard for a long time, even though I think sort of it was misinterpreted.   0:05:52.0 JD: And I think a lot of those people that were talking about teacher skills leveling off after five years, they didn't have this lens of a stable system. They didn't have that part of it. And so they were saying, well, teachers aren't improving. Well, it really wasn't the teachers not improving. It was the fact that most of the capacity, like we've talked about here for improvement lies within the system itself and not the individuals. And I would also make the argument that this is not just educators, that this is other sectors as well, healthcare or whatever that thing is.   0:06:27.0 AS: Yeah. I mean, a good way of imagining that is a person who knows nothing that has the prerequisites, the education or whatever's necessary to get the job. And they know nothing about teaching and about the school system or anything that you can just imagine that so much of the initial phase is just understanding how the system, how they operate within that system to do certain tasks, which can be a process of trying to understand all of that. But then it's like they become, it's like entering the stream and then they become the stream floating down the river where everybody's kind of doing the same thing. And then you realize, okay, by this time now their, their, the amount that they can improve has been hit for some specific tasks and things like that. And then all of a sudden their output is a function of the system.   0:07:23.0 JD: Yeah. Yeah. And I think where this can really go off the rails is when people don't understand the stable state of systems. I think that, and I think a lot of the educators from reformers were sort of talking about it as if teachers were kind of replaceable because they didn't improve after those initial five years, especially 10 years ago that was sort of the common way people talked about this. And you could then sort of the next step is to draw the conclusion that experienced educators aren't that important since that improvement sort of levels off pretty early in their career. But I think that is the completely wrong conclusion to draw. I think experienced teachers are incredibly important because of the stability they provide a school. They can provide mentorship to inexperienced teachers, they have longstanding relationships with families as multiple students come through the system.   0:08:25.0 JD: That stability is really important for all those reasons, which are hopefully fairly obvious to anybody that's worked in a school. But I think even maybe more importantly is this idea that once teachers have that baseline level of knowledge and skills, they can run a classroom, they can deliver a well-planned lesson. The reason that it then becomes important for improvement to have those folks is because once those basic things are in place, now we can actually start to work on the system where the real potential for improvement lies. And I think that was a point that was missed or glossed over in a lot of those conversations about education reform and this idea of the teacher skills leveling off after year five.   0:09:23.8 AS: Mm-hmm. One of the the things about education that I have a story that's... I guess one of the conclusions is that the next level of improvement of the system oftentimes comes from outside the system. And that's where education takes the mind into another space.   0:09:40.9 JD: Yeah.   0:09:49.2 AS: From that other space, they're getting knowledge and theories of what's going on out there. And I had an example, John, that was... When I was the head of research at Citibank, and I had been head of research before taking care of a team of analysts, and analysts are always late in their reports, they're writing long reports about whether to buy or sell a company. They're trying to gather as much information, talk to the company, things get delayed. They set their deadlines and then they... The job of a head of research is juggling those delays so that the sales team and the clients need an idea day. And it's always the case that you're juggling around and okay, we don't have something this day, let's make something up with what we've got. Okay, this guy couldn't produce on that day, but he's gonna come in on Monday. So I felt pretty good about my skills at managing that process. And then I got a job at the number one foreign, the number one broker, let's say, or investment bank at that time in Asia called CLSA. And when I talked to them, I asked them how do you handle the flow and how bad is it here [chuckle] with the analysts being late? And they said, the analysts are never late.   0:11:13.3 AS: And I was like, that's impossible. My whole career it's been about handling the analysts being late. And they said, no, analysts are never late here. And I was like, how are you doing that? And they're like, well, we have a three week plan ahead. Everybody knows it. You know your day. There is no excuse, there's no shifting, there's nothing, it has to be delivered on that day. So it's up to you to kind of bring your project to a head so that you're ready to present on that day. And if you have some kind of major setback or problem, talk to another person and switch the day with them and sort it out. And every single day we had great stuff coming out. And I would've never, I mean, I was operating at a certain level thinking I was really knocking it out of the park, 'cause I was accommodating. I was careful, I was thoughtful. I understood the pressures that people were feeling. I was doing my best, but I didn't have a knowledge that it could be a very different way of doing it. And that's where I think about going outside of your own system to observe and learn and see. And then all of a sudden you're like, oh, [laughter] Okay. And that's where I feel like what you're talking about, about the education aspect is really the most amazing part.   0:12:33.2 JD: Mm-hmm. Yeah. That actually... I hadn't planned to talk about this, but I've been reading recently about the... Called the... Well, there's a book called Toyota Kata and Kata is from martial arts. It's the various movements that you have to do sort of repeated deliberate practice so you can sort of, they become ingrained in your muscle memory. Well, the same idea is in place in Toyota. They call... Well, they don't, but the author called it... They don't call... They don't have a name for it, but he sort of observed it and gave it the Improvement Kata name Mike Rother. Yeah, there it is. Yep. There it is. That one. And one of the things that was interesting, and it kind of reminded me of this as you were talking, is that part of the improvement kata is there's a sort of a target that's aligned with the organization's vision that guides anything that the folks in the organization are working towards.   0:13:27.0 JD: And so there's always a target condition. There's an understanding of sort of where each individual is and the departments are. And they're always setting a new target on the way to that sort of vision target and running these experiments all the time. And they constantly set those targets so that they are ambitious but within reach. And then they're coached on the way repeatedly. And in that way they're sort of always moving forward the organization. And so I think of when you've changed investment banks and you're at this new bank and they're saying, Hey, this thing is possible, it's possible to do this. Here's the way we do that. Here's how we work towards that. And so you can imagine a place like Toyota being so successful, because if everybody has got this mindset, this scientific thinking where they're constantly moving towards a target and there's a method for doing so, [chuckle] that is an incredible education right there if you're an employee working in an environment like that. So that just made me think of the Toyota Kata.   0:14:41.4 AS: Yeah. And it's a great example of how reading books is part of education because you're getting exposed to new ideas and exploring and thinking about things. And that's where, well, think about the repetition in let's say a martial arts as an example. And when Dr. Deming talks about opening up education to everything for everybody, there's something to learn in almost everything out there. Like if it is about... What is it about those repetitions and why is that important and could that benefit our business? And he talked about painting and other things, you know? Like education very widely can bring you new ideas that can come back to improve your system.   0:15:27.3 JD: Yeah. And I think you have to invest in that sort of broader education, 'cause it's sort of an investment in the future, you know? Especially right now, things are changing fast. And you could have the best training program in the world, but if you are not also sort of looking out for what's next beyond that, to adapt to whatever's changing in your environment... A good example is this, we have a much better understanding of cognitive science than we did 20 years ago. And so if we didn't adapt... If we didn't sort of learn that and then adapt that and sort of include that learning in our training system that we're gonna start falling behind pretty quickly. And I think this can get... This may be part of the most important responsibility of a leader on the learning front.   0:16:28.5 JD: Because what I also see is that education leaders are often getting enticed by many, many fads that sort of come along. And so how to sort of actually latch onto something that represents a potential advantage, that's a real important skillset to have. And I don't think... That's a key... I think a key function of systems leaders is sort of to know what to let go of or what not to latch onto at all and what to sort of sink resources into because if you're gonna go do these educational pursuits, you're obviously gonna have to sink time and money resources into these things. And so being able to differentiate between what is good and what is bad is a real key skill.   0:17:22.6 AS: And one of the things about Toyota is it's like the ultimate Asian family business. And although it's now a big public company, the largest automaker in the world, and the family's ownings in the company is relatively low, it still has the influence of the family. And I was thinking about another huge company that I know of in Thailand here that shifted its focus away from, let's say, Deming in this case, to when a new CEO came in, he said, well, there's a different way and this is my way. And one of the things that's interesting about what Toyota's done, you know, Toyota gets a lot of blame for being slow to progress and stubborn and all of that, but man, they have built a machine and a... You just can't change the direction of that quickly, you really nurture what has been developed and how do you not just throw away. I was presenting to my students last night in my finance class here at Sasin School of Management in Thailand and I was showing them the DuPont Analysis in the world of finances where you break down the return on equity of a company. And I explained why they call it the DuPont Analysis, and that's because the DuPont company bought shares in General Motors in 20- or 1912 or something like that and they instituted this method of financial controls on General Motors. And I said to my students in passing, General Motors has been going bankrupt since 1912.   [laughter]   0:19:00.9 AS: And it's like every... It's not a cumulative level of learning. And that's where I feel like Toyota, what Toyota has achieved is a cumulative learning process.   0:19:16.9 JD: Mm-hmm. Yeah. You know, and it's a part of their DNA. I think certainly there have been challenges as they've grown across Europe and the United States and the world really. And a lot of the challenges that I understand is because people... That improvement Kata is sort of combined with a coaching Kata, like an approach to coaching and managers at different levels coach folks that are sort of a level down from them. And everybody in the organization, especially early, had sort of this mentor-mentee relationship. And so part of the challenge with growth was the fact that there are only so many of these folks that are grounded in this scientific thinking in the coaching part of this. And so that was a challenge as they grew, you know, in California and Kentucky and other places across the world.   0:20:17.9 JD: They had to build this coaching capacity across all of these new production facilities and other types of facilities across the world. So... But I think that what I really like about this principle...I, you know, if push came to shove, I started this by talking about Deming would basically allow almost anything when it came to allowable educational pursuits. And I think I would be much closer to that than I would be to limit those things. I think that is a really... That's a good sort of approach to take as a leader. I think here where I am at United Schools Network, one of the things that I was able to do was go take an improvement advisor course which required significant resources and time and money at the Institute for Healthcare Improvement.   0:21:19.6 JD: And so someone could look at that very easily and say, well, why are you an educator going to a healthcare organization? And I think it's one of those things where people maybe don't realize that the Deming philosophy and some of the continual improvement stuff, it's sector agnostic. And so when you can learn the philosophy, the methods, the techniques, you can bring them back to your own organization. So I think had I not gone down this path to study Deming, I wouldn't have made it to IHI and then bring this stuff back to my organization. I think it's benefited our organization in lots of ways, even though that might not have been immediately apparent to folks, you know, initially.   0:22:09.8 AS: So how would we wrap this up for the listeners to make sure that they truly understand the idea of vigorous education, self-improvement, this type of stuff?   0:22:14.0 JD: Yeah. I mean, for me the main point is that systems leaders should really encourage education among the whole workforce with a pretty wide latitude for allowable pursuits. I think especially for educators, when we seek those types of opportunities, we're also modeling this idea of continual learning to students as well. They see that just because I have a degree or a master's degree or even folks here that have a PhD, we have I think an organization that's pretty hungry for learning. And that's a model for students. Oh, this doesn't end when you graduate high school. This doesn't end when you graduate college. It doesn't even end when you graduate from graduate school. People all across the organization have books piled up on their desks and we're sending people to various learning programs and stuff like that.   0:23:09.4 JD: And I think that's a good model for students. And I think within that another big thing is to think about do you have an understanding of the stable state of systems and understanding that training programs are only gonna take you so far? Individuals are gonna come to a sort of a stable state once they've sort of maxed out on any particular skill. And that's why this idea of education is so important. Skills are important, training is important, but this other side of the coin, you have to pay attention to education. What's on the horizon? How are you gonna push the boundaries within your system? And I actually think to your point about outsiders or having an outside perspective, that's sort of, I think the benefit of education, because I think without that sort of push from an outsider, the push from the education, breakthrough improvements aren't possible in our school systems. They're not gonna come from training programs. They're gonna come from this continuous learning, this idea of continually pushing the targets, having sort of an improvement mindset. Having a coaching mindset that's always pushing towards those things. And I think this requires not just skills, but it requires new knowledge and new theory continually. And I think that has to come from this vigorous program of education.   0:24:39.7 AS: And the beauty of capitalism is that if you don't go out and get the education, your competitors will, and you don't want your source of learning to be facing constant defeat from your competitors.   [laughter]   0:24:56.2 JD: Yeah, you can't sit around and wait, that's for sure. That's for sure.   0:25:00.0 AS: Exactly. Or someone's gonna take it. And that's the beauty of the capitalist system, the adversarial aspect between companies definitely gets people riled up when they see that all of a sudden someone's doing much better with some new technique or idea. Well, I think that was a great discussion to help us understand the difference between training and education and why it's so important. John, on behalf of everyone at the Deming Institute, I want to thank you again for this discussion. For listeners, remember to go to deming.org to continue your journey. You can find John's book "Win-Win: W. Edwards Deming, the System of Profound Knowledge and the Science of Improving Schools" on amazon.com. 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."  

How do grading systems, teacher ratings, school rankings, and other programs like those create barriers to learning? Should we eliminate them entirely, or do they have their place? John Dues and host Andrew Stotz talk about how to preserve joy in learning. TRANSCRIPT 0:00:02.4 Andrew Stotz: My name is Andrew Stotz. I'll be your host as we continue our journey into the teachings of Dr. W Edwards Deming. Today, I'm continuing my discussion with John Dues, who is part of the new generation of educators striving to apply Dr. Deming's principles to unleash student joy in learning. This is episode 18, and we're continuing our discussion about the shift from management myths to principles for the transformation of school systems. John, take it away.   0:00:31.3 John Dues: Good to be back, Andrew. In this episode, we're doing the 12th principle. So we're on 12 of 14, remove barriers to joy in work and learning. So that's a certainly a concept that we've talked about, but I'll start by just reading the principle. "Principle 12, remove barriers that rob educators and students of their right to joy in work and learning. This means working to abolish the system of grading student performance, the annual rating of staff and accountability rating systems for schools and school systems. The responsibility of all educational leaders must change from sheer numbers to quality." There's two really great quotes I like from Deming. One on joy in learning where he says, "Our schools must preserve and nurture the yearning for learning that everyone is born with. Joy in learning comes not so much from what is learned, but from learning."   0:01:24.4 JD: And then for joy in work, he says, "Joy in the job comes not so much from the result, the product, but from contribution to optimization of the system in which everybody wins." So he is saying basically the same thing in those two quotes, but he is talking about the contributions to the process is where the joy comes from, not necessarily the outcome. And so much of the time, we're focused on the outcome, be it the work product in a work setting or the test scores perhaps in a, in a school setting. But he's really talking about what is that process that you're contributing to? And, and you know, how do you feel because of that, those contributions you're making? I think whether you're talking about joy in work or joy in learning, sort of unifying theme in principle 12 as it's, this concern with the pride of workmanship, whether that's the workmanship of making a product or in the learning that you're doing or something you're doing as a result of that learning, like a report or a poem that you've written or whatever.   0:02:31.6 JD: And so I think as a result, it's barriers that get in the way of joy in work and learning. And you know, maybe one of the most important obstacles to improvement of the quality of our education systems in the United States. And you know, just like, sort of, it says in the outline of the principle, there's really sort of three levels that these barriers exist at. You got the students and the grading of students. And then you have oftentimes some type of rating system, evaluation system for teachers, for principals, perhaps sometimes those rating systems use test scores or other similar metrics. And then that third level is, you have the actual schools or school districts themselves that are being rated within these state accountability systems. So you sort of have, you know, these three levels. And then there's this common problem at all three levels, regardless of which one. And that's basically this thing that we've talked about repeatedly, where you under-appreciate the contribution of the system to the performance of the people, whether you're talking about students, teachers or, or you know, school systems. So I thought that's where we could focus today.   0:03:49.8 AS: Yeah, you know it strikes right at the heart of everything that we believe, as particularly as Americans, but certainly spreading that around the world, that it's all about measuring, ranking, tracking. You know, when a parent puts a kid in school, what do they want to know? What was their grades? When a student's in trouble, it's 'cause of grades. And what a student wants to know, like everybody wants to know and rely on grades. So it's just so, it's so difficult. You know, I was talking with someone else talking about why Dr. Deming's philosophy hasn't been adopted as as widely as you'd hope. And I think it's part of, it's just because it's just sacred, the sacred heart of everything that we believe. And if you can measure it, you can track it, you can feed that back and give it to people and show them where they are and you deserve where you are based upon your efforts, and you've gotta move yourself from there. That is so ingrained. And I'm just curious, like what's the hope from your side that this can be seen. I think it can be seen if you stop and look, but it's so hard to implement.   0:05:18.7 JD: Yeah. Well, I mean, I think one thing that can be confusing is obviously Deming was a statistician. So he is, has no problem with using data to improve the quality of our schools or even an individual lesson that a teacher delivers, gathering some data on how students are doing and tracking that over time. There's no problem with that. There's no problem with that I don't think at the school level either. I think the problem comes in when you create a reward and sanction system around that data. And I think that's, Deming actually think he indicated that, that system of reward or sanction on the other side is one of the main constraints from being able to develop this win-win culture. Whatever level of the system that you're talking about, that student level, the educator level, or the school and system level. They're, all those grading systems are really reward and sanction systems. And I think when you take the data and use it in that way, that's when I think Deming is talking about the real problems, the manipulation, you know, the competition for top spots that leads to all kinds of strange behaviors, those types of things. That's really where he's focusing most of his attention.   0:06:49.1 AS: And if you had no constraints from governments or other outsiders and you were setting up a new school right now with zero constraints, the only thing was absolutely optimizing the learning of young people. How would you handle this - grading? How would you handle all of this? Would you do it in a different way? Would you just do it and de-emphasize it and say, oh, well, it's not so critical? It's just information feedback, or would you teach them how to use that data like Deming may, or like how he uses data? Or would you say, no, that's just that there's no redeeming benefit, if we're not required to do it, then we wouldn't do it?   0:07:43.4 JD: Yeah, I mean, I think it'd be some combination of the things that you mentioned. I mean, on just from a practical sense, Demings certainly understood that we live within the world that we live within. And so if that hypothetical school that you're talking about is a public school and I was in Ohio, I would obviously give the state test and take whatever data I could use and use that in a positive way that I can. So I'm gonna do the thing that I'm caught on to do as a educator in a public school system. So I wouldn't opt out or anything like that. I think in terms of how I set up internal systems, I think, ..GAP. Yeah, I thought a lot about this but I haven't maybe put to paper exactly how I would do it.   0:08:36.2 JD: I think...I certainly would use assessments. I certainly would track how students are doing on standards. I would involve students in doing so they could track that over time. In terms of grading, I don't know exactly what I would do. I would definitely de-emphasize that to the extent that I possibly could so that the emphasis is on the learning and not on the grades. That would be a key sort of guiding principle. There's certain things that I think are outlandish that schools do, where they do pep rallies or pep rallies or something like that to, as the buildup to state testing comes, I find those things ridiculous. So I would stay away from doing anything like that. Kind of how we've treated state tests in the past, even prior to discovering Deming was matter of fact.   0:09:47.2 JD: Like, this is something we're preparing for, we're gonna do our best. We're gonna try our hardest, we're gonna learn from the experience, we're gonna work hard on it, and then we're gonna move on. You know, that's the type of mentality we had. In terms of like the mindset of the school I led, there was a poster in the hallway that said, you get it wrong and then you get it right. So that was the mindset is, we learn from our mistakes. We talked about creating a culture of air in our classrooms so that students felt, you know, safe, I guess is the word I would use to, or willing to call out when they didn't understand something, or they did make a mistake, and then we work together to rectify that. So that's a little bit a long-winded answer. I don't have it all worked out. I have some ideas, but I think overall using data is fine. I think it's, when you get into the rating and the ranking, that's where the problems and the rewards and the sanctions, I think that's where the problems generally come from.   0:10:50.8 AS: Yeah. I mean, I'm kind of unconstrained in my Valuation Masterclass Bootcamp, because I'm not under any, there's no supervision of what I'm doing by anybody. It's just me trying to make a better experience for the students. And the idea of grading never really came into my process. It's interesting, John, that one guy who was a student of mine, he graduated and then I hired him to work with me to take care of the other students. One of the first things he did was come up with a matrix and a grading system, [laughter] just because that's what he knew. And now he uses that system and he has little points that he gives. That system doesn't have any connection to whether you're gonna pass the class or not, or there's no ranking or anything related to it. It's just that, okay, you only got six points out of 10, which means you haven't really done the assignment. He's clearly defined what are the things that you need to have done? And then he goes through and says, did you do them? So it's definitely a, I think it's a good feedback mechanism.   0:12:08.4 JD: Yeah.   0:12:10.2 AS: But, you know, whether it's valuable. I think what I'm trying to do is create the experience that young people are learning how to value a company through the process of learning and discovery and, and discussion and, and, and going online and going through my material, asking me questions, and then demonstrating, showing different things. And then they're slowly putting those pieces together. And I can also see that it takes time. You know, it can't all happen in one week. We have six weeks and where they're at at the end of the six weeks is so much further along than where they were at the beginning. But I guess my point would be if I was completely unconstrained, which I am, it's just that it wouldn't be pro or con grades and ranking, it wouldn't even really exist because it's not a core part of learning. Core part of learning is providing the environment, the excitement, keeping people on track, helping them see, okay, here's what you gotta do now, see if you can do it. You know?   0:13:18.8 JD: Yeah. And I think what I was gonna do today is bring this alive. You know, we've talked about grading of students and even the performance appraisals in some of the past episodes. So what I thought we would do here is, sort of, focus on why grading schools could also be you know, a barrier to joy in work, how this might play out. So I think generally most people are now familiar with, because in the public school system, we've had various types of rating systems. You know, each state has their own. And I think it's, what's important here is to look at examine if the ratings help the public differentiate between schools that are doing a good job of educating kids and those that are not, because that's the point.   0:14:09.7 JD: Right? At least one of the points. And on its face, it sounds simple, you know, up until this year, Ohio has like an A through F grading system for schools, and there are sub components and you get an overall grade A to F. Right? And so it sounds simple. Schools with more A's are better schools, except for it's not that simple when you go beyond like a surface level analysis. So I thought it'd be helpful to just zoom in on two schools located here in Columbus. One's called Jones Middle School. It's in the Upper Arlington School District, which is close by. And then Columbus Collegiate Academy, I'll call it CCA, it's also a one of our middle schools. Both the schools serve grades six through eight. They're less than 10 miles apart here in Columbus.   0:15:03.6 JD: So they're geographically proximate. And this analysis comes from an article I wrote in 2020. So it's from a few years ago. So the results are a few years old, but you know, I think they're fairly representative of how the schools have performed over the last decade or school or so. So let's start with just the grades that the schools received. So the schools get an overall grade. Jones Middle School has an A, CCA has a B, so you know, fairly close there, but Jones outpaces. And then there's the achievement grade. And that's basically looking at all the kids' test scores, how they do overall. Jones gets a B, CCA gets a D, right? So Jones has quite a bit better performance. And then there's a progress category. So how much progress did the kids make during that particular school year?   0:15:57.9 JD: How much growth did they make? Now this is interesting now, CCA gets an A and Jones got a B. So just to recap, the overall grade for Jones was A, achievement B, progress B, for CCA overall, B achievement D, progress A. So basically a higher percentage of students at Jones begin year on grade level 'cause they have that higher achievement grade, but they don't grow as much as the students at CCA once they're there. This difference between achievement and progress grades becomes even more interesting as you start to factor in not only the school characteristics, but also the neighborhood characteristics. So let's talk about inside the school just to start with. So in terms of student population, Jones and CCA are pretty similar in terms of students with disabilities. So those kids with special education needs tend to, as a general rule score lower on standardized tests.   0:17:02.9 JD: So those populations are roughly equal, but 100% of the kids at CCA are economically disadvantaged as defined by the state. At Jones, just 2.4% of the kids are economically disadvantaged. When you look at other report card measures such as attendance, chronic absenteeism, Jones has much better rates. So 97 plus percent attendance rate, just 2% of their kids are chronically absent. At CCA 93% attendance rate, 21% of the kids are chronically absent. But when you start to look at these, some of these metrics framed in terms of the poverty rates in the community surrounding CCA, these numbers start to take on a different meeting. And I think what they're, especially things like chronic absenteeism, that's all the rage right now, attendance, I think what you start to need to understand is these are indicators of inequity, housing instability, neighborhood violence, lack of access to healthcare.   0:18:15.5 JD: I think they're more an indicator of those types of things than they are of school performance. So as you start to think about things in those ways, what you realize is that the students at CCA are just as capable as the students at Jones, but they face sometimes overwhelming obstacles related to poverty. It's also interesting to take a look outside the schoolhouse. So the median family income in the census tract where Jones is located is $184,000. So the median family income in that neighborhood, so it's a pretty affluent area. In the neighborhood surrounding CCA in that census tract, the median family income is just over $20,000. So we're talking about an order, orders of magnitude higher family income in upper Arlington than in the neighborhood that CCA sits in. And then there's all types of factors. Some grounded in historical reasons that relate to this, but they're also compounded by funding disparities. So the per pupil revenue at CCA for this year is $10,600. In Upper Arlington, it's nearly $17,000...   0:19:35.0 JD: This Jones Middle School has almost no students living in poverty, yet gets $6,000 more in additional revenue per student than the students that attend CCA. So think of the implications of that.   0:19:52.3 AS: When you say they get more revenue, you mean the state or the government's providing them more money per student?   0:20:00.1 JD: Yes, all in. From all sources. So when you look at what the federal government provides, the state government, and then local funding sources. When you look at all those sources combined, this more affluent middle school gets $6,000 more students, dollars per student.   0:20:14.5 AS: Obviously, it's not based upon need. Is that based upon the grade or some other?   0:20:19.0 JD: Well, it's because the funding is heavily influenced by local property taxes. And because of the affluence of...   0:20:26.7 AS: They have the resources.   0:20:28.2 JD: They have the resources. And in Ohio, charter schools don't have access to local money. So that explains most of the gap. Most of the gap. But back to my point, when you think about CCA, having kids with more challenges, less money per student, less resources to pay for a facility, to pay teachers a competitive salary, extracurricular activities, all those types of things that we want to equalize are highly inequitable between those two schools. So then you start to ask yourself, well, what are the report card grades measuring exactly? Are those grades on those state report cards a fair representation of what's happening inside the school? Or can a significant portion of those grades be attributed to this larger context in which the school sits? And I think that's where you sort of put on this systems thinking lens and realize that, sure, what teachers and the principal is doing inside the schools, they are certainly making contributions to those state report cards. But you cannot ignore what is going on outside those schools and those neighborhoods when you're thinking about these grades.   0:21:54.1 JD: And so if you're sort of thinking about... Like a formula that would sort of lead to the school's results and you just... Let's just call it A+B+C+D+E=71, where 71 is the score that the school gets. Let's just call it that. And let's call the school's contribution letter F. A, B, C, D, A+B+D+C... Or A+B+C+D+E+F=71. The school's contribution is F. Well, that equation cannot be solved unless you know the values of A through E or at least some of those values. But what we try to do with this state report card system is that we assign this value to F, the contribution of the school, with no knowledge of the effects of these other variables.   0:22:57.3 AS: So it's, in other words, the contribution of the school is 100%. You mean you're responsible for your results? Is that what it means?   0:23:04.4 JD: Well, right. So if you're going to give me... If you're going to give CCA Main Street a D in achievement, that means the only thing that contributed to that grade was the school. But there's all those things that we talked about. Some, sort of, when you look at the variables A, B, C, D, and E, those other variables, you could look at things like, what are the state standards? Or what's the test design? What's the school funding? Household income? Home environment?   0:23:34.1 AS: Education level, maybe, of families.   0:23:37.2 JD: Education level of parents. Teaching methods. All of these things are variables that are outside of the school's control, or most of the ones that I just mentioned. But we don't, we don't see that when we look at these report cards. Right? You know, and just like I said at the beginning, despite all of that, I'm in favor of administering these state tests that are standards aligned, reported annually to the public. I actually think understanding how students are performing in a standardized way is actually... Could be useful information, I think. But when you extend those systems to the grading, the rating, and the ranking, I think that's a misuse of the information. Because too much of the rating and ranking comes from the system, as opposed to being directly assignable to the school or to the individual educators within that system. I mean, I think, if you analyzed report cards in this way, I think my opinion is that a reasonable person would conclude that the comparison between Jones Middle School and CCA is not a fair one.   0:24:56.4 JD: Because those students that arrive in those schools are not on equal ground upon enrollment. And I think our time would be better spent figuring out how to make things more equitable between those two groups of students than constantly recalibrating these rating systems that at best communicate confounding information, conflicting information.   0:25:27.5 AS: KPI experts around the world listening and viewing this are saying, "oh, come on, John. What? All you got to do now is you just got to break it down. And now we're going to do the KPI by adjusting for these factors. And now we're going to compare schools based upon that." Of course, what we've learned and I've learned over my life is that every time you think you're going to break it down and make it more comparable, it gets harder and harder to do that. And it just becomes less reliable and less useful in a lot of cases. Not completely. I mean, making some simple adjustments just for, let's say, yeah, I suspect that just one factor could probably represent A, B, C, D and E probably pretty well. Maybe that's the income of the area or the amount of funding that they got. One or two of those factors probably is enough to say, okay, we gotta compare schools that have these factors similar as a first step. But every time that I've ever gone down to go deeper into measuring, it just gets...it, it, the answer isn't there.   0:26:40.6 JD: Yeah, and I'm going to tie this back to joy in work. So if you think about that current school rating system, what we fall prey to is that fundamental attribution error that we've talked about before, where we have this tendency to underestimate the impact of situational factors on other people's behavior and overestimate the impact of individual factors, you know, when it works in our favor. But what happens is if I'm a teacher at CCA, there's a likelihood that I'm going to get blamed for the results. Let's say the achievement results. If I'm at Jones Middle School, there's a likelihood for praise. Because the school is doing pretty well. But in both cases, in both cases we're vastly underestimating the impact of the situational factors or the system on those results. So over time, I think this can have an impact on joy in work of educators working in these challenging schools.   0:27:49.3 JD: Even, even in the case where in many of these schools, like the one I just talked about with CCA, that there's solid evidence that staff and these schools are often getting better outcomes if you go beyond the surface level analysis. Because if you remember, they did quite a bit better on the progress, meaning they grew the kids more in a single year, even though they may have not hit the proficiency standard at the rate that Jones did, they grew the kids more. So you could make a solid argument that CCA is actually better, even though they got lower grades on the report card, right? I've often said, what would happen if you just switched the two staffs?   0:28:33.6 AS: Yeah. Problem solved.   0:28:36.3 JD: What would happen to the report card? You know. That's interesting. Obviously, it's never going to happen, but it's an interesting hypothetical experiment. My guess is a lot of teachers will find out that would go from Jones Middle School to CCA in a much more challenging environment would find out pretty quickly, that a lot of their methods don't work as well, right? So I think that these are the types of things that we're talking about. Imagine if you're at CCA year after year after year after year, get these lower grades. Right? And even if there's some evidence, like the progress score, who's digging in to find this? That score is often harder to find than the overall grade. That score is often not in the headline and what makes it into the newspapers. You know? And so you start to ask or you start to doubt yourself. You start to think about, am I really good at my job? Those types of things come in. And if you don't have someone there doing this deeper analysis, putting this in context, that's not easy to do.   0:29:52.1 AS: Yeah, when the pressure's on.   0:29:54.4 JD: When the pressure's on. And even if you're good at doing that type of analysis, sometimes people won't believe you because, well, that's not what I'm hearing. That's not what I'm... That's not what my family's saying. Those types of things. And then, and then, if you have those good teachers that at a certain point say, I'm just going to go somewhere where it's easier. Then those kids at CCA wind up in a worse place. And that's, I'm using CCA as an example, but I think this plays out at you know challenging schools all across the country all the time.   0:30:36.2 AS: Yeah, when you were talking about the morale of the CCA teachers, I was just thinking some brilliant bureaucrat would probably come up with the idea of why don't we post this grade right on the front of this school?   [laughter]   0:30:51.4 JD: Well, yeah, they're easy to find. That's for sure. These are all public, public reports. Sure. And in fact, actually, back during, I think, during the Obama administration, during Race to the Top, when it became really in vogue to rate teachers based on their progress scores, the individual teachers. The school report cards are easy to find, like a report card on any public school in Ohio or any public district. But in some cities, what started happening is they were, newspapers were getting a hold of the list of the progress rankings for individual teachers and posting those. I remember some of those were in the newspaper. And I think we've talked about this here as well, that what researchers have shown over time with these progress scores, these value added scores, is that some of the score is attributed to the teacher from before. Teachers that take on more challenging groups of students tend to have scores that are... Progress scores that are lower, all types of things And you want good teachers in those rooms. And what you're doing is disincentivizing that to happen when you have these types of rating and, rating and rating systems. So it's a tough thing.   0:32:15.2 AS: It's such an interesting topic. And I think, it got me thinking that we should start a new series on the Deming Institute podcast, which is, bad use of data. Like examples of, you know, here we have a misuse of data or just the simple thing of not making adjustments for situational factors and the misattribution. You could argue if you just improve that, maybe there's a little bit more meaning to this. But then, of course, there's also all the unintended consequences. And I just would imagine, I'm thinking about a book I have called the... By Terry Mueller, I think, or Jerry Mueller, which is the Tyranny of Metrics.   0:33:05.9 JD: Yeah, we got a lot of copies of that in our, right in this room where I'm sitting.   [laughter]   0:33:10.8 AS: Yeah. And I think that that would be kind of fun to bring out from the audience examples of what you're seeing.   0:33:17.4 JD: Yeah. Well, and one thing I didn't even mention that is also a key contributor here is, so let's say these two middle schools get this state report card. And another contextual factor is that most of the kids that go to Jones Middle School went to, I don't know the name of it, Upper Arlington Elementary School. And a very stable neighborhood. And of course, there's a few families here and there that will move in and out. But for the vast majority, I guarantee a vast majority of the kids that took these tests in sixth, seventh and eighth grade at Jones have been in Upper Arlington since kindergarten or preschool.   0:34:00.4 AS: Yeah.   0:34:01.2 JD: CCA Main Street, because of the nature of charter schools in Ohio, is a standalone 6-8 middle school. So that means 0% of the kids went to our elementary school during these years. And now whatever happened K-5 in a school, those kids school career, that certainly plays a big role in how they're going to show up when they enroll at CCA. So the only rule in terms of counting for CCA's test scores is that the kid had to be enrolled by October, let's say the first week of October. And they take the test in March. So six months later, let's say.   0:34:49.2 AS: Yeah.   0:34:49.6 JD: So let's say probably 50% of the kids at CCA, were brand new to that building, to that district, that school year, whereas the vast majority of Jones middle school students had been in that district for seven or more years. Because kindergarten is a year, and then when you're a sixth grader. So the time that they've been there, that's not taken into account either. And that may be the most important.   0:35:19.0 AS: Yeah. That's fascinating. So how would you summarize the one thing you want the listener, the viewer to take away from this.   0:35:30.5 JD: Yeah, I mean, I think it can be easy to start to think that data is bad. That is not the problem. You need data to help inform your decision making.   The problem comes when you then take the data and attach the ratings and the rankings to it, that's when the problem comes in. So you need to detach those two things.   We need to keep it public, keep it transparent, keep it known by all stakeholders, be it parents, the public, policymakers, students themselves. But it's the rating and ranking, that's the problem. That's the key takeaway.   0:36:11.9 AS: Great. Well, on behalf of everyone at the Deming Institute, I want to thank you again for this discussion. And for listeners, remember to go to Deming.org to continue your journey. You can find John's book, Win Win. W. Edwards Deming, the System of Profound Knowledge and the science of improving schools on Amazon.com. This is your host, Andrew Stotz. And I'm going to leave you with my favorite quote from Dr. Deming, which is totally pertinent to what we just discussed. And that is: people are entitled to joy in work.

Many businesses equate "manager" with "leader," excluding potential leaders from across the organization. In this episode, Bill Bellows and host Andrew Stotz talk about leadership in Deming organizations - with a great story about senior "leaders" making a huge error in judgment at a conference of auditors. TRANSCRIPT 0:00:02.0 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 discussion 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. The topic for today, episode number 14, is Beyond Management by Extremes. Bill, take it away.   0:00:29.7 Bill: Number 14 already, Andrew.   0:00:32.0 AS: Incredible.   0:00:32.6 Bill: It's a good thing we skipped number 13. That's an unlucky number. [laughter]   0:00:37.0 AS: Not in Thailand. It's a lucky number.   [laughter]   0:00:40.6 Bill: No, we didn't skip number 13. This is 14.   0:00:42.1 AS: Yes, we didn't.   0:00:43.5 Bill: Alright, so I just enjoy going back and listening to all of our podcasts, once, twice, three times. And then I talk with friends who are listening to them. And so I'd like to start off with some opening comments and then we'll get into tonight's feature, today's feature.   0:01:00.9 AS: So let's just, to refresh people's memory, episode 13, which we just previously did, was Integration Excellence, part two.   0:01:09.2 Bill: Yes. And that's what we called it. [laughter] So... [laughter] So last week I...   When we thought about getting together, but I had the wrong time, and it worked out well in my schedule. Last week, Andrew, I did three presentations. A two-hour lecture for Cal State Northridge, which is part of a master's degree program, where I do a class in quality management. That was Tuesday night. Wednesday morning I did a one-hour presentation with one hour of conversation afterwards with the Chartered Quality Institute, which is kind of like the American Society for Quality in the UK, and this... So this was several hundred people from the UK and also the Caribbean chapter from Trinidad Tobago, Jamaica. And so there's a bunch there. And then on Thursday morning I did a three hour session for a group in Rotterdam, which was really early for me and late afternoon for them.   0:02:25.4 Bill: And in all three, I covered similar material for all three groups, which included the trip report that we've done on the ME Versus WE, how did you do on the exam? How did we do? And so it was really neat to present that to the three. And in each case, when I threw out the question, "how did you do on the exam?" And then explained as I did one of our earlier podcasts that if you've got a long list of inputs, which includes - the woman I was talking to and, 'cause I said to her, the question is how did you draw on the exam? What are the inputs? And she said, the inputs are, my energy, my enthusiasm, my commitment that she got stuck. And I said, have other students helped you? And she said, yes, other students have helped you. I said, that's another input.   0:03:17.3 Bill: I said, given that input, how many can you see? And she said, oh my gosh. She said, my professor, my parents, my brother. And then all of a sudden there was this long list of inputs that she couldn't see. And so I explained that to the people and then say, "if you've got that long list of inputs and the original question is, how did you do on the exam? Does that long list of inputs change the question or are you okay with that question?" And what I look for is, and what we've talked about is, does the whole idea, how did we do on the exam jump out at you? No, it doesn't jump out. So, in each case, I said, here's the situation, might you reframe the question? And in all three situations, most of them that I asked said, there's essentially nothing wrong with the question. And if they did restate the question, they kept the "you," "do you think you could have done better?" Do you think... And that's what's so cool is that they just hold onto the you. Well, and for one of the groups it came a... It was kind of like what I was saying was semantics.   0:04:32.6 Bill: And I said this is not semantics. I said, there's a big difference between somebody, you know referring to our kids as my son and my daughter and our son and our daughter. And this, "my," is singular ownership, "our" is joint ownership. And so what I was trying to explain is that, saying “How did you do versus how did we do?” is the difference between being an observer of your learning if you were the student, Andrew and a participant. Those are not... Those are enormous differences. It's not, just, it's not just a simple change in pronouns. And so when I... And when I got to next, I was at a meeting years ago, I was at the annual, you ready Andrew? I was at Boeing's Annual Auditor's Conference.   0:05:40.5 AS: Sounds exciting.   0:05:41.4 Bill: 1999. So I got invited to be a speaker, Andrew at Boeing's Annual All Auditors Conference. Right? So I'm thinking going into this, that these are a bunch of people that don't feel valued. Because it's not like I get a phone call and I say, hold on, hold on. Hey Andrew, I got good news. And you say, you're a coworker, what's the good news? Annual... Andrew, we're gonna be audited next week!   [laughter]   0:06:10.2 Bill: You're like, "Holy cow. Hold on, lemme go tell everybody." So I thought going into this meeting is, these are a bunch of people that don't feel valued. I'm an auditor at least that was, so that was my theory going into this, so it's a Monday afternoon gathering with a dinner and then all day the next, all day for a couple days. So the opening speaker, speaker on Monday night was the senior executive of a big Boeing division, it might have been Boeing defense let's say. And my theory was first of all, you got a bunch of people that don't feel valued and I came away from the three days thinking there's a whole lot going on in audit whether it's financial audit, data integrity audit, quality audit, these are necessary roles. And so I came out of it with great respect for that whole organization otherwise would think right, but I'm thinking this executive is going to come in, going to do the Friday, Monday night presentation and I'm thinking it's like they drew straws and they say well okay I'll go, I'll go up there and talk with them.   0:07:22.8 Bill: Within minutes of him speaking I'm thinking this guy's excited to be here. So I'm thinking he's going to kind of phone it in, now I'm watching this I'm thinking he is, he is really engaged with the audience. He's talking about, the future role of the audit organization being partners and all this and he's talking, I mean he's giving them an enormous bear hug and I'm thinking this is not what I thought and again and so... I'm still thinking he's either a really good actor or he really wants to be here. Then my theory was and I thought, holy cow, now I get it. How many people in the room Andrew would it take to leave the room with their nose out of joint and shut down the F18 program by noon tomorrow? How many people would it take?   0:08:21.3 AS: Not many, one.   0:08:22.9 Bill: Right, so then I'm thinking these, he needs these people to love him, because if he disrespects them, it's a bad day. So I went from thinking why would you want to be here if you were here, then I'm thinking, oh no. Now I'm thinking this is brilliant so then I look at the program and I'm thinking which other executives have figured out how valuable this is and I see the next day at lunch is Boeing Commercials I'm thinking they figured it out but the organization I was within was Boeing Space and they weren't on the program so I contacted a friend that was connected high up in Boeing Space, I said we've got to be in this program, right? So the program ending, it ended nice and I'm thinking wow, wow. So then just prior to lunch the next day is the number two guy for Boeing Commercial. Not the number one. The Monday night guy was the number one. The number one guy for Boeing Commercial at the time was Alan Mulally, it wasn't Alan Mulally, it was his number two person.   0:09:33.7 Bill: So he's up on stage, he's up on stage, he's up on stage. And he's talking to the audience and in parallel Jim Albaugh who at the time was CEO of Boeing Commercial, no Boeing Space and none of Jim's people were there, Jim wasn't there. Jim a couple weeks prior he had asked me to get with his speech writer at a presentation he was doing and he wanted some words in there about investment thinking and all the things we've been talking about in this. He said get with him and put some of that stuff in there put there some of that stuff in there. I said okay. So as I'm listening to the number two guy speak there's a lot of "we" and "you" but who's the we? And who's the you? So I'm making notes to myself to tell Jim don't say "you." Say "we" and make the "we" inclusive, 'cause the guy on stage is, the you and the we and the you and the we, and I said no no stay away from "you" focus on we but make sure they understand that "we" is all of us, right?   0:10:35.1 Bill: So this is what's going through my head and I'm writing it all down, writing it all down and then this guy says and I'll paraphrase. I wish I had the exact words and the paraphrase is pretty close to what he said as judged by what the audience heard, right? So when I heard the comment and I'm thinking to myself, you said what? Then I look around the room and I thought he did. Here's what he said again the paraphrase is: he made reference to those within Boeing that do the real work, and he said it in a way that was present company excluded right? Right, so I hear him say 'cause I'm getting, I'm making literally I'm making notes to myself and then I hear that comment and I'm like, did you just say what I thought you said? And I look around the room with 300 people and I'm thinking, Oh my gosh, you did and I'm seeing I am seeing people irate, you see the body language, right?   0:11:44.3 Bill: And I thought wow, how could you say that? So then the lunch speaker was Harry Stonecipher, the chief operating officer. And he was up, walking around the stage. I don't think he knew anything about what happened prior so he's up there talking, okay. After Harry we're getting back to the program and the guy running the entire event is now up on stage and he's very deliberately he's got a, he's got a piece of paper rolled up, he's walking around on stage, "yeah Scott misspoke no doubt about it. He misspoke, I hear you." I hear you, you are ready Andrew? You are ready, you are ready?   0:12:36.8 AS: Give it to me.   0:12:37.4 Bill: And then he says then he says "But let's be honest we don't make the airplanes." And I thought, really? And as soon as he said that, I had this vision of 250,000 employees, which was about the employment at the time. And so as soon as he said that, I just imagined being at the Everett facility, which is huge, where all the twin-aisle plants are made. And I had this vision of 250,000 people in the building. And the CEO Phil Condit says on the microphone, "Okay, I'd like all of you who make the airplanes to move to the west end of the building."   0:13:26.4 AS: And everybody else.   0:13:27.4 Bill: And it's what you get, is all the flight line mechanics move all the way over there. And then you show up and somebody looks at you and they don't see any grease on your hand, and they say, "ahhh you don't make the airplanes." And you say, "you see that tool in your hand? Who do you think ordered it?" And so this "we" and the "you" stuff, how did "you" do? How did "we" do? It was just, it was...   0:14:00.3 AS: He wasn't deliberately setting up the auditors to be pissed and then to be really, really tough on the rest of the organization. I'm teasing with that.   0:14:12.7 Bill: It was, it is just, I shared that with you and our audience as how uniting language can be and how divisive language can be. And so how did we do, how did you do, and what, with just, this is what I find fascinating is - these words bring people together. What I love, I love watching politicians or State Department people speak and 'cause what dawned on me is they are very deliberate on, I mean they to great lengths to not be divisive.   0:14:57.1 Bill: That's their job. And so they introduce people in alphabetical order, countries in alphabetical order. But they, and I thought, what a neat way of not inferring that the first one I list is the most important one and I just thought there's a just an art of diplomacy. And that's what, to me, that's what diplomacy is, is that the art of uniting, not dividing.   0:15:25.7 Bill: Alright. So now I wanna get into, in the three different groups last week we were doing the trip report and we got down to the hallway conversations and the ME Organization versus a WE Organization. And then a question I asked him was, who are the managers in a ME Organization and what do they do? And you got, those are the ones that set the KPIs. Mark the KPIs, beat you up, sit in their office. Okay. Who are the managers in the ME Organization? What do they do? Who are the managers in a WE Organization? And what do they do?   0:16:01.8 Bill: They are mentors. They're out there on the shop floor, they're working with people. People work for managers in a ME Organization. They work with managers in a WE Organization. So I get that and I think "Okay, pretty good. Pretty good. Pretty good." And then I follow with "Who are the leaders in a ME Organization and what do they do?"   0:16:26.4 Bill: And what's really cool is you get the same answers as the managers. And that's when I started noticing in a ME Organization, we'll refer to the senior leadership team, the senior management team, and we're talking about the same group of people. And I said, what we've just said is that manager and leader are the same. And then I say to people, so what is that message in a ME Organization? The message is, if you're not a manager, Andrew, then you're not a leader. Which means what? Which means you have permission to wait for direction.   0:17:12.5 Bill: Boeing had a leadership center in St. Louis. It was called the Boeing BLC, the Boeing Leadership Center. Yeah, Boeing Leadership Center. And in order to go there, you had to be a manager. You either had to be a first level manager, you would take frontline leadership, a middle manager, which I was, which is leading from the middle or an executive. But the model... So then I think part of the confusion is in a ME Organization, on the one hand we say, our managers are our leaders. If you're not a manager, wait for the direction, wait to be told.   0:17:49.7 Bill: But then we said, we want our managers to be leaders. But that's the ME Organization. In a WE Organization, in a Deming organization, I think of leadership is the ability to bring forth a new order of things, a new order of designing hardware, a new order of designing software, a new order of marketing, we're talking earlier and the ability to create a new order of things and the ability to create a path for others to follow.   0:18:20.6 Bill: And so then in a WE Organization, it's like show and tell. When we were in elementary school, you go in and say, I have discovered this. And I thought, in a WE Organization, everyone has the ability to be a leader on something within their realm. And why would you, why would you make leadership incl...exclusive, which is the ME Organization. And when I tell companies that I consult for I said, when you make leadership exclusive in a ME Organization, to me, that's a kiss of death 'cause you're telling a few people, you're in charge and you're telling everyone else, you're inferring that everyone else, you wait for direction, again.   0:19:09.0 Bill: And I'm not proposing, everyone's all over the place doing it. No. There's got, this is not chaos. And if I have an idea on something and it's not my assigned responsibility, then I know to reach out to you because you're the marketing guy and I just throw the marketing idea to you and then you do with it what you want. But I look at leadership in a WE Organization as being inclusive. And then we get into this idea of, driving...driving change.   0:19:38.0 AS: Let me just ask you about that. Would this really be down to the core principle of Appreciation of a System? That somebody who appreciates a system knows that there's all kinds of components to that system?   0:19:55.5 Bill: Yes, yes.   0:19:55.6 AS: And that you can't say, oh, well this system really is only the people that are working on the production line, when in fact we know that there's all kinds of people working in that system. If I think about my coffee business as an example, we have a hundred employees and not all of them are working on production. And some are moving paperwork and making phone calls and others are out in the field. So an appreciation of a system brings you to the "we" rather than....   0:20:23.0 Bill: Yes.   0:20:23.5 AS: And a person who gets up and says about me, or, tries to identify that there's a certain number of people that are really driving the performance of this company are, they just have no appreciation for a system.   0:20:39.1 Bill: They have a narrow, a narrow view, a narrow view. So what you just said triggered another thought. But, um, the thing I wanted to add to this, in a ME Organization, it's about driving change. And we've talked about this in prior podcast. I go to, you put a gun to your head and I say, I want this KPI by Friday, Andrew. And you're like, yes, sir. And then I said to people in the past is, if driving change is the mantra of a ME Organization, like you're driving cattle driving, driving, and which is not an endearing concept. It is, it is, this is the where we're going. And I say to people, so what would you call it if driving is the ME construct, what is, what's the language of a WE Organization? And people will be wondering "ah," I say "lead, lead, lead." And if we like where you're going, we will follow. That's you creating the path that we will follow.   0:20:40.0 Bill: So I just wanna throw that out. But the other thing you mentioned about the metrics and the design of the organization and the thinking that, these are the critical people. At lunch with an old friend today, and I was sharing with her I taught a course at Northwestern's Business School, Kellogg Business School in the late '90s. And Kellogg then, and today is the number one or number two business school in the country. And I had a friend who was a student there in..., they liked what I was saying. So they hired me to teach a five week course for four years. And I presented, these ideas to them and it was pretty cool. I was, what was exciting is one of them told me that, what I was sharing with them about Deming, you are ready Andrew? contradicted what they were learning in their other classes.   0:22:46.2 AS: Huh. Funny that.   0:22:48.7 Bill: Yep. And so I did that for four years. There were three classes in quality. One was the use of control of charts, mine was called Quality Management, or TQM or something like that. And so there were roughly 80 students in the program, and they had to take two of the three, five week courses. So I got two out three students in the program. Then after four years, they waived the requirement. And so nobody signed up. And so I, um, after, right after 9/11 was when this happened, they invited me back because the person I was working with really liked what the course was about. But they wanted to, make it optional for people to attend. And he said, why don't you come out and talk with them and, that'll inspire them to sign up for the following year. I said, okay, fine. So I went out and he says there'll be 80 people there. I said, why are you so confident? He said, well, we've made it mandatory for everyone to show up. I thought, well that's, I said, that's one way to get people in the room. I said, do me a favor. I said, let them know I'm coming out and I'll have breakfast, I'll have lunch with whoever would like to meet with me beforehand.   0:22:50.7 Bill: So a dozen of them show up. And one of them says to me he says, you're gonna have a, he says something like, it's only fair to say we had a presenter like you last week. And to be honest, it's gonna be a really hard act for you to follow. So I'm thinking, "well, tell me more." "Well, we had a presenter last week who works for a company that makes pacemakers," I'm thinking, okay, "he had a video and showing people before and after their pacemaker one of the fellow students fainted. It was emotional." And I'm thinking, I'm talking about rocket engines. I don't even have a video. It's not gonna be emotional. I let the guy talk. And at one point he says "they keep track." He said "they keep track of who makes each pacemaker." I said "what do you mean?" He says, "they have a list of the people."   0:23:42.9 Bill: Every pacemaker is associated with a team of people who made the pacemaker. And part of what they saw on the video is people who have received a pacemaker now and then go to that company and they meet the people on their team, Andrew, who made their pacemaker. How do you like that concept? Right? Does that, when you graduate from this MBA program, Andrew, isn't that a neat idea that you can take away and use with you? Right? Right? Isn't that a takeaway? Right? So I'm hearing this [laughter] so I said, "let me see if I got this straight. So you're saying they keep track of who makes each pacemaker?" "Yeah, they do." And that's because, when people come well, people come to visit and they keep track. So let's say I said to the student, "let's say I'm the guy who orders the plastic that goes into the pacemaker. Would I be on the list?" you know what he says, Andrew?   0:26:01.9 Bill: No, you didn't make it.   0:26:04.0 Bill: He says, "no," let me try this. I'm the one who wrote the check, Andrew, that paid for the plastic. Would I be on the list? What he says Andrew? "No, you wouldn't be on the list."   0:26:20.2 Bill: So, I said, "well, why not?" And he says, "you have to draw the line someplace." So, I had with me, post 9/11, ready? I had with me a United We Stand two-foot by three-foot poster, which were all over Los Angeles and likely all over the rest of the world, at least the States. So, I held up the poster, and I said, "Have you seen this before?" He said, "Oh, yeah, United We Stand. I'm all about that." I said, "No, you're not." [laughter] I said, "You think you can draw the line and know who contributes and who doesn't, right?"   0:27:02.8 Bill: And you can suddenly see him kind of back up. I said, "Well, let's be honest." I said, "If teamwork doesn't matter, then draw the line any way you want. It doesn't really matter. But if teamwork does matter, be very careful where you draw that line." And to me, in a WE Organization, "we" is, who is the "we"? It's a big list of people. It's the employees, it's the suppliers, it's the customers. And so anyway, it's just that, so what's neat is, go ahead, Andrew.   0:27:41.6 AS: While you were speaking, I was able to go online and find the website of North, what was it? North?   0:27:49.5 Bill: Northwestern.   0:27:50.3 AS: Western, yes. And I was able to actually find the course that you're talking about that was the one that the students said that what you're teaching is contradicting.  The name of that course, I just found it, here it is, "How to apply KPIs to drive in fear and division in your company." No, no, I just made that up. [laughter] "How to apply KPIs to drive in fear and division in your company?"   0:28:16.7 Bill: All right. And so, and we're gonna get to that. So, so as, so I look at management, there's management as a position, but I look at management as an activity of how we allocate resources. And so, are the resources mine or are they ours? And are we proactive or reactive? And then we talked in the past about purposeful resource management, reflective resource, reflexive resource, resource management, which is being highly reactive. Another thing that came to mind. Well, actually, let me jump to the loss function. We looked at last time because I was going through and listening to it. And I thought, let me, let me clarify.   0:29:00.7 Bill: And so when Dr. Taguchi would draw his, his parabolic loss function, a parabola is a curve that goes higher and higher as you get farther and further away from the center. It's like a bell and it just gets steeper and steeper and steeper. And his loss function would be an upward facing bell. And, and then, and he would draw it sitting on the, on the horizontal axis. The idea of being, when you're at the ideal, the loss is zero. And that's, if you're getting exposure to this for the first time, that's okay. But in fact, let me even throw in here a quote from Dr. Deming. Do I have it right here?   0:30:00.4 Bill: Oh, gosh. Anyway, Dr. Deming made reference to, he said, the Taguchi loss function is a better description of the world. And he talks about how loss continuously gets higher and higher and higher. The point I wanted to make is, what I tell people is, once you get used to that concept that loss gets higher and higher, and what matters is how steep that curve is. And so if that curve is very flat, then no matter where you are within the requirements, nobody really notices. And in that situation, you could have a lot of variation 'cause it doesn't show up. It's not reflected in terms of how...   0:30:40.2 AS: And maybe just to help the listener to visualize this, imagine a V.   0:30:44.6 Bill: Yes.   0:30:45.1 AS: And imagine a U. And a V has a very tiny point that is at zero loss. And it very quickly rises to both sides where loss is getting higher and higher. Whereas a very, kinda, let's say, a deep U could have a tiny little loss that's happening for a distance away from the minimum loss point, and then eventually turn up.   0:31:14.4 Bill: Well, but even, even Andrew, and I like the idea of the V. We could also be talking about a V where the sides, instead of being steep, are very flat. So it's a very wide V, and it never goes high because there's situations where, where the impact on integration is very minimal no matter what. All right. So anyway, um, the point I wanted to make is, I would say to our listeners and viewers, loss, the consequences of being off target, are the difference between what happens downstream at integration. And what I love, I went back and listened to the podcast, the one, you talked about your partner in the coffee business.   0:32:12.2 Bill: The point of integration is when they drink the cup of coffee. And that's integration. I mean, the point when they're, when we're eating a food, that's integration. So the piece of coffee is out there, whatever it is. But when the customer's using it, drinking it, that's integration, Andrew. And a...   0:32:32.2 Bill: And so... What I look at is what the loss, loss is the difference between what you see happening at integration and what you think is possible. So if we're at the Ford factory banging things together with rubber mallets day after day after day and you're the new hire and I show you how to do this, as soon as you begin to believe this is how we do things, then loss is zero. Because that's what we think is the norm. But if you have the ability to rise above that and say, I don't think it needs to be that difference, when you look at it and say, I don't think it needs to be the difference between what you think is possible and what it could... Difference between what is and what you think could be that's loss. And what I also say to people is it takes a special eye that you have to see that. It's like your coffee business, somebody's tasting that coffee and you're thinking this is pretty good. Then they say, "well, try this", whoa.   0:33:40.1 Bill: So it takes a special eye to see loss. But then it takes a whole lot of other people to make that happen. So whether that's people in engineering, manufacturing. So a WE Organization is where someone has the ability to see that opportunity, but it's dependent upon all the others to make it happen. So now let's talk about Beyond Management by Extremes. And these are... Has a lot to do with KPIs and also say in one of our last, wasn't the last one, it was a couple before that you had made clear your firm belief that KPIs need to be thrown away in the morning trash. And I remember on the call listening to you and I'm hearing you, we ought to get rid of them, we ought to get rid of them, we ought to get rid of them.   0:34:38.5 Bill: And I'm thinking they aren't bad, it's how they're used. And so I wasn't sure I was in agreement with you on that call. But when I went back and listened to it and that's what what I, what I told the friend is, I said, if you listen to what Andrew says, I don't say anything at the end. And the reason I didn't say anything is I wasn't sure I agreed. But when I went back and listened to it most recently, I said, yes! yes! yes! 'Cause what you said is: if they can be used without an incentive system. And I thought, yes, yes, yes, yes. And so we are in agreement on KPIs, [laughter] they are... But what we have...   0:35:25.2 AS: Which, which my, which my point is, number one, that as long as you don't attach some kind of incentive or compensation system, then, you're not that, you've eliminated a lot of risk that they're causing damage. The second part is a lot of times what I'm looking at is individual KPIs. And what I'm trying to say is that even if you don't add in compensation, it's, it's, it's a fool's errand to try to set up, three KPIs for a thousand people, three thousand KPIs individually and think that now we've got that set. Our organization is going to really rock now.   0:36:06.0 Bill: Well, then what you get is the KPIs are always round numbers. We want to decrease by 5%, increase by... And you're thinking, so how much science getting to these numbers anyway? And you're thinking, but early on in your career, you look at this, you think, well, somebody's thought about this and you realize, no. And so what management by extremes is about is KPIs that are extreme. And so I my PhD advisor in graduate school, I was studying heat transfer and fluid mechanics and and before each of us graduated, went to work in corporations, he'd pull us aside and he'd say, he'd say, "Bill, he said you're gonna be in a situation one day where your boss is gonna come by and is gonna give you.... He's going to give you an assignment, that gives you, he's gone give, that gives you five minutes to figure it out."   0:37:05.7 Bill: And he says, "so, if he or she comes he comes to you, she comes to you and they give you five minutes to figure out, he said there's only three possible answers and I'll tell you what they are and you got to figure out which of them it is and so it'll take you a minute to figure out which one it is. And then the rest of the time you're going to explain it." I remember saying to him, I says, so, "Okay, so what are the three possible answers?" And he says "zero, one and infinity", 'cause it turns out in the world of heat transfer and fluid mechanics, those three numbers show up pretty often as ideal solutions for different cases. And so what he's saying is when your boss comes to you and says, boom, then you have to say, which case is that? 'Cause if that's this case, it's zero.   0:37:51.0 Bill: This case, it's one. This case is infinity. So I thought, okay. Well, in Dr. Taguchi's work, he talks about quality characteristics. So we're running experiments to improve something and a quality characteristic could be as large as possible, infinity being the ideal, the strength of the material. We want to make it stronger and stronger and stronger. But it's referred to as larger is best, meaning infinity is the ideal, smaller is best I'm trying to reduce leakage. I'm trying to make something smoother and smoother.   0:38:25.9 Bill: That's smaller is best. Zero is the goal. And the other one is to get your first who is nominal as best, where a finite number is the answer. And so what I had in mind with this management by extremes, inspired by my Ph.D. advisor, inspired by Deming, Dr. Taguchi, is that, if the KPI is driving to zero or driving to infinity, we want the inventory Andrew to go to zero. We want sales to go to infinity. I said, if you're thinking about things systemically, I don't think zero or infinity is what we're going to do. And so I throw that out as not all the time, but I think quite often if the KPI, if you're working on something where you're heading to zero, heading to infinity, to me, that's a clue that you're looking at something in isolation. And I would say to people.   0:39:25.2 Bill: Let's say you're, you call me in Andrew and you say, "Bill, we need your help getting the cost down of this project." And I say, "well, what'd you have in mind?" You say, "Bill, we'd we'd love to get 10% out of this cost. Boy, 10%." I said, "Andrew, I can double that." "No way. No way" And I say, "Andrew, on a good day, I could do more than that." And then what I say is that the more you get excited by how much we could lower that cost, eventually I'm going to say, "Andrew, gotcha." And you say, "what do you mean?" "Gotcha. Andrew, you're looking at cost in isolation." What's the clue? You'd love it to go to zero. Or... And that's what we end up doing is we want to drive variation to zero. That's the Six Sigma people. Well, first of all, cloning does not produce identical.   0:40:30.6 Bill: Photocopies don't create identical. Dr. Deming would say that of course there's variation. There'll always be variation. And then there are people, and and I cringe. But Dr. Deming was once asked. He was interviewed by somebody I believe with the BBC back in the '80s. And the interview ends with "So Dr. Deming, if we can condense your philosophy down to two, down to two words, what would it be? Or down to a few words, what would it be?" And he said, "reduce variation" or something like that. And I said, "no, it should be manage variation. We should have what the situation needs." And so I'm going to absolute agreement with you. On how can we have KPIs without goals which make make things even more isolated. And then we talk about by what method are we going to achieve those goals? But I think if we're talking about driving variation to zero, then you're looking at things in isolation. If you are driving waste to zero.   0:41:20.8 Bill: then you're looking at things in isolation. If you're talking about, the non value added efforts driving to zero. I'd say value shows up elsewhere. I had somebody within Boeing once say to me "Bill, you know, being on target, you know being on that ideal value, I've had people tell me that once you achieve the minimum size of a hole, going further doesn't add value." And I'd say "If all you're doing is looking at the hole, I can understand that. But if you're focusing on what goes in the hole, that's different." And the other thing I throw out is I was doing some training years ago. There was a guy in the room that I, I mentioned the term "value engineering" 'cause I remember when I got excited by Taguchi's work and Deming's work, somebody said, "The last big training, big thing was value engineering." "What do you mean?" And they pulled out their "That was the wave of the sixties was value engineering." So I asked this guy in class. I said, so, he mentioned he worked at GE back in the '60s and value engineering was really big. So I said, well, "So tell me about that. What was behind that?" He says, “We were taught to look at a contract and all the deliverables. And our job in the value engineering department was to figure out how to, how to meet each deliverable minimally because anything more than that doesn't add value." And I thought, you can't make that up!   0:42:53.0 Bill: Let's look at all the requirements and how do we go to? What's the absolute minimum we have to deliver on the term paper, on the project.   0:43:06.5 AS: How could we kill this through a thousand cuts?   0:43:10.8 Bill: So that's KPIs. Driving to zero driving to infinity. But, but we're in agreement that if you, in a Deming organization where we're not driven by incentives then KPIs are measures of how we are doing. And why isn't that enough to be able to say, how are things? How are things? We can talk about how might we improve this? But then we're going to look at: Is that a local improvement that makes it worse elsewhere? Are we driving costs to zero and screwing this up? So that's what, that's what I wanted to throw out on this management by extremes zero and infinity, and getting beyond that.   0:43:47.6 AS: Well, I think that's a great point to end it went through so many different things, but I think one of the biggest takeaways that I get from this is the idea of appreciation of a system. When you have a true appreciation of a system and understand that there's many parts and, you know, adding value in that system basically comes from more than just being on a production line, for sure and creating value in an organization comes from not only working on improving a particular area but the integration of the many different functions. And if you don't understand that, then you end up in not a Deming organization, not a WE Organization, but more of a ME Organization. That's kind of what I would take away. Is there anything you would add to that?   0:44:51.9 Bill: Well, what, what reminds me of what you're just saying is I was doing a class years ago for a second shift group in facilities people, painters, electricians, managers, and one of them says, he says "so Bill, everyone's important in an organization." I said, "absolutely. Absolutely everyone's important."   0:45:13.2 Bill: Then he says, "everyone's equally important" right? And as soon as he said that, I thought to myself, "I remember you from a year ago." So he says, "So so everyone's important." "Yeah, everyone's important!" "Everyone's equally important." So as soon as he said that, within a fraction of a second, my response was, "No, if you wanna get paid what a quarterback gets paid, you better, you better train to be a quarterback." So what Dr. Deming is not, he's not saying everyone's paid the same. We're paid based on market rates for quarterbacks, for linemen, for software people. And the, and the better we work together, ideally the better we manage resources, the better the profit, we get in the profit sharing, but we're not equal. Our contributions are not equal. The contributions cannot be compared. They are, they're all part of the sauce, but we don't get into who contributed more." Right, and I think that'... We're all contributors.   0:46:28.3 AS: The more you learn about Dr. Deming's teaching, you just realize that there's an appreciation of a system, but there's also an appreciation of people.   0:46:40.1 Bill: There we go.   0:46:43.2 AS: That's really where, as I have said before, when my friend was working with me on my book, Transforming Your Business with Dr. Deming's 14 Points, after many many weeks of working together, he's like, "I figured it out. Dr. Deming is a humanist. He cares about people." It's pretty true. So appreciate the people around you, appreciate the contribution that everybody makes. Nobody makes equal contributions. And even great people who are making amazing contributions could have down months or years where there's things going on in their family or other issues. They're not contributing what they did in the past.   0:47:17.1 AS: That's a variable that we just can't control. But ultimately, appreciation of the system is what I said in my summary. And now I'm gonna add in appreciation of the people.   0:47:30.6 AS: Bill, on behalf of everyone at The Deming Institute, I wanna thank you again for this discussion. Again, entertaining, exciting, interesting. For listeners, remember to go to deming.org to continue your journey. And 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".  

Who wins when teams and team members compete with each other? In this final episode in the Role of a Manager in Education series, David Langford and Andrew Stotz discuss why cooperation beats competition, particularly in schools. TRANSCRIPT 0:00:02.5 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 discussion with David P. Langford, who has devoted his life to applying Dr. Deming's philosophy to education, and he offers us his practical advice for implementation. Today we continue our discussion of Dr. Deming's 14 items that he discusses in The New Economics about the role of a manager of people after transformation. And we're talking about the 14th of these different 14 items. And this one I want to read out, it is, "He understands the benefits of cooperation and the losses from competition between people and between groups." We decided to title this one: "Do you think you're winning from competition?" David, take it away.   0:00:53.7 David Langford: That sounds great. Great. It's good to be back again, Andrew.   0:01:00.4 AS: Yeah.   0:01:00.6 DL: Yeah. This is a great point, and it really is the basis for Deming's philosophy about everything that he brought to management and it got people to think differently. When I would give seminars with educators around the world and stuff, and we'd start talking about the differences between competition and cooperation, I'd often get people speaking very strongly that, "Competition is the way the world works and you have to have competition to get people to do stuff. And sports teams are always competing." And when you start to think about it, sports teams that, that usually have a sole focus of just beating the, the other team, generally don't have multi-year winning streaks, [chuckle] because you're not building a program, you're not building a whole philosophy, a whole basis to how you do things.   0:02:06.0 DL: And I've made it a point to really listen to all kinds of interviews with coaches over time. And one common theme I usually hear over and over and over from really good teams is they'll talk about the next game that they're playing. They don't talk so much about, "We're gonna beat these people." They talk about, "This will be a really good test for us." Or they'll say something about, "We're probably gonna really learn a lot this weekend [chuckle] at this game." Well, to me, those are really good coaches because they're lowering the fear level, they're lowering the anxiety. And the better we... The irony of this statement, this point number 14, is the better you cooperate, the better you compete. [chuckle]   0:03:04.0 DL: And when you're not doing that, you potentially could just go down in flames. And the same thing happens in a classroom. If you set up a classroom so everybody's competing against each other, or what Deming called the artificial scarcity of top marks, you'll end up with a whole bunch of people that are just basically at each other's throats, not cooperating, not getting along. You'll have all kinds of discipline problems and behavior problems and things that are going on in classrooms like that because it's all just set up on a competition level. So grading on a curve is a scarcity, artificial scarcity of top marks. So if there can only be three top marks or three A's or whatever it might be in this class, and people that are actually struggling in the class and actually trying to learn, they're gonna quickly learn, "There's no point in me actually trying because there's no way I'm ever going to get to that point. There's only gonna be three people that are gonna get the A."   0:04:14.2 DL: And that's the biggest thing about this, is getting to the point where you're understanding the losses of setting up artificial competition for, whether it be grades or points on a soccer field, or whatever it might be. Deming often used the analogy of the difference between a bowling team and a orchestra in terms of cooperation. So people that go bowling, they're generally just out for your own score and whatever you're trying to work through, and it's not really a team activity. Even if you're on a bowling team, it's still... You're just doing your own thing and doing your own score.   0:05:07.8 DL: So they have a very low level of interdependence in that environment. But I used to be a band teacher and orchestra leader and things like that. And so when Deming used the analogy of an orchestra about that being the pinnacle of interrelationships, it really struck home for me that like he said, "A 1OO people in an orchestra or a band, they're not there to compete [chuckle] who can play the loudest or who could play the biggest solo or... " Right? 'Cause that'd be a terrible thing to listen to if you went to a concert like that.   0:05:47.3 DL: But the reason we give people standing ovations, is because we recognize the interdependence and the cooperation it takes to reach a pinnacle performance. Even in a very small group, maybe just three or four people in a band or something, it takes a tremendous amount of cooperation to get to that level of performance. And just imagine some of our famous rock bands and stuff, if everybody on the stage was competing against each other, it would sound terrible. [chuckle]   0:06:24.9 AS: Yeah. It's interesting about the orchestra concept. I like to talk... When I'm speaking to audiences about Deming's teaching, I say, "Imagine that we have a new generation of leaders that are KPI managers, and they sit down with every person in the orchestra and say, 'You've got a KPI, we've got a limited pool of bonus here, and we're gonna distribute it amongst all the players based upon who was the A players, and C players you're going to get zero.' And so now you need to think about what is your contribution here. And then you pull up... The curtain goes up and you rise up and everybody claps. And then everybody in the orchestra stands up and plays to their best ability."   0:07:03.6 DL: Yeah. You'd have chaos.   [laughter]   0:07:07.5 AS: It's interesting in this one that he sees the need to highlight that it's... He's talking about competition between people and between groups. Why did he have the need to say that rather than just competition in general?   0:07:25.1 DL: He did talk about competition in general a lot. He also talked about... He made statements like, "It's really good to have a good competitor." And that seems like it's the opposite of what this statement is about, but I think there's a difference between competition and comparison. So if you have another company, another school, another grade level. So let's say I'm a fourth grade teacher in an elementary school or something, and there's maybe three other fourth grade teachers in that same building. Well, I'm not trying to compete to [chuckle] win in that situation, I'm actually trying to cooperate. And the more that we all three cooperate together, share ideas, maybe even share kids and make a very fluid situation, everybody wins. The number of people that get to higher and higher and higher levels of performance increases and increases and increases.   0:08:35.9 DL: You may never get to a 100% of the people learning a 100% of the material a 100% of the time, but you're gonna get closer and closer and closer, the higher, the more that you cooperate. And the more that you set up competition, we're not talking about games, Deming talked about the difference between games that everybody knows it's a game. You go to a soccer game, everybody knows this is a game. We even call them games. [chuckle]   0:09:07.8 AS: Games.   0:09:09.4 DL: Something we can play, but that's not real life. And that's why I always try to explain to teachers that you can't set up your classroom as a game, because really what you're doing is teaching life and death situations. Somebody that can't learn to add is gonna have a tough, tough time in the rest of their life. So we can't just reduce it down to a simple game, or do this and you get a lolly or an M&M or a piece of candy or something. And we often have teachers that would say things like, "Oh, well, kids like that." "Okay. Well, I like that." [chuckle] But don't tie it to something so critical as performing well on fractions, [chuckle] that if you do really well on this, then you're gonna get a prize or you're gonna get something out of that. I remember, 'cause we're talking about the orchestra thing, as a band teacher, I had to learn the hard way when I was teaching young kids how to play, say, "Look, you need to be practicing 20 minutes a night. And that's the firm rule, is just you need to be doing that."   0:10:23.9 DL: Well, it was really pretty foolish on my part because they have a system too, and they have all kinds of things going on in their lives, that was what was happening. And when I really pushed it really hard, and they'd get little cards that they'd have to fill out how many times they'd practice, and their parents had to sign it and all this stuff. Well, what I found out is I had a bunch of kids cheating, writing down times even though they didn't practice. Some of them would even forge their parents' signatures, [chuckle] all kinds of stuff. And it's really easy to blame the individual and say, "Wow, look how ineffective kids these are. If I can get some better kids, we'd have a better program here."   0:11:05.7 DL: But after learning about Deming and studying all this, I made just one simple change. I just gave them a little run chart and I said, "All I want you to do is just mark down how many minutes a night you practice, that's it. And all you have to do is just, I don't care if it's one minute or no minutes, or whatever it might be, you just put that on this chart." And then we would turn that into a little run chart for a whole week's performance. And lo and behold, the average number of minutes per night that kids were practicing just went up and up and up because they wanted to see their chart get better. [chuckle] It's a human phenomenon that Deming tapped into, that people want to improve. And when they could just see the number of minutes going up.   0:12:00.5 DL: And I'd have really good conversations with them and sit down and say, "Hey. Well, how do you feel about that? Look at this. Look at your chart?" And you didn't have to have anybody verify it or anything else, but it was just you keeping track of your own performance within that. And then when we come together as a group, that's our time to optimize the situation. And Deming talked a lot about that. Sometimes people or groups would have to be sub-optimized, they may not be working to their full potential, so that the whole group or the whole system will work more efficiently. That's a hard concept to get somehow. But again, back to the orchestra thing, there's a lot of people in an orchestra when you play a piece that they're sub-optimized, [chuckle] they're just playing one little part of the whole big piece. [chuckle]   0:12:57.7 AS: Yeah. The cymbals.   [vocalization]   0:12:57.9 DL: Yeah.   0:13:00.8 AS: There's a moment.   0:13:02.7 DL: But it's necessary. [chuckle]   0:13:04.7 AS: There's a moment. T And just because the cymbals guy is sitting there and not participating, as long as he's contributing that moment, that's really performance in that sense. There's a quote that I like by what Dr. Deming said that's somewhat related to this, and I see this in my work with companies here in Thailand. And that is, "A company could put a top man or woman at every position and be swallowed by a competitor with people only half as good, but who are working together."   0:13:40.1 DL: Absolutely. Yeah, exactly. [chuckle]   0:13:43.4 AS: Yeah. I think that really says it all, as to what...   0:13:46.2 DL: Yeah. That's what he is getting at here. The more you cooperate, the better you're gonna compete, even though competition was not... Were really never your goal to start with.   0:13:57.9 AS: Yeah.   0:13:58.9 DL: Well, this made me think about when I was a high school teacher, and I tapped into how much the students really loved learning about Deming and everything. And we started going out and doing presentations actually, and going to the universities, corporations, all kinds of places to do presentations. And every person that did a presentation had to have like four or five people that were helping them, making sure that their video was working and making sure that the sound was right and all kinds of things. And the idea being so that they could concentrate on their presentation. And I'll never forget, we were at a state department somewhere, and somebody at the end got up and said, "The information you shared with us and everything is very [chuckle] profound and very wonderful, but the real show was the high degree of cooperation going on amongst all the students as things were happening." So somebody just didn't get up and do their thing and then just go sit down in a corner somewhere and just wait, everybody had an interrelated job to help people put on a really good performance, basically.   0:15:15.5 AS: Well, what a great way to end our discussion on the role of managers of people. And this was 14 items that Dr. Deming talked about in his book, The New Economics. And this final one, I think really stands out to me, and that is the idea of today, starting right now, stop pitting individuals and groups against each other and start figuring out how we can get people cooperating and how we can coordinate effort, because the coordination and the cooperation is where the real value is created and the real experience is created, whether that's in a classroom, whether that's on a factory floor, or whether that's in an office. All of those spaces, the idea of cooperation is so valuable for performance and getting the most out of people, but also, gosh, it makes it a happier day. [laughter]   0:16:17.8 DL: Absolutely. And not just limited to businesses and organizations, family works the same way. I have five children and I used to always tell people in my seminars, "How do I go about figuring out who amongst them is the greatest child?"   [laughter]   0:16:38.0 AS: Child of the month.   0:16:38.1 DL: Yeah. And out of five kids, what? Two or three of them were gonna be below average probably. [chuckle] And so, if you start thinking about it that way, you start thinking about, "Oh, we wouldn't wanna do that." But I had the opportunity to take our family to Europe, we went to Singapore, we went to all kinds of places. And I remember when we went to Singapore to visit relatives there, we had 15 pieces of luggage [laughter] that we flew with for the seven people that were all going on this trip. Well, no one person can be responsible for all that, it has to be an interrelated related system. And everybody's working for the common aim of to pull this off and make sure that we can go on another trip. And it's really enjoyable and everybody had fun. And so... That's my final comment.   0:17:32.0 AS: Well, let's wrap it up there. David. On behalf of everyone at Deming Institute, I wanna thank you again for this discussion. And for listeners, remember to go to deming.org to continue your journey. And listeners can learn more about David at langfordlearning.com. This is your host Andrews Stotz, and I'll leave you with one of my favorite quotes from Dr. Deming. "People are entitled to joy in work."

What are unhurried conversations, and why should managers prioritize them? In this episode, David Langford and host Andrew Stotz talk about the kinds of conversations managers should be having with their team members. TRANSCRIPT 0:00:02.5 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 discussion with David P. Langford, who has devoted his life to applying Dr. Deming's philosophy to education, and he offers us his practical advice for implementation. Today, we continue our discussion of Dr. Deming's 14 items that he discusses in The New Economics about the role of a manager of people after transformation. In the third edition, that's page 86. And in the second edition, that's page 125. So we are talking about item number 13, and in that point, I wanna read it to you. It says, "Number 13, he will hold an informal unhurried conversation with every one of his people at least once a year, not for judgment, merely to listen. The purpose would be development of understanding of his people, their aims, hopes and fears. The meeting will be spontaneous, not planned ahead." We're calling today's conversation the unhurried conversation. David, take it away.   0:01:17.5 David Langford: Thank you, Andrew. It's good to be back again. So always fun to discuss these points and talk about the depth of what it means and how to work through that. So once again, this all sounds really simple. You know, hey, just have this unhurried conversation with people at least once a year. When I talked to Dr. Deming about this years ago, he was recommending more like once a quarter, if you can do that, to work that through. But what are we really talking about? So in this world of managing with data and KPIs, key performance indicators and, you know, holding people's feet to the fire and really making them toe the line and all that kinda stuff, Deming is sort of just pretty much kind of the opposite. Those things all have their place and time, but that's not the kind of conversation that he's hinting at here or he's talking about here.   0:02:24.4 DL: I find it really interesting that he says, you know, it shouldn't be... The meeting will be spontaneous and not planned ahead. And so what he's getting at is that you're not, you're now coming in with an agenda for what you wanna hear from somebody. And on the opposite side, as an employee or somebody that you're working with, they're not prepared with some kind of an agenda where they're telling you what they think they... Where they're telling you what they think you want to hear, kind of thing. And I think that's what he is talking about why it needs to be spontaneous. He also goes deeper and he talks about, you know, find out people's aims and hopes and their fears and what's happening. And I was just thinking about that movie The Intern where the guy is hired in the company and he is 80 years old, and so they're doing the interview with him. And this young kid asked him the question, where do you see yourself in five years? I think, he looks at it and says, "You mean when I'm 85?" So, different...   0:03:47.4 AS: Dead.   0:03:48.1 DL: Yeah. Different points of life, different ways to think about it. So yeah. But he's just talking about, hey, just set up a time, be spontaneous, come in, sit down with somebody, and just not necessarily talking about business. Right? What are your hopes and fears and where do you see us going? And do you think we're on the right track? And...   0:04:13.2 AS: I'm curious, why do you think that... I mean, in some ways it seems like such an obvious thing. Why do you think he even needed to say this?   0:04:18.7 DL: Because it's not happening and it's even even worse today, I think, than in Deming's time in the 1990s when all this, all the computer technology, KPIs, all that stuff was just coming into being. Well, nowadays, it's sort of just a way of life to have all that kind of stuff. And I, I hate the phrase about being data managed or managing with data or data-driven. That's what it is. Well, we're a data-driven school district, and we make all of our decisions. Well, there's a lot of problems with that, just the word "driven" kind of drives people a little bit crazy about stuff. And really, the data is just there just to be informed. So you could still make informed good decisions, but I think Deming even talked about if you just make decisions just based on the data, you're probably gonna go out of business because you're not really paying attention to the people and what's really going on in the organization, what's happening and that type of thing.   0:05:34.4 DL: So it can also be really intimidating if you're the boss, and you're just popping in and saying, hey, you got a few minutes, you wanna sit and talk for a while? Because especially if you're in an organization where you've always... Or your predecessor, or you've always had an agenda for that meeting, it can be somewhat threatening for people. I know when I was a superintendent and I tried to do this with the principals that I was working with and stuff, and one of them, I'll never forget, she was just, she was just shaking the whole time. And I just had to say just, let's just sit here a minute and just calm down and what are you so nervous about? And just get to know her and everything else. Well, always before, the person before that had been the boss had come in and only time you had a meeting was when something was wrong.   0:06:42.7 DL: And she was gonna get ripped into. And so her fear was super great like that. Also found teachers just the same way that when as a new superintendent, I'd walk into their classroom just... I just wanted to sit and watch what's going on and maybe help out or participate or do whatever. And they'd just be almost shaking in their boots that the boss came in today. And what I found out is that it wasn't until at least six or seven months of doing that just spontaneously popping in, observing, watching what's happening, et cetera. Maybe chatting with them a little bit afterwards or doing something like that, that pretty soon that started to go away and people started to sort of function on a normal level. So one of Deming's 14 points in Out of the Crisis was pretty simple, drive out fear.   0:07:42.8 DL: And I think that's also what he's alluding to here is, here's a way that you can drive out fear, you know? And at the same time, just really get to know people. I've done a lot of study with neuroscience and the science of how do we actually think and et cetera. And there's a lot of that in neuroscience as well, that if you have a very fearful situation, you actually downshift and your brain actually shuts down. It goes into the survival mode of... And you're not gonna think creatively about a different option. You're simply trying to find out, what do I have to do to get out of this situation? And I think that's a lot of what Deming's talking about here is, hey, you gotta have these meetings and spontaneous and make it a joyful experience and just talk to people about what they wanted to have happen.   0:08:41.3 DL: Other thing I'll never forget in his seminars, he used to talk about this point or these points and stuff, and he said the purpose of the conversation is not for me to find out how you're doing. He said, I wanna know how I'm doing. And I remember the first time as a superintendent, sitting down with people and say, tell me about how I'm doing. They would look at me just kind of blankly like, what? Yeah. Well, how do you think I am doing with this job? And what do you think I need to be doing differently? And I always found those conversations really interesting, and again, it wasn't until like the second or third time having conversations with people that they actually started to tell you stuff that was useful. Because they don't wanna tell you something and then you end up firing them. So they have to have trust that you really do wanna find out how to improve, how to get better, so.   0:09:48.8 AS: Yeah, it's interesting. When I worked for Pepsi, when I first got out of university, it was three years I worked at Pepsi, and I would say we probably never had one company outing that I could remember. And in Thailand, I remember when I worked at one of my first jobs as a broker, and I was an analyst, and there was a questionnaire passed around, this was 25 years ago, that was questionnaire passed around, "Would you like to wear a company uniform to work?" And I said, well, obviously no. I was like, yeah, no.   0:10:27.9 AS: And then, I was stunned to see the results that majority of people said yes. And that's when I realized like, what Thais value in work is the comradery and the connection and the closeness. And they appreciate the relationship. And so therefore, you also have outings and things that we do and parties and go bowling or go hiking. And those things are where some of these unhurried conversations happen. Oh, well, yeah, this is what's going on at my home and with my family, and this is why I'm struggling and all that. And so what I realized in American culture, it's just not that common. You go into work, work's work.   0:11:14.4 DL: Yeah. So I'd say my last comment on this is that it's really not so much about work. I mean, it is work related, and obviously, there's an employee employer relationship going on, et cetera, but it's more about what you just talked about, really getting to know somebody, really getting to understand them. And again, back to neuroscience, I used to advise teachers all the time to try to do the same thing or at least do an exercise with kids. What's your aim? And have kids actually set aims and hopes and fears? And if you can do that very same thing. Where do you aim to be? And et cetera. Because if you have a second grader who wants to be an astronaut, and soon as you find that out, well, there's all kinds of ways you can tie everything that they're learning to eventually becoming an astronaut. And suddenly, everything that they're learning becomes relevant, and relevance is the key.   0:12:20.3 AS: Yeah. And the next year, they may say they want to become such and such, and then take that and run with it. You know? One of the last thing I would say about this that I always say when my students are giving their final presentations in my Valuation Masterclass Bootcamp, is I say, okay, now the last thing I want to tell you before you present is we're on the same team. Which I'm trying to convey to them that although I'm gonna critique you and I'm gonna challenge you and all that, we're here together for the same purpose.   0:12:54.6 DL: Yeah. I'm gonna give you feedback, but yeah, we're both here to accomplish the same aim, so.   0:13:01.4 AS: Yeah. So I love the unhurried conversation. So any last thing you wanna add to this before we wrap up?   0:13:08.9 DL: No, that's pretty much it. So I think we don't wanna make it too much out of it. I mean, it is on face value, it is pretty much what it says, have these conversations and understand who people are. And you'll find out that pays off in multiple ways down the road.   0:13:29.7 AS: So I'll wrap up by just saying to the listeners and the viewers out there, start today. Start today to have an unhurried conversation that's not connected to performance, compensation, company goals. It's an unhurried conversation to have two human beings sit down and take an interest in each other. And that's really the challenge I think that we got from this discussion. David, on behalf of everyone at the Deming Institute, I wanna thank you again for this discussion. And for listeners, remember to go to deming.org to continue your journey. Listeners can learn more about David at langfordlearning.com. 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.

Quotas, arbitrary targets, work standards with numerical goals - these don't seem to apply to schools. But, as John Dues and host Andrew Stotz discuss, quotas show up a lot in classrooms, causing harm and preventing improvement. TRANSCRIPT 0:00:02.4 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 discussion with John Dues, who is part of the new generation of educators striving to apply Dr. Deming's principles to unleash student joy in learning. This is episode 17, and we are continuing our discussion about the shift from management myths to principles for the transformation of school systems. John, take it away.   0:00:34.3 John Dues: It's good to be back, Andrew. Yeah we've been working our way through these 14 Principles for Systems Transformation. Last week or last episode we did eliminate slogans and exhortations. And so we're on to principle 11, which is Eliminate Arbitrary Numerical Targets. So I'll start with the overview. So principle 11, eliminate arbitrary numerical targets in the form of work standards that prescribe quotas for teachers and numerical roles for people in management, substitute leadership in order to achieve continual improvement of quality and productivity. And the first thing I wanted to start with was just this really powerful Deming quote on quotas. In Out of the Crisis, he said, "A quota is a fortress against improvement of quality and productivity totally incompatible with never-ending improvement." I just love that quote because it's just such a forceful pushback in the other direction. It's a fortress against improvement. There's really no gray area there in that quote.   0:01:43.0 AS: It's not a fort, it's not a barrier, it is a fortress.   0:01:48.2 JD: Fortress. It kind of brings together a mental image in your mind when you hear fortress, a fortress against quality, a fortress against improvement. So why did he say that? One of the things that's interesting is, especially thinking about work standards that prescribe some type of quota for teachers, it's like, well, when you think of a quota, you typically think of a worker and some type of production facility. And that, of course, is largely what Deming was talking about with his Point 11 'cause he was doing a lot of work in manufacturing and that type of setting. However it does, like all of this stuff, it translates into education. And, you know, so that's why I decided to keep Principle 11 'cause it does show up in different ways in the classroom setting. And I think examples are really good because when I initially read this quote and I was thinking, well, how do quotas show up in a classroom setting?   0:02:40.5 JD: And I thought of one that really stood out from when I was a principal here at one of our middle schools here in Columbus, at United Schools Network. We, we had this quota of sorts for homework. So in the middle school where I was, teachers had to assign homework nightly in their classes to students. And they had to grade two to three of those assignments a week and then return the graded assignments to students within 24 hours. And as I stopped and read this particular principle, and I thought about how it applied to my time as a principal, I really learned that that was the wrong approach. And as you start to think about that and reflect on it, you start to think about why Deming said quotas are a fortress against improvement. And there's this...   0:03:31.5 AS: And before you go... Before you go on, I just wanna highlight how normal that sounds.   0:03:38.4 JD: Very normal. Yeah. Very normal.   0:03:39.8 AS: And anybody here, like the first thing I'm gonna do or the first thing I do when I take over as principal is I'm gonna require that there's a minimum amount of this, and it has to be da, da, da, da, da. And it just seems like it is the responsible thing to do as a manager.   0:03:56.4 JD: Yeah. And there was a noble premise behind the quota, and that was that students needed frequent feedback on their work in order to learn. That was the premise, right? So it was this work standard, it was well-intentioned, but like a lot of these things that Deming talks about and quotas are no different, is the actual effect was that teachers spent less time giving feedback and more time grading this high volume of work. So this is what happens when you have a quota, is the focus became meeting the quota, grading the two to three assignments per week, rather than giving that quality feedback to students. So in this case, this sort of numerical target for graded assignments, then superseded the quality of the feedback. And this is, this is what happens, I think, generally speaking, with quotas and practice.   0:04:56.3 JD: And so when you step back and you think about that particular quota, you say, well, what was the teacher's job? Was it grading two to three homework assignments per week or was it giving students quality feedback? And it really couldn't be both. It couldn't be both those things. So then I started thinking about, well, what would've been a better approach? You know, had I had the Deming lens when I was a principal, I think the thing that I would've done is start with, well, let's come up with a sort of a well articulated aim for why we give homework. And included in that process, or included was, developing a process so that students received timely and high quality feedback 'cause that's really what this was about. So I think that sort of brings to mind substituting leadership, that second part of the principle.   0:05:58.4 JD: And in this case, I think, you know what I should have done is replace those work standards or that quota with some type of a better understanding of the job of the teacher. So, you know, I think in doing that, then I also... Leads to higher quality work-life for teachers. I would say, in thinking about this homework example, time spent grading homework was probably the number one complaint that I got from teachers. And this better approach to the two, three, assignments per week quota would've been to work with teachers to design a better system. Like how could we design a system that would give them the time to deliver high quality feedback to students on a timely basis? That was really the aim. And that's really where I should have concentrated my time as a principal. But again, I didn't have that Deming lens 10 years ago when I was serving as a, as a principal in our network. And reading the Deming stuff, it was very quickly like, oh, aha. Like, here's how I should have been thinking about this. Rather than being so hyper-focused on: you gotta grade those two to three assignments every single week.   0:07:29.9 AS: I like the word substitute leadership, you know, and Dr. Deming said that a lot. And the best way that I've kind of tried to explain it, and it just happened recently, where a client of mine was talking about having what they would consider to be underperforming staff. And they were older. They'd been with the company for a long time, and like the mindset is not there. And so their idea was to use KPIs as a way of basically catching these people out and then eventually firing them from the company. I'm making it kinda crude, but that's kind of the way it came across.   0:08:09.7 AS: Yeah.   0:08:10.1 JD: And I was like, wait a minute, let's just get down to the meat of this. The fact is, is that you hired these people [laughter] and you led these people for 20 years, who's responsible for this? And then I said, look, don't substitute leadership... Don't substitute KPI for leadership 'cause people say, so if I don't have KPIs or I don't have this, how am I gonna manage the people who aren't performing? I'm like, you know the people who aren't performing, they're probably in the wrong job. They may be in the wrong company, they may be the wrong thing, I don't know, but you need to talk to them and work it out and figure out a solution, that's leadership. But hiding behind some sort of quota or target and thinking that that's gonna solve the problem, no, that's why we need leadership.   0:09:06.4 AS: Yeah. And knowing the staff that I was working with at the time, the group of teachers, I am sure I am 100% sure that we as a group could have come up with a way, a better way to do our feedback system than the way it was set up. I have, I have no doubt. If we said, look, this actually isn't really working that well for teachers the time it's taking just to grade the homework. The kids, the students are, do they really need homework every single night? And when they're getting these papers back in the morning, do they have any time to actually look at whatever feedback is provided? Sometimes it was pretty minimal. Sometimes there was, depending on the teacher and the assignment, sometimes there was some feedback there. But are we giving kids time to look at that and actually learn from that feedback in any way? And so, again, you know, well-intentioned as it was, the volume superseded the, you know, the quality of the feedback. So I can think of all types of ways that I would sort of redo that system in retrospect with a clear aim is where I would start, what's the aim of this? Whether it's homework or classwork or whatever it is.   0:10:23.9 AS: And with technology now too, it's just such, it's gotten a lot easier. Such as give the students a five question online quiz that tests the topic that you taught that day. Then accumulate the data and understand what was the hardest one or two questions. Then in the first 10 minutes of class or five minutes of class, say, okay, last night's assignment, the hardest question was number three. And now I'm gonna randomly select one person to tell me how did you answer number three? And then let's have a discussion on that. And then that way you're getting feedback. It's the same thing I did with Feedback Friday just 'cause you were talking about feedback. Where everybody wanted, they requested in my Valuation masterclass bootcamp, they requested more feedback and I designed Feedback Friday where I gave them the exact assignment, then a certain number of them will present their work, the ones who volunteer in this case, and then they present their work on Friday. And then I give feedback that everybody witnesses and can learn from.   0:11:44.8 JD: Yeah. I mean, I think there's so many different ways, like what you're describing to set up the practice, to set up the feedback system, to have students pair up or someone present their work or you know, there's all types of better ways that would would've saved a lot of people, a lot of time, a lot of headache. There were many, many ways we could have redesigned that system.   0:12:06.4 AS: And why use the word arbitrary? You've said eliminate arbitrary numerical targets. We've talked about the numerical aspect of it, but why do you say arbitrary?   0:12:19.5 JD: Yeah. I wrote an article that actually called them arbitrary and capricious goals. So not just arbitrary, but also capricious, but yeah.   0:12:26.8 AS: What does capricious mean? How would you define it?   0:12:28.4 JD: Well, it's sort of the same as arbitrary. It's sort of like without any sort of grounding in logic or reality. [laughter] Flippant, sort of, I think I have that right. You can fact check me on that definition. But that's actually a perfect segue into that 'cause there's that second part of the principle that talks about also eliminating numerical goals for people and management. So not just teachers, but also school or network leaders. And we've talked a lot about, and across the series about various types of targets that exist in education. But I think it's still worth discussing a few points. Like what does arbitrary mean in this setting?   0:13:07.2 AS: And capricious means "given to sudden and unaccountable changes of mood or behavior." [laughter]   0:13:12.5 JD: Yeah, and I think in that article I've used capricious because in education, you know that the targets are changing so often, especially associated with test scores or other sort of parts of state accountability systems. One year it's some type of label, another year it's letter grades that schools are rated on. Now in Ohio we're given star ratings. So they've gone away from A to F and now it's schools get rated based on a five star system. And so that's what I mean by capricious. It's just...   0:13:42.4 AS: So five is A?   0:13:44.5 JD: Five is good. Yeah, five is good. Five is an A, I suppose. If there's a difference between a star, a five star and an A, I don't know, [laughter], but that's the new thing here in the Buckeye state. Yeah, but so back to the management. I think, well one thing I think when you're talking about teams or departments or a school or the whole organization, I think they should have an aim. So I think that's really important. But by aim, I'm talking about some type of clear purpose statement, but that's not so specific in detail that it stifles initiatives, that's one part. And I think a clear aim statement sort of in that spirit is something very different from a numerical goal. So that's one part of it. I think another part, and I'm getting to the arbitrary part, is that so many times that internal goals either set for management or set by management of an organization are basically a burlesque,you know, if they don't include a method.   0:14:52.8 JD: And that's what I've seen so often where, we've sat down to create a scorecard or whatever, or we see these things imposed on us from some type of organization that holds us accountable like the state department is, we have these goals, like increased student attendance rates by 10% or increase math scores by 5%. And the thing is, is part of the arbitrary is that sort of natural variation in those attendance rates or in those test scores are viewed as a success if they're going in the direction of good, but fluctuations in the other direction sort of send everybody scurrying around looking for explanations. And we end up sort of writing fiction to explain away or to explain causality when there's not actually causality there. And I've been just as guilty. We're gonna improve test scores by 10% next year without some clear plan.   0:15:53.7 JD: But then what Deming would say is, if we can do it next year with no plan, why didn't we do it this year? [laughter] And why did we stop at 10%? Why not just make it 20%? That's again part of the arbitrary. Now there is a caveat and Deming I think makes this caveat Out of the Crisis that's important. And that's when... When we are setting numerical targets or talking about numerical targets that he categorized as, he called them, facts of life. Meaning, they're just sort of plain statements of fact with respect to survival. So a good example would be, for a school would be, unless student enrollment improves by 10% next year, the school will have to shut down. But that's not arbitrary, that's a fact of life.   0:16:43.3 JD: If we don't get the revenue associated with increase in enrollment, then we're gonna have to shut down. That's not an arbitrary target. That's something sort of something, you know, altogether different that we should pay attention to. But I think getting to this idea of arbitrary, I would probably characterize it this way, and this is probably the main point of principle 11 for leaders is that they have to understand system capability. And that's often what's sort of missing from the understanding when these arbitrary targets are set. So if the system is stable, you'll get what the system will deliver. If the system is unstable, then there's no way to predict capability. So I think it's fine for organizations and individuals to have goals, but the problem is so often just like what you zeroed in on is they're arbitrary.   0:17:50.8 JD: And that's been my experience during the vast majority of my career is, why is this target set at 80%? And then no one can really tell you why that was picked as the target. For whatever the thing is, I just picked 80%, sometimes it's 75%, sometimes it's 80%, sometimes it's 90%. But I think that type of goal setting is really inevitable when as a sector, we have really no understanding of the theory of systems, we have no understanding of the theory of variation. And so without that understanding, what we tend to do is blame individuals working within school systems instead of working to improve the system itself. And I think that's really the key for me and why I'm so zeroed in on the Deming philosophy 'cause it does offer this other way. And so thinking back to system capability and before we as leaders set goals, there's really four kind of things that I've tried to focus on. And one of them is: what is the capability of the system or process under study?   0:19:13.3 JD: And when I say what is the capability, the easiest way to think about this is, if I display my data, let's say it's third grade reading state test scores. By capability, what I mean is, if I've look at the last dozen years of those third grade test scores, there's gonna be an average. And that average of those twelve years is basically the capability of my system. So I'm not just looking at last year or even the last two years, I'm looking at a dozen or more data points preferably, to see how capable that particular system is. So that's sort of the first thing I'm gonna look at is, what's the capability of that particular system or process over time? The second thing I'm going to do is ask, what's the variation within that system? So we've talked about the process behavior chart a lot. I do think I'm sort of in the Donald Wheeler camp and thinking that that is the most important tool. And so it's very easy using a process behavior chart because I have the limits, the upper and lower limit.   0:20:29.8 JD: And however wide or narrow those limits are, that's gonna tell me the variation I can expect in that particular system over time. The tighter those limits are, the less variation, the higher the quality, or at least the higher the predictability of that system or process. The third thing I am gonna wanna know is, is that particular system or process stable over time? Do I see any signals in the patterns in the data that would say that this is a stable system and therefore it's predictable or is it unstable and therefore it's unpredictable? So that's the third thing I'm gonna ask. And then once I've answered those questions, the last thing I'm gonna say is, do I have a logical answer in thinking about whatever goal we're setting to the question by what method? And so I think if you don't have that sort of picture in your head, the goals that we set are sort of arbitrary and capricious. If we are setting a goal, we can answer those four questions, then the goal is probably reasonable, logical, and grounded in some type of understanding of our systems. That's what I think Deming meant when he talked about arbitrary targets or arbitrary goals.   0:21:58.1 AS: So let me review that for the listeners out there. Number one, what's the capability of the system? Number two, what's the variation of the system and understanding a process behavior chart? Is the system, number three, is the system stable over time? Is it predictable? And number four, do I have a logical answer to the question by what method? And what you get from that is that, clearly if you can answer those questions, you understand your system pretty well. And therefore it's less likely you're gonna come up with an arbitrary goal. You're gonna go to the, say, here's what I think we can do with a deeper understanding of the system. But if you have a bureaucrat from the state education department, as an example, say, I want 5% more. Why not 5% less? [laughter]   0:22:50.4 JD: Right. Based on what?   0:22:51.4 AS: But where? Where does that come from?   0:22:53.5 JD: Yeah. Yeah. I think another thing I mentioned Donald Wheeler, he said, goal setting is often an act of desperation. And I think I talked about earlier in this series of episodes, I've talked about third grade reading test scores in Ohio. The goal is 80%. The system right now is capable of about a 60% in terms of looking at the system of third grade reading test scores in the state of Ohio. So 80% is a hope and a dream. It's somewhere out in la-la land. You know, and and what's happening is schools are being held accountable for that number in a system that is not capable of meeting that target, far from it, as a state. So I'd wanna know, like who set that and on what basis was that goal set for third grade, for third grade reading in the state? And that sort of thing is happening over and over and over and over again. What's the latest thing that we're gonna focus on? I think chronic absenteeism is one of those things right now that everybody's talking about. Kids aren't coming to school like they did pre-pandemic without any understanding of the theory of systems and the theory of variation. And so people are just running around talking about it without any understanding of what that data looks like over time.   0:24:27.2 AS: Yeah. And I'm looking at Donald Wheeler's goal is often an act of desperation, part one. And some of his discussion on that is great, great stuff. I was thinking about, in my own case with my Valuation masterclass bootcamp, when I first started the bootcamp, now we're on bootcamp number 12, but the first ones, I just told the students, okay, pick any company and then you can write a report on that company. And the outcome of that was disaster. Like it was just so... And I realized I didn't have that much teaching involved in how to get them to where I wanted to get them. So I had to... First I had to start to improve my teaching knowing that I'm trying to narrow the outcome to be, you know, somewhat consistent. And then I realized I can't just let them do any one company by choice, I have to kinda give them a list 'cause there's a certain companies that just don't have much information.   0:25:23.3 AS: If they choose it, it's a bad company for them to work on. So then I would give them a list of a hundred companies and say, pick one out of this, and each person had a different company. So that started to improve it that I had more information. And so I'm iterating through this and then I realized, some people just state that it's harder for them to do this assignment. It takes six weeks to do it and it's just overwhelming for some people. And I thought, what if each team did the same company? And I assigned it. And so what I did is I set up teams and now I encourage the teams to work together. They each wrote their individual report on that company, but now they start sharing information. And now I'm narrowing down, and I'm getting my system more and more narrow and the outcome is getting more and more narrow.   0:26:07.1 AS: And then I have a deadline that by the end of the fifth week, you've got to submit your draft. If it's not up to the standard, I can't put you in a time slot. We're gonna have to figure out something else to do.   0:26:21.5 JD: Yeah.   0:26:22.0 AS: And so that prevented someone who's postponing until the last minute, we're giving them a deadline that's a week before to give them some time to wake up and fix, make sure they got the stuff fixed as much as they could.   0:26:35.6 JD: Yeah.   0:26:37.4 AS: And then recently, so we've been iterating through this and improving the system. And now the outcome is better and better and better of what they're doing and the way that they're presenting. The way that I'm able to... I can't teach about a hundred different companies, I can teach about a few and help them in that process. And then in this particular bootcamp, my idea for improvement was what if we... Instead of starting the first week by assigning them that company and the team gets all excited and they start working on that company, let's say the company's Tesla, as an example. Why don't I pick an industry? And in the first week, everybody in the bootcamp works on an industry report, which is just a one-page report. What are the key features? And now everybody's going out and getting industry analysis, third-party research, and that's helping them.   0:27:26.1 AS: And I had four groups that are later going to be assigned the actual company. So we looked at the automotive industry and then there'll be assigned companies like Ford or Tesla or Toyota or whatever. And so by the time we get to the second week, they've now got a really good picture of the industry. And all of a sudden it adds a lot. My hypothesis is it's gonna add a lot of context to their assumptions in the final report. The reason why I'm explaining that is the idea of a process, a system. And in this case, I have to say, I'm not like measuring it very, very specifically, I'm judging the outcome based upon my experience in the prior outcomes. But if somebody came along and they said, hey, why don't you improve this? Why don't you do this with the system and set an arbitrary goal? They would have no understanding of what we've been through, what we've learned, how we've iterated through it. And without that understanding, almost anything would be arbitrary. They're interesting ideas and I listen to what people say, but almost everything would be arbitrary in a system that you're not studying or that you are studying in detail.   0:28:33.9 JD: Yeah. I also think about our previous conversation about, I don't know how you evaluate the final project, but I think of the Deming admonition to abolish grades. And you can very clearly picture if you... How many cohorts have there been of the, that class?   0:28:53.8 AS: We've had 12.   0:28:55.1 JD: 12. So let's say you lined up the sort of reports, a representative sample from cohort one to cohort 12, and you looked at the quality of the reports from cohort one compared to the quality in cohort 12. It sounds like because of all these iterations you've done, the quality is much higher in cohort 12 than cohort one. But then the question would be, who do you assign that evaluation of that grade to? See what I'm saying? Like now you can start to see why Deming said that. Because the lack of quality or the lower quality in earlier cohorts is as much attributable to you and what you were doing as the instructor as it was to the students.   0:29:42.8 AS: It was almost 100%.   0:29:44.5 JD: Yeah, so you can see... [laughter]   0:29:45.0 AS: Because I was setting the whole system. And I think that's where you get the idea of substitute leadership.   0:29:54.3 JD: Yeah.   0:29:55.7 AS: Like it's you, for the listeners, for the viewers out there, it's you, it's your responsibility. The outcome is your responsibility. The outcome is an outcome that's happening because of the system that you're running and participating in and operating. And I could go back and look at my bootcamp number one students and go, they were terrible. [laughter] But the fact is, there's no difference between the raw material that came into the bootcamp in the first group versus the one that came in in the 12th group, but they're just so... The output's so much better, so you can't argue that it's the students, it's an improvement in the system. And let me just add one thing about grade. I really don't know how to grade them truthfully. So what I just say, first, you've got to hit that deadline of having a good quality draft. I said, it doesn't have to be perfect, but it has to show that you've put time in. Otherwise, I can't spend time in your presentation with you during the final presentations, which means you're not gonna graduate. You can come back and try it again, and we can do it in another way.   0:31:03.4 AS: We'll talk about that later. But then the second thing that I do is say, if you can submit on time and you can present on time and according to the guidelines that we give, which they can do, then you pass. So I guess it's kind of pass/fail. Now, what I do is I pick out what I think was the best one of that particular cohort. And I have never announced that, and I've thought about it in my team. My other team members have said, wait a minute, what about... All you talk about a Deming, and here you are highlighting this one person and all that. And I was like, yeah, that's a good point. So we haven't really done it, but what we did do is take that one and we use that in the next cohort to say, this is the high bar. That this is one of the best ones that was done in the last group and my goal is to have you exceed that.   0:32:03.6 JD: Yeah. Yeah. To me it sounds like sort of what you've been doing to improve that particular, that class, that system, follows the Deming philosophy to a T, really. Yeah. Yeah.   0:32:21.4 AS: And I think in the end, I think the key thing and maybe we'll wrap up on this is just the... I like the idea of the arbitrariness because what it tells you is that really to set, as you said, Dr. Deming didn't particularly, he's not against goals and he's not against plans and all that, but it is that arbitrary nature of somebody just coming into a system that they didn't really know much about and setting some arbitrary goal. And really that just disrupts the system. And so for the listeners and viewers out there, if you are setting some arbitrary goal without having a clear understanding of the system, then what's holding the system back could be you. And that to me is a big takeaway from this. Any last thing you would add?   0:33:08.3 JD: Yeah, and I was looking at that article that I wrote. I was in a series called Goal Setting is Often an Act of Desperation. And the definition I used for capricious came from a law dictionary 'cause that's where capricious most often shows up is in the legal world. And it's "a willful and unreasonable action without consideration or in disregard of facts or law." And so that's what I was feeling is that often what's happening is educators are given these targets that have no basis in reality and that can only cause consternation and we're seeing churn. And so, and the people that work in education, teachers leaving and those types of things, and I'm not saying it's all for this reason, but it certainly doesn't help when you're constantly being given goals that are not set in reality. So I think if we took those steps to do those four things when we're setting goals, what's the capability, what's the variation? Is there stability and do we have a method? I think we'd be far ahead of where we are now.   0:34:09.8 AS: Boom. John, on behalf of everyone at the Deming Institute, I wanna thank you again for this discussion. And for listeners, remember to go to deming.org to continue your journey. You can find John's book, Win-Win, W. Edwards Deming, the System of Profound Knowledge and the Science of Improving Schools on amazon.com. 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.

Should we strive to better understand what happens "downstream" to our defect-free work? No matter the setting, if our work meets requirements and we pass it on, are we responsible for how well it integrates into a bigger system?  In this episode, Bill Bellows and Andrew Stotz expand on the interaction between variation and systems and why Dr. Deming regarded Genichi Taguchi’s Quality Loss Function as “a better description of the world.” TRANSCRIPT 0:00:02.8 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 am continuing my discussion 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. The topic for today is, in episode 13, Integration Excellence, part two. Bill, take it away.   0:00:31.4 Bill Bellows: Thank you, Andrew. Always a pleasure to connect with you. Alright.   0:00:40.1 AS: Mine too.   0:00:40.1 BB: [laughter] In episode 12, I thought it was great. We shared perspectives on the human side of integration, what it means to be connected, to be synchronous, to feel included, to feel connected, to feel included or connected when something good happens where you're like, well, I was part of that, or to feel separated is when something bad happens. And, we somehow have the ability to not feel associated with that. I pass the puck to you and you hit the slapshot, it goes into the stands, off the goalkeeper. Y'know, girl gets hit in the head and you feel bad, but I go home and I can sleep. And so why is that? And so anyway, but I thought, and listening to it, and I thought it was a lot of fun to look at the human side of feeling connected or feeling separated. And what I wanted to get into tonight, and perhaps in another episode as well, is the physical side of connections.   0:01:46.5 BB: One thing I wanted, and I got a couple anecdotes. I had a woman in class at Rocketdyne years ago, and she said, "Bill, in our organization, we have compassion for one another." And I said, "Compassion is not enough." And, and so you, Andrew, could be in final assembly at this Ford plant, where you're banging things together with a rubber mallet 'cause they're not quite snap fit, and you're banging them together. I mean they all meet print perhaps, but where they are within the requirements is all over the place, and you're having to bring them together. That's called integration. And so when this woman said, in our organization we have compassion for one another, I said, well, that's like me saying, "Andrew, I feel really bad that you're, I can't believe, Andrew go home. You can bang that together tomorrow. You've been banging it together all day." And what I said to her is that "compassion is not enough."   0:02:54.7 BB: When I feel connected to what you're doing, when I begin to understand that the parts you're banging together meet requirements, but how they meet requirements is causing you the issue. Now, the compassion plus my sense of connection, now we're talking. But short of that, what I think is we have organizations where as she would say, we might feel bad for others. And it means I hear about your injuries and your ergonomic training because of all this, but I don't, until I feel associated with that, I just feel bad. But feeling bad is not enough. But I like that, that sentiment. But what I wanna look at tonight is a greater sense of Dr. Taguchi's so called Loss Function and look at more why we should feel more connected to what's happening downstream. So I wanted to throw that out. [chuckle] On the topic of variation, I just started a new cohort with Cal State Northridge University. And this is my, fifth year in the program doing an eight week class in, seminar in quality management. And the cohort model is, anywhere between two dozen and 30 some students that start, the ones I'm getting started a year ago.   0:04:23.5 BB: And they have class after class after class after class. Then a year into the program they get to meet for eight weeks so then onto other professors in the program. So I was showing them, first quarter, second quarter data points from an incident that happened at Rocketdyne years ago. And I was in a staff meeting and the vertical axis is number of accidents per employee. And the horizontal axis is quarter one, quarter two. So the quarter one data point is there, and I don't have the original data, the original data doesn't matter. But what I say to the students is, imagine we've got the first quarter data, what would you expect for the second quarter data? And what's funny is a number of them said, it should be lower. And I said, "Well, based on what?" And it's like, said "Well, we're gonna go off and study what went wrong and we're gonna improve the process."   0:05:20.6 BB: And I said, "Okay, that's all right." So then, I said, "I'll accept that, that's a possibility." Well, then I showed them the actual second data point was lower than the first, which in the meeting I was in, led to the question from one of the senior managers to one of the more, let's say the vice president of operations, "Hey, Andrew, why is safety improved?" To which the executive said, "Because we've let them know safety is important." And so I asked him, "So what do you hear in that?" And we went around and we went around and we went around. It's not the only time it has happened that what they're not hearing is the separation that "we" have let "them" this this. And so in part, I think with my Deming perspective finely tuned. I pick up on those things. And they're not picking on it picking up on it yet which is which is fine. And then but I kept asking, kept asking, kept asking. And then one person said, "Well maybe we need to look for a pattern." I said, "Oh brilliant. What if we've got this run chart of all this extra data?" So then I got them to buy into how easy it is to take two data points draw conclusion up and down. That's called variation. And so it was neat to... The first conversation with them on the topic of variation was really cool. And there's so much more to follow. Well then it, what I wanted to follow with this once upon a time our son when he was in third grade this is 20-some years ago invited me to come to his class.   0:07:07.6 BB: And I don't recall why other than he said, Can you come talk to the class? And I said, Okay fine. So my biggest concern was that the teacher wouldn't know I was coming but she knew I was coming so it was good. So I walk in talked with her briefly and I said I've got some things I'd like to do. She's like oh, I didn't wanna monopolize. But she said okay why don't you show your video? I said I got a video of rocket engines blah blah blah. And then I've got a little exercise I wanna do. Okay we'll do the video then we'll do some reading. So we're doing the reading. And so I'm helping her with the reading. And then what I noticed is now and then a word would come up and she'd write the word on the whiteboard and ask the students if they understood the word. So I clued in, I cued in on that. So when it got to me I wrote the word theory on the whiteboard. This is third graders Andrew, third graders. [chuckle] And I said do any of you know what a theory is? And a one of the girls Shelby whose name I'll never forget, she raises her hand and she says a theory is a prediction of the future. Third grade Andrew third grade! [chuckle] right? Now...   0:08:18.8 AS: And you know what they'd say now they'd say Ethereum is a type of cryptocurrency. [chuckle] Oh Ethereum. No no "theory" not "Ethereum." [laughter]   0:08:30.2 BB: You're right. You're right.   0:08:31.6 AS: Okay. That's a great answer.   0:08:33.9 BB: Well oh but what I tell my students is I didn't correct her. I didn't say well technically a theory is a prediction of the future with a chance of being wrong. But we'll just, I just, oh we'll just stop with that. So I invited her to the front of the room. So she comes to the front of the room and I brought with me this little plastic bag with half a dozen marbles in it. And the bag was also a holes from a three hole punch, little dots of paper. So I held the marble up and I said Shelby I'm going to drop the marble from this height predict where it will land. And what I tell students is she was able to predict where it would land without any data.   0:09:18.3 BB: So she predicts the first data point, the marble lands someplace else. I marked the spot with a marble. I then said okay Shelby I'm gonna drop it the second time. Where will it land? And I'll ask people in class so where do you think she predicted, exactly the same spot of the first drop [chuckle] Exactly right. That's what we do as adults. And so we went through this cycle again and again. And and finally after about 10 drops where these you know 10 different dots on the floor I said Shelby where's it gonna land? And she drew a circle, she said somewhere in here which is kind of like a control limit you know kind of thing.   0:09:55.9 BB: So the one thing I'll say is and I'm sure you've heard people say well you can't predict the future. No, as Dr. Deming would say [chuckle] you know he gave the example you might recall of how will I go home? I'm gonna take a bus. Will the bus... I'm gonna take the train. Will the train arrive? And so I'd ask adults in the class that says how many drove here today? All the hands go up. And I said so at the end of the day will you walk in the direction of where you left your car? Yes. What is your theory? It's still there. [chuckle] Is that a guarantee? No! [chuckle] So I throw that out as a predictions and her sense of variation and this sense of a third grader not acknowledging, I mean one understanding having some sense of a theory, not a lot of understanding of variation but I don't think that's unique to third graders.   0:10:51.8 BB: So that brings us to...there's variation. We can look at the variation in the Red Beads. Okay the Red Beads are caused by the system not the workers taken separately. Then we got into variation and things that are good. And when I introduced the students to last night in class is, I asked them "So how often do you go to meetings where you work to discuss things that are good and going well?" And I get the standard answer, "rarely." I said, "Well, why is that?" "Well 'cause we got, we're focusing on the bad." They said, "to make it good." "Well why do we focus on the bad to make it good? Why don't we focus on the good?" "Well the good is good." And we went around the room, went around the room online and and I said "what's the likelihood that we could prevent bad from happening by focusing on the good while it's good?" And it's like, "...interesting." And so where that leads us to is, is two aspects of looking at things that are good.   0:11:57.1 BB: One is the better we understand the variation of things that are good whether that's on a run chart or a control chart. My theory is we could prevent bad from happening by keeping track of the bad. Whether it's your pulse, your weight, [chuckle] how much gas is in your car. And so there's if we focus, if we pay attention to the good with some frequency you know every second, every hour, once a month, whatever it is, we could prevent an accumulation of damage to an appliance at home. Another aspect to focusing on things that are good is that it can improve integration which is boom, here we are. And that integration that I mentioned last time that understanding integration could be looking at candidates for a new hire and looking for who is the best fit because there's degrees of fit. Fit is not absolute. Last time we talked about reflections of an engineer who is worried that his hardware on the space shuttle main engine may have contributed to the disaster of the second... Of the Columbia space shuttle blowing up in reentry. Well let me share another story from a coworker at Rocketdyne.   0:13:19.8 BB: And this guy's father worked at Rocketdyne in the '60s. So in 1999, 30 years after the lunar landing, there's news teams, you know, from the local TV stations and television. It's 30 year anniversary of the Lunar Landing. And Rocketdyne was known for the Apollo engines that get the vehicle off the ground, as well as the engines that got the, Orbiter off the moon. So there's an article in the newspaper a couple days later, and this coworker is quoted and he says, "Boy, I would've loved... My father worked here back in the '60s, just to be a fly on the wall would be so cool. Oh my gosh, it'd be so cool." And the article ends with him saying how exciting it is to feel like you're part of something big. That's what we talked about last time.   0:14:09.8 BB: And I used to use that quote from him on a regular basis because it, the article was about something that happened at Rocketdyne. Then I would share that this is a quote from a coworker. And after quoting him for several years, it dawned on me, I've never met this guy, so I call him up one day and he answers and I say, "Hi, this Bill Bellows." And he laughs a little bit. And I said, "have we ever met?" And he says, "No, no, no," he said, "But you quote me in your class." And I said, "Well, I apologize for never calling you sooner." I said, "I do quote you." And I said, "Let me share with you the quote." I said, "you feel how exciting it is to feel like you're part of something big?" To which he says, "I wish I still felt that way." [chuckle] And I said, "can I quote you on that?" And so you can join an organization with this sense of being connected, but then depending on how the organization is running and you're blamed for the Red Beads, that you may lose that feeling.   0:15:15.6 BB: And on another anecdote, it's pretty cool. Our daughter, when she was in fourth grade, was in a class, they were studying water systems. And the class assignment was to look at a, they had an eight and a half by 11 sheet of paper with a picture of a kitchen sink on it, like a 3D view of a sink with a pipe out and a pipe in. And the assignment was, we're about to study water systems. How does the water get to the sink, where's the water go?   0:15:47.2 BB: And so my wife and I were there for the open house and there were 20 of these on the wall colored with crayons showing all these different interpretations of water coming in, water going out. And I was fascinated by that. And eventually got copies of them and the teacher wasn't sure what I was doing with them. Well, I turned them into laminated posters. And so I gave one to our daughter one day. I said, take this to Mrs. Howe so she sees what we're doing. And so the following weekend I bumped into this woman at a soccer field, but she wasn't dressed like a teacher. She's dressed in a hoodie. And she says to me, "Allison shared with me the posters." And I'm looking at her thinking, "how do I know who you are?" She pulls the hood back. She says "I'm Allison's fourth grade..." Oh! I, her comment was when Allison shared with me how you're using those posters, handing them out, and people are inspired by them. And she says, "I cried." So that you get that emotion for free Andrew. [chuckle] Right. And that's all the integration stuff.   0:16:58.5 BB: Now let's talk about Dr. Taguchi and his Loss Function. So, um, the Taguchi Loss Function says Dr. Deming in Out of the Crisis is a better view of the world. The Taguchi Loss Function is a better view of the world. Dr. Taguchi says following...   0:17:15.3 AS: Wait a minute. I was confused on that. You're saying Deming is saying that Taguchi is better, or Taguchi is saying Deming's better?   0:17:22.3 BB: Dr. Deming in The New... In Out of the Crisis, Dr. Deming wrote "the Taguchi Loss Function is a better view of the world."   0:17:30.3 AS: Okay, got it.   0:17:34.5 BB: And that's what amongst the things that I read into Deming's work and I thought, boy, that's quite an endorsement. Dr. Taguchi is known for saying quality is the minimum of loss imparted to society, to the society by a product after shipping to the customer. So what does that mean? And we'll come back to that. Deming met Dr. Taguchi in the 1950s. There's a, at least once, there's photos I've seen in Deming's archives of the two of them on stage at a big statistical conference in India, and I know they met in September, 1960 at the Deming Prize ceremony where Dr. Taguchi was honored with what's known as the Deming Prize in Literature. There's Deming prizes for corporations, and there's also Deming prizes for individuals.   0:18:35.0 BB: And Taguchi won it 1960 for his work on the, on his, this quality-loss function concept. 1960. So then in 1983, Larry Sullivan, a Ford executive, was on a study mission to Japan, and he wrote an article about this for the American Society for Quality in 1983 the title of the article is “Variability Reduction: A New Approach to Quality,” so if any of our listeners are ASQ members, well I'm sure you can find a copy of it. The Variability Reduction: A New Approach to Quality. Well, Andrew in 1983, Sullivan's article, 23 years after Taguchi's awarded this Deming Prize in literature, I'm convinced that's the first time Taguchi's Loss Function was heard about in the States. 23 years later. And in this article, Sullivan says, he says, "In March of 1982, I was part of a group from Ford that visited Japan, we studied quality systems out of variety of suppliers," this is ostensibly the first time the auto industry in the States is sending people to Japan.   0:19:52.8 BB: Right so 1980, summer of 1980 is the Deming documentary Why Japan? If Japan Can, Why Can't We? And so here Ford is in 1982, sending a team over. I know it was the late '80s, I believe, when Boeing sent executives over. So then in this article, he says, "The most important thing we learned, right, in this study mission, is that quality in these companies means something different than what it means in the US. That it's a totally different discipline." And so this is like the beginnings of people hearing about Dr. Deming in 1980. They're now hearing about Dr. Taguchi's work through Larry Sullivan. And it turns out Larry Sullivan and Dr. Taguchi became business partners and set up Dr Taguchi's consulting company in the States, which still exists. So they became fast friends and I've met the two of them many times.   0:20:53.6 BB: What Taguchi is saying is, is when it comes to things coming together, we talked about integration, whether that's combining, mixing, joining, weaving, this is the synchronicity. So in sports, we're talking about not, not where I am on the field, but where I am relative to the others, in music, and we're talking earlier about music and I've, I've played a musical instrument one time, Andrew with a group and I was with a, hockey band on a road trip when I was in college. And the cymbal player, they were missing, so they asked me to bang the cymbal, "you want me to do what?"   0:21:36.9 AS: When we signal you.   0:21:39.4 BB: So I'm boom! and what I didn't realize is I'm controlling the pace, like being in is like, okay, slow down, slow down. And I and a former student last year in the Cal State Northridge class who plays with one of the Beach Boys, and I went to watch her in the play and I was asking about these speakers, which are on stage, facing the players. And I said, so what are those about? She said, "Those help us stay synchronized." I said, "what do you mean?" She says, "the speakers next to me," she's the keyboard player. She said, "What I'm listening to in those speakers is the drumbeat. I need to make sure that I am playing synchronous with a drummer." And then what about the others? "Well, the others have their own speakers synchronized. They get to select who they wanna be synchronized to." And so I throw that out because we take for granted when we're listening to Coldplay, whoever these musicians are, we're not paying attention, at least I'm not paying attention to what if they're playing it... What if they're not as synchronous? How would that sound? 'Cause we're so used to it sounding pretty good.   0:23:00.1 BB: And, um, so there we go with synchronization and things fitting together, it's not just that the note was good, but is it played at the right rhythm and pace and, um, you know, with timing. So we talked about the Loss Function. We talked about last time about ripeness of fruit. Depending on what we're doing with the bananas, we wanna put it into a muffin mixed or eat, slice it up. Are we looking for something soft and hard? And I say that because what Dr. Taguchi is talking about is for a set of requirements, a min and a max, we're used to a sense of anything between the min and the max is okay, is "good."   0:23:45.2 BB: What Taguchi is saying is there's the possibility that there's an ideal place to be. And how do you know what that ideal place to be is? Well pay it, as you're delivering that piece of fruit to the next person, whatever it is, to the next person, deliver them something on the very low end of the requirement and see what they do with it. Then, it could be the next hour or the next time you give them something a little bit, a little bit further along that axis. How are they doing? How are they doing? How are they doing? And what you're looking to see is, how, how does, what is the effect of where you are within requirements on them? And this is how Toyota ends up with things being snap fit, because they're not just saying, "Throw everything to Andrew in final assembly." They all come together.   0:24:42.3 BB: My theory is they're doing what we do at home, at home I create the part, I cut the piece of wood. I'm, making the part, but I'm also using it. So I'm the one responsible for the part and integration, in a work setting that may not be the case. So what Taguchi is talking about is there could be a sweet spot in the requirement. And so towards that end, if we're talking about baseball in a strike zone, the World Series is teams are defined, not that I was gonna watch this year, the Dodgers, we're out of it. But in baseball, there's, for those understand baseball, there's a strike zone. If the ball somewhere in that rectangular ball zone is called a strike, outside is called a ball. And depending on who the batter is, it might not matter where the ball is in the strike zone, 'cause this player can't hit the ball anyway. But for another player, you may have to put that strike somewhere in particular to make it harder for them to hit. And that's what the loss function is about, is, is paying attention to how this is used and I wanna share a couple of stories that are, one that's kind of hard to believe. Well, I'd say one that's easy to believe. As you're driving down the highway, Andrew, in Los Angeles, right? You've lived out here.   0:26:07.2 AS: Oh, yeah.   0:26:07.4 BB: And no matter where you're driving down, right, do you stay to the left side of the lane, Andrew? Do you stay to the right side of the lane? Or do you kind of go down the middle of the lane, Andrew?   0:26:17.9 AS: I'm kind of middle of the lane guy.   0:26:20.5 BB: Yeah. And I think that people in the other lanes, you know, like that 'cause I know when I drift to the left, you're like, Hey, what are you doing? So being towards the middle is saying, I get the entire length of myself, but being down the middle is probably, what is that? It's minimum loss to myself and others. So I spoke at a, at a NASA conference ages ago and learned, this is uh '97, '98 timeframe, and I learned that the two greatest opportunities for destruction of the space shuttle are at launch, you can have a catastrophic failure, or at landing. And so at launch, it could be a problem with the engine, any of the engines or the solid rocket motors. Okay, so that I can understand. But I'm thinking, what's the issue with landing? Well, I say, well, the issue with landing at that time was the space shuttle's coming in at a couple hundred miles an hour.   0:27:24.9 BB: And when you're landing on a dry lake bed called Edwards Air Force Base, it's not a big deal. You got all that open space anywhere you want. You just get her down. But then in that timeframe, NASA converted. It was easier for them to have the shuttle land in Florida because they don't, they don't have to fly the shuttle across country. The shuttle is going to land there, launch there. So what they were talking about is, a lot of the pilots for the space shuttle are military pilots. They're used to landing in the center of the runway, Andrew, in the center of the runway. Why? 'cause they're landing on an aircraft carrier. And if I'm a little bit too far from the center, one way or the other, I either crash into the structure or I'm in the ditch and enter the water. So they've got these military pilots landing the space shuttle, wanting to be right down the center. And so they said what happened was if they land and they're a few feet to the left or to the right, going a couple hundred miles an hour, should they quickly steer the nose gear to be on the center?   0:28:32.5 BB: And he said, when you're going that fast, if you steer, you may cause the shuttle to just flip. When you're, once you touch down, don't steer to the center of the runway. Just go, go straight. No more steering. And they kept having this message and it kept being ignored and they kept having the message that kept being ignored so what was the solution, Andrew? You ready?   0:28:58.7 AS: Yes, here, tell me.   0:29:00.8 BB: They painted the center stripe to be wider. [laughter]   0:29:05.5 AS: I was thinking they were going to paint like 10 stripes so that there was no center one.   0:29:10.3 BB: So the center stripe is like three feet wide. You can't miss it. Well, and so I use that because what they're saying is when you land at the Kennedy Space Center, you could be off target left and right a lot, and it's not a big deal, we got a lot of space here.   0:29:29.4 AS: Yep.   0:29:29.6 BB: And what does that mean relative to loss of the vehicle, relative to bad things happening downstream? The loss function that Dr. Taguchi would describe as a parabola, and a parabola being a curve that has a minimum, and then the curve goes up faster and faster to the left, faster and faster to the right. That's if the parabola opens up, it could open down. But in this case, Taguchi draws the loss function as being opening upwards as like a bell and it gets steeper and steeper. But, what, but depending on your system, it could be very steep, which is you're landing on an aircraft carrier, or it could be very shallow.   0:30:13.6 BB: So when I ride on a bike trail in Santa Clarita where I live, I go down the middle of the bike trail. And to my right, depending on which direction I'm going is a split rail fence so I don't go into the Arroyo, which is this gully for all the water running off. And so there's... I go down there and the worst, I stay away from that split rail. When I ride in Long Beach where you went to college where our daughter lives, there is no split rail. So I stay not in the center when I ride in Long Beach. I ride to not the center of my lane, I steer closer to the to the center of the overall lane, which means I'm closer to the bikes going the other way. And that's and that's my understanding of: I go off that off that side is gonna be a bad day.   0:31:08.0 BB: And so that's what Taguchi is saying relative to the loss function. But I think a better way to think about loss, I think that may be kind of a weird concept. I think if we think about integration, and in making the integration easier or harder. So again, if we're talking about space shuttle landing, maybe the loss makes sense. But if we're talking about putting things together, we've talked about the snap-fit that Toyota pickup truck that Toyota was producing in the late 1960s. And what struck me when I first read that is, Holy cow, they've developed a system of hardware which goes together without mallets, and I immediately associated that with what I had heard that Dr. Taguchi was influencing, working with them, consulting with them back in the '50s. And I thought that kind of fits. And so why aren't things here in the States, why are they being banged together? Because over in the States, going back to Larry Sullivan's article, we've got an explanation of quality which is "part" focused. Everything meets requirements. And so what really amazed me is that Toyota in the late '60s, had things which were going together well.   0:32:25.9 BB: Ford in 1982/83 timeframe, they had been working with Dr. Deming for a couple years. They discovered that a transmission they had designed and were building was also being built by Mazda. And part because they owned one third of Mazda and they were outsourcing production. And these transmissions went into Ford cars. And what I've mentioned in a previous episode is that the Ford warranty people figured out that the Mazda transmission, which was designed by Ford, but built by Mazda, had one third fewer complaints than the Ford transmission designed by Ford, built by Ford. And in this study that Ford did, led by their executives, and then they sent out the documentation to their supply chain and it, and it talked about the need to... Their explanation was what Mazda was doing was what's known as "piece to piece consistency." And what they found is that the parts, instead of being all over the place in terms of dimensions and whatnot, that they were far more uniform, yet what you won't hear in that video, what they talk about is within Ford, we're all over the place we're consuming the greatest, a big portion of the tolerance. We've got scrap and rework. But these Mazda parts, boy they only consume a fraction of the tolerance compared to us. And that's the difference. And that's the difference.   0:34:02.6 BB: And so what I wanna close with is, having less variation is not the issue that gets us back to precision, but not accuracy. So my explanation is that Mazda was actually focusing on accuracy - being on target of the respective parts. And as a result, they got great functionality outta the transmission. But what Ford, at least, I'm willing to bet the path Ford was going, was saying, "oh look Andrew, their parts are more consistent than ours. Consistency is the name of the game." And that's precision, not accuracy. So what I wanted to do tonight is build upon what we did last time, bring it to this loss function as being a parabola. Depending on what happens downstream, you don't know how steep that parabola is, and not knowing how steep it is, we don't know how much effort we should spend on our end upfront providing those components to improve integration 'cause we don't know how bad the integration is.   0:35:17.6 AS: And that's a wrap. 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 want to keep in touch with Bill, you can just find him right there 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."

Slogans and exhortations don't work to motivate people. Targets usually encourage manipulation or cheating. John Dues and Andrew Stotz discuss how these three strategies can hinder improvement, frustrate teachers and students, and even cause nationwide scandals. TRANSCRIPT 0:00:02.4 Andrew Stotz: My name is Andrew Stotz. I'll be your host as we continue our journey into the teachings of Dr. W Edwards Deming. Today I'm continuing my discussion with John Dues, who is part of the new generation of educators striving to apply Dr. Deming's principles to unleash student joy in learning. This is episode 16, and we're continuing our discussion about the shift from management myths to principles for the transformation of school systems. And today we're gonna be talking about principle 10 "eliminates slogans, exhortations, and targets." John, take it away.   0:00:37.1 John Dues: Good to be back, Andrew. Yeah, we've been talking about these 14 principles for educational systems transformation for a number of episodes now. I think one, one important thing to point out, and I think we've mentioned this multiple times now, but really the aim in terms of what we're hoping the listeners get out of hearing about all these principles is really about how they all work together, as a system themselves. So, we started with create constancy of purpose. We've talked about a number of other things, like work continually on the system, adopt and institute leadership, drive out fear. Last time we talked about break down barriers. We're gonna talk about eliminating slogans and targets this time, which is principle 10. But really, as you start to listen to 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, and now 10, what should start to become clear is how all of these things work together.   0:01:34.5 JD: If you are operating as a leader, for example, within sort of the Deming philosophy, one of the things you are gonna do is eliminate these slogans. So all these principles shouldn't be studied in isolation. We study them together, see how they all work together. But let me just start by just reading principle 10 so you have the full picture. So principle 10 is "eliminate slogans, exhortations and targets for educators and students that ask for perfect performance and new levels of productivity. Such exhortations only create adversarial relationships as the bulk of the causes of low quality and low productivity belong to the system, and thus lie beyond the power of teachers and students." So really what we're talking about is, what's wrong with slogans, exhortations and targets for educators and students, because these things are, pervasive, I think.   0:02:29.5 JD: We've seen them, we've seen the posters on the walls with the various slogans. And, of course targets are everywhere in our educational systems. In my mind the main problem is that they're directed at the wrong people. The basic premise is that teachers and students could sort of simply put in more effort, and in doing so, they could improve quality productivity, anything else that's desirable in our education systems. But the main thing is that, that doesn't take into account that most of the trouble we see within our schools are actually coming from the system. And I think we've talked about this quote is probably one of Deming's most well-known quotes, but he said, "Most troubles and most possibilities for improvement add up to proportion, something like this, 94% belong to the system, which is the responsibility of management, 6% is special." And that's more like, can be sort of tagged or pinned to individual students or individual educators working within the system. So I think that's a really important thing to revisit 'cause it sort of is at the heart of all of these, all of these principles.   0:03:47.7 AS: It's interesting, like, maybe you could give some examples of what type of, slogans or targets or exhortations that you've seen, in your career and what's going on in education these days.   0:04:06.5 JD: Yeah, I mean, I'm gonna give an example here, kind of walk through an example in a second. But there, they're really everywhere, I mean, to varying degrees probably in different places. But, one, that one that sticks out in terms of, a target is when I first started my career in 2001, I was a teacher in Atlanta Public Schools. And No Child Left Behind had just come out. And, basically as they, as the leadership at the school sort of presented what was in this legislation, you know, they would always put up a just chart that basically said, a certain percentage of students are expected to be proficient across the country on state tests. And that, that percentage would increase over time starting in 2001 when the legislation was rolled out. And by the 2013, '14 school year, the way the tables were laid out is that 100% of students would be proficient in reading and math across the country in third through eighth grade. And of course, that didn't come to fruition. There's no chance that that ever would be the case. And it was also the case that there was really no methods attached to that target. So that's a really good example of a target that was sort of pulled out of the sky. And, basically, over the course of a dozen years, it was supposed to sort of, so somehow magically come to be.   0:05:38.2 AS: That's great. The idea of 100%. I mean, like what fool would say that, you would have 100% of anything. I mean, you just can't get anything to that point. But one question I have about that, I suspect that in those types of cases, it just gets swept under the rug and nobody's looking at that number the way that they looked at it back then, but maybe, maybe they do look at it. But my question would be that No Child Left Behind if we were able to objectively measure the improvement that was caused by that, or a devolution, like did, if it was, what was the starting point, for No Child Left Behind?   0:06:26.0 JD: Well, so, it, that would vary by district. If I remember right, I think the, the target early in the 20000s was something like in the 50 or 60%, something like that, right? And then it would...   0:06:40.3 AS: Right, so let's say 50 to 60%. And I wonder at the end of that period of 2013, if we could objectively compare and calculate that number, what would be your estimate of where it would be if it was 50 to 60 originally, where do you think it was at the end of 2013?   0:07:00.0 JD: 50% to 60%.   0:07:02.4 AS: So no improvement?   0:07:02.5 JD: No. I mean...   0:07:02.5 AS: Incredible.   0:07:04.2 JD: That could vary a little bit by time and place, but it's a little bit even hard to pin down because, the way that the test was constructed in 2001 in Georgia, for example, would be different than the way the test was constructed by 2013-14. So even, even the test itself had changed, the standards had changed, a number of things had changed over time. Also, for folks that know much, about what was going on in Atlanta by, by 2013-14, the superintendent, who would've been the superintendent from about 2001 until, I don't know, 2010 or something, she was actually charged under the RICO statute for sort of, yeah, I don't know if that was warranted or not. I think it was unprecedented, that's for sure. But there was a cheating scandal that was systematic from superintendent to principals down to even teachers. That was pretty pervasive because there was a lot of, in Atlanta at least, there was a lot of monetary incentives tied to the test score improvements. And so I know that it did result in a number of people being charged with various crimes, including the superintendent and number of principals.   0:08:18.3 AS: That's incredible.   0:08:20.6 JD: Incredible. Yeah. Yeah.   0:08:22.8 AS: Yeah. And there was a trial, there was a trial, I'm looking here on the internet. The trial began on September, in September of 2014 in Fulton County Superior Court.   0:08:32.3 JD: Yeah. Right around that time.   0:08:33.7 AS: Incredible.   0:08:33.8 JD: And so I was gone from Atlanta by that time. So I don't know all the details, but I have read a little bit about it, and I think, again, because there's these targets, that's certainly not an excuse for systematically cheating on these tests for sure. But, a byproduct of some of these testing regimens and some of the monetary incentive systems that were put in place was, cheating did happen in, in a number of places in the United States. Especially at the height of when the scrutiny was highest on these test results. So again, it's not, that shouldn't be the expectation even in a system where there's a lot of focus, certainly, but it was a byproduct. So you, you would wanna ask the question, why did that, why did that happen?   0:09:20.5 AS: Yeah.   0:09:21.9 JD: I mean, I think, yeah, go ahead.   0:09:25.2 AS: I was just gonna say that I also wanted to talk about, we were talking before we went on about the word "exhortation," which is kind of an, an old word, kind of a, and so I was looking it up on the dictionary. It says, "an address or communication emphatically urging someone to do something," and they use an example of "no amount of exhortation had any effect." And then I thought about, one of the questions I always ask students when I start my class, is "who's responsible?" And I want the listeners and the viewers to think about this answer to this question. Who's responsible for students being on time to class, the student or the teacher? And of course, the majority of students are gonna say the student. And if I ask the teachers, of course they're gonna say, student, it's personal responsibility. And most of the listeners and viewers would probably say the same. And then I want to explain a situation that I do every time I start my class. My class starts at 01:00 PM in this particular semester. And as soon as the door, as soon as 01:00 PM came, I just locked the door and I started teaching.   0:10:39.8 JD: And this is university setting?   0:10:40.7 AS: This is at university.   0:10:44.0 JD: Yeah.   0:10:44.6 AS: And when I did that, the university students, some of them had the, they were outside and kind of knocking on the door or no, wondering if they can come in. And I didn't let them in until after five or 10 minutes of teaching. And then I let, I went out and talked to them a little bit about, being on time and, please, be on time to my class or else I'm gonna lock the door and you're not gonna be able to come back in. And so I did that a couple times until all the students, I have 80 students in that class, and they all were in. And the next time that I, had my class, 100% of the students were on time. They were in there and ready to go. In fact, I had a funny case, John, I was, I was visiting a client of mine, which is north of the city of Bangkok. And I told my client, I gotta get outta here now because if I'm late to my class, my students are gonna lock me out.   0:11:32.7 JD: They're gonna lock you out. Yeah.   [laughter]   0:11:33.0 AS: But the point of the story is for the listeners and the viewers out there, if you said that the students are responsible for being on time, but I've just presented a case where the teacher changed something about the way that the, the class was done. That changed the outcome of the students. Can you still say that it is the students, and in fact, if you were to, to listen, if you went, we went to a, a high school or university and we sat down with all the teachers that would they be saying no amount of exhortation had any effect on the students being on time. These guys are just irresponsible.   0:12:17.4 JD: Yeah. Yeah. It's interesting 'cause I think, David Langford, on one of the episodes he did, talked about the problem of kids being, or students being late to class. And in that particular scenario as a high school, and, when you ask the kids, why were you late? They said, "well, the teacher doesn't start until five or seven minutes into the period anyway, so why, why do I need to come on time?" So, there is some truth to thinking about who, who is creating the system, what is that system? What types of behaviors does that system encourage? That's certainly a good way to sort of analyze each, each situation.   0:12:53.7 AS: Yeah. I mean, it makes you think, and I think what David highlights too is like, what's the priority here? And, where do we want, is it so important that someone's gonna be there at exactly this moment or does it matter if it's five minutes before, five minutes after? And I think that there's, there's an interesting discussion on that.   0:13:13.1 JD: Yeah.   0:13:13.8 AS: And for the listeners and the viewers out there, you're gonna make up your own mind. But I think that the key thing is that what you're saying when you talk about 94% of, the output or the result of something is the result of the system. And that helps us to focus beyond just, putting the pressure on students or administrators or educators or employees.   0:13:36.1 JD: Yeah. Yeah. And I think, one of the tools that I've talked about repeatedly and I'm a very big fan of is, is the process behavior chart or what some people call a control chart. And the reason for that is because when you use that chart, you can then tell what problems are coming from the system itself, and that's the responsibility of management and what problems are coming from other causes and may take some other types of sort of approaches. I think just knowing that is a really important sort of upfront step when you're considering that 94%, 6% problem. You can actually tell what's coming from the system, and then there's one approach and what's coming from special, special causes. And then there's another approach to, to improvement. And I suspect that, you know, when you chart data in this way over time, the vast majority of systems are stable, but unsatisfactory.   0:14:38.5 JD: And I think that's probably where things like, targets, exhortations, these slogans when you have a stable but defective system, that's the point where, these exhortations, et cetera are particularly pernicious, you know? I think, goal setting seems like a good idea, but it's really useless in that type of situation. It's really often an active desperation actually, when you set a goal in a stable but defective system. So I was gonna sort of talk you through a, through an example of how this, perhaps, could show up.   0:15:23.6 AS: Yep.   0:15:26.2 JD: We... This is going back a couple years, but as the pandemic rolled out, and I think we've talked about this data before, but we were really closely charting and paying attention to: are kids engaged in remote learning? And again, this example's from the pandemic, but this can come from any data that that's important to you. And almost all of this data unfolds over time. But we were looking at, how, how engaged are kids in remote learning? And it was really important for us to first define engagement. And so for us, this question always comes up, what do you mean by engagement? For us, this meant, kids did a remote lesson with the teacher and then they had a practice set in math. So what percent of the kids completed that full practice set?   0:16:17.6 JD: And basically when we, when we charted this, what we see, we did this for, about five weeks. We charted the data. So we had about 24 days worth of data. This was eighth grade math. And the first day 62% of the kids were engaged the second day, 67, the third day, 75%, fourth day, 84%, and then down to 77%. And then the next day, 71%, the next day, 58%, the next day 74%. So you can kind of get the picture here that this data was sort of bouncing around. And when we took that out to 24 days, that first day was 67%, the 24 day was 68%. And then sort of, we looked at the average over those 24 days, it was about 67%, a high of, 84%, a low of 49%. But when you put this on a process behavior chart, what you see is it's a stable system.   0:17:17.3 JD: Meaning there are these ups and downs, some are above that 67% average, some are below it. When we look at sort of the natural process limits. So those are sort of the boundaries of the system based on the magnitude of the variability over time, it was sort of suggesting with this system, we could expect a low of 42% engagement, a high of 91% engagement, but mostly it's bouncing around this average. Now if imagine, that you're this eighth grade math teacher and the principal comes and says, this engagement data is not high enough, we're gonna create these posters across the school, we're gonna start this campaign. You can almost picture this in different places, right? And it says these posters say 100%...   0:18:06.3 AS: Graphic design.   0:18:07.0 JD: Yeah, that design, you have this poster and it says "100% engaged. We can achieve it if you believe it." Right? And you can almost imagine these posters going up in a school, and it's just this sort of proclamation. But when you look at the data, it's just a stable system. And what we can expect is this, these data points bouncing around the 67% average. School, the school leadership wants higher engagement rates. They want fewer days with the low rates. But the problem with a poster or a target or exportation is that you're, you're basically asking the teacher to do what they're unable to do. And we do this in all types of settings, all types of, work settings, not just, not just in education. If you look at this particular system, the upper limit's at 91%. So basically the...   0:19:10.0 JD: The system's not capable of achieving 100% remote learning engagement, and so basically the effect is then fear and mistrust towards leadership, and I think, you know, when you look at this remote learning engagement data, that's probably what happened to a lot of people, but if we go back to that No Child Left Behind example, the Federal Government, 'cause that's who is setting the proficiency targets, for No Child Left Behind, its federal legislation, teachers knew, principles knew that in many places, the system that was in place for education was not capable of hitting those targets, it just...   0:19:50.1 JD: It wasn't in the capability of the system, and then so if you are an individual operating within that system, you're trying to navigate that, you're gonna try to hit that target no matter what, and then in some places, they chose to do things that went as far as cheating, because they were trying to hit that target. Now, I'm not absolving those individual educators of responsibility, but it was that system that they were operating in that sort of caused that behavior to then happen. You know the worst case scenario is people did, the adults did cheat. And I'm sure there were other things that were happening in other places that didn't rise to the level of cheating, but I think we've talked about it before, there's really only three options in response to data that's not satisfactory. You can improve the system. That's the ideal. That's what we're talking about here. That's what we're going for here. You can sort of... What do you wanna call it? It's not as far as cheating, but you can sort of...   0:21:02.6 AS: Manipulate or...   0:21:04.4 JD: Manipulate the data in some way, or you can manipulate the system in some way, and that's I think what we were seeing. So the worst case scenario in Atlanta, they manipulated the data. But I think in many places, this idea of manipulating the system is less clear, but what happened in many places, and I think we've actually talked about this, that there was this over-emphasis on reading and math at the expense of other types of academics, and that's a manipulation of the system. That's not cheating necessarily, but it is sort of in my mind, sort of cheating kids out of a well-rounded education, and that was a product of so much emphasis on just reading and math test scores, and again, a lot of this was well-intentioned because people were...   0:21:53.5 AS: It's all well-intentioned. What are you talking about a lot of it?   0:21:56.9 JD: It's all well-intentioned but what actually happens as a result of putting these systems and these testing systems in place, and especially the sanctions or even the incentives on the positive side, the money. What actually happened...   [overlapping conversation]   0:22:10.6 AS: Holding back funding or providing additional funding, if you can hit these targets or that type of thing.   0:22:15.4 JD: Right, right, yep. And so you get all these unintended consequences that are produced as a result of the system, and we talk about these things as side effects, just like with drugs, there's these side-effects, but they're not really side effects, they're things that commonly happen, they're things that you would expect to happen as a result of doing these things, but we sort of put them in this... We've given this language as if they're these small things that happen over here, but really they're the sort of the typical unintended consequences that you could expect when you design a system in that way, whether the side effects of a drug or the side effects of cheating in a very strict, sort of, and regimented testing system, an accountability system in a school district.   0:23:03.6 AS: I couldn't help but laugh 'cause I thought about Robin Williams, and he had this skit he used to do when he was alive, and he talked about the drugs, drugs that people that the companies are marketing. And he said I was going through the side effects and I was like reading these horrific things that they had a list and he's like, I'd call that an effect.   0:23:21.4 JD: [chuckle] Right, right, yeah. Yeah.   0:23:24.0 AS: Let me ask you about this slogan, "We can achieve it if you believe it." Now, some students may respond to that, John, what do you say about the fact that... You know, because every time that you talk about getting rid of targets and getting rid of slogans and stuff, that people say, sometimes it works and it works for some people, and some people are driven that way, and when they hear that, they respond to it. What do you say to that?   0:23:57.5 JD: Well, I would say prove it, I wanna see if you're telling me that was actually successful, sometimes people will sort of dress up an anecdote. So, one, I'd wanna see the evidence that that did have the intended...   0:24:13.2 AS: Okay great answer and that's a lesson for everybody listening and viewing is always go back and say, prove it, 'cause I'm making an assertion.   0:24:21.3 JD: Yep. Yeah.   0:24:22.1 AS: And my assertion is that it helps certain people, actually, the burden of proof, of course, is on me as I make that assertion and you're asking me to prove that, which is a very, very logical and sensible thing to do. What else would you say?   0:24:38.0 JD: Well, well, I would say that, you know, Dr. Deming often talked about this idea, I think he got it from Taiichi Ohno, this idea of the loss function, which is basically like...   0:24:51.9 AS: Taguchi.   0:24:52.0 JD: Taguchi loss function, sorry.   0:24:54.4 AS: Yeah.   0:24:54.9 JD: And basically, think of an inverted parabola inverted U basically... And here is an optimum.   0:25:03.3 AS: Or think of a U. Think of a U.   0:25:03.4 JD: Now either side of it... An inverted U, yep, and the optimum is at the bottom of the U, but there's loss as soon as you start to move away from the U, but that loss comes on both sides. So, you know, the people that are anti-testing versus the people that wanna put strict sanctions and rewards in place, probably the answer is somewhere in between there, because we have to know how our students are doing, so we do need some data, so I would be probably a proponent of kids being given some type of standardized tests and can we sort of know the scores at the aggregate level, perhaps at the school level, by subject and grade level, but there's not sanctions and rewards tied to that in any way, it's just information. So that's one thing that'd be a big difference between, you know, between what we could be doing with this data and what's actually being done.   0:26:06.1 JD: So like taking the eighth grade math engagement data, for example. In terms of what would you do? I mean, I think if I was gonna put a poster up with sort of an explanation of how we're gonna approach the remote learning, maybe the first poster that I'd want staff to see is a list of what we're gonna be doing month by month to sort of deal with the reality of remote learning, maybe that first month, it's just making sure... The strategy is to make sure every kid has a device and access to reliable internet connectivity, right? That's very different than this proclamation, that 100% of kids is gonna be engaged, because as soon as I see that, as a teacher, I know that's not gonna happen. Especially if there's no other sort of methods tied to that. Maybe in month two, after I get all the kids devices and connectivity, that's reliable, we can do some training on, well, how do you even teach? What are the methods that a teacher can employ in a remote learning environment, and maybe all along, I am tracking the data, there's nothing wrong with tracking the data, but I'm putting it on that chart, I'm tracking it over time, and as we implement these various approaches to remote learning, I can see how that's impacting, but I'm doing that with students and teachers, and I'm not just plotting the data and then not giving a set of methods that sort of accompany the sort of march towards continual improvement.   0:27:47.2 JD: And the same thing, the same approach could be used with that test data from Atlanta, you know if the idea was, I'm gonna sort of start charting this data and seeing how we're doing over time, and I'm working with teachers and students to come up with ideas to how to improve this, to march closer to that 100% proficiency goal, I mean that's a noble goal, assuming that the test is well-constructed and that we want obviously more and more kids to be marching towards proficiency for sure, but we don't want all these other side games going on that come about when you sort of just simply have targets without methods, and I think that's the point. And if you take that approach, I think then teachers sort of understand that the leaders, the school leaders or the district leaders, they're taking some of that responsibility for a lack of engagement or low test scores or whatever it is, and they're trying to remove those obstacles systematically, that's a very different, different approach, 'cause I'm not suggesting that people shouldn't have goals. That's not what I'm suggesting. I set goals for myself all the time, I think they're actually helpful and necessary tools for individuals, but I think when you set numerical goals for other people without a set of methods to accomplish those goals, then you get the opposite effect of what was intended and you know, that's what I see happen over and over and over again in the education sector.   0:29:28.2 AS: And what I like to say is that two things about that, which is one is that if, if you're setting a goal, just don't tie compensation or other benefits to the goal or other punishment. Set the goal and then use it as a tool and track the information and discuss it. It's the same thing with compensation, once you start to tie compensation to specific goals, then you start to mess around with the incentive structure. And that's the first thing I also think the other thing I'd like to say is that if the object that you are measuring through your goal or target or whatever knows that it is being measured, look out. Now, I have a ruler right here, and if I measure the height of this glass, the glass doesn't know I'm measuring it, and so there's no change in anything in the glass, but when a human being knows that they're being measured, it causes a change. Just the knowing of that.   0:30:46.9 JD: Okay.   0:30:49.6 AS: So. Okay. So that helps us to understand about slogans, and what you're talking about is the idea of maybe replacing slogans with "How are we improving the system?" And, you know, I've started doing that in my Valuation Masterclass Boot Camp, where I was at the end of each session... At the end of each six week period, I have a survey that I give to students and I asked them for feedback, and how can we improve this? And then what I do is I take all those and I give them to my team and then we have a discussion and we kind of rank them, and then we go back on the final day and we say, by the way, these are the improvements we're making. And these are the improvements we did the last, this current time that you guys didn't realize, and then that way, the students also are kind of involved and interested in what we're doing, that we're asking for their feedback on how to improve the system, and we're telling them.   0:31:44.9 AS: I don't generally announce it beforehand, like put up something about, "Here's all the changes that we're making in this boot camp," 'cause I just want them to have a natural experience, I don't necessarily need them to be thinking like, "Okay, so this is new", and also some of the things that we're trying, we're testing and we're observing how they work and if they work, and so we may abandon that thing, so it may not make sense to just necessarily advertise it, but when we have some big things like this time, we got some excellent feedback in our last one, and now, I decided that when we do the boot camp, we're gonna have, let's say, 30 or 40 people, and we're gonna cover it one industry, we're gonna value companies in one industry, so we're gonna do the automotive industry, and then that allows everybody to work together in the first week, say, "Let's analyze this industry before I tell you which companies each of you are valuing." And so that's a new innovation that we're trying to do this time, and so there's a lot of work on our side to get that prepared.   0:32:46.7 JD: Yeah. And it sounds like there's methods, there's methods attached to the goal of improvement. That's the most important thing, I think.   0:32:58.1 AS: Yeah, I mean I feel like... One of the things I feel like, and I think maybe some of the listeners or viewers may feel like this, sometimes I don't measure it the way I maybe should. What I do is I get feedback from the customer, from the student in this case. And then I bring that feedback to my team and I ask my team to kind of rank what they think about those, and then we identify, let's say three of those recommendations that we think, Okay, this is good. Let's implement it. And then we test it. We don't have an exact measurement that say, "Okay, well, you wanna say, "Did that work at the end of a six-week period?" We just kind of know whether it worked or not, how much trouble it was, how much benefit we thought it got, and then we get some feedback at the end, and maybe the feedback from students at the end is part of the data. But I'm just curious, what are your thoughts about people who are doing things necessarily, they may be doing the right things, but they may not necessarily be measuring it in the way that they could or should, including myself. What are your thoughts on that?   0:34:08.7 JD: Yeah. I mean... Well, I mean, I think there's quantitative data and qualitative data, and it sounds like what you're doing is relying more on qualitative data, including this experience of the students. I mean, I think generally, probably some things lend themselves to more quantitative data, some things lend themselves to more qualitative data. I mean, I think the key here is to set up a system for improvement, identify what's most important to you in terms of... 'Cause you can't focus on everything at once, what are you gonna focus on? Get, you know, get other people involved. So it's not just coming from you, and it sounds like there's a team here working together, you're also doing it repeatedly over time. I don't think there's necessarily a right or wrong answer on this. I think the most important thing is to, for me, I think about looking at this stuff, putting the data on a chart over time, again, that can be quantitative or qualitative data, determine what the sort of capability of the system is, get some baseline data. I think that's really, really important. And then understand, is what you're seeing sort of typical, is it bouncing around an average within some limits, or do you see special causes in your data? I think those are the most important things.   0:35:57.2 JD: And then the other thing, I think if we're talking about a school and if we really wanna make breakthrough improvements, then I do think at the end of the day, that continual improvement sort of approach has to involve students and teachers, I think it has to. And so I think there's different ways to go about doing that, but I think if you do those things, then you're well on your way to improved outcomes.   0:36:25.1 AS: I do have one question I ask them at the end, and that is, I give them a range of value, and I say, now that you've experienced the Valuation Masterclass Boot Camp, how, what would you say is the value that you received? And definitely in the beginning that kept going up because we kept improving and they could feel that value, and I didn't give them any guidance, the rating did never change, but it was moving up. Now it's kind of flattened off, and so I think we've, we've got a challenge if we wanna bring that to another level, but that's one of them. Well, John, without, without any exhortations to the listeners, I would love it if you could just wrap up the main takeaways that you want us to get from this discussion.   0:37:15.7 JD: Yeah, I think you know, maybe putting a fine point on those things, I think what I've come to appreciate is continual improvement is really the combination of plotting data over time and combining it with that Plan Do Study Act cycle, which we've talked about multiple times. So the first recommendation is whatever metrics are most important to you, plot them on a chart in time order, and then... It can be intimidating at first. But the calculations on the process behavior chart, to add in the upper and natural process limits or control limits is really, really valuable, because then you can start to understand the capability of the system And then you start to understand what would it really take, what would we really have to do to actually shift those limits and indicate a pattern of the data that actually indicates that we've brought about improvement. The other reason those limits are really important is because it does help you understand, do you just have this common cause system where there's lots of different cause and effect relationships, but there's not really a single one you can hone in on, and so then you know you're not trying to improve one component, but the entire system systematically. So I think for those reasons, it gets a little technical with the process behavior chart, or the control chart but they are...   0:38:46.7 JD: I think it's the most powerful tool that we have in the continual improvement tool box. So I would highly suggest at least a couple of people on, on your school district team have that sort of skill set, because then you don't waste your time on improvement efforts, and you can also tell when something you tried has actually resulted in improved outcomes for kids or for teachers or for schools.   0:39:13.1 AS: John, on behalf of everyone at the Deming Institute and the listeners and viewers, I wanna thank you again for this discussion. For listeners remember to go to deming.org to continue your journey. You can find John's book, "Win-Win: Dr. W. Edwards Deming, the System of Profound Knowledge, and the Science of Improving Schools" on amazon.com. 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."

What does it mean that people feel connected and included when something good happens yet dissociate when something bad happens? In this episode, Bill Bellows and Andrew Stotz discuss the human side of integration. TRANSCRIPT 0:00:02.9 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 discussion 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. The topic for today, in today's episode, number 12, is Integration Excellence. Bill, take it away.   0:00:32.2 Bill Bellows: Thank you, Andrew. So before we talk about integration excellence, I wanted to throw out a couple thoughts. And listening to the podcast, I was reminded that when I share examples, there are times when I mention companies by name, and there's times I don't. And my hope is that people in those organizations don't feel offended. So what I found with students is, if I use the name, there's the risk of someone in the class having worked for that company who feels offended. If I don't use the name, then there's a sense that I'm making the stories up. [chuckle] So I just want to say I um... But there are... What I find is that most organizations are run with what Dr. Deming would refer to as a prevailing style of management, in which case examples such as replacing the cardstock paper with regular paper, and all organizations have those types of stuff. So I just want anyone to feel offended by that.   0:01:40.1 AS: Well, we can make an announcement.   0:01:43.3 BB: Go ahead.   0:01:45.3 AS: Remember those shows that we used to watch that says the names have been changed to protect... but here we're going to say the names have been changed to protect the guilty, [chuckle] not the innocent.   0:01:57.3 BB: Well, there are some stories, I can't share the names for a number of reasons, but they're all the same. Anyway, next thing I wanted to share is, again, on a recurring theme, we talked in the past about red pen companies and blue pen companies, or me and we, or last straw and all straw. And I was recently in... I was in the Netherlands last week doing a class live session for a group that I'm just starting to work with, and we did a physical simulation, a live experiential thing that built upon all the ideas we're talking about here. And I had the group do the trip report, looking at blue pen companies and red pen companies, or however you want to look at the contrast.   0:03:00.1 BB: And we talked about what are the hallway conversations in both organizations? And another was, what are the survival skills in both organizations? And the fairly straightforward survival skills in a last straw organizations are, be really good at shifting blame, be really good at hiding errors, hoarding information is power. And I look at, what are survival skills in a blue pen company or an all straw organization? That's sharing knowledge as power as opposed to hoarding it, it's sharing it. And so we got into those, all those, the usuals. And then I said to them, "Okay, so imagine we are, here we are in a last straw organization, I'm the president of the company and we're in a Friday afternoon staff meeting.   0:03:56.7 BB: And because it's a last straw organization, that means you work for me." I said, "If it was an all straw organization, you would work, and people always say with,": I said, exactly, it's with versus for, but it's a last straw organization. So you work for me. I walk in to the end of the week staff meeting. I apologize for running late. And then I turned to you and say, "I just got off the phone with a customer. I need to know who's responsible for last week's shipment." And then I turned to you, Andrew, and I say, "Andrew, was it you?" And you say, "No, it was Joe." [chuckle] And then I go to Joe and I say, "Joe, according to Andrew, it was you. And he says, "No, no, no, it was Sally."   0:04:44.6 BB: And then I'll go to Sally and actually I won't go to Sally. I'll then go to somebody next to Sally and I say, "It sounds like Sally was involved in this. Can anyone corroborate that?" Then someone else raised their hand and said, "Okay." 'Cause in the olden days, we went by one witness, but nowadays we need two witnesses. Okay, so we've got two witnesses. So, okay, Sally. So then I turned to Sally and I say, "I need you in the front of the room right now." And they're like, "Right now you want me to come?" "Yeah, I want you to come to the front of the room in front of the entire class."   0:05:18.0 BB: And I've had times people get really anxious. I've had times when people walk up on stage and they're like, "You want me to... " "Yeah, I want you up here right now." And they stand alongside me and I say, "So Sally, I understand you're responsible for last week's shipment." And she's like, "Uhhh, yes." And I say, "I just want to thank you. The customer has never seen such high quality before." [chuckle] And then there's this great sigh of relief. And I turn to the audience and I say, "Meet your new boss, same as your old boss." And then kid them that this is a point of time where Andrew says, "Oh, well, I provided the packing tape... "   0:06:00.6 AS: Yeah, I was involved.   0:06:00.7 BB: "That allowed that to happen." And then somebody else says, "And I licked the stamp and put it on... " So what you get is, in a last straw organization, what you have is failure is an orphan, as John F. Kennedy would say, and success has many fathers. So what I point out to them is survival skill in a last straw organization is now and then it might be good news. So when everybody else is playing duck and cover, that might be your opportunity to ask for a little bit more information and find out something good happened. Now you raise your hand, you get promoted because you're now the one who was responsible for this. And then the others then realize, "Well, wait a minute, I played too." And so what I find interesting is in organization is, we don't know if we were connected until we know it's good news or bad news.   0:06:55.2 BB: So what you get is situational association. And that leads me to a real story. I was mentoring a young engineer who worked in the Space Shuttle Management Program at Rocketdyne and I was, had been away, I was in England for about a week. And so I was just getting back to work. And on the day I landed in England, I landed at 9 o'clock in the morning. So it was middle of the night back in Texas. And so I walked in, my friend, Alan Wendlandt picked me up at the airport as usual. We went back to his home, walked in the front door and his wife's in tears because the Columbia shuttle had blown up on re-entry.   0:07:46.9 BB: And so back in the States, people are, yes, middle of the night. So I get back to work the following week. There's an engineer I met with regularly and he comes into my office and he tells me that, you know, what it was like. I said, "So... " I wasn't there. It was the first time I was at Rocketdyne when a disaster happened. Back in '86, I worked in Connecticut, wasn't on the program, wasn't at Rocketdyne. So it was interesting that, so I said, "What was it like?" And he said, "Everyone got a phone call. Everybody goes to their station and we follow this protocol." And I said, "So what was the protocol?" He said, "Every component, team, every component team in the space shuttle and men engine goes through their hardware, looking to see, could they have done something?"   0:08:39.5 BB: 'Cause he said, the early indications were it could have been a spark in the engine cavity, the rear, and that could have led to, led to, led to. I said, "So what'd you do?" He said, "Well, we each went through our planning." And he said, he in particular was thinking, "Oh my God, oh my God, oh my God. We recently came up with a new version of one component. I hope we followed the new process." And he's panicking. He said he was feeling a lot of anxiety over this. Yeah, at first, until he goes in and he's thinking, "Oh my God, oh my God, did we follow the new process?" 'Cause if not, that could have been a contributor. So he found out that he did follow the new process. Which means what, Andrew?   0:09:29.7 AS: He feels relief.   0:09:31.9 BB: A huge sigh of relief, because he followed the process, he's no longer associated. And that's what I started thinking is, we go through life and there's times we feel connected and there's times we dissociate. And I asked a psychologist friend years ago, and I said, is that how we survive? We have the ability to feel connected sometimes and other times we dissociate. There was a hockey game in the National Hockey League in the early '90s where on a shot off the goalkeeper, the puck went into the stands and hit a teenage girl. She would, eventually into a coma, died a few days later. And so I have the headline and the headline says, "Player Distraught Over Death of Girl."   0:10:29.5 BB: And so I would show people that headline and say, "Which player is distraught over the death of the girl?" And people say, "Well, it's the guy who hit the slap shot…was the one feeling distraught." And I thought, why not the goalkeeper? Why doesn't the goalkeeper feel distraught? What about the person who passed the puck to the one who took the slap shot? How do they feel? And so this is this last straw mindset that, and I think psychologically we go through life and if we were that last straw, we feel all this weight. And if we're dissociated somehow, we don't feel it. Well, integration is about understanding how things come together.   0:11:14.7 BB: And in the world of integration, there is no separation. It's it’s understanding that there's many contributions to the performance of a system. And I used to ask students, "If I gave you a 10 minutes to list all the people who contributed to who you are, would you miss some people?" "Yes." And then once you come up with a list, could you measure their contribution? And measuring it means that number, if you take all those numbers, like 10% from your mother, 10% from your father, X%, you add them all up to 100. There's no such thing. So in the world of integration that I wanna get into with Dr. Taguchi's work, it's about understanding that things are connected as in an all straw mindset. They are not separate. Okay?   0:12:10.2 BB: So then next I wanna get into, I've taken, I've been fortunate to take some training in the Lean manufacturing, Lean management, Lean thinking, whatever you call it. And it's not uncommon, there'll be simulations where there's a bunch of parts to put together a car, or you're building something out of Legos. And there's a model, you need so many rectangular Legos of this size, so many square ones and you... And, you know, we're creating a flow, putting all these things together. And I've been in situations, university classes where the students are doing that and they're doing that ahead of me presenting something to them. And I remember one time, they're putting, you know, these cars together, they had four wheels and a little motor and a windshield, and they're putting it all together, this assembly line.   0:13:02.6 BB: And I participated in that. And then when it came my turn, I held up a tire. And I said, what is this? And they said, "It's a tire." And what is this?" That's a tire." I said, "Are they the same?" And they're like, "Yeah, they're the same." I said, "Well, actually they're not." If you understand variation, and no two snowflakes are the same, then no two tires are the same. And so I say that because we get stuck in this model of: if the parts are good, which means they conform to a set of requirements, then the sense is because they're good, when we pass them onto the next station, then they all come together, just like that, with no effort.   0:13:48.9 BB: And I say, sometimes that's the case. There could be degrees of effort, but this model that says, because they're good, they fit. And then we treat good as it's good or it's bad, which is black and white. It fits or it doesn't. And then the model we have is because they are good, all the things that are good are equally good, and then they fit equally well. And that's just not the case. And an everyday example would be going to a supermarket and sorting through the fruit. And I would ask students or attendees of a seminar to say, if I told you all the fruit in the supermarket was bruised or otherwise physically damaged, would you sort through it? And there'd be people that say yes, and then people say, no, I don't sort.   0:14:35.8 BB: Well, I point out is the reason we sort through the fruit is because there are different ripenesses of the bananas or the oranges different levels of juiciness. And our needs depend upon either something very juicy or very ripe or something green or something that's gonna be ripe later. What is that? That is saying that we're looking at the integration as we're going to use those oranges and integrate them into our breakfast by making orange juice out of them or taking the banana and turn it into a smoothie. So the bananas and the oranges don't exist in isolation. We have a sense of how we're going to use them. And then we have a sense of how much variation do we want or more so within a set of requirements, we're looking for something in particular and we're looking for a particular parking spot. We're saying there's all these parking spots and we're looking for the one with the most shade because there's degrees of shade. When it comes to hiring...   0:15:39.5 AS: Bananas is a good example because if I'm just gonna buy the banana to eat it, it needs to be reasonably ripe. If I'm gonna buy it to put in a smoothie, it's less critical that it's ripe.   0:15:52.3 BB: That's right. Yes, exactly. And what we're saying is that your integration of that banana depends upon its use. Since you have in mind I'm making banana bread, what does that mean? I want one which is very soft, it doesn't really matter because I'm not eating it as I'm out cycling. Then when it comes to what I've also shared with students, you'll say, well, is there a place for meeting requirements? And that's all. I said, yeah, there's a place for meeting requirements and that's all we need. And then there's a place for going to the next step and saying, I want the juiciest one, I want the freshest one, I want a parking spot which is furthest away from the door, closest to the door. And the same thing happens with staffing.   0:16:37.3 BB: We hire, we're looking to fill a position in our organization, we post something on LinkedIn and we put down the requirements we want and we go from 20 people down to three people. We invite them in for an interview. And what are we looking for? We're looking for, on paper we're saying these people are relatively…on paper, they are the same. The reason we're inviting them in is we want to know what is the degree of fit of each of these people into our organization? And what we're saying is fit is not absolute on a scale from zero to infinity, where are these people on that scale? And our judgment is which one fits in best.   0:17:18.7 BB: I'd say the same thing goes in when you're dating, thinking about marriage or thinking about a long-term relationship even with a supplier, you're looking for degrees of fit. And that's where Dr. Taguchi's loss function comes in. What he's saying is, is all these things meet requirements but depending on how the requirements are met from the very minimum to the very maximum, chances are there's a place in there which has the best integration. And that could be it goes together the easiest. And then, and then in terms of integration excellence, what I want to speak to is shifting from the model that things are good, then they fit. And then when you turn the thing on, it works. That we think about an alternate model, which is there's degrees of good, which leads to degrees of fit, which leads to degrees of performance. And an advantage of that model is it allows for improvement. The model of good equals fit equals works. How do you improve once you get everything good? And that goes back to a far earlier conversation we had over the red beads and the white beads. And of all the beads are red or gone, we're stuck with the white beads.   0:18:39.0 BB: Can we continually improve? Yeah, when you begin to think about improving integration, what we've also spoken about, Andrew, is, you know, we ended a conversation, you said, "So what's the aha moment for people listening?" And I said, "Would you like your organization to be known for products or services that integrate incredibly well in terms of how they perform in the use, as used by a customer, whether their customers are using it exactly or next immediately, or it gets plugged into their system. And do you wanna have... " The reputation that I find... Well, the reason I buy Toyotas is they tend to last very long. And I associate that with their appreciation of Dr. Taguchi's work, which supposedly goes back to the '50s, that they are looking at the parts as a system, how they work together and looking, not just meeting requirements minimally or maximally, but trying to find out where in the requirements of the associated parts should you be for this entire system to come together easily on a scale from zero to infinity and perform incredibly reliably. Andrew, you're gonna say?   0:20:01.0 AS: There's a couple of things. The first one, when you talked about the act of separation that people go through when blame's being tossed around, as an example, let's say, but it's happening all the time. What I was just thinking about is that act of separation is in their mind only.   0:20:20.5 BB: Yes, absolutely.   0:20:21.6 AS: Just because, just because you declare separation doesn't mean that there's not integration of the system. You're just denying it, running away from it. And the other thing I was thinking about about Toyota, it's a very interesting situation with Toyota because the company's being totally beat up for not having electric vehicles to the level that the market wants them to have, the investors want. And when you go against the, the EV crowd, the people that want this for climate or whatever reason, you're gonna get beat up. And they really have been attacked. And to the point that their share price went down seriously low. But when you listen to the CEO of Toyota, he's trying to speak in a system thinking way.   0:21:13.2 AS: He's trying to develop hydrogen as a possible solution. He's got hybrids. Yes, he hasn't moved as fast on the EV, but he also sees other problems. And he sees the research and development that they're doing, which they've just recently announced that they've got some fast charging and long mileage EV vehicle. And so he's trying to manage this whole system. Whereas take a weak manager or a manager, maybe he just... The CEO came in for the last five years or so at Ford or at GM or wherever. And they're like, "Hey, the market says EV, let's go." And then without thinking about the whole system, they end up losing billions of dollars in EV. Whereas now I think that what I've seen with Toyota, and the reason why I'm talking about this is because I've been working with students in my valuation masterclass.   0:22:10.5 AS: They're valuing Toyota and some say it's a buy, some it's a sell, some are beating them up just like the crowd is on EVs, but others are seeing, some, that integration. But ultimately the job of a manager, I guess, is to figure out, I like the degrees of fit. That is such a great thing of how it's good enough. Like Taguchi's loss function was specifically can be a tool to look at one particular thing. But the idea of then bringing that all into the whole system is fascinating. And it's hard.   0:22:44.3 BB: Oh, yeah.   0:22:44.9 AS: The last thing I would say is it's hard. And I think most people, most managers spend their lives trying to break that because it's just too hard to manage. I would rather say, "Okay, you guys do this. You're responsible for this. You're accountable for this. And you guys do that. And I want accountability around here." It's just, it's easier. It's hard and complex what you're talking about.   0:23:12.2 BB: Well, and let's go back to this, this separation. And I don’t, and a couple of things come to mind is, one is when the young engineer found out on the Space Shuttle Main Engine that his component was manufactured using the most current process, he was able to go home and sleep. So what I would propose is that we live in a society where when our task meets requirements, we don't, we can separate it. And that's what that, failure is an orphan. It wasn't...It wasn’t…I didn't contribute to that. I passed the puck to you. You're the one, Andrew, who hit the slap shot. It wasn't... Yet, let's be honest that, where the, where the puck ended up that you hit did contribute. But that's what I find is, is that the newspaper article says, "Player Distraught," which player? You who hit the puck last.   0:24:39.9 BB: And then I thought, well, I wonder if we ran a study at what point would the goalkeeper, the goaltender feel responsible? Yeah, because it's just, it's off his or her stick. And that's what I find is that we have the ability to separate physically. So when I hand my part off to you, I'm separating physically, but then, when you're having trouble putting those parts together, my claim is that I didn't cause that. So I hand off to you because it's good you accept it. If it's not good, you give it back to me. But when I hand off to you physically, and there's nothing wrong with handing off physically, we have to hand off physically. But I find in a, in an all straw organization, I do not hand off mentally. So if you come back to me, "Bill, I'm having trouble getting these together." I'm thinking, but of course, of course.   0:25:37.9 BB: Right? I am contributing to that. So I don't have... This is... What I also find is, if you understand the psychology of an all straw organization, success has many fathers, but then failure has many orphans. And so you have to be able to go both ways. We're used to associating, all of us associating with success. But what I would want to, Andrew, going back to Toyota's, how do they deal with an organization where everyone feels responsible for the good times, and then but we also feel responsible in some way for the others. And this is the psychology piece of Dr. Deming's work, but notice how it’s, there's a bit of variation in terms of how each of us feel contributed.   0:26:25.9 BB: We're talking about systems. And so there's a psychological piece of this. There's a physical piece of this. And what I admire, I think what we both admire about Dr. Deming's work is that he's tying all of this together in his System of Profound Knowledge, that in order to improve integration, integration is not just a physical thing, how these parts go together, but it also requires us to mentally be connected and, and, and feel each other's pain. And that we're not, instead of this, we've got a few hidden figures associated with putting man on the moon. You know what, Andrew? There's a lot of hidden figures that help helped put man on the moon and everything else that happens. But the other thing is I wanted to throw... Go ahead, Andrew, you want to say?   0:27:14.4 AS: I was just going to say that one of the interesting features living in Thailand, and I often wonder after 31 years in Thailand, if I went back to manage people in America, you know, how would I do it? I don't really know, 'cause Thais are so different. And one of the ways that they're different is if you're working in an office with a bunch of people and one person is going to have a late night, they’re gonna have to work instead till 6:00, they're going to work till 7:00 or 7:30. The other people in the office, many of them, not all, but the ones that are closest to that person, they'll stay with that person.   0:27:53.2 AS: They won't leave until that person leaves, even though they don't have any work to do. They may ask them if they can help, but they may not. They just will be there. And I just thought that's so fascinating because in America, I remember, you could be like, "That's your problem, dude. You didn't plan or you didn't do this or you didn't think about that. So I'm out of here. Have fun, see you tomorrow." But here there's this connection in the workforce that's really important to Thai people. And I would say probably important to Asians in general, but Thais specifically is what I know best. And it's just, there is that connection that I think particularly for Americans, it's a lot easier to disconnect than it is maybe for the Thai worker.   0:28:40.3 BB: Well, what we're talking about in large part is, what does it mean to work together? And that second word “together” is not separate. This is not working independently. You and I opposite ends of the ditch, one plus one equals two, one plus one equals...you know, right? The opportunities we find appealing in Dr. Deming's work is that when we focus on relationships, not just I hand the part to you and you know you say, so you say, "It's good." And so I say, "Whew." So I separate physically... And I would do that with people in a classroom. I would hand the part to you, Andrew, and I say, "What if I deliver a part to you that doesn't meet requirements? What do you do?" And you say, "Hey, not on my watch." You didn't dot that I, you didn't cross that T. Hey, and you send it back to me. Then I cross the T, dot the I, and I give it to you. And what do you say? And I would physically give you something. And I say, "What do you say now, Andrew?"   0:29:44.8 BB: Actually, what I would say is, "What just happened?" So I would say to the audience, I just gave Andrew something, which is good. What just happened? I don't know what just happened. I said, I separated physically and mentally. So when you come back to me the next day and say, "I can't get this to fit quite right." I'll say, "Why are you calling me?" But I mean, so this integration is about together, working together, thinking together, learning together. And I think what Dr. Deming is offering us is insights that one plus one could be three, could be four, could be five, in terms of the positive synergy within the organizations. And really what it comes down to is, do we want to have no synergy? One plus one equals two. Do we want negative synergy? We're working at odds because how we're meeting requirements is pushing us against one another. And, and we're none the wiser for it.   0:30:47.1 BB: Or are we interested in what's called positive synergy in terms of getting performance out of the system, which you cannot explain by looking at the parts taken separately. So there's a lot of economics here when you begin to shift from looking at the parts in isolation, there's good/bad thinking. And again, there's a place for good and bad thinking. What we talked about last time is compliance excellence. But there's also an opportunity where depending on how we manage the components, we can end up with exceptional performance that they are, "Snap fit," that the transmission lasts much longer. And there's plenty of examples that when you manage the system that way, you get something out of it, which cannot be explained by looking at the parts taken separately.   0:31:39.3 AS: I wanna wrap up, but I also wanna just tell a quick story. In my ethics and finance class that I teach, which I was mentioning I'm teaching this afternoon, I have debates because part of ethics is independent and objective thinking. And I want to help students think independent and objectively. And so the first debate topic that I have, which will come up next week, the proposition is: individual performance-based compensation such as KPIs are the best way to get the most out of an organization. I'll have a group arguing for that proposition and a group arguing against that proposition. And I don't get involved in the... I raise the questions, you know, at the end of the debate, but I let them go and try to see what they come up with. But the point is, is that individual performance-based compensation is a great way to destroy integration.   0:32:48.5 BB: Yes. Yeah, exactly.   0:32:51.0 AS: So, all right, I'm gonna leave you with the last words on this. So let's have you sum up, we talked about integration excellence. Let's wrap up all the different stuff that you've talked about and say, how can we apply this in our lives?   0:33:09.1 BB: Well, one is I would say the recurring theme we've been focusing on from the very beginning is an understanding of systems variation, the psychology piece, that's the human spirit piece and the opportunities. And the last piece being that, this Theory of Knowledge from Dr. Deming, all we know is what we know and can we articulate our theories and a theory being a prediction of the future with a chance of being wrong. And I find that what Dr. Deming is offering is great insights on to how to, how to prepare your organization for an uncertain future. And I find that what a last straw organization does is get people to focus on themselves as you're just describing, avoiding blame, shifting blame to others when mistakes happen.   0:34:11.3 BB: And when you're living in that environment, now you're back to, you get into firefighting modes, you get into, is this a manufacturing problem or a design problem? And all that finger pointing associated with that. And I find is what you're really doing as an executive team in such an environment is you're praying that the future is like the present. And why do I say that? Because when you turn your people into concrete, when you turn your people inward as opposed to outward and they become all about avoiding blame, then boy, what's gonna keep your organization in business is if the future is like today.   0:34:58.0 BB: But if the future is not like today, then you're in a really bad situation because your people have become concrete, they have ossified. And the beauty of a Deming organization is that you've got people who have flexibility. So after the concrete is poured for the walls and after the tables and the equipment are put in place, yeah, you've got chairs on wheels, you can move some equipment around. But boy, if the most flexible part of your organization, your people, aren't flexible, then boy, you better hope the future is like the present. But if you're a betting man, as you and I would be, boy, I would not bet for the future to be like the present. I'm expecting there's gonna be changes going on either caused by people, caused by who knows what. And we want an organization where people are flexible and I'll just close on that thought.   0:35:55.2 AS: Bill, on behalf of everyone at The Deming Institute, I wanna thank you again for this discussion and for listeners, remember to go to deming.org to continue your journey. And 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.” Now go get yours.

Listening to understand and learn is often harder than not-really-listening because you're thinking about what to say. Dr. Deming emphasized learning and was excited about ideas he heard from others every day. In this episode, David Langford and Andrew Stotz talk about why and how managers, including teachers, should listen to staff or students. TRANSCRIPT 0:00:03.4 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 discussion with David P. Langford who has devoted his life to applying Dr. Deming's philosophy to education and he offers us his practical advice for implementation. Today, we continue going through Dr. Deming's 14 items that he discuss in New Economics about the role of a manager of people after transformation. In the third edition, that's page 86. In the second edition, that's page 125. And we're talking about point number 12 and that is "he listens and learns without passing judgment on him that he listens to." And we decided to title this one, Do You Listen to Speak or Listen to Learn? David, take it away.   0:00:56.8 David P. Langford: Yeah. Well, thanks. It's good to be back, Andrew. Yeah, I was just, I was just thinking that when I was at Deming's conferences and a couple of times sat with him either after the end of the day or even at lunchtime, etc. Or just watching him interact with other people, it was often pretty amazing that he'd be chatting with somebody and then he'd pull out these little notebooks and he's all of a sudden just writing down something that somebody told him or that somebody said or... And later in the day, a lot of times he'd pull out the notebook and say to somebody, "Look what I learned today." And I was always just so impressed with that. And I don't know how many four-day conferences I was at with him, at least half a dozen, and always the same, always swan with that little notebook, always writing stuff down.   0:02:02.9 DL: And so this point comes to mind about how special that made you feel that here you have the master of the third industrial revolution, writing down what, what you say, people that he doesn't really know that well or something, but just a point that somebody made and how important that was to him and to keep track of that. And a lot of times I think we've lost that skill. And I like the title of this session because a lot of times when people are having even casual conversations, they're not really listening to what the person is saying. They're thinking about what they're going to say next or how they're going to respond to a point that was made. And when I really started taking these points to heart and thinking about it, even as a classroom teacher, I began to realize that I really wasn't listening to my students. I was preparing to talk at them. [laughter] I remember...   0:03:16.0 AS: And they were preparing to be talked at.   0:03:18.6 DL: Yeah. They're ready to take notes, and you know, but they weren't ready to think and offer opinions and to go through that whole process of working through it. I'll never forget my friend Dr. Myron Tribus, he was a professor at Dartmouth, I think in the engineering school. And for some reason, his whole lecture that he was going to do one day was just either lost or something just before he was ready to walk out in his classroom of 200 kids, students that he was working with and everything. And he thought, "Oh my God, what am I going to do? I don't have my notes. I don't have all this stuff and everything else." Anyway, he just started asking them questions and put them into groups and had the groups discuss things and then come back and pose questions and debate each other and talk and work through. And he told me he'd never had so many students on the way out of classes. "Wow, that was the best class we've ever had." [laughter]   0:04:21.7 AS: Such a great, a great opportunity when you come unprepared, but you've got a group of people in front of you with all kinds of opportunities to pull out discussions.   0:04:37.3 DL: It's sort of like, are you prepared to be unprepared? [laughter] So there's a difference, there's incompetence where you just come in and you don't know what you're doing and, you know, you're lost, or you're prepared, this is a plan that you're going to come in and actually listen to people and present and go through things. I remember even in a high school class that I had, one of the most successful things we did is, I may have told you this story before, but anyway, the library would get all the newspapers and then after a day they're no good. And so coming into class, I would just get all the newspapers from the previous day. And the challenge for the students was to go quickly through the newspapers and pick out relevant events happening around the world and be prepared to discuss that in small groups and stuff. At first, I just thought of it as an activity. And it turned into be so profound that students really thought deeply about stuff.   0:05:43.1 DL: And then they would take Deming principles and apply that to that situation, whether you're talking about world wars, or you're talking about the economics or business or education or whatever it might be. And I remember even just a few years ago, a student of mine, 35 years ago, ran into me and said, "I still remember doing that. I still remember those discussions going through." And most of the time, I was just sitting and listening to them discuss about things. And maybe I'd ask a few questions now and then about things or try to get them to think differently about something. But it was, there were no right or wrong answers, it was just getting people to think.   0:06:30.9 AS: There's so many different things going on in my head as you're talking about this. The first thing is I was thinking... I was thinking about three things. The first is, in order to achieve what he's talking about, first, you have to stop talking. And the second thing is what I've learned over the years is, the best way to stop, the next thing you have to do is stop thinking, because my mind's racing to think about what am I going to say next. And the best way to stop thinking is to take notes of what the person is saying, from my experience. Yesterday, I went to visit a, a prospective client, and I asked him to tell me about his pain that he's feeling in his business and why he's asked me to come. And I have in my notebook here, I've got it all listed out. And then I went back and I read them back to him. And it was kind of funny because I said, "Unfortunately, I just don't think this is enough pain." [laughter] But I don't think I could have said that if I hadn't really understood what his pain was. And so, we had a further conversation going deeper.   0:07:42.5 AS: But then the third part that Dr. Deming is talking about is not passing judgment. Wait a minute. Come on. I'm all about judgment. I know what's right. I formed my beliefs over many years. And you can also say that Dr. Deming passed some pretty tough judgment, you know. So, I'm just curious, as I think about those three things, how do you put that all together in your mind?   0:08:09.2 DL: Well, I was just thinking about one of the conferences that we were at. He always had an education day after one of his conferences. And so, there'd be educators from all over the state would come to his one-day conference. And I'll never forget the room was filled with like 300 school administrators, principals, some teachers, et cetera. And then there was a time to ask Dr. Deming questions. And this fairly young man got up and described the high school that he was a principal of, and there were 52 different languages spoken, and the gang violence that he was dealing with, and all just really detailed and clear. And he had data, and he really understood what was going on. He says, "So Dr. Deming, I need your advice about what, where I should go from here, what I should do." And Dr. Deming is sitting up on this big stage. He's probably 89 years old at the time, and he's got his arms folded, and he looks down, and he looks up at the ceiling.   0:09:14.1 DL: The silence is just deafening with 300 people there. And started to think, well, maybe he didn't hear the question or realize he's supposed to [laughter] he's supposed to answer or something. And finally, the guy couldn't stand it anymore at the microphone. He says, "Well, Dr. Deming, do you have an answer to my question?" And Dr. Deming said, "It's not the answer that's important. It's the question. And you've got that right." [laughter] Next question. [laughter] And there was just this ripple in the audience, like, "What does that mean? Oh, my gosh." Yeah. So when you're able to actually ask the right questions, then you're probably on the right track of figuring out what to do yourself. It's the people that aren't listening and aren't thinking about what is the next question? Or what question should I be answering?   0:10:10.3 AS: And what do you think about when he says... Now, we have to understand that, we're talking about managing your people here. So it's not like he's talking about when you're going out and speaking in the public necessarily, but he's talking about how you're developing your people and interacting with your people. And he's saying, without passing judgment. And I guess the first thing he said, if the way you interact with the people that you manage is to pass judgment on them, you're probably going to lose trust right away. And we've already seen that trust was number 10. So I guess what he's trying to say is, you know, listen and accept what you hear. I don't know.   0:10:55.2 DL: Yeah, I think what I've often taught teachers a lot is to learn to be comfortable with silence, too. You think you're the leader of people so you have to fill all the silence all the time. And you may ask a question, and then you have to just wait. And I'll never forget when I was working with Alaska Native students in Alaska, high school students, read a study that said the average time it takes for an Anglo Saxon teacher to ask a question and then answer their own question is like three seconds. You know, not really listening at all. The average wait time, response time for Alaska Native students was something like 20 seconds. So, here you have all these teachers that have come in from the outside that are starting to work with Alaska Native kids. And they, I remember vividly teachers saying, "Well, these kids just don't respond. They just don't talk. They just don't." Well, give them time. [laughter] It's not in their culture just to respond instantly every time you ask a question or like a game show host or something like that of how many questions can we get through in one hour or something.   0:12:19.3 DL: And I just noticed for myself that I had to do little things like learn to put my hand on my watch, while I, as a cue just ask... I asked somebody a question just to wait until I got that response. And sure enough, when I would wait, I would get really good thought out well...good responses. I didn't wait and I get just cheap answers that people are trying to give you what they think you want to hear.   0:12:53.8 AS: I just thought about how being a podcast host has helped me a lot in listening because, I'm doing two things, one is I'm shutting up. And there's so many times that I feel like, you know I think my discussions with you are a little bit different from my discussions I do on my other podcasts where here I think there's a lot more... We're going back and forth on a lot of things, which I really enjoy. But still, it's just, it's a lesson in being quiet. And what you just said reminded me of something I always said to people that came to Thailand, either managers or teachers, and I said, "Just because Thai people don't respond to your question doesn't mean they don't have an opinion." And I think it's the same thing as what you're saying. And therefore, you've got to use different ways. So in the case of Thailand, one of the ways you do that is you have... And I just saw a presentation recently by a Thai person and they messed up themselves because what they did is they asked the audience, "Raise your hand and ask a question."   0:14:05.0 AS: Which they knew that that's not how Thai people respond. They're not so brave as to do that. But luckily, that person also had a little venue that they could type in a question. And instead of in, they could have saved time by just not even saying, "Shout out your question," they could have just said, "Go to the app, type in your question now." And then people would have really... Eventually they got it. But it was just interesting to see even a native person not really realizing the way people respond.   0:14:39.4 DL: I just know, even in my own family have five children. Well, my wife and I have five children. [laughter] But when they were really little, by the time we got to probably the third one, we had to sort of just hold back the older kids, because we found out that they were just filling in all the blanks for the little ones that couldn't answer or couldn't answer incomplete sentences, or they were actually just completing their thoughts for them and things and just had to explain to them, "Look, you just have to wait and let them formulate an answer and let them talk, let them speak." Because they didn't realize that they didn't have that problem when they were that age. [laughter] They just had parents that were just doting on them and there weren't any other children around. So.   0:15:31.6 AS: Let the process happen.   0:15:33.8 DL: Yeah, it worked out really well because then we'd have fantastic dinner conversations in which all five of them at different ages could enter in and talk about it and enjoy experiences.   0:15:48.3 AS: One other thing I recently did in one of my classes that maybe I would talk about because there's an aspect of listening to it. Originally, this is my ethics in finance class, and it's a 15 hour class. And I can teach for 15 hours on the ethics material, but after COVID happened, it's like, why not just put it all on video. And so what I'm teaching is exactly mirrored to what's in the videos. So now what I did is I told the students, "Look, you're responsible for going through this material. I'm going to carry you through a portion of it. But from day one, I'm telling you, it's all in the videos. And then there's practice questions and things like that." So now what I do is I did... Originally, what I did is I taught for half the three hour session I would teach and then I would have them do case studies. But I realized that I wasn't happy with what the case studies were bringing out and so I switched it to debates.   0:16:47.4 AS: And now I give them topics and they have teams that debate. And I still had the problem that the audience wasn't participating or asking really great questions, it's almost like, it's the other team. So I required all teams to submit one, let's say two arguments with some sort of link to some evidence and two arguments against linked to some evidence, and they all have to submit that by Monday. And then I release that to the whole group, so that the teams that were preparing for Wednesday can see even wider view before they get up on stage. But the key thing is that what's happened now is that I don't have to ask any questions at the end. So I'm just listening. And it's fantastic, because the audience now, they've got good questions. And I just feel like when you talk about listening for me to be able to spend the second half of the class, I don't say anything.   0:17:44.3 DL: Yeah, so it seems like such a simple point. But I think when you really think about it, there's just a lot of depth there and reasoning. And you also made me think about, because you were referring back to the one of the previous points to and trust and stuff, but all of Deming's work was always an interrelationship of parts to the whole. So whether you're talking about the 14 points in his New Eco... Or the Out of the Crisis book, or you're talking about these 14 items for managers or whatever it might be. I was always so impressed that he always saw these things as an interrelated parts to the whole. So it's not like, "Hey, if you just start listening and just do this, then everything is just going to be great." Well, that's a piece of the puzzle, that's not the whole puzzle.   0:18:31.0 AS: It's a progression. Well, is there anything that you would add in wrapping up about listen and learn without passing judgment on the person that you're listening to?   0:18:46.5 DL: I think, I think the last thing is that as a manager of people, whether it's a teacher in a classroom or whatever it might be, you have to actually formally make time to do that. And I know that's really hard to do, but you think of a normal like classroom teacher, like K through 12 classroom teacher, maybe you have 30 kids in a class, how are you going to set up a system so that you're actually getting some time to listen and learn from individual students? And that's really hard to do. It can be done if you think about, "Okay, well, I got 25 kids, if I set up a time to listen to five a day, by the end of the week, I've actually got some one-on-one time with everybody involved with that." Or we've talked about too, in moving to small groups or even whole group kinds of sessions. But the whole point is that you are listening, and think how proud it makes people that you are listening.   0:19:56.3 DL: That's why I told that story about Dr. Deming, because I always felt really proud that he was really listening to what I was trying to say or explain or ask a question about.   0:20:07.9 AS: Yeah, I can't help but add to that, that I do one-on-ones with every one of my students in the Valuation Masterclass Bootcamp. Now, it's a 70% pass rate. So, I don't do those until the end of the course, but people line up video meetings, and we do it virtually because it's kind of, it's easier. But what I have is I have a series of about eight questions that I ask them. And then what I do is I just get them on the line and I say, "Okay, let's look at your first question I asked you, and here's your answer." And I read it back, and then I say, "Tell me more about that." It's incredible.   0:20:47.2 DL: And you have to be real quiet and listen. [laughter]   0:20:51.1 AS: Just tell me more about that. That's all you have to do. And I think that's what your last wrap up there just reminded me. And I think for all the listeners and the viewers out there, you know, "tell me more about that." Well, David, on behalf of everyone at the Deming Institute, I want to thank you again for this discussion. And for listeners, remember to go to Deming.org to continue your journey. Listeners can learn more about David at Langfordlearning.com. 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."

Most people agree: teamwork and collaboration generate greater results than isolation and silos. So why do we let barriers get in the way? In this episode, John Dues and host Andrew Stotz talk about barriers to collaboration and how to break them down. TRANSCRIPT 0:00:02.7 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 discussion with John Dues, who is part of the new generation of educators striving to apply Dr. Deming's principles to unleash student joy in learning. This is episode 15, and we are continuing our discussion about the shift from management myths to principles for the transformation of school systems. John, take it away.   0:00:34.9 John Dues: Good to be back, Andrew. So we're talking about these 14 Principles for educational system transformation, like you said, I think last episode we talked about Drive Out Fear, so this episode I thought we'd focus on that next Principle, which is Break Down Barriers. So Principle nine, break down barriers. The way I have this framed is "to break down barriers between departments and grade levels and develop strategies for increasing cooperation among groups and individuals, everyone must work as a team to foresee problems in the production and use of high quality learning experiences" in the case of schools. I was looking back through some notes, and I just happened to come across a quote from Out of the Crisis that I thought was a good quote to sort of start off with, in that book, Deming said "Teamwork is risky business. He that works to help other people may not have as much production to show for the annual rating as he would if he worked alone." And I think what this does for me is really illustrate how big a job breaking down barriers is, because everybody's gonna say, yes, I'm for working as a team. Everybody's gonna say I'm for cooperation.   0:01:58.9 JD: But when the rubber meets the road, you know what actually happens? And I think that quote is a good one, too, because it very clearly connects back to Drive Out Fear. Right. 'Cause what are you going to do once you break down the barriers? What's the behavior that you hope to see? And, you know, the behavior that you hope to see is only possible if you also drive out fear, which I think is, you know, showing that there's this connection between all of these Principles, there are these mutually supporting guiding principles.   0:02:36.3 AS: One thing that's just popping in my head is if you didn't incentivize people, let's think of young people, maybe. Would people naturally be, you know, helpful and doing teamwork? We know that, you know, the annual ratings and those types of things can incentivize being, you know, selfish and not, not working across the organization. But I'm just curious, what are your thoughts on that?   0:03:06.8 JD: Yeah, I think... If, if, are you using incentives as a pejorative in this context?   0:03:13.9 AS: Yes.   0:03:16.6 JD: Yeah, I think you have to look at the system that you've set up and the behaviors that result, and then sort of step back and see that whole picture, what is it that... What's the behavior that you're causing by the system you've set up? So I think... That's the major point I think.   0:03:34.0 AS: I'm just thinking about like when someone's young and, you know, they're just living a normal life, they're out with their friends, they're playing in the woods, when I was young, you know, those types of things. Are they naturally helping each other and, you know, naturally want to help or are they naturally selfish?   0:03:53.0 JD: Well, yeah, I think that's a good question. I think that would probably depend a lot on the context. I think, you know, if you're generally talking about young kids, there's probably a sort of a natural inclination to cooperation that's sort of, I think maybe stomped out, extinguished, as you encounter the various systems that are in place in schools, in work settings, those types of things. So, I think, yeah, I mean, I think I would probably lean that way, that there's a natural inclination to cooperation that sort of, is depressed, you know, through the various work and school systems that we've set up. You know, that's a generalization, obviously, but I would probably concur with that. Yeah.   0:04:39.8 AS: You talked about departments and grade levels, and when I think about breaking down barriers, I always think about departments. But maybe you could explain breaking down barriers between grade levels too.   0:04:54.3 JD: Yeah. I mean, I think a grade level team in a school system can be very similar to a department in a business. I mean, obviously I'm working in a school system. And so, there are departments, there's, you know, operations folks, there's HR folks, there are the academic folks and so forth and so on. But there's also these grade level teams where, you know, oftentimes in a school, teachers work most closely with the four or five other teachers on their grade level team. That's a pretty common setup. And so, you know, just like you could sort of optimize the finance department at the expense of the operations department. Same thing, you could do that with the sixth-grade team versus the seventh-grade team versus the eighth-grade team in that same way in the school system. Yep. Yeah.   0:05:47.9 AS: And what's the hardest part about breaking down barriers in school environment? It's, at first, I think that, you know, everybody's overloaded. They're trying to get their stuff done. You know, like, I'm curious what you've experienced there.   0:06:05.0 JD: Well, you know, I mean, I think with any school, I see schools as sort of a complex system, lots of interdependent parts, I think especially so in schools that are located in, you know, high poverty areas, because in addition to the regular stuff of school, you're often sort of also coordinating any number of partners, providers, counselors, you know, healthcare providers even, that are coming from oftentimes outside your system, and, you know, there's all these programs and things that you're trying to coordinate on top of just normal school. So that's sort of an added challenge to coordination in my setting. I think in general, one of the big challenges is that whether you're in a high poverty or low poverty setting, there is a lot of coordination that happens in schools. But teachers are with kids all day. And so, when there is coordination that needs to happen amongst the adult teams, when do you do that? You know, there's only a few options where you can get everybody, you know, together that's, you know, before school, after school or perhaps, you know, you set aside days that are specifically for that where the kids aren't in the building. So I think that's a major challenge in a lot of...   0:07:22.2 AS: Which I would assume everybody would love a 6:00 AM meeting before school.   0:07:24.8 JD: Yeah. I mean, we try not to do too much of that anymore. But we used to do that, you know, not infrequently for certain things. And one of the things we actually did here at United Schools Network where I work, it's been almost a decade now. We reorganized our school day, so that kids used to come at 7:30 and now we have a lot of those sort of adult type meetings, grade level team meetings, building leadership team meetings. Those happen in that 7:30 to 8:30 hour now. So, we did sort of change our system, shortened our day a little bit in recognition of the fact that we need some time to coordinate all the work that's going on during the school day.   0:08:04.5 AS: What are the school hours now?   0:08:06.7 JD: For kids, 8:40 to 4:00 basically, and then adults come an hour earlier.   0:08:16.4 AS: Right. I don't know if you read that, the book Why We Sleep by Matthew Walker, I think it is.   0:08:24.4 JD: No.   0:08:25.7 AS: It's an excellent book that I mean, I highly recommend it for everybody because it really shows the importance. I didn't really wanna read it because I felt like I don't need, I don't need to know why we sleep. I need to know how to sleep more. But once you literally understand why we sleep, you realize, okay, that's the impetus for starting to sleep more. But they had some research that they talked about how, you know, basically there's morning people and then there's evening people, you know, or let's say morning and not morning. And they talked about different schools and outcomes, and they talked about how the problem that schools could be facing is that by forcing non morning people to get into class at an early time they're hurting the performance of those people, those kids substantially, and they had research showing that. And I have always felt like everybody should be a morning person. Come on! That book changed my mind.   0:09:26.8 JD: Yeah, I've heard this argument made before and it went into our decision-making sort of praxis when we decided to change our day. We sort of have it backwards. We, you know, elementary kids often go to school around 8:30 or 9:00, and high school and middle school kids often go to school in a lot of places at 7:20, 7:30. And they're generally the kids that need to sort of more sleep. But, you know, thinking of systems, it's very hard to change because it's tied to transportation systems. It's tied to athletic systems and practices and stuff like that. And so, it's a very hard thing to sort of reshape those systems for all those reasons, for sure.   0:10:12.0 AS: I'm wondering if you could give advice to the listeners or viewers about, they're facing, let's say, somebody facing a lot of barriers in their school. And they don't really know where to start. Maybe you could give some ideas about ways to start and kind of your own experience and, you know, any guidance that you would give.   0:10:37.8 JD: Yeah. I mean, I think that one good starting point in the process is just to stop and think about the question, you know, what exactly is being produced by a school system. So, I think that's something to get clear on because I think a lot of people would instinctually say students, that's what's being produced. But I think if you stop and think about it, that's not quite right. Rather, I think what the aim of a school system is, is to produce high quality learning, not the students themselves. And knowledge and skills is what's being produced by a school system. And I think when you sort of look at your system in the same way that Deming would, you know, we don't have a graphic here, but for those that have seen it, you know, you sort of have, you know, inputs into your system and then you have all these processes that you sort of undertake, you know, while kids are with you. And then, you know, kids go out and are going to other places. In our case, they're going to high schools or, you know, for K-12 systems, they're going into the military or to higher education, to jobs, those types of things. And so, I think it's, you know, be very clear about what it is that you're producing. You're not producing the students themselves. You're producing these high-quality learning processes. Then how do you bring that to fruition?   0:12:07.9 JD: I mean, I think, in thinking through that aim and how to accomplish it, I think just like we were talking about the departments and the grade levels, school systems are organized functionally, and that's for efficiency, just like businesses, you know? But what we really need to think about is how to operate cross-functionally. So that would be one thing is how to set up cross-functional teams. And you know, this is for that simple reason that we've talked about repeatedly that we don't operate cross-functionally, and we just sort of operate in our silos. We make that silo as good as it can be. Oftentimes that can come at an expense to the system as a whole. So that's one thing I think of. You know, I think of...when you think about improving your system, I think one thing to think about off the top of your, sort of at the outset of any improvement effort is what's the boundary of the system that you're talking about. Are you just talking about your school system, which sort of the school system start and stop sort of at some arbitrary geographic boundaries.   0:13:35.4 JD: So, are you talking about improving the educational system in a city or in a single school building or a single school district? So, I was thinking of a couple of examples. You know, one sort of within a system and then would be between systems. But within a system, often there's a, you know, you have general education, students in general education, and then you have students that are spending some amount of their time in special education within that same school system. So, I think, you know, if you're talking about defining your system as that, that school system, you know, I think no matter what, it's you know, what's the aim of that system? Because we're required to have these special education services within our school systems, all of us. And, I think what often happens is actually two parallel systems get created. And, you know, there's specialized staff, there's a language that goes with special education. There's a whole list of compliance items and laws.   0:14:46.9 JD: And, you know, if you make one or the other really good, general education or special education, are you actually making the system as a whole worse? I don't know the answer to that question, but there's a whole lot of questions to answer. You know, do the special education students get the same curriculum? Do they get the same testing system? Are they operating under the same academic standards? I don't have the answers, you know, and that can vary by situation. All I'm saying is, wow we've created two separate education systems, and what happens when we try to improve one corner of the system like special education, does that actually make the whole system? Are we serving the kids well that are getting those services? I think there's a whole lot of questions happen... So I think just looking at that, how those systems talk to each other is another sort of step you can take.   0:15:41.4 AS: Yeah. And I guess the other thing, going back to what you've talked about before, about the aim of the system, and you've talked just briefly here about it right now, but the idea is that if you can, maybe one of the first steps besides setting up a cross-functional team is to say, why don't we talk about what's the aim? Because if we can get to that point of what's the aim of what we're doing, chances are that will be the first kind of guiding light as to why we should break out of our silos or break down the barriers.   0:16:17.6 JD: Yeah, what's the purpose? I mean, is the purpose of special education a temporary set of supports that then leads the child back into more and more general education services? Or is that not, not the purpose? I mean, I think clarifying that in your system is really important. Another example. You know, this would be more like, sort of thinking of a larger system, not just your school system, but in a lot of places we have a traditional public school system, like in a city, like a big urban system. And then we have a public charter school system, which is a lot of times not its own district, but a series of small networks or maybe even single, single buildings. And again, I step back and say, well, what's the aim? Is it to make the system of education better in that particular city, in my case, you know, in Columbus? Or are we just trying to optimize our little corner? Are we thinking about these different pockets? We've often you know, speaking from experience, we've often been an afterthought when it comes to transportation systems or funding or facilities. And a lot of times, I don't think it's nefarious. It's just like literally there is not a representative around the table when decisions are made. And these systems were set up not, you know, originally weren't taking public charter schools into account. So there literally is no one thinking about how the needs might be a bit different in that particular type of system.   0:18:02.8 JD: And then, of course, because there's limited resources, there can be a lot of sort of, you know, people at each other. And that, that was a revelation of sorts or a mindset shift of sorts for me not to think of, you know, other school systems as competition, but really in looking at the Deming approach, it's win-win. Like if we have any chance of creating, you know, a successful system of education, especially in areas where things aren't working so well, like in a lot of core, core cities. I mean, the only way that we're going to do that is through cooperation, working together, having a shared aim. Those types of things. So, I think breaking down those barriers, whether they're internal, your own system, in a lot of cases there's a lot of barriers in place. Or it's between systems. I think that's, you know, at least as important, maybe more important, I don't know. And so that's the best...   0:19:01.1 AS: Your mic was fading out there. So, what was the last thing you said?   0:19:05.4 JD: Yeah, I said, breaking down those barriers between the systems is just as important as breaking down the barriers within your own system. Probably more important in a lot of ways. And I think that's the, you know, part of the power that I see in the Deming philosophy is this framing of win-win. You know, I used to think of other school systems as competition. Now I think of, well, how can we work together to create this system of, you know, of education that works for kids? Yeah, those are a couple, you know, thoughts.   0:19:41.4 AS: I'll tell a story to wrap up and then ask you to do a final summary. But you just, just my mind went back to like, when I was younger and how I was in some special education classes or, you know, I was just in trouble. But my story, my story is that by the time I was 17, I was addicted to drugs and alcohol. And I went into a treatment center in Minnesota called Fairview Deaconess Hospital. And then four days after I got out, I started getting high again. And then I went to Baton Rouge General Hospital. My parents bought me a one-way ticket to, on a bus, on a Greyhound bus to go there from Cleveland. I left from Akron bus station, and, and somehow I got clean at that time. That was September 15th, 1982. And I've been clean since then. So 41 years now. And I went to a long term treatment center that was in Solon, Ohio at the time. It's moved now, but outside of Cleveland called New Directions and I was there for seven months. But, so I had a real challenge with addiction in high school and prior to high school.   0:20:50.7 AS: But why this is interesting about coming back to my special education was that back when I was in third grade or so, I just knew I was in a lot of trouble, and I was just not an easy kid to handle, like a lot of kids, I had a lot of energy. My mom came to live with me seven years ago and she brought, you know, we brought some of her personal effects and stuff. And she had a little, a notebook that she gave me that was the notebook she kept of all my medical journals of my whole life where she wrote down things. And what I found in that notebook a couple of years ago was that the doctors started giving me Ritalin at the age of seven. And I had forgotten completely about that. But I don't know whether it was three years, five years, whatever. But I was on Ritalin from a young age and it was, you know, because okay, I was, you know, not cooperating probably and all that. And so I needed special help or whatever. But I started wondering, I wonder what role that had in my later addiction. And then I look at my, my skills in education, which became much, much better as I went through university. And then I went on to do my Master's and I went on to do my PhD and I went on to teach and I realized that I'm actually, you know, reasonably smart and I am a good learner and a good teacher. But I look back at that time and, you know, it just I don't know, I just wanted to tell that story because I don't think I've ever, you know, put the pieces of that together, but...   0:22:19.3 JD: Yeah, that's interesting. There's a lot of directions you can take that, for first, you know, congratulations on 40 plus years of sobriety. I'm sure that wasn't easy. I think, one, you think could there have been more coordination between the schools and the treatment centers and, you know, other maybe your own primary care physician and stuff like that? And maybe that would have made it an easier road, I don't know, for you. And then you think of the school system and what are the expectations for a seven-year-old? How is that system set up? You know, how much time are you spending sitting and things like that. And, you know, I'm not a doctor, so I can't say. Did you need Ritalin? But I do know is it's you know, it seems like I mean, it's obviously a often prescribed drug for students with ADHD, but it's also a powerful psycho-stimulant, you know, that that can have major side effects. I did my senior thesis on Ritalin in undergrad, so I have a little bit of experience interviewing kids that are taking it and stuff like that. And it can have powerful effects for sure. So yeah, I mean, I think of a lot of things like that. How could you have been better served early on, maybe at seven or eight that wouldn't have led to?   0:23:46.8 AS: And what do you do with a kid that's tormenting everybody and the teachers and you know, like it's just such a hard thing. And I probably needed to run, you know, around for, you know, an hour and a half before I got into class, maybe exhaust me. I have no idea. But for those people out there that are facing addiction or, you know, have dealt with something like that or know about that, we have Deming's 14 points, but we also have a 12-step program that you can find online that can help.   0:24:13.0 JD: Yeah, Hard questions. Hard questions. For sure.   0:24:16.4 AS: Exactly.   0:24:16.6 JD: Yeah. Well, I was just gonna say to your point about you need to run, like I went to a K-8 school where teachers would send kids out by themselves and tell them to go run a lap around the school as a sort of a management tool.   0:24:30.8 AS: It's great one.   0:24:31.5 JD: You can't do that everywhere. But, you know, you certainly sometimes sit here and think, that would be better than Ritalin, I think.   0:24:37.7 AS: Well, how many times do the listeners or the viewers realize they just get up and take a walk and then new things come into their mind? So... All right, let's wrap this up. How would you... Let's just give your final points on breaking down barriers.   0:24:50.3 JD: Yeah, I think there's some concrete steps. I think we talked about some of them. So, you know, defining the boundaries of your system, you know, where are you working? Where are your efforts when it comes to breaking down barriers, where are you gonna focus? I think when you determine that focus, you know, building that shared vision and aim is a good first step to make sure everybody's grounded in that aim. You know, one we didn't really talk about, though, I think especially for an internal, you know, effort, I think building this internal customer concept, I think that's probably more common in the business world, but less common in schools.   0:25:57.3 JD: I say that often here is, you know, who are your internal customers? I say that to people on my team, you know, and sort of taking that mindset that you are in service to a certain group. And I often say if someone's coming to you and asking for this, this and this, it may mean that you didn't sort of communicate out ahead of whatever that thing is. So that's another sort of mindset thing I think you can take. And then we talked about these cross-functional teams to build understanding and reduce adversarial relationships, I think because when you're sort of siloed and you don't see or you don't often talk with another group that, you can start to assume things about that group. And one concrete thing I did across sort of the department that I manage, the departments, we literally have a weekly meeting on Thursday called See the System Meetings, and it's operations, HR, student enrollment, health and wellness, all are in one spot, and we're sort of saying, where do we need to problem solve? Where are things showing up that are, sort of need cross-functional attention? And those types of things. I think that's been fairly successful just to get those people in a room on a regular basis.   0:26:40.6 AS: That's a great one. And I think for everyone out there, you know, See the System is a great idea, or another idea is meaning to work on the system, not in the system. You know, those are some great ways to start the process of breaking down barriers. Well, John, on behalf of everyone at The Deming Institute, I wanna thank you again for this discussion. For listeners, remember to go to deming.org to continue your journey. You can find John's book Win-Win: Dr. W. Edwards Deming, the System of Profound Knowledge and the Science of Improving Schools on Amazon.com. 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."

What's the difference between Compliance Excellence and Contextual Excellence? Is one better than the other? Which one does a Deming organization pursue? In this episode, Bill Bellows and host Andrew Stotz talk about the variety of types of excellence, and why they matter. TRANSCRIPT 0:00:02.7 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 discussion 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. The topic for today is episode 11: In Search of Excellence. Bill, go ahead, take it away.   0:00:28.9 Bill Bellows: All right. So, as I've been doing for the last few episodes, I like to go back to the prior episode. Because I listen to these again and again and again. Oh, there's other things I wanna say. [laughter] Remember the title of the last session, Andrew?   0:00:46.1 AS: Well, that depends. [laughter] The title was, It Depends.   0:00:50.7 BB: Alright. Alright. So you know I'm fond of that phrase. So I wanna... I thought of after, you know, in the last couple weeks is, I took a class in program management at a big university in Greater Los Angeles. I mean, it could have been anywhere, but it was in Los Angeles, and there were 25, 30 people in the room, maybe more, from around the world coming into this university. It was a three day program, you know, like, $1,800. $1800. I had just joined a department called The Program Management Office, and I thought, I should go find out what program management is it all about? I had some ideas, but I thought, "I want to go take a real class on this." The class was presented by an aerospace veteran in project management. He had been involved in major programs with Hughes, installing, you know, working on airports around the world and other DOD stuff.   0:01:48.6 BB: And I mean, he was, he was a very interesting guy. I got there early every day looking, I was hoping there'd be an opportunity I could start a conversation with him, have lunch with him, that never happened. But three days long. And so, on the second day, he threw out a question to the audience, and people are sitting in a... It's kind of an amphitheater, with the rows were kind of curved. So he throws out a question to the audience and the guy in the front row answers, "it depends." [laughter] And the instructor very deliberately walked from the front of the room, a good 15 feet without saying anything, just walked right at that person in the front row, you know, all at the same level, gets right in his face and says the following, Andrew, are you ready?   0:02:47.6 AS: I'm ready.   0:02:48.6 BB: He says, "Are you an attorney?" [laughter] And I thought to myself, "All of that for the answer, "it depends," really?" And so, [laughter] later that afternoon, somebody asked the instructor a question, "Hey, what if you're in a situation where you gotta deal with blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, this, this, this, this, this, how would you handle that?"   0:03:17.3 AS: And for the listeners out there, you know the punchline here, come on, give it to me. What did he say?   0:03:23.5 BB: No, here's what he said. He said, "Well, if it involves this, I would do this. If it involves that, I would do that." And so, what did I say, Andrew?   0:03:42.6 AS: What did you say? What do you mean?   0:03:44.7 BB: I bit my tongue.   0:03:45.9 AS: Oh, you didn't say anything when he said that?   0:03:48.6 BB: Because what he just said was, "it depends."   0:03:50.4 AS: “It depends” in another way.   0:03:52.8 BB: Yeah. He found another way to say “it depends.” So it was also...   0:03:56.0 AS: He sounded kind of smart, you know, well, let's just narrow it down to two potential options.   0:04:00.8 BB: “Are you an attorney?” Yeah. But he still... What he was still saying was, it depends on the situation.   0:04:09.3 AS: Yep.   0:04:09.8 BB: And I just thought... I mean... And not that I didn't mind that answer, but I was just dumbstruck as to why he was so emphatic in challenging this answer, "it depends"? And I just thought, again, I never went up and asked, but I just thought, I wasn't sure it was gonna go anywhere. So anyway, so I wanted to throw that out. Going back a couple episodes, I wanna talk about metrics and KPIs and point out that there's nothing wrong, I mean, we're not saying KPIs are bad. What we're talking about is, when KPIs are used as goals and in a way that unnecessarily drives the organization in different directions, but if a KPI is just a metric of how we're doing in sales, that's one thing.   0:05:03.7 BB: But if the metric is, I want sales to be this number, and I go to people in procurement and say, "I want you to cut back on procurement," you know, we can end up with a conflict. You know, I had a woman in class once who worked for a gym, health club. And her job was to sell memberships and get on the phone every day, sell memberships, sell memberships, sell memberships. And she told her boss, she says, "Now, if I do a really good job, lines will form if we don't get more equipment. So, while I'm doing this, shouldn't we be working on that?" And her boss' attitude was, "You keep working on that and don't worry about that." So what she realized, it was just a revolving door of replacing old people with new people. They were just managing the parts in isolation. But another thing I think we had agreement on, you know, also had agreement on KPIs is it's... We're not saying there's anything wrong with metrics, but in organizations where we've worked, we've seen people drive change with, "give everybody a KPI."   0:06:17.5 BB: We could have great ignorance of variation. We have... Leading to dissolution of, just increased separation of organization. What I'm also reminded of is a quote that Dr. Deming used to use of his statistician colleague, Lloyd Nelson, who said, "the most important numbers used to manage an organization are unknown and unknowable." And one example from when I worked for Boeing is a good friend of mine was at the Boeing Leadership Center and there was a big emphasis at that time on what's called the Economic Profit Calculator. Making sure that business decisions close. They were not gonna build the next generation airplane unless they've got all the sales lined up and you have to have closure and closure within some timeframe, and that person came out.   0:07:12.4 BB: That was the big driving change in that era. Well, right after that presentation by somebody senior, the Chief Operating Officer, Harry Stonecipher presented. And what was near and dear to Harry at that point was something he started when McDonald Douglas was separate from Boeing, then Boeing bought McDonald Douglas, and he was really big on an education program that allowed anyone to pursue any degree, all reimbursed. So if he wanted an AS degree, a Master's degree, a law degree, not only were they paying for the degrees, but there were people getting a Bachelor's and then getting a Master's in Science and a MBA, so he just go at it, go at it. And he's very proud of that.   0:08:00.5 BB: So, my friend Tim is listening to all this and he says, "This afternoon, we heard from so and so in finance about Boeing business decisions needing to fit into this Economic Profit Calculator, how does your education reimbursement program fit into that model?" And his answer was, I thought really profound, he said, "there are some things you just do." And to me that fits in with Deming saying, you can’t measure the price of education. We brought an instructor in, we had you away for so many hours...   0:08:34.6 AS: You can measure the cost.   0:08:36.1 BB: And so, we can put some numbers on it. But what are the benefits? The benefits show up in the future. So I really admire that Stonecipher's answer was, I think very much in keeping with Deming is, we're gonna spend money on education. So, I just wanna throw that out for in terms of metrics and what not.   0:08:52.9 AS: And I would just throw in my thoughts on KPIs, which has gotten stronger and stronger over the years, and that is that, I really think people should stop KPIs. And the reason why is, because I think they've gotten to the point where it's just so misused and so, people are so reliant on it. Now, I know that that's an extreme view and so... But I say it to also challenge people to think about it, but if you can't stop the KPIs, then I would say the most important thing from my perspective, is make sure that compensation is not linked to the KPIs. Which of course, people will come back and say, that's the whole point of KPIs.   [laughter]   0:09:44.4 BB: Exactly.   0:09:44.5 AS: And if you remove compensation connection to KPI, and instead of that, you use coaching and working with your team, and you have metrics of what you want to achieve as a company, as an organization, as a department, and you look at those metrics... Nothing wrong with that, but it's when you bring in the personal, particularly the personal incentive or the division incentive that can then sub-optimize... Can optimize a part of the organization, either an individual or a department, and therefore, sub-optimize the total.   0:10:22.0 BB: Oh, yeah. If you tie those metrics... Yeah and that becomes the... What makes them sinister, when you provide that incentive that... And I'm sure we've both seen people given incentives and they're not gonna leave, what I tell people is, they're not gonna leave a penny on the table, whether it's get rid of that division, lay off so many people, they are going to achieve that metric, because there's money on the table and in the way of that problem.   0:10:55.2 AS: And for those people who are listening or viewing, who feel like, "My God, what would I do if I don't have KPIs, because that's kind of the way we've been managing?" The first thing is, I would say is that, if you know that... So first, talk to your staff, because once you go out and talk to the people in the company, you realize that almost nobody is in favor of KPIs, because they're being manipulated in many ways and they all see it. But if you know in your heart that it's not the right thing to do, my argument is, don't wait to stop doing the wrong thing until you know what the right thing is. You know? Stop... "I don't wanna stop beating my child, because I don't know the other way to do it." [laughter] No. Stop beating your child today, that would be a first step. Don't worry about what it is you're gonna do next. Anyways, that's enough on KPIs.   0:12:00.4 BB: You've reminded me of a story that's coming to me, but it's not coming in loud and clear, so I made a note, I'll share it next time 'cause you're gonna love it. I wanna give an example of what, of what, of what a narrow focus on KPIs can do. Just a couple of little ones, that are, you just can't make these up. In 1999, while at Rocketdyne, there was a focus on reducing costs. And this is, all organizations have these stories. And this is one I use to talk about in class all the time. So I don't think anyone's gonna be offended. Hopefully they'll laugh more than be offended by it.   0:12:37.9 BB: So there's a big focus across the company of reducing cost. Reducing cost. What do people do in a non-Deming organization? They look at cost in isolation. Where I wanna reduce the cost of this, not look at how it affects the others. And so, at that point of time, again, we're talking over 20 years ago, all the documentation to make every space shuttle main engine was on, was on paper. Every page used to fabricate the engines on paper. And there were page by page instructions of manufacturing to do this, do this, line by line by line, and on every line it might say, torque this bolt to 55 inch pounds, and it was stamped by me, the mechanic, and by you the inspector. Boom, boom, boom.   0:13:28.2 BB: So if NASA ever wants to know, was that bolt torqued on that engine on... And we have all the documentation. Guess how many pages of documentation there are? Nowadays it's likely all electronic, but in that day it was all paper. Guess how many pages of documentation for every single space shuttle main engine of which they're on the order of 18 made? Take a wild guess.   0:13:55.9 AS: Gosh. I'm just thinking thousands.   0:14:00.5 BB: 18,000 pages of documentation. So Andrew, that's like, 60 3-Ring Binders and I mean, 300 pages in a 3-Ring Binder, right? So imagine every engine's got 60 3-Ring Binders. So in 1999, all the pages in those books are on card stock heavy... Card stock paper, heavyweight paper, right? And why is that, Andrew? Because these are a storage document, right? So, I kid you not, one week I'm doing a class, you know talking about paradigms of variation and all the things we've been talking about. And somewhere in the conversation, somebody mentions that the card stock paper was replaced by lighter weight photocopy paper. And then, the person mentioned that, shared that, as a result of that, in the use of these 3-Ring Binders, the pages were falling out.   [laughter]   0:15:05.4 BB: And when I... And then the person went on to say...   0:15:07.1 AS: Oh, that's okay.   0:15:09.3 BB: Oh, no. Hold on, Andrew. So, as a focus on reducing costs, the heavy card stock paper is replaced by a lighter weight paper. The pages are falling out. So when I asked the guy, what are we doing with it? And the answer was, we're putting hole reinforcement circles on the pages to put them back in the binder.   0:15:34.2 AS: Absolutely.   0:15:35.1 BB: Right? And so, for those who don't know, hole reinforcement circles are little circles about the size of a, of a cheerio that get put on either side of the sheet of paper...   0:15:46.9 AS: With adhesive on the back of it.   0:15:48.1 BB: And it's a heavy cloth to keep it from pulling up. So, I mentioned that a couple of days later to some colleagues and they looked at me like I was from Mars. They're like, no, I mean, you've got some great stories, Bill, but they weren't buying the story. So the following week in class, [chuckle] I said, Hey, last week somebody mentioned, anybody know anything about that? And the guy in the front row, not only does he nod and say, yeah, he pulls out of his box a roll... Pulls out of his pocket a roll of like, 300 of these. And I said, so, this is really going on. He says, Bill, I go through a box of these a day.   0:16:29.9 AS: Oh, my God.   0:16:34.5 BB: So when you focus on the cost of the paper and forget that the paper is actually a storage document, not just a sheet of paper, you end up with hole reinforcement circles as a solution. Now...   0:16:46.1 AS: And the cost of the circle, the reinforcement, hole reinforcement adhesives that you put on and the cost of the labor that's spending time doing that by these high value added people.   0:17:04.6 BB: Well, and I also realized, if the space shuttle is on the pad and ready to go, fueled, if you're in that window and something comes up and somebody in NASA calls up Rocketdyne and says, we need to know for the second engine in that vehicle, if this work was done? If this work is done? If you delay the launch, if you're in the window, the vehicle was fueled, it's like a million dollars a day. So imagine going to the binder and the phone call back is, we can't find that sheet of paper. So this is...   0:17:46.8 AS: That was on page 47. I've got 46.   0:17:52.7 BB: We've got 40...   0:17:53.3 AS: And I got 48.   0:17:55.5 BB: So, but I use that. Okay, well, pre-pandemic, I was doing some training in New Zealand at a university. I needed to staple... I needed... [chuckle] I needed to staple these documents together. And so, the instructor who was hosting us, said, "What do you need?" I said, I need staples. So he goes to his office, comes back five minutes later, gives me a couple reams of staples and I go to put them in the stapler. And he says, "You're using these?" I said, “yeah, I'm using them.” He said, “wait.” He says, "Let me go get the good staples." I said, [chuckle] “what do you mean?” He says, "The university buys us really cheap staples. So all of us in the faculty keep a private stash of good staples. Let me go get the good staples." Right?   0:18:48.8 BB: You can't make up... Right? This is little stuff. All right. So now I wanna get to what Dr. Deming said last time I used a quote from Dr. Deming about it would be important for people to work together. And what I share in some of my seminars is an Aesop fable, from Aesop the Greek fablist. So we're talking like, 500, 600 BC and the particular fable I referenced is the four oxen and the lion. Are you familiar with that one?   0:19:23.7 AS: No.   0:19:25.1 BB: Okay. Well, I came across this, because I was doing some research on the expression "United we stand divided we fall." And I'm thinking united, divided, I'm thinking Abraham Lincoln, Civil War and to come up with, no, that's the punchline for Aesop's Fable about the four oxen and the lion. And the storyline goes that these four oxen would stand looking outward with their tails connected. That's the united we stand, they looked outward and the lion would circle them, but the lion couldn't do very much, because we're protecting one another. And then when the oxen broke rank, the lion jumped in and ate them. So the united we stand divided we fall. So the reason I use that is, I'm not proclaiming that Dr. Deming is the one who figured out the importance of teamwork. [laughter] I think that was figured out a long time ago. I look at what Dr. Deming's work is about - is helping us understand what are the obstacles to what I think we all really want. But I don't think he... So when he references teamwork, that's an old concept. That's why I like to use the Aesop fable, as it goes back a long way.   0:20:41.3 AS: Yeah.   0:20:42.2 BB: All right. But in terms of division, I'm gonna share from Russ Ackoff one of the many things I learned from him and that is that the adjective in front of the word "problem" is divisive. And so, when I worked in Connecticut for the jet engine company, we're making 120 tank engines a month, 1500 horsepower $300,000 each. And at least once a year there'd be an issue. We gotta stop production. Which would lead to the conclusion that it's a design problem in which case manufacturing did what, Andrew?   0:21:24.5 AS: Not sure.   0:21:25.1 BB: Breathed a huge sigh of relief.   0:21:26.7 AS: Not our problem.   0:21:28.4 BB: Or if it's not a design problem, it could be a manufacturing problem, in which case engineering said... And the engineering people felt slighted, because the president of the company was a manufacturing person. And so, what I saw was, yeah, as soon as you define the problem from that vantage point, then it's stuck on someone. And everybody else just says, whew! Thankful it wasn't us this time. So, I wanna share from Russ, what if we aren't so divisive?   0:22:02.4 BB: So Russ has a really neat story going back to, could be the '60s and you'll know by the punchline the timeframe. So at that point in time he was invited to GE's Appliance Center in Kentucky and he brought a graduate student with him. And he said, in the room, in the center of the room of this conference table, they're discussing this issue they're having. And around the perimeter of the room are all the major appliances that GE is selling at the time from refrigerators, freezers, stoves, washing machines, dryers, they're around the perimeter. And the issue they're facing is, what is labeled a "forecasting problem." And store owners are complaining that when the people are coming in to buy the appliances for the kitchen, they need to remodel the kitchen, they need a new refrigerator, they need a new washing machine, I mean a dishwasher and a stove.   0:22:54.2 BB: They need those three. And the forecasting issue is they come in and we only have two of the three, or we don't have the right... We don't have the matching colors, the matching styles. And so, that's why we're losing sales to the others. And we needed a better forecast. And in addition to having the right colors and the right model, another feature in that timeframe was the refrigerator door had to either open from the left or open from the right to match the configuration of the kitchen. So you may have the right... All three are right, but now you've got a left-handed door and the refrigerator needs a right-handed door. Oh. All right. So the graduate student upon hearing this uses a Swiss Army knife, Russ said, to take a door off of the refrigerator and said, have you ever thought about a reversible door design?   0:23:49.1 BB: And so, the reason I share that story for our audience is, that's what happens when you involve design in a solution to a forecasting problem. You get their inputs. And so, anything short of that, when we, when we focus on a manufacturing problem, only invite manufacturing, not invite others and as is prone in a non-Deming organization you end up with solutions that don't involve the others. And so, I just wanna throw that out that these are... The everyday things we do in organizations to divide. Alright. So now let's talk about the featured movie tonight.   0:24:27.3 AS: Yes.   0:24:27.8 BB: In Search of Excellence inspired by the book by Tom Peters and Robert Waterman. Correct?   0:24:35.3 AS: Yes.   0:24:35.9 BB: Roughly '82, '83 timeframe. And so, Dr. Deming's work has been known for a couple years and Tom Peters and Waterman wrote a book talking about... There's US companies doing excellent work, so let's go look at them. So at Dr. Deming's last seminar there were three assistants helping him. He was very frail, he was in a wheelchair, ended up dying 10 days after the seminar ended. And I think I mentioned sitting next to me for all four days was a rabbi praying for him. So, Dr. Deming is very frail in the wheelchair the entire time, when he would get fatigued, he'd be wheeled off the stage. One of these three assistants would come up and pick up the pace. Couple hours later Dr. Deming comes up. And so, during one of the breaks I went up and introduced myself and, to them. And one of them told me that...   0:25:30.0 BB: You know, he traveled with Dr. Deming. He was one of what's called a Deming Scholar. So at that point of time, there was a cadre of people that would travel with Dr. Deming if he was doing a seminar or he's at GE headquarters, wherever he was that week, this cadre came with him. So he said, somebody once in one of these sessions, said to Dr. Deming, “what's the difference between Jerry Falwell and Tom Peters?” And he says, Dr. Deming says, “who's... Well, who's Jerry Falwell?” And he says, “oh, he's a Baptist minister.” He says, oh, he says, so.   0:26:02.8 AS: A very famous one at the time.   0:26:05.0 BB: Very famous Baptist minister. And he says, “so what's the difference?” Dr. Deming says, so what's the difference? He says, "Jerry Falwell has a message." And so in that timeframe, I remember... I used to remember... And you likely watched these as well. So Tom Peters would be working on his next book and whatever the theme of the book was, he's doing research. And I give him credit. I mean, he's a Stanford Business School graduate. He's doing all the research, incredible at marketing. So he picks a topic, does his research, writes the book, goes on PBS to do this presentation with a thousand people in the room. And he's using real life people and companies to tell this story one at a time, one at a time, one at a time. So I thought, well, what if Tom Peters was to write a book about how to live to be a 100? Well, what do you do, Andrew? You've got to go find people who are a 100, right?   0:27:05.3 AS: Yeah.   0:27:06.2 BB: You can go find them, right?   0:27:07.1 AS: Yep.   0:27:07.8 BB: And so, I used to imagine that if Tom Peters is, you know, writing a book about how to live to be a 100, he's gonna go... The recipe is find the people, find the successful companies, go research them, a chapter on each one of them. Each of them comes up and presents. And so, there we are on PBS and the first guests that come out are a 101-year-old gentleman. And he comes out and he's chain smoking and he explains that, how does he live to be a 100? He says, well, "you...smoking is good, cigars sometimes, shots of Old Granddad and that's how you live to be a 100." And then next we have the sisters, live together, twin sisters, never married, lived together their entire lives, don't drink a thing, teetotalers, and that, you know, vegetarians. And so, you say, oh, so that's how you live to be a 100, Andrew, you drink, you drink tea, no, you stay away from alcohol, stay away from red meat.   0:28:14.6 BB: Next one comes out, right? And the point is that all these companies are different and you're left to figure out which one to think. And whereas what Dr. Deming's talking about is a theory by which to understand organizations that you could take to your organization and figure out how to live to be a hundred, not just what we see otherwise. So anyway, I was aware of all that, studied all that. I wasn't aware at the time that's what was going on, but as I started to research this Peter's and... Why Dr. Deming thought of him that way. And so, Rocketdyne was sold by Pratt and Whitney, sold to United Technologies after Boeing, and they had a big Lean Six Sigma program, but they didn't call it Lean Six Sigma.   0:29:02.7 BB: And the Rocketdyne people are asking, why did you call it Lean Six Sigma? He says, well, it is Lean Six Sigma, but GE calls their program Lean Six Sigma, and we're not gonna use the same name as those guys. Those are the light bulb people. So we've got our own name. Well, what's your name? Well, we call it ACE. What is ACE? Achieving Competitive Excellence. But it's really Lean Six Sigma. So I spent a few years trying to wonder, what does it really mean? And I'm and I'm embarrassed that it took me as long as it did, but it dawned on me what it really means is achieving Compliance Excellence.   0:29:42.9 BB: And it was all about, does this meet requirements? And so that's what I referred to early on as question number one. Does this characteristic, have you passed... You know, have you met all of the requirements? And that's all it was, it was meeting requirements, meeting requirements, meeting requirements. And then, and what it reminds me of is, I was doing a seminar in England once for a one-on-one, went over for three days through a translator, and the audience was a physician from Kazakhstan who was anxious to learn as much as he could about Dr. Deming's work and that led him to England. And through some fortunate situation, I had a chance to meet with him one-on-one and went through and explained to him, Me and We organizations, Red Pen and Blue Pen companies, all that, all through a translator. So I had asked a question in English, the translator would translate, boom.   0:30:36.5 BB: So the question I asked him was, that I wanted to share is, I said to Ivan, I said, "what's the fastest way for a Red Pen company to become a Blue Pen company? What's the fastest way?" So that gets translated into Russian. Then it comes back to me and he says, "what?" I said, "spray paint." [laughter] And to me, that's the epitome of Compliance Excellence where we're... You get a really light surface texture, where it's looking good, but it misses the deep sense of the theory of Dr. Deming's work. But I'm not saying Compliance Excellence is bad. And so, when I wrote an article about this, and if any of the listeners want to contact me on LinkedIn, I can send them an article I wrote about it. And so, 'cause when you go to write about something, now you start to think deeply about this, does this make sense as opposed to just having a conversation? And it dawned on me that Compliance Excellence is not a bad thing.   0:31:39.3 BB: And the example I want to use here is, I was listening to two friends, husband and wife who spent a whole year serving society. They were compelled, had incredible military careers, and they decided we wanna pay back society. So the plan was that the husband, Doug would ride his bicycle every day through every state in the United States, including Alaska and Hawaii over the course of one year. So they started upstate New York, crisscrossing around the country. So he was on his bike every day riding, raising awareness for veterans' issues. 'Cause for those who don't know, there's... The the suicide rate of veterans is enormous. And so, they're looking... They're out there trying to help veterans. They were compelled to do that. And Doug's wife Deb, rode the motorhome, either ahead or behind, hooking up with local radio stations, trying to get PR.   0:32:38.8 BB: Then Doug would show up and he says one day they're riding through the Rockies, having dinner... And they're having dinner that night. But all day long, Doug is going up these hills, down these hills, up these hills. And so at dinner, Doug says to Deb, he says, I mean, "how'd you like that hill?" [laughter] Deb says, "what hill?" [laughter] So to Doug, every mile is not the same. [laughter] Right? So it's 18,066 miles. Doug felt the difference in every one of those miles, more so than Deb did. So if somebody says, how far was that route, Doug? For Doug to say 18,066 miles, 67, that's ups and downs, he felt every one of them. For Deb, it was a little bit... They were more of the same. So I'm not saying there's anything wrong with answering the question 18,067, but to me that's a compliant... That's looking at every second being the same, every hour being the same, every widget being the same, not understanding the differences or how they're being used.   0:33:49.1 BB: So now I wanna talk about, instead of Compliance Excellence, again, I'm not saying Compliance Excellence is bad. What I would say is that non-Deming organizations thrive on Compliance Excellence in this sense of interchangeability. Everything is the same, looking at things in isolation. So then I started thinking, well, if that's what they do, what is it that that Deming organizations do? And that's what I would call Contextual Excellence. There's an understanding of context, understanding of the context of the system. Tom Johnson, who has written about, Management by Means, which I wanna look at in a later episode, when Tom was doing research, this is around the time I met him, 1997, '98 timeframe. He was, he was visiting Toyota Plants, definitely in the United States. I'm not sure how many overseas, but he is taking copious notes, going behind the scenes. So this was before the world was all over Toyota.   0:34:47.3 BB: So Tom had free access. He said eventually they start charging for all this stuff. But Tom was there way ahead of the crowd. And he said one day he is with his notebook and he is walking around, he is looking at the stamping presses. But they're notorious for stamping out one part at a time. One single minute exchange of dyes. So they don't make a thousand parts and then figure out how to use them. They figured out how to change the dyes quickly. So Tom said, he asked the guy, "how long does it take to change this dye?" And the guy says something like, 28 minutes. And so Tom writes down 28 minutes and later the guy came back to Tom. He says, "just so you understand" he says "28 minutes is not world class, but this does not require world class."   0:35:32.3 BB: And so this is when I was explaining Contextual Excellence to Tom. And he says, is that what you're talking about? I said, that's exactly what I would expect to see within Toyota, that things are... They fit the situation. So it's not speed for the sake of speed, it's speed that fits the context of the situation, which is also like saying, have card stock paper where it makes sense. Have the appropriate staples where it makes sense. And so, when I talk about "in search of excellence," with my classes or in presentations, what I'm trying to get across is, there's a place for Contextual Excellence and there's a place for Compliance Excellence. But I think that difference is far better understood in a Deming organization that has a great understanding of systems and connectedness and synchronicity and teamwork, and lacking that non-Deming organizations, I think unknowingly default to Compliance Excellence, driving things to zero, thinking you could have zero waste in these things.   0:36:39.9 BB: And then you end up with cheap staples, lightweight paper, and you end up paying for it somewhere else in the system. So I just wanted to point out that there's... I'm not saying one is better than the other. What I'm saying is, I believe a Deming organization would have a profound appreciation of when to use each. And as simple as, if you were to say to me, Bill, how far is it to the nearest airport? I could say, it depends Andrew, what are you... How are you getting to the airport? You say, I'm riding my bike. I said, "okay." Right? And again, not that we're always gonna say it depends, but that's what I think that appreciation has. Let me just stop there and...   0:37:19.6 AS: Yeah.   0:37:20.2 BB: See where you are.   0:37:21.6 AS: So, I have two little stories that I wanna share in relation to this. One of them is about my uncle Ham. Hamilton.   0:37:28.4 BB: Yes.   [laughter]   0:37:29.8 AS: And then the other one is about my own business, Coffee Works. And when we set up our factory 28 years ago, my business partner Dale, was absolutely passionate about coffee. He roasted every bean for our first 10 years. And he sold and he did the accounting and he did everything basically, until eventually he trained staff. And some of those staff still, they've been with us for years, for decades, and they take care of the roasting now. But what Dale really understood was what he called, "in the cup quality." The idea that when... When it's in the cup, that's about to touch the customer's lips, that's the quality that matters. Nothing else matters.   0:38:15.1 AS: If you don't get that right then, you know, it doesn't matter how much you've documented or did whatever you've done in the past, in the temperature of the water, in the grind, you know, in all of these different things. So he was really all about excellence, and we didn't get... We never got complaints. Maybe we got an occasional one, but it wasn't very common. Anyways, we got a big, big multinational company came to us and said, we want you to bid along with some other coffee companies for our business, and we bid for the business. And they said, "We're picking you. And now we're gonna go out to your factory and we're gonna inspect your factory. And if you get a score in our quality audit below 70, you're basically in trouble, [laughter] already, and you're gonna have six weeks to fix it or else you're fired."   0:39:05.9 AS: And this was a huge amount of volume and a prestigious company for us. So we pulled everything together to get ready for their audit. And they came and they gave us their score and we felt like we were pretty damn good. And they said, 65. [laughter] And you know, what we realized to them, quality was about paperwork and quality was about, you know, compliance to that paperwork. And so, we had to do that, because that's what quality was to them. We'd never done anything like that. You know, now, 15, 20 years later, we still supply that same customer and they still do their annual audits and our scores are much... They're in the 90s, which puts us in like, world class. But the point is, we learned a lesson, you know, the difference between contextual quality or let's say, intrinsic quality that Dale was working on versus this kind of, what did you call it? Compliance Quality.   0:40:08.5 BB: Yes.   0:40:09.9 AS: So that's my first story. The second one is about my uncle in Germany where he was in charge of the, of the logistics of a base of a US military base. And the commanding general came to see, and they had cleaned up everything. And they got to the end of the whole thing, and they kind of dumped out to the parking lot where there's, you know, 700 or 500 vehicles lined up in different ways and whatever, all kinds of different sizes of vehicles. And Uncle Ham said, "Sir, so how did you like the tour of the facility and all that?" And he says, “of the base?” And he said, "Ham, everything was great except one thing."   0:40:48.4 AS: And my uncle's like, "Okay, what is that, sir?" And he said... And he looked at the vehicles, a long line of vehicles parked side by side. And he asked him, he said, "Next time I come here... " Now remember, these vehicles are all different lengths. "Next time I come here, I want these vehicles all lined up. It's a mess the way you've got it done." Yeah. And so, my uncle said, "Yes, sir!" And he said, "Before you leave, sir, could you walk to the back of the vehicles for a moment with me?" "Yes, yes, I will." And he said, "Sir, would you like them lined up in the back or in the front?" And they had lined them up in the back, which meant their noses were in different lengths. And the point is, is that you can't have it all, right? Everything's a tradeoff. You want it this way. There's a compromise here, there's a challenge there and all that. And that's a lesson I learned from Uncle Ham.   0:41:46.1 BB: Well, and then he, I'm sure he learned it from that point on is, you know, when, when he is asked to line them up and make them more uniform, the question is, help me understand what that means.   [laughter]   0:42:00.3 AS: And the answer's gonna be, it depends. 'Cause this general likes them lined up in the back and this general likes them lined up in the front. We're gonna need to wrap up. So how would you close out this episode?   0:42:17.0 BB: The main thing I want to get across saying is that, first of all, Contextual Excellence is the bedrock of investment thinking. To look, when you begin to look at things as a system and to understand that every mile is not the same or do I need to... Does that matter to me? But to me, instead of everything could be improved, you know, we focus on where are the most red beads, get all the red beads to zero and then go across the organization. And what is that? That's managing actions. We talked about that months ago. And to me that's Compliance Excellence. It's looking at the parts in isolation. But to me, what Contextual Excellence is about is the better we understand, the greater how things fit together.   0:43:10.5 BB: And there, the challenge is that everything we work on is part of a bigger system, which is part of a, then again, bigger system, which is part of, then again, bigger system. So we're not proposing that you're going to infinity, you know, that there's this big picture of you, whatever that means. It's, it's, and I like it... You know, people talk about, well, you know, Andrew's a systems... You and I, Andrew are systems thinkers, as if the others aren't. What does that mean? That means that we think of the big picture. There's no such thing as a big picture. So there, what we're talking about is Contextual Excellence, is trying to gather as much context for the system as it makes sense with appreciation that you might still be missing something.   0:44:00.3 BB: And that's where learning comes in. But that understanding is part of, is fundamental to investment thinking. You know, is the education system paying off? How would you know? Where are we gonna see that benefit? What is your theory for that? So I just wanna point out is, I'm not trying to condemn Compliance Excellence. I think Deming organizations are gonna have a place for that. Just like there's a place for, you know, does it meet requirements? Yes or no? It's just becoming more mindful of these choices is, is what I'm suggesting or proposing.   0:44:31.1 AS: Yes. Well, Bill, on behalf of everyone at the Deming Institute, I want to thank you again for this discussion. For listeners, remember to go to deming.org to continue your journey. There's so much there for further learning. And if you wanna keep in touch with Bill, just find him on LinkedIn. He's right there. This is your host, Andrew Stotz, and I'm gonna leave you with one of my favorite quotes from Dr. Deming. "People are entitled to joy in work."  

What causes fear in an organization? How is fear hurting employee morale, productivity, and overall performance? What great things can happen when you remove fear? In this episode, John Dues and host Andrew Stotz talk about fear, and how managers can get rid of it. TRANSCRIPT 0:00:02.6 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 discussion with John Dues, who is part of the new generation of educators striving to apply Dr. Deming's principles to unleash student joy in learning. This is Episode 14, and we are continuing our discussion about the shift from management myths to principles for the transformation of school systems. John, take it away.   0:00:32.9 John Dues: Andrew, it's good to be back. Yeah, we've been talking about these principles. We've sort of shifted from the myths to the principles that, you know, especially education systems leaders can use to guide their transformation work. I think we're up to Principle 8 today, and most recently I think last time we did, "institute training on the job" and "adopt and institute leadership." So we'll move on to Principle 8, which is "Drive Out Fear." So I'll start with just reading the principle verbatim from the book. So Principle 8: "Drive out fear so that everyone may work effectively for the school system. No one can perform their best unless they feel secure to express ideas, ask questions, and make mistakes." So I think maybe for me, when you look at the 14 principles, I haven't done this analysis, but I would venture a wager that Dr. Deming spent more time on this particular principle and related topics than any of the other ones.   0:01:44.6 JD: He discussed it numerous times in Out of the Crisis, numerous times in The New Economics. And one of the quotes that really stands out for me on this topic was in Out of the Crisis where Deming said, "Where there is fear, there will be wrong figures." And I don't think that... I don't think people sort of fully appreciate just how much sort of... "Writing fiction" is sort of how I've framed this in the past in one of our earlier episodes, but just sort of how much made-up data there is in every organization. And that can be wrong figures in the form of qualitative descriptions of important work, it can be quantitative data. But in either case, it makes it nearly impossible to improve our organizations. Because how would you even know where to start improvement if the figures and the descriptions of the work are inaccurate? So that'd be a good topic for today.   0:02:53.3 AS: Sometimes this one about fear is, sometimes it's easy for people to understand and sometimes it's hard. You know, like, when you think about fear, you can think about physical fear like, "Well, okay, am I in physical danger here?" Like, what are we talking about? Or, "Am I in fear that I'm gonna lose my job?" And some people may think that that's a good thing. And one of the first things I want to just think about is, what are the specific things in a school or in a school environment that causes people to be fearful? Maybe we could identify what you see, because you've talked about the outcome of fear is made-up data, wrong figures. It's all kinds of outcomes from fear, but what are the sources of fear?   0:03:47.2 JD: Yeah. Well, one thing I think of is you certainly can have sort of a tyrannical boss or manager. That certainly exists where there's actual fear, they yell, they threaten, passive-aggressive, those types of things. So that certainly can exist.   0:04:05.4 AS: Yep.   0:04:05.9 JD: I've definitely witnessed that in my almost 25 years in terms of career, you're gonna witness things like that. But I think more often what I'm talking about is sort of more subtle versions of fear that permeate throughout organizations. So sources, there can be different sources. I think they can come internally from some of the systems and processes you've set up in your own school or school system. Some of them are external, so, I mean, a go-to source of fear for a lot of people is, "How do my kids that I'm teaching perform on the state test?" That can be a source of fear, for sure. There is sort of internal to your system. I think the fear... I think a lot of people have sort of apprehension when the principal comes to your classroom to observe your class, and then there's sort of the ratings and rankings that go with a typical performance evaluation. So I think that can be another source of fear in a school system. And there's probably many other sort of versions of that. But I was thinking of...   0:05:25.4 JD: A lot of times when you hear people talk about driving out fear, you sort of get the negative stories. I think, not related to schools, but I think of a classic example of fear in the form of an unwillingness to speak up and say something is the Challenger space shuttle explosion. I think that's a classic sort of example of where people did see issues along the way and really nobody spoke up. So I think that's a sort of a classic example. But I was thinking of... And I was thinking about driving out fear in my own organization. At United Schools Network, one of the anecdotes in the book that I tell is actually a sort of a more positive example. So I was gonna maybe share that and talk about some of the details there. And it's sort of a combination of Appreciation for a System and Driving Out Fear, sort of working together.   0:06:32.0 JD: But I'm going back to the summer of 2013. So I was a school director or principal at that time of a middle school. And to put that in context, we were grades six through eight. I was entering my sort of fifth year leading Columbus Collegiate Academy. It's a fully built out middle school, six, seven, eight, serving the East Side of Columbus. And I was sitting in my office with my colleague, her name's Kathryn Anstaett. She was the principal on the other side of town. Kathryn and I had a working relationship because she previously had served on my team as a teacher and then as sort of an assistant principal for curriculum and instruction. So we knew each other well. And then she had been tapped to lead our new middle school on the West Side. And she had just wrapped up that first year. It was growing from just serving sixth grade, and now they gonna serve sixth and seventh grade for the 2013-14 school year.   0:07:37.1 JD: And just like today, 10 years ago, sort of similar, limited pool of prospective teaching candidates. And sometimes Kathryn and I, we would interview a person and we'd both want to hire that same teacher. And we had come to the sort of agreement where across the hiring season, for us, the fairest approach was just to alternate turns. So Kathryn would get first choice on a particular set of interviews, and then I would get first choice on the next set. But on this particular day, we both wanted to hire this same reading teacher, and it was my turn in that rotation. Kathryn and I were sitting and looking at both school's staff rosters, and we literally said, "In order to sort of make a decision that's best for the system, this hire should really go to Kathryn." I wanted the person, I needed the person, but I also had this capable group of reading and writing teachers, despite the one teacher opening, but she was just building this new team. So she really needed a really outstanding reading teacher.   0:08:53.4 JD: And I think thinking through this sort of whole system's lens gave my turn to Kathryn. And I think it's important to say here, I actually hadn't heard of the Deming philosophy at this point. I hadn't been exposed to this idea for appreciation for a system, but really the decision making was pretty simple. Kathryn and I were colleagues, we were on a small team working to build this new network of schools, and one of the best ways to sort of bring that network to fruition was to, you know, allow her to hire this particular teacher for her school across town.   0:09:31.4 AS: Now where this connects with Drive Out Fear is that there were a number of things in place that sort of gave me the confidence as a school director or principal to make this decision. I was employee Number 2 in our organization, so I was sort of on that founding team. That gave me some, I guess, some standing in the organization. By this time I had been there for five years, and I was pretty well established as a leader. I had a close working relationship with our staff. I had a close working relationship with our founder and superintendent. But even in that context, if I was being honest, this sort of whole system thinking was not easy because we're still a relatively young organization. We're just five years old. Really the question for a startup in its fifth year is still survival. Are we gonna survive as an organization? And there was a lot of pressure on me as a school leader to achieve high test scores and really establish the reputation of the school as a strong option on the East Side of the city.   0:10:44.9 JD: And thankfully, I had the backing of my superintendent, I had the backing of our board to make this decision, but I was fearful. I was fearful because it is very possible that even with that support, what would happen if I had been held accountable for our reading results, let's say, after this decision had been made? Unless I reminded people a year from now when kids take the state test and they get their scores back, they might not even remember that, "Hey, remember when we had sort of collaborated and made this decision?" They're likely, and some organizations are gonna come to me and say, "Hey, John, what's up with the reading scores?" That's not actually what happened, but that certainly was a plausible possibility.   0:11:40.7 JD: But my point is, and I think most organizations, it is really hard to make decisions like that. Was I fearful of my boss? No, of course not, not in this situation. Was I fearful of my colleague across town? No. Of the board? No. But in the back of my mind, I'm sitting there thinking, "I'm gonna make this decision. I really wanted this teacher. It was actually my turn. But I think it's the best thing for the whole system if this particular teacher goes across town and helps this new school."   0:12:18.0 JD: I think I feel better today making that decision 'cause we've more explicitly made the Deming philosophy and these 14 principles a part of our system. However, I can imagine, for many people sitting there thinking if they're a school leader, could you make this same decision in the absence of having these principles in place beforehand? So I thought that was a good example of Drive Out Fear. Again, with all these things in place, even with all those things in place, a startup early employee close relationship with the superintendent, board, I was still sort of wondering if I should make that decision as a young leader.   0:13:04.8 AS: So it's interesting because I was thinking about, what is the source of fear? The source of fear is that we are personally going to be injured. If we think about the source of physical fear of an animal or of a human when we're in a dangerous situation, it's that we're gonna personally be injured. Now you could also extend that to the family. If you are a pride of lions or you're a group of animals and the mother or father instinctively knows to try to protect itself but also its family. But it's this, it's the ultimate selfishness for survival. And that's where... One of the things I was thinking about when you were talking is like, why does Deming use this word "fear?" I mean, it's a pretty intense word. It is something that's visceral.   0:14:00.2 JD: Yeah.   0:14:00.3 AS: You know, to be fearful is a scary thing. And...But what you're describing is the idea that if we don't think about the business or the school or the education as a system, then what we're gonna be doing is everybody for themselves.   0:14:24.0 JD: Yeah.   0:14:24.6 AS: Protecting themselves and rewarding the protection of themselves and their areas. And when you view things as a system, then you have to give space for people to do the not necessarily natural thing. I mean, it's strange to say "not natural" 'cause I also think that people want to work together. People do not wanna be pitted against other people. Nobody wants that. Nobody has that as a natural instinct. If that instinct to be pitted against other people is in someone, it's quite possible it's in them because of something that maybe happened in their past where they realized, "To survive in this situation, I've gotta be pitted against other people and gotta overcome that." But I would say that people naturally wanna work together, and it's like we come in and we put in structures that we think are good management, but actually cause people to be pitted against each other.   0:15:28.9 JD: Yeah. I think you have to draw this out a lot of times in terms of... Because I think a natural reaction for someone listening to this, for some people, some leaders may say, "There's no fear in my organization. I'm a good guy," or, "I'm nice," those types of things. But as soon as I would hear a leader say that, that would be a dark pink flag, if not a red flag for me. Because there is, without a doubt, there is fear in every single organization. Now, the level of that fear is gonna vary based on the culture at that particular organization. But there is some form of fear in every organization. If you've ever sat in a meeting and you have withheld a thought that you think that was important to share because you are afraid of what the response is gonna be from the people in that room or a person in that room, then there is fear in that particular organization.   0:16:30.8 JD: And I think a lot of it has to do with people are making judgements all the time based on the system that they are living in. They observe what happens to other people that make similar decisions or behave in a similar way. So that's why something like Appreciation for a System and Driving Out Fear, these things have to work in concert with each other, right? Because if I was gonna be held accountable at all costs, if the board and the superintendent that I were reporting to in that situation, that hiring situation, were solely focused on management-by-results or management-by-objective, and I had this let's say a performance evaluation tied to that, I'm not sure even in retrospect if I would've made the same decision. 'Cause all those things have to work together to facilitate the individual's being willing to collaborate like this. The system has to facilitate it. I think that's sort of the point that all these principles have to work together hand in hand in order to bring something like Drive Out Fear to fruition.   0:17:45.9 AS: And I think one of the hardest things for people that are new to this thinking is that almost everything that we do drives in fear.   0:17:55.4 JD: Yeah. [chuckle]   0:17:57.2 JD: It's "I want results. We're about accountability around here." And there's plenty of schools I'm sure that put up a sign like "Personal Accountability," and, "We want measurable results and I don't want to hear excuses and you're not responsible for another department. You're responsible for your department." And it's just everything that we are given, and everything... We are rugged individualists, particularly in the American sense. That's kind of the foundation. So to come and say, "I'm not so concerned about your individual, I'm concerned about your contribution to the whole team," it just doesn't happen that much.   0:18:41.0 JD: Right. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I think the first thing you have to do as leaders is recognize that fear is present in your organization, and then the next step is sort of figuring out the pervasiveness or severity of that fear. And a lot of that's, again, determined by the culture of your organization. But I think it is a natural byproduct. If you're doing anything that's the management-by-objective, management-by-results, performance appraisal, rating and ranking; if you are doing any form of those things, then there's no doubt that fear is pervasive in your organization. Because you're incentivizing people to optimize their individual classroom or their corner of the organization, whether that's classroom, grade level, an individual school building within a system, a department within the system, whatever it is; you are optimizing that behavior versus optimizing the aim of the the total organization.   0:19:39.0 AS: And the last part of this that I just wanted to think about was, when someone first hears this and then they start seeing the connection between personally incentivizing people through performance appraisals and merit pay and these types of things related to individual performance, the first question is, what do I do instead? I got performance appraisals and I've got pay for performance and I got beliefs about accountability and all that. And maybe a good way to wrap up this Drive Out Fear is kind of, what are some steps that you can do instead of or in replacement of or maybe you don't even necessarily have to replace something? What are your thoughts about how you can help somebody who's just coming aware of all this stuff but is a little bit overwhelmed because they're used to the traditional structures?   0:20:39.0 JD: Yeah. That's a good question. I think one thing is this idea of you have to... If you are a management or a leader or set of leaders, you have to stop blaming employees and looking at problems as systems problems instead of problems of individuals sort of serving in the system. So that may be one of the hardest things is that, then if that's true, which I think it is, then faults of the system are the responsibility then of management 'cause they're the ones that have the authority to design the system, redesign the system, change the system. I think that there has to be some type of concrete mechanism by which, in a school system whether it's teachers or students, that they can ask questions and offer suggestions for improvement. There has to be that mechanism in place.   0:21:31.7 JD: It doesn't mean that every suggestion necessarily leads to a change in the system, but there has to be a system in place that elicits those suggestions, and then some type of follow up. "I heard this. I studied it with you. We're not gonna make this change but here's the reason why." Or, "We looked into this. We studied it together over time. We gathered some data and this is actually a really good idea and we're gonna change that." So one very concrete, small thing that I do for every improvement team and every committee I lead in an organization, there's always sort of a meeting tracker document. And one of the tabs within that is just a Google Sheet. Each meeting is on a tab. One of the tabs is always a parking lot, where that every member of that committee or every member of that improvement team can drop in suggestions for improvement all along so we could make improvements in real time if we need to. So that's one very simple thing that I do. And then I also have a written record and for committees that I lead year in and year out, I just constantly, continually improve them over time based on those suggestions. So that's one concrete thing.   0:22:44.7 JD: A bigger thing for management, I think, is because things get hard when you get into a time crunch or a high stress situation, it is easy to sort of make decisions based on, "It is just easier short term to do this." So ahead of that, what I would strongly suggest is have a written set of guiding principles. That's why I like the 14 principles so much because they are a concrete written set of principles you can fall back on and you can then... You can test any idea or any direction that you're moving against those sort of foundational principles. And if the principles are violated, then you know you're moving in the wrong direction. But it's much harder to sort of do that in the high stress situation where you're reacting to something. In the absence of those foundational principles, you're more likely to sort of take the easy way out. So that's a little bit of longer process to put those principles in place. And I think that's probably a concrete thing that a leadership team or a superintendent and the board can do, so that you can facilitate having the Deming philosophy take root in your organization.   0:24:03.0 AS: So let me summarize what we've talked about in this Principle 8 about Drive Out Fear. The idea of course is to drive out fear for the effectiveness of the system, the school system, the business, whatever that is. And you talked about having the ability for people to... People to have the ability to express ideas and ask questions and make mistakes. And you mentioned that Dr. Deming said, where there is fear, there will be wrong figures. And you said, a lot of made-up data.   0:24:35.2 JD: Yep.   0:24:36.1 AS: That you see a lot of made-up data or that's what we end up. And we talked about sources of fear and we talked about tyrannical boss and possibly yelling and threatening. Those are like overt types of fears. But you also talked about subtle versions like internally driven, maybe ratings and rankings. People are fearful of speaking up. Or maybe they're externally driven by the test scores that your students get in maybe state tests as an example. And then we wrapped up by trying to think about, what are some ways to improve the situation, particularly for someone relatively new to this. And one of the things you mentioned is allowing employees or teachers to make suggestions on how to improve. And you also talked about having the written set of guiding principles which is what you've created through your book.   0:25:29.2 AS: And I like that one because that also is a longer term way of building some constancy in the business. But I just really want to end my summary by saying, for those people who are listening that think, "I haven't heard of this Deming stuff and I'm dealing with all these different problems but it's a bit overwhelming," so I think the best way to end my summary of this is - if that's the case, if you're in that situation where you're just starting to adopt this type of stuff, just start with stop blaming employees.   0:26:01.8 JD: Yeah.   0:26:03.5 AS: Anything you would add to that?   0:26:05.0 JD: Yeah, just taking that mindset of, most of the things that you're seeing are not a result of individual employees but rather they're created by the system itself. So three words. When you run into a problem, what's the system? What's the system? In the vast majority of cases, 95% plus, it's the system that is producing those results, not the individuals working in the system.   0:26:32.5 AS: Well, John, on behalf of everyone at the Deming Institute, I wanna thank you again for this discussion. And for our listeners, remember to go to deming.org to continue your journey. You can find John's book, "Win-Win: W. Edwards Deming, the System of Profound Knowledge and the Science of Improving Schools" on Amazon.com. 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."

Perfection may be your goal, but unless you create an artificial environment, you're not going to get it. David Langford and host Andrew Stotz discuss how good managers/teachers let go of perfection and, instead, understand variation, then work on the system to produce better and better outcomes for everyone. TRANSCRIPT 0:00:02.6 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 discussion with David P. Langford, who has devoted his life to applying Dr. Deming's philosophy to education, and he offers us his practical advice for implementation. The topic for today is a discussion and a continuation of our discussion of Dr. Deming's 14 items that he discusses in The New Economics about the role of a manager of people after transformation. Today we're talking about point number 11. And that is, "he does not expect perfection." So we titled this one, "Are You Expecting Perfection?" David, take it Away.   0:00:51.8 David Langford: Great. Good to be back again, Andrew. Thank you.   0:00:53.7 AS: Indeed.   0:00:54.9 DL: So, yeah. Five simple words for a whole podcast. So what, what is Deming talking about here? Well, I think underneath these five simple words about expecting perfection is the whole concept of understanding variation and understanding systems, and understanding psychology and understanding how do you implement new theories and come up with new ideas and innovation. And that's Deming's concept of Profound Knowledge. And if you don't have some Profound Knowledge and understand basic statistical variation, then you do go about thinking, "Well, I can just, I can just expect perfection." I remember Deming talking about this point and saying, "I don't... " And I don't know if I have this exactly right. But he said, "I don't demand perfection, but I'm happy when I get it" or something to that effect.   0:02:04.0 DL: Meaning that when something just turns out perfect, you know, that's fantastic, but that doesn't take into account the variation in people and systems and process and everything that goes into a system. So basically in a school, in a classroom, I mean, one of the ways you can, you can get perfection, have everybody score 100% on a test or something like that, is to have students cheat. [chuckle] Because then everybody can get the same answers and do the exact same thing and there's no variation and there's no reason to have any discussion or anything like that. And actually, that actually happens in classrooms.   0:02:55.4 DL: If you make the expectation so high and then you create an artificial scarcity of top marks by grading on a curve or, or there's only one, one winner of a system, then the only way some people can get there is to cheat, is to do something. I remember a friend of mine got his MBA, Master's in Business Administration, and the environment was so competitive that when the teacher would give an assignment, the students would immediately run over to the library and check out all the books that had to do with that assignment, so other people wouldn't be able to learn. [chuckle] And because you know they're expecting perfection, expecting you to master this to get this. And it's really interesting because when people do things like that in systems, we often wanna blame the people without first blaming the system and basically, you as the manager of that system. So a teacher in a classroom, if you're not getting the perfection that you wanna have, you want to think about you know, "What am I doing? What can I be doing differently that might get us closer and closer to more and more people getting those top marks?"   0:04:31.5 DL: So when I first started learning about this, and this point actually really goes to Deming's work in education about grading, grading systems, and him talking about eliminating grades and so on and so forth. I went through the same process, because I couldn't stop giving grades, or I wouldn't have a job any longer. So I had to think about, "Well, I could stop...I could create processes whereby more and more people could get that A or could get that perfection or could get that top mark." So I actually went to my principal and asked him, I said, "Is there any state law or school rule or anything else that prevents all students from getting an A in my class?" And he laughed at me [laughter] and said, "Oh, no, it's not possible, but we'd love to have all the kids getting A's." Well, at the end of that year, I think out of the 134 students, I saw that I had I think about 132 A's. And as soon as I pushed that button and turned in my grades, the principal was in my room in about 10 minutes.   0:05:41.7 AS: Ding, ding, ding, ding, ding.   0:05:42.8 DL: "What are you doing?" [chuckle] "What are you doing?" And the academic counselor was right with him, and he said, "You're destroying the whole grading system." I said, "Well, thank you very much. That was my aim." But yet you'd have to think about if you want more and more students to get top marks, or whether you call it an A or whatever you wanna call it. By the way, sometimes I work with districts, they say, "Oh, we don't have grades anymore, so we just rank kids, four, three, two, one." [laughter] So it doesn't...   0:06:18.0 AS: That's smart.   0:06:19.6 DL: It doesn't matter. Yeah. It doesn't matter what you call it, yeah, you're still doing the very same thing. But you have to think about, "What would I have to do if I was to get every year more and more and more students to get those top marks?" Well, I would have to manage differently. I would have to let people... If they got something wrong, I would have to let them learn about it, right? And go back and fix it, and make it right. I remember talking with Dr. Deming about his own classes at New York University, and I said, "Well, what do you do?" And he said, "Well, you know, you're supposed to write a paper on something. And I read that and sometimes I'm a little concerned about what people have written or what they've done, and I'll say, 'We need to have a chat about this and talk about it.'" He said it's also a very good chance that they've come up with a different way of looking at things and a new idea that you didn't even think about, right? So it's not a matter of just doing it exactly the way, you know, the teacher wants it done. So anyway, that's my take on this.   0:07:40.2 AS: While you were speaking, I went on the Google, which is now our new brain. And I'm afraid that I feel like the definition of perfection or perfect has been changed. I haven't looked at it for a while, but it says, "Make something completely free from faults or defects." Okay? That kinda makes sense. That's what I always thought was perfection, but it has a further part. It says, "Or as close to such condition as possible."   0:08:12.2 DL: Ah, yeah. That's very Deming-esque, free of fault or defect. And Deming used to lamb-blast programs that were trying to teach people to be defect-free. And and I think that goes a lot to this very same point of thinking that you're gonna get perfection on things, not understanding that the normal variation that's in every system.   0:08:38.5 AS: So I think I've got my interpretation is for this one, "he does not expect perfection, he expects a distribution of outcomes."   0:08:52.1 DL: Yes.   0:08:54.6 AS: That's the way I would see it. That we understand that it has nothing to do with perfection, it has to do with understanding the outcomes of a system and the distribution or the variation of those outcomes. And when you truly understand that, it's much more valuable and important than understanding or sitting there and going, "I want perfection." So that, that... You talked about variation and stuff, to me, that's really a key thing that I interpret from this.   0:09:28.3 DL: Well, if you take any process, whether that's in a school or company or military or anything, and you implement this process and you have some kind of data on how did it go? What was that distribution of who did it really well, and the people in the middle, and some people at the end. Basically you look at the average performance and say, "Am I happy with the average," right? And I always tell teachers, "If you're happy with your average and you know it, clap your hands," which is [laughter] basically what you have to do. It's just to take a look at and using some Profound Knowledge. You look at the situation and you realize, "Yeah, I am happy with that average." Let's take for example, maybe you gave a test or you did something and everybody scored between 85 and 95, and the average was 90, right?   0:10:22.6 DL: But you know that you're probably going to revisit the same material two or three times coming up. Well, it, it doesn't make sense for you to spend a whole bunch of time trying to get everybody to get a higher score right now, because you know that your Profound Knowledge tells you that you're gonna be revisiting this later on. And that's what Deming's talking about here. And basically if you're not happy with your average and you know it, okay, then don't blame the students, because 98% of the reason you're getting the results you're getting is coming from the system itself.   0:11:06.6 AS: I was just thinking about a rocket that I believe Russia recently sent a rocket to the moon, and it ended up crashing, from what I remember reading. And it made me think about aiming for perfection and aiming for that one absolute outcome, when in fact there's a range of outcomes. And particularly when you're shooting something to the moon [chuckle], you know, like, and it may just be that there's a little mountain...   0:11:34.7 DL: Complexity of that, yeah.   0:11:36.2 AS: Yeah. There's a little mountain right there that you hadn't planned for, and how are you adjusting for various potential outcomes and understanding that rather than just pinpointing and saying, that's where we're gonna be 'cause chances are you're not gonna be there, so.   0:11:53.5 DL: Yeah, it's probably a good analogy. I imagine if you ask people that had been around NASA for what, 40, 50 years, et cetera, and ask them, how many perfect flights did you ever have? I would bet a large amount of money that they would say zero, [chuckle] because there was variation and complications of every single flight.   0:12:19.8 AS: Yep. Yep. So, I'll wrap this up by challenging the listeners and the viewers out there to focus on that distribution of outcomes. Someday one of those outcomes may be perfect but most days or almost every day, it's not gonna be, it's gonna be a distribution. And so if you do not expect perfection, rather focus on the distribution of outcome, I think you're gonna be in great position. David, on behalf of everyone at the Deming Institute, I want to thank you again for the discussion. As always, it's fun. For listeners, remember to go to deming.org to join, continue your journey and list...listeners can learn more about David at langfordlearning.com. 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."

When we answer a question with "it depends" we are asking for more information about the possible variables that will inform the answer. In this episode, Bill Bellows and host Andrew Stotz discuss how, in the Deming world, "it depends" can trigger improvements in processes or products and services. TRANSCRIPT 0:00:02.6 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 discussion 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. The topic for today is, in this episode 10, It Depends, Rethinking Improvements. Bill, take it away.   0:00:34.6 Bill Bellows: Rethinking improvement, yes.   0:00:38.3 AS: You're always teasing us with your titles, Bill.   0:00:43.2 BB: I hate when that happens, I hate when that happens. No, I uh, what I would tell managers when I was doing these one-day seminars all over Boeing for year after year after year after year, and the managers would wanna know, so what should I expect from the people afterwards? And I said, or I would warn them, I said, here's what's gonna happen, just so you're ready. I'd say, you're gonna hear a lot more of people saying, "It depends." 'Cause to me, Andrew, "it depends" is the beginning of an appreciation of a system. So Andrew, you and I are going out to dinner and then you say, would you like to have some wine? And I say, sure. Then you say, red or white? And I say well, it depends Andrew, what are you having? Right, I mean, so to me, it depends is an understanding of what Ackoff would call interactions, that I cannot order the wine without knowing the meal. Planning a wedding, we can't order the food without knowing the guest list, can't order the music without going to the guest list. The colors of the flowers depend upon, the color of the tuxes depend upon it. And what is that? It is looking at things, not in isolation, but as a system. So when I tell my students, graduate and undergraduate is, you already manage systems, you already manage interactions.   0:02:09.0 BB: You don't use that word, but you couldn't plan a vacation without looking at things in context. You couldn't run errands on Saturday morning without knowing what time the store is open, what time... So, so I think we have a natural proclivity of looking at things as a system, quite often, quite often. It could be better. But I... So I just throw out, I just, I mean, if somebody asked me a question on a topic I've never heard about before, what I find is, one is I think, well, how would a red pen company, a me organization, a last straw organization look at that? And they'd look at things in isolation. Which reminds me of an Ackoff quote. He says, "getting less of what you don't want doesn't get you what you want." So we're gonna drive variation to zero, and when I was listening to the last podcast, it was talking about this driving variation to zero. You can't go to zero, 'cause Andrew, cloning does not produce identical, twins are not identical. So for those who think you could drive variation to zero, you can't. Get under a microscope and you're gonna see differences in snowflakes. The question behind reducing variation is, is it a worthwhile investment, which gets us into this continual improvement thing.   0:03:32.6 BB: But, so whether we're reducing variation to zero, reduce... Eliminating waste, eliminating non value-added efforts, what Ackoff asking is, he is challenging us saying, getting rid of what you don't want, what is it that we want? And here I had a great quote from a good friend, Dr. Deming, he says, "it would be better if everyone worked together as a system with the aim for everybody to win."   0:04:00.2 AS: He was saying, win-win before everybody was saying it.   0:04:06.3 BB: Well, what I like about that quote is, did the word quality appear in that quote? Did you hear the word quality anywhere in there, Andrew?   0:04:14.8 AS: No, I didn't hear it.   0:04:17.1 BB: Huh. And Dr. Deming was that quality guy, right?   0:04:20.9 AS: Mm.   0:04:22.4 BB: So he's got quotes that don't have to do with quality? [laughter]   0:04:25.0 AS: Yeah, and so that's one of the things that I think people come, when they first come to Deming, they're looking at, they're thinking of quality in terms of tools, you know...   0:04:35.6 BB: Tools, techniques, yeah...   0:04:36.8 AS: And then they find...   0:04:37.1 BB: And so part of the reason that I wanted to throw that quote out is, to reinforce my point, that I look at what Dr. Deming is doing, is providing guidance for how to manage resources, time, energy, money, space, equipment, tools and techniques, ideas, as a system. And the ideas as a system, is the idea that things are interdependent; I depend on you, you depend on me. And I think the better we understand that, you realize is that improved quality, what he would call quality, would come from that, improved safety would come from that, improved profit would come from that. Again, Ackoff would say, you know, profit is the result of how well we work together, which is how well we manage resources and the idea of being deliberately proactive, deliberately reactive, we talked about last time. And I also made reference last time through the term purposeful resource management, purposeful... And then also reflexive resource management, which is the "me organization," the non-Deming organization being reactive, why?   0:05:58.3 BB: I'm not thinking about it. [laughter] I just, why would I be proactive? I'm gonna be reactive. I'm not gonna work on things that are good. I'm gonna focus on the problems. I'm gonna focus on the defects. Whereas in a Deming organization, a "we organization,: I think there'd be, we're gonna be reactive, where it makes sense, it depends. When does it make sense? We're gonna be proactive when it makes sense, it depends. And another term I'm gonna throw out to build upon this purposeful resource management, which I would... I look at management as an activity, we're managing resources, we're thinking locally...   0:06:33.3 BB: Thinking globally, acting locally. And I think everyone in a Deming organization has that responsibility. You don't ask for twice as much resources as you need. So you don't, so you make sure you get things done as you would at a non-Deming company where you ask for way more than you need on everything, because you don't wanna be the bad guy, so you protect yourself. I would believe in a Deming organization, you would ask for what you need. But again, when I'm working on a project in the backyard, it involves going to the hardware store, you know, I'm gonna go there a few times that day. And, but I anticipate that. And in fact, now I get smart and instead of on one visit, and then going back, I'll say, I'll buy, if it's three different things I might need, I'll buy all three.   0:07:19.8 BB: I say it to myself, what am I doing? Managing resources. But a new term, to build upon purposeful resource management, so purposeful resource management is, "I know when I go to the hardware store, I buy more than I need. I can always return it next week and when the project is done." And that's how I manage projects. But I didn't always do it that way. So what I wanted to say is that purposeful resource management is how I currently manage resources. And then when you and I come up with a whole 'nother way of managing resources, I refer to that as purposeful resource leadership. And leadership is about creating a path for others to follow. And you say, holy cow, I should do the same thing, you know, in my part of the organization, again, where it makes sense.   0:08:05.2 BB: So whether that's focusing on an ideal value when it comes to improving integration or managing and improving how we manage interactions, purposeful resource leadership to me is everyone...I mean, someone coming up with a, then again, better way of doing it, and then we spread it around the organization, then somebody else takes the lead on their thing. The other thing I wanted to share with you is, is a quote from, quotes from two friends who spent a good deal of time with Dr. Deming, conversations. I met him twice, never asked him a question. The first time I didn't have a question to ask. And the second time he was health-wise, not in good shape. I just wanted his autograph. And I just wanted to just be thankful for being in the room. But Gipsie Ranney, who was the first president of the Deming Institute, and before that she was a professor at the University of Tennessee and a senior consultant at GM, she told me, she was a mentor for many years, she said she asked Dr. Deming once, she said, "so, um what are people getting outta your seminars?" And he said, he says, "I know what I told them. I don't know what they heard."   0:09:21.1 BB: And I think... And the more I thought about it, it's just I think that's part of the problem. So a big part, of what I was trying to do at Rocketdyne was to make it easy to read The New Economics. 'Cause I think there's, I think yeah, you can read it on your own, but I think the meaning you'll get being guided by others first, and that could be listening to the pod... You know, listening to these podcasts, watching videos on DemingNEXT. I think It's important to realize that there's words he's using that have perhaps a different meaning than you're using where you are at work. I just throw that out. And the other quote I wanted to share was from Bill Cooper. And Bill Cooper is approaching 90, he lives in San Diego, and he's a great guy.   0:10:07.7 BB: And I, I met him 20 some years ago and remained in touch. And he was a senior civilian officer, senior civilian at the US Navy's Overhaul facility in San Diego at a place called North Island, in the early '80s he came across Deming's work and became riveted, along with Phil Monroe, who was a senior military officer. And they went off to do Deming Consulting around the world. And, and Bill said he asked Deming once, Dr. Deming once, he said, "so what percent of people who attend your four-day seminars really walk out understanding what you said?" And his explanation, his answer to Bill was, "very few." And I think that's consistent with Gipsie, because I think you have to step back and realize that there's, there might be something more going on than what you're thinking. And I'm hoping these conversations help to spur that. Now, relative to teamwork, I had a colleague within Boeing, he was at Boeing Corporate, and somebody went by his office one day knowing that he was very fond of Deming's work and Taguchi's work. And the guy sticks his head out and he says to him, "you know the reason I don't like Deming, there's no equations, you know there's no equations.   0:11:30.0 BB: If you had equations, it means something." And so I told my friend, I said, next time the guy comes by and says that, say to him, "do you believe in teamwork? Is teamwork important?" 'cause at that time, within Boeing, Boeing's corporate slogan was "people working together as, as a one global aerospace companies"... But people working together. And I said, ask him, does he believe in working together? And he'll say yes. And then say, "so what's the equation? What's the equation?" And so I wanna share in advance of a, of another session where we get more into this, an example of teamwork. And I think, I think... I think if executives had an understanding of what teamwork is, that it improves profitability, no one would be against it. Now again, I've also come across people who think teamwork means everyone's involved in every decision, and they get turned off by that.   0:12:30.2 BB: And I'm not saying I agree with: everyone's involved in every decision. But what if, Andrew, in terms of a task, let's say you and I have to dig a trench that's 50 yards long. And I give you a shovel. That's a tool. I take a shovel. That's another tool. We start at opposite ends. And let's say we can each dig the trench at one foot an hour. So that means in one hour we're digging two feet, in two hours we're digging four feet. And so what is that? That's one plus one... One hour plus one hour equals two feet. That's addition, right, Andrew, addition. But if you're at one end of the trench and I'm on the other end of the trench, where's the teamwork? [laughter] There's no teamwork in that model. But Andrew, what if I came along with another tool called a pickaxe, and what if I get in there and start softening up the dirt? And then as it's softer, you can shovel faster. That's teamwork, Andrew. Teamwork is that you and I, again I'm changing tools, but what I'm showing is that you and I working together, my work depends upon yours, yours depends upon me. Two of us can be digging three feet an hour. So what's that Andrew? One plus one is three. My wife and I, a number of years ago, were scraping the spray off the ceiling in our hallway, and the work split was, I climbed the ladder and scraped off the acoustic spray. Right?   0:14:07.2 BB: And her job was to be ahead of me spraying it with water to soften it. And I use that example at class because we were doing far more together than the example I gave you. But if her ambition was to get to the end of the hallway before me, then the acoustic spray would be dry long before I got to it. That ain't helping. And so this is an example of would you like to be in an organization where two people are doing the work of two, or two people are doing the work of three, or two people doing the work of four or five or six. Or, or worse than that Andrew, would you like to have two people doing the work, falling behind [laughter] and get into the... 'Cause I also think people think, well, what's the worst case scenario? Two people equals zero? No, falling behind each day.   0:15:00.9 AS: Two people equal negative one.   0:15:02.7 BB: 'Cause they think well, how bad can it be? It can get better and better or worse and worse. And the other thing I'll add relative to the, "it depends" and the answer to every question. I think if you think of in a Deming organization, you're thinking about, "it depends." And so Andrew, if we're in a red... If we're in a non-Deming organization and I say to you, "Andrew, will that report be done by tomorrow?" How would you answer it in a non Deming organization, Andrew?   0:15:34.7 AS: In a non... Yes, sir.   0:15:36.1 BB: You're gonna salute and you're gonna say, "yes sir." All right. And I do this with my students and they'll be quick enough to figure out the answer is yes. Then I'll say, I'll call on a different person and I'll say, "Okay, let's say we're in a Deming organization, a 'we organization' will the report be done by tomorrow?"   0:15:55.5 AS: It depends.   0:15:57.6 BB: And they're like, it depends. It depends on what Andrew? It depends on what time tomorrow. It depends on those other five things you've asked me to do. And you might say, is this a five minute task or a 20 minute task or a two hour task? And so if you're unwilling to answer "it depends," then what's the chance the effort you're gonna apply? And so that's what I find is, I think the beauty of it is not, "it depends" is a smart-alecky response, it's trying to get a better sense of the system. And they, but I also say that I confess of thinking about "it depends" all the time. If my wife, of 40 years, was to ask me, do I have plans for Saturday morning? You know what my answer is, Andrew?   0:16:50.5 AS: For whatever you want, dear, I am free.   0:16:54.2 BB: I do not say, "it depends." [laughter] So it depends is the answer other than when your significant other says, do you have plans for...? And you say, no, I don't.   0:17:07.5 AS: Yes.   0:17:07.8 BB: All right.   0:17:08.3 AS: All right. So I got so many different things that you triggered.   0:17:12.2 BB: Good.   0:17:13.4 AS: The first one I wanted to mention was I have a friend of mine, Bevin in Bangkok, and he helped me edit my book, Transform Your Business with Dr. Deming's 14 Points. And he didn't know anything about Deming, so it's kind of fun to write it and have him going through it. And he actually worked with me side by side in my office and he was reading it and going through and editing and going back and forth chapter by chapter. And then after he was pretty deep into it, he looked at me and he says, I think I just figured it out. Dr. Deming is like is a humanist that cares about people.   0:17:49.8 BB: Yeah.   0:17:51.2 AS: And that was such a... And I think for the listeners and the viewers out there, you're gonna get to a moment where you move beyond tools and techniques into the way you think about getting the most out of a system, getting the most out of people. And that's really where you really get into the meaning to me, the most powerful part of the meaning of Dr. Deming.   0:18:14.5 BB: Well, when you start to think about the potential for one plus one, and then you realize that in a non-Deming organization, you deliver the report by, you know, without understanding the context, you deliver the part without understanding the context. You have the ability to, as we've talked, spoken before, meet requirements minimally, leave the bowling ball in a doorway and... 'Cause I say, Andrew was the task completed? And you're like, yes sir, it was completed. But to do so with the absolute minimal effort and then to realize that that then is creating a ripple effect for the next person. And what we end up doing is a one plus one is a big negative number, or you go off and get the cleaning solution, which is really, really cheap, but it doesn't cut whatever the grease is on the table. And we're saving a lot of money, but we're putting all this manpower. When you start to realize how easy it is to end up in a situation where one plus one is a big negative number, why would you treat people other than with the greatest of respect? And I've had people say, "Well, oh, so it's a feel good thing." I said, are we... Is the result at the end of the day to make... I'm not saying we're in business to make a profit, but I said if we wanna be sustainable, then the better we work together, the more sustainable we are. So, do we wanna be sustainable? And you get what you get.   0:20:00.0 AS: I had some other things that came up. First one is, for the audience out there, you may not know what Bill's talking about when he kept saying Ackoff, Ackoff. But what he's talking about is Russell Ackoff.   0:20:12.5 BB: Russell Ackoff. Yes.   0:20:15.7 AS: And I just wanna go back to an article that he wrote in 1994, and it's titled Systems Thinking and Thinking Systems. But what's critical for our discussion is his description of a system, which is very brief. So let me go through it.   0:20:32.4 BB: Yeah, please do.   0:20:33.5 AS: "A system is a whole consisting of two or more parts, one, each of which can affect the performance or properties of the whole, none of which can have an independent effect on the whole, and no subgroup of which can have an independent effect on the whole. In brief then, a system is a whole that cannot be divided into independent parts or subgroups of parts." Now, I just wanna talk briefly about my... One of my areas of expertise is in the financial markets. And I say something a lot like what you say, when I go into my class and I said it last night in my valuation masterclass boot camp, when you finish my class, you'll be less confident than when you started. If you are less confident when you finish this class, I have succeeded. Well, this is very painful and difficult for people to think about because we're going to school to become more confident. But the stock market is not like physics where we have immutable laws that we can...   0:21:52.2 BB: That's right.   0:21:52.7 AS: Grasp and understand and then watch the interplay of those laws. The world of finance is a messy ball of activity. And the fact is, is that the minute you touch that ball, you have now affected that ball. If you place a buy order, you have just affected that ball. If you maybe place a very big buy order, you've really affected it. Some people could even say that just by looking at that ball of activity, you could influence it. When you face a complex, constantly changing system, then you start to realize that we have so little...to expect definitiveness, I'm just gonna do this.   0:22:49.0 AS: I'm just gonna take care of my department, if... And you're talking about a company, you are ignoring that the system, in this case I'm talking about the stock market, but now let's take it into a factory or into a business or into an office environment. All of these component parts. And if you write an email, a scathing email and you send it into that group of people that is working in a system, congratulations, you have made an effect or an impact on that system. For better or for worse, that system must react to every interaction. It cannot be divided into independent parts or subgroups. And therefore, the typical manager nowadays, that's all they wanna do. "I got my KPIs, that's my subgroup."   0:23:39.2 BB: Yes.   0:23:39.5 AS: We'll take care of that. And they're missing the word that I love in... When I work with management teams, the word I love is "coordination."   0:23:49.9 BB: Yeah. Synchronicity.   0:23:52.2 AS: Yep. So there's a lot there. But I just wanna highlight one other thing. You made me think of a book and earlier I was looking around for that book. So I'm gonna get out that book 'cause my books are right here and for everybody that's in business that's looking at competitive strategy of your business, Michael Porter is the guy...   0:24:14.3 BB: Yes.   0:24:14.8 AS: That's the best of all. But what I can say is that Michael Porter can be a bit dry. And the lady who worked with Michael Porter is a lady named Joan Magretta and she wrote a book called Understanding Michael Porter, a simple, small book to teach all the main things that Porter teaches. But what he teaches, the most important thing is that to develop a competitive advantage in a company, you wanna build that competitive advantage in the supply chain of that business, the flow of that business. And then he talks about the importance of fit, of how different components of that supply chain fit together.   0:24:57.3 AS: That that's the right person running the right part and that they're coordinating their efforts. And when you build that competitive advantage in your supply chain through the coordination of efforts, it's almost impossible for the competitor to copy. A great example is if General Motors, if the CEO of General Motors came in and he says, what I wanna do is start building cars like Toyota. Good luck. It's never going to happen because they've built their whole competitive advantage in their supply chain and it's not something that you can just go out and replicate.   0:25:36.0 BB: Well, to add to that, and I have a...students in one of my classes watch a one hour lecture by Porter. And then I explained to them Porter's five... I think it's a five forces model.   0:25:49.9 AS: Five forces. Yep.   0:25:52.1 BB: And all of that, I think it's absolutely important to know about. What I learned from Tom Johnson, is a retired professor from Portland State University and we'll talk more about Tom in a later session. What Tom pointed out to me that I would have paid no attention to in Porter's model is, in Porter's model it's about "power over." Power over your customers. Where else are you gonna go, Andrew, for Internet? Right? Power over your suppliers, power over your employees. I think and when we get into this "power over" model, so we're gonna go to our customers, start demanding things, put a gun to their head, drive change and they're gonna respond by leaving bowling balls in the doorway when it... So what's missing in that model is... I mean, if the model's based on all white beads are the same, everything which is good, everything is, there is no variation, then it might work. But if you now go back to the humanist, if you've got people in the loop who have vested interest in their survival as an employee, their survival as a supplier, and you go to them and start wrenching them and squeezing them and driving them to...   0:27:18.4 BB: And they respond with things that are thinner and break more often or still meet requirements, it doesn't work out as well. To your point on Toyota, my sense is Toyota has a sense of relationships with suppliers, which is not mutually self destructive. I think there's a better understanding, I think, again, not that I've spoken and gone to visit Toyota's suppliers. But I'm thinking, in order to deliver what they deliver, there's got to be some sense of, shall I say win-win, because if it's win-lose... Boeing, when Rocketdyne was owned by Boeing, you know, severe downturn in the market, there was a lot of pressure within Boeing to improve things and it was a pretty stressful situation. And Boeing was going to suppliers, not only asking them to take back inventory, all those parts you bought from the last six months and we're having trouble selling airplanes. But the reason we want you to take them back, Andrew, is it's not so much that we need the space. We want you to buy them back from us. [laughter] Yeah. Are you okay with that, Andrew?   0:28:44.9 AS: Absolutely not.   0:28:45.6 BB: And I'm thinking, what's gonna happen when you go to that supply chain and say, we're ramping up, we've got customers, and we... Andrew, we need your help, we need your help. Are you there for us? And you're like, remember five years ago? Remember? You get into this rainy day friends kind of thing. It's one thing if we're mutually suffering or mutually benefiting, but anything short of that is not win... I wouldn't define it as win-win. I also want to point out the production viewed as a system, the loop, the loop model that Deming showed the Japanese in 1950. And what I've done in the past is, is I've taken a class and I said, okay, you over there, you are the beginning, the raw material comes to you and then you do your thing, hand off to the next person, off to the next person, off to the next person. Then you over there, I go around the room, and I just show the flow of work from the first person to the last person, last person is a customer. And I say, so, where's the best place to be in this situation? And everybody wants to be way upstream. And you say, why? I say, well, when people start leaving the bowling balls in doorway...   0:30:07.2 AS: What does that mean, leaving bowling balls in doorways?   0:30:10.7 BB: If they start delivering minimally, minimally meeting requirements as they hand off as they hand off as they hand off as they hand off, and that system, the last... The worst place to be is at the end. And I say, but what if what comes around goes around? What if it's actually a loop? [laughter] Now, where would you rather be? Then you begin to realize that whatever goes into the air, I have to breathe, whatever goes into the water, I have to drink. So I think what, going back to the humanist side, I think the better you understand others, and they understand you, this is not done invisibly. So when I'm in a Deming environment, leaving the bowling ball in the doorway, meeting requirements minimally without asking for your permission, you know that, others know that, and then you might call me on it.   0:31:10.3 AS: Yeah.   0:31:11.9 BB: Because instead of black and white thinking - it met requirements, we've got shades of gray thinking - you call me over and you say, "I don't know, you're kinda new here, right Bill?" And I said, "yeah." And he says, let me take you aside. You might be able to tap into the humanist in me. So one is I'd say, I think the better our understanding of what comes around goes around, the better the understanding of what a good friend, Grace used to call boomerang karma. [laughter] But let me also say that Dr. Deming came up with that model...   0:31:49.2 AS: There's a bit of redundancy in that.   0:31:49.3 BB: Say again.   0:31:49.3 AS: There's a bit of redundancy in that. Those words kind of mean the same thing. But yes.   0:31:54.5 BB: Yes. [laughter] That's right. It's like connected as a system. That's what system means. But when Dr. Deming showed the Japanese in 1950 production to view it as a system, and there's an idea of what comes around goes around. And it took me a while to figure this out. If everyone's meeting requirements minimally in that system and you end up with something where there are problems, then if your model is meeting requirements is okay, then it wouldn't dawn on you that some of the problems could be coming from how we meet requirements. And there's a story we'll look at in a future session of a transmission designed by Ford, built by Ford, also built by Mazda in the early '80s. And Ford somehow found out that the Mazda transmission had an order of magnitude fewer complaints, with the shifting of the transmission than the Ford transmission. It was the same design, but one was built with an understanding of managing the variation between the parts and how they work together.   0:33:09.8 BB: Very much as you would do if you're working in the garage, you're gonna get the pieces to come together, not just meet requirements any way. But I thought if Ford operated with a Deming model in everything, and they end up finding out that these transmissions are performing differently, well, if you go back in and check with quality and all the parts meet requirements, you couldn't explain what's going on. And you're left thinking, well, our transmission must have some bad parts. So part of the reason I throw that out is, in the world of improvement, when you shift from this black and white parts are good, what Ackoff would call managing actions, looking things in isolation, you might find that the requirements are met to one extreme or the other. And maybe if we started to mix and match how they come together, there's an opportunity for incredible improvement when you shift your thinking from the black and white...   0:34:10.1 BB: My parts are good, to how they work together. And also, how can you have continual improvement if your mental model, your mindset is things are good and bad, but if we look at things in a relative sense, then we could say our... If we look at understanding as relative, improvement as relative, then there's room for improvement. But if quality is defined as good and bad, there's no room for improvement. And relative to the title, what I want to bring out is, there's a sense among people in the Deming community, people like a few years into Deming, we can go off and improve everything.   0:34:51.4 BB: Now, what we have to be careful about is what does improvement mean? Does improvement mean having less variation? Does improvement mean having lower cost? The important thing is to look at things, right, Andrew, as a system, and then start to ask where can we spend some, where can... I look at it as a resource management model. Where might we spend an hour to save five hours, spend a dollar to save five? And that's what I refer to not as continual improvement, but rather continual investment. And so I look at in terms of managing resources is within an organization, we've got red beads, we've got things that are defective, things that are behind that are not quite good, and we can use a control chart or run chart to manage those, see those ahead of time. And so we have a fire, Dr. Deming, he said, of course we're gonna have fires.   0:35:41.9 BB: Let's put the fire out. We end up back to where we were before, which means the process is...we wanna get it from out of control to in control. But I think the better we are in responding to that, we don't end up shut down for long periods of time. That then gives us the opportunity as you would be as a homeowner... Again, as a homeowner it's the same thing. You end up with a leak, you gotta go fix it, whether it's the faucet, the toilet, but then every now and then you're thinking about, maybe I can improve how the watering system is done. Maybe I can improve how the air conditioner works. Maybe by cleaning the filter more often. And what is that to me, Andrew, paying more attention to the filter, because if I wait six months to change the filter in the air conditioner, now all of that dust is way up inside the coils and I'm gonna spend forever.   0:36:32.0 BB: But if I'm changing that filter on a more regular basis, what am I doing? I am overall reducing the amount of effort spent on this maintenance. And I just wanted to say, I don't look at that as improvement thinking. I look at that as investment thinking, and I just wanna go from, okay yes, we can go past "all the beads are white" and we know that we don't stop at a hundred percent white beads. So that means improvement is possible, it doesn't mean, I'm not suggesting let's go improve everything. What I'm next looking at in terms of, you know, how I interpret Dr. Deming's The New Economics is asking where's the stitch in time saving nine, where's an ounce of prevention worth a pound of cure? And that I refer to as not improvement thinking, but investment thinking.   0:37:22.3 AS: Yep.   0:37:23.4 BB: And that's what I was trying to say last time. I think reading to your kids is investment thinking, listening to these podcasts is investment thinking, going to a concert, I think everything we do is based somehow on, "I think that's a worthwhile use of my time."   0:37:39.0 AS: Yep. Okay. Let's wrap up. I just want to go back to the title, which was, It Depends, Rethinking Improvements, and what you said is that, if you're working in a Deming organization, it's not gonna be as definitive. When we ask questions, we're gonna get answers like, well, it depends. Everything's a trade off. We need to know...   0:38:03.7 BB: That's right.   0:38:03.8 AS: How many things... We need to know many things, as you said, before deciding what to do because we want to think about the impact of the system... On the system. And also I would argue, and I think you make this point, that this is hard and I think there's a rush to simplification in KPIs and things like that to try to corner people into little areas and little boxes. And that's destroying the system and... Or the potential of the system.   0:38:37.5 AS: And then I mentioned the word coordination, the idea. We talked about Porter and his idea of building competitive advantage happens through the supply chain. His example, one of them that he uses is IKEA that makes flat, it ships everything in flat boxes.   0:38:52.5 BB: Yes.   0:38:53.2 AS: And that has built something in the supply chain that's not easy to replicate. And so, but that also requires fits that you're designing your supply chain around a new way of thinking. And then you've talked about Russell Ackoff and also I discussed his definition of a system that's saying that nothing can be independently... Can act independently. Everything has an impact. I talked about the stock market and how that is an interacting system. And then I just wanna finish up my kind of review of what we've talked about by a discussion, Bill, that I had with my father before he passed away.   0:39:35.4 AS: And my father had a PhD in organic chemistry and he created a career all of his life at DuPont in selling, he was a salesman and a technical salesman. And he raised three kids; my mom was a housewife. And I asked my dad, what was your proudest accomplishment? And he said, I built a trusting family.   0:40:01.4 BB: Cool.   0:40:03.1 AS: And I didn't really... It hit me then, but it just hits me more and more whenever I think about that. My mom and dad never betrayed my trust. I never was in a situation where I could see that they were acting for their benefit and...   0:40:14.3 BB: Yeah.   0:40:16.8 AS: Not considering mine. So now I wanna go back to Toyota. One of the things that makes Toyota successful is that it's the quintessential family business. It is a family business that built certain values in the family business that are ongoing. Because what we're trying to do, and when we talked about Dr. Deming being a humanist, we're trying to build trust.   0:40:42.5 AS: He's telling us to build trust in the system. In other words, don't beat up your suppliers, work with them. Don't beat up your employees and make them fearful. Don't rank and rate your employees. Build a system of trust. And what I realized, I want to just go back to the story of my father, if my father had done something that was selfish only for him and neglected the impact on me and my mom or the family, he would have broken our trust. And it just takes one time to cause a system, like a family system, to be permanently broken, unless there's effort made to try to resolve that. And it's no different in a business. What would you like to add to end up this episode?   0:41:33.3 BB: No. I think that's a good point. A number of things is, and I really like the way you described that, because I thought about that recently as well as, it's one thing to have trust in others, but I think what you're saying is that a Deming organization we have trust in the system. And when you, when you lack that trust, what do you do, Andrew? You look out for yourself.   0:41:57.7 AS: Yep.   0:42:00.4 BB: Because you've learned. You've learned the hard way. You fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice, shame on me. But I think if you have trust in the system, then there may be a new direction. But you say, "I don't know where we're going, I just got the announcement, but I have trust in the system. I'm not gonna get tossed overboard." And I think you're right. When you have trust in the system of the company or of the family, then you know that you're being looked out for. And lacking that, when people say something to you, you're like, "what's their ulterior motive?" And when you start thinking about ulterior motives behind coworkers or friends, then they're really not friends for long when you start wondering about ulterior motives.   0:42:51.6 AS: And that stifles innovation.   0:42:53.3 BB: Oh, yeah. You say to me, Andrew, or you say to me, Bill, hey, what do you say we go do this? The first thing comes to mind is, what's Andrew up to now? But that's the humanist.   0:43:04.4 AS: Yeah.   0:43:04.8 BB: And what I love about what Deming is saying, and when you put psychology in the System of Profound Knowledge, is that it's an understanding that that psychology gets me to think about me and not the system. That psychology, then we're looking at also an understanding that each of us is different, that's the variation piece. Right, the theory of knowledge piece or am I willing to share my theories or hide my theories? But if you're not tapping into the... That people... I mean, the most flexible part of the system, once you pour the concrete, so yeah, the chairs are on rollers and you put casters on some machines.   0:43:40.6 BB: But at the end of the day, the potential most flexible part of the system is the people. And when you turn people into concrete, now you've got trouble. So I just wanna... And I know you've got a favorite Deming quote, so let me share with you my favorite Russell Ackoff quote, and then you could sign us off. And so to borrow from Russell Ackoff, "a system is never the sum of its parts. It's the product of the interactions of its parts. The art of managing interactions is very different indeed than the management of actions. And history requires this transition for effective management, not efficient management, effective management." And that's my closing quote, Andrew.   0:44:25.2 AS: Bill, once again, on behalf of everyone at The Deming Institute, I want to thank you again for our discussion. For listeners, remember to go to deming.org to continue your journey. And if you want to keep in touch with Bill, just find him on LinkedIn. Oh, wow, we have a lot of good discussions there and all of this stuff is posted there. Share your ideas and opinions. 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."

"Trust me!' We've all heard it, and probably said it. But how do you build a culture of trust at work, or in a classroom? David Langford and host Andrew Stotz talk about how inclusive decision-making inspires trust, and leads to better outcomes. TRANSCRIPT 0:00:02.5 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 discussion with David P. Langford, who has devoted his life to applying Dr. Deming's philosophy to education, and he offers us his practical advice for implementation. Today we continue our discussion of Dr. Deming's, 14 items that he discusses in New Economics about the role of a manager of people after that manager has been through the transformation. This is on the third edition of The New Economics on page 86, and in the second edition on page 125. Now, today we're talking about point 10, which is a simple and short point, and it reads as follows, "He creates trust, he creates an environment that encourages freedom and innovation." So we decided to title, this one, "Trust Me." David, take it away.   [laughter]   0:01:02.3 David Langford: Thanks, Andrew. Good to be back again. So, yeah, this point it seems simple when you just read through it, and it seems logical like all managers of people would want to create trust with their people, but it's not like it happens automatically, [chuckle], and I think a lot of managers of people do things inadvertently, hopefully they're inadvertently, where they create distrust and stress, etcetera. One of those most obvious things is performance evaluations, "Trust me, and then I'm going to rank you amongst people in the department, and then we're going to have a prize for the top person and/or a bonus or something else within that."   0:02:03.6 DL: And people learn that you're not really interested in improving the product, the service, the classroom, the function of what's going on, you're really interested in who's pleasing you. [chuckle] And that's how you get a promotion, and that's how you move up is like, they'll... The old saying, "It's not what you know, it's who you know." And, I think that's really the heart of what Deming's getting at here, that you're supposed to create an environment of trust. And it doesn't just... It's not a pill you take and where you just all of a sudden you can say to people all you want to "trust me," [laughter] but it's over time, when you find out, "Are you trustworthy?" And if you prove not to be trustworthy, either you can't keep things confidential or you talk behind people's backs, or you, you know, any of those kinds of things, over time people start to realize you're not somebody to be trusted.   0:03:16.3 DL: I often heard Deming say things like, "If you create an environment where people can't trust you, pretty soon you're only left with the people who can't get another job." [laughter] "Can't go someplace else, because you're just not trustworthy." Well, the same thing happens in a classroom, a classroom teacher that is not trustworthy and can't build trust among a classroom of students, won't get the very best from those students. Pretty soon they'll only do what the teacher wants to be done, and then that's it. They won't think on their own. They won't... Deming is talking about they won't become innovative in what they're doing, because you're not a trustworthy person managing the class. And so how do you do that? How do you build trust over time? Well, a big part of that to me is involving people in the decision-making process. On the previous points, in this section that we're working through, Deming talked about, the role of a good manager and a leader and etcetera, and those kinds of things. Ultimately, you still have the formal position, right?   0:04:43.2 DL: And it's your job or in some cases, you're next on the line, if you don't make a good decision. But the more you can involve people in that process of making decisions, number one, you're going to come out with a better decision, because you just get more brains looking at a situation in ways that you just never thought about before. And number two, it's sort of a double-edged sword, not only did you get a better decision but whatever decision you do come up with gets implemented to a higher degree. So when I'm teaching teachers to do this with classrooms with students, I always tell them, you know, if you involve students in a decision-making process, and let's say that it doesn't turn out well, it wasn't a good decision.   0:05:42.8 DL: You win both ways, right? Because it wasn't just your decision. And it's the same way with a manager in a company. If it's just your decision and something doesn't work, people will just let it fail, they'll just let it not work because they had no part in it. They don't really care if it works or not. And they'll just let you, gladly let you fail in some cases and not bail you out. But if it's our decision and we all use some tools and processes and took the time to actually work through and figure out the best solution to something, then if things start to go wrong, people, because they have such strong trust in you and the organization, they're going to pick up the pieces. They're going to do stuff to make even a bad decision work, because they have ownership in it, and they're a part of that process.   0:06:45.3 AS: I wanted to briefly talk about trust because, it's such a interesting word and concept that I think we may just brush over. I remember reading a book by Dr. William Glasser called "Reality Therapy", and he worked with prisoners and others through his psychiatry. And one of the things he always talked about is that a key sign of mental illness, which he didn't... He actually said there was no such thing as mental illness. He said basically the issue was that that person did not have a trusting relationship with anybody, and therefore it was so hard... So then all the mental problems and emotional problems they went through were coping mechanisms.   0:07:29.8 AS: And that really rang true. And I think about my friendships with my best friend, Dale, who we run - he runs the coffee business. And I think about the relationships with my mom and dad and my sisters, and I can say none of them ever betrayed my trust. And I think I thought that was normal. But when I talked to my father just before he died, I asked him, "What is the accomplishment" of many accomplishments, including getting his PhD and being successful and all that? And he said to me... I said, "What is your number one? What are you most proud of?" And he said, "I built a trusting family." And now as I've grown, you know, and I've looked at that more, I really realized that is rare. And I want to just highlight that trust is rare.   0:08:19.2 AS: And the second way I want to highlight that is that, I teach in my ethics course, which I just teach ethics and finance all the time at university and for CFA, what I say... I ask people to raise their hand. I ask them, think about how many people you truly trust. If you had a really... And I want everybody who's listening and viewing, let me ask this question. How many people do you truly trust? If you had a secret, something that you did not want to get out to the world, but you felt like you needed to tell somebody, how many people would you trust? And the answer to that after asking thousands of people that question is about one or two. And my point, and I say academic research can oftentimes be interpreting surveys. That's a survey. That's some research. And what does it tell us? It tells us that trust is rare. And so when I hear the word trust, and I think about what he's saying, "He creates trust, he creates an environment that encourages freedom and innovation." I think that's extremely hard thing to do, and it's not happening much in this world.   0:09:38.5 DL: Well, you want that freedom and innovation because in a company that's creating new products or new ideas or things like that, and people are freely distributing or giving you those ideas. And so unless you have that sort of fertile ground for creating new ideas and innovation, you're just not going to get there. It pretty much means that everything has to be a top-down decision-made process of doing something. And you want tremendous growth. It's the same way in a classroom. It's interesting that we think that, "Oh, we have to do great trustworthy kinds of things." But it happens in such simple ways. Like a teacher might say, "Oh, well just take 10 minutes to finish this." And, uh, then a half an hour later they return back to what they were working on and stuff. Students quickly learn, you're not trustworthy, [chuckle] 10 minutes means 10 minutes. And I often tell teachers, just have a little stop watch or a little timer or something, and when you do something like that and you say, "Okay, we're going to take 20 minutes to work on this," then just set a timer. It'll keep you on, trustworthy, and it'll keep them on track as well and people will know, okay, we're there.   0:11:15.5 AS: Yeah. And I think the other thing I would say is when you're standing in front of a group of students teaching you have to really understand that they trust almost no one. And so...   0:11:26.1 DL: Yeah, that's true.   0:11:26.3 AS: They're observing your every action. And I say that they trust almost no one from my survey of people that I've been surveying asking this question. And maybe even ask your students, ask them a question such as, "How many people do you trust?"   0:11:44.2 DL: Yeah. Well, I've been involved as a student myself, and an assignment was given or a timeline, "Have this by Friday or be ready to discuss this by Friday." And then you get to Friday and the teacher doesn't follow through. And you've put in all this work and effort to be ready for Friday. And it's, "Oh, well, we'll just put that off until Monday." Well, you're not building trust, you're actually taking trust away. Stephen Covey says, "You're not adding to the bank of trust." [chuckle]   0:12:17.5 AS: And it is a bank and it is cumulative. One last thing about trust that I was thinking about is, you know, for managers right now in businesses, and I'm sure it's the same in education, it's all about KPIs and measurements. And one of the real destructive things of these measurements is they destroy trust, because the manager of people is sitting behind a desk looking at a chart and graph and not understanding a person's situation and basically blasting them. I think that it's possible if we could get to where some managers want to be, that you could implant some sort of electrical stimulus, so that if somebody doesn't hit their KPI, you just give them a volt, you give them a shot of electricity and say, "That's a reminder that you haven't, didn't hit your KPI." And I think about the relationships that I have of trust, and none of them were built through KPI. So I like the...   0:13:23.8 DL: No point, they already you have it.   0:13:26.1 AS: Yep. Maybe a good ending point. Anything you would add?   0:13:30.5 DL: Yeah. No, it's just on the surface this seems so simple. But what Deming often talked about Profound Knowledge, and the word profound means deep knowledge and understanding. So it's taking these points that he accumulated basically over a hundred years. And he makes it so simple, "Hey, just think about this, just do this and things will get better." So, trust me.   0:14:00.8 AS: Trust me. So I'm going to wrap this up by first asking the listeners and the viewers, how many people do you trust? And I want you to think about the people around you. Are they any different than you? They probably trust one or two people. And some people will say, "I trust no one." And an important part of this point, number 10, is to recognize that trust is rare and rare is valuable. David, 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. Listeners can learn more about David at langfordlearning.com, and this is your host, Andrew Stotz. And I'll leave you with one of my favorite quotes from Dr. Deming. I just never get tired of this quote. "People are entitled to joy in work."

In this episode, John Dues and host Andrew Stotz discuss what Dr. Deming meant by "institute training on the job" and "adopt and institute leadership" (principles 6 and 7). How do you follow those principles in the context of education? TRANSCRIPT 0:00:02.6 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 discussion with John Dues, who is part of the new generation of educators striving to apply Dr. Deming's principles to unleash student joy in learning. This is episode 13, and we're continuing our discussion about the shift from management myths to principles for the transformation of schools systems. John, take it away. 0:00:30.0 John Dues: Good to be back, Andrew. Yeah. We've turned to this set of principles that can be used by systems leaders to guide their transformation work. In the last few episodes, we've discussed the first five principles, the five of the 14. Just to recap real quick, we did constancy of purpose was number one. Principle two is adopt the new philosophy. Then we did principle three, cease dependence on inspection to achieve quality. Four was maximize high quality learning, and the last time we talked about working continually on the system. And then the plan today is to talk about the sixth principle, which is institute training, and then the seventh principle, which is adopt and institute leadership. So, I figure we just dive in with principle six. So sort of the short version is "institute training on the job." And this really is training for everybody in the system. So in our system that would be students, teachers, staff, management, basically so that everyone can make better contributions to the school system.   0:01:42.7 JD: And just to clarify, when I'm talking about training, I think what it's important to know is that I'm talking about learning how to do a particular job within the system using a particular set of methods and tools. And basically the purpose of training in a system is to allow a worker or a student to know exactly what their job is. Now, we're constantly updating that training because in our world for teachers and principals, you have to constantly develop new skills to keep up with changes in whatever it may be, cognitive science, new curriculum, lesson design, new technology, better teaching techniques. Any number of things that we're training on and improving our training on on an ongoing basis. But a major aim of the training in our system is to reduce variation in methods, basically. I think no matter what type of training you get as a teacher, I think you've experienced variation in methods.   0:02:51.3 JD: And if you go to pretty much any school building in the United States, I think most educators would very quickly tell you, and I think even parents and students, you could sort of go room to room and say, yep, that's the strict teacher. That's the teacher that lets you get away with anything. So this is sort of commonly known when it comes to how teachers run their classrooms, especially on the classroom management level. Everybody knows who has the highly structured classrooms or the disciplined classrooms, but this really does cause problems when you think about it, 'cause there's this mixed message about what a classroom is supposed to look like. And I think on the flip side of classroom management is instruction. And I think there's a lot of variation there. And that's more hidden, I think, but probably possibly more important to sort of consider. And so when you have a typical, let's say an elementary school, an elementary school has three third grade classrooms, and each of those three teachers in most schools in the US, they operate pretty independently of each other.   0:04:05.6 JD: And a lot of schools, each of those teachers would have their own sort of preferred methods. And even sequencing for how that, let's say, a math class is taught. But then the problem is that some combination of students from each one of those classes in third grade that following year are gonna end up in a fourth grade classroom. And now this fourth grade teacher has to deal with this. And really the fourth grade teacher is this customer of the third grade teachers. But if each of the third grade teachers are sort of doing their own thing, then they've sort of optimized each of their own classrooms at the expense of the system. So that's what I'm talking about when I'm talking about sort of reducing variation in methods through training.   0:04:58.9 AS: So there's a few things to discuss in this that I think are interesting. The first thing is, let me just repeat what you said. The aim is to reduce variation in methods. I think most people, if they expected you to say something, they would've expected you to say, "The goal is to reduce variation in outcomes." So tell us why... Now, it may be that methods get to reduce variation in outcomes, but you're focusing on methods. So just tell us a little bit more, because also as we know, there's teachers want some independence and there's some academic independence, at least at let's say university level. They try to have more of that. But maybe you could talk a little bit more about the methods and why you focus on methods instead of just saying you do it the best you can. And one other thing I would say about that is that you could say that if you had three different teachers, different styles, some students would perform better in one style versus another. But a counter argument is, well, we're not sorting them by that to put them into those classrooms. So it's only by luck if that happens. So tell us more about that.   0:06:05.5 JD: Yeah, I think when I'm talking about methods, maybe I should maybe use a little bit different language, but I think probably the most important thing here is that the same sort of high quality curriculum is in front of students. And let's take a math curriculum, for example. Many schools, even at the school building level, there could very well be variation in what the teachers are putting in front of the students, and even in the same school, in the same grade level, let's take those three third grade math classrooms. Now, it's certainly possible that those teachers have taken upon themselves to have a highly sort of coherent system, it's also possible that their school or their district has a highly coherent system, but a lot of times what I found is that, each teacher is sort of making their own decisions, and they sort of say, I'm following the state standards, but those state standards are often general statements, and there's a lot of wiggle room [chuckle] into what you could sort of fit into that.   0:07:11.6 JD: And so what ends up happening is people go to the internet and go to various websites and they print off their preferred worksheets a lot of times. And so when I'm talking about variation in methods, what I'm mostly talking about is a high quality curriculum that's coherent and it's used in kindergarten, first grade, second grade, third grade, fourth grade and fifth grade. Now, within that, teachers have... Still have many, many, many, many decisions to make in terms of how that curriculum gets used, how they sort of adapt it to their students, how they design individual lessons, there's all kinds of room for sort of creativity, individual decision-making, responding to how your students are doing when you actually put it in front of them, but that's mainly what I'm talking about when I'm talking about variation in methods.   0:08:04.8 AS: Okay, got it.   0:08:07.5 JD: Yeah. So, I mean, I think we sort of recognized this as a school network here in Columbus, we have the two elementary schools, the two middle schools. We're a fairly young organization and our oldest building is 15 years old, our newest building is only five years old, and so because we're a relatively young organization, many of our teachers are very early in their careers. So this sort of training, having a set of methods, a set of curricula that we're training on was really important, and so we thought it was so important in fact that we actually have a three-week... It's three and a half weeks that we call a summer institute for teachers prior to the start of the school year. It's a little bit shorter for veteran teachers, but for new teachers, it's three and a half weeks and they actually just finished it 'cause this is our first day of school actually today, so we have the summer institute, and so that was important to us, we're gonna have this training program for our early career teachers, but then the question quickly becomes, what is it that we're doing during that summer institute time period?   0:09:22.4 JD: And so that's where I think this sort of deliberate thought about training comes in, so one of the things that we did is design a capacity matrix for teachers, and so we've talked about this, but just basically outlining what are the capacities that we want teachers to learn and develop during their time with us, not only as new teachers, but it's a sort of an ongoing development road map really, and we have this capacity matrix that outlines the skills, the mindsets, the knowledge that we want teachers to sort of gain over time, some of it through this summer institute, and it sort of defines, "Here's the capacities." It breaks those capacities down into things that we're then linking to specific training sessions throughout that summer institute. And it's not really an evaluation tool, it's more like a road map for, "Here are the things I wanna be working on, here's how I'm doing, here's some areas where I can go learn this even, outside the training because the capacity matrix also has readings linked, it also has podcasts or videos or books that are linked, that if there's an area that a teacher is particularly interested in, they can do a deeper dive in it, and then there's also a way to sort of track their learning over time. So that's a way to sort of add some structure to this idea of instituting training on the job.   0:10:55.6 AS: It sounds like I would be excited to sit into that 3.5 week... Three and a half week summer institute. Like just the excitement of new teachers and of prior teachers sharing their experience. I imagine that they don't get that much time to do that during the school year.   0:11:15.7 JD: Yeah, it gets tough, I mean, unless you're really deliberate about building that into your schedule because most teachers are with students obviously the majority of the day, so we have this three and a half week summer institute for new teachers, and then we also built in at least an hour a week of PD on an ongoing basis, and then we also have eight days that are so...   0:11:35.1 AS: To the listeners out there, PD means Professional Development.   0:11:38.9 JD: Oh, right. Professional Development. Yep, Professional Development.   0:11:41.4 AS: Okay. Got it.   0:11:41.9 JD: Cheers. But you mentioned teachers are excited to share what they learn, and so this summer institute has a deliberate design on that front as well. So all teachers that are in their first and second year with United Schools Network go to this three and a half week training, and then it's about half that for more experienced teachers. But the reason we do that is because early on we got this feedback that for new teachers and the amount of stuff they're trying to download on the curriculum front, on the classroom management front and other areas is basically a blur. And then they come back after living it for a year now, they're going through that full summer institute as a second year teacher, they say, "Oh, I actually can sit at a table with the new teachers and they're actually a second teacher within the training." And that's a part of the deliberate design is you've kind of lived it, you've learned it, you've applied what you learned, and now I can come back, I'm still learning as a second year teacher, obviously, early in my career, but now I have a lot to sort of pass on during each of those trainings in addition to what they're getting from who the actual trainer is up in front of the room.   0:13:03.1 AS: Well, it's interesting because I was also thinking about a production line, like a worker on a production line doesn't say, "Okay, on my shift, we're gonna do this differently." A worker on a production line learns how that process works, how it's measured, why it's important to do it this way, so that it... How it impacts the next part of the process. So whether we talk about a worker on a production line, whether we talk about a worker in an office doing software development, the fact is is that ultimately what we really want is to standardize what we're doing and then innovate over time. It's not that we don't want an employee or a teacher to stand up and say, "Okay, I think we can improve this now. Yeah, we've been doing this for a year this way, but I see more improvements that could be done." And that's where you get into this process of PDSA and thinking about how do we improve this in a methodical way.   0:14:06.7 JD: Yeah. Well, and there's two things that come to mind. So I used to be the point person on curriculum development training. I led that training in our network for I think a dozen years. And so what I would tell the first year teachers... So I had first and second year teachers in my training every year. I would tell the first year teachers, you're gonna get a curriculum that's been built and tested over a number of years. Do not touch it across the school year. And here's the reason why. One, you're learning all these new procedures and processes, you're learning this new curriculum, and you're sort of learning it just in time to teach it to students in terms of the curriculum that you're gonna put in front of students. And all of these different stages are linked.   0:14:50.1 JD: And if you start making changes in an early stage, there's sort of this waterfall that happens throughout the entire process that you're not gonna be aware of initially. And so I tell them, wait till your second year that you have the full sort of system picture in your head of your curriculum before you start making changes. And that works pretty well, and and then you'd have the second year teachers there saying, "Yes, yes, do that, do that." [chuckle] 'Cause what he is saying is, "Basically, I learned this the hard way, or you know, I thought I could do this and what happens is, I had to... I thought I was changing a lesson and that ended up meaning I had to change a unit and then I had to change an assessment that's tied to this unit and so I didn't have that full picture." So that was one thing I'm thinking of. And another thing is, you know, we want feedback on this summer institute delivery. So many of the people that are delivering this training are senior leaders.   0:15:46.3 JD: Many have been with us for more than a decade. But even just this week we got this long feedback from a first year staff member on summer institute. And an organization can respond to that in different ways. It could be, well, "Who do you think you are sending me this feedback? You just got here." But the response to that staff member was, "This is great. School starts soon, let's... We'll wait a few weeks, schedule a time so this is still fresh in our heads, and we're gonna sort of take notes on this and think about how we could incorporate this feedback into the design of summer institute next summer." And so that's sort of the continual improvement mindset, be it... Could be at the individual teacher level, or in this case it's the whole network's summer institute that we're taking a look at, but everything is on the table for continual improvement, yeah.   0:16:35.9 AS: Well, and it raises another point, which Dr. Deming talks about. I know Toyota talks about too, in the stuff that they talk about, about being a learning organization. And what does it mean to be a learning organization? The most important thing about being a learning organization, to me, is the cumulative learning. It's not the training and we do this and we have this training and we support learning and all that, it's the cumulative learning. Like you said, we've been improving this, this process, this curriculum, this teaching process over many iterations and we've gotten it to here.   0:17:14.3 JD: Yep.   0:17:15.1 AS: The objective is to bring it to the next level.   0:17:17.3 JD: Yeah.   0:17:17.7 AS: Now, you can imagine, a way to think about that is, imagine you're a new CEO, you go in and you say, "We're throwing all that out and we're going with this." And it's like all that cumulative learning is gone.   0:17:30.5 JD: Yep. Yep.   0:17:31.3 AS: Now, it's not to say that that cumulative learning ended up in the right place. That's a whole another discussion about being in touch with the customer.   0:17:40.3 JD: Yep.   0:17:41.2 AS: And making sure that you're delivering with your cumulative learning.   0:17:44.5 JD: Yep.   0:17:44.8 AS: But if you are delivering what you're supposed to be delivering to your, you know, what your customer wants, then, then it really is a matter of how do you keep that learning in your organization? And I think that's... So your three and a half week summer institute is a great example of a training method and the response about, "Hey, that's a... We are going to get all this feedback of lots of improvements, but we're not gonna do it right now, we're gonna put that together, think about it, observe, and then try to figure out, okay, one of these is particularly good." For instance, in my case with my valuation masterclass bootcamp, I'm just about to launch my 11th bootcamp.   0:18:23.9 AS: So, and I can do my iterations in about eight weeks. Bootcamp lasts six weeks, I take two weeks off, then we do it again. And I'm trying to do as many iterations as I can. And the newest iteration, after many great iterations is we are gonna test a buddy system. And we've been designing it, discussing it, looking at how do we build this into the program with the objective that the buddy system basically helps our pass rate. In other words, the people that feel like dropping out don't drop out because they've made a connection with one individual, they're already on a team, so they got a team feedback. So that is a new, just one new learning piece that we're gonna test and then see where it ends up at the end of the, you know, of the, of the six weeks. So that's an example.   0:19:11.0 JD: Yeah, that's a really good example. And I know we talked about the, that class prior, that eight-week class and... Sorry, the six week class and how it's sort of a natural sort of PDSA cycle that you're running through each of those. So you have a lot of those cycles. You just kind of keep making it better and better, you know?   0:19:28.7 AS: Well, that's what... When I heard you talk about, we'll look at that at the next three and a half week summer institute I thought, "Gosh, does it, is that," I mean, I guess that you've got improvements that you're doing throughout the school year, that you're already determined this is the things we're gonna work on, but also you have to accept the fact that everybody's probably overloaded. And so it isn't that easy to say we're gonna improve a zillion things. And that's for the listeners out there, you know, it's an important thing to understand your own capacities in your organization and to understand the cycles that you're doing through your process. If you can speed up the cycles, then you can speed up your testing and your learning. And that's something that most of the time we'll just say, well, my cycle is my cycle, but maybe not. Maybe there's some way to speed it up, 'cause I know we used to teach the valuation masterclass bootcamp every six months, and I'm like, no, it's not enough cycles.   0:20:25.0 JD: Yeah. Yeah. No, that's, I mean, being able to do those sprints like that on a repeated basis is definitely an advantage, you know. I think when I was leading that curriculum development training, so there was, it was usually a two day training, the one I was doing. And, you know, I would get some on the spot feedback. I'd say if there's something that's, I can improve to make this a better experience tell me, just write, you know, if it's something I can fix quick. That's how I handled that in the moment. And then I would have some more formal surveys and, you know, some of that feedback I could take and apply to other things that were similar workshops I was doing, you know, throughout the professional development I was leading throughout the year. And then the first thing that I did as I started making that two day session better for the next summer institute was go back through that more formal feedback that folks had left. Then I have, I have those boxes of trainings going back that dozen years, including all the feedback that I got over the dozen years. So, yeah.   0:21:25.5 AS: So let's, I think that wraps up a great discussion on principle six. And I'll just summarize a couple things from it before we move on to principle seven, which is, principle six is institute training on the job. The point is, you want to get everybody to make better contributions to the system. And training is for skills as you've talked to us about. Whereas education is maybe for the acquisition of knowledge. And training is about learning how to do a job with a particular set of tools. And the aim is to reduce variation in methods. And you talked about classroom management, you talked about instruction and you talked about the same high quality curriculum in front of the students. We also talked about your three and a half week summer institute, which is happening before the school term starts. And the value of that. And you talked about the capacity matrix where you're looking at, you know, a roadmap and trying to link specific training sessions to activities and stuff. Is there anything you would add to wrap up principle six?   0:22:26.3 JD: Yeah, it's just in that capacity matrix is, sort of begin with the end. It's, that's where we started with the roadmap and sort of then worked our way backwards to the training from that, what was the end goal, these things in the capacity matrix. And then we sort of plan backwards from there, map that back to the summer institute.   0:22:44.6 AS: Got it. And now, principle seven, leadership.   0:22:48.6 JD: Yeah, principle seven is adopt and institute leadership. And basically the aim of the leadership is to help people that are working in a system do a better job. And that's management's responsibility. And Deming here is specifically talking about shifting from that focus on outcomes or solely focusing on outcomes to focusing on the quality of learning experiences or other types of services that are being produced by the education system. I think in Deming's language, he was talking about the transformation and he was talking about this, including in the transition of managers and supervisors to become leaders. And so he was I think looking at abolishing this focus on outcome, the management by numbers, the numerical goals, performance appraisal, merit pay, and installing what he called leadership. And then, you know, he sort of operationally defined what he meant by that.   0:23:52.8 JD: But basically, you know, leadership following Deming philosophy, I think the most important thing is that leaders are responsible for creating this environment, in our case, where educators and students can have sort of genuine interest in their work and that, you know, they're supported to do it well. And I think, you know, this becomes like a mutually reinforcing activity. Meaning that if people are interested in their work and learning, then they'll wanna do it well, they're gonna accept help to do that. You know, and if we set up the conditions to help them do that well, then their interest will increase and this sort of virtuous cycle is created. But then I think in many cases we have the opposite that occurs, sort of, when we don't have this type of leadership, get this vicious cycle where people just aren't, they don't feel like they're doing a good job, their interest in work or learning plummets, and then this causes them to in turn do a poorer job, which in turn lessens interest further.   0:24:58.6 JD: And I think one of the things I think of is education sort of broadly in the United States is sort of in one of these vicious cycles. We talked about the number of new teachers that are coming into the system and then being spat out of the system each year. There's this constant churn, we're sort of in this vicious cycle where we get all these new teachers across the United States, and many of those new teachers are leaving because of dissatisfaction, not feeling like they're doing a good job, not feeling like they have been set up for success. Those types of things. And I'm convinced and that's why I wrote the book and talk about these things. I'm convinced that the virtuous cycle is more likely to occur when we transform following the System of Profound Knowledge. I think when you truly appreciate your organization as a system, you have sort of logical theories of variation and knowledge and at least a basic understanding of psychological concepts like intrinsic motivation. I think that's when you truly have a chance to transform your organization.   0:26:11.2 JD: And I talked about Dr. Deming operationally defining leadership. What was he talking, cause there's many different sort of, probably we'd have many different definitions if we surveyed a hundred people about what it means to be a leader. And there's this great resource that Dr. Deming distributed at many of his four day seminars, especially the ones closer to the end of his life called Some Attributes of a Leader. And there's sort of nine points to that really, when I go through those, they really paint a clear picture, okay, this is really what leadership means when you're following the Deming philosophy. So I think it's worth unpacking those a little bit.   0:26:56.7 AS: And do you think... I mean, where do people fall down? Where they're supposed to be bringing leadership to an organization and instead they're bringing, I don't know, something else.   0:27:11.7 JD: Yeah, something else. And maybe even people that would um, maybe sometimes display some of these attributes, I think where we often fall down as leaders is when things get tough. And that's when we actually need to double down on these attributes, these leadership attributes. And when oftentimes we sort of revert back to the prevailing system of management, 'cause it's easier, maybe maybe even get some short-term impact, but it's always worse in the long-term, and that's the problem. And these things are hard. Some people probably could pinpoint some on this list of nine that they do well and others that maybe where they struggle. And I think that's fine, but I think having this list that explicitly defines leadership within the Deming philosophy is important. So I just go through these?   0:28:11.4 AS: Yeah. Go ahead.   0:28:11.9 JD: And we can talk about... I think the first one, and we've talked about elements of all of these things, but the first one is just really whatever I'm a leader of, whether it's a department or a school or whatever, whatever business unit that I'm a leader of, I think understanding how that fits into the overall aim of the system is really, really important. How does my grade level, or how does my classroom, or how is my school, how is my school system, how does it fit into the larger system? And I think you have to know that. That's key. A second attribute would be in that recognition of where you fit in the system is that you have a responsibility to work with preceding and following stages.   0:29:02.0 JD: This is pretty easy to sort of identify in a school system. If I'm a third grade teacher, I need to work with second grade teachers. I need to work with the fourth grade teachers. And that doesn't... That type of vertical sort of work doesn't often happen in a school system. But, you know, that focus has to be on our customer, both internal and external. And if I'm a third grade teacher, one of my customers is the second grade teacher, and one of my customers is also the fourth grade teacher. I think many managers, I think sort of see as one of their primary responsibilities to motivate the people that work on their team. And I think a sort of a better frame, and this is attribute three, is that leaders should work to remove barriers to joy in work and learning.   0:29:58.4 JD: And that's a slightly different conception. Maybe it's a very different conception than, you're not trying to motivate folks. You're trying to remove things that would lead to joy in work and learning, removing those barriers, that's what your job is as a leader. I think attribute four is, you are really there when you're a leader to act as a coach and counsel, not a judge. So I think that's an easy one to default to acting like a judge when things aren't going well. And one of the things about being a leader is knowing when someone is truly outside of the system and in need of special help. And that could be an employee, a teacher, a principal, or it could be a student.   0:30:53.2 JD: It's not, when we understand variation using the sort of Deming philosophy, we're not asking are our students or our employees different, but rather are they significantly different? And that's where some of these statistical methods come in. And when you have this in your leadership toolkit, then you know what questions to ask and you also know what action to take. Sure, some students might be performing lower than others, but are they statistically significant differences? And if they are, I'm gonna react to that. I think of, there is this really great figure that demonstrate this, where you have like a bell curve and you're trying to shrink the variation of that bell curve.   0:31:44.8 JD: You're trying to move it to the right, assuming right is better performance. And then you're sort of looking, is there anybody that requires special help 'cause they're outside of that system. And then if they are, then you have to provide that. That's a responsibility of leadership. But something like a process behavior chart or a control chart can help point you toward those data points that you should be paying attention to. I think another sort of key attribute of a leader is you're obviously always working to improve teaching and learning processes. Everybody's gonna say that. But what you're doing is trying to improve those processes instead of doing the sorting, the tracking, the ranking, the grading, those types of things. So that's what I was talking about when things get hard, yout know that's what people default to because it's sort of known.   0:32:46.4 JD: Attribute seven is creating trust, which, I think that, it goes without saying, whether people do that I think is another thing. I think there's lots of different ways to do that. But a key thing when you're a manager I think is follow through. I think you don't follow through on plans, if you don't follow through on commitments, I think that's where I see a lot of leaders sort of drop the ball and people stop trusting.   0:33:17.5 AS: Let me ask you about, number four I believe was act as a coach, not a judge. What was number five?   0:33:23.7 JD: Number five was, was, I don't think I stated it really explicitly, but basically, basically using data to help them understand people and themselves. So basically using knowledge about variation to understand who, if anybody, is in need of special help.   0:33:43.0 AS: Yeah. And six?   0:33:44.4 JD: Six was, working to improve the teaching and learning processes versus relying on the sorting, the tracking, the grading, the ranking. And that could be students or rating and ranking employees too. Seven was create trust.   0:34:00.2 AS: And then seven is creating trust.   0:34:03.5 JD: Yep. I think eight is, don't expect perfection. Forgive a mistake. People are gonna make mistakes. And in fact, you wanna, part of our capacity matrix for new teachers is how do you create a culture of error with students in your classroom? And that means instead of hiding mistakes, students are comfortable, when they make a mistake, highlighting that so that we can give feedback and fix it basically. Yeah.   0:34:34.2 AS: Yep.   0:34:34.2 JD: That's learning is, you get it wrong, then you get it right. Right? But you can't do that if people are always trying to sort of protect their mistakes, that type of thing. And then nine I think is, you know, listening and learning without passing judgment on the folks that they're listening to. I think that's... Again, a lot of these things are, you know, people have heard them before. I think many people would say they do them. I think, again, in reality, [chuckle] if you got that feedback from the folks that are in your department or in your school or in your school system, you might not be doing as well on those things as you may have thought.   0:35:16.7 AS: Let me summarize this a little bit for all of us. So we're talking about principle seven, adopt and institute leadership. The idea is help people in the system to do a better job and shifting from focusing on outcomes to quality of services. And I remember when I was in university, MBO was the big thing. Now it's KPI, but MBO was management by objective. And a lot of what he, Dr. Deming was talking about is by what method? It's not just, hey, let's just agree on, what, you get the result. I don't care how you get it.   0:35:50.2 JD: Right.   0:35:50.3 AS: And then you also talked about how leaders are responsible for creating the environment. You also talked about without leadership, there's like a downward spiral. And that maybe the US is in that downward spiral. And you see that when leaders really fail is when times get tough and they gotta make tough decisions. And then finally on that, you talked about how the System of Profound Knowledge could possibly be a way out of this downward spiral and into a cycle of learning. You talked about the nine principles, number one, understand how my area fits into the larger system. Two, you need to work with the preceding and following stages. You need to understand that. Number three, work to remove barriers to joy in work. I love that. Number four, act as a coach, not a judge. Number five, use data and knowledge of variation to help people better understand. Number six, work to improve the process rather than spending your time on rating and ranking. Number seven is create trust. Number eight is don't expect perfection. And number nine is listen and learn without passing judgment. Is there anything you would add to wrap up this awesome discussion?   0:37:02.0 JD: Yeah, I mean, I think just being really deliberate with the language instead of principles so we don't confuse people. I would call those, those are attributes of a leader.   0:37:11.5 AS: Okay.   0:37:11.8 JD: Just to kind of keep that clear, and, you know, a common question for Dr. Deming, I think at his seminars, because since he railed against performance appraisal, you know, a typical audience sort of follow up question then is: "Well, how do you choose candidates for promotion?" And his typical answer was, "What better than the ability to be a leader?" And then, so what he was talking about were those nine attributes. You identify those nine attributes, those are the people that you wanna be promoting in your organization. Folks that possess those.   0:37:44.7 AS: Yes. And I would just add to that in wrapping up that, part of what you realize as you get more mature, and I think most people understand it even at a low level or starting out in a business or their career, is that no measure captures what you need. You need to make a judgment about a person as a potential leader. There's no measure that could have determined Steve Jobs' ability to create Apple. In fact, if you had measured it, you probably would've kicked him out, which they did. And then eventually he came back.   [laughter]   0:38:21.6 AS: And so...   0:38:22.2 JD: Yeah.   0:38:22.6 AS: Go ahead.   0:38:23.3 JD: It'd be a hard thing. Well, I was just gonna say, as a principal, one of the types of leaders I was choosing, it was who was gonna be the grade level chair. So that was like a teacher leader position in our building. And I knew when I worked through that process, people applied for it. And I would sort of name the grade level chair. When I didn't hear a single piece of feedback, I knew I picked the right person, because people were like, yeah, that's the person. Right? And when you get a lot of pushback, [chuckle] that's when you just sort of need to go reevaluate, does this person actually have these nine attributes?   0:38:57.3 AS: Beautiful. Well, John, on behalf of everyone at the Deming Institute, I want to thank you again for another awesome discussion. For listeners, remember to go to deming.org to continue your journey, and of course, you can find John's book Win-Win: W. Edwards Deming, the System of Profound Knowledge and the Science of Improving Schools on amazon.com. 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 learning," I'm gonna add in.

Most of the time, variation between students or workers is the result of common cause situations, but sometimes you find folks who consistently aren't performing at the same level. Does more punishment work? What should you do instead? In the episode, David Langford and host Andrew Stotz discuss how managers (or teachers) should approach these "special cause" situations. TRANSCRIPT 0:00:02.4 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 discussion with David P. Langford, who has devoted his life to applying Dr. Deming's philosophy to education, and he offers us his practical advice for implementation. Today we continue our discussion of Dr. Deming's 14 items that he discusses in his New Economics book about the role of a manager of people after the transformation. This is on page 86 of the third edition, or page 125 of the second edition. And this is point number nine. Let me read it to you before we get started. So again, for a, the role of a manager of people, this is the new role of a manager of people after transformation. Point number nine, he will try to discover who, if anyone, is outside the system in need of special help. This can be accomplished with simple calculations. If there be individual figures on production or on failures. Special help may be only simple rearrangement of work. It might be more complicated. He in need of special help is not in the bottom 5% of the distribution of others. He is clean outside that distribution. And Dr. Deming presents a normal distribution and some other things, in this chart that he presents in this one. And we're gonna call this episode: Who Needs Special Help? David, take it away.   0:01:40.5 David Langford: Okay. Yeah, this is always a topic of discussion because, there's all kinds of management theories out there, right? About, how we manage, I can't remember who, was a proponent of just getting rid of the bottom 10% of your...   0:01:57.9 AS: Jack Welch.   0:01:58.0 DL: Organization every year. Jack Welch, yeah. Notoriously wrong, with that. And, or well, "if you can't cut it, out you go." And that all sounds good until it becomes so expensive to constantly be hiring new people and replacing people. And the fear level goes up so high that you can't get anything done because nobody wants to take any risks because you really can't take a risk because you might be gone. So Deming is saying a lot really in this point, he talks about the distribution of people. Well, so first thing is you have to figure out what is that distribution, right? So how are you calculating that? Or how are you figuring out what that performance level is? Well, as a teacher in a classroom, obviously, you have tests that you're giving, you have projects that are happening, etcetera. It is actually pretty easy to see that distribution of performance in a classroom. You give a simple test on something and then you look at the test results and you start to see, okay, everybody scored on this test from 70%-100% on this test, right? So you can say, okay, that's an average of about 85 or so for the whole class.   0:03:31.5 DL: When you look at it on a histogram scale like that, what Deming is really talking about, he's not talking about just the people that were scoring at the lower end of that distribution. People that were getting 70, 75, 80, etcetera. They were all at the lower end of the distribution of that system. But what it's showing is that's the capability of the system. You did something, you did a process with people, you tested the process, the process produced that curve, and on average, it gives you an average of 85. Now deciding whether or not that's good, is good, is good good enough, that's a whole different really discussion than what really Deming is talking about here. So he's not talking about people just on the lower end of a distribution of performance. He's really talking about somebody that's completely outside of that distribution. So in a classroom, if I did something like that and we did a project or a test or whatever, and everybody is scoring from 70%-100% except for maybe two people that got 10 or 5, right?   0:04:46.6 DL: Obviously these are two people completely outside of the system. And what he is really talking about is probably no amount of adjusting the system is going to help those two people. They are so far outside of the distribution that they really do need special help. So in a classroom that can mean, this could be children with special needs, they could be hearing defects, they could be the eyesight that, I don't know how many times I thought somebody was an understanding problem. And then we find out, oh, they couldn't see, either they couldn't see to read or they couldn't see the...   0:05:31.8 AS: Something very simple.   0:05:32.3 DL: The whiteboard in front of them. Yeah. And they got tested and got glasses and everything and wow, it just made a huge difference. But obviously when you have people in a special category, it's gonna take much more time and effort individually to deal with them. Right? And that's why it's called special, special needs, right? Because you are gonna take the time and effort individually to deal with those individuals. If you don't have anybody completely outside of the distribution of performance, then you're gonna go back and look at the system itself. So in my example, everybody is scoring from 70%-100% on some test that you give them. And the average is 85. Then you have to decide is good good enough, is that a good enough distribution on this? And as a teacher a lot of that has to do with understanding where does this fit in the entire curriculum.   0:06:40.2 DL: So is this a critical skill, that if these students don't have this skill and they don't have it just down pat, and are acing it, it's gonna cause huge problems later on. So it might be worth the time to go back and sort of rework that for the entire class and see if we can get a higher average. On other things, you might look at that and say, "Oh, okay. Only I know really the whole curriculum for the year, and I know that we're gonna be revisiting the same concept probably four more times throughout the year. So this average at this time of the year is probably good enough." I often joke with teachers and say, "If you're happy with your average, and you know it, clap your hands," so.   [laughter]   0:07:31.0 DL: But if you're not happy with your average and you know it, then you have to think about, okay, well what am I gonna do about it? Do I have the time to go back and rework this? And Deming in his example in figure 12, that he's showing there, is actually talking about moving in the entire system forward. So shrinking the variation so that it's not nearly as wide as it used to be, and more people are getting a higher average within that. So how do you get that higher average? Well, prevention is the key to quality. So every time you're doing a lesson that you've done before and you're taking that feedback that you've gotten before, folding that in. And this time when I did it, ah wow, we got an average of 89, or we got an average of 93, or...Excuse me. It's really difficult when you're improving a system and you're moving that average up, each time you go through something, when you start to get up and really high levels performance, going from 93 to 94 is a really big effort.   0:08:57.4 DL: There's gotta be something really happening there to get that next level result. And do you really have the time right now to get that? Or is it a problem of tomorrow that we have to figure out, okay, what are we gonna do in this system, in the future, to get a higher average? But I didn't believe, really, this when I started working with Deming, but then I went back and looked at all the grades and scores that I had given people, and I was so predictable. Every year I had the exact number, the same number of people getting A's or doing top-level work. I had the same level of percentage of kids that were failing I had... But of course it was always their fault, not my fault, so. And so that was really eyeopening to me that all I had been doing is just basically, for five or six years I had been doing the same thing over and over, and over, and expecting a different result. And it just doesn't work like that.   0:10:05.2 AS: Yeah, this one is interesting because first of all, he's presenting us with a distribution. We can see a normal distribution, and he's presenting also a more narrow distribution, saying that the goal is to try to, maybe in this particular case that he's showing to, he says, "You wanna work to improve the system by narrowing that distribution so that..." And shifting it, as we can see, as we've talked about. But I think also in this one, if you don't understand the system, you can get caught up in chasing performance in individuals that actually are just a normal outcome. And you miss the time that you need to spend to fix that special cause that needs to be fixed. So that was one of the things I took away from it. What do you think about that?   0:11:02.6 DL: Yeah, that's why he hated practices like grading on a curve. Which is notorious, it is still is notorious in many universities, grading on a curve. And... Because that shows no understanding of performance and distribution and average performance and it takes no accountability. And for you as the teacher, it just all blame on the student. "Well, if you tried hard, you could do that." Well, no, that's not true. There's only gonna be so many A's, so many B's, etcetera. So you're not gonna ever get there, so. But really this is about... Go ahead.   0:11:43.8 AS: To understand that a little bit more, so is the problem about grading on a curve that you're constantly... You're not necessarily improving? You're just like, "Well, this group had a curve that was here on the continuum and this group had a little bit better, they were better." And what is it? 'Cause I'd say grading on a curve is something that people on initial blush would think, "Isn't that what Deming is talking about?" I mean, we see normal distributions, we see curves. Explain that in more detail.   0:12:15.1 DL: You're creating an artificial scarcity of top marks. So only... No matter how well we do as a class, there's only gonna be so many top marks or people that are gonna get the top grade, right? And so you're gonna create all kinds of competition and you're gonna create all kinds of weird behaviors that go on. You're actually encouraging people to cheat. And I can't remember if I told you this story or not, but one of my children, she was in a advanced chemistry class or something, I think it was. And she comes home the first day of school and she said, "Dad, I think this teacher would be really interested in talking with you about what you do and improvement, and everything else." And I said, "Why?" And she said, "'Cause he said, well, everybody in here can achieve, everybody in here can get an A, can do well."   0:13:14.1 DL: She comes home the second day of school and she said, "I think I'm gonna drop this chemistry class." And I said, "What happened in two days?" She said, "He came back today and he spent the whole hour of the class explaining how he grades on a curve. So there's no way in the world that everybody in here is gonna get an A," right? You're creating an artificial scarcity of top marks and it's just not gonna happen. And I said, "Okay, well, just let me know what you decide to do with that." Well, she comes home the next day and she said, "I think I'm gonna stay in the class. I'm pretty sure I'm gonna be one of the people on top of the curve." And this was an honors chemistry class and in that class, half of the kids in that class had had straight A, 4.0 averages to that point. So, there was a bunch of kids that quit, 'cause they could not risk getting even a B in a class like that.   0:14:18.0 DL: But my daughter stayed in the class, at the end of the first semester, she comes home laughing one day and she said, "Dad, you'll never guess what happened." I said, what? And she said, well, this is a very, very smart group of kids. And not only did kids keep track of their own scores, they actually kept track of other kids' scores in the class as well. And I think there were one or two kids that found out that there were a bunch of kids that were just right on the line between a B and a C or something. But if those kids failed, it wouldn't make any difference to them. They're still gonna get the same grade at the end of the semester. Even if they didn't even take the final, it's not gonna affect them one way or the other, they're still gonna get that B or a C grade that was in that. But if they did fail it would mean it would change the curve and these other top kids could move up into the top echelon.   0:15:13.3 DL: And so they paid these kids $20 to fail the final. Well, somehow the teacher found out about it and then the principal found out about it. And there was a Spanish inquisition that was taking place and then they were talking about expelling kids and all kinds of stuff, I couldn't stand it, I had to go and talk to the principal and I said, how do you like it? He said, what do you mean? I said, "They're better at managing your system than you. They figured out how to play your game better than you. And you gotta be rewarding these kids not... And recognizing amazing statistical analysis and capability, not punishing them through that process, so." I think it was the same principal that said, "I know I'm having a bad day when your car is in the parking lot," so.   [laughter]   0:16:06.6 AS: Exactly. You should have said, you should have been... You didn't even realize you were teaching 'em a double major AP chemistry and AP statistics.   0:16:17.6 DL: Yeah, absolutely. So.   0:16:19.3 AS: Well, let's wrap this up by... I think the key thing of what Dr. Deming is telling us in this is about understanding your system and then identifying if someone is outside of the system, and that person or result outside of the system is... You know, warrants some special attention or special help and that that, you can't really know that without understanding the system and also not being too distracted by the variation that's natural from that system. And therefore, ultimately, once you understand that, then you really can clearly identify that some outcome or some individual is a special cause and then you can focus in on that and fix it. And so that's how I would summarize it. Is there anything else you'd add to that?   0:17:12.9 DL: Yeah. I was just was recalling that you are... Deming explaining several times that if somebody is outside of the systems that, far outside of the system, further rating and ranking are not gonna help them at all. Giving them more failures, more Fs, docking their pay. Whatever you're thinking of doing to somebody that's completely outside the system it's really not gonna help them at all in that process. And that... That's not help. Rating and ranking and bribing people to do better is not actually helping them. You actually have to study cause or the reason why that person is special cause and then do something about it. And in a classroom, and it could very well be that this person really doesn't belong in this class. They don't have the prerequisite skills that the other 98% of the class has. And so therefore they really don't even belong in this class. So that just means you have to get them in a different class or help them in some way to get caught up or, and it's gonna take more time and effort. Special causes take more time and effort. That's why they're special. So.   0:18:31.3 AS: Well, David, on behalf of everyone at The Deming Institute, I want to thank you again for this discussion. For listeners, remember to go to deming.org to continue your journey and you can also learn more about David at langfordlearning.com. 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."  

In this episode, Bill Bellows and host Andrew Stotz talk about resource management in a non-traditional sense. Bill explains how managing the variation and integration in your product or service is just as important as increasing consistency and removing waste.  TRANSCRIPT 0:00:02.3 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 discussion 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. The topic for today is episode nine, Resource Management. Bill, take it away.   0:00:28.9 Bill Bellows: Thank you, Andrew. And thanks for our audience and thanks for joining in again. So we're picking up following episode nine, which was, I called it the Paradigms of Variation. It was, I think the title on the podcast may be a little bit different, but what we've been building up to from the beginning is, parallel tracks. But one aspect that I've been trying to bring forward is this idea of variation in the white beads. We talked about the white bead experiment and the idea that the red beads are not caused by the workers, they're caused by the system.   0:01:13.5 BB: And then what if we got to the point that there were no more red beads? Yes, we can make the red beads faster, we can make the red beads cheaper, but could we make, I'm sorry, we can make the white beads faster. We can make the white beads cheaper with the elimination of the red beads, but if we're dealing with nothing but white beads that are cheaper and made faster, can we improve the quality of the beads? And what I found is, when I press on people, they'll say, "Yes, everything can be improved. Everything can be improved. When I press, press, press, they'll say faster. They'll say cheaper. I said, "Yeah, we said that." I said, "But can they be better?"   0:01:53.4 BB: Is that what Dr. Deming's trying to say with continuous improvement that we stop it a 100% white beads? Or can we go further? And I find people get stuck. And I think it's very easy to get stuck, because that's the world we live in of good parts and bad parts. We focus on the bad to make them good. And what do they do when they're good? Well, they met requirements. But what's missing is this key word called variation. And yes, there's variation in the red beads and Dr. Deming would plot that on a control chart. But Dr. Deming also discovered in, definitely in 1960, from Dr. Taguchi who he met a few years earlier, this notion of variation in the white beads and that the, so I talked earlier also about question number one and quality management.   0:02:44.0 BB: Does this quality characteristic meet requirements? There's only two answers, remember Andrew, yes or no. But then question number two is how many ways are there to meet requirements? And I'd say there's an infinite number if you take into account, how many decimal places you can go. And that, the idea that you can have anywhere from the absolute minimum to the absolute maximum of the requirements is there's all those places be in between. That's called variation. And does it matter where you are within spec? Within spec? And again, by spec I mean specification. You've met the requirements for the activity. And so what we did in episode nine, I'm sorry, episode eight is look at what I call the Two Distribution exercise. And you may have caught me saying there are four suppliers.   0:03:41.7 BB: And at the end I said, forget about the four. There's actually two. I've done it with four, I've done it with two but the important thing is when I show people a number of distributions within requirements, and one of them will be, we'll go from the minimum to the maximum with near zero and frequency at either end to then high in the middle. And I'll say, "The middle is the ideal value." And then I'll say, let's say you also have a really narrow distribution consuming, and I said, last time, 10% of the variation, what I meant to say, and I said at least once, is 10% of the tolerance that, so you're using a very small portion of the tolerance, but you're far away from the ideal value.   0:04:27.0 BB: You're shifted to the right. And so when I give people the choice of buying from one of those two suppliers under the idealized situation, you may recall, Andrew, of same price, same schedule, everything's guaranteed to meet requirements. We've got histograms, we've got control charts. The processes are in control with all those, what Ackoff would call idealized situations. Make it really, really simple. Do I go with the wide one centered on the ideal value or the narrow one over to the right? And time again, people take the really narrow one, which we said was about, why do you like the really narrow one? Because they're more consistent. Then I explained that that's precision. And that's the most popular answer. And I'm reminded of that every time I use the exercise. Within the last few days, I've used it again.   0:05:19.6 BB: And that narrow one gets people's attention. What I find really fascinating is if the goal is to meet requirements, then why is the answer not, I'll take either one of them, which was one of the choices. You could take the wide one in the middle that covers the entire, or the narrow one. Why does it matter? Why not say in the world of meeting requirements, what's the driver behind the narrow one? Why don't people say it doesn't matter anymore? And I think because there's something about variation and consistency. I was talking with somebody the other day and they said, "Being consistent is, that's everything in terms of quality." And I said, "Not quite. Not quite." What... And this will become the focus of a later episode, that you could, ideally you could put the variation where you want it to be along the ideal and end up with improved what?   0:06:18.4 BB: The answer is improved integration. Because the very simple model we use in organizations is that if the parts are good, whether it's two parts, three parts, four parts, number of parts going together, you have to have at least two. And I say if the parts are good, then they fit. That's the model. If the parts are good, then they fit, then is there anything wrong with that model? And people are like, "No, that's the model we use." If the parts are good, then they fit. Now, if you're developing an airplane or a rocket engine, you've got a wing and a fuselage, then you've got all the parts to make the wing, all the parts to make the fuselage, all the parts that do these separate components, you could say the same thing for a play. You have all the elements of the first act, all the elements of the second act, and then you put them together for the entire play. So the point is that what I'm talking about is that integration is not black and white.   [overlapping conversation]   0:07:23.2 AS: What... Just... Can you define integration just so we can make sure we understand it?   0:07:27.5 BB: Yeah. Integration is when I'm going to put the cap onto the bottle of water. That's integration. The cap is good, the bottle is good. Now I'm trying to put the cap, which is good, and the bottle, which is good, and I'm trying to put the cap onto the bottle.   0:07:46.0 AS: Okay.   0:07:46.5 BB: Yeah. That's integration. Or I'm trying to put the, I'm trying to put two parts of something together. I'm trying to put the cap on top of the pen. What I love about water bottles as a prop is wherever I'm presenting, someone in your room will have a water bottle. And I'll say, can I use this as a prop? Sure. And I say, if all the requirements for the cap are met, what do we say about the cap? It's good. And if all the requirements for the bottle are met, what do we say about the bottle? It's good. Then I'll say, see what we're doing? We're managing parts in isolation. We're saying the cap is good, the body is good. Then I say, why don't we focus on how well the cap mates with the bottle? And I had a co-worker once said, well, if the cap is good and the bottle is good, then won't it fit. Fit as in absolute fit, right?   0:08:39.7 BB: Not relative fit ‘cause remember in early episodes we talked about black and white thinking versus shades of gray thinking. Good versus bad is black and white. Fit is black and white. It fits or it doesn't. What I'm talking about Andrew, is the idea that there's variation in good and the variation in good cap, and the variation in the good bottle show up when I go to put the cap onto the bottle. Because if the, if the outer diameter of the bottle is on the high side and the cap, inner diameter is on the low side, then I'm gonna have trouble putting the cap onto the bottle, ‘cause one's too small, one's too large. Boom. And, so what I'm trying to imply, [chuckle] not what I'm trying to imply. What I'm stating is fit is not absolute.  It's relative. Integration, which is about fit, is relative. And I don't, did we talk Andrew about a hundred percent…?   0:09:41.1 AS: Wait a minute. You gotta say that again. I didn't catch that. I know many of our listeners are a little faster than me. But say that again about relative versus...   0:09:56.6 BB: Okay, so what I'm saying is the fundamental model we're using is if the cap is good of the water bottle and the bottle is good, then the cap will fit onto the bottle. It'll fit when you go to...   0:10:05.7 AS: Yep.   0:10:07.8 BB: Put the, put it on it fits just like that. What I'm talking about…   0:10:12.1 AS: And when you say fit, are you using that as a general term in a system or are you just talking specifically about the cap?   0:10:17.8 BB: No, no, I'm really, I'm glad you brought this up. What the suggestion is that fit, there's only one degree of fit. It goes together you know with a, technically what we're talking about is how much torque is required to screw it on, how much force is required. And so fit is about how much force is required to screw it on. And the implication behind them being good and fit is that they always fit the same. So the model is that parts that are good fit together the same way each time. And that's not the case. So there's a... And I, one of my first exposures to this was reading a book by David Kearns and I mentioned this, I don't know which episode. And I said that Frank Pipp, an assembly plant manager at this Ford factory had his assembly team routinely buy competitor's cars and put them together.   0:11:19.4 BB: Because at the Ford plant, most of the time when they're putting parts together, they needed rubber mallets to bang them together because they didn't quite fit. And, so they needed help. And the help was the hammers to bang them together and out. Every now and then two parts went together without a hammer. That means fit is easy as opposed to hammers, which means fit is difficult. So imagine you've got everything between I can put them together, with little effort at all to I need a hammer to bang them together. That's degrees of fit, which I'm saying Andrew is degrees of integration.   0:12:00.4 AS: Okay.   0:12:01.2 BB: And, so the point I was trying to, what got me excited about Taguchi's work and then really excited when I saw Dr. Deming realizing it, is that when I came across this a hundred percent snap fit Toyota pickup truck story account, I thought, well, holy cow. And I found in listening to these podcasts that I use a expression quite a bit.   0:12:24.1 AS: Holy cow cow, holy spicoli.   0:12:26.3 BB: Holy... Holy cow, Andrew [laughter] But what was cool is this Ford plant has discovered that Toyota, where I know Dr. Deming had some influence, but some influence, okay, what influence? that's a whole ‘nother topic, but I know Taguchi had an influence there. So I'm looking at that with my understanding of variation and thinking, that's incredible. And brought that awareness to my coworkers at Rocketdyne. And we developed, with, I provided the education, they provided the hands-on go make it work. They developed hardware that went together beautifully. And why is this important, Andrew? And this is one of the things we got to in the end of the last podcast is if you would like your customers to have products that go together easily if they're assembling it or going together means that it, this product fits well with how they use it.   0:13:22.7 BB: That the car starts each time or the stopwatch, whatever they're using, works really well, which means there's degrees of performance. That's what excites me about the idea that if we can pay attention to the variation, we can either have designs that require hammers to assemble or we can design them to go together well. And, and all of this is to say that's what prompted me to get people excited by the paradigms of variation to get them to better understand that a mindset of meeting requirements is different from a mindset of precision, which is different from a mindset of accuracy. And what I've just repeated is Paradigm A is meet requirements. Get the darts somewhere on the dartboard. Meet requirements be anywhere within the requirements. Paradigm B is this idea that we're striving for consistency, incredible uniformity, otherwise known as, as precision.   0:14:30.7 BB: And, and there may be a place for that. But what Dr. Taguchi's talking about is different than that, that's precision is Paradigm B. Paradigm C is trying to be close to target. So that's taken the distribution, which is precise, and then finding a way to adjust it to be on the bullseye. And what does that gain us, Andrew? That, well, first of all, I would say when we're working at home looking for, working on the recipe, trying to get exactly one cup of flour, exactly 350 degrees, exactly one hour in the oven.  As we pay attention to how close we are to those values, chances are we're gonna end up with an incredible product. And that's, we're trusting that the person who developed the recipe has done that.   0:15:23.2 BB: But so whether it is woodworking or working on any project, it could be making things out of cloth where you're, you’re putting together some outfit out of cloth that my father used to do for my sister when he was in the textile business. That is about the idea that things come together well is about accuracy in improving integration. And that's what I find the Deming philosophy offers an understanding of what does it take to inspire an organization where, where it takes the people working on their different elements, not to meet the requirements any way they choose, but to meet requirements in a - ready Andrew - synchronous way. So you and I are on the soccer pitch, and it's not about your position, it's about my position and your position on defense that we're trying to win the World Cup.   0:16:25.2 AS: Yeah.   0:16:26.4 BB: And so all of that is about the Paradigms of Variation. Go ahead, Andrew. You were gonna say.   0:16:29.0 AS: You referenced sports and I was just thinking about how easily we work together in team activities, team sports that are just, clearly great teams are the ones that integrate each individual's doing their own personal work and they're doing training and they're improving themselves, and then they're practicing together. How do we bring this together into an integrated system that then wins?   0:16:54.9 BB: That's right. And so when you say bring together, that's what integration is. It's bring together, right? And we're looking, we we're screened a bunch of candidates on the phone, now we bring them in for face-to-face interviews. What are we looking for? Why isn't it enough that they meet the requirements that are on the website? We wanna know which of these potential employees is the best fit with our team, whether it's to play first base, or play senior researcher. Are they a fit? They may be very consistent in what they do, but is that consistency...I mean, they have to be, their consistency has to mesh what we want. So they may be consistently tardy, they may be consistently dominating the meeting, but what we want them to do is fit into the meeting.   0:17:50.0 AS: And the other thing that I always think about when I hear you talking about this stuff is, I think about when I was younger, when Lexus came out, if you remember Lexus, when they first...   0:18:01.8 BB: Absolutely.   0:18:02.5 AS: Launched...   0:18:02.5 BB: Oh yeah.   0:18:03.7 AS: Their great video or the great advertising was stacked up champagne glasses...   0:18:09.5 BB: Yes, yes.   0:18:11.6 AS: Onto the hood of this car. And then they lifted the wheels off the ground and then, or not off the ground, but like they had a roller that they were rolling it on, and then they revved that car up to as fast as it could possibly go, and those glasses did not fall. And you know the only way you can get that is by improving not only each individual part, but how those parts work together with the end result being less vibration, less friction.   0:18:39.9 BB: Yes.   0:18:41.1 AS: All of those things.   0:18:42.0 BB: Yes. Exactly.   0:18:42.5 AS: And you couldn't do it by just improving one part.   0:18:45.6 BB: That's right. And that's a great example because together you've got minimum vibration. That's not an accident. That's they have figured out how those things come together to have an incredible product, which is consistently, it works consistently. But the consistency, there's nothing wrong with consistency. Consistency is not the issue. But it, the issue is is the consistency we're talking about striving for precision or accuracy. So a car that consistently doesn't start is consistent, but that's not helpful. I want a car that consistently starts, right? I wanna be consistent around... I want you to bring your consistency in concert with others' consistency where those consistencies matter, you know? And if we don't need you to be consistent, then that's okay. Then we save money by having lack of consistency because why have consistency if you don't need it? But all of that's about...   0:19:50.6 AS: It's hard. It's hard. Consistency is hard and fit is hard.   0:19:55.4 BB: Yes. And, and, and, to build upon what you just said, consistency is about managing variation as a system. And so, another thing I wanna point out, and I got some comments from some friends about, you know, the last podcast.  The Paradigms of Variation are about the paradigms of white bead variation. So, so, Paradigm A is we've got variation within the requirements and, and is that okay? Is it enough to have variation in requirement? It doesn't matter where we are? That's Paradigm A. Paradigm B is precision. We're consistent, but we're not around the ideal. That's accuracy. And then paradigm D is....and I was searching for the word, the expression Dr. Taguchi used. He calls that Technology Development, that we're developing an advanced technology for use in... And I, the example I used last time is, let's say we're fac…we’re developing a new way of making tubes for plumbers to use.   0:21:07.6 BB: And I said in the beginning let's say we just have one inch outer diameter tubes, and that's Paradigm C because everything we make is one inch outer diameter tubes. And then somebody comes along in our research labs and comes up with a novel way to make tubes of different sizes. That's variety. So they can make them down to quarter of an inch, half an inch outer diameter. And then what we're doing with what Paradigm D is about is developing the technology that allows us to be really accurate around all these different values. That's what Dr. Taguchi calls Technology Development. I called it Paradigm D, he called it Technology Development. And in the world of sports, we talk about sports. That's the ability of the soccer player to kick the ball, or I should say a football player. [laughter] To put the ball anywhere in the net during at any time. Whether it's...   0:22:03.6 AS: That's within spec.   0:22:05.4 BB: Yeah, it's so the goalkeeper goes one way and they can hit any point in there. Because if you come up and the goalkeeper knows, oh, here comes Andrew, Andrew's gonna go to the lower left 'cause that's all he knows how to do. But you don't think I know that as your opposing goalkeeper. I know Andrew, Andrew's gonna fake, but I know what Andrew's gonna do. So the Paradigm D is in sports is the ability to move the ball around. If you're the pitcher, if you're the tennis player, and that's how you become a professional athlete, is that ability to move it around. That's Paradigm D. So, years ago, and this, I was developing this and sharing this, refining it with co-workers.   0:22:44.4 BB: And I was at a Deming Institute conference. True story, in Washington DC with Tim Higgins, a co-worker, and got a call from a really good friend, Jim. So Jim calls up and Jim was in this professional development program within Boeing doing a lot of travel. Every time he called, he was somewhere different in the country doing some really cool stuff in this incredible program to develop next generation leaders. And he definitely fit the mold. So he calls me up and he says, so he says, Dr. Bellows, have you discovered Paradigm E yet?   [laughter]   0:23:17.9 BB: I said, Jim, there is no E. He said, yeah, there's letter A, there's letter B, there's letter C, there's letter D. Oh, so there's also E. I said, Jim, A meets requirements, B is consistency anywhere, C is being on target, D is being on any target. I said, there's nowhere else to go. I said that we've run out. He said, we haven't run out of letters. [laughter] So I said, so he pushed on me and I pushed back. He pushed on me. We literally pushed on each other because I kept saying, Jim, you're you... Let's find another topic. No, no, no, no. I wanna hear about Paradigm E. And then it dawned on me, and I can remember it like it happened yesterday.   0:23:58.8 BB: And every time I have lunch with him, I say, Jim, I give him a big hug because I could not explain with the Paradigms of Variation, why would I pick up a nail in the parking lot, right? Why would I pick up a piece of glass in a parking lot? '‘Cause I viewed that as minimizing loss to society, that if I pick up the nail, prevent the flat tire, pick up the piece of glass, prevent the flat tire. I am, to quote Dr. Taguchi, "minimizing loss to society." But I don't know how to put that into his loss function, which is a subject of an of a future episode. And the idea of the loss function is there's an ideal value somewhere within the requirements. And the closer we are to the ideal value, the better the integration, and therefore the easier the effort.   0:24:55.2 BB: And, so now I'm stuck trying to say, so Jim's poking me, and I'm thinking, I'm stuck trying to explain everything through Dr. Taguchi's loss function, which is looking at the impact of variation relative to meeting requirements. And it dawns on me, and what Jim is saying is, I'm stuck in the world of variation. And, so when he mentioned...as, as he pushed and pushed and pushed, and it dawned on me that there's another whole world called managing, not... There's managing resources. I'm sorry, managing variation is Paradigms A, B, C, and D. What Jim got me to do that he called Paradigm E, and later we called it Resource Management, he realizes variation is a resource. Variation is a result of how we define our processes. There's managing cost.   0:25:52.3 BB: What is the cost of what we're doing? How much time is required? So, I look at resources as all the things we have in our organization from people to equipment to software to hardware and tools and techniques. Those are all resources. And picking up a piece of glass in the parking lot is a way of managing resources to improve the system, just as being on target is a way to improve how resources are managed. I started, I just jumped back and thought, holy cow, it's bigger than variation. And I think Dr. Deming really had this in mind. It's not just about variation, it's about the system includes variation, but it also has resources. Again, people, time, ideas, money. How do we use our money? That's a resource.   0:26:39.4 BB: Are we using, 'cause the other thing that was bugging me was are we using our money to improve things that are good? No, we're using our money and our time and our resources to focus on what is bad to make it good. And so that's what started off as Paradigm E then became Resource Management. So that's the genesis for Paradigm E. Managing resources is, should I get a college education, right? Should I exercise? How often should I go to the doctor, right? How often should I go shopping for groceries? Should I go shopping every day on my way home or should I go once a week? Those are resource management questions. Should I have a garden in my backyard? Should I buy the groceries? What's a better use of my time when I'm running errands?   0:27:33.2 BB: So on Saturday morning, I'm gonna run out and I'm gonna pick up the dry cleaning, go to the drug store, go to the veterinarian, pick up something for the cats. Do I do each of those randomly, come home and I say, what do I do next? Or Andrew, do I line up the errands and figure out what time the store opens? When do the lines occur? What time does traffic start to pick up? Am I making right-hand turns or left-hand turns? And I find what I do is I'm trying to figure out how do I get all these things done as fast as possible? And that directs my route. What I'm I doing, Andrew? I'm managing resources.   0:28:11.7 AS: And you remind me of the book I'm reading right now, Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson.   0:28:16.8 BB: Yes, I listened to it, it's fantastic.   0:28:18.9 AS: Yeah, and there's just these times that Steve Jobs would just go into an absolute focus into some minute detail that all the people around were thinking that, and rightly so in some cases, that he was wasting resources, the resource of time. But there was another component that I think they couldn't see maybe was the passion that he was conveying to people around them that this matters.   0:28:48.0 BB: Yes, well, I don't know if this story shows up on that book, but that book was a fantastic read, oh I just loved it. Do you know the subject of Walter Isaacson's next biography? I don't know when it's due, but the very next auto, biography that Walter Isaacson is doing, take a guess who it is?   0:29:07.7 AS: No idea.   0:29:08.4 BB: Elon Musk.   0:29:10.9 AS: Oh, great.   0:29:12.7 BB: Yeah, yeah. So I think Fortune Magazine had an article that Jobs, well, first of all, let's go back, let's say 15, 20 years when I would go into work with others and we'd turn on our computers and then go get a cup of coffee. You know what I'm talking about, Andrew? You know where I'm coming from?   0:29:35.4 AS: I remember that very well.   0:29:37.8 BB: And why are we going to get our coffee, Andrew?   0:29:41.1 AS: Man, it takes minutes to boot up.   0:29:43.1 BB: Yes, so because we're going to go, we gotta turn on the computer and it's going to take minutes, five, 10 minutes. And for those of you that are, I mean, really, now we're so used to turning on the iPhone and it comes right up. Yeah if you shut off the iPhone, it may take 30 seconds to turn on, but you start your computer and it, from scratch and it's within 30 seconds, your computer's up and running. No, what we're talking about, Andrew, is you go into the office, turn on the computer, go get a cup of coffee, talk with some friends, you come back in 10 minutes, your computer's up.   0:30:18.9 BB: So Jobs supposedly went to people that were working on that boot-up system and told them that if we could shave a few seconds off of the boot-up time, multiplied by the million or so users around the world, we can save society big numbers. And the person that went off and did this, or the team that went off and did it, went way beyond what he was talking about, but he's the one, he Andrew, saw that as a loss. All right, so when you're banging things together at the Ford plant and I come in on day one and, Andrew, what are you doing? You're like, and you're banging things together. I said, "Andrew, why are you doing that?" And you say, "Bill, this is how we assemble cars here." I said, "Andrew, look at those calluses on your hand." You're thinking, "Bill, you'll get used to it, but this is how we put things together." In the world of automobiles, this is how you do it, Bill." And I think, "Geez, I don't think it needs to be done that way." And what's fundamental here is, and again, the whole idea of the loss function, the integration loss function, we'll look at in a future episode, but what I want to point out here, Andrew, is if I believe you that banging it together with hammers is as good as it gets, then there is no loss.   0:31:51.6 BB: Meaning that as soon as I say that's as good as it gets and I stop, then I'm saying that this is how we do things here. But if I come in and look at that with an understanding of Taguchi's work and how to manage variation as a system or manage resources as a system, I have the capacity to look at that and say, as Jobs did, and say, "I think it can be better." And the difference between what it is and what it could be is loss. But as long as I look at what we do and say, "That's it, let's stop right here." Then what I'm saying is... What I'm acknowledging is that, that's okay. And so what I was looking for within Rocketdyne and got the president of the company to agree to this is finding some people that I was mentoring for several years and their role was to go around the organization and look for loss.   0:32:54.8 BB: And, loss is the ability…Ready Andrew, to look at what is in terms of integration and wonder what could be. And then look at the components and then ask, "Can we change the variation of the components to improve integration?" And of course, the big question is, is it worth the effort? But it's having the vision that the integration and I think that's a great example. The integration is all that time we're spending waiting is not only is it lost, but that's integration time. [laughter] Bingo. So, the next thing I wanna point out before we close is... So this conversation with my friend Jim got me out of being stuck on the loss function and then stepping back and saying that's... There's... It's a global thing. It's all about managing resources, which also means it's more than quality. It's not managing quality, it's managing resources.   0:33:51.8 BB: And if we improve how we manage resources, quality goes up, integration improves, all these things improve. Well, the next thing I wanna point out is, I started thinking in terms of a model that says, how do we allocate our resources? Again, resources are time, energy, equipment, software, ideas. How are we using them? And the first model I had in mind was, are we applying... Are we allocating the resources proactively or reactively? Are we applying the resources to go to the doctor for annual checkups just to see how we're doing. We're going to the dentist for an annual checkup. Are we having somebody come by and look at our plumbing system and getting a feeling for how is it running? Are we taking the car in for routine things. Or are we reactive? We call the plumber when it breaks, we go to the doctor when we're sick. We bring the car in when it's broken. And, so what I started focusing on is what is our preference? How are the resources being allocated?   0:34:55.6 BB: And, without a doubt, what I found is the majority of the resources, time, energy, equipment are being used reactively. Focusing on things that are broken, not good. And, and I would go into big production meetings and say, "How much time are we... How much time do you ladies and gentlemen spend every day discussing parts which are good that arrive on time?" And, no matter where I went, the answer was “little to none.” And, so what I found is the resources were being used reactively, reactively. Now, let me also throw in that if the company's doing research and developing, developing next generation products, that is proactive use of resources. But what I also found is for the products that are in production, rarely did anybody ever come to me for something in production and say, "This could be better."   0:35:52.0 AS: Mm-hmm.   0:35:53.1 BB: That's rare. So the other dimension of this model. So the first dimension... I was just... In fact... It wasn't till I discovered Taguchi, Deming's work that got me to realize this is focusing on things that are broken is the norm. It wasn't just where I work. I started to see that pattern play out elsewhere. Well, the other axis of this resource management model, so the vertical axis is... Are the resources being applied proactively or reactively? So that's let's say the vertical axis going up. Top versus bottom. The horizontal axis are, is are the resources mine or are they ours? Is it my equipment, my people, my department? Or is it ours, Andrew? And so on the horizontal axis, the left hand side is the resources are mine, my department, my, my, my... And the other side of the horizontal axis is ours.   0:36:53.1 BB: And so in this two dimensional model, the vertical axis is, are the resources applied proactively, that's the top. Reactively, that's the bottom. If you think of a two by two matrix, the top row is proactive, the bottom row is reactive. And then when it comes to columns, so the left hand column is the resources are mine. The right hand column is the resources are ours. So we've got a two by two matrix. And I say to people, so given your understanding of Red Pen and Blue Pen companies, me and we organizations, last straw, all straw. I say, according to that matrix, how do you see resources managed in a Red Pen Company, a non-Deming company? And people will say the lower left quadrant, which is what, which is my resources applied reactively. Right?   0:37:43.4 AS: Yep.   0:37:44.9 BB: And then I'll say, "Okay." [laughter] And the name for that is... And it took a while to come up with a name and you're gonna love this. We started calling that at Rocketdyne, Reflexive Resource Management. Reflexive Resource Management. Because a wise man, born in Iowa in 1900, Andrew [laughter], by the name of W. Edwards Deming, once said, pulling your hand off of a hot stove requires no thought. It's all reflex action. When I saw him and that, I don't know where it was, I said, but I know he said that. And I thought, that's it. It's all reflexes. There's no thought involved. Why are we reactive? Because! I mean, why would I be proactive? I mean, why would I work? So when I started realizing is there's no thought involved in being reactive in a Red Pen Company. It's just that's what we do. So then the question is, well, how are resources managed in a Blue Pen Company? A We Organization, a Deming organization. And, what people will say is the upper right quadrant, which is proactive ours, the resources are ours.   0:38:56.1 BB: We're gonna be proactive. And wherever I go, that's people's answers. And I say, you, are you ready? And okay, what? I say, the entire right hand side is a Deming organization. What does that mean? It means I'm smart enough to know when to be proactive, and I'm smart enough to know when to be reactive. I choose, I choose to replace the light bulb when it goes out, it's a choice. Or I choose to replace the battery in the smoke alarm when it goes out. I, being reactive in a Deming organization is a choice. Being proactive is a choice. And so the right hand side, it's about choice. And it took some time to figure this out. What do we call that? What do we call this? So we call it the left hand side, the left lower left quadrant, Reflexive Resource Management. So it took a while to find out what's the adjective for the right hand side.   0:39:55.6 BB: And I come up with an adjective, find out that it's an acronym used by somebody for something else. No, can't use that. Try it again. Try it again. Try it again. Try it again. Try it again. It took about an hour to, at least an hour and finally came up with a term used by the Bureau of Land Management in the late 1800s. And it, and it's, it was known as Purposeful Resource Management. And I thought, bingo! One is nobody's got a trademark on it, [laughter] And so we started calling the deliberate use of resources to be deliberately proactive, or we choose to be proactive, or we choose to be reactive. We started calling that purposeful, thoughtful resource management.   0:40:45.5 AS: Yeah, that choice. It made me think about there's a lot of things in business that you just, your choice is to be reactive. When that breaks, we're gonna fix that because it's not so critical, whereas we cannot have a situation where we're reacting to this particular process. Like, think about my coffee business as an example. We cannot be reactive to downtime on the roasting machines. Well, we're not just waiting for that. We're doing preventive maintenance. We've got stocks.   0:41:17.7 BB: That's right.   0:41:18.5 AS: Stock of parts. We've got, so we make a deliberate effort and resource allocation to make sure we never in that situation, but there's other parts. Let's say we have a few grinders and something like that, we'll fix those when they break. [laughter]   0:41:35.0 BB: Yeah. Well, I've shared this with a woman who, the hairstylist I go to. My kids used to go there and I've been going there ever since. And she is awesome. Just awesome. So I, these are the things I discussed with her, all kinds of things. And so I have a photograph of her, Andrew, holding a hairdryer in her hair salon. And the hair salon is called Kids Cuts because a good part of her business is kids. And then people like me bring the kids in there and next thing you know, I'm a customer, too. Well, so I'm explaining this to me and she says, "Bill, every 6 months I get rid of all the hair dryers". I said, why? She says, "I cannot afford to burn somebody's hair". And so, so I've got a photo of her holding it, so she doesn't monitor how it's performing.   0:42:24.1 BB: She just knows 6 months, get rid of it now. You know, does she donate it? I don't know where it goes. And I don't wanna get into recycling, but she deliberately, she's not gonna burn somebody's hair.   0:42:35.0 AS: Right.   0:42:38.1 BB: Alright. And, what else? Oh, but you and I talked earlier in one of the episodes, this idea of choice, that instead of following the domain that says you can't have inventory, we gotta have blah, blah, blah, you realize this? No, we can choose to have inventory, or we can choose not to have inventory. And so what we're talking about in resource management is, which gets into all those things we talked about earlier, is it's about choices. And so I would say to people, I've got a slide, then I say, it's like you get to the end of the road and you turn right and turning right is being reactive.   0:43:21.3 BB: And I say, Andrew, I've been patterning you, and you get to the end of the road and you turn right, you're always reactive. Why do you turn right? And you say, "Bill, there's only a right-hand turn". And I said, "No, Andrew, there's a left-hand turn, but you can't see it. It's in your blind spot". So the right hand turn is to focus on what's bad, to make it good, what Ackoff would also call managing actions. And that's the road that's well traveled, [laughter], the road less traveled is the left-hand turn, which is to be proactive, again, when it makes sense. I'm not saying being proactive all the time, I'm saying there's a place for it. Consider being proactive, consider being reactive.   0:44:04.0 AS: So, on that note, I think we ought to leave. Why don't you leave the listeners and the viewers with a concise statement of what you want them to take away from this discussion. We went through a lot of different things, but if you wanna bring it down to something clear and concise, how would you describe that?   0:44:24.5 BB: I'd say the, um…I'd like, I'd encourage our listeners, viewers, students of the Deming philosophy, those new to it, to expand their appreciation of quality management and realize that to managing resources period. And the better we manage our resources in our organization, knowing when to collect data, when not to collect data, when to meet requirements, when to be on target with minimum variation, when having lots of variation. Should we be proactive or re…. These are all choices. And they're, and I think the better we understand those choices about how we manage variation as a system in concert, I think the better the performance of the organization and improving productivity, improving quality, improving profit. So I think all those things we're striving for come from a better understanding of how to manage resources. And so instead of just being narrowly focused on the quality dimension, I think if we step back and realize that that's one aspect of how an organization operates.   0:45:42.4 AS: Bill, on behalf of everyone at the Deming Institute, I want to thank you again for this discussion. And for listeners, remember to go to Deming.org to continue your journey. If you want to keep in touch with Bill, just find him on LinkedIn. This is your host, Andrew Stotz. And I'm gonna leave you with one of my favorite quotes from Dr. Deming, "People are entitled to Joy in work."

In this series, John Dues and host Andrew Stotz discuss principles that educational systems leaders can use to guide their transformation work. This episode covers principles 4 and 5: maximize high-quality learning and work continually on the system. TRANSCRIPT 0:00:02.5 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 discussion with John Dues, who is part of the new generation of educators striving to apply Dr. Deming's principles to unleash student joy in learning. Today is episode 12, and we're continuing our discussion about the shift from management myths to principles for the transformation of schools' systems. John, take it away.   0:00:34.4 John Dues: Andrew, it's good to be back. Yeah, like you said, we've sort of turned to this set of principles that can be used by educational systems leaders to guide their transformation work. Two episodes ago, we sort of kicked off the principles, gave a little bit of an introduction. We talked about principle one, which is create constancy of purpose. And then the last time we talked, we kind of broke down two principles. Principle two was adopt the new philosophy, and principle three was, cease dependence on inspection to achieve quality. So in this episode, I was gonna sort of take on the next two, the fourth and fifth principles. So the fourth principle is, maximize high quality learning. And the fifth principle is, work continually on the system.   0:01:28.6 JD: So I thought we'd sort of kick things off with principle four, that idea around maximize high quality learning. And I think sort of... If I was gonna capture that principle in just a couple sentences, I would say, you wanna maximize high quality learning and minimize total cost of education by improving the relationship with educational institutions from which students come and to which they matriculate. So, we're thinking about a single source of students coming into a system, such as an elementary school student moving into a middle school, and seeing that as an opportunity to build a long term relationship of loyalty and trust. So that's sort of the overarching idea. And I think if you sort of look at this principle through the lens of United Schools Network, where I work in Columbus, Ohio, I think that's sort of a helpful lens. And when you think about our origin story, we started as a single middle school serving a few east side neighborhoods, near downtown Columbus. And I was the founding principal, school director of that particular campus.   0:02:55.3 JD: And at the time, we decided we were gonna open a middle school, 'cause this is the point often in a student's educational career where they fall so far behind, they often then drop out of school altogether just a few years later. So we wanted to get them in middle school. So, before we were this sort of network of schools in the school system, we were this one school that grew from serving just sixth grade over the first few years to sixth through eighth grade, right. And when you looked at these east side neighborhoods where we were located, there were 15 or so elementary schools from the city school system that formed this sort of de facto feeder pattern into our middle school. Most of those schools were performing in the bottom 5% of schools in the state. Which means when those students then matriculated to our middle school, they typically did so in... The typical kid was at least two, but more often three and even four grade levels below where they should be when they enrolled with us in 6th grade.   0:04:18.1 JD: And, while I didn't have this Deming lens at the time, I did sort of approach things from a process standpoint, from a system standpoint. But, as the middle school principal, I'm thinking about sort of all that entails to run a school and a new school at that, so we're doing all the things that come with a startup. There was no way for me to run around and form relationships with the 15 principals leading those elementary schools from which our students were primarily coming from.   0:04:54.0 JD: And so when we had this opportunity to grow from one school into a network that's now four schools, we elected to grow down into elementary schools. The point in doing so was to move towards this sort of single supplier relationship, that Dr. Deming outlined in his point four. And so now, we have two middle school principals, two elementary schools in our network, and they can work together on a whole host of sort of quality characteristics, like vertically planning curriculum across that K to eight pipeline. And, we were middle schools first and then elementary schools, so while we're getting some of our students from our own elementary schools we're also still getting students from other non-USN schools, non-USN elementary schools, but we're sort of increasingly moving toward that single supplier model. And I think that coordination is one of the ways that we can then maximize high quality learning, and the great thing about this is that we then minimize the total cost of education.   0:06:14.6 JD: And I think this is one of the important paradoxes of Dr. Deming's work, in that, as quality goes up, price goes down. Which that's sort of the opposite of what a lot of people think. In the case of schools, what we're talking about in terms of minimizing cost, a lot of that has to do with less remediation of students as they sort of increasingly come from those USN elementary schools and they're not as typically far behind when they arrive to our middle schools as they were previously.   0:06:54.1 AS: And for our international listeners, and also just for a refresher for myself. Is middle school what we... I used to call it junior high, I think I called it. But what is middle school and elementary as far as your grades and ages?   0:07:09.7 JD: Yeah, that's a good question. Middle school is six through eight for us. So sixth, seventh, and eighth grade. And then our elementary schools are kindergarten through fifth grade.   0:07:19.4 AS: Got it.   0:07:23.1 JD: There's also this sort of... I think when Deming wrote his point four, his version said, "End the practice of awarding business on the basis of price tag. Instead, minimize total cost, move toward a single supplier for any one item on a long-term relationship of loyalty and trust." So I sort of translated Deming's framing to one that applies directly to students as they move through that K-12 pipeline. However, there's also this second component to this principle that's more sort of directly analogous to Deming's point, and it's definitely applicable to the business side of running schools. And this is the idea of ceasing dependence on price tag alone when we're selecting curriculum or technology or supplies or any number of goods and services that school systems regularly buy. I think the main ideas here, is to understand that difference between the lowest bidder and the lowest qualified bidder. And I think one of the things that Deming pointed out on this side of things was that basically price has no meaning without a measure of quality being purchased, including that after sale service. So I think that's a key point as well.   0:08:44.7 AS: When did you guys open the elementary schools?   0:08:48.6 JD: Yeah, so it sort of unfolded over time. So the first middle school opened in 2008.   0:08:55.2 AS: Right.   0:08:55.3 JD: Second middle school 2012. And then we moved toward elementaries in 2014 and 2017. But a key thing here is, when we open new schools, we sort of have a slow growth model where we typically open with just a single grade level. So they can sort of put systems and processes in place, hire staff, recruit students, that type of thing. And so it took about five years before those elementary schools were mature enough that they were actually feeding to the middle schools.   0:09:32.1 AS: So let's say 2020, 2019-'20 and then onwards, you're starting to get the students from the elementary schools, was there a significant difference? How would you describe the difference in what you received, from your elementary school versus... In other words, did it deliver on what you had hoped?   0:09:56.8 JD: Yeah, I think we have work to do there. But for the typical student that's coming from our elementary schools, one, they're very familiar with our routines, our procedures, our sort of school culture, the way that the school's run. A lot of those students often have older siblings that are either in our middle school or had been in our middle school and are now alumni. And then academically we see a difference as well, especially for those students that started early in elementary, like in K-1, 'cause we take kids at all grade levels. But for those kids that started K-1 and went all the way through our system and are enrolling now six years later or seven years later in sixth grade with us, the difference is stark. Both from a sort of student traits and responsibilities and sort of student academic side of things.   0:10:52.0 AS: And how does that changing... Ultimately what I think about... Toyota is a good example. And in Thailand here, Toyota has a huge manufacturing base. And part of what's so critical to that manufacturing base is all the supplier relationships that come with that. So they're surrounded by their suppliers and they've built great relationships with those suppliers. In a sense, you just happen to own that supplier in this case, but whether you're owning the supplier or whether a listener or a viewer is saying, "Okay, I need to build a better relationship with the suppliers that I have." The question I have in your case is, how did that change the final result at the end of middle school? 'Cause ultimately what you're trying to do is get your final output of your system to be better over time. I'm just curious, how has that reflected in what comes out?   0:11:48.8 JD: Yeah, I think it has a dramatic impact because so much of education and what a student is ultimately gonna do, is sort of... I don't wanna say determined, maybe a little bit too strong of a word, but maybe not too far off, by that sort of early education foundation. Specifically, did you learn to read proficiently. And when students were coming to us in middle school without that foundation in reading, it makes it really, really hard now that when you get to a point in your schooling career where things have shifted from being sort of learning how to read to, you are reading as a part of the learning process. And we did some intensive interventions before we had elementary schools to try to catch kids up, especially on that reading front. And those are really hard sort of interventions to sort of put in place when a kid is 12 or 13-years-old when they're getting those interventions. Not to say that they can't help, but the older the student is, the farther they've gone in their educational career, the harder that is.   0:13:02.5 AS: And I guess the majority of public educators are dealing with that all the time. People popping into their district and all of a sudden... Coming from many different sources and all of that.   0:13:16.1 JD: Yeah. Yep. And in some places that's more than others. That sort of coming and going tends to be associated with certain conditions in which the school sits and the community in which the school sits, where there's higher poverty rates, there's more movement. So one stat that jumps to mind on this front, in Columbus City schools, which is where our kids would have gone had they not come to us, were geographically within that district's boundaries. In any given year, 30%, nearly one out of three kids changes school buildings during the year, which is just an overwhelming number, an overwhelming amount of transition. That's just within a year, that's not even across multiple years. And so that's why this sort of single supplier [laughter] relationship is so important, because we're trying to push back in an opposite direction.   0:14:23.1 AS: And is there ever a chance that you could have all of your students come from your elementary program? Or is that unrealistic or is that happening or can happen?   0:14:35.5 JD: Well, right now it really can't happen, and that's mostly due to the size of our building. So in our elementary schools, there is basically two homerooms per grade level. So there is two fifth grade classrooms, let's say. But in our middle schools, there is at least typically three homerooms in 6th grade. So no matter what, right now, about a third of the kids would be new in a typical school year.   0:15:07.2 AS: So capacity matching?   0:15:09.2 JD: Yep, capacity matching. Yep.   0:15:11.6 AS: Okay.   0:15:12.1 JD: That's right. That's right.   0:15:13.2 AS: That's a great explanation of the methodology you're using. There's people who are public school teachers that may be listening to this and going, "Oh come on, I can't do that." Well, yeah, you're gonna have different challenges and limits, but you can start to build those relationships with the schools that are bringing students to you and trying to do the best that you can with that. Because we know that... What Dr. Deming taught was that fixing things at the beginning of the process is the way to do it. Because if you're trying to solve the problem at the middle or the end of the process, it just grows exponentially more complex, difficult, more costly. And that's the reason why a high quality means low cost. Wait, what? Yep.   0:16:01.0 JD: Yeah. And some public schools do this really well, and they, for all intents and purposes, already have this set up. But sometimes I've seen even in places like a smaller school district that maybe just has one elementary and one middle - high school building. I've been to a place where I have heard people say, "I never even thought about leaving our building and going to see what they're doing in the high school." And part of it I get, you're a teacher, you're kind of stuck in your classroom, it has to be facilitated for you to have a sub or whatever, but it's not an overwhelming barrier. And I think it's a very valuable exercise to have some of that cross movement between buildings. And I don't think it's actually that hard to do. And the good thing is, in most school districts there's geographic proximity, so that's not a barrier. But someone has to say, "This is important and we are gonna do this."   0:16:58.1 AS: I think it reminds me of my discussions with Bill Bellows, where we were talking about... Also on the podcast, and trying to talk about the idea of thinking beyond specification and thinking beyond... And asking the question, "How is this product or service being used by the next part of the process?"   0:17:18.4 JD: Yeah. Right.   0:17:19.0 AS: And looking forward, you find that even if you think that you're doing really well, you all of a sudden find that there is a huge amount of opportunity to improve in just that one step forward in the process. All right. Well, does that bring us to work continuously on the system?   0:17:39.0 JD: Yeah, I would just say, the takeaway here for me is developing those partnerships with suppliers. Whether it's on that sort of K-12 pipeline side, or if it's more like Deming's version of point four, where you're actually making purchases for the school system. And I think... A change in thinking for me was that the suppliers are a part of your system. Whether they're internal or external to the governance structure of your school system or your business, the suppliers are actually a part of the system. And thinking about them that way is really important. And I think both those approaches are keys to helping maximize high quality learning and then minimizing that total cost. And when I actually started to think about that, even though we didn't, again, think about it through this Deming lens early on, we have a number of vendors that sort of operate like that. Our IT vendor, our food services vendor, have been with us since day one in 2008 when we started.   0:18:42.0 JD: And you'll see their employees doing things here almost like they work here. They almost feel like an employee. So at least in certain cases, we've been able to develop those types of relationships on sort of more on the Deming business side of things as well, and I think that's just as important.   0:19:00.8 AS: There is an interesting business in the US that is a model for that. And that is... So, to talk about business aspect, a company called Fastenal, that makes fasteners and many different things that companies need. But they changed their business model many years ago to basically, rather than having a warehouse and distribution, and you order from the warehouse and all that, they actually set... They go into your factory, and they take over your whole inventory, and they run your whole inventory department.   0:19:30.6 JD: Interesting.   0:19:30.7 AS: And the benefit for you is that you don't own the inventory anymore. So you could have a million dollars in inventory in your factory, and all of a sudden that all goes onto their books.   0:19:39.4 JD: Wow.   0:19:40.2 AS: And the second benefit is that, you only have the cost of that inventory at the moment that you take it out of their system, and then put it into the operation that you're doing.   0:19:50.8 JD: Interesting.   0:19:51.2 AS: And that is this relationship, this super close relationship of that supplier actually working at your facility. And it's amazing.   0:20:05.0 JD: Yeah. This shift a little bit from antagonistic. "I'm trying to get the lowest price out of my suppliers" to, "Wait a second, I need to get the highest quality at a fair price, and I'm gonna work with you on an ongoing basis to make sure whatever I'm buying from you on an ongoing basis is high quality as it comes into my system." That's a much better way to operate than the sort of the antagonistic feel.   0:20:31.3 JD: Yeah, so I think that's a good transition point from principle four to five. So principle five is, work continually on the system. So as I was gonna sort of sum up this principle in just a couple of sentences, I'd say this one is improve constantly and forever the system of planning, teaching, learning and service to improve every process and activity in the organization, and to improve quality and productivity. It is management's obligation to work continually on the system, whether that's school design, curriculum, incoming supplies and materials, technology, supervision, training, retraining, whatever that thing is.   0:21:13.0 JD: And if you think back to when we talked about principle one, principle one and principle five are very similar, and that they both talk about improvement of the system and processes over the long-term. The distinction would be that, principle one is talking about constancy of purpose, the aim of the organization, and this in turn facilitates this principle, principle five, continual improvement of systems and processes. Sort of a key idea that you mentioned I think even in this talk is that, we have to keep in front of mind that quality must be built in at that planning and design stage of work. And I think that a lot of times in the education sector, we see teachers blamed for a lot of things that they have very little control over often.   0:22:10.1 JD: And I think one example as I was thinking of examples was when a school system selects a curriculum, they often select a curriculum for the entire system, but we don't often consider the downstream effects on teacher lessons and in turn student learning. How many teachers have had the opportunity to select their district's curriculum? That's a number probably close to zero. But there are sort of many I think components of the education system that are analogous. And I think the same is true in other sectors as well, and I think that's why Deming really harped on this idea that it's management's obligation to continually improve the system, because they're making many of these decisions that then have these downstream effects on the frontline workers, be it teachers in a school or nurses in a hospital or line workers in a production facility. And this... Oh, sorry, go ahead.   0:23:27.7 AS: I was just gonna say that I was recently teaching an ethics class at a university in Cambodia called CamED, run by a guy named Casey Barnett. And he is an American guy who started it on his own, funded it on his own, and for decades now has built this university, and he's built it around his principles and he sources his students his way. He has great relationships with... He's teaching accounting, finance, business, which is the practical things needed in a developing economy or economy that's really growing like Cambodia. But it's just that what I saw was the constancy of purpose when I went through the whole university, and then I got to know more of the students and they've attended some of my valuation masterclass course and stuff online. And then I'm just like, "Ah, that constancy of purpose, and the constancy of management gives the ability to continually improve." And that without that, with constant turnover in leadership, it's so hard.   0:24:40.3 JD: Yeah, and management is hard, leadership is hard. I think schools are facing some challenging times right now, because... And this is true in any sector, but if you're a leader or you're in management, you have to deal with these day-to-day issues of the organization, then also sort of keep your organization moving towards continual improvement. You have to put out these fires, like Dr. Deming would often say, putting out fires does nothing to actually improve your system. I think sort of the way he would frame it is that, you know detection and removal of a special cause does not improve a process at best. Fighting fires, i.e., detecting special causes, just... It's important, 'cause it does return that process back to its previous state, but that state is not where you want it to be necessarily.   0:25:48.8 AS: Smoldering.   0:25:49.9 JD: Smoldering, yeah. And where I heard this, it was sort of stated in a great book on Deming's work called The Deming Dimension by Henry Neve, who I'm sure a lot of listeners know. He said, "This means that systems leaders must strive to make unstable processes stable, and to make stable but incapable processes capable, and to make capable processes ever more capable." So you sort of start to break that down, you can start to see why being in management, why being a leader is not an easy task.   0:26:27.4 AS: One of the questions I...   0:26:30.2 JD: Oh yeah, sorry, go ahead.   0:26:31.4 AS: Go ahead. Go ahead.   0:26:32.0 JD: No, I was just gonna say this idea of never ending improvement, depending on what your mindset is around that type of thing is, it can be daunting, even for the most stalwart of sort of continual improvers.   0:26:46.0 AS: Yeah. And that may determine where you position yourself within an organization, because if you're at the top, it's your responsibility to be focused on that and building the system, which can be a bit overwhelming for some people, and they say, "Look, I'm okay being in this spot, and I'll try to improve what I'm doing in the classroom, but I may not be able to be involved in how we're improving all the systems." I wanted to end this discussion on principle five with a little bit of hope and vision of what is potential. I think about my little case. I have my valuation masterclass bootcamp online. And I'm going into the eleventh one. Right now, we're in the 10th one. And I'm just doing it every 8 to 10 weeks and it's a six week program.   0:27:34.2 AS: I want repetition, I want to practice, I want to see how I can improve. And I've seen enormous improvements by just looking at the problems, solving them, going to the next level. And in bootcamp number 10, basically, the students are valuing the same companies over the last couple of bootcamps. A company called Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company, and then in Toyota. And so they're in groups, and they're valuing those two companies. And I was really hesitant to show them the progress of the prior students, 'cause I didn't want them to copy from there. But I've now incorporated that in the bootcamp, halfway through to say, "Alright, here's the bar. This is the minimum. This is what the last group did using all the tools that we gave them. Now, your job is to take this to the next level." And yesterday, a student posted something on LinkedIn, and that was an absolutely comprehensive takeaways of the stuff that he's been learning and applying. And it's like, it worked. It inspired them to say, we gotta go to the next level. And I just want to hear from you about when you work continually on the system, what are some of the transformations and other things that you've seen, and what's some hope for the people who are struggling in a system that needs help?   0:28:57.5 JD: Yeah, that's a really good frame. I don't know if it'll get to that level, but I think, you know, as I've sort of built my sort of Deming knowledge base and spread that here internally where I work, I think I would go back to those two tools that I talked about repeatedly. The run chart or process behavior chart, and the Plan-Do-Study-Act cycle. And why I'm saying that is because right now, internally, we are running one, two, three, four, at least four PDSAs concurrently right now with different teams. And people are starting to see the power of this, especially in areas where performance was struggling a bit. We put PDSAs in action just to take small steps to try to improve our system. And what's happening, whether we're running that PDSA, some of these are running for a week at a time. Some of them are running for up to three weeks at a time, depending on which area you're talking about.   0:30:02.0 JD: But what's happening is we get to that Act to decide what we're gonna do next. For example, we had to make a purchasing decision where we have, talent is a struggle right now in education. We had a platform that we were trialing for 10 days, the free version. And then we have to decide, are we gonna pay for this? And with the PDSA, you get to that Act, you looked at what happened over the weeks, you did the measures of the things that you thought were important, and that decision just jumps off the page. And so these things that people used to go back and forth about, do we do this, do we not? How do we know if this is effective?   0:30:44.4 JD: Now we have this structure that makes this decision, just like I said, leap off the page in terms of its obviousness, and the direction that we're gonna go. What are we gonna do? Are we gonna buy this thing? Are we gonna spend the money? Are we gonna put resources towards this? Both in terms of the money it costs to purchase in this case, plus the human resources that it's gonna take to manage this platform? And in this case, the answer was yes. And that's all because of the power of this way of thinking. It wasn't about holding people accountable, it was about designing a good PDSA, running it, gathering the data that was important to us, and then evaluating that together and then making the decision. And so I think once people try that a few times, they'll both sort of see how clear the decision making process can come.   0:31:36.2 JD: It doesn't mean all the decisions are gonna be easy, but it clarifies decisions. It gets you working together, and planning something that's important to you as an organization and as a team, you get to see how people think things are gonna end up 'cause they predict as a part of that Plan section. And then once people get comfortable with that tool, they start owning it, they start running their own PDSAs, and they come to you and they say, "Oh my gosh, look at this, look what happened, look what I discovered. I didn't know this was gonna happen. I'm gonna keep doing this. Can I go do this over here?" "Yeah, let's set up a plan for that." And so people start to get excited, because they build this momentum with this tool. And then you pair that with a way of thinking that Deming's philosophy gives you, and your organization just starts to operate in a completely new way. And it's this sort of combination of the tools which are important, but most importantly, this way of thinking that goes with the tools.   0:32:39.2 AS: Well, let me wrap up our discussion. We're talking about principles for transformation of school systems. And today, we talked about principle four and principle five, and that is principle four, maximize high quality learning, minimize total costs. And we spent a lot of time talking about the importance of working with your suppliers, the inputs into your system. And the deeper you can build those relationships and connections with them, the better opportunities you have to improve the quality of what you're doing, and to reduce the cost of what you're doing. And principle number five, the second thing we talked about was the idea of work continually on the system. You are operating within a system, we can see there's suppliers, there's also customers that you're supplying. Ultimately, what we're talking about is planning, teaching, learning, service, those types of things are all defined as the system of what you're doing.   0:33:43.3 AS: And I think that you made the point that ultimately, that's management's job, and it has to be done by management because it has a lot of downstream effects, as Deming has taught us that ultimately the output, the majority of the output of any system is really based on what the system's capabilities are. And so your job in management is to try to improve those system capability. And maybe a teacher may find that a bit overwhelming, but that's okay, that can be brought down to a small scale maybe in a classroom. Is there anything else you'd add to that?   0:34:16.4 JD: Yeah, I think just overarching is that we're replacing those management myths with these sound guiding principles. And that, we're kind of going through 'em, either one or two at a time, these episodes, but they are sort of a mutually supporting network of principles. And so, while we may learn these piecemeal, we wanna put 'em all together, 'cause it's really that's where the power comes from is when all of these principles are working together rather than in isolation.   0:34:45.5 AS: Well, John, on behalf of everyone at the Deming Institute, I wanna thank you again for this discussion. For listeners, remember to go to deming.org to continue your journey. You can find John's book Win-Win, Dr. W Edwards Deming, the System of Profound Knowledge and the Science of Improving Schools on amazon.com. 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."

When things go wrong, who gets blamed? When things go right, who gets the credit? Dr. Deming wrote that good managers don't play the blame/credit game. Instead, they "study results [of feedback] with the aim to improve  performance." In this episode, David Langford and host Andrew Stotz discuss getting honest feedback, how to react, and why it's important. TRANSCRIPT 0:00:02.7 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 discussion with David P. Langford, who has devoted his life to applying Dr. Deming's philosophy to education and he offers us his practical advice for implementation. The topic for today is improving performance. Who's at fault? David, take it away.   0:00:28.8 David P. Langford: Hello again. So we are at point number eight on Deming's role of a manager of people. And it says he will study results with the aim to improve his performance as a manager of people. So once again, Deming wasn't into all the pronouns that we use now and everything. So when he says he, he means he, she, anybody that's a manager of people. So, our aim is to improve performance and everything that we do. Right. So I think what's going on with this simple point that he's making is to get people to think about when things go right, or things go wrong, who's at fault, or who gets the reward or who gets the blame for that process.   0:01:29.1 DL: And as a manager, if things are going well, of course, everybody wants to take credit for that, whether you're a teacher or superintendent, business owner, or whatever, then it was, the same way in politics, right? Everything's going well. Oh, I did it all. And if things are not going well, then obviously it was somebody else's fault. Right. Or if you're a manager of people, like what Deming is talking about here, we have a tendency to blame the individual without first thinking about ourselves as the manager of that situation. So I was just coaching a group of teachers and talking to them about how difficult it is to really think like that as a teacher. Because you think, "Okay, I worked really hard on this lesson, I got everything prepared, I came in and I did it."   0:02:23.8 DL: And I don't know how many times I've heard teachers say something like, "Well, I taught them, but they didn't get it." [laughter] Well, that's probably the problem, you taught them, but they didn't learn it. [laughter] Well, that's probably the problem, right? You taught them, but they didn't they didn't learn it, which is two different things. It's possible to teach and get learning, but it's better to create actual learning experiences through that process. So you have to think about if I'm not getting good results I don't care what your position is as a manager of people I have to turn the finger of blame back towards me and start to say, “Okay, what am I doing differently?” And that's a hard pill to swallow when you start to think like that and because usually most people are trying to put in their best efforts. And Deming said many times we're being killed by best efforts, [chuckle] which is like a crazy thought to think about, wow, I shouldn't be trying hard. Well, you should be working in the right way. So if you're not getting the results that you want probably the very first thing is to go back to the people that you manage and ask them what you're doing right and what you're doing wrong or what could be improved. And I have seen this with just very little kids, like three, four, five-year-olds, when the teacher says, "We just went through that lesson and it seemed like some of you weren't interested, you know, what was the problem?"   0:04:05.4 DL: And they'll tell you, [laughter], "Oh, you went too fast, or we didn't have time to think about it, or we needed more time." Or they'll tell you exactly what the problem is. And it's usually a better way to go than having your supervisor come in and do an observation, because your supervisor probably isn't there every day watching how you're managing people, how you're communicating, how you're having conversations, et cetera. But the people are there every day. And if we're talking about education and kids in classrooms, they're the ones that are experiencing your management style. [laughter] And I've found out that the more you ask, the better they get at giving you advice, telling you what to do. And when you do it, then you get even better advice. So I remember I think I may have told this story before, but I remember I had a new student that came to class and I was in a project like that and I asked the students, I said just take out some sticky notes or whatever you want to, and write down a few thoughts about how you think this last project went. What could be improved, how we could have changed it what, I might do differently next year, et cetera.   0:05:27.7 DL: Just things like that. Well, this new student, he was just like blowing this off and he was not paying attention. He's screwing around everything else. And I'll never forget one of the students that had been there all year, she turned to him and she said, You better take this seriously 'cause he's gonna do whatever we tell him.   0:05:44.7 AS: [laughter], wait, what?   0:05:49.3 DL: Yeah, I'll never forget the look on that kid's face. It was just like, Oh. And then he did... He started to sit up and take it seriously. So.   0:06:00.0 AS: Yeah. Well that's, it's... One of the interesting points about that is, when you ask for feedback, how do you receive it? I asked... I have a bunch of interns working for me right now. And I asked them to go through one of my online courses, and write down feedback in a document, a shared document that they're all writing into. It's brutal, David. It's brutal! And then when I see some stuff, my first reaction, "Oh, I can't do that because, yeah, I can't fix that because of, yeah." And it's just so hard to, you know, it's hard enough to ask, but it's even harder to receive in a way that you're able to really use that to improve yourself.   0:06:42.7 DL: One time I kept getting feedback from the students saying, you're going too fast, or you're talking too fast or can't understand it, or we need more time to process what you're saying or... I said, well, okay, I've been doing this a long time, so I've got habits and so I don't always know [chuckle] that I'm doing that. So let's work out a signal or something that if that's happening you can just suddenly kind of signal me that, okay, we need some reflection time here, or something to happen. [chuckle] And so they came up with this idea that they would pull on their ear lobe if I was going too fast or working through stuff. It's very disconcerting to... I'm into something. I'm really explaining a concept and I think I'm really doing a good job. And you look out and you see about six people going like this, and you're like, oh, oh, okay, I'm doing it again. [chuckle] But...   0:07:46.1 AS: That's one of the things that was lost in the Zoom era. It's harder to read the audience too, just to even figure out if people are understanding.   0:07:52.8 DL: Oh, yeah, absolutely. But Deming often said, help comes from the outside and by invitation. So when you're inviting those students or workers or whoever you might be managing to give you that feedback, it's just really amazing what can be accomplished like that. There's almost no problem that can't be solved, [chuckle] by using the people actually doing the work to give you the feedback.   0:08:27.1 AS: You know, when we started this episode, the one thing I started thinking about was that great saying that we all probably heard when we were growing up is "You can lead a horse to water, but you can't make him drink." And my mom said that to me, and my dad or anybody, I'd heard it a lot, but I guess what I thought when I heard you kick off this episode, I thought to myself, yeah, but what if you led them to the wrong pool of water? [chuckle] or the wrong place? And that there's a responsibility on the side of the teacher or the administrator to make sure that it's not enough to absolve yourself, "Hey, I did it and they didn't drink it," that's not acceptable or that's not enough.   0:09:13.4 DL: Yeah, over the last 40 years, I've heard some awful things from teachers saying things about students about...you know... Privately or not, this kid just doesn't wanna try or doesn't care, or this kid isn't one of 'em that came to mind was "this student isn't even worth my effort." So how do you know that? [chuckle] And, Deming said, "Why would I give somebody a grade when I don't know who among them is gonna turn out to be great someday?" And I might be limiting them with a grade at that point in time, but a feedback information on feedback about how to improve what, wow. People really received that really well. I think that's really what he is talking about here in point eight and I think it's pretty simple, but it's tough to do.   0:10:16.4 AS: So let's wrap this up by... First I'm gonna just read point eight again, and this remember that for everybody, I forgot to say it at the beginning, but this is from the Role of a Manager of People section of The New Economics. And point number eight, "he will study results with the aim to improve his performance as a manager of people." And, I think one of the things that stands out is study results also. What is the result that we're getting? And some of the things that we talked about is like asking the question, what can I improve as a manager of people? How do I seek out information to do that? And you said, the more you ask, the more and the better advice that you get. And you also mentioned his quote that help comes from the outside and by invitation. And so I think the main thing is being on a path and a desire to improve yourself as a manager of people. Anything that you would add to that?   0:11:19.4 DL: Well, what he is after is how do we go about improving? The classic way we do stuff is we send somebody to a conference or where, go give them some training or now put 'em on an online thing that they go through, all those kinds of things. And what Deming is really saying is, look, study the results. You need to know how you are doing. [chuckle] And once you start to figure that out, then they are going to do a whole lot better.   0:11:50.0 AS: Fantastic. Well, David, on behalf of everyone at The Deming Institute, I wanna thank you again for this discussion. For listeners, remember to go to deming.org to continue your journey. Listeners can learn more about David at langfordlearning.com. 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."

Dr. Deming was a professor for nearly 5 decades, and while most of his examples and writing discussed manufacturing, he applied all the same ideas to teaching. In this episode, John Dues and host Andrew Stotz discuss points 2 and 3 of Dr. Deming's 14 Points for Management - translated for people in education: adopt the new philosophy and cease dependence on inspection to achieve quality.  TRANSCRIPT 0:00:00.0 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 discussion with John Dues who is part of the new generation of educators striving to apply Dr. Deming's principles to unleash student joy in learning. Today we're continuing our discussion about the shift from management myths to principles for the transformation of school systems. John take it away.   0:00:29.4 John Dues: Andrew. It's good to be back. I thought since we've done a number of episodes now just to do a quick recap of where we're at folks that are following along on the Deming Institute website. We're on episode 11. In episodes seven through nine I outlined those six common management myths and you just talked about the point of those three episodes was to help the education systems leaders see what not to do. We've now turned to a set of principles that can be used by these same leaders to guide their transformation work. And in the last episode, episode 10, I introduced the 14 Principles for educational systems transformation. We talked about Principle 1 which was called Create Constancy of Purpose. In this episode I'll describe the second principle which I call Adopt The New Philosophy and the third principle which I call Cease Dependence on Inspection to Achieve Quality. And I mean I think a really important point to make that I got from Dr. Deming when I think about these 14 principles is a preemptive strike. Over the course of 60 years or so of continual improvement work Dr. Deming worked with Japanese industrial leaders, governments, top companies in the United States. Maybe a little bit lesser known was that he was a professor of statistics at New York University for nearly 50 years.   0:02:06.1 JD: And in his books he not only taught the 14 Points to the leaders with which he worked but they also guided his own teaching practices as a professor. And so there was a, sort of, a short Deming quote that stuck out in regards to the 14 Points and who they apply to. He said the 14 Points apply anywhere to small organizations as to large ones to the service industry as well to manufacturing. So I think it's sort of a preemptive strike of sorts, in case people in schools would think that maybe these 14 principles only apply to industry or only apply to healthcare and other sector but they really do apply to the education sector and in fact that was, sort of, a sector close to Deming's heart since he spent like I said five decades or so in academia.   0:03:00.3 AS: Yeah I mean so it's a good point that I think when you read Deming's material or if you watch his videos there's an overwhelming amount of information about factories and businesses and all that. And there's less about service sector. There is talk in there about service sector. But so I think a lot of people that first stumble upon it start to think, "Oh, this is just for factory quality control", or something like that. And that's been proven wrong particularly the LEAN startup in the world of startups really applied Deming's PDSA cycle as an example in very much service industries so it's a good point that this applies everywhere.   0:03:42.3 JD: Yeah. And basically what I tried to do with the 14 Principles in my 'Win-Win' book was just basically just translate the language from, sort of, manufacturing or sort of, industrial language to education sector language. So I actually literally created a crosswalk where I said here's Demings Point 1 and here's how I'd frame that for school people. And so that's, sort of, what I'm taking folks through in this most recent set of episodes. So thinking about diving in here. Principle 2, sort of, the short name is Adopt the New Philosophy. The descriptor, sort of, is Adopt the New Philosophy: Systems leaders must awaken to the fact that education reform movements often lack a sound philosophical foundation, must learn their new responsibilities and take on leadership for improvement. So this, sort of, goes back to this idea of what came out of A Nation At Risk. What was the next steps? What was, sort of, the response? And what I'm saying is that was probably the wrong response and instead we need to Adopt This New Philosophy. That's what Dr. Deming is calling us to do. And that's his point too and I've translated that for education folks.   0:05:01.8 AS: And just for clarity purposes. This principle number two and, you know, what Deming's talking about Adopt the New Philosophy is a very kind of a general statement yet it's maybe a specific statement. Is he telling us to adopt this new philosophy, like generally or is he saying the philosophy of such and such, the philosophy of quality, the philosophy of constancy and purpose, the philosophy of being a learning organization? I'm just curious how you're interpreting that.   0:05:38.7 JD: Yeah I think the 14 Principles are a part of the philosophy. Really, the philosophy is the System of Profound Knowledge though. And if I could, sort of, frame the Deming Philosophy for education what I would, how I would put that is that it's really about studying and applying the System of Profound Knowledge to do two things basically. The first thing is we wanna view teaching and learning as dynamic processes that occur within a system. That's, sort of, the first frame. The second frame is understand the nature of variation of those teaching and learning processes so that we can take the appropriate action within our systems and then we're doing that so we can accomplish improvement on this continual basis. So that's the, sort of, frame I would give the application of Deming's Philosophy to the education system.   0:06:40.9 AS: So is the goal improvement, and understanding the process and understanding variation are steps we get to, of how we improve better, faster, more sustainably or how do you see that?   0:06:56.4 JD: Yeah I think that's exactly right. I think it's all of those things. It gives us the information that we need the knowledge that we need within our systems to make the changes that need to be changed on a, sort of, continual basis. And, you know, it's something that never ends. It's a process that really never ends. It's, you know, not a recipe it's not a program to be implemented but instead it's a method it's a way of thinking that allows to, sort of, continually improve our organization.   0:07:29.1 AS: One other thing I would just mention about this is that if you take away one thing... One thing we could take away is to become a learning organization. I didn't really understand that for many years, but now I really understand that in order to truly learn you have to understand variation in the System of Profound Knowledge and all of the systems stuff in order to truly learn. And then you start to realize that if you're on a mission to truly learn the amount of improvements that you're gonna be able to do is way beyond most other people most other companies competitors most other schools. Because you have... That is part of the Constancy of Purpose is learning and that, I didn't really understand that when I first got into the Deming stuff but now I see just become a learning machine.   0:08:28.3 JD: Yeah. That's what you sort of have to commit to. And I think really what the 14 Principles do is serve as this practical guide by which, you know, systems leaders can lead. It's really that guide. So those management myths avoid those things and then here are these 14 Principles that we can, sort of, follow and some of those principles like Principle 1, Create Constancy of Purpose really tell us what to do and then, sort of, other principles in the list instruct us on how to, sort of, remove barriers in creating this environment the very environment that you were, you know, talking about just now in terms of an environment that's conducive establishing a new philosophy, establishing a learning organization, avoiding barriers to those things like management by objectives. One of the points that we'll get to is "abolish management by objective". That's something we want to get rid of. And really the backbone of the philosophy is transformation from this culture of competition where I win you lose or I lose you win. And really what we want the dominant paradigm in order to, sort of, have the environment that we need to be that learning organization is to create this, sort of, win-win paradigm based on this culture of cooperation.   0:10:00.1 JD: I think, you know, especially when Deming was speaking 45 years ago, 50 years ago when he became really popular in the United States, we had a long way to go. And I think there's still a long way to go but you can almost see, well, you can see a lot of the Deming philosophy in companies today. It is just most companies aren't anywhere close to all the way there, right? And that same thing goes for school systems. I think, sort of, that this idea of win-win philosophy it is a new way of thinking for a lot of leaders. I think one of the, sort of, primary concerns which once you've adopted, sort of, this new approach is that we want to develop joy in work and learning among students, for us as staff as well, as a prerequisite to achieving the core purpose of the organization. Because when people are joyful in their work or joyful in their learning you know you've already created this, sort of, environment that you're referring to where people can learn and improve and people are gonna use data in a way that drives towards that instead of, sort of, guarding their corner of the system like we've talked about before. And I think, you know, I think when you read Deming and I think when you think about transformation of an organization from one philosophy to another philosophy that can certainly be daunting.   0:11:39.0 JD: I think I've said it on this podcast episode, one of these episodes before but this transition is not gonna happen overnight. And I think Deming said something to the effect of when it comes to transformation there's no instant pudding. This doesn't just happen instantly. I think a more realistic goal is this constant consistent movement towards the new philosophy where you're moving towards total involvement of the entire organization everybody from top to bottom and then you're getting everybody working on this continual improvement activity of all systems processes and activities, you know, within the school system. Now it doesn't mean you're necessarily, sort of, attacking every single system or every process at the same time. It just means that you're sort of equipping everybody across the organization with knowledge of the philosophy, knowledge of the methods, and then the tools that go along with those methods like the Plan-Do-Study-Act cycle, like the Process Behavior Chart. And you're getting everybody, sort of, working towards this common aim. And again this is, this is a process and it takes, it takes time for sure.   0:12:51.9 AS: And that's why you need Constancy of Purpose too. Because if you don't have Constancy of Purpose and you have constant change, you know, change in leadership and direction, you know, you're never gonna get there. And I think about the...so many companies that we looked at when I was first studying Deming and listening and learning, many of those companies went through a 5 year phase of implementing the Deming teachings and then they got a new CEO and he says I'm not up for that. I like this. I'm, you know, I'm up for measuring everybody's KPIs and kicking ass and holding people accountable around here. Enough of this cooperation. [laughter]   0:13:36.1 JD: Yeah I think that's a common occurrence and I think, you know, in addition to the 14 Principles there's also the five... I forget what he exactly called them Deadly sins or something like that.   0:13:52.4 AS: Six Deadly Diseases I think it was.   0:13:55.0 JD: I think it was started as five and maybe it grew to six or seven but definitely one of them was the transition of senior leaders on a frequent basis because that makes this virtually impossible to, you know, to change to a New Philosophy.   0:14:08.5 AS: So that really ties together the Constancy of Purpose and Adopting the New Philosophy because then you really see that this is a real commitment. This isn't a fad, this isn't some new tool or something like that. It's a new way of thinking that's gonna require work to get there.   0:14:28.3 JD: Yeah that's exactly right and a lot of people, sort of, associate Deming with Control Charts or something like that, which obviously again he was a statistician. He used Control Charts frequently. I think the Control Charts and Process Behavior Charts are an important tool but what's more important is this way of thinking this is really what Deming was focused on more than anything else is this way of thinking that went with understanding your organization through the lens of the System of Profound Knowledge. It's really this philosophical change adopting this new philosophy that's really what he was most focused on when he worked with governments or schools or corporations, organizations. But that was Principle 2. That's Adopt the New Philosophy. It's not easy. Takes commitment, takes Constancy of Purpose. You've got to stick with it.   0:15:21.8 JD: I think Principle 3, sort of, transitioning to that, I talked about ceasing dependence on inspection to achieve quality. And when I'm talking about Principle 3 in education I'm talking about two specific types of inspection. So I'll just, sort of, read the whole principle and then we can, sort of, unpack it a little bit. So Principle 3: "cease dependence on standardized testing to achieve quality and work to abolish grading and the harmful effects of rating people eliminate the need for inspection on a mass basis. For example standardized testing by building quality into the product in the first place. The product in education systems is high quality learning." That's, sort of, Principle 3 in a nutshell. There are two, sort of, different concepts to deal with in Principle 3 and this will be probably fairly controversial for a lot of, sort of, educators but those two concepts are...   0:16:28.9 AS: Bring it on John.   0:16:30.4 JD: Standardized testing and grading. And the prescription is actually different for each of those things if you're following W. Edwards Deming's teachings. And I think that calls to attention an important point with all of this stuff this principle for sure. But all the principles. You really have to do close reading of the 14 Principles because Dr. Deming chose his words very carefully. And I think, you know, when you say, you know, stop over-reliance on standardized testing or abolish grading. A lot of people's initial reactions is probably going to be to scoff or laugh. And I think, you know, I think that's really just a demonstration of how far away they are from the standards that he demanded.   0:17:22.3 JD: So a lot of people might hear this and say oh this is fluffy stuff or something like that. He must not want real quality to exist and he was actually saying the exact opposite. So if we start with the standardized testing part, you know, when I think of... Is Deming saying that we should abolish inspection in the form of standardized tests or assessments in general? And I would say no. Of course not. And I think without assessment we are not able to answer the critical question, how are we doing? So assessments in and of themselves are useful I think. But I think we're overly reliant specifically on, sort of, mass inspection style standardized testing like in the form of state testing as the, sort of, key way that we're trying to ensure that there's quality throughout the education system.   0:18:26.0 AS: It's interesting because I'm thinking about in the case of a business, inspection is an internal activity that has happened in the past, and our objective is to get rid of that and build quality into the process and the system. But as a business, you're ultimately judged by the quality and you know, value that your product provides. And you'll instantly get the customer feedback by looking at the revenue that you're getting or not getting when you bring that product to market. Whereas in the case of education, what my question to you is, is the signal that we get from business, from the customer. Like, it's just so in your face you go start up a company, you put a million dollars in it, and you don't get any revenue. You think, oh my God, I really messed up. Or you've got a defect in something and it causes a recall and a big cost and, you know, a lot of damage to your reputation. It's just right there in the revenue numbers. But is there a disconnect in that for education? Or is there something that I'm missing in education?   0:19:42.8 JD: I don't, I don't think there's a disconnect there. One, every day a student, let's say a 10 year old student goes home and their parent says, how was school today? Do you like your teacher? Those may be a little more qualitative but they're pretty powerful, you know, 'cause you're getting this report back, every single day. In our case in our specific case where I work at United Schools Network in Columbus, we're a public charter network, and so there are no kids that are assigned to us by geographic boundaries. So we have to go out and recruit every student, sort of, in a grassroots way, knock on doors, make calls, send mail, do tours and open houses, those types of things. And so if people aren't satisfied with our school program, they literally walk out the door to another school. They have other schools they can go to. That's pretty powerful as well, that enrollment factor, that would be a little bit different in a traditional public school. But they... People do... When you think about going and buying a house, for example, one of the first things most people do is check out the school system. Or...   0:20:54.4 AS: My parents specifically, you know, looked at that when we moved to the town that we moved to in Ohio. And my dad's work was not in Ohio, it was in Detroit and other areas, but he ended up, you know, he was traveling as a salesman, but he ended up choosing, my mom and dad chose that town because of the reputation of that school. And so, yeah.   0:21:15.4 JD: Yeah, yeah. And really when you think about Principle 3 too, and specific to standardized testing, it, you know, the way I'm interpreting Deming's Principle 3 and then applying for education - it's not, it's calling for the elimination of the dependence on standardized and other types of tests as the sole measure of quality, not necessarily for their elimination altogether.   0:21:42.4 AS: What damage does...I mean, for those, there's a lot of people that may be listening or viewing that think, wait a minute, I mean, standardized testing is what it's all about. I mean, I want everybody in the school system to be tested on the same thing so I can figure out, you know, which one's doing a good job, which one's not, which students, you know, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. So just for a moment, if you could just explain why standardized testing, what are the flaws with standardized testing?   0:22:07.0 JD: Well... Well a big thing is I think there's a big difference between mass testing as an attempt to provide, you know, sort of the customer or the student or the family with something they won't complain about, and the use of assessments to provide guidance toward improvement of, you know, a learning process. And I think, you know, too often or not, we're focused on the former and not the latter, right? So I think standardized testing, let's say state testing I think can provide some useful data hypothetically, but what often happens is it gets used in all these other ways.   0:22:53.8 JD: It's sort of this mass inspection through testing, it's costly. A lot of times, you know, it's unproductive. It basically sort of sorts out sort of good from bad, but doesn't really contribute to progress, right? Just , sort of,year after year low score or the low scoring schools, sort of, score low and the high scoring schools score high, right. I think another thing, another problem with, sort of, mass standardized testing at the population level is that it sort of introduces this idea that there's an acceptable level of defectives, right? Because in most states, there's, sort of,some goal for the percent of students that are gonna be proficient on state tests. In Ohio for grades three through eight, that goal is 80% of the kids will be proficient, and that's acceptable. But then that also means that one in five students, 20% aren't meeting that standard. And that sort of, you sort of lose sight that there's [laughter] this whole bucket of kids over here that you know, you can meet the goal, but you're really leaving behind a whole sort of a significant minority of the students taking the test.   0:24:21.9 JD: I think there's also this, sort of,direct contradiction to the philosophy of continual improvement. You know, the Deming philosophy is to build quality into the process in the first place. And that quality doesn't come from this inspection mechanism. You have to go upstream to improve the teaching and learning processes. And I think something like classroom assessments are a much better tool for identifying these upstream processes. And that's kind of a cool analogous to what you were talking about. You know, in businesses where there is inspection that is happening sort of at the local level, and there's not, sort of,like a regulatory or government agency doing that work for a private business.   0:25:07.4 AS: It's interesting that you highlight the word dependence and when you talked about it earlier, and if you think about what we're being told by Dr. Deming is to focus, shift our focus from the end of the, or the output of the system to the input and the processes of the system. And I think that that, you know, helps us to frame, it doesn't necessarily mean that we absolutely no longer do any inspection and there's no more testing. But what the important thing is, is we've got to shift our focus to the beginning of the process rather than the end. And I suspect most, you know, senior politicians and government officials are just focused on the end, just get the result. Come on.   0:25:52.7 JD: Right. Right Yeah. I think, sort of, to capture this, you know, Deming said, this system of sort of make and inspect, if it's sort of applied to toast, it would be expressed sort of, you burn I'll scrape, right? So that's, we've sort of already burnt the toast, so to say, and we're scraping it by sort of saying, "Oh, well we have the state testing system, that's got how we're gonna improve things." And really alls we're doing is scraping the toast.   0:26:21.2 AS: So let's talk...   0:26:23.1 JD: Oh, sorry, go ahead.   0:26:23.5 AS: I was gonna say, I wanna hear your thoughts on grading next, but good.   0:26:28.2 JD: Yeah this is where things...   0:26:29.4 AS: You got more on standardized testing, feel free.   0:26:29.8 JD: No, no, No. This is a good segue. You know, I think in that turn to grading, it gets a little even more controversial probably because Deming didn't suggest that we merely cease dependence on grades. He said we should abolish them. And again, this is where in, sort of, credibility as a practitioner, those 50 years as a professor, he did this, he did not, he did not issue grades to his students.   0:27:00.7 JD: I think it's really worth noting here, this has nothing to do with making things easier for students. It doesn't have anything to do with low-scoring students' self-esteem. Has nothing to do with that. Instead, it's, this idea is based on this more sort of fundamental premise. And this is really key. We want students to experience success and failure on schoolwork as information rather than reward and punishment. And grades themselves are inherently about experience things as reward and punishment. And that really comes... Those ideas come from author and, sort of, social science researcher, Alfie Kohn, who many Deming practitioners and followers would be aware of Alfie's work as it relates to education and parenting and cooperation and competition and those types of things. And I think one of the things that, sort of, pulled me into this way of thinking when... I think it's in this book called Punished by Rewards. He did this... Alfie Kohn did this comprehensive review of the research literature on grades. And it really compared students who got grades to those who didn't. And he found these pretty robust differences. Three of them. So the first one is that kids who are graded tend to become less interested in the topic they're studying. I think that's really important. This includes, actually, the specific topic, as well as the, sort of, subject area more generally, such as math or writing compared you know, to students who got the identical assignment but with no grades involved.   0:29:00.1 JD: Second thing is that kids who are graded, when they have a choice to pick, they pick the easiest possible task. Because if the point is to get a high grade, it's only rational to pick the easiest book to read or the easiest assignment to do. So what that tells us is that grades, sort of, inherently lead to kids avoiding intellectual risk taking. That's problematic. And then the final thing, the third thing is that kids who are graded are more likely to think in a superficial or, sort of, shallow fashion. So they're more likely to ask questions like, "Do we have to know this?" as opposed to more thoughtful questions about the content itself. So...   0:29:41.7 AS: And just to highlight, is that book called Ungrading: Why Rating Students Undermines Learning, and What to Do Instead?   0:29:50.3 JD: No, this is Alfie Kohn's "Punished by Rewards."   0:29:52.9 AS: "Punished by Rewards." Okay, that's another book that he did a forward to. Okay, I see.   0:29:57.7 JD: Yeah.   0:29:57.9 AS: Okay, "Punished by Rewards." I'm looking for it. And I know everybody could search for that too. So, keep going.   0:30:03.5 JD: Yeah. And it's got a longer subtitle about gold stars and things like that. But I think fundamentally, it's this displacement of the, sort of, core priority from learning to the grade that's at a heart, that's at the heart of both Deming and Alfie Kohn's philosophy in this area. I think Deming went as far as to say that the specific losses from grading practices are "unknown and unknowable, but likely catastrophic." [chuckle] So he didn't mince words there. So just sort of recapping that one, it's you know cease dependence on standardized testing to get to quality. And then he is saying abolish grading, because it does so much to put kids on the path to, sort of, gaming the system, shifting the focus from the learning itself to trying to get the reward that comes with a high grade or this thing or that thing that's handed out as a reward for high grades.   0:31:15.0 AS: Got it. "Punished by Rewards."   0:31:16.6 JD: "Punished by Rewards."   0:31:16.7 AS: It's the 25th edition that's come out, "The Trouble with Gold Stars, Incentive Plans, A's, Praise, and Other Bribes."   [laughter]   0:31:24.0 JD: Yep, that's the one. That's the one. It's a heavy read. It's worthwhile. It's a good read. It's... Yeah.   0:31:30.2 AS: It comes as an audio book too, so that could be, read by the author. So, interesting one.   0:31:35.3 JD: Absolutely.   0:31:35.8 AS: I'm gonna check that out. All right.   0:31:37.3 JD: That's a good one. It's a commitment.   0:31:40.1 AS: So how do we wrap this up?   0:31:43.2 JD: Yeah, that's a good question. I mean, I think again, I think a key thing to, sort of, understand is, sort of, we're studying these 14 Principles, one or two at a time. But anybody listening to this, I think it's really important not to lose sight that these things are mutually supportive. It's a System of Principles, and you have to have all 14 connected together in addition to the System of Profound Knowledge. That's why this gets so hard. You have to understand all of this. And you can't just put it together like a recipe or, you know, pick this one. I can get behind ceasing dependence on standardized testing, but I can't get behind abolishing grading, right? You can't do it like that. You can't disconnect these things. They're all sort of tied back to the underlying philosophy.   0:32:38.3 JD: So I think that's a really important thing. And, you know, because it's not a program or, you know, a project to be implemented, it really requires a, sort of, neverending commitment to both learning and quality. But it is discontinuous. You don't have to do everything at once. You can't do everything at once. Instead, what this allows you to do when you start to understand some of the methods is you start to understand, okay, what is our system capable of on any number of fronts? And then we can set more realistic goals together to, sort of, step towards improvement, real quality. So that's, sort of, what I would take from this entire distillation of the 14 Principles.   0:33:27.2 AS: And I would wrap up by saying, you know, there's a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow that most people don't see. [laughter] There's... We see what's in front of us, but the truth is, by starting to adopt the principles, what's happening is you're just trying to make a transformation. And part of that transformation is that you're seeing the opportunities in the world that you didn't see in the past. And conventional thinking, what we've been taught in the past has given us our perspective. But when you start to remove the blinders and say, "what would happen if we remove grading? What would happen if we ceased dependence on standardized tests?" And we said, "We are gonna look at other ways of doing this."   0:34:09.6 AS: What would happen if we really started to adopt this philosophy and the System of Profound Knowledge to really set a long-term direction? What you are gonna find is so much unfolds. And so today's discussion, just to kind of wrap up, adopting, Principle 2, adopting the new philosophy, talking about the teaching process, understanding variation with the ultimate goal of improving, and improving the outcome for students. And ultimately that's a transformation that your organization can go through. The other one is Principle 3, which is ceasing dependence on inspection to achieve quality.   0:34:51.2 AS: And you really focused in on: hey, standardized tests and grading, which I think is a challenge for everybody to think about. If you are saying that so strongly, and Deming was saying that also there's gotta be something there, right? And ultimately, as you said, the product of education is high quality learning and, it doesn't say, completely get rid of any kind of tests or any kind of assessment. But I think that what you are also trying to get us to do is look at the beginning of the process and then use feedback that we are getting through tests and assessments to go back and improve the beginning of the process. And ultimately, I think, I would end my summary of what you said with, of this discussion with what you said about, that you want students to experience success and failure as information, not reward and punishment. Anything you would add to that summary?   0:35:49.0 JD: Yeah, the only thing I would say is, a disclaimer. I certainly have not figured this all out, and I work in a system and we have not abolished grading, for example. Because you, another thing you have to do is you have to design a replacement that has to be a part of the process. So in the book, I suggest some questions. I don't suggest necessarily an alternative system. I haven't got to that point with grading, but I have a series of questions people can ask to start to think about what their grading policy is. So it's a process, I'm not, I definitely don't have it all figured out. I'm still working on it.   0:36:26.4 AS: Yeah. And, I'll just wrap up that last bit right there and say that if you were in your own environment where you weren't under government regulation or you weren't required to do this or that, you don't have to have a replacement. So for instance, in my case, in my coffee business, we just heard so much negative about the performance appraisal system that eventually we just, like, we are gonna stop and people ask, "well, what are we gonna do instead?" And I said, "I don't care what we are gonna do instead." This is, we've already evaluated that this is bad. Everybody's saying it, we know it, we've learned that, we've seen it internally. So our first job is to stop what is not working. Now, it would be a dream if I could replace it with something amazing that is working, but wouldn't we all already have that? So sometimes we are caught into this system that this thinking that we have to have a substitute or new way. And that's not always the case. But when you are under a lot of constraints, then, you are kind of forced to that. So I just wanted to open people's minds to that. And, anything you would add to that before I close?   0:37:38.4 JD: No, that's really interesting. I... I'd love to hear more about how that's gone since you guys did that.   0:37:44.1 AS: Yeah, it's okay. We never really done a replacement. We did it a long time ago and we never really...   [overlapping conversation]   0:37:48.6 JD: That's cool.   0:37:49.5 AS: So our, I mean our replacement is feedback, coaching, sitting down, having meetings and, but we don't, and when it comes to compensation, we came to some, different conclusions that we wouldn't compensate people for their individual performance. The compensation would be related to the performance of the company with a very clear system of how the success of the company comes up in additional profit and how that's allocated to each person based upon, first their salary. So there's a market component, the market rate component, then based upon their years of service, which we want to reward, and then based on a fixed amount so that people who aren't making the biggest salaries in the place still always get something, that's meaningful to them. So there's lots of alternatives and, let's keep thinking about it. And that's, I think what you bring to the whole Deming sphere is to start thinking about that in education.   0:38:48.6 AS: So John, on behalf of everyone at the Deming Institute, I want to thank you again for this discussion. For listeners, remember to go to deming.org to continue your journey. Also, you can find John's book Win-Win, Dr. W Edward Deming, the system of Profound Knowledge and the Science of Improving Schools on Amazon. 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 that counts in education.

In this episode, Bill and Andrew discuss the shades of variation: meeting requirements, accuracy, precision, and precision around variety. Is reducing variation to zero a good thing? Plus, Bill and Andrew share stories that offer practical ways to think about these concepts. TRANSCRIPT 0:00:02.4 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 discussion 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. The topic for the day is The Paradigms of Variation. Bill, take it away.   0:00:28.1 Bill Bellows: Ooh.   0:00:28.1 AS: Exciting, exciting.   0:00:33.1 BB: Alright. So let me start off by saying this is episode number eight, and I wanna just make a couple comments about episode number seven, where we talked about "all straw" and "last straw" organizations also otherwise known as "me" or "we" organizations, or red pen or blue pen companies. And I just wanna burst a bubble and say neither one of them, neither organization exists, whether it's all or last or me or we. I view it as a... It's really a matter of which direction your organization is moving, it's a really simple model that I've seen get people to begin to appreciate what Deming's talking about, because I think that contrast is very much like a Deming organization versus a non-Deming organization. But instead of black-and-white thinking, there's really a continuum, and so I think... I just want to say at the beginning, it's really a question of which direction is your organization moving? Another thing I wanna throw out is... I don't think people know, I think absent an understanding of the System of Profound Knowledge, if you're in a last straw organization or a me organization, or a red pen company, I don't think you know that. I think if you become aware of Deming's work, you become aware of what could be. And I liken it to Dr. Deming saying, "How could they learn? How could they learn? The answer is frightening, how could they know?" So I think absent an understanding of The New Economics - Deming's work, I think it's hard to appreciate what you're missing.   0:02:11.4 BB: That you're being blamed for the grade, you're being blamed for the red beads. You're being blamed for the weather, if you're the weatherman. And the other thing that comes in mind there with that, "how could they know" is... There's a great video with Peter Senge, which he did a case with Dr. Deming, and there's a blog I wrote about it on the Deming Institute website if you just search for Peter Senge and my name. And you can find the blog as well as the link to the video. And in there Senge is talking about the present state of education systems and very much in this contrast of industrial and post-industrial, and he says, very much what it comes down to is, he says it's the water. He says, "We don't know what fish talk about, but you can be damn sure it's not the water." And likewise, I think people in a red pen company are not getting together. You and I talking about, "Andrew, this system sucks. I'm being blamed for the red beads," and I don't think we're the wiser. Now, if you turn me on to The New Economics. And we started listening to DemingNEXT and we became aware. But absent that, I think we're both frustrated, but we wouldn't know better. Alright, it's on the topic of variation.   0:03:30.8 AS: It's...   0:03:31.5 BB: Go ahead Andrew, you wanna say something?   0:03:32.4 AS: I was just gonna say that... That's where I think Dr. Deming's making the point of the difference between training and education. Education is the idea of bringing outside ideas into your mind, into your business, as opposed to training, which is trying to upgrade skills. And I had a little story of that when I was a head of research at an investment bank in Thailand. The whole job of a head of research is managing all these analysts who are writing research reports on company A, buy company A, sell company B for our institutional clients. And the job of a head of research is to try to manage that schedule. And you know that analysts are always gonna be interrupted and clients are gonna call, the market's gonna do this. So they're very rarely on time when they say that they're gonna finish something. So you're constantly scrambling for the morning meeting, because on the morning meeting you gotta have a story.   0:04:22.0 AS: And so that was just the job of a head of research. So I did that really well, managing them and, kind of, all that. And then I went to the number one investment bank, the number one broker in Thailand as the head of research. And I asked them, "So how often do you guys miss?" And they said, "Never." I said, "That's impossible." Because I've spent my whole career managing the flow of analysts. They said, "No, we never miss." When an analyst is gonna be on, they're always on. "And how do you do that?" "Well, we do a three-week-ahead schedule, everybody knows that you are held accountable for being that person on that day. And if you find out that you can't do it, you're gonna talk to someone else and rejigger it and say, hey, could you do Friday? And I'll do Monday the next week?" But they never miss. And I just thought, like the water, I never even knew I could go to a different level.   0:05:15.0 BB: Yeah.   0:05:16.8 AS: And then I went to a different level.   0:05:19.8 BB: Yeah, it's...it's the ability to step back. Alright, so on the topic of the paradigms of variation, I wanna throw out four words. Variety, variation, accuracy, and precision. A variety is, there's red beads and white beads, that's variety. There could be, eight different colors, that's variety, sizes of pants 32 waist, 32 length, that, to me that's variety. As opposed to variation is that a 32-inch waist or a gallon of gasoline, every time you go to get the gallon, you get a gallon of gasoline, it might not be exactly a gallon, that's variation. The reason I throw those out to begin with is that Dr. Deming is known in some circles back in the '80s, he was interviewed by somebody at the, I think at the BBC in England and an interview ends with him, with the interviewer saying, "Dr. Deming, if you could condense your philosophy down to a few words, what would it be?" And I thought, he's gonna say... He is just gonna reject that, that "I can't be condensed." No instead of that, he says, "Reduce variation." And I thought, "Oh, no... "   0:06:50.4 BB: So, and there are people alive and well today in the Deming community, who will quote that to me? "You know, Bill, Dr. Deming said, we gotta shrink variation to zero." And I said, "So, is he saying we all ought to be the same size? We ought to be the same skin color? Is he saying that he doesn't like diversity? What does that mean? And same religion?" I mean, you could look at religions as variety, and then you could say within each religion there's variation. So part of what I wanna get at today is what I think is confusion as to what he meant by shrinking variation to zero. So there's variety, variation. Accuracy is that when I get a gallon of gas, is it a gallon, or is it a couple ounces high, a couple ounces low? You go to the gas station, you'll see a sticker on the pump that says that it was calibrated to some standard, when you go to buy a pound of meat, are you getting a pound? Are you getting 15 ounces? And so the National Bureau of Standards is looking at accuracy, are all these things... Is every customer in the United States getting a gallon's worth of milk?   0:08:15.3 BB: Now, so that's accuracy. Precision is the idea that you get the same value each time, so I could go to the scale and it measures exactly a pound, exactly a pound, exactly a pound. But is that pound the same pound as the National Bureau of Standards pound? So I could be. 0:08:37.3 BB: Sorry about that. I could get the same value each time, and that's precision, but that's not to be confused with accuracy, so I just wanna throw those terms out. Relative to shrinking variation to zero, shrinking variation to zero which I, for the record, do not believe in. Dr. Deming would say anyone could accomplish anything if you don't count the cost. I think if you start to look at what is the benefit of having less variation versus the cost of that, then we can get to some point that makes sense economically as in The New Economics. But this idea of driving defects to zero, driving variation to zero without looking at cost.   0:09:24.1 BB: And you can look in The New Economics, we'll come back to this in a future episode. He definitely had in mind that you have to consider the cost, in fact, Dr. Deming would say, anyone could accomplish anything if you don't count the cost. But there's a... What I wanted to reference is a book by Peter Block called 'The Answer to How Is Yes' and what Block talks about is... Could be like, how...we get focused on, we're gonna go off and reduce variation, we're gonna go off and drive variation to zero or non-value added to zero. What Block talks about that I really appreciate, that I think Dr. Deming appreciate is, why? Why did... Let's step back a minute, and so part of what I wanna get at tonight in this paradigms of variation is the 'Why' piece. Okay. So the first example I wanna look at a variation is throwing darts okay? And hopefully that makes sense, you're throwing darts in a dart board and imagine meeting requirements is being on the dart board, so imagine it could be a foot in diameter.   0:10:29.4 BB: And in terms of meeting requirements, you wanna be on the dart board. So I throw it three times, and if you get three that are really close together, they may not be on the bullseye, and that says, I'm very precise, but if the three are not on the bullseye, then that's not very accurate. So again, throwing three and getting really, really consistent is one thing, but then how do I move that to the bullseye? So that's an idea that I could first focus on precision, and then often I find that if I could just slightly adjust my release or my arm, then maybe I could then move it over, so I wanna look at that.   0:11:14.7 AS: And moving over is accuracy or?   0:11:17.5 BB: Moving it over is accuracy.   0:11:19.2 AS: Okay.   0:11:19.5 BB: I mean, so the first thing could be, I'm just looking for three...   0:11:22.5 AS: Get on the board.   0:11:23.6 BB: I wanna be consistent.   0:11:25.9 AS: Yep.   0:11:26.6 BB: And then make the adjustment, 'cause I find often it's easier to make the adjustment, I think it's a lot of work to get consistency. So I just want to separate those out as two different strategies.   0:11:39.2 AS: Yeah, just go to the bar and start throwing darts and you'll see it's a lot of work. Yep that helps, that helps, that helps us to understand it.   0:11:45.9 BB: Alright, so next. Next I wanna talk about what I refer to as the Two Distributions Exercise, and so here's the context. Imagine that you are in the procurement organization, and your job is to make a decision as to who to buy a given product from. So your company goes out and gets quotes from four different suppliers, and they provide you with the information. And for simplicity, let's say what you're buying are these metal tubes and... Short metal tubes perhaps used in plumbing, they're a given length, a given diameter. And imagine these four suppliers come back to you. And again, you're the procurement person, "Who are we gonna buy from?" They come back and they say, they quote you the price, and they quote you exactly the same price. All four of them quote you exactly a dollar each, $10 each. It's like, "Holy cow, they're the same price."   0:12:46.2 BB: Imagine also, they quote the same delivery schedule. So you've got a plumbing supply, you need lots of these, they all tell you they're gonna give you the volume that you need. So I think, "Gosh, volume-wise that's the same, cost-wise, it's the same." Now imagine what they tell you is relative to meeting the diameter, let's say it's the outer diameter is really critical to how these things fit together. And they quote you and say, "All the outer diameters will meet requirements." They're gonna take care of the scrap and they're gonna get rid of the red beads. All the tubes they will send will meet requirements, guaranteed. And you're thinking, "I want that same schedule, same costs, same quality," now what? Well, now imagine they send you the distributions from the control charts and they tell you that these distributions, you're thinking, "Holy cow, these suppliers are using Cisco process control." And they provide you with the histograms, and they say, "These distributions will never change, shape or location." Holy cow.   0:13:49.6 BB: And then added onto that is that you're gonna use them as is. So you're not gonna take them and modify them, you're just gonna bring them into the inventory and send them off to the plumbers to use. So you're saying, "Okay, the process is in control, the level amount of variation, location is predictable, stable, forever. How could I go wrong?" And then the last thing they tell you is, procurement that, "Here's the lower requirement, here's the upper requirement, and here's the ideal value." And so then you end up with two distributions. If I was confusing, I meant to say two, not four [chuckle]   0:14:24.1 BB: Alright, so imagine you've got two suppliers and the one distribution goes from the lower spec to the upper spec. And let's say it's a normal Gaussian distribution and it starts at the low end, goes up, high in the center, then off to the other, and that's supplier A and then imagine the other supplier uses 10% of the variation, but is towards the upper spec so it's far more uniform, but it's off of the ideal value. And so I've been using those two distributions with people as an ideal scenario saying, "You're never gonna have all that information, let alone that's all the same." And very deliberately, what I want people to do is say, if it's the same price, same schedule, zero defects, guaranteed, distributions never change and you're looking at the lower spec, the upper spec, and you're saying, "Okay, so one distribution, it has more variation, but the average is right in the middle, which is the ideal value. And the other one is shifted towards the high end of the tolerance, but incredibly uniform," who do you choose?   0:15:38.3 AS: So it's a tall curve?   0:15:39.4 BB: It's a very tall curve, let's say it uses 10% of the variation, 10% of the tolerance and so I've been using that going on 30 years, and I'll have 30 people in the room and I'll ask them to write down on a three by five card, "Who would you buy from?" And I'll say, "Here are the choices you can buy from the, the one that's the widest, we'll call that supplier A and supplier B is the narrow one to the right, or You could say it doesn't matter." And what I find is incredibly consistent inside and outside of Rocketdyne and literally around the world is the majority of people will take the narrow distribution, to the right will call that supplier B, what I ask them, "Why do you like supplier B?" To a person they will say, "It's more consistent, there's less variation." And I say, "Less variation from what?" "Well, less variation from each other." Well Andrew, that's precision.   0:16:40.9 BB: And then I ask the others, and my find is three quarters of the room will take that distribution, the one which is precise. And for the ones who are focusing on the wider distribution, where the average is on target, I say, "Why do you like that one?" And they say, "Because it has less variation from the ideal value." Alright? And so I wanna throw that out is part of the confusion I find inside and outside of the Deming community, in the world of Six Sigma quality distribution B, using a smaller percent of the tolerance, is, has the higher process capability index. 'Cause what that index is doing is comparing the amount of variation, the width of the variation to the overall tolerance. And the idea that you're using a smaller portion is valued. And I said, "Okay, well that's not quite the same as what Dr. Taguchi is talking about. What Dr. Taguchi is talking about," and this one we'll get into in a later episode, "is the closer you are to the ideal value, what you're doing is affecting how this is used in a greater system, so if I'm at home cutting a piece of wood to a given length and I want it to be closer and closer to the ideal value, then what I'm gaining is making it easier to put that piece of wood, or whatever I'm making, together.   0:18:00.5 BB: And I find that people who preferred distribution B are really confused 'cause in a big way what they're saying is, "I don't care about where I am within, all I care about is using a small portion of the tolerance." And then when I press on that more and more, they say, "Well, I want fewer and fewer defects." I said, "Well, zero defects is guaranteed, so if you really believe in zero defects as the goal, then you should have said it doesn't matter." And so the reason I wanna talk about the paradigms of variation is that one: variation is one of the elements of the System of Profound Knowledge and it's not just the variation in the number of red beads, right?   0:18:58.0 BB: And not to dismiss that the variation of the red beads is caused by the system. But what I've tried to bring to these episodes interviews with you is what I learned from Dr. Taguchi is the variation in the white beads and what is the impact of the variation on the white beads. And if we ignore that, then what we're saying is, "As long as you meet print, that's all that matters at the end of the day." And I'd say if that's where you're going then, then you could do the same thing with Lean or Six Sigma operational excellence. What differentiates Dr. Deming's work, I believe in terms of his appreciation of variation as an element of Profound Knowledge, is what he learned from Dr. Taguchi. That the closer we are to the ideal value, that affects how the system, which is another element of Profound Knowledge, comes together.   0:19:53.8 BB: All right, so going back to those two examples, what I started to do, one is I was detecting that less variation, less, I was detecting within Rocketdyne and elsewhere that there was a far greater regard for less variation, less variation from each other than being on target. And I was just wanting to one; find out why does it matter if all you have to do is meet spec? Why does it matter? So relative to the paradigms of variation, and this was back into the mid '90s when I was working with some people in manufacturing and was greatly confused over this, and the confusion was, "Is it enough to meet print, Bill? You're not sure? And then we've got these capability indices. We want to use a small portion of the tolerance and then we've got this, "Bill you're telling we wanna be on target, help me understand that."   0:20:49.7 BB: Was what these guys were asking for. And the paradigms of variation that I come up with. And I described it, I said, "Well, let's look at it this way." I said, "There's this thing called... Let's call it paradigm A, and Paradigm A is meet print." All that matters at the end of the day, we wanna meet spec. So.   0:21:06.4 AS: When you say meet print, print is a kind of a word that maybe not everybody understands what that means.   0:21:12.7 BB: Thank you.   0:21:12.9 AS: What, that means spec?   0:21:13.6 BB: Meet the requirements.   0:21:14.6 AS: Meet the requirements.   0:21:15.6 BB: Meet the requirements. And so we want the meeting to start anywhere between here and here. And as long as we're in between... So "meeting requirements" such that everything is good, is paradigm A. And so if you went back to those... Looking at those two distributions, if you said it didn't matter which one to take, that would be the paradigm A answer. And that's rarely the case. And so what I was poking at with people is, "You tell me you're striving for zero defects, and then when I give you that information that there's zero defects, why does that not trigger you to say it doesn't matter?" Because there's something else going on. So then the idea that we want incredible uniformity, precision, that's what I refer to as paradigm B.   0:22:07.3 BB: And as I mentioned earlier, that is the dominant choice. We want narrow distributions. We want what people refer to as "piece to piece consistency" to be differentiated by the second most popular answer is being on the ideal value what Dr. Taguchi would call the target, which is what I refer to as paradigm C. So in explaining these three paradigms to these manufacturing folks, I said each of them has a goal. So the goal of paradigm A is to meet requirements, but they not only have a goal, they also have an approach. And their approach typically tends to be, "If you're slightly out measure again, if you're slightly in you're good. Can we change the requirements?" And so I thought as... The paradigm A solutions are all about playing with those lines, moving them in, moving them out.   0:23:01.1 BB: Paradigm B, which has a lot to do with, I find within Six Sigma quality, is we wanna have a given fraction of a percent of the tolerance. And these indices, the Cpk Cpk, Cp Cpk, and others, there'll be goals of, "It needs to be 1.33 or 2.0, or 1.67, and we wanna strive for Six Sigma quality." Well, the question I ask those people is, "How much money are we gonna spend to achieve Six Sigma quality? And is there a corresponding benefit?" And I don't get an answer. But so the paradigm B approach would be to take the distribution, and try to make it narrower, but narrow to the point that we're only using, 10% of the tolerance. And again, what bothers me about that is that it's not addressing what Taguchi's talking about, which is what we're doing at home.   0:24:04.8 BB: Whether it's baking something, we want the temperature to be close to 350 or, whatever it is we're doing. We're, looking for accuracy in how we're pulling something together, is we're looking for an ideal value. And there, what we're trying to do is, as I mentioned earlier, we're striving for, "Can we get precision and then can we make the adjustment to achieve accuracy?" And instead of just saying, "We wanna achieve some given value." To me, what I tell clients I work with and students in my classes is, "What is it gonna cost to achieve precision, to then focus on accuracy? How much money are we gonna spend on that? And what is the benefit?" And the benefit will be improvements downstream, which is looking at things as a system. And what we'll talk about in a future session, looking more at this is examples of things I've been involved with, that address this idea of not reducing variation to zero, but to me it's about managing variation and having the appropriate amount of variation, knowing that it could never be zero.   0:25:18.1 BB: But, does it...am I in a situation where meeting requirements is all I need to be. In the world of baseball there's a strike zone. You've got a batter coming up who can't hit the ball no matter what, and you say, "Well, it doesn't matter where it is. Just get it into the strike zone." The next batter comes up. And that batter is very determined to make... And you're trying to get the ball around the bat. Now it depends on where you are within the strike zone.   0:25:46.6 BB: Alright. So the other paradigm I wanna get into, and then we'll call it over, is, paradigm D. So there's A, is meet requirements, that's all that matters. B is, I'm looking for precision. C is, I'm looking for precision followed by accuracy. Paradigm D when I explained this to Dr. Taguchi in the late 1990s, and he said, I need to differentiate having one ideal value so I can be working in a place where all the tubes we make are one inch in outer diameter. And, so there's one ideal value, well, maybe what the company is doing is getting into variety and having different outer diameters. One inch, half inch, three-quarters of an inch. And in each case they're looking for accuracy, but accuracy around different values. And that's what Dr. Taguchi would refer to as... Well, he and I agreed to call it paradigm D, which is precision around an ideal value. But depending on your product line, you may have ideal values for different customers. And that's called variety. And so paradigm D is about precision coupled around varieties. So I just wanted to throw that out as well in our session.   0:27:16.7 AS: And the risk that you're highlighting is that somebody who's skilled in Six Sigma or some other tools will be patting themselves on the back, that they've got a very narrow distribution in that... And it's inside of spec and therefore they've done their job.   0:27:39.4 BB: Yes. Well...   0:27:40.1 AS: And what you're highlighting is that there is, there is an additional cost to the business or additional benefit if that narrow distribution could be moved to the target value?   0:27:58.2 BB: Well, here's what I've seen. I've seen organizations go from a really wide distribution where, in the assembly process, they need all those different sizes to put the puzzle together. And then somebody comes in and shrinks the variation to a fraction of that, not taking into account how they're used, and instead of going around and having all the different sizes to put the puzzle together, they can no longer do that. So what I'd say, I've seen plenty of examples where a given amount of variation that people are used to, that they're accommodating could be quite well until somebody comes along and gets rid of those other options.   0:28:48.2 BB: So I've seen variation reduction gone sour, a few times leading to some near catastrophic failures of a rocket engine because we're just looking at something in isolation. And, so I went to a very senior executive in that timeframe and I said... 'cause there's this big push in the company and we gotta reduce variation, "We gotta reduce variation." And I went to him and I said, "If we have a choice between shrinking the variation and doing nothing, I'd say do nothing." And he is like, "Well, what do you mean?" And I went through and explained this scenario with him and he said, "Oh, I've never seen anything like that." And I thought to myself, "You must have worked for companies that make the tubes, but don't use the tubes."   [laughter]   0:29:33.4 BB: I said. And so, this is why when I hear people talk about reducing variability, reducing cost, trying to make improvements, and again, we'll look at this in a whole nother episode, is my concern is are they thinking about that part in isolation? Are they thinking about how that fits into a greater system? So whether it's reducing the variation in the outer diameter, whether it's reducing the cost, if they're focusing on that as a KPI, and not looking at how that KPI fits into a greater system, I'd say I'd be nervous about that.   0:30:17.4 AS: One of the interesting examples I remember from when I was young and in maybe business school or whatever, was when Toyota came out with Lexus and they talked about how they spent a huge amount of time reducing variation in every part so that you had a much smoother and more quiet ride, and the reliability was better and better. And they talked about the pursuit of perfection was the tagline that they did. But it made sense to me that, many people would be... Many companies are satisfied with a certain amount of variation.   0:30:54.8 AS: When if they could get it more narrow around the desired outcome, then the knock on effects, particularly for a new company, maybe for an old company, and the knock on effects basically lead people to go, "Go back we want more variation," because you're screwing up everything downstream. But if you're building an operation where you can get more and more narrow distribution around the target output, the target desired output, then you're bringing benefit all the way down the line for the business. What have I got right and what have I got wrong out of that?   0:31:33.2 BB: Well, that's fantastic. And a couple things come to mind. I really appreciate that question. Andrew, if you were to do a Google search for Dr. Taguchi and Toyota, because this idea of being on target associated with what he referred to as the quality loss function, which again, will be a focus of another episode, I'd rather one, look at it as an integration loss function, just to reinforce the idea that being close to the ideal value is about improving integration. And that's it.   0:32:12.7 AS: When you say integration, what do you mean?   0:32:15.5 BB: Who's gonna use that tube? What are they gonna do with it?   0:32:18.1 AS: Okay. So downstream, integrating the process with the downstream.   0:32:20.5 BB: And so if I'm not looking at how the doctor fits into the system, how the tube fits into the system. So what I find is in the Taguchi community, people will say, Dr. Taguchi worked with Toyota back in the '50s and '60s. Dr. Taguchi and Deming met for the first time in the mid '50s in India. Dr. Taguchi was honored with the Deming prize in literature in 1960, and they would've met then. Don Wheeler in his books on Statistical Process Control, and inside the cover it will say, "In September 1960, a new definition of quality being on target with minimum variation." So there's all that. So what I've tried numerous times over the last 30 years is searching for documentation of Taguchi's influence on Toyota. I found nothing.   0:33:10.7 BB: And, so here I'm flying back from Japan, having gone there while Rocketdyne was owned by Boeing to explain these concepts to people at the Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, which is the largest aerospace company in Japan.   0:33:25.1 BB: There was a big partnership going on between Boeing, the division I worked for at Rocketdyne was part of Boeing. And, Boeing's, at that time, largest supplier in the world was MHI. So I was on a study team to go over there to... And I explained these ideas to them. They knew nothing about this. They were focusing on uniform... They were focusing on... Their quality system was precision, not accuracy.   0:33:47.6 BB: And I was explaining what we were doing with that. Well, flying home, I was sitting in business class, sitting next to me is a young engineer, flying out of Tokyo. He is Japanese. And now we started talking. Turns out he is a graduate of Cal Poly San Luis Obispo in California working for Toyota at the NUMMI plant. And I explained to him red pen and blue pen companies, he loved it. I explained to him the paradigms of variation. And he says, "Bill," he says, "I'm coming back from working with supplier to get them to focus on the ideal value." He says, "That is the thinking we use."   [laughter]   0:34:29.2 BB: He says they wanna change the tolerance. And I'm telling him, "No, you've got to hold that target value." So you can search the Internet, you won't find this. And so there's two data points I want to get before we close. So one is that the majority of the flight coming home was me explaining this stuff to him, and then afterwards maintaining a relationship with him and his boss and looking to see if I could learn more.   0:34:56.0 BB: But he was... For him to say, "That's exactly what we do." Well then I spent several years poking Dr. Taguchi about his loss function concepts and all, and he said, "No company in the United States uses the loss function." And I said, "Really?" He says, "No." He said, "The leading users in Japan are Toyota and Nippon Denso," now known as Denso, a major supplier to Toyota.   0:35:21.1 BB: And I said, "What do they do with it?" He says, well, he says, "Bill, they have a database of loss functions for how different things come together." He says, "They have a database for the impact of variation." And I said, "Really?" I said, "How do they use it?" He said, "They use it to guide their investments." That's what you're talking about, Andrew. But you won't find that on the Internet. I've not found that in any literature.   0:35:51.1 BB: So, those are two things that I hold there. I believe Toyota is using this somewhere deep in the organization as evidenced by this young guy. And my interest is to expand that appreciation within our community in The Deming Institute, that it is not about uniformity. It is not about precision. And, that improving precision could make things worse. [chuckle] If you're not focused on accuracy, then the question becomes, "Is every situation worth accuracy?" And the answer is, "No. You've got to look downstream."   0:36:29.6 AS: Okay. Now it's time for me to ask the question that was asked of Dr. Deming.   0:36:34.8 BB: Okay.   0:36:35.9 AS: Explain it in one short sentence. What do you think the key takeaway is from this excellent discussion?   0:36:44.8 BB: I think what's really important is the need to manage variation, which is the same thing as Akoff would say, the difference between managing actions and managing interactions. The idea is that how I accomplish my task depends upon how you're using it. And so for me to blindly meet a requirement from you not knowing how you use it, well, whether that's you asking me to clean the table and I don't know anything about the table, you saying, "I need you to meet these requirements."   0:37:21.2 BB: You saying, "I need this by tomorrow." And I say, "What do you mean by tomorrow, Andrew? Tomorrow at eight o'clock, tomorrow at nine o'clock?" And so I think what Deming's talking about is if I just blindly take a set of requirements and meet them in a way that I interpret without asking you for clarification, is not teamwork.   0:37:41.7 AS: Great.   0:37:44.1 BB: So I need to know how you're using this.   0:37:47.1 AS: And, that's a great lesson. And I think what it's telling us is the idea of communicating and cooperating and getting to the next level has to do with really understanding what the next process is doing with it, and how what you're delivering could be improved so that the improvement is measured by a benefit to the next and the next and the next profit process. Not as a loss to the next one, which is what you explained about if variation got reduced, all of a sudden people weren't built for handling that.   0:38:23.2 BB: Well, and let me throw one other thing out along those lines. And as a colleague of mine in Amsterdam says to people in the Lean community says, "How does Lean...how does implementation of Lean explain why we love Toyota products? How does it explain the reliability of the products? We buy nothing but Toyotas." Now, we've had bad luck with Toyotas, which people I met in business school classes told me, "You never buy anyone's first model even Toyota."   0:39:03.8 BB: So we will only buy Toyotas, but we'll never buy the first model year. And I'm buying it because I want it to start every single time. I don't want a car where I've gotta replace the water pump. And so for our listeners, if you wanna have customers revere your products for the reason, I think, many people revere Toyota products, I think what we're talking about tonight is a significant part of what makes those parts come together and those cars last so long.   0:39:41.3 AS: Bingo. 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. This is your host, Andrew Stotz, and I'm gonna leave you with one of my favorite quotes from Dr. Deming, which is, "people are entitled to joy in work."

In this episode, John and Andrew shift from management myths (don't do this) to principles for transformation (do this instead) based on Deming's 14 Points for Management. This episode introduces the principles and the context you need to get started. TRANSCRIPT 0:00:02.4 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 discussion with John Dues, who is part of the new generation of educators striving to apply Dr. Deming's principles to unleash student joy in learning. The topic for today is shifting our focus from management myths to principles for the transformation of school systems. John, take it away. 0:00:31.8 John Dues: Yeah, Andrew, it's good to be back. It's good to make this shift from the sort of the "don't do this" to the "things that we should focus on" as leaders of our systems, whether it's in business or education or whatever. And just as sort of a recap, we did these three episodes on management myths, and I think I made this point where sort of the common thread amongst all those myths is that they suboptimize our systems. I think the key thing to look for, whether it's sort of something we should be doing or whether we should not be doing when it comes to management practices, is does the thing, whatever that practice is, does it fragment the whole into parts and fail to appreciate the organization as a system? I think that's sort of the key differentiator between what I would call management myths, and then the things that we should be doing, some principles that we should be following. And I think that Deming philosophy is the opposite of the management myths. 0:01:33.0 AS: It's so tempting to fragment... I like what you said, fragment the whole into parts and optimize those parts. That is just so natural for us in some way, that it's manageable, it's accountability. And what you've taught us is that well, actually it produces a suboptimal result for the system. So I think, it's exciting to move into like, okay, now I understand that, so what do we do? 0:02:06.4 JD: Yeah. And I think with the myths, a common...sometimes people are gonna push back, obviously and it can be hard to wrap your head around the myths because they're often common practices. That's how we're often trained in business schools or schools of education. But if you sort of start to unpack and say, "Okay, you say that practice is working in your organization, but tell me what you hear when you talk about a particular practice, let's say merit pay for example?” "No, that works for us. That works for our organization." But then you start to say, "What do you hear around that particular system?" And I think a lot of times people start to say, it sort of dawns in them that, oh yeah, departments are competing against each other. Well, we sort of go around the rules to do X, Y, and Z so we can get the reward. And when you start to sort of think about those things, you can see how those myths sort of lead you in the wrong direction and you wanna sort of steer towards these principles that guide you in the right direction. 0:03:03.7 JD: But I think it's important to understand those myths and then take that next step, that next step to follow the principles that Dr. Deming talked about. Of course, many people that follow Dr. Deming's work are familiar with his famous 14 Principles for Management. I basically took those 14 Principles and translated them into sort of a language that's closer to what education folks are used to. And really what I think they do is they provide this sort of strong philosophical foundation. The management myths, again, are the don'ts, the principles, the guiding principles are the dos. But I think it's always good to steer it back to sort of these central ideas, quotes from Dr. Deming or someone else that captured the essence of what you're trying to do. And I thought one of the Deming quotes that stuck with me when it came to transformation is that Dr. Deming said, "The transformation will release the power of human resource contained in intrinsic motivation." 0:04:14.3 JD: And so, a lot of times people talk about transformation, but what do you actually mean? And to sort of put it simply in the Deming world is: transformation is a process where you begin to understand the System of Profound Knowledge and that helps you pull away from this prevailing system of management, the management myths that we talked about, like accountability, or merit pay, or a number of the other things that we talked about and move to this new philosophy. That's where the transformation is actually happening. And again, these guiding principle... 0:04:47.5 AS: You said release the power of human resources contained in intrinsic motivation. Is that what you... Did I get that right? 0:04:53.1 JD: That's right. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So I said... 0:04:54.5 AS: Incredible. 0:04:55.5 JD: The transformation will release the power of human resource contained in intrinsic motivation. And so, what you're trying to do is set up your system to tap into that intrinsic motivation instead of stomping it out. And those management myths stomp it out. And then these guiding principles will lead us in a different direction. 0:05:13.4 AS: And one of the things I would like to just highlight is that, a lot of times I'd like to just go back to childhood and look at what do we naturally do? We naturally work together. We naturally make friends. We naturally try to solve problems and we share. There's just so much natural learning that goes on. And if we would just go back to that, instead what happens is, like you said about the myths, adults start layering on all kinds of systems that all of a sudden just crush. 0:05:52.4 JD: Yeah. I think a lot of that comes from optimizing for competition versus optimizing for cooperation. And if we really wanna make our systems work, then we have to do the latter. I think that's key. And one thing I was gonna do is sort of tie these principles and the myths back to two sort of major problems that have unfolded in education over the last 50 years. And I think we've sort of talked about this in some earlier episodes. But sort of that first problem I would frame as, you remember that Nation at Risk report that we talked about came out in the early '80s, so 40 years ago or no. So I think all of the sort of major federal education reform policies that have come out since A Nation at Risk have fallen prey to one or more of those myths. So that's the sort of problem one. 0:06:49.1 JD: About the same time in the late '80s, we saw this major shift in the demographics of the teaching profession that we've only just more recently started to realize. So this actually blew my mind when I read this in a research report. But basically in 1988, so not that long ago, the typical teacher in the United States had 15 years of experience. You fast forward to 2017, the typical teacher was in their first year of teaching. So we've had this dramatic shift where the model teacher used to be sort of mid-career, and now the model teacher, the most typical teacher in the US is in their first year, they're a beginning teacher. So that's gonna cause all sorts of problems. 0:07:39.0 JD: Now, part of the issue, I can't tie this back to the federal education policies, and I'm not attempting to do that. I think maybe a contributing factor to sort of the general ecosystem, but not maybe causality, that's too strong to say that it caused it. But there's one, there's been the significant growth in the teaching profession, meaning there's lots more teachers than there were today, or in 1988 as compared to today. So of course if you're gonna add teachers for all sorts of reasons, more specialization is required, kids receive special education services that require smaller groups and things of that nature. So that's led to this explosion in the number of teachers in the United States. 0:08:28.7 JD: But regardless of the cause, this means that large numbers of teachers are entering the profession and they're leaving the profession, so there's all this churn. And so when you tie these two problems together, so number one is you got the federal education policies following sort of a lot of those management myths, then you got this sort of significant change in teacher demographics. It's basically massive instability in the US's education ecosystem. 0:09:03.6 AS: And before you go on, that statistic is almost unbelievable. And I wanna get more from you on that later, but I just...in order for that statistic to be correct, it would seem like there was a huge drop off of older teachers exiting, as you mentioned. And also, I guess what would be correct is that it was a massive influx of brand new teachers. 0:09:34.0 JD: Absolutely. Yeah. 0:09:34.4 AS: Like huge. And it kind of depends on what year that happened, because if that's the case, that number will be changing very rapidly as those new huge mass of new teachers mature over time. I wonder, I have a lot of questions about that data and I'd love to see more of that. 0:09:53.9 JD: Yeah. And I think...I'm certainly not an expert in demographics in the US but I think what I've seen is there's both a graying and a greening of the profession. Meaning there's lots of people that are retiring or nearing retirement age and there's lots of new teachers. There's less people in the middle. And a big reason for the churn is, or to keep in mind, is that a lot of these new teachers are leaving, so they're being replaced by more new teachers. So I don't see this sort of subsiding anytime in the near future. 0:10:28.1 AS: Could you imagine running a business like that? It would be just impossible. 0:10:34.1 JD: No. No. And that's sort of one of my theses right now. And sort of tying back some of the work that I've done with the book I wrote is that there's this massive instability in the education sector. And part of the reason for that is that we as a sector lack this sort of solid philosophical foundation and a sound theory of management. And I think that's where the Deming Philosophy can actually fill in sort of this major hole in how we're operating in education. I think specifically that's where these 14 Principles for educational systems transformation, is what I call them, I think that's where these principles can come in and play a role in sort of stabilizing the education sector that's been so topsy-turvy for 30 years or so. 0:11:36.1 JD: So I think it's a good place to start with sort of an introduction to the 14 Principles. So the Deming sort of crowd will be familiar, if you're coming to this as an interested party but less familiar with Deming, you may not know. So I think there's some things to clarify that were a little bit confusing to me initially. 0:11:56.4 JD: One thing that you'll hear in the Deming community is people will refer to the 14 Points, but then also Deming sometimes called them Principles. He sometimes called them Obligations of management for clarity and just to be straightforward I just call them Principles, my 14 guiding principles. I think it's also important to sort of call out that while they're an important component of the Deming philosophy, they're not in and of themselves the Deming philosophy. I think that's really important to call out. And I think when you discover something like anytime you have a numbered list, like 14 this, or 10 this, or five this, I think there's this sort of almost human nature to sort of start to think of them as a checklist to be implemented. Really, they're not. They're not. You can't just do number one and then you do number two, and then you do number three. That's not how they're set up. Really, what they're set up to do is sort of open your mind to a whole new way of thinking in terms of how we organize and run our institutions, in this case, our educational institutions. 0:13:09.2 JD: And I think most importantly, these 14 Principles are these interlinked points within this larger management philosophy. And you can't simply put the points into action without first understanding why Deming wrote them in the way that he did. So, they're not super long. Some of the points are a couple pages, some of the points are just even a page or so in Out of the Crisis, one of Deming's books. So he is very deliberate about the words he chose and the framing of the Principles. 0:13:43.4 JD: And the last thing I would say, if you're sort of new to the 14 Principles, that you have to account for your organization's context. So you can't just adopt the 14 Principles without a deep appreciation of both the principles themselves, and that organizational context. If you just sort of tried to throw this into your system, without deep study and deep understanding that, it could cause sort of mass chaos. So I think those are some things that I would say to anybody that's considering looking at the the 14 Principles. 0:14:19.9 AS: Yeah. And the point is that the reason why it's not a checklist, it's because number one, it's hard, it forces you to think, number one. You really have to think about what it is that he's presenting. And number two is, it's even harder to implement, because once you start to realize that there's so much value in what he's saying, now you're gonna have to come up against the prevailing system of management, all the myths and all of that stuff. And that's the reason why, one of the reasons why it's not a checklist, it's 14 Points for Management. And here is what...and I can say I first read that when I was 22, 23 working at Pepsi, and now I'm 57 and I can say that I still look back at them and go, "Oh, now I see." 0:15:18.5 JD: Yeah. I think there will always be that. There will always be that, even for somebody that's done this for 30 years or 40 years, there's always gonna be that sort of continual "aha" moments, or connections. But you sort of have to go all in in the sense that you can't pick and choose like a menu, like, "I'm gonna do, of the 14 Principles I'm gonna do 1, 2, 4, 6, and 9," it just doesn't work like that. You have to sort of go in all in on the 14 Principles. It doesn't mean that you have to do them all at the same time, or at the same rate, but you can't just sort of pick and choose which ones you're gonna do. They work together. 0:15:55.9 AS: And it's interesting cause the first one talks about constancy of purpose. 0:16:00.8 JD: That's right. 0:16:00.9 AS: I would say that, that's the one that really challenges the management. I'm gonna be meeting with the management team of a...the ownership team basically of a factory in Thailand next week and what we'll be talking about is: how do you build constancy of purpose, or how do you think about that? And also the idea of constancy of purpose of thinking that our job is to improve. How do we keep learning? How do we keep improving so that we deliver more and better value to our customer, to our student, to whatever. And that, without that commitment, it's hard to do the other ones. But I agree that there's...you can jump around and think, "Okay, I can do this one right now, I can drive out fear right now. This one's gonna take more time," or that type of thing. So, yeah. 0:16:52.3 JD: Yeah. So I think that's a good segue and so, with that sort of introduction of mine, I think diving into Principle one, sort of the short version is "create consistency of purpose." And then I sort of took Dr. Deming's version and rewrote it for educators, and the way I did that was I said, "Create consistency of purpose toward continual improvement of high quality learning systems. These systems should be designed in such a way that they enable joy and work for staff, and joy in learning for students, with the aim that everyone can access opportunity rich lives in our society now and into the future." So that's sort of the long-term vision, that's the long-term purpose that we're working towards. Now you have to say, "Okay, now what do we have to do to get there?" That's the hard part. 0:17:45.8 JD: And I think, what I read from Dr. Deming is that he often spoke about two problems that all organizations face if they want to stay in business, whether they are a factory, or whether they are a school or some other type of organization, doesn't really matter. First, there's these problems of today, and second, there are the problems of the future. And both camps are a fairly daunting list, but we'll start with sort of problems of today. I think with all schools, but maybe even especially so for schools like where I work where they're... We're a network of public charter schools, we don't have any kids geographically assigned to us. But even for a traditional public school I think enrollment, student enrollment is a constant concern. "How are we gonna make sure that we are setting up our program so it best serves our students and families?" 0:18:48.3 JD: And I think if you think of the problems of today, of the typical public school, ensuring the quality of learning experiences, balancing the demands of local, state, federal education policies, attracting, retaining... Or attracting, training and retaining employees, making sound budgeting decisions, recruiting and retaining students. Fundraising is a component of our system. Acquiring, maintaining, upgrading school buildings, you could go on and on and on. It's pretty self-evident from that list that educational leaders could easily stay tied to those problems of today, and that would be more than a full-time job, just sort of keeping up. 0:19:40.8 JD: That's even before you consider this second camp, this idea of problems of the future. And that's really where constancy of purpose becomes especially important. And this is where this idea of continual improvement of the school district's competitive position within the educational ecosystem really comes into play. So why are parents gonna choose my school or my school system for their child? And a really important question for all school systems to consider: is the board and the superintendent dedicated to the short-term or are they dedicated to the long-term of the institution? And of course, short-term, maybe in a business setting may be quick profits. Short-term in a school system may be something more like really focusing on these state test scores. 0:20:47.6 AS: Pass the exam. 0:20:50.1 JD: Pass the exam, right. There are certain things we could do to increase those scores on the short-term. Or are we taking the mindset that our school is set up to ensure that our schools will be success...or our students will be successful 10 or 20 or 30 years from now. And focusing on short, long-term is not mutually exclusive. There's certainly things in the short-term you need focus on, certainly things in the long-term, but I think taking that long-term view is the most important. I am not as concerned with how a sixth grader in my system does on the state test, although that has some importance to me. What I'm most concerned about when I'm thinking about that 12-year-old is what will they be doing when they're 18, when they're 28, when they're 38. Did we set the right foundation for them on a long-term basis? And that's a really weighty responsibility for school to balance those two sets of problems, the everyday things that we have to deal with and then keeping our eye on future problems that we should be anticipating. 0:22:03.0 AS: Yeah, one of the things about that, that's interesting is that you're pretty much never pulled to future problems and you are constantly pulled into today's problems, and therefore majority of people just...all they can do is deal with today's problems and the idea of starting to think about how do we start to devote a portion of time, some of our thinking, some of our efforts. I remember Dr. Deming saying that somebody could put out fires for their whole career and never improve the system. 0:22:40.6 JD: Easily, easily. In fact, I'd say that's what most people do. 0:22:44.7 AS: Well, it's pretty exciting to be a problem solver and to walk in, "Alright, do this. Okay, I know this problem, we've seen it before, let's do this. Okay, here's how you solve that." And it's really exhilarating to go home from the end, at the end of the day, just say, "Man, I fixed a bunch of crises that came up. I'm the hero." 0:23:07.6 JD: Yeah, absolutely. And with Dr. Deming, he did give us some key things to focus on and he really talked about when it comes to this commitment to constancy of purpose, he really talked about this alignment of acceptance of these three obligations you talked about. First, one obligation is a focus on innovation. A second obligation was a focus or is a focus on research and education, kind of clump those together. And then the third obligation was to focus on continual improvement of, in our case, educational services. So it is helpful to go through just a little deeper on each of those obligations and what he meant. 0:24:04.1 JD: So obligation, one, is innovation. And so to your point about how we sort of shift some of our focus on to future planning. Well, one thing is, if you're gonna do that as a school or any type of organization, you have to allocate resources to long-term planning, whether that's staff that's focused on long-term planning specifically, or other types of resources. It could be new educational services, that better prepare students for the future of work, could be new curriculum resources. It could be educational technology. It could be the cost associated with those things. There could be new pedagogical approaches grounded in neuro-scientific discoveries as we learn how people learn, adjusting our instruction accordingly. 0:25:01.0 JD: New skills for teachers and administrators, training and retraining staff. All of these things are costs and you, and then they're upfront cost and though if we are gonna be serious about planning for the future that you then have to allocate some resources. And I think a key to this is the people that are working in your system, they have to have faith in a future. That's a pre-requisite for innovation. If all you're doing is putting out fires and not thinking about the future, if there isn't this unshakable commitment to quality, then especially middle managers, who in a school system is like principals and teacher leaders, the frontline people are the teachers, and of course the students, if they are skeptical about the future of your organization then they're not gonna put in best efforts, and then it's gonna be impossible to put any attention and energy towards innovation. 0:26:11.2 AS: So just to summarize that part, so is what you're saying is that the most important thing that you can do as a leader in a school, as an example, is to switch the focus from putting out the fires and stuff and start to say we need to think about innovation, research and education, and continual improvement, and get everybody focused on those things as the way forward? 0:26:42.4 JD: Yeah, that's certainly part of it. And I think saying things like, you know, talking about constancy of purpose explicitly. So I think saying like, teachers often get very stressed out about state test scores. So I would say okay, look, these things are important. There's something that we have to do. But what I'm most concerned about is the long-term health, well-being of our students. So that's what I'm most concerned with preparing them for. So I think even little statements like that, the sort of reorient people and how they're thinking about their sort of day-to-day, I think that's really important. And I think you also - doing things to tie back sort of that message to things concretely in your system such as having alumni come back and speak to your current students, having events where you can see sort of what students are doing now after they've left your system, that makes that connection real to that long term constancy of purpose. So I think it's all of those things. 0:27:54.6 AS: Yeah. So one of my questions you know to start to think about how we wrap this up is how does somebody take all of what you just described. We've shift from myths, now we're like, okay, let's focus on what we can do. What are some...what's one take away or something that you feel like somebody listening to this could go back to their classroom, back to their office as an administrator and say here's step number one I can take towards this? 0:28:34.9 JD: Well, I think one initial activity just to get a sense of where your system is, so let's say you're a superintendent and you have a team of five or eight people that report directly to you. I think going back and ask them to individually write what is our purpose? What's the...why are we here? What's our long-term purpose? And I'm betting that you're going to get five to eight different answers. So, I think that would be a helpful exercise, is just what do people see now as the core long term purpose of your organization, and I think there's many exercises you could build from just that simple question. 0:29:17.7 AS: Yeah, that's a...I'm absolutely sure you're going to get five different answers.  0:29:23.4 JD: Yeah. I agree. I agree. 0:29:25.8 AS: All right. So is there anything else that you want to add before I wrap up and summarize what we've been talking about? 0:29:35.1 JD: Yeah, I would just... Maybe just touch really quickly on those two other obligations. So innovation was the first one. The second one is Deming talked about research and education and I think when he was talking about education, he was talking about self-improvement and acquiring new knowledge and he differentiated that from training. You know, whereas training is something that you're going to do and once you do it, you expect to see it the next day. That's different than education, that's sort of acquiring new knowledge about the best way to teach or do some other key function. There needs to be a focus there. 0:30:11.1 JD: And then that third obligation is continual improvement. And what he's talking about there, at least in an education setting, is systems leaders have to continually improve the design of their educational services. You have to have this growth mindset. So because this particular obligation never ceases. You never stop improving. I mean as soon as you start thinking you've arrived, your organization has already started to move backwards. So that can be - you know depending on who works in your organization that can be a hard thing to sort of hear. Like I thought I had my lesson plans done. No, your lesson plans are continually improving. You're continually making them better. That doesn't mean you have to overhaul everything that you're doing all the time, but it does mean that even in small ways, I'm going to be working on that on a never ending basis. You know, for my teacher, it's my lesson plans. If I'm a systems leader, there are other aspects of my work that I'm going to continually improve. 0:31:12.5 JD: And I think, you know, you asked about what could people do concretely is, you know, once you understand what your core long-term purpose is, everybody in the system has to understand that. So customers, be it families or higher education, government, industry, whatever, that has to be employees, that has to be the suppliers to your system, which are families, other school districts. Everybody needs to know what that long-term purpose is and they need to know even explicitly that you're committed to those three obligations, that you're committed to sort of longterm success of your organization. 0:31:53.8 AS: You'll notice over my shoulder I have a piece of paper on the wall and when you were talking I walked over...I slid back to look at it and it's a reminder from David Langford, who teaches us so much and that is continual improvement. Not "continuous" and you said "continual." So the point is he makes is that if you say continuous, it's like just constantly improving everything. It's like jumbling things up forever as opposed to continual where you're codifying the things that are working, standardizing some things, and then moving on to the next step of learning. So... 0:32:35.9 JD: Yeah. I think Deming was wise in choosing those words always deliberately. Continuous sort of implies like software, always self-improving and never ends. But humans can't continuously go on. Continual means there's discontinuous improvement. There's stops and starts. There's changes in focus, those types of things. So it's another nod to the humanistic nature of the Deming philosophy. 0:33:01.8 AS: All right. So let me summarize. We started off by talking about, it's a shift from talking about the management myths, now we're into the principles for the transformation of school systems. And basically, I think you kicked it off by saying that when people are implementing the myths, they're sub-optimizing the system and they're fragmenting the whole into parts and thinking if they can just get those parts right, that's gonna get the best result for the system and that is unfortunately wrong and we've gotta look at it from a systems basis. 0:33:39.0 AS: And then also you mentioned the quote of Dr. Deming saying, "Release the power of human resource contained in intrinsic motivation." And that, I just love that. That really helps to understand what we're trying to do is that people do want to contribute and they want to contribute in a great way. And then you also talked about, start with constancy of purpose and an aim. And you talked about the balance of problems between of today and the future. And I was adding in that you're constantly pulled into problems of today, and you're never pulled into problems of the future. So it takes some discipline, as you said, to start to strike that balance. 0:34:22.5 AS: And then, you talked about the importance of really taking that long term view. Then you mentioned about the three obligations, which all seem to look towards the future, and therefore maybe that's a good way to start to draw your people into thinking about the future. And the first one you mentioned about was, that Deming talked about, and you mentioned about was innovation. He also talked about research and education, and you highlighted, when he talks about education, he's talking about self-improvement and how do we acquire new knowledge in this organization? 0:34:56.2 AS: And then the third one is continual improvement. And the point is in education, it's design of the educational services. And then finally I think a call to action, a challenge to everybody that you have now given us to say, how do we take this back to the classroom or as an administrator back to the school? And your point was maybe ask your top three to five people, whatever, to answer the question, what is our long-term purpose? And have them do it individually. Write it down in short little statement and what you pretty much guarantee and I would second that you're gonna find probably five different statements of purpose. And I think that then, a note that I took as you were speaking was, "Use that as a starting point to clarify your long-term purpose." So great call to action at the end of this one. Anything you would add to that? 0:35:52.0 JD: No, I think, that was a perfect summary. Without an aim, there's no system. So that long-term aim that defines your constancy of purpose is that good place to start like you just said. 0:36:06.0 AS: So ladies and gentlemen, there's your challenge. Go back and do that little bit of homework. John, on behalf of everyone at The Deming Institute, I want to thank you again for this discussion. And for listeners, remember to go to deming.org to continue your journey. Oh, and by the way, you can find John's book Win-Win with Dr. W. Edwards Deming, The System of Profound Knowledge and the Science of Improving Schools on amazon.com. 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."

David and Andrew discuss the three types of power that leaders have: authority, knowledge, and persuasion. David also explains where the current style of "command and control" management comes from and what a nearly failed family vacation can tell us about power. 0:00:02.7 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 am continuing my discussion with David P. Langford, who has devoted his life to applying Dr. Deming's philosophy to education, and he offers us his practical advice for implementation. The topic today is the Three Power Rangers and Their Sources of Power for Improvement. We are now on item number seven on the list that was given to us by Dr. Deming in the book, The New Economics. It's called, the title of the list is called Role of a Manager of People. This is the new role of a manager of people after transformation. For those of you who have the third edition, this is on page 86, and for those with the second edition, it is on page 125. 0:00:56.7 AS: So now let's get into number seven. So we're talking about the manager after transformation. He has three sources of power. Number one, authority of office. Number two, knowledge. Number three, personality and persuasive power or tact. A successful manager of people develops number two and three, that is knowledge and personality. He does not rely on number one, which is the authority of office. He has, nevertheless, obligation to use number one, as this source of power enables him to change the process - that's the equipment, materials and methods to bring improvement, such as to reduce variation in output. Dr. Robert Klekamp says "He in authority but lacking knowledge or personality must depend on his formal power. He unconsciously fills a void in his qualifications by making it clear to everybody that he is in a position of authority. His will be done." David, take it away. 0:02:02.5 David Langford: Okay, that's great. So this is one of my favorite points, which has three subset points or Power Rangers, sources of power for improvement. And I've used this with managers around the world for the last 40 years. And in some cases, they just drop their jaws and they're just amazed at how simple this is. But the more you think about it and realize what people, managers of people are not doing, it gives a roadmap about: what do you do? How do you do something? And I get that question all the time from superintendents and principals in my field of education, and people that do have a formal position. Then they wanna know: well, how do I get these people to do stuff, make things happen? 0:02:58.2 DL: So, before we get into each of the three Power Rangers, I wanted to give a little bit of context too, because I wanna remind everybody that, Deming lived through World War II and was a part of the quality improvement effort for World War II. And what happened during World War II is that a lot of the manufacturing was being done by women in the United States especially. And so when the war ended, you had all these military people coming back to corporations and moving into top management positions, and basically the management style that they brought with them was military. And so that's where you got phrases like, "My way or the highway," and, "You're not getting paid to think. You just do what I tell you to do and everything will be fine." 0:03:51.5 AS: Attack that hill. 0:03:53.1 DL: Yeah, right, which was totally opposite to the whole manufacturing thing that had been going on during the war and was really the key to the war machine was being able to produce huge amount of military items in a very short period of time. 0:04:09.3 AS: Well, and also when you think about that, David, it's interesting to think about the patriotism and the commitment to a cause that those women went into those factories to do. And so when it was all done and the cause was met, the challenge was met, then to be faced with that, it's like, "Wait a minute, we lost something here." 0:04:30.9 DL: Yeah, and then I remember Deming talking about it one time at a conference and stuff and talking about, basically, in those factories, women liked to get together and talk about what was going on, and their performance and everything that was happening in the factory. And then when the men came back in, they said, "No, we're not gonna have groups or teams or anything like that. You're just gonna do what I would tell you to do, and if you don't like it, then find someplace else to work." One of the phrases I always remember Deming used to say was that: "pretty soon you're left with only the people who can't get a job someplace else." 0:05:14.0 DL: And I've found that to be so true in every profession that I've worked in or helped people with, etcetera, and have... So it leads us to number one, your formal position. So yeah, you have a job. You're the CEO, you're the principal of a school, you're a headmaster, you're whatever it might be. You got the job, right? And so with that comes formal position that you need to be able to...you have to do stuff and you have a job to do. And you may even be given goals by a board or something that it's your job to make this happen. Well, the question is, how do you make it happen? If it was just so simple that a new boss could come in and just start bossing people around and tell them what to do, and then they all do it and things get better, then we wouldn't actually need any of this Deming stuff, right? 0:06:13.6 DL: But it's not so simple as being able to do that. And basically what Deming is saying in this point too, is that if you act like that and you use your formal position to make change, basically, you're not gonna be around long, because pretty soon the people that work for you are gonna start to kind of revolt, and either they'll find other jobs or the pressure will become on you to get out and get somebody else in there. This is also the reason that some boards think improvement means, we'll just hire somebody else. Well, that doesn't work either. I'll never forget a superintendent of a huge school district that I worked with, and I had asked him, when we started working with him, I said, "Well, what's been your method of improvement?" And he very looked at me very clearly and just said, "Well, we fire people." 0:07:17.3 AS: That's the Jack Welch School. 0:07:19.8 DL: Yeah, exactly. 0:07:20.3 AS: Take the bottom, bottom half or the bottom quarter or the bottom 10% and make sure you're firing them often. 0:07:25.8 DL: Yeah. But that's means that you're also in that category too, right? To improve your position, all we got to do is fire you and find somebody else in that position. But are you finding somebody else with the exact same philosophy or are you actually looking for somebody else that has a different philosophy? And I think that's really what Deming is talking about here, is that, hey, if you want to stay around a very long time, yeah, it might be your formal position, but don't use that unless you absolutely have to. I often tell managers, if suddenly there's a fire in a building, you're not gonna get a bunch of people together and have a meeting and say, "Okay, what do we do? And which way should we go?" And things like that. You're probably gonna use your formal position to take charge and say, "Let's get out of the building," etcetera. But then very quickly, you should get people together to say, "Okay, how could we have done that better? And how could we work through that and improve that whole process?" 0:08:31.6 DL: And so that's where I think point number two really comes in, is that, do you have knowledge of a different way to manage, different way to think? And that's all Deming, about statistics and understanding process analysis and understanding how people work together, and do you understand how to do Plan-Do-Study-Act - the PDSA process - to improve something? And so you're using your knowledge of theory and background to improve something. And the irony of that is, when you concentrate on using your knowledge to do stuff, you actually gain authority. Just 'cause people start to look up to you as, oh, he or she, they have a process of improvement and they just stick with it. Anytime that something comes up, it's never blaming people. It's always looking at what is the process? What's happening? Let's use a few tools. Let's analyze what's happening. Let's look at a flow chart of the process and let's improve the process. That's knowledge. 0:09:40.4 AS: So the people want to follow you rather than people must follow you. 0:09:46.6 DL: Yeah, that's a good way, it's a good way to put it. Exactly. So, I think of the three, probably that's most important, right? 0:09:57.9 AS: Yeah. 0:10:00.6 DL: And the other thing about these three points is that, maybe you're working in an organization, maybe you're just a teacher. I say just, maybe you're a teacher in a school, and there's maybe 200 teachers, and you see that things are not going well. What can you do? Well, you're not the person in charge, right? And if you just march into the headmaster or the principal or whoever and start telling them what to do, you're probably not gonna be around. But what can you do? You can use your knowledge of improvement. And through that process, you actually become very powerful, because lots of people wanna work with you, 'cause every time we do, we get things done and we look at problems differently. And then pretty soon, your boss is coming to you when problems arise or when process improvement is necessary and saying, "Hey can you help here? Help us work through this problem?" And that's a level of power that's for change or improvement that is significant, if you think like that. 0:11:14.2 AS: I was thinking about, if you're a young person going into the workforce, you don't have authority. I mean, you may be given it in a small position. I was a supervisor at Pepsi when I first started, so I had a certain level of authority, but there's no way I could use it when all of my work... All the guys working for me had been there 20 years or whatever. 0:11:33.7 DL: Yeah, exactly. 0:11:34.8 AS: And do it would be foolish for me to do that. And so, I definitely used my personality and I didn't have much knowledge, so I had to try to acquire knowledge, which was making me...I took a note and just thought about, to be able to use knowledge as an a form of management, you've gotta acquire it, and it comes through your own acquisition plus also hiring people who...you can acquire knowledgeable people that are around you that can help to solve things. And then as I started, and in my case, David, what we were doing was we were filling Pepsi trucks every night, and they were all wrong. So the drivers in the morning would come in and they'd have to waste a lot of time counting their trucks, counting what's on their trucks, and then going back and getting what was missing. 0:12:24.3 AS: And I had to then develop...I had to then acquire knowledge of why were we making these mistakes? Which one on my staff was doing really well? How could we learn from that? And how could we do it so that we could lock those trucks and guarantee those drivers that that truck was accurate? And it took me many months to get to the point where I acquired enough knowledge to be able to then have the authority to go, "All right, now we've done all of this. Now, this is the way we're doing it from all that we've learned." So anyways, this is just me rambling, but that was just something that I thought about. 0:13:00.9 DL: Yes. No, that's a good... That's a really great example. That's a great, great story about that. And I'm sure that it took a while for the drivers to trust that it was actually right. 0:13:14.7 AS: I mean, I had to negotiate with them, and I'd tell them, "Look, if you find a problem out there, we're gonna fix that," and blah, blah, and all that, but then they were like, "Well, if I find a problem out there, I don't have the product to sell, so it has to be right," which basically it was, there's a lot of teaching actually involved in that to help everybody understand. 0:13:33.9 DL: Yeah, exactly. So then point number three is about personality. And so, you probably have worked for people, if you've had several jobs, everything from delivering papers on up to a current job you may be in now, you probably worked with people that are just really great people to get along with, right? And that's a source of power. I mean, they get things done because they're just really nice people and supportive, and they just have a really great personality about how to work and what to do. And I can visually see people in my mind that I worked with over the last 40 years that, just great people like that. But it's not enough, because you might be a really great person to work with. "Joe is really a great person to work with, and he's really fun and everything else, but he never gets anything done." Because he doesn't have the knowledge of basically the Deming philosophy about how to get stuff done, right? 0:14:45.7 DL: So what Deming's talking about here is that these are the three Power Rangers, the three sources of power, that if you wanna get something done and move forward and improve something, really you have to think about it as an inter-relationship of parts to the whole, of these three areas working together. So if you start concentrating...and the explanation in the following paragraph, he talks about, well, you don't have any knowledge and your personality stinks, and so what you rely on is your authoritarian position just to tell people what to do, you won't last long and also you're not gonna improve things. Things are not gonna get better when you do that. So you may have a formal position, but he talks about concentrate on two and three, your knowledge and your personality, and you will start to see a major transformation. 0:15:44.8 DL: Everybody knows you're the boss. You don't have to go around and tell people you're the boss. By virtue of the formal position, you have that. And I always take these things down to a teacher in a classroom. A teacher, that's a formal position that a teacher has. I have authority over these students during this time period, right? And I've known teachers that that's all they concentrate on, is the authority. And again, we've talked before about oftentimes, especially in like grammar school or primary school or elementary school, you're physically bigger than them and so you use that as part of your authority, that, "I'm the boss here. You do this, out you go." Well, even very little kids don't respect that. 0:16:42.1 DL: I think I told a story one time of 5-year-olds testifying for a state board of education, and they were so amazing explaining all these wonderful things that they were doing in their classroom and collecting data and improving stuff. And one of the board members said, "Well, where's your teacher when all this is going on?" And this 5-year-old, without hesitating, grabbed the microphone and said, "The teacher's not in the closet, you know." And as soon as I heard that, I thought of these three points. That little person knew they had been coached and mentored and taught a process of how to work together and improve that classroom, and the person that he looked up to was the teacher. So even at 5 years old, these things come in to play in a very real way, so. 0:17:41.6 AS: I would like to bring this back to constancy of purpose for a second, because...and I wanna think about, there's a book I recently read by Richard Rumelt, which is called Good Strategy Bad Strategy, and it's an excellent book about setting corporate strategy. But he talks about how businesses kind of move in waves, where you have a decentralization period of time where you're expanding and your giving authority. And then, basically the organization can lose focus, and then it's gonna require the authority of the senior management to say, "Okay, we have to, at some point, restructure and refocus this," and then you rely on more centralized, and he was just talking about the waves of that. And then I was thinking about the authority, from a positive perspective, is the role of the leaders of an organization, of the school, of a business, the role of those leaders is to set that direction. 0:18:37.5 AS: And you do have to claim authority or else you can't...that's what I also liked about what I learned from Deming when I first started learning, is that you can't just go, "Okay, what do you guys think our direction should be?" I mean, that is a fun question, but ultimately, as a leader, you got to really make sure that the constancy of purpose and the aim is there, and that sometimes requires what I would call good authority, authority coming from a knowledgeable and experienced perspective, but there must be authority. 0:19:07.3 DL: Right. Well, you could be the manager that comes and says, "Look, we need to reestablish our constancy of purpose. So let's talk about some ideas about how we can go about that and that are different than what we've done before, because obviously that's not working. So let's work together to figure out a good pathway that we can make that happen." So that's using your personality to run a meeting and get what you need to have happen, but you're bringing people with you instead of doing stuff to them, so. 0:19:39.2 AS: Yeah, I have one little story to tell about this authority concept, is that in our coffee factory many years ago, my business partner Dale was sitting in the office up above the roasting area and he started to smell smoke. And roasting coffee has... We have roaster fires that happen in the roasting machine. And basically, he went rushing down to realize that a fire was raging in the roasting machine, particularly in the chimney, and was getting down into the machine. And so the first thing he did is he just started yelling, "Everybody out!" And he got everybody out of that building first thing, except for one or two men that were there working. And with one of the guys, he said, "Grab that little hose," and he's got this little hose that they had to try to cool down the plate that he had to unscrew all these screws on. And he told the other guy, "Get up to the top of the building and start pouring water down the chimney of this roaster to start putting this fire out." 0:20:49.6 AS: And then they eventually got the whole thing out. But it required authority at the time to save the factory and to save the lives of the people. And so authority is necessary. It's just that that authority came at a time of emergency. Also, the other question is, is it good authority? There are people that give really bad advice in the middle of an emergency. And so, you know... 0:21:14.2 DL: Yeah, but then, points two and three come into play, personality and knowledge, because the very...soon as that crisis is over, the very next thing that guy should have done is bring everybody in and say, "Okay, what do we do to make sure this never happens again?" 0:21:31.8 AS: Which is exactly... 0:21:31.9 DL: Yeah, and if it does happen, what's going to be our process? 0:21:38.7 AS: Which is exactly what happened. And they analyzed why it happened and it was because they hadn't been maintaining the machine by the schedule that they had set. So they had to set up a better schedule to make sure that all of the husk that's coming off of the coffee, the chaff, is taken out on a daily basis and all clean. And so, we've never really had a major fire like that, and that's been, probably be 15 years ago. 0:22:00.3 DL: Wow. No, that's really a great example. So if you have a crisis, my advice to managers always is get through it. And then as soon as you get through it, bring everybody together to just say, "Okay, how do we make sure this never happens again?" 0:22:15.6 AS: Yeah, it's the balance between short-term and long-term. Last thing, I want to just highlight something that you talked about at the beginning that many people may not really understand is that, that workforce change that happened after World War II. And this is something that shaped a lot of Dr. Deming's observations. And that is, the estimates are that there was about 4-5 million American men who came back from Europe after World War II. And we know that there was a large amount of women in the workforce there. And so about 4-5 million men was about 3-4% of the 140 or so million population of the US. So, it wasn't a small number, but if you actually look at the labor force of the US, it was roughly 50-60 million of that 140 million that were in the labor force at the time. So we're talking about 7-8% of the labor force. 0:23:11.4 AS: And so this wave of command and control men who had been trained through boot camps and all of that, of command and control, it kind of explains why Dr. Deming railed against what then started happening was that all of a sudden, the joy was just destroyed. The aim that the women in particular that came to these factories producing, that aim was kind of demolished by these marching men that came in. So any thoughts on that, David? 0:23:43.3 DL: Well, in wartime, it's just constant crisis management. That's all it is. And that's why the military relies so heavily on chain of command and who's in authority and who's in command here and all those kinds of things, because you're just trying to survive a situation. But when you're not in wartime, that's the time to actually improve processes, get things done, understand a different way to work and operate. But even in those kinds of situations, military commanders that concentrated on two and three, knowledge and personality, got a lot more done and saved a lot more people than just "do it my way" kind of thing, so. 0:24:29.9 AS: Yeah. Well, in wrapping up, let's just now revisit what we've been talking about, and that is, ultimately, it's authority, knowledge, and personality. And these are the three factors that Dr. Deming is talking about. And ultimately, we want to develop personality and knowledge, and then ultimately that leads to higher authority. And the idea of command and control type of authority is only really useful in times of emergency, but most of the time, you need to use the others. Anything you would add to that? 0:25:10.0 DL: Yeah, that's a perfect way to think about it. That's a great, great wrap up to it. And Deming talked a lot about business, but I always gonna wanna bring it back that this applies to anything, a classroom, a family. If you're treating your family like that, you have a different kind of problem. And I don't know if I've told this story, but I have five children and I live in Montana. And so we had a really bad snow year, one year, and there was, just terrible in February, just so much snow and everybody's sick of it and everything else. So my wife and I dreamed up this scheme that we would get tickets to take all the kids to California and go to Disneyland and all these great things, but we wouldn't tell them. We would just get up in the morning like we're getting ready for school. 0:26:01.9 DL: And so we're sitting around the table and my wife says, "I'm sick of this snow. I'd like to get out of here, and who else would like to get out of here?" And the kids are all like, "Yeah, I would like to get out of here. When can we do that?" And she said, "Well, our plane leaves today at 11 o'clock, so here's a list. Go pack these kinds of things." And they were like "Wow, where are we going? What's happening? This is so exciting." And we didn't tell them anything, so they had to figure out when they got to the airport, where the plane was going. And then they said Orange County, and they, "What? Orange County? What's in Orange County?" 0:26:39.6 AS: Oranges. 0:26:39.8 DL: So, they figuring all that out. So we just thought we were so clever using our position of authority to do this. And after about three days, we are sitting around a dinner table and the kids are all kind of moping and we'd been taking and spending money going to Disneyland and all this great stuff in Southern California and all these wonderful things, and they liked it, right? And I said, "Gee, what's going on? You guys are just tired or just all kind of silent and kind of moping and everything else? And didn't you like what we did to today?" "Oh, yeah, that was okay," and da, da, da. And then finally, one of my daughters said, "You know, we talked about it and we just want to go to the beach," because they'd never seen the ocean. 0:27:29.3 DL: And I was like, "Oh, these three points," right? Yeah, I had the position of authority as father and I could make this decision and spend all this money to do these wonderful things, but if I just used some personality and knowledge and asked them to begin with, "Hey, if we go to California, what would you really like to do?" "Hey, we'd like to go and hang out at the beach 'cause we don't have an ocean." I could have saved thousands of dollars and lots of headache if I just had a little bit of personality and knowledge certainly in the situation, so. 0:28:02.5 AS: What a great story. And kids can play on the beach for weeks. I know. 0:28:03.9 DL: Oh, yeah. 0:28:04.1 AS: I was young, so yeah, that was crazy. 0:28:09.1 DL: That's what we did. The rest of the trip, we canceled everything and we just went to the beach every day, and they were happy as could be. 0:28:13.5 AS: And it's easier on you. 0:28:15.7 DL: Yeah. 0:28:17.7 AS: Yeah. Well, David on behalf of everyone at the Deming Institute, I want to thank you again for this discussion. And for listeners, remember to go to deming.org to continue your journey. Listeners can learn more about David at langfordlearning.com. This is your host, Andrew Stotz, and I will leave you with one of my favorite quotes from Dr. Deming. "People are entitled to joy in work."

Learning Deming is like seeing the world through a different lens. In this episode, Bill Bellows uses various examples to show us how powerful that new vision can be.  TRANSCRIPT 0:00:03.4 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 discussion 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. The topic for today is Vision Therapy. Bill, take it away. 0:00:29.9 BB: Welcome back, Andrew. Yes, I wrote an article, gosh, maybe 10 years ago now for the Lean Management Journal under the title Vision Therapy: Shift from Big Problems to Great Opportunities. And in the article, I talk about vision therapy - as getting glasses is one form of vision therapy or perhaps you need surgery on your eyes. I also talked about therapy our son once went through which is hand-eye coordination. And all of that is leading up to a vision exercise I put together 1998 timeframe and was inspired by a number of things. One is I had read a book written by David Kerns, former CEO of Xerox, and it's called 'Prophets in the Dark.' And he shared a story in there of a senior executive who had come from Ford. And he said, this guy named Frank Pip, who went on to become an outstanding leader within Xerox. If there was... I get the feeling if there was a hall of fame within Xerox, David Kearns would be in it. Frank Pip would be in it. 0:02:02.0 BB: And quite likely Barry Bebb, who's a mentor of mine, would be in it. And others, and... Anyway, relative to Frank Pip: Pip started his career at Ford and he got to the point of being a plant manager for the Ford final assembly plant. And there was an account he gave to Kearns of whenever they did final assembly of automobiles, rubber mallets were used to bang the mating parts together. They didn't quite fit. And every now and then, two parts would go together without a mallet. And the Ford, at Pip's plant, they called the parts that assembled without a mallet Snap-fit - everything else required mallets and mostly it was mallets. But every now and then there'd be Snap-fit. And then he explains how they, Pip was inspired to go off and buy competitor's cars for the purpose of buying them, taking them apart, putting 'em back together. And unfortunately, Pip died a few years ago, and I... And it never dawned on me to reach out to him. I thought by the time I heard of him, it was maybe too late then, it turns out I had plenty of time to reach out to him. So I don't know what inspired him, but I get the feeling he was routinely buying competitors' cars, taking 'em apart, putting 'em together, just alike, and they assembled just like theirs, just like theirs, just like theirs. 0:03:26.7 BB: And then there was a pickup truck they took apart, put together, and never used a mallet. It was, in Ford's language, 100% Snap-fit. And Pip was so astounded by the results he had the assembly team take it apart again and put it back together again 'cause he couldn't believe it was a 100% Snap-fit. Well, when he found that it was 100% Snap-fit twice, now he thought, "Holy cow," he calls up corporate, had someone come out from Dearborn, which was Ford's corporate headquarters, and I don't know if it was his boss, whoever the person was, came out very, very senior. And he says, they met with the team. The team's answering his questions. And as I explain it to people, you can imagine what it's like when somebody from corporate comes out. That's typically in my experience, somebody coming from corporate that's either, they're there to celebrate something or it's a bad day or it's a routine, but it... Anyway, it's a big deal for him. And as Pip's account was when the plant manager, when this executive came out from Dearborn and heard this account first hand, blah, blah, blah, his comment to the team was "The customer will never notice the difference." 0:04:38.1 BB: And in the book it said Pip was so frustrated with that attitude that he quit 'cause he thought, "We have uncovered something and this guy is treating it as no big deal.” Well, then I point out to people that was the late '60s and which was at the beginning of Ford, I'm sorry, of Toyota selling cars in the States. It was a Toyota pickup truck. So I just... I shared this story in part for this term, Snap-fit. Well, then in the late '90s I was teaching a graduate class in quality management at the Kellogg School of Management, Kellogg Business School, Northwestern University, which I checked very recently. It's the number two business school in the United States. And I'm teaching a class there. Through some interesting occurrences, I was invited to teach this class there. And I wrote up this contrast between the very simple black and white model. And we've been talking black and white models and I was using a black and white model of organizations which were about continuous improvement versus black and white thinking in that kind of contrast. And I gave them pairs of words and I said... 0:06:16.5 BB: You could have "good versus bad" - is one model. What I was showing 'em is, is black and white words versus continuum words versus relative words. I said, there's, let's see the good versus bad, and then that would be a black and white. And I said, "If you take the good versus bad and put it into a continuum, what would it be? And people would joke, "Gooder." And I said, "Well, faster, it could be tall versus short - taller, cheap versus expensive - cheaper." And I was using those pairs, getting them a sense of relative thinking versus black and white thinking. And I put out the word Lean, L-E-A-N and I said, "Let's say you don't know anything about the word. In which category does this word apply? Does it fit into the black and white mold or the continuum mold?" And a first of them would say it's shades-of-gray thinking. And I said, "Well, why?" And they come up with explanations and finally one guy says, he says, "It's black and white thinking." And I said, "Why?" He says, "There's no 'er' in the end." 0:07:36.4 BB: Lean, Lean. It's right? And then there's a woman who pushed back on that. And she said, "No, I disagree." She said, "You can continuously eliminate waste." And I said, "How far are you gonna go with that?" And she said, "Until there's no waste." And I said, and I was trying to point out is, well then we're done. I said, "Where is the continuous improvement, the continuum thinking behind being done?" And I said, [laughter] what'd I tell her, saying to her, I said, "So if you're done, well then what do you do?" She said, "Well, you continuously eliminate waste until you're done." Well, then I said, "Well, describe to me what an organization looks like that has no waste. Is what does it look like?" She says, "I don't know." Well, I think those two things inspired me in a class later that year, this is 1998, to throw out as an exercise, a vision, and I call it vision therapy exercise. 0:08:38.0 BB: And I said to them, "Yeah, I want you to take a piece of paper, divide it into half, into half, left and right, and then top and bottom. So there's four quadrants." And I said, "Label on the left hand side Blue Pen for Blue Pen Company. The right hand side for Red Pen as in Red Pen Company." And I held up, I would have these transparency markers. I had eight different colors. And I pulled out one, which is blue. And I said, "Imagine each of you have recently visited a company which makes blue pens, only Blue Pens. And every week I'd buy one that costs a dollar." And, I pulled out a Red Pen. Why red? 'cause I wanted something the other end of the spectrum. So I had eight different colors to choose from. So one was blue, one was red. Later somebody said to me, "Why did you pick blue versus red?" 0:09:31.2 BB: And I said, "Well, Rocketdyne was owned by Boeing at the time." And when I looked at the colors, you know a lot of the, advertising the logos of Boeing were blue and white. And I thought, blue is the company I have in mind for one side, and then something not blue, not green, not brown, red is the other side. So I said, "So imagine you've recently visited a Blue Pen Company, that only makes blue pens. You buy one every week, it costs a dollar. When you need a Red Pen, you buy that from the Red Pen Company, and they only make red, you buy it, it cost a dollar." So I had them create this - left and right. Imagine you've recently visited both organizations for two weeks each. All right? And then I said on the, you've got a left side and a right side, one's red, one's blue, top versus bottom. 0:10:24.1 BB: I said, "So imagine for the first week as you're visiting these two companies, nobody's there. So give us some additional information. What I want you to do is describe the physical layout of both organizations." And this ties in really well with... So my idea, as I shared in a recent session from Edgar Schein who had passed away back in January. He was an organizational therapist for most of his career at MIT. And in his book, 'Organizational Culture and Leadership,' he talked about organizational culture can be analyzed at three levels. And I didn't know about these levels back in '98 and found about them later. And I found it fits really well. And he said the first level is artifacts. And he says, I just wanna read, he says, "The constructed environment of an organization, including its architecture, technology, office layout, dress code, visible or audible behavior patterns, public documents like employee orientation, handbooks." 0:11:27.8 BB: And, what Schein says is that those artifacts come from values, the reasons and/or rationalizations of why members behave the way they do. And values come from assumptions. And again, I'm quoting from Schein, "Typically an unconscious pattern that determines how group members perceive, think and feel." And again, I didn't know about those at the time, but going back to the exercise, there's a left side and a right side. One is Blue Pen Company, one is Red Pen Company. The top two cells are, what would you see physically as Schein would say: what are the artifacts of these two organizations? And all you know so far is that one makes blue, one makes red, they both cost a dollar. And I buy one from each. Well then in the bottom two cells, what I want you to imagine is, so for the first two weeks, you visit both organizations, write down what are the physical characteristics of both organizations for the bottom two cells. 0:12:25.5 BB: And I apologize for coming back to this. In the first week you visit, there's no one there but you, no one there but you. So you're walking around both organizations, you're the only person around. You've got a clipboard. All you can talk about are the artifacts. What do you see? And the bottom two cells, imagine the second week in both organizations, there are people there. So for the bottom two cells, describe the people in both organizations. So all of this is artifacts and they come from values, they come from assumptions. But all you're doing is saying...but what I specifically wanted to differentiate is, what does the place look like different from what are the people like? And so everybody's ready to go. I'm gonna give you five minutes to put something in each cell. And here's the additional information. Andrew, you're ready? 0:13:12.7 BB: When I go to use the Blue Pen. So I would take the Blue Pen out and I would say, "When I use the Blue Pen, the cap goes off, the cap goes on, it goes off and it goes on nice and easy." And at the time I'm explaining this, they don't know anything about the prior story of Toyota, the pickup truck, 100% Snap-fit, Frank Pip. I usually... I save that for later. I said, all you know is the cap goes on, goes off nice and easy. Now the Red Pen, when I go to use the Red Pen, I need pliers to get the cap off. And there were times I had a little pair of pliers and I would use the pliers to pull it off and I need a hammer to get it back on. And I would have a little hammer and I boom, boom, boom. Now however, the Blue Pen... The cap is said to be Snap-fit. Then I would say just like snap your fingers, it comes off nice and easy goes on nice and easy, it doesn't fall off. That's all the information I have. Spend the next five minutes putting something in each cell. 0:14:14.3 BB: I've done that exercise around the world over 500 times of all different audiences, as young as college students, people working in the fishing industry, all over. And what's really cool is what shows up in those four cells is nearly identical. There may be some caveats due to language and whatnot. 0:14:40.8 AS: Identical across the 500, or again, identical... 0:14:44.1 BB: Yes. 0:14:44.5 AS: Across the red and blue. 0:14:46.5 BB: Yes, I... Well... What shows up in those four cells is nearly identical. So I would give people five minutes. And the other thing for those who are listening, my advice when you're doing this, that it took me a while to figure out the additional benefit is, what I would do is go around the room in each cell, the Blue Pen physical and ask if anyone has an example. So for the Blue Pen physical, someone will say: an open environment, bright lights, windows. All right. Then I'd go to the Red Pen Company, physical, "Okay, what do you see over here?" People might say, "Closed doors." Then I'd go to the Red Pen people, what about the people? And the... There might be "rigid,” “looking over their shoulder,” “on a time clock." Blue Pen Company, people might be happy and smiling. So I would go around the room before I give 'em five minutes just to make sure most of us are on the same page 'cause now, and then there'd be some people who are lost. And... But in general, people are pretty good. So then I give 'em five minutes and then depending on the size of the room, I might go around the room, table by table, look over your shoulder, see how you're doing, onto the next one, onto the next one and I get a feeling that they're doing pretty good. So then when I have them stop and there's different things I do at this point. I've had people at this point after five minutes stand up. Okay, there's a couple hundred people in the room at a conference. 0:16:31.0 BB: And I'll say: okay what I'd like you to do is find someone you've not met today and go introduce yourself and spend five minutes comparing trip reports. What's in your trip reports? And the room will very quickly erupt in laughter, whether I do it having you stand up, go find somebody or whether you are sitting at a table of four or five and I say across the table share. And then after they're done with that I'll say, "Okay, what did you find when you share your answers with others at the table?" And again and again, they'll say, "Their answers are just like mine." And I'll say, "Did anything come up in any of those quadrants that you were lost? That you said, Andrew, I... What do you mean by this? I don't know where you're coming from." And that's never happened. Every single time, they may have... They're looking at a factory and somebody may be looking in the kitchen, someone's looking in the lobby area. So they may be looking at different places, but it always fits together well. In the very beginning, what I would do, is I would give them five minutes. I wouldn't have 'em share anything yet. And I would go around the room and I'd say, get in the front of the room and the very first person, and I'd say if it was you say, "Andrew, what's the first thing you have for Blue Pen Physical?" And you'd say, "Clean." In fact, what's really cool is "neat, clean and organized" came up in order again and again. 0:18:13.6 BB: So I would ask you, "Andrew, what do you see?" You would say, "Neat," next person "Clean," next person "Organized." And I go all the way around and just fill up one cell with the very first... One thing you have that you haven't heard yet. Then I would jump over to the Red Pen, fill it out, then I'd go to the Red Pen people. So I would fill up a given cell and in the beginning I would write these on flip charts. And again, I don't know exactly what I was... I had in mind, "It's gonna be interesting," but I didn't appreciate how powerful this has become. And in the beginning I would write these on flip charts and then at the end of the class, I would throw them away. Then as I began to see how common the patterns were, then I would write them onto transparency and save them and I would date them. And at one point of time I've a colleague who's working on a PhD thesis, University of Texas and his PhD research, Andrew, [laughter] came from 200 trip reports that I still had in my files that I hadn't thrown out. And he and his brother took the data 'cause we knew exactly who was in each class. And so he had... He and his brother had some methodology in his... So his research data for his PhD thesis, looking at the leadership styles of these two organizations. And so let me... 0:19:52.3 BB: So in the Blue Pen physical, it's: an open layout neat, clean, organized, what else? Harmonious and as needed, if you were to say harmonious, then I might say, "Andrew, what do you mean by that? What do you mean? What do you mean clean? What do you mean this? What do you mean?" And so there's nothing wrong for our listeners who are trying this out with people. It's just keep asking them: "What do you mean by, what do you mean by." What's most critical is write down exactly what people say. Don't interpret. Don't yeah I would just say don't interpret. So I go all the way around and people would be astounded. 0:20:40.9 BB: I mean, I'd say a couple of things. One is quite often what people see in the contrast is where they work [laughter] versus where they would love to work. [chuckle] Now let me also say, in the very beginning when I did it, I did not explain to them what Snap-fit meant. So I did not say Snap-fit is good. I just said Snap-fit. Now, there would be people who would say, "Well, does it mean because it's Snap-fit, that it's good." And I would just say, "I didn't say one is good, one is bad. All I'm saying is one goes together with the hammers, one doesn't," and then I would eventually explain to them the a 100% Snap-fit Toyota pickup truck, and it would come together nice for them. Well, when I found the uses of this are one, people can, but Dr. Deming talked about prevailing style of management, but talking about it and having conversations about it is, what I found is this exercise... 0:22:00.1 BB: I think helps people in their own words, explain to them. It allows them to create a sense of: what is the prevailing system of management? And it's the Red Pen Company's side in many ways, and then: what is a Deming organization? It's the opposite. Now this is a very simple black and white model. And as George Box's quoted saying "All models are right. Some models are useful." I have found it enormously useful to look at the two organizations and ask people, what are the conversations like in both organizations? And I would say, "Okay, you're walking around a Red Pen Company, you come across two people in the hallway, what are they talking about?" 0:22:48.4 BB: And what you'll get is: it's second-shift people complaining about first-shift people, or it's engineering complaining about manufacturing. And then people would say, there's a lot of "us and them" and I said, okay. What I've also heard people say, is they'll say, "Well, on second shift where they work, we're a Blue Pen Company." "Also on second shift we're a Blue Pen, but those first-shift people, those are Red Pen." And you know, I said, what's a conversation like in a Blue Pen Company? "I've got an idea. Hey, let me hear about it, blah, blah, blah. Tell me more. Tell me more." I'll ask them, what are survival skills in both organizations, survival skill in a Red Pen Company? What'd you find there? And people would say you know, being able to finger-point, not being blamed, protecting yourself, you know, the CYA mentality. Mentality. Don't ever... 0:23:52.8 AS: Surviving the occasional backstabbing. 0:23:55.9 BB: Oh yeah. Don't ever try anything new. You know, what will also come out is, you know, "stodgy, stiff, inflexible." Whereas I said, what about people in the Blue Pen Company? And they'll present this. And I'll ask them, "Which organization would you call a learning organization?" And people will always say, the Blue Pen Company. And I say, why? And they say, "Well, you know, they're always trying to figure out, you know, they're doing PDSA cycles, trying to figure out improvement, improvement." And I'll say, you don't think people in a Red Pen Company have learned how to survive [laughter]? You don't think they've learned how to finger-point, you don't think they've learned how to duck and cover? 0:24:39.9 AS: In a Red Pen. You were saying in a Red Pen Company or in a Blue Pen? 0:24:40.7 BB: Oh yeah I meant Blue Pen, I meant red I mean Red Pen. I said, what I was trying to point out is people will say a Blue Pen is a learning environment. What I'm trying to point out is, don't underestimate the ability of people in a Red Pen Company to also learn, but that learning is about self-protection. And, you know, so the survival skills in that environment are protecting oneself, hoarding information, not allowing others to know how to, you know, do things. So they have secret tools, secret analysis methods, and I say, what are survival skills in a Blue Pen Company? And people will say, "Sharing knowledge is power in a Blue Pen Company." And so I constantly wanna make sure that I'm sharing. And, but it's not that I inundate everyone with everything, but a week later after Andrew, you've asked me for something, a week later I come to you and I say, "Hey, I've been thinking about it. 0:25:34.3 BB: And something else occurred to me that I thought you might value." What I would also add to the conversation is, "What percent of organizations are Red Pen companies?" And I just say, just, you know, in your experience. And then I would say in this unscientific survey, people would say the majority, 80% to 90% of companies, they would say, are Red Pen companies. And I would say, "Well, what keeps them in business? I mean, how could, what is, if 80% of them are Red Pen companies? What keeps all of these companies in what Deming would call the prevailing style of management and business?" People are like, "I don't know." 0:26:17.0 BB: In my response, I shared with my boss who was once President of Rocketdyne. I said, "What keeps us in business?" He said, "What?" I said, "Lousy competition." [laughter] 0:26:27.1 AS: Yeah. That's what I was gonna say. What keeps us in business is the other 80, 90 percent that's in the same boat as us. 0:26:32.7 BB: Exactly. Because they blame their people. Their people become dejected, withdrawn, only do as they're told, hide mistakes, which caused others to make the same mistakes. How can you keep in business focusing on the past to get back to the present when you're in this constant firefighting mode? How do you stay in business other than: others run the same way. And Deming somewhere in The New Economics, I believe in The New Economics. He says, "Be thankful for a good competitor." So that's what I mean by the vision therapy. This Blue Pen Company, Red Pen Company. I've done variants of it. The very first one was blue and red Snap-fit versus not snap-fit. I've, in the last few years, we'll get exactly the same results with a different starting point. 0:27:30.2 BB: And the starting point I use is, I tell the story of the executive sitting next to me that I think I've shared about the last straw. The straw that, what if you're in an organization where you believe the last straw broke the camel's back, what would it be like to work there? And people would say, "Oh, I wouldn't wanna work there is a culture of blame." So I would explain, imagine you recently visited an organization where everyone believes that the last straw did it, and that's called the Last Straw organization. And then there's also this All Straw organization where you understand the systemic aspect of all the straws getting together. And so if I was to start this exercise and explain this belief in the last straw that we have in society, that the basketball game has won on that last shot, or lost in that last shot, versus an all straw, I can use that starting point, Andrew, and have people go through and compare the physical aspects of both organizations and people and get exactly the same results and if it's, 'cause what I found with people, they'll say that... 0:28:31.9 AS: When you say exactly the same, you're saying exactly the same as the Red Pen Blue Pen? 0:28:36.1 BB: Yes. If you were to look at the... If you had a group of 30 people and get a composite score in those four quadrants, you wouldn't necessarily know if it was started with Red Pen, Blue Pen, or All Straw, Last Straw. And I've also done it when I worked for the Deming Institute in that timeframe when I left Rocketdyne, I started explaining it as what if there was one organization where there's a sense of "we," look what we did, how did we do on the exam? Andrew, you're the student, I'm the professor. A collective sense of all for one and one for all versus a "me" organization. Where the question I ask you, Andrew, is "How did you do on the exam?" And inferring that your ability to learn from the exam is separate from my ability to teach. 0:29:28.6 BB: Like I could be saying, "How are you doing in sales" versus "How are we doing in sales?" So if I was to describe it as a "me" organization, everything I do, everything is accomplished by me alone breaking things into parts. My task is done. A lot of this question one stuff that we've been talking about in terms of quality versus a "we" organization, if I explain the "me" and the "we," and there's ways to do that and then get into the trip report, me, we, and the four quadrants, very, very similar. And so I found is in terms of a vision exercise, first of all, depending on who the audience is, I'll get a... I'll figure out do I wanna use Red Pen, Blue Pen, All Straw and Last Straw, me versus we. And there's a couple others that I've used, but I know that once I get them thinking about, I just have to come up with what is the differentiator. 0:30:26.7 BB: And then I get them thinking about the artifacts. And then from the artifacts, once that is done, then I can talk about the conversations in both, the survival skills in both, the what if an... What is an ethics issue in both organizations? And I'll just say a little more about that. And I've worked in large corporations and ethics training. Really, what does it come down to the end of the day is that I didn't misuse company resources, that I didn't charge Project A using the Project B charge number [laughter], right? And I didn't fill out my timecard deliberately wrong. I didn't try to cheat the company on a trip report kind of thing. Well, then what I start thinking about is what's an ethics issue in a Blue Pen Company? 0:31:23.5 BB: And I believe, I think this comes from Dr. Deming, he would say, if, I'm pretty sure it was Deming, Deming would talk about a salesperson for a copying machine. And so Andrew, I'm the salesman and I come to your company and wanna sell, you're in need of a copier. And Deming would say, if I tried to sell you a copier that was bigger than you needed, because there's a bonus for me, Andrew, or a copier that was smaller. If I sold you a copier that I knew was much less than what you needed or much more than what you needed, then Deming would say, that would be unethical. He'd say, "My job is to sell you exactly what you need." And I view that, and I thought, "Well, that's a Blue Pen phenomenon where ethics is about how am I treating others with a sense of sharing or hoarding or whatnot?" So what I found is... 0:32:21.3 AS: Well, also ethics is how am I treating the customer? 0:32:24.4 BB: All of that. Well, how am I treating my coworkers? There's a poem I use with a great quote from Robert Frost and he said "What's the secret to selling a horse?" Have I ever shared this with you? 0:32:35.0 AS: No. 0:32:36.1 BB: The secret to selling a horse. Are you ready? 0:32:36.8 AS: Yep. 0:32:39.5 BB: Just sell it before it dies. [laughter] 0:32:41.7 AS: There you go. 0:32:44.3 BB: And so, and what Frost says in the poem is that we go through life handing off our problems to others. And I've written about this and I said, well, you mean like selling a coworker a horse? And then you come back the next day and you say, "Bill, you know this horse is dead." And I say, "Andrew, it was alive when I gave it to you." What? So I look at it as whether you're a coworker or a customer, what's that all about? And so I throw that out because... 0:33:12.2 BB: I find that that simple model is an incredible mechanism. Earlier today I was in a conversation with a coworker and the word that came up in conversation was you're "driving change." Driving change. And I said, "Driving change is what happens in a Red Pen Company." And the explanation I gave, in the Red Pen Company, I come to you Andrew, and I said, "I want this by tomorrow." And driving change is: I've got a gun to your head. And I say, "Do you understand what I'm looking for?" And you're like, "Right, 'cause I can find somebody else to do this, Andrew. I need this by tomorrow." That's driving change. And so what I'll say to people is, if driving change is a Red Pen Company, then what's the word we use in a Blue Pen Company? 0:34:05.2 AS: Coaxing. 0:34:07.4 BB: And people will say, "I don't know, what's that word?" And I'll say, "Lead, lead!" [laughter] That's what leadership's all about. You want to follow. And so, what I find is this model has allowed me to get a great number of people to explain in their own way, envision the two different organizations. And there's no doubt where they wanna work. They'd much rather be in the Blue Pen, "we" organization, an All-Straw organization. And then we can talk about, how does... The next thing I look at is with an understanding of the System of Profound Knowledge. Can you understand how a Red Pen Company might become a Blue Pen Company? Or my other proposal is that all organizations start off as a Blue Pen Company. So I started off an organization in my garage. I'm the only employee, I have customers, I have suppliers, but I know where everything goes and everything is Snap-fit because it's all about me and I wanna make sure these things integrate really well. And so how does that become a Red Pen Company? 0:35:19.7 BB: Well, here's what happens Andrew is, I hire you right outta school. You're all excited and you come in, you wanna join this organization, and I need help. Andrew, I need help. And I like your attitude. But then what happens is, I go to you and I say, "Andrew, here's what I want you to do. Your job is to answer the phone. Your job is when people call in, here's an instruction sheet, here's the order sheet. I want you to take the order. Here's what we do. We offer different sizes, different colors. You're gonna sell them what they need, not more, not less. You're gonna take their credit card information, you're gonna repeat it back to them, blah, blah, blah." 0:35:54.0 BB: And what I point out is that what I'm slowly doing, once I hire you, is putting people in separate roles. And next thing I know, I've got a baseball team where everybody's covering their own base instead of being incredibly flexible. And so I use that to point out that with the best of intentions, you could go in that direction. And, but what I've seen is I can use the four elements of Profound Knowledge to explain how one becomes the other. I can also use the System of Profound Knowledge to explain why the behaviors are the way they are. Which goes back to: what are the value systems in both organizations? What are the fundamental assumptions? Now relative to what is meant by big problems? Well, Red Pen companies, again, going for those listeners who have heard the earlier podcast. Well, Red Pen companies, all straw, I'm sorry, Last Straw organizations. 0:36:57.7 BB: They're focusing on parts in isolation. They don't work on things that are good. They focus on the things that are bad. So it's always big problems. They're focusing on the past to get back to the present, kept in business by competitors who waste their resources exactly the same way. And it's not to say you never have a problem, but it's to say instead of having a full-time fire department where that's all we're doing, all the doing all the time with a significant portion of our resources, we're using control charts in places where it makes sense. Run charts when a control chart doesn't matter as much. Or we are not even collecting data 'cause intuitively we have a sense of how things are going and where we get blinded, we have problems, but we're also in that environment. We know where can we be spending time to save a lot of time. That's the great opportunity. 0:37:49.7 BB: Things are, so I'm saving time by not having things break. I am managing variation in my resources accordingly, just to allocate my resources for the greater good. A stitch in time saves time. And that's the great opportunity focus that Red Pen companies don't know anything about 'cause they're so focused on the firefighting. And to me, what allows the shift from the Blue Pen to the Red Pen. I mean, what, either if you're unaware of these dynamics, then my Blue Pen Company will gradually become this Red Pen Company nightmare. Because I'm not paying attention to what Deming's talking about. I'm unaware of the System of Profound Knowledge. And I just lapse into that unknowingly. It's not intentional. I just don't know that addition doesn't work, you know, only works when the activities are independent. I think things that are good are equally good. 0:38:47.1 BB: And so to me, I can explain with the System of Profound Knowledge how red becomes blue, how blue becomes red. I can explain the conversations. And the last thing I wanna mention is, is when people come to me with, "Hey, how can I handle an X, Y, Z situation, something we've never talked about in the class or in a seminar?" And people will bring this to my attention and say, "Here's the issue I'm dealing with. Here's that problem I'm dealing with. How can I solve that?" And what I find is, is what I tell people is, here's my advice. 0:39:24.0 BB: And you can do it on your own, or ideally if you can explain this to others and have some others understanding this contrast, then you can - with a group - do what I'm about to explain. And that is first ask yourselves, "How would a Red Pen Company address that issue?" "We're gonna do a root cause investigation. We're gonna find the person who screwed up, we're gonna replace him, blah, blah, blah. We're gonna go that way." And then I would say, "Okay, after you've exhausted that, now ask yourself, what would a Blue Pen Company do by comparison?" 0:40:51.0 BB: And I'm not saying one of those is right, one is wrong, but my belief is that as a starting point, no matter where you are in your Deming journey, I believe, again, and the more people are involved in this, the better - I think the better we can get our minds around how a Red Pen Company handles it. And then say, "Okay, what if we become aware that the ability to learn together and work together is based on the our ability to think together?" Now you go the other way and I have individually done that when someone has asked me. And so I just want to throw that out that I find the model, this vision therapy model to be immensely valuable in brand new situations as a starting point. 0:40:51.1 AS: And in wrapping up, how would you describe kind of the number one takeaway without talking about Blue Pen, Red Pen and the exercise, how would you describe the takeaway that you want our listeners and our viewers to get from this? 0:41:07.6 BB: The number one takeaway is: don't underestimate the value proposition of a shared mental model. And this is what I find is, I can within a half hour have people imagining both organizations, imagining the conversations and that for the, and this is what is so cool that I wasn't anticipating in the beginning, is how quickly people can, without reading The New Economics, just by, 'cause essentially what you're getting them to do without talking about assumptions, they are focusing on assumptions and values. So we're not talking about the artifacts, but we're taking the artifacts and without getting... This is what's so cool is without reading Edgar Schein's work, we're really doing what he's talking about is going from the artifacts down to the values, and then we can talk about the values within organizations. And I find, and another thing I would say is, I've never met anyone that thrives to work in a non-Deming organization. 0:42:15.6 BB: They wanna work in a Blue Pen Company. And so I would, that's what I also find is without mentioning Deming's work, which is also pretty cool about this, I don't have to mention Deming, Taguchi or Ackoff. I could very simply get them and they will self-identify, reveal things. And another essential aspect of this is, this is not me telling you where you wanna work. This is me not telling you what you see. This is you sharing with others. And I learned from a colleague years ago that you can't tell anybody anything. So another immense value proposition here is that people are telling you, and then all you have to do is guide them. And that's what I find is immensely valuable. 0:43:02.6 AS: It's like you're teasing out the intrinsic desires, values and all that. 0:43:08.1 BB: All of that is coming out... 0:43:10.5 AS: Without... 0:43:10.5 BB: They're sharing frustrations. They're articulating frustrations in areas that they've not thought about. And then when they share and realize... In fact, I had a guy in a class once going through this exercise and he came up to me actually, we went through...I did this with a bunch of co-workers at an offsite location where all of them knew each other. And we went through the exercise and then took a break. As we're going to a break, one of them come up to me and he saw all the things on the whiteboard and the four quadrants. 0:43:50.3 BB: And he says to me, "These people, my co-workers," this is one-on-one. He's looking, and he says, "My co-workers got all of that over the cap fits or it doesn't." [laughter] 0:44:09.6 BB: And he wasn't denying, but he's like, "I don't get it." He came up to me two hours later when the class is over and he said, "I can't believe what I couldn't see." [laughter] And that's when I realized this is a really exciting exercise that I've written about and helped others present literally around the world. And I find it works amazingly well to create a framework that people aren't realizing is helping them achieve what they really all want. I believe. I believe. 0:44:46.2 AS: Yap. Well, Bill, on behalf of everyone at the Deming Institute, I wanna thank you again for this discussion. For listeners, remember to go to deming.org to continue your journey. 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."

If something is "good" is that good enough? Who decides? In this episode, Bill and Andrew discuss how people define "good," what interchangeability has to do with morale, and the problem with a "merit-based" culture. Bonus: Learn how Americans became the first to use the French idea of interchangeable parts in manufacturing. Note: this episode was previously published as Part 5 in the Awaken Your Inner Deming series.  TRANSCRIPT 0:00:02.3 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 discussion 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. The topic for today is, Deming Distinctions: Beyond Looking Good. Bill, take it away. 0:00:30.4 Bill Bellows: Funny you mentioned that. You remind me that I've been at this for over 30 years, and coming up in July, I'll be celebrating 40 years of marriage. Like 30 years, 40, where do these numbers come from? 0:00:44.5 AS: Okay. Yeah. Who defines quality in a marriage, Bill? 0:00:47.0 BB: Alright. 0:00:50.8 AS: Okay, we won't go there. Take us, take it away. 0:00:52.2 BB: We won't go there. So we are gonna talk about who defines quality, and to get into "beyond looking good." As I shared with you, I've listened to each of the podcasts a few times. And before we get into who defines quality, I just wanna provide clarification on some of the things that came up in the first five episodes. And so, one, and I think these are kind of in order, but if they're not in order, okay, well, I made reference to black-and-white thinking versus shades-of-gray thinking. And I called black-and-white thinking - black and white data - category data, and the word I was searching for that just wasn't coming out was attribute data. So for those who are keeping score, attribute data is probably the most relevant statistician term in that regard. 0:01:44.9 BB: Attribute data versus variable data. And what I've made reference to, and we'll talk more in a future session, is looking at things in terms of categories. And categories are black and white, or it could be red, yellow, green, that's three categories, or looking at things on a continuum. So I'm still excited by the difference that comes about by understanding when we're in the black-and-white mode or the category mode or the attribute data mode versus the variable mode, and still have a belief that we can't have continuous improvement or continual improvement if we're stuck in an attribute mode. 0:02:22.9 BB: And more on that later, that's one. I talked about Thomas Jefferson meeting Honoré Blanc and getting excited about the concept of interchangeable parts. And I had the date wrong, that was 1785, if anyone's keeping score there. He was ambassador to France from 1785 to 1789, but it was in 1792 that he wrote a letter to John Jay, who was a...I think he was a Commerce Secretary. Anyway, he was in the administration of Washington and shared the idea. I was doing some research earlier and found out that even with the headstart that Blanc had in France, 'cause back in 1785, Jefferson was invited to this pretty high level meeting in Paris where Blanc took a, I guess, like the trigger mechanism of 50 different rifles. Not the entire rifle, but just the...let's just call it the trigger mechanism with springs and whatnot. And he took the 50 apart and he put all the springs in one box, all the other pieces in their respective boxes and then shook the boxes up and showed that he could just randomly pull a given spring, a given part, and put 'em all together. And that got Jefferson excited. And the...what it meant for Jefferson and the French was not just that you can repair rifles in the battlefield quickly. 0:03:56.9 BB: Now, what it meant for jobs in France was a really big deal, because what the French were liking was all the time it took to repair those guns with craftsmanship, and Blanc alienated a whole bunch of gunsmiths as a result of that. And it turns out, Blanc's effort didn't really go anywhere because there was such a pushback from the gunsmiths, the practicing craftsmanship that jobs would be taken away. But it did come to the States. And then in the early 1800s, it became known as the American System of Production. But credit goes back to Blanc. I also made reference to absolute versus relative interchangeability. And I wanna provide a little bit more clarification there, and I just wanna throw out three numbers, and ideally people can write the numbers down, I'll repeat 'em a few times. The first number is 5.001, second number is 5.999, and the third number is 6.001. So it's 5.001, 5.999, 6.001. And some of what I'm gonna explain will come up again later, but...so this will tie in pretty well. So, what I've been doing is I'll write those three words on the whiteboard or throw them on a screen, and I'll call... 0:05:28.9 AS: Those three numbers. 0:05:31.4 BB: A, B, and C. And I'll say, which two of the three are closest to being the same? And sure enough people will say the 5.999 and the 6.001, which is like B and C. And I say that's the most popular answer, but it's not the only answer. People are like, "well, what other answer are there?" Well, it could be A and C, 5.001 and 6.001, both end in 001. Or it could be the first two, A and B, 5.001 and 5.999. So what I like to point out is, if somebody answers 5.999 and 6.001, then when I say to them, "what is your definition of same?" 0:06:14.9 BB: 'Cause the question is, which two of the three are close to being the same? And it turns out there's three explanations of "same." There's same: they begin with five, there's same: they end in 001. And there's same in terms of proximity to each other. So I just wanna throw that out. Well, then a very common definition of "quality" is to say, does something meet requirements? And that's the black-and-white thinking. I've also explained in the past that requirements are not set in absolute terms. The meeting must start at exactly 1:00, or the thickness must be exactly one inch. What I've explained is that the one inch will have a plus or minus on it. And so let's say the plus and minus gives us two requirements, a minimum of five and a maximum of six. Well, then that means the 5.001 meets requirements and the 5.999 meets requirements. 0:07:15.4 BB: And so in terms of defining quality, in terms of meeting requirements, A and B are both good. And then what about the 5.999 and the 6.001? Well, those numbers are on opposite sides of the upper requirement of six. One's just a little bit to the left and one's a little bit to the right. Then I would ask people, and for some of you, this'll ring - I think you'll be smiling - and I would say to people, "what happens in manufacturing if, Andrew, if I come up with a measurement and it's 6.001?" Okay, relative to defining quality as "meeting requirements," 6.001 does not meet requirements. So what I'll ask people is, "what would a non-Deming company do with a 6.001?" And people will say, "we're gonna take a file out, we're gonna work on it, we're gonna hit it with a hammer." And I say, "no, too much work." And they say, "well, what's the answer?" "We're gonna measure it again." 0:08:25.7 AS: Until we get it right. 0:08:27.7 BB: We will measure it until we get it right. We will change the room temperature. We will take the easiest path. So then I said, get people to realize, they're like, yeah, that's what we do. We measure the 6.001 again. Well, then I say, "well Andrew, why don't we measure the 5.001 again?" And what's the answer to that, Andrew? [laughter] 0:08:51.5 AS: 4.999. [laughter] 0:08:54.7 BB: But what's interesting is, we'll measure the 6.001 again. But we won't measure the 5.001 again. We won't measure the 5.999 again. And so to me, this reinforces that when we define quality as "meeting requirements," that what we're essentially saying in terms of absolute interchangeability, what we're pretending is that there's no difference between the 5.001 and the 5.999. At opposite ends, we're saying that Blanc would find them to be interchangeable, and putting all the things together. I don't think so. 0:09:36.7 BB: I think there's a greater chance that he'd find negligible difference between the 5.999 and the 6.001. And that's what I mean by relative interchangeability, that the difference between B and C is nothing, that's relative interchangeability. The closer they are together, the more alike they are in terms of how they're integrated into the gun, into the rifle, into the downstream product. And I just throw out that what defining quality as "requirements" is saying is that the first two are...the person downstream can't tell the difference. Then I challenge, I think there's...in terms of not telling the difference, I think between 5.999 and 6.001, that difference is minuscule cause they are relatively interchangeable. The other two are implied to be absolutely interchangeable. And that I challenge, that's why I just want to throw that out. All right, another thing I want...go ahead, Andrew. 0:10:38.3 AS: One of the things I just highlight is, I remember from my political science classes at Long Beach State where I studied was The Communist Manifesto came out in 1848. And Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels were talking about the alienation of the worker. And what you're talking about is the kind of, the crushing of the craftsmen through interchangeable parts that was a lot like AI coming along and destroying something. And after 50 or 60 or 70 years of interchangeable parts, along comes The Communist Manifesto with the idea that when a person is just dealing with interchangeable parts, basically they're just a cog in the wheel and they have no connection to the aim of what's going on. They don't have any connection, and all of a sudden you lose the craftsmanship or the care for work. And I think that the reason why this is interesting is because that's, I think, a huge part of what Dr. Deming was trying to bring was bring back...it may not be craftsmanship for creating a shoe if you were a shoemaker, but it would be craftsmanship for producing the best you could for the part that you're playing in an ultimate aim of the system. 0:12:02.6 BB: Yes. And yes, and we'll talk more about that. That's brilliant. What you said also reminds me, and I don't think you and I spoke about it, you'll remind me. But have I shared with you the work of a Harvard philosopher by the name of Michael Sandel? 0:12:24.3 AS: I don't recall. 0:12:27.0 BB: He may be, yeah, from a distance, one of the most famous Harvard professors alive today. He's got a course on justice, which is I think 15 two- or three-hour lectures, which were recorded by public television in Boston. Anyway, he wrote a book at the beginning of the pandemic. It came out, it's called The Tyranny of Merit. 0:12:54.0 BB: And "merit" is this belief that "I did it all by myself." That "I deserve what I have because I made it happen. I had no help from you, Andrew. I had no help from the government. I didn't need the education system, the transportation system. I didn't need NASA research. I made it happen all by myself." And he said, what that belief does is it allows those who are successful to claim that they did it by themselves. It allows them to say those who didn't have only themselves to blame. And he sees that as a major destructive force in society, that belief. And I see it tied very well to Deming. Let me give you one anecdote. Dr. Deming was interviewed by Priscilla Petty for The Deming of America documentary, which was absolutely brilliant. 0:13:49.8 BB: And she's at his home, and he's sharing with her the medal he got from the Emperor of Japan, and he's holding it carefully, and I think he gives it to her, and she's looking at it, and she says to him something like, so what did it mean to you to receive that? And he said, "I was lucky. I made a contribution." He didn't say I did it all by myself. He was acknowledging that he was in the right place at the right time to make a contribution. And that's where Sandel is also heavily on, is don't deny the role of being born at the right time in the right situation, which is a greater system in which we are. Well, for one of the college courses, I was watching an interview between Sandel and one of his former students. 0:14:48.1 BB: And the point Sandel made that I wanted to bring up based on what you just said, he says, "what we really need to do is get people dignity in work." And that's what you're talking about, is allowing them to have pride in work, dignity in work instead of as they're making interchangeable parts, having them feel like an interchangeable part. And I'm really glad you brought that up because when we talk later about letter grades, I would bring back one of the reasons I find Deming's work astounding, is that he takes into account psychology in a way that I hope our listeners will really take heart to in a deeper way. 0:15:30.2 AS: And so for the listeners out there, just to reinforce, the book is called The Tyranny of Merit: What's Become of the Common Good. Published in 2020 by Michael Sandel. And the ratings on Amazon is 4.5 out of five with about 2,446 ratings. So it's a pretty well-rated book I'd say. And looks interesting. Now you got me wanting to read that one. 0:15:57.0 BB: Oh what I'll do is I'll send you a... Well, what I encourage our listeners to do is find the interview... Harvard Bookstore did an interview in 2020, 2021, with Michael Sandel being interviewed by his former student by the name of Preet Bharara. [laughter] Who used to be the... 0:16:24.3 AS: SEC... 0:16:24.4 BB: Head of these...no, well, he prosecuted a number of people for SEC crimes, but he headed the Justice Department's long oldest district, which is known as SDNY or the Southern District of New York. And so he was a...in one of the first classes his freshman year at Harvard, Preet Bharara's freshman year at Havard was one of Sandel's first years. And so they had an incredible conversation. So I would encourage the listeners to... 0:16:51.8 AS: Yeah, it's titled: Michael J Sandel with Preet Bharara at Harvard. And the channel is called Harvard Bookstore. 0:16:58.6 BB: Yes, absolutely. All right. So another topic I want to get to in terms of clarification and key points, last time we talked about tools and techniques and what I'm not sure I made much about.... First of all, I just wanna really reinforce that tools and techniques are not concepts and strategies. Tools are like a garden tool I use to dig a hole. Technique is how I go about using it, cleaning it, and whatnot. Not to be confused from a concept...and what is concept? We talked about last time is a concept is an abstract idea and a strategy is how do we apply it? So tools and techniques within Six Sigma quality could be control charts, could be design of experiments. And all, by the way, you're gonna find those tools and techniques within the Deming community. So it's not to say the tools and techniques are the differentiator. 0:17:50.8 BB: I think the concepts and strategies are the differentiators, but I don't wanna downplay tools. Lean has tools in terms of value streams, and you won't find value streams per se in Dr. Deming's work. Dr. Deming looks in terms of production viewed as a system. In a later session, I want to talk about value streams versus Deming's work. But I just wanna point out that I find it...it's easy to get lost in the weeds with all we find within Lean, Six Sigma, Deming and whatnot. And this is why last time I wanted to focus on tools and techniques as separate from concepts and strategies. And what I think we did speak about last time, again, for just as a reminder, is what's unique that we both enjoy with Dr. Deming's work is that KPIs are not caused by individual departments, assigned to individual departments. 0:18:46.0 BB: KPIs are viewed as measures of the overall system. And if you assign the KPIs across the organization and give every different function their own KPI, what you're likely to find - not likely - what you WILL find is that those assigned KPIs are interfering with others' abilities to get their KPIs met. And in the Deming philosophy, you don't have that problem because you understand that things are interdependent, not independent. And so I just wanna close by saying what I find in Deming's work to be most enlightening is this sense of "what does it mean to look at something as a system?" And it means everything is connected to everything else. When you define quality in terms of saying "this is good because it meets requirements," what you've just said is, "this is good in isolation." Whether it's the pass from the quarterback to the wide receiver, saying the pass met requirements. 0:19:52.0 BB: What I think Dr. Deming would ask is, "is the ball catchable?" [laughter] And yet, what I've seen in my aerospace experience is parts being measured for airplanes in Australia that they meet requirements because the measurements are taken early in the morning before the sun has had a chance to heat the part up. And we get the 6.001 is now 5.999. You know what that means, Andrew? It's - we can now ship it. [laughter] 0:20:23.9 BB: And send it off to America for some airplane factory. 0:20:26.2 AS: When we shipped it, that's what it was. 0:20:28.9 BB: Exactly. And so, again, interdependence is everything. Go ahead, Andrew. 0:20:34.6 AS: I wanted to point on, there's a company in Thailand that really has gotten on the KPI bandwagon, and I was talking with some people that work there, and they were just talking about how they've been rolling out the KPIs for the last couple of years and down to the number of seconds that you're on the phone and everything that you do is tracked now. And then I just witnessed that company basically use that KPI as a way to basically knock out a whole group of people that they were trying to get rid of by coming in with tight KPIs and then saying, "you're not keeping up with 'em and therefore you're out." And I just thought...and the manager that was involved I was talking to, you could just see, he saw how KPI can just be weaponized for the purposes of the senior management when you're doing KPIs of individuals. And the thing that I was thinking about is, imagine the CEO of that company in a couple of years, in a couple of months, they happen to listen to this podcast, or they pick up a book of Dr. Deming and they think, "Oh my God, what did I just do over the last five years implementing KPIs down to the individual level?" [laughter] 0:21:48.5 BB: Oh, yeah. And that's what we talked about last time is...as I told you, I had a friend of a friend who's worked for Xerox, and he said there wasn't a KPI that was flowed down that they couldn't find a way to beat. And that's what happens, and you end up getting things done, but what's missing is: at whose expense? All right. So we talked about...now, let's get into beyond looking good, Deming distinctions. Who defines quality? Well, from Philip Crosby's perspective, quality's defined by the...it could be the designer. The designer puts a set of requirements on the component, whatever it is. The unit, the requirements have latitude we talked about. They're not exact. There's a minimum of six, a maximum of...or a minimum of five, maximum of six. 0:22:48.8 BB: There's a range you have to meet, is the traditional view of quality. And in my 30 years of experience, I've not seen quality defined any other way than that. It has to be in between these two values. Sometimes it has to be five or below or six or above, but there's a range. But also what we talked about last time is Dr. Deming said "a product or service possesses quality if it helps someone and enjoys a sustainable market." But what I found profound about that definition, it is not me defining quality and saying, "Andrew, the parts met requirements when I threw it. Now, it's your job to catch it." It's me saying, "I've thrown the ball and you tell me, how did I do? You tell me how did I do?" And if you said, "Bill, if you throw it just a little bit higher, a little bit further out, a little bit faster," that's about synchronicity. Now, I'm realizing that my ability to throw the ball doesn't really matter if you can't catch it. So if I practice in the off season, throwing it faster and faster, but don't clue you in, until the first game, how's that helping? So I've got a KPI to throw it really, really hard. And you're thinking, "how's that helping?" So that's... 0:24:19.9 AS: And can you just go back to that for a second? Quality is on a product or service, you were saying that how Dr. Deming defined that, it helps someone... 0:24:26.7 BB: Yeah. Dr. Deming said "a product or service possesses quality if it helps someone and enjoys a sustainable market." And so my interpretation of that is two things. One is, it's not me delivering a report and saying the report met requirements. It's saying, "I get the report to you, and I ask Andrew, how did I do?" And then you say to me, "I had some problem with this section, I had some problem...." But the important thing is that you become the judge of the quality of the report, not me. And it could be information I provide you with in a lecture. It's you letting me know as a student that you had a hard time with the examples. And I'm thinking, "well, I did a great job." So it's not what I think as the producer handing off to you. It's you giving me the feedback. So quality is not a one-way...in fact, first of all, quality's not defined by the producer. It's defined by the recipients saying, "I love this or not." And so that's one thing I wanna say, and does it enjoy a sustainable market? What I talked about in the past is my interpretation of that is, if I'm bending over backwards to provide incredible quality at an incredible price, and I'm going outta business, then it may be great for you, but it may not be great for me. So it has to be mutually beneficial. I just wanna... Go ahead, Andrew. 0:26:03.1 AS: You referenced the word synchronicity, which the meaning of that according to the dictionary is that "simultaneous occurrence of events which appear significantly related, but had no discernible causal connection." What were you meaning when you were saying synchronicity? Is it this that now you're communicating with the part of the process ahead of you, and they're communicating back to you and all of a sudden you're starting to really work together? Is that what you mean by that? 0:26:33.1 BB: Yeah. When I think of synchronicity, I'm thinking of the fluidity of watching a basketball game where I'm throwing blind passes to the left and to the right and to the observer in the stands are thinking: holy cow. That's what I'm talking about, is the ability that we're sharing information just like those passes in a basketball game where you're...I mean I cannot do that without being incredibly mindful of where you are, what information you need. That's what I meant. That's what I mean. As opposed to - I wait until the number is less than...I'm out there in the hot sun. I get the measurement, 6.001, no, no, no, wait. Now it's five. Where's the synchronicity in that? Am I concerned about how this is helping you, or am I concerned about how do I get this off my plate onto the next person? And I'd also say... 0:27:32.6 AS: Yep. And another word I was thinking about is coordination, the organization of the different elements of a complex body or activity so as to enable them to work together efficiently. You could also say that the state of flow or something like that? 0:27:48.7 BB: I'm glad you brought up the word "together." The big deal is: am I defining quality in a vacuum, or am I doing it with some sense of how this is being used? Which is also something we got into, I think in the, one of the very first podcasts, and you asked me what could our audience...give me an example of how the audience could use this. And I said you're delivering a report to the person down the street, around the corner. Go find out how they use it. I use the example of providing data for my consulting company to my CPA, and I called 'em up one day and I said, "how do you use this information? Maybe I can get it to you in an easier form." That's together. I mean relationships, we talked earlier about marriage, relationships are based on the concept of together, not separate, together. Saying something is good, without understanding how it's used is not about "together." It's about "separate." 0:28:54.1 BB: And so what I find is, in Lean, we look at: how can we get rid of the non-value-added tasks? Who defines value? Or I could say, and Lean folks will talk about the...they'll say this: "eliminate things that don't add value." My response to them is, if you tell me that this activity does not provide value in this room for the next hour, I'm okay with that. If you tell me this activity doesn't add value in this building for the next year, I'm okay with that. But if you don't define the size of the system when you tell me it doesn't add value, then you're implying that it doesn't add value, period. 0:29:43.4 BB: And I say, how do you know that? But this is the thinking, this is what baffles me on the thinking behind Lean and these concepts of non-value-added, value-added activities. I think all activities add value. The only question is where does a value show up? And likewise in Six Sigma quality, which is heavily based on conformist requirements and driving defects to zero, that's defining quality of the parts in isolation. What does that mean, Andrew? Separate. It means separate. Nothing about synchronicity. And so I'm glad you brought that point up because what I...this idea of "together" is throughout the Deming philosophy, a sense of together, defining quality in terms of a relationship. 0:30:31.1 AS: And I remember when I was young, I was working at Pepsi, and they sent me to learn with Dr. Deming. And then I came back, and what I was kind of looking for was tools, thinking that I would...and I came back of course, with something very different, with a new way of thinking. And then I realized that Dr. Deming is so far beyond tools. He's trying to think about how do we optimize this whole system? And once I started learning that about Dr. Deming, I could see the difference. Whereas, you may decide - let's say that you wanna learn about Lean and get a certification in Lean or something like that. 0:31:15.5 AS: Ultimately, you may go down a rabbit hole of a particular tool and become a master in that tool. Nothing wrong with that. But the point is, what is the objective? Who defines the quality? And Dr. Deming clearly stated in the seminars that I was in, and from readings that I've read, that the objective of quality isn't just to improve something in...you could improve something, the quality of something and go out of business. And so there's the bigger objective of it is: how does this serve the needs of our clients? So anyways, that's just some of my memories of those days. 0:31:52.4 BB: Yeah. But you're absolutely right. And the point I'm hoping to bring out in our sessions is: I'm not against tools and techniques. Tools and techniques are incredible. They're time savers, money savers, but let's use them with a sense of connections and relationships. And I agree with you, I've done plenty of seminars where people are coming in - they're all about tools and techniques. Tools and techniques is part of the reason I like to differentiate is to say....and again, I think people are hungrier for tools and techniques. Why? Because I don't think they've come to grips with what concepts and strategies are about. And I'm hoping our listeners can help us...can appreciate that they go together. Tools and techniques are about efficiency, doing things faster, doing things cheaper. Concepts and strategies are about doing the right thing. Ackoff would say "doing the right thing right." And short of that, we end up using tools to make things worse. And that's what I'm hoping people can avoid through the insights we can share from Dr. Deming. 0:33:05.4 AS: And I would say that, would it be the case that applying tools, and tools and techniques is kind of easy? You learn how they work, you practice with them, you measure, you give feedback, but actually going to figure out how we optimize this overall system is just so much harder. It's a complex situation, and I can imagine that there's some people that would retreat to tools and techniques and I saw it in the factory at Pepsi when people would basically just say, "well, I'm just doing my thing." That's it, 'cause it's too much trouble to go out and try to negotiate all of this with everybody. 0:33:50.7 BB: I think in part, I think as long as they're managing parts in isolation, which is the prevailing system of management, then, I agree with you. Becoming aware of interdependencies in the greater system, and I'll also point out is whatever system you're looking at is part of a bigger system, and then again, bigger system, then again, bigger system. What you define is the whole, is part of a bigger system. No matter how you define it, it's part of a bigger system because time goes to infinity. So your 10-year plan, well, why not a 20-year plan? Why not a 30-year plan? So no matter how big a system you look at, there is a bigger system. So let's not get overwhelmed. Let's take a system, which Ackoff would say, take a system which is not too big that you can't manage it, not too small, that you're not really giving it the good effort, but don't lose sight of whatever system you're looking at - you'll begin to realize it is actually bigger than that. Again, what Dr. Deming would say, the bigger the system, the more complicated, which is where you're coming from, but it also offers more opportunities. I think we're so used to tools and techniques. 0:35:14.3 BB: I don't think people have really given thought to the concepts and strategies of Deming's work as opposed to Lean and Six Sigma as being different, which is why I wanted to bring it up with our listeners, because I don't think people are defaulting on the tools. I just don't think they appreciate that concepts and strategies are different than tools and techniques. And I like to have them become aware of that difference and then understand where black-and-white thinking works, where continuum thinking has advantages. There's times to look at things as connected, and then there's times to just move on and make a decision, which is a lot easier because the implications aren't as important. But at least now we get back to choice, be conscious of the choice you're making, and then move on. All right, so also on the list we had, who defines quality? 0:36:09.0 BB: We talked about that. What is meant by good: the requirements are met. Who defines good? Again, if you're looking at Phil Crosby, who defines good? Someone has to set, here are the requirements for being "good." I could be giving a term paper and me saying to the students, this is what "good" means. Next thing I wanted to look at is, "why stop at good?" And, I'm pretty sure we've talked about this. A question I like to ask people is how much time they spend every day in meetings, discussing parts, components, things that are good and going well. And what I find is people don't spend a whole lot of time discussing things that are good and going well. So why do they stop? Why not? Because they're stopping at "good." 0:36:57.1 BB: And that goes back to the black-and-white thinking. They're saying things are "bad" or they're "good." We focus on the bad to make it good, and then we stop at good. Why do we stop at good? Because there's no sense of "better." All right. And what does that mean? So again, we have why stop at good? Why go beyond good? And this is...'cause I think we're talking about really smart people that stop at "good." And I think to better understand what that means, what I like to do is ask people, what's the letter grade required for a company to ship their products to the customer? What letter grade does NASA expect from all their suppliers? And I asked a very senior NASA executive this question years ago. He was the highest ranking NASA executive in the quality field. 0:37:50.5 BB: And I said, "what letter grade do you expect from your contractors?" And he said, A+. A+. And I said, actually, it's not A+. And he is like, "What do you mean?" I said, "actually the letter grade, your requirement is actually D-." And he pushed back at me and I said, what...he says, "well, what do you mean?" I said, "how do you define quality?" And he said, "We define quality as requirements are met. That's what we require." I said, "so you think A+ is the only thing that meets requirements?" He's like, "well, where are you coming from?" I said a pass-fail system, now we get back to category thinking, if it's good or bad, what is good? Good is passing. What is passing? What I explained to him: passing is anything from an A+ down to a D-. 0:38:38.9 BB: And he got a little antsy with me. I said, "well, the alternative is an F, you don't want an F, right?" I said, "well, what you're saying is that you'll take anything but an F and that means your requirements are actually D-." And then when I pushed back and I said, "is a D- the same as an A+?" And he said, "no." I said, "well, that's what I meant earlier" in the conversation with him. And I told him that they weren't interchangeable. So when you begin to realize that black and white quality, Phil Crosby-quality, allows for D minuses to be shipped to customers. Again, in this one way I define quality, I hand it off to you. 'Cause in that world, Andrew, I make the measurement, it's 5.999, it meets requirements, I ship it to you, your only response when you receive it is to say, "thank you." [laughter] 0:39:33.2 BB: For a D minus, right? Well, when you begin to understand relationship quality, then you begin to understand that to improve the relationship, what's behind improving the relationship, Andrew, is shifting from the D- to the A. And what does that mean? What that means is, when I pay attention to your ability to receive what I give you, whether it's the pass or the information, the more synchronously I can provide that, the letter grade is going up, [laughter] and it continues to go up. Now, again, what I'm hoping is that the effort I'm taking to provide you with the A is worthwhile. But that's how you can have continuous improvement, is stop...not stopping at the D minus. 0:40:17.6 BB: Again, there may be situations where D minus is all you really need, but I, that's not me delivering to you a D minus blindly. That's you saying to me, "Hey, I don't need an A+ over here. All I really need is a D minus." That's teamwork, Andrew. So on the one hand, and what I think is, our listeners may not appreciate it, is who defines the letter grade? So in your organization, I would say to people, you give everyone a set of requirements to go meet, what letter grade does each of them has to meet to hand off to a coworker, to another coworker, to a customer? Every single one of those people, all they have to do if they're feeling disenfranchised, as you mentioned earlier, they're feeling like an interchangeable part, well, under those circumstances, Andrew, I don't have to call you up, I just deliver a D minus. And you can't complain because I've met the requirements. 0:41:14.2 BB: So what I think it could be a little scary is to realize, what if everybody in the company comes to work tomorrow feeling no dignity in work and decides to hand off the minimum on every requirement, how does that help? And what I find exciting by Deming's work is that Dr. Deming understood that how people are treated affects their willingness to look up, pay attention to the person they're receiving and deliver to them the appropriate letter grade. So I'm hoping that helps our audience understand that if it's a black and white system, then we're saying that it's good or it's bad. What that misses is, keyword Andrew, variation in good. So the opportunities to improve when we realize that there's a range, that "good" has variation. Another point I wanna make is, what allows the Deming philosophy to go beyond looking good? 0:42:16.2 BB: Well, if you look at the last chapter 10, I think, yeah, chapter 10 of the New Economics is...like the last six pages of the New Economics is all about Dr. Taguchi's work, and it's what Dr. Deming learned from Dr. Taguchi about this very thought of looking at quality in terms of relationships, not just in isolation, Phil Crosby-style meeting requirements. And the last thing I wanna throw out is I was listening to a interview with Russ Ackoff earlier today, and he gave the three steps to being creative. This is a lecture he gave at Rocketdyne years ago. And he said, the first thing is you have to discover self-limiting constraints. Second, you have to remove the constraint. And third, you have to exploit that removal. And what I want to close on is what Deming is talking about is the self-limiting constraint is when we stop at good. [laughter] 0:43:20.7 BB: And I'm hoping that this episode provides more insights as to the self-imposed constraint within our organizations to stop at "good." What happens when we go beyond that? And how do you go beyond that? By looking at how others receive your work and then expand that others and expand that others and expand that others. And then what I find exciting is, and the work I do with students and with clients is, how can we exploit every day that idea of synchronicity of quality, and not looking at quality from a category perspective? Again, unless that's all that's needed in that situation. So I don't want to throw out category thinking, use category thinking where it makes sense, use continuum thinking where it makes sense. So that's what I wanted to close with. 0:44:12.1 AS: Bill, on behalf of everyone at The Deming Institute, I want to thank you again for this discussion. For listeners, remember to go to deming.org to continue your journey. This is your host, Andrew Stotz, and I'm gonna leave you with one of my favorite quotes from Dr. Deming, and it's very appropriate for the discussion that we've had today. "People are entitled to joy in work."  

 Data represents raw numbers and information represents the what, when, where, etc. of something. Knowledge requires looking inward at how something works. Understanding requires looking outward at a bigger system for an explanation of what lies inward. Wisdom is the ability to utilize these elements. So how do we go from having data to having wisdom? Bill and Andrew talk about tools, techniques, concepts, and strategies. TRANSCRIPT 0:00:02.8 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 discussion with Bill Bellows, who has spent 30 years helping people apply. Dr. Deming's idea is to become aware of how their thinking is holding them back from their biggest opportunity. The topic for today is: Tools and Techniques and Concepts and Strategies. Bills, take it away.   0:00:30.2 Bill Bellows: Thank you, Andrew. And as we get into number five, I was listening earlier to episode number four, and I just want to start off with a clarification and addition. I shared a quote, "I'd rather know a little less than to know so much that ain't so." Which is the opening quote of The New Economics. Every chapter of The New Economics has a great quote. And that quote is attributed to Josh Billings, who is an author who lived in - the author, humorist in the late 1800s. And I thought that was attributed to Will Rogers. Will Rogers is kind of the Josh Billings of the early 1900s. And Will Rogers quote, which a little similar is, "It isn't what we don't know that gives us trouble. It's what we know that ain't so."   0:01:26.8 BB: And to that end, we've been talking about black and white thinking, question number one, shades of gray thinking, question number two. And something I learned from Ed Baker who's a genius who worked at Ford, followed Dr. Deming around the world, a really sweet guy. And one of the first times I met him, he said something about having the ability to realize that the more you know something may be the less that, we're so used to thinking that I know it better and better and better. And where he was coming from my interpretation was, there's a possibility of getting to a point of questioning your understanding, which means your understanding goes backwards. And that's where I think these quotes from Billings and Rogers are so appropriate. Are we willing to let go of dogma? I mean, that's what we were talking about last time. Zero inventory, zero variation, and that's all dogma. And what these two people are talking about is that understanding is relative.   0:02:42.1 BB: It's not absolute. And also that it can go backwards. So you could look at what you're knowing and all of a sudden say, "Maybe I'm not as confident." And if I go there and say... I met a really cool guy, it was at Deming's first seminar in the UK, he worked for Ford. And I used to meet him at this annual UK Deming forum. And at the end of the days there we'd go to the pub, and I liked to hang out with him 'cause he is just, he had so much great wisdom. And one of the things he said is that he constantly challenges his understanding, and not just of Deming, but is this, is it, 'cause he found himself really passionate, but he was questioning, he had the ability to step back and question why he thought it was so important. "Am I crazy?" And, I said, "You're not the only one who does that." But I think that's really healthy, that you can step back, read other people's stuff. But the ability to keep challenging and I think in the world of continuous improvement, we use that phrase, the ability to question your understanding I think is absolutely important. So anyway, I just want to get that off first.   0:04:05.8 AS: It made me think when I teach my finance classes at university, one of the first things I say to my students, is I say, if I'm successful in this class, you'll be less confident when you leave.   0:04:18.0 BB: Yes.   0:04:19.3 AS: And they just can't understand that at that moment in time. But at the end of the course, they realize that nothing's written in stone and that it is a shifting sands, particularly the stock market. Stock market is just a, as one of my guests on my podcast on investing said, "The stock market is a predator, and it's just constantly evolving ways to take money from you." But the point is that if you think that you've got it licked, then it's your, it may be your time up next. And then the other thing I was thinking about is, does knowledge go backwards or does it just become that we have a different vantage point? And also, what's the motive of learning? In the beginning it was just to gather information. The ability to interpret that information strongly didn't come until you really start to feel better and you have more experience. But then the further you go, it's like playing a piano solo and you go far away from what you learn in the rudiments. Does that mean the rudiments are wrong? No, you're just coming at it from a very different angle now.   0:05:32.1 BB: Well, let me add, and this adds to where we're going. And I've shared my, what I've learned from Dr. Deming. I met him twice and never asked him a question. I learned a whole lot from Russ Akoff, who I asked a lot of questions, Dr. Taguchi I asked a lot of questions. And one of the things I share in all my classes that I learned from Russ, and I find... I use the word profound. It's a model he refers to as the D-I-K-U-W model. Others have used four letters. I like Russ's model, D-I-K-U-W. So what is D? "D" is data. And what is data? Data are temperatures, pressures, sales numbers. Those are, that's data. "I" is information. And as Russ would say, information is what a newspaper reporter writes. It's what, where, when, how, and a car accident occurred at this time. That's information. And what's neat is what Dr. Deming said was the dictionary is filled with information.   0:06:52.4 BB: But the "K" is knowledge. And Russ uses K the same way Deming uses knowledge - as in Theory of Knowledge - which is, what is my theory for how this thing works?   0:07:06.8 BB: If I tweak this, then this happens. So the ability to understand causes and effects, that's knowledge. I take something apart and I understand the springs and this turns this, and I would turn it clockwise and boom, boom, boom. That's knowledge. Understanding, the "U," comes from stepping back. And an example I used with my students is, a number of years ago, I took apart our washing machine, 'cause I heard the bearing is starting to hum. And I thought, well, given the experience in corporations, I can either continue to let this hum and at one point it breaks, in which case I am where I am, or I can be on top of it and get ahead of it. And that's what I decided to do. So I went online, found a couple websites, and got great instructions, took the whole thing apart, and was able to get back together. Taking it apart, putting it back together, looking at how all these things work together, is that I gained great knowledge. But what Russ would say is, understanding how the washing machine works doesn't tell me why it's sized for a family of four.   0:08:27.5 BB: Russ would say, taking an automobile apart and putting it back together doesn't tell you why it's designed for four passengers and why the driver sits on the left. So understanding is when you look outward at the greater system, and Russ also refers to that as synthesis, as opposed to analysis is when we bore in. And he said... And what's really also, we'll get into this. I mean this, these terms will come up in this conversation later, so it works out well to throw it in now. So there's data, information, knowledge. Okay, fine. Again, understanding is: we step back and say, why is the car, why does the car have four passengers? And that's also what Russ calls synthesis - which is when we look outward at the containing system. And analysis is when we go inward. So there's analysis inward, which is where the knowledge piece comes in, stepping back.   0:09:28.9 BB: And then the "W" piece is wisdom, which is, what do you do with all this stuff? So I'm sitting in a staff meeting at Rocketdyne, and they're talking about the results of the latest survey. And every director in the room has got a solution on how to improve their issues, and every solution involves some awards program. And I'm listening to one person after another, after another, after another. And this is a, I knew all these people, but I was recently assigned to this vice president, and I was all set after the 12th or 13th of them said, "and I'm gonna implement an award system." And I was all set to say, “for the record...” but I bit my tongue, and it's a good thing I did, because immediately after the meeting was the monthly awards and recognition luncheon for the buyer. But I say that that's the wisdom piece. The wisdom piece was, I was lucky. I just, but the wisdom piece is knowing, when do I use this knowledge and when do I just shut up?   0:10:45.6 AS: That's true isn't it?   0:10:47.5 BB: Yeah. And I would say I was, I was lucky. But still, with what we're sharing with people, it's one thing to be aware of it, but you have to pick your battles. You have to pick your opportunities, and you can't be a bull in a China shop. All right. So back to tools and techniques.   0:11:08.6 AS: Okay. But wait, I want to go back through this just to highlight it because I think it's a good... I teach students how to value companies, and I've been doing it for 30 years. So, I would argue I'm close to the wisdom part, further away from the data part. But when I bring students in the class, the first thing they do is, hey, I got data, I got data, I got these charts, look at this, look at this. But then I say, okay, so what, what, tell me more. And then they say, then they get into the information. Okay, what, when, how, where, but they still don't have an interpretation of what this means. And then we get to knowledge where they start to ask more questions: okay, how does this all work together?   0:11:49.2 AS: And then as you get better and better in what you're doing, you get an understanding of how it all works together. You're not just valuing one stock, you're looking at that stock relative to the overall market. And then when you get to wisdom in the valuation and in the finance world, you've now seen many different parts of this overall system. And when you come back and look at the idea of: how am I valuing this particular stock? So many more elements come into that decision. What's the FED doing? What's happening in that country? What's happening in demand? If it's a car company, like I've just valued Toyota, what's happening? And we going into recession? Has that been put into the...is that already in the price? So Data, Information, Knowledge, Understanding, Wisdom. Alright, great. Let's continue.   0:12:35.2 BB: Oh yeah. And then again, we'll see where it shows up. So first one, talk about tools and techniques. And when I presented my classes I said there's tools and techniques, and then there's concepts and strategies. So what are tools? Tools are the implements that we use to complete tasks. So in the backyard I've got an axe, I've got our hammers, screwdrivers, pliers, those are tools. So is my cell phone, it's a tool. The computer, the cameras these are tools. The microphone, these are tools. Techniques are the methods of how they're to be employed. So when I get ready for the podcast, I turn off anything that would just come on board and distract us, things like that, close the door. So the technique is: what is the method by which I use the ax, use the screwdriver? Okay. Now we get to concepts and strategies.   0:13:29.8 BB: So concepts represent abstract ideas such as the theory of System of Profound Knowledge, as well as fundamental building blocks of thoughts and beliefs. So, those are concepts. Again, concepts represent abstract ideas as well as fundamental building blocks of thoughts and beliefs. All right. So I couple that with strategies. Strategies represent a plan of action or a policy designed to achieve a major overall aim guided by a concept. So if I want to implement Lean, implement Six Sigma. So Six Sigma and Lean are concepts, and then we have a strategy to implement - training people, whatever. And I throw those out because what I find is well, let me even back up in terms of another model I want to share with our audience. And I'm aware that there are people listening to this if they're joining online on the Deming Institute webpage.   0:14:32.1 BB: And then for our viewers that are watching us, Andrew, through DemingNext, then they can see us. They have a video. But I want to, as much as we cannot rely on PowerPoint slides that the listeners can't listen to. So I want people to imagine an input-output diagram, a rectangle where you've got inputs coming in one side, and what are the inputs? The raw materials used to create something. It could be literally materials or information or students as inputs into an education system. And then the output is whatever it is you're trying to achieve. So the left hand side is the inputs coming in the outputs are going out the right hand side. Well, what I also think about is imagine coming down from the top are concepts and strategies, and coming up from the bottom are tools and techniques. And the idea is that the tools and techniques are used to manipulate, convert these things, these inputs through concepts and strategies into the output. And so, tools and techniques offer us speed, the ability to dig the hole with a shovel as opposed to my hand. The ability to contact thousands of people in email as opposed to one at a time. Tools and techniques offer what Akoff would call efficiency, doing things well. So efficiency is about lowering cost, improving speed.   0:16:14.7 BB: And so, again, Akoff would talk, again another concept from Akoff is differentiating efficiency from effectiveness. And I don't think we've talked about this in the past, but when I first heard Russ explain this I thought, "holy cow, I use the words efficient and effective interchangeably." If I was writing something I'd talk about, let's do it efficiently then over here, not to be redundant, and I'd say, we're gonna be effective. And in Russ's work, and he is incredibly eloquent, and he says, efficiency is doing things well, effectiveness is doing the right thing. And he'd say that the better you do the wrong thing the wronger you become. And the idea being effectiveness is asking: "why are we doing this in the first place?" And I say that because concepts and strategies are about effectiveness, an overall plan of action.   0:17:17.4 BB: And my concern is we get hung up on tools and techniques wanting to do things faster and cheaper. Again what Russ would say is the righter you do the wrong thing the wronger you become, because we're not challenging that. Reducing cost of something in isolation may make the whole thing worse, and we get all hung up on driving cost of zero, cycle time to zero, variation to zero, defects to zero, not understanding the greater system. So again back to this model is the raw materials, the inputs and come in the left hand side, they're acted upon by tools and techniques, but the tools and techniques are guided by concepts and strategies and that gives us the output. Well the...   0:18:04.8 AS: Go ahead.   0:18:06.5 BB: Go ahead Andrew.   0:18:07.5 AS: I was just gonna say, I was gonna put it in the context that in my coffee factory, the main input is raw coffee beans. And then the process is roasting and packaging, and then a finished product comes out the other end. And if I think about the tools and techniques, we use thermometers, we use roasting equipment, we use coolers and we have techniques that we've worked on that we have certain recipes, certain dump times, so these are the tools and techniques. And then the concepts and strategies. Well, as far as concepts are concerned, part of it is making sure that we're making the right product. We have a lot of competitors that come in the coffee business and they're absolute coffee lovers, and they start up little roasting factories to compete with us, but what they don't realize is that we're not roasting for the best tasting coffee, we're roasting for the best match with what the client wants from a taste and a cost perspective. And it may have nothing to do with what you and I appreciate in a nice espresso. And so when I think about the concepts, it's like really understanding where are we going with what we're doing with this.   0:19:28.0 BB: Yes.   0:19:28.4 AS: And then this, the strategy is kind of, in some ways I would say it's kind of the overall, how does this fit into our overall strategy of the service that we're bringing to our clients. The machines, the coffee, the coffee doesn't brew itself. It has to be brewed in equipment. So we have to optimize for that equipment. Then we have to have service technicians that train. So there's a strategy of kind of how we implement that overall thing. I'm just trying to apply what you've said about tools and techniques and concepts and strategies.   0:19:56.9 BB: Well, that's brilliant. And what is else is cool that I've never shared with you is our... One is our, your undergraduate degree and our daughter's undergraduate degree are both from Cal State Long Beach.   0:20:08.8 AS: Interesting.   0:20:10.1 BB: And she went and studied - a few changes in direction - and came out with a degree in English. She wanted to be an English teacher. And then upon graduation decided it's not what she wanted to do. But she spent one year in Europe and somehow got turned on to coffee. And her senior year she was working in these coffee shops making lattes and espressos. And she is a coffee snob, let me tell you. She turned me on to the difference between, let's just say Starbucks Coffee and Intelligentsia Coffee. And it's never been the same. And she would say 'cause I put, cream or half and half and that she says, dad, she said, “Coffee lovers, if you have to put something in it, then you're not a coffee lover.”   0:21:17.1 BB: But she worked in the coffee business and just an incredible mind for exactly what you're talking about. And then decided to go back into education.   0:21:30.2 AS: Yeah. Whenever I go out on a dinner, since I don't drink wine and they pour me a glass of wine, I always pour in about, a little about a quarter of a cup of milk into my wine just to freak 'em out. And think, now who would ever do that with coffee anyways.   0:21:46.4 BB: But no, but those are great examples. And they... But the other thing I wanna point out is, I've seen, and I'm sure you've seen, people look at Deming's work and they say, well, he uses control charts and so do the Six Sigma people. Hey both of them talk about design of experiments and both of them talk about continuous improvement. Isn't it all the same? And when I started to explain to people is to say, don't confuse tools and techniques with concepts and strategies. And it's really powerful to differentiate. And I point out to people, I'm not against tools and techniques, but I shared in the past that, when I joined Rocketdyne in 1990, I got involved in problem solving and working on things and doing training.   0:22:40.7 BB: And in hindsight, most of my focus was tools and techniques. Was showing them how to go in there and apply this and apply this. And that was kind of in the community where I was being mentored by these people outside the company. That's the path I was on was, looking at, how I was being trained by the people doing the training and that it made sense. But it wasn't until I came across Dr. Deming's work, then I said, the tools and techniques needed to be guided, and without guiding them properly, we're gonna keep solving problem, solving problem, solving problem. So I'm not against tools and techniques, I love tools and techniques. And I spent the first couple of years and I was all about tools and techniques, and then I got enamored with concepts and strategies - and see that's where the action is. And then, but when it comes to the rubber meeting the road, you're gonna need tools and techniques. And makes you may have an incredible concept, but at the end of the day, you have to bake the coffee beans.   0:23:53.1 AS: Yep. And you and I were talking before we turned on the recorder, about how I've had a little back and forth on LinkedIn with someone who posted something about KPIs. And it was all about how... And it was actually, I think it was a company that has KPI training and all that. But I...   0:24:10.9 BB: And again, for our audience, KPIs are a key process... Key performance indicators.   0:24:14.7 AS: Performance, key performance indicators. Yeah. And it's such a common thing now, I would say almost every business has them. And the KPI concept is that, every business, every division, every individual should have some key performance indicators of whether they're doing their job right. And that is a measure that we can use to try to understand and manage people. And so they, I basically chimed in that KPIs...I would challenge anybody that KPIs probably cause more damage than they solve. And that's a bit offensive, because, people are really relying on KPIs right now. And then one of the common comebacks to that is, yeah, because people weren't trained in them, and therefore, unless they're really carefully thought out, they don't work or it's harder. But what I was trying to explain is it's beyond that. You can't fairly design KPIs for individuals. And I said, and the ultimate way that you can understand this, and this is good lesson for the listeners, is just go to your employees, not your managers who are all talking, they're having their KPI chat rooms or whatever, but go to your employees and ask them, just ask them a simple question.   0:25:33.5 AS: Do KPIs add more, do they add value or do they detract from value of this business? However you word it. And I've done surveys like that and I found that about 80% of the people have a negative perception of KPIs. And there's a lot of different reasons. But the biggest reason based upon what you're talking about is that most of the people that are doing KPIs, they only understand the tools and techniques. They're not thinking about the concepts and strategies and understanding the motivations of individuals, the motivations of people to cheat, the motivations of how do you measure something, how do you know that I should be calling five customers in the mornings, versus 15 versus one, and have a long conversation with that one? There's just... It's nothing in the world is that objective. And you can't get there until you get to concepts and strategies.   0:26:23.8 BB: What you've just said brings a number of things to mind. One is I went to meet one of the vice president at Rocketdyne once, and I had a conversation with him on a particular topic. And he was new to being the VP. And so I went in and I said, I need your help, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And so we got that one done with that and that went really well. He says, "Hey let me ask you a question. Help me out here." He said - 'cause at that time, at the beginning of the year, KPIs were rolled out, right? And at the highest level, the next level. And then at the end of the quarter, how we doing? At the end of the next quarter, how we doing? So he says, so he is a VP, he's got a dozen of directors reporting to him. And he says... I've asked him to put together these goals. And they weren't called KPIs, but they were KPIs. And I forget what they were exactly called.   0:27:29.7 BB: And he says, "I know they're capable of so much more." I said, "What do you mean?" He says, it's like he didn't use the word sandbagging, but they were sandbagging. He said, "they're kind of underestimating what they're capable of." He said, "What do you... " And he was really sincere. He was a really, really nice guy. He says, so "What do you think's going on?" I said, oh, I said, "I'll tell you what's going on." I said, "You're holding them individually accountable and of course they're holding back because you expect the numbers to be met." And I said, under those circumstances, you'd be a fool to stretch 'cause he says, there's so much more capability and these people and they're holding back. And I said, "They're holding back because when you hold their feet to the fire, they need a way out." So their way out is to underestimate. And then if they go beyond that, then they look good. But instead of, but he was baffled that they were underestimating what they could do, 'cause he knew these people as peers. He used to be one of them now he is their boss. And so again, it was a really sincere question, but he was really puzzled. And that's exactly what you're, that's part of what we're talking about.   0:28:55.7 AS: And to come back to that, just the idea there is that majority of people actually intuitively know that they only have so much control over the situation that they're operating within a system. And so they'd be a fool to go out and say a big number because they can't control the other departments doing whatever needs to be done to get to their goal. I have a friend of mine that went to work for Microsoft from a small company and went to Microsoft and he had a big, big contract, multi-million dollar contract he was trying to get in Dubai, and he asked the guy in Redmond if he'd be willing to fly out - to go. He said, "I'd love to go, but I gotta hit my KPI to get my bonus and I've got two weeks to get there, so I'm sorry I can't." And so what was a $10 or $20 million contract in Dubai had to be let go of because that guy just couldn't support it. He had to focus on what could have been a $300,000 KPI. So you can't think about the system when you are incentivizing people individually. And that's where...   0:29:56.3 BB: Yeah, and we'll come back to that. But I'll throw out an example. I have a neighbor who once upon a time worked for Xerox and field service, and he was so cool 'cause we started to compare notes: what do I do, what do you do, and all. And I never forget the one thing he said, he said, there wasn't a KPI that was flowed down that they couldn't meet.   0:30:17.2 BB: And because at the end of the day they had the ability to play the game. And one story a little bit different, but an example of how the game is played. There are some people, years ago writing a book about companies that are incredibly creative, and this is a real story. So they went out and they came across a company where there was on average 20 suggestions per employee being submitted every week. Gotta go visit this place! So they go in and then we read the reports and they're like, "Yeah so how do you do this? How do you, it's like 20 ideas per person per week. How do you do this?"   0:30:58.7 BB: The guy pulls out of his pocket a bunch of three by five cards, again, this is back in the '80s or '90s. And he says well, as a matter of fact, he said, "Yeah, I come up with an idea. I write it down. I keep it in my pocket, on Friday I have to deliver 20." And the guy says, "Every week you deliver 20? I just like, how do you keep doing this?" He says, well, like, yes and no. He said, "So in my pocket, in this one here, you see this idea here?" He says, "Yeah, well this was Andrew's idea last week." And this one here Joe submitted this three weeks ago. So he, I gave him a couple of mine and so I'm gonna submit 20 but... And they aren't all mine." And I thought, that's exactly what we're talking about. They're gonna make the numbers. Another thing I've seen, which I don't think is not uncharacteristic, is people estimating how long something's gonna take, how many hours are required, resources required? And then they end up using twice as much resources, right? And then they go back and change the estimate to the actual they used. And I was like, holy cow.   0:32:18.7 BB: But what we both know is the system is causing people, as this VP, I was trying to convey to the VP, if at the end of the day you are solely held accountable as the willing worker, then you are going to go to great lengths to protect yourself by padding the budget, overestimating the resources you need, under... And you're gonna play these games, 'cause what's missing from everything is unique to the Deming philosophy, I believe over Lean Six Sigma, Operational Excellence, Six Sigma by itself, Lean by itself is... An understanding of integration and how things work as a system. Now what I've also seen is you may find the word 'System' used in those concepts in the deployment strategies, but those... That language, if you pay attention to how the focus is about question one. Does something meet requirements? We wanna lower the cost of this. We wanna drive this cost to zero, we wanna eliminate this inventory.   0:33:39.3 AS: To me, those are examples of looking at something in isolation. So even though we use the word “system” you can hear the isolationist thinking. And I was... I had an ear ache the other day, and so actually when we were on vacation, my left ear was bugging me. So I got back and waited and waited and said, okay, I'm gonna go and take a look at it...Gotta get it taken, get them to take a look at it. And so I went in and to see my doctor and she wasn't available. So I met a new guy and, so he says, "What do you do?" And I said, I consult and I do online classes. I have these podcasts with Andrew. And he said, what it's about? And I said, well... I said, the way organizations are run, I said, they give the right wrist, a goal for Pulse, and they give the left wrist a different goal for Pulse. So over here I want, 45 beats per minute. And over here, this is what I want.   0:34:42.9 BB: And that's this KPI stuff. And there's not an understanding that as soon as you assign the goal to the right wrist, you've constrained everything else. And that's the concept behind Deming's work that I so love that, with his work I understand the fallacy of assigning these things over here. Over here we wanna see zero inventory, we wanna see this, we wanna see this, we wanna see this. And you can't... It doesn't work because they're all connected.   0:35:16.8 AS: Well, I was thinking about, I used to have a sauna and a cold, plunge pool place near my house here in Bangkok, and I would love to go into the sauna and get really hot. Then I had a hot bath. So I'd get super hot and then I would get out of that, I'd go into the cold and then you get super cold and obviously your body's going through very different situations when you're in there. But then, being the analyst, I started asking myself, I wonder what would happen if I put my right foot down here into the hot, extremely hot water. Okay, what signal is that sending up to my brain? And I put my left foot in the extremely cold water? And you could just imagine what your body and your brain is trying to figure out how to react to that. And that's what you're saying about the pulse on one hand versus the other. I feel like I wanna wrap this up because we've gone through so much stuff, and is there anything else that you want to talk about before I do a wrap up?   0:36:16.8 BB: Well, lemme tell you one other story.   0:36:19.5 AS: Yep.   0:36:21.3 BB: I was in a meeting number of years ago, at a pretty high level, I was a bystander. I happened to be invited to a pretty high level meeting. And in the room where nine divisions. Each division, there were roughly 300 people in the room representing nine different divisions of the company. We'll just leave it at that. And elsewhere in the company, there's others doing similar things. So I was in a... And part of this big corporation. Then there's others working in parallel. And in the group I am, again, there's nine Presidents with their respective Vice Presidents and down to a director level. And again, I'm just there for whatever reason. And the objective is to improve the stock price of the corporation.   0:37:22.8 BB: And because the big consulting companies said that if you reduce return on that... If you improve return on that asset and increase cash flow, then you'll have stock prices like the golden companies. And that's where the company wanted to be. They wanted a huge stock price. So the plan is, for these nine different divisions of the company, to each work on a plan to improve their return on that asset and a cashflow number. Right? So we break it into in the parts, each part's gonna come up with a plan. And so the day begins with: this is the overall concept. The strategy is you nine at the end of the day are gonna go to a conference room. You're gonna outbrief tomorrow morning with your plan and blah, blah, blah. Okay, so now what? So the next presentation is on this concept called, Big Hairy Audacious Goals.   0:38:23.9 BB: And so an outside consultant comes in and "don't hold back. Go for gold. Go for gold. Don't hold back. Don't hold back the company's stock price it is dependent upon you!" So again the concept is, we're gonna break it into parts. The strategy is we're gonna go separate directions. This guy comes in and says, "go, go, go. Don't hold back." And we get to the point after that presentation and the number one guy in the room gets up and he says, okay, everybody understand the concept, understand the strategy. You're gonna go to these rooms, get back tomorrow morning with the out brief.   0:38:58.9 BB: Okay. And 300 people are standing up. And they're beginning to gather their stuff and before they could leave the room, the number two guy in the room was up on stage, comes up to the microphone and he says, "Ladies and gentlemen, hold, let me get your attention, before you leave the room. Let me just emphasize, let's not sub-optimize." So I shared that later that evening with my wife and she said, "What'd you do?" I said, "I just stood up in the back of the room and yelled, what other effect are you expecting than sub-optimization?" And she says, "You didn't?" I said, "No, I just sat there and watched." That's what we're talking about, Andrew. Every division coming up with their own thing. 'Cause the belief is if they each improve, the overall improves. But the other thing I wanna say is, and we'll talk about this more in the future, is the number two guy in the room, he knows that sub-optimization is a bad thing. So it's like if I called a guy up and I said "Hey An…is this Andrew Stotz? Yeah, Andrew, hey how'd you get…?" "Yeah, who are you?" I said "Andrew, I'm your best friend, and I've got a deal for you. I am selling sub-optimization."   0:40:29.7 BB: And you're like, hold on, hold on. That's a no no, no. That all you know is that that's a bad thing. And that's what I thought, is that's dogma. We know that sub-optimization is bad, but they wouldn't know sub-optimization if they bumped into it in a brightly lit room. And so this KPI stuff is the epitome of sub-optimization. It is every department with their own pulse. And what you and I revere about Dr. Deming's work is it's a concept of looking at things of the system, which challenges that. But this advice within the corporation came from McKinsey.   0:41:14.5 AS: Of course. Okay.   0:41:16.6 BB: So a lot of money was paid for this advice. So it's out there. It's alive and well. And so again, when we're talking about concepts and strategy is - to me, they are the differentiator. Looking at Deming's idea as a concept is an incredible differentiator.   0:41:36.6 AS: Okay. So, let's wrap up. First, we talked about the idea that, could knowledge go backwards? Like we were accumulating knowledge and all of a sudden we start to lose...we gain a new perspective and we start to lose confidence in what we're looking at. The second thing we talked about was D-I-K-U-W, data, information, knowledge, understanding, and wisdom. And it's just thinking about maturing also over time as you learn and grow. We talked about tools and techniques and concepts and strategies, and the idea being that tools are the implements that we use to achieve tasks. Techniques are the methods that we're employing. And that tools and techniques are about efficiency, which is about doing things well. And that's different from effectiveness, which is doing the right thing.   0:42:29.2 BB: Yes.   0:42:29.7 AS: And concepts represent like the abstract ideas, the fundamental building blocks, the thoughts and beliefs to understand how these things all work together. And strategy is ultimately: where are we going and how are we getting there?   0:42:46.1 BB: Yes.   0:42:47.1 AS: And the point that you've said is what you like about Dr. Deming is that it helps you not to confuse tools and techniques from concepts and strategies, in where Dr. Deming saw something out of what seems like a very innocent tool to the average person. He saw the damage that could be done. And then what you talked about at that last example about the guy that stood up. And everybody's gonna go into their rooms and their departments and then work on this project. And at the end he says, let's not sub-optimize. And the answer from the audience should have been, well then let's sit back down in this room and figure out how we're gonna all work together to get the most out of this system. Because in fact, what we know, just like Dr. Deming taught about a symphony, is that it must be part of this symphony will be sub-optimized, while another part is being optimized to get the optimum output of the system. So to think that you can drive a business 100% on all cylinders and not have an impact on the other, you're actually, it's like holding up someone's pulse on both of their hands and saying, I want a low pulse rate here and here, I want a high pulse rate. It's only one beating heart of that person. Anything you would add?   0:44:05.2 BB: No, as I would just say again, the model is we've got the raw materials coming in the left hand side. We've got tools and techniques, which are about efficiency coming from the bottom, coming down from the top, our concepts and strategies, which is effectiveness first, effectiveness sets the path, sets the plan with efficiency, and then we get a credible output. So that's exactly what we're talking about. Again, we're not anti-tools, anti-techniques. What we're talking about is, let's put effectiveness with concepts first.   0:44:38.9 AS: Right. And Bill, on behalf of everyone at the Deming Institute, I want to thank you again for this discussion. For listeners, remember to go to deming.org to continue your journey. 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."

How do we motivate employees? Traditionally, we offer merit pay, focus on accountability, and use other extrinsic motivators tied to performance. The ideas sound good on the surface, but John and Andrew discuss the many pitfalls and unintended consequences - and what to do instead. 0:00:02.4 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 discussion with John Dues, who is part of the new generation of educators striving to apply Dr. Deming's principles to unleash student joy in learning. The topic for today is...well, in fact, we are continuing our discussions about management myths that keep fooling us. And today, we're talking about merit pay, accountability, and extrinsic motivators. John, take it away.   0:00:37.7 John Dues: Yeah, thanks for having me back, Andrew. We've sort of been on this sort of mini-series talking about some of these myths that Dr. Deming talked about. So two episodes ago we sort of introduced the idea that Deming said we're living in this sort of age of mythology. We talked about two myths: the myth of best practices, and the myth of the hero educator. And then last time we talked about the myth of performance appraisal, and really talked about sort of this failure to consider the role of the system on individual performance. And really what we're gonna do is kind of wrap up those myths with the three you mentioned today. I think when I think of the myth, I'm thinking about sort of management dos and don'ts, and the myths are the don'ts. And then sort of the idea would be after we cover the myths, we can turn to some guiding principles, and those would be sort of the dos, the things that management leaders should do, that sort of Dr. Deming talked about.   0:01:38.7 JD: So we can dive into the first one, which is sort of a continuation of last time, this idea of rating and ranking. Last time we talked about performance appraisal, and now it's sort of the merit pay side of rating and ranking. And it something...merit pay is a practice that has been sort of tried over time in education. What I can tell, it goes...the idea in education goes back at least to the Reagan administration. So at least to the '80s. So since that time, this sort of merit pay idea for teachers or other educators in the system has been taken up by various governors and presidents in the United States. I think most recently during President Obama's administration, there was the Race to the Top program. And sort of as a part of that program, there were teacher and principal evaluations where merit pay was sort of a key part of those evaluation systems.   0:02:36.1 JD: And so the basic theory is that if you pay people based on results, that motivator to make money will drive improvement of outcomes in schools. And I think one sort of key differentiation, because pay in all sectors, but especially in education, is a hot button topic. I'm not talking about sort of the core salary, whether or not teachers are paid enough or not. Those sort of base salary levels are sort of a separate discussion topic altogether. I'm just talking about sort of merit pay, bonus pay, performance pay, that type of thing. And when I think of merit pay, I mean a lot of these ideas, I think, sort of sound good before you really dig in and start to think about them.   0:03:34.0 AS: And that's, Dr. Deming would say pay for performance makes sense. Seems like you're gonna get a good outcome, but in fact it's a little different or a little bit more complex than that.   0:03:44.9 JD: It's a lot, yeah. A lot more complex, I think that's exactly right. When I was thinking about merit pay and the theory behind it, what are the problems, especially in education? So for me, problem number one is paramount, and that's how do you define a meaningful measure of performance by which to judge individual educators? That's a pretty thorny problem. I think problem two is that the basic theory suggests that additional money will incentivize these...improves teaching and in turn improve student outcomes. But for that to be true, that means that teachers were previously withholding their best efforts and if you just paid them this bonus, that they would then sort of unleash this previously withheld power. And then another really thorny problem is this idea, if you sort of create this environment where you have a merit pay system, it sort of disincentivizes the behaviors that are important to improving any complex system.   0:05:00.2 JD: Things like, cooperation and teamwork. And so, especially in a merit pay system, the ones that I've sort of been aware of, the merit pay calculation is often sort of viewed as sort of opaque. How is this calculated? Often sort of the algorithms are proprietary, they're viewed as unfair, and then they can lead to these undesirable behaviors like unwillingness to share ideas or, just as problematic, unwillingness to take on certain teaching assignments, the tougher assignments. The very kids that you want to have the best teachers are often the toughest to get results with. And so you're sort of disincentivizing people taking those assignments because of the differential pay or the poor rating.   0:05:57.9 AS: Yeah, it's interesting too - that the point that people are withholding their best work. If we just give them merit pay, then...and I just had a vision in my mind. Imagine that we had a peaceful cage of tigers, and they're all chilling out and these tigers consume, at every meal, they consume, let's say all of them consume a hundred kilos of meat. [laughter] And we end up putting in 50 kilos in there and say, "okay, you gotta fight for this."   0:06:44.9 JD: Yeah.   0:06:47.4 AS: What's it gonna look like?   0:06:48.8 JD: What's it gonna look like? Yeah.   0:06:50.2 AS: And in a way, like what we're doing with merit pay is saying there's a limited pool. We've allocated a pool that's available to you. Yes, you've got your survival pay, but here is this pool of additional merit pay. And then...yeah, some people, some of them may just some people may sit back and go, "I'm not doing the work for that. I'll stick with my monthly pay." Whereas others will be extremely competitive to get that pay.   0:07:19.8 JD: Yeah. Yeah. But all of it assumes that, let's say, today I don't have the merit pay system. I get certain results. Tomorrow, I have this merit pay system. It assumes I'd know what to do tomorrow to get the outcomes, right? And I think that's a huge problematic assumption.   0:07:42.7 AS: So is that's part... If you think about what you're saying, that's part of the myth that, you know, you just think...   0:07:47.8 JD: It's part of the the myth. Yeah.   0:07:49.3 AS: It's like "just put this in place." I mean, come on. It's internal competition. We want everybody to...well, wait a minute. Internal competition in the company?   0:08:00.4 JD: Yeah. I mean, I could work, potentially, work harder for some period of time, but if I don't have any different methods for bringing about these outcomes, then the merit pay itself is...assuming everything else went well, assuming it was seen as fair and transparent, the fact that you don't have any new methods with which to bring about this improvement is a serious impediment to just thinking that merit pay in and of itself is gonna be an effective system. Putting aside all the other issues like disincentivizing the very behaviors or taking on the various assignments that you want the sort of top-notch teachers to do.   0:08:36.5 AS: Yeah. I guess that's another way of thinking about it too, is that it's like you have a certain set of tools on the tool floor, on the factory floor or in the classroom or whatever. There's a certain set, and you're not adding to any of that. You're just saying, "we're gonna pay you to get more out of that," and it's just...there's a limit as to what you can get on that. All right.   0:09:01.9 JD: Yeah, and I think the most typical way this has showed up in, say, the last 15 years or so, are these value-added models, that instead of just focusing on the absolute test scores of individual students, what percentage are hitting that proficiency standard? The value-added models did allow you to sort of attempt to measure the progress of individual students. So even if they didn't hit proficiency, you could look at, well, did they grow a lot? And a lot of the sort of merit pay schemes, during the Race to the Top era, were based on these value-added models. But I was...just as an example, I was reading a working paper from a Cal Berkeley economics professor who looked at some of these models. And one of the things that he said really stood out, he said, Teachers gain... "Value-added model scores are evidently inflated or depressed, in part due to the students who they teach, who differ in unobserved ways that are stable over time.   0:10:04.5 JD: This bias accounts for as much as one third of the variation in teachers value-added scores, enough to create a great deal of misclassification in value-added model based evaluations of teacher effectiveness." So I think that that type of finding is exactly the thing that I'm talking about. Creating these models is very, very difficult. And according to at least that one research study, up to a third of the variance in the results of teachers value-added gains for their students was not attributable to the teacher themselves. It was for...to these other things.   0:10:41.5 AS: And so... Go ahead.   0:10:43.7 JD: Oh, go ahead. Yeah.   0:10:45.1 AS: I was just gonna say that one of the takeaways that people take from this type of discussion is, oh, I see, but okay, so merit pay needs to be better implemented.   [laughter]   0:10:56.0 AS: Right? Like, and I had...there was a LinkedIn discussion where someone posted something about KPIs, and I said the damage caused by KPIs is almost immeasurable. And I mentioned something about that and pretty much every post said it's not KPIs that are bad, it's just that we didn't train people well or they weren't explained well or they weren't implemented well. And that's a cover that can keep you doing merit pay or that type of thing for a decade - trying to create something that's fair and all of that. And I think that is part of the myth, part of the...where people get lost for years.   0:11:39.5 JD: Yeah. Yeah. And even in those systems, they were heavily focused on reading and math, because those were the heavy focus areas of No Child Left Behind, which was the key legislation at that time. Race to the Top was sort of a supplemental sort of grant-making process that sort of layered on top of No Child Left Behind. So even the models in reading and math weren't great at pinpointing where results were coming from. But then you also had this whole other problem where reading and math teachers make up a fairly small percentage of any staff. I mean, there's social studies teachers, science teachers, teachers in the arts, the physical education teacher, the administrators, the support staff and so you really have to finagle just the reading and math scores, to sort of make them applicable to all those other people, that have much less of a sort of direct impact on reading and math score. So that's just a sort of another problem with those systems, is how do you include the vast majority of school staff?   0:12:41.6 AS: And so I would say, let's wrap up this particular one by also saying that it's not about doing merit pay better.   0:12:50.9 JD: No, it's not. Nope. I think the practices themselves, whether it's performance appraisal or merit pay, they lead to sub optimization of the system as a whole. But I think what happens when you don't have profound knowledge, and this definitely happened to me with all of these myths, and I sort of latched onto them, when you don't have profound knowledge, these practices are continually recycled by education policy and political leaders, which is why I think you see them in the '80s during the Reagan administration, then you see 'em about 20 years later [chuckle] with the Obama administration. They get recycled, these bad ideas. When you don't have that solid philosophical foundation, you get latching onto these sort of policy implications or policies that have been tried before. You sort of forget that they didn't work the first time.   0:13:44.4 AS: Yeah, I think about Dr. Deming saying, how could they know?   0:13:47.8 JD: Right.   0:13:48.7 AS: And that there's just so many people that are kind of misguided by - just because something is done, that there's actually a foundational evidence that this is really the way that we optimize. So, all right, what's....   0:14:08.9 JD: And that was exactly what he said when he found out that President Reagan had, or his advisors, had proposed this merit pay system for schools. He said, "the problem lies in the difficulty to define a meaningful measure of performance. The only verifiable measure is a short term count of some kind, where were the President's economic advisors? He was only doing his best." So basically he was saying to the President exactly what you said. So I think the real key here is things like joy in work, intrinsic motivation, cooperation, are key to a healthy organizational culture. And these things sort of upend that. I think what we should have what Deming is telling us to do: just work to optimize the system, rather to try to incentivize those individuals working within the systems, the system as a whole that you want to work on.   0:15:00.7 AS: Okay. So accountability.   0:15:03.9 JD: Accountability. Yeah. So when we say "accountability" in school systems, what we're typically talking about is state education department accountability systems, so basically all 50 states have some type of district and school report cards. School system gets it, individual school within the school system, get them. And they're typically based on performance metrics, like proficiency rates on standardized tests, absenteeism rates, college and career readiness indicators - which on their face seem like sort of noble things to keep track of. In my home state where I am in Ohio, that sort of system trickles down to not only individual schools, but in the teacher rating system, those ratings are applied to individual educators at many traditional public schools as well. I think when we're talking about accountability systems, if you're reading Deming, he often labeled them something like "management by objective" or "management by the numbers." But really those are all the same thing. It's some type of practice where you're focused heavily on outcomes. But I think like the merit pay, several problems with the myth of accountability.   0:16:26.3 JD: So one we've talked about before, but I think a key one is that too often goals for accountability and goals for improvement get conflated as if they're one and the same. But accountability goals, they're sort of like inspection. They come after the fact, they don't improve the processes that produce the defective results in the first place. So when you get these results and you haven't been sort of getting sort of local data that tells you how your practices are doing, the idea is that you're supposed to then take this once a year data and then figure out what to do when it doesn't look like you want it to. And that data is not very good at that. So those two things, improvement goals and accountability goals get conflated. The sort of second problem is we talked before about how you can react to data.   0:17:20.9 JD: You can take it and try to improve your system, or you can distort the system itself or distort the data that's coming from the system. So a second problem, that I saw up close when No Child Left Behind was launched in the early 2000s, I was teaching in Atlanta, the legislation comes out. And if you ask teachers, what did you experience? Very often, they're gonna tell you some version of what I experienced, where as a teacher in Atlanta, we were required to spend an inordinate amount of the day on reading and math, recess got cut from an elementary schedule. I taught in an elementary school at first, and gym and the arts, while we had them, they were for very, very short periods of time and a couple times a week. Big chunks of the day on reading and math.   0:18:14.4 JD: And so that's a good example of distortion of the system because the legislation focused on math and reading results, to the exclusion of science and social studies and the arts and these other things. Well, that's where the school schedule then focused. And I don't think if you asked anybody that was sort of delivering schooling in that way, that that was in the best interest of kids in terms of giving them a well-rounded educational experience. The third problem is the distortion of the data. And this is something that happened many places, especially during Bush two and Obama's administrations, when No Child Left Behind was in full swing. So if you ask any educator and even many people outside of education, can you remember some major cheating scandals that happen with state test scores? Everybody can remember a few. There's a big one in Atlanta a few years after I left. I know there was a major one in DC.   0:19:13.1 JD: There was a major one here in Columbus in the Columbus City schools in like the 2013-2012 range, and they happened all over the country. I mean, even the one in Atlanta, the superintendent of the schools was charged with running a corrupt organization. They used the RICO statute because they were actually giving bonuses based on test scores that were - I forget how they were cheating exactly. And obviously, this isn't the majority of people. But it is sort of a product of a system that's putting so much focus on these test scores, and then you're layering the merit pay on top of it, and this is sort of what you get.   0:20:01.3 AS: That's the problem around here. We don't have enough accountability.   0:20:04.2 JD: Right, right.   0:20:05.4 AS: So, we're getting everybody accountable, everybody's gonna be... And we are gonna get tough on accountability.   0:20:12.5 JD: Yeah, yeah.   0:20:13.1 AS: Squeeze.   0:20:14.0 JD: I think that's the Deming sort of point with management by objective accountability system, is stop holding people accountable in lieu of improving processes. Of course accountable to our teammates, Deming talks about a system, where do you fall in the system? Understanding the system's view versus the organizational chart. Who's relying on me? Who do I rely on? Those are important...that's accountability. But what he's talking about is when all of this focuses on accountability by inspection rather than sort of working together to improve the processes that ultimately lead to the outcome.   0:20:54.1 AS: Yeah, and seeing the data as a tool, a feedback mechanism that helps us understand, and test what we're doing with the system. So, yeah.   0:21:05.2 JD: I think another thing that's really underappreciated is that one, numerical goals don't produce quality especially when those goals are outside the capability of the system as it's currently designed. So, if you remember back when we looked at those third grade reading test scores, they were sort of bouncing around about a 60% average, if I remember right. They were like 58% then up to 62% and down to 60% and up to 61% and down to 59%. And so, they're bouncing around about a 60% average, the goal is 80%. That goal is outside of the capability of the system.   0:21:40.6 JD: And so, if people over time, depending on what sanctions are being issued, realize that there is literally almost no chance that they're gonna hit that mark within the current system, what are they gonna do? Again, they can work to improve the system, which is hopefully what happens. But you're very likely to see some type of distortion of the system or distortion of the data, even if it doesn't rise to cheating on state tests. I only report out on certain data results that make my organization look good or whatever. I spend all my time trying to write this fiction instead of actually improving the system. And I think that's something that happens all the time, and we don't understand what's the current system capable of.   0:22:23.7 AS: And how do you counter the argument that some people say is that: some of your employees, some of your teachers or administrators, just they don't care that much, and they need accountability. If you don't have accountability, they're not gonna step up and try to improve the system and all that stuff. How do you handle somebody who says, "You're living in a fantasy world, John. And the fact is that we need to crack the whip around here." [laughter]   0:22:50.4 JD: Yeah. Yeah. I can appreciate that, I think I grew up with, show up on time and do your job. That was a part of my upbringing. However, it just hasn't been my experience that most people are slackers. Sure, have there been a handful of people across my 20 years in various cities and states that probably shouldn't be teaching or leading a school? Yeah. I've definitely come across some people like that.   0:23:18.1 AS: And I guess the answer to that is really, that's a management job, to assess a person and try to make a decision, coach them, help them, move them, whatever.   0:23:27.1 JD: It's a management decision or a management sort of responsibility. And I think a key thing is, when I have seen teachers that maybe would have the attitude that you're describing. If you unpack why that is, it's often in education because let's say there are a 15-year teacher... I saw this a little bit in Atlanta. I was a newer teacher, there were some 15-year teachers on my team. They were gonna do their own thing, but if you unpack why that is, it's because, "look, I've been through four or five superintendents in my 15 years, each one brought a new set of reform ideas. I had to get trained on all these new things, and then those things were gone in two or three years. And I've been through that cycle three or four or five times." Of course, you're gonna have that attitude, who's not gonna have that attitude? You sort of have initiative fatigue.   0:24:18.4 AS: Yeah. And I'm sure as those cycles went through, there was times that those people were beaten down on a particular thing that they didn't get right, and then it's like, "Sorry, I'm not taking the risk."   0:24:30.3 JD: Yeah, yeah.   0:24:31.1 AS: Alright.   0:24:31.3 JD: So that just goes back to, the problematic employee is a very small percentage. And generally what we're talking about are systems problems that require leadership to fix. Yeah.   0:24:44.3 AS: So: extrinsic motivators.   0:24:48.7 JD: Yeah. I think the things we've been talking about are extrinsic motivators too. Performance pay, performance appraisal systems, those are all sort of forms of extrinsic motivators. But I think the basic premise of this myth is that you can improve performance by putting the right extrinsic motivators into place. So, the basic theory or supposition is that if you just get the right balance between reward and punishment, then that's gonna improve your system. And I think it's definitely true that people are differentialy motivated by extrinsic and intrinsic factors.   0:25:31.9 JD: Some people require far less of the other, or one or the other than other people. But I think it is a false premise that you can improve performance using carrots and sticks. Just sort of full stop. And I think what I've seen when I've read about this is that, one, in most contexts within complex systems like schools, extrinsic motivators don't work to improve performance like some people might think they do. They typically only work in the short term, and even in those short term settings, they typically only work for simple and repetitive tasks. And those don't sound like what teachers or principals do on a daily basis, basically.   0:26:24.6 JD: I think there's also these unintended consequences that stem from practices like teacher evaluations and merit pay that heavily rely on extrinsic motivation, because they do lead to these distortions in the data or the data within the system. Distortions of the system or data within the system. Because again, they're optimizing competition within the organization versus cooperation. They actually make it harder to achieve your goals. And then I think that this all brings us to the primary issue when you try to use extrinsic motivators targeted at individuals, is that individual performance only accounts for a tiny fraction of organizational performance.   0:27:18.2 JD: And I think Deming pegged that number depending on the exact situation, that 94% to 97% of the troubles and possibilities for improvement in any given organization actually belong to the system, and are the responsibility of management. So, if you do the opposite and try to incentivize individuals who have little control over the system in the first place, at best it's pointless. And at worst, these incentive systems have the exact opposite effect and actually decrease organizational performance. [laughter] I think that's really what is behind the Deming philosophy. The common thread is that these things work to sub-optimize the system as a whole, all of them. So yeah, when you fail to appreciate the organization as a system, you're actually making the improvement of that system much, much, much harder. The Deming philosophy does the opposite of that.   0:28:20.4 AS: Yeah. I'm thinking about taking like a test tube and putting some things in it and then shaking it up, [laughter] agitating it, and really putting pressure on it and all that. And then when you open the container, it goes, pop, and it explodes because you've agitated. And you're agitating a small part of the overall, that's a part that has probably the smallest impact on the overall system, of the overall output of the system. So, yeah. Interesting. [laughter]   0:29:00.0 JD: Well, and I think a key part of this mentally is that even for people that have at least a moderate grasp of the Deming philosophy, when you're actually a leader and you're in a high pressure situation: I just got my state test scores, well, how did we do last year? We have to have done better than last year, and we have to do better than these three competitors. As long as that's okay, I'm okay, I'm okay. But then you sort of have forgotten in the moment of stress all of the things you've learned about this philosophy. Like, well, how does this data look over time? Is it really just bouncing around? It's not really improvement. But the trick is assuming that you know the philosophy in the first place, that you can then step back and employ it or fully use it in those times of stress when community members or board members, your boss, is asking you for these results and you're trying to figure out a way to sort of paint them in a positive light.   0:30:00.0 JD: And so, even if you're a believer in this, you can see how people start to distort that system or distort the data. Again, not rising to the level of the cheating scandals that I talked about in Atlanta and Columbus, but in these everyday and in these everyday ways. So, I think that's why you have to explicitly say the Deming philosophy - it's how you manage your organization. It's why you have to get top leaders an understanding of the philosophy. And then you have to live it day in and day out, not only when it's easy, but especially in those times of high pressure when you wanna revert back to the myths.   0:30:42.9 AS: And the exam results come out.   0:30:43.8 JD: When the exam results come out, and someone's calling, you have to be ready to talk about it in this way, even in those high pressure, those pressure time periods, yeah. Yeah.   0:30:53.6 AS: So, let's wrap this up. We're talking about the management myths that keep fooling us, and we're talking about merit pay, accountability, and extrinsic motivators. What we were saying about merit pay, you were saying that it assumes that additional money is what's going to get a better output from teachers as if maybe they're holding something back right now. And also, you mentioned that it disincentivizes teamwork, and it's not clear how it's calculated, and it leads to sub-optimization of the system. About accountability, you were talking about how Dr. Deming talked about management by objective or management by numbers and the problems that you face with that. You also talked about the accountability versus improvement goals. I think that was a really helpful discussion to kind of understand that improvement and accountability are two separate things. And then also, you talked about distortions of the data, distortions of the systems and that type of things.   0:32:01.5 AS: And that only also you mentioned finally on the accountability is that, if you're holding people accountable to numerical goals that are outside of the system's capability, it's not reasonable at all. And then extrinsic motivators, you talked about that there's a myth that we can improve performance with the right balance between reward and punishment. But you mentioned about unintended consequences of that and causing distortions of the system. And in a sense, you're optimizing for competition within the system rather than cooperation and coordination. And then finally you wrap that up, which probably applies to all of it, with the idea that Dr. Deming clearly stated that the output of a system, maybe, 95%, 96% or so of the output of a system is actually attributable to the system, not the individuals running about doing the best that they can within that system. And so therefore, it doesn't make so much sense to overly focus on these things when they really are not the key to getting the output that you want. Is there anything you would add to that?   0:33:18.6 JD: Yeah, no, that's exactly right. I think systems leaders have to understand the management myths, so they can avoid them. And then sort of the next step beyond avoiding the management myths is, well, what do you do? What are the things that you do? And that's informed by the system of profound knowledge. And I think it's also informed by that set of guiding principles that I alluded to at the beginning. And I think that's sort of where to go next. Those are the dos of the Deming management philosophy. So, you have some principles to operate by, so you don't get caught up in these myths when things get tough.   0:33:54.3 AS: Beautiful. Well, John, on behalf of everyone at the Deming Institute, I wanna thank you again for this discussion. For listeners, remember to go to deming.org to continue your journey. This is your host, Andrew Stotz saying, I'll leave you with one of my favorite quotes from Dr. Deming. "People are entitled to joy in work."

Dr. Deming railed against performance appraisals, listing them 3rd in his Seven Deadly Diseases of Management and calling them "Destroyer of People." In this discussion, John Dues explains our cultural attachment to appraising workers and why it is a myth to assume that appraisals have any impact on performance at all. TRANSCRIPT 0:00:02.3 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 discussion with John Dues, who is part of the new generation of educators striving to apply Dr. Deming's principles to unleash student joy in learning. The topic for today is a continuation of our discussion about management myths that keep fooling us, and we are gonna be talking about performance appraisals. John, take it away.   0:00:32.1 John Dues: It's good to be back Andrew. I thought it'd be helpful first to connect back to what we've done, because it'll help listeners connect the dots between the various episodes that we've done together. I think this is the eighth episode, so episode one and two were all about the System of Profound Knowledge as a theory, and then episode three, we started working on understanding the concept of variation, special causes, common causes, that type of thing, and then four and five, we switched gears and talked about how to then apply the System of Profound Knowledge in our organizations. And so we talked about two powerful tools, process behavior charts, and then the PDSA cycles.   0:01:21.9 JD: Episode six, we started talking about A Nation at Risk and the Sandia report and how calls for education reform haven't always been built on a solid philosophical foundation. And then last time I introduced this idea of living in an age of mythology, and we talked about two myths. The myth about best practices and the myth of the hero educator. And so today, like you said, I thought we continue that discussion of the myths with a focus on performance appraisals, which is something that is a little bit hard to understand, I think it was hard for me to understand initially, but it's something that I thought was important because it's something when I listen to Dr. Deming's recorded seminars, it's something that he railed upon often.   0:02:14.9 JD: And I think tying all of the myths to a couple of key ideas is helpful. So I think that first idea is that when we see outcomes in a system, they're more than the skills and efforts of the individuals that work within the system. So those results come from more than just how the individuals within that system are working. The outcomes, that second idea is that the outcomes are mostly attributable to the system itself, and workers are only one part of that system. I think that's really important. That underlies all these myths and certainly underlies this idea of the myth of the performance appraisal.   0:03:00.8 JD: And I think that when we're talking about these myths, so we've covered the theory, we've talked about some ways to apply that theory, that System of Profound Knowledge in actual organizations. When we're thinking about the myths, what I'm thinking about is, dos and don'ts. And so the myths are the don'ts. There are specific prescriptions following the Deming philosophy that leaders should learn to stay away from and why to do so. And then of course, the do's would be a set of guiding principles to follow, and I thought, right now, we're focused on the myths and as we get through this episode and maybe one more on the myths, then we would then focus on the "what do you do?" That's where the guiding principles would come in, and so Deming outlined all of this for us. The theory, the application, the Do's and the Don'ts, and so that's where I thought we would start today.   0:03:55.6 AS: That's great. And we were talking before we turned on the recorder about how performance appraisals are such a fascinating area, and I know for a lot of people, there's nothing else. That that is the key of how you manage people. Like, you're talking about the core. Without performance appraisals, people are gonna be lazy. Without performance appraisals, people are gonna get distracted. Without performance appraisals people aren't gonna work hard because they're not gonna get compensated. Without performance appraisals, we can't get this organization to work and everybody to work together and this is the ultimate incentive that we need to motivate humans. So boy, you're taking on quite a tough topic here, John. Tell us a little bit more.   0:04:45.6 JD: We'll see how we do. And one thing to clarify when I say performance appraisal, in my world, in schools, this is typically called the Teacher Evaluation. So it has different names, but, an evaluation, an appraisal, some type of rating and ranking of employees basically. So I think one thing that, and you kinda just brought this up, is "if I don't do a performance appraisal, how am I gonna give feedback to team members?" And I think that's a good place to start is that, of course, I think that leaders and managers should, as a part of their job, provide direction and give feedback to team members.   0:05:33.9 JD: But I think it's a far cry to make the leap that giving direction and feedback is synonymous with administering performance appraisals. And I actually think that performance appraisals can actually work against giving good feedback. But like as a starting point, what makes up the typical performance appraisal? Thinking about four parts, just so we are all starting from the same place.   0:06:06.7 JD: First there's standards that are set. "Here's the standards that are gonna be outlined in this performance appraisal." Then there's a time limit set to meet those standards, then the manager makes observations and judgments, and then finally, the evaluation is given to the individuals by the person sort of in the organizational hierarchy. I think a key thing that I've learned in studying the Deming philosophy when it comes to performance appraisals is that they fail to consider the role of the system on individual performance. So that's one problem.   0:06:50.2 JD: They also fail to appreciate the variation in performance attributable to common causes. So that's why I was connecting our earlier episodes on theory and the applications to performance appraisal, 'cause you have to understand that to understand why Dr. Deming was railing against performance appraisals in the way that he did, and those are two of the key reasons.   0:07:20.2 AS: Right. So a person being evaluated or being talked to with a performance appraisal, a common thing is, they could say, "wait a minute, you're saying I didn't do this, but I couldn't do this because the system has this whatever." Or you get a boss that's focused on common cause variation going, well, "you did this, and then that, and this guy did that, and this is and then all..." What they're really doing is chasing their tail on all of these common cause variation, which is not going to improve the system and it's just rewarding and punishing what is just a natural outcome of the system.   0:08:01.1 JD: Yeah, that's a big part of it. So if I'm a teacher and part of my evaluation is something like outcomes of students and how well I deliver the curriculum, the effectiveness of the curriculum, those types of things. Well, the vast majority of teachers didn't select the curriculum. So that's a good example of something that's a part of the system that a teacher has no control over typically, but that it could play a role in an evaluation, and there's all kinds of examples like that. That second idea in terms of the appreciation of where the person is falling performance-wise within that common cause system, what that means is that, sure, people could be performing at different levels, and there could be slight variations in that, but it's very possible that those ups and downs, just like any other ups and downs that we study are just common cause. And so it's not one person different from another within the rating system?   0:09:06.6 JD: Are they far enough outside that they show up as a special cause. That their performance shows up as a special cause. Because if it does in the case of a teacher or maybe a student that is outside of the system in terms of performance, then there may be special help or special support that's needed. But I think many, many times that's not the case, and that the ups and downs don't represent anything meaningful. And I think one of the things that helps bring this into view for people is to say, "well, how did you experience teacher evaluations or performance appraisal or whatever you call it in your system, how did you experience as...   0:09:50.6 JD: How did you experience that practice as a receiver of those things?" Because that puts you in a different mindset. For me, performance appraisals, when I've been evaluated, have largely been positive in terms of the overall rating, but they've also, a lot of times not made a lot of sense on any number of fronts. And so I think of, as a teacher in Atlanta, and Atlanta Public Schools had a teacher evaluation system, the principal would come in for one hour across the school year and observe me and write it up and formally evaluate me, sit down with me and go over that evaluation. Well, if you think about that, one hour of observation, the typical 180-day school year, seven hours a day, that's about 0.08% of the school year that the principal observed. So that's a big problem.   0:10:52.1 JD: So we're saying that that represents the entire...my entire time teaching across the school year. That one hour observation. So that's a major problem. Another issue is, what is it that I'm being evaluated on? One that stands out for me, and granted we were in a different time, 23 years ago, 22 years ago when I first was evaluated, but they're still a technology category in the evaluation. And so part of the evaluation was to "use technology effectively in a lesson." And so one of my first questions would be, well, "do you have to use technology in a lesson for it to be effective?"   0:11:40.4 JD: I think that would be questionable at best. But what if I use technology in some lessons and not in others, and the one you happened to observe, I didn't use it, right? You didn't see the ones where I did. I was working in a large urban school system, I had seven computers in my room and five of them didn't work on a regular basis. So that's another obstacle, right? And so I get this rating, I take it, I don't really say anything about the computers not working, or what about my other lessons where I did use computers, I just listen to this, but...   0:12:13.3 AS: Otherwise you're gonna be labeled as argumentative.   0:12:15.4 JD: I'm gonna be labelled as argumentative and the rating was fine as it was, although I lost some points for those things. It's probably not worth...it's not.... You kind of pick your battles. But the point is, what does that leave me with in terms of the taste in my mouth about my school, about this evaluation system, granted it's one part of the system and maybe I didn't care about it too much as long as the rating without a satisfactory level, but the point is, it didn't seem fair, it didn't seem to make sense, it didn't seem to line up with what you would need to look at in terms of what you need to make an effective lesson.   0:12:55.0 JD: And how many people are experiencing evaluations in those same ways, whether it's ridiculous and being evaluated for something that doesn't work in your room, like the computer's not working, or a smaller like, do you need computers to be a part of the lesson in the first place. And so there's all kinds of things like that that I think are part of a typical evaluation system.   0:13:22.0 AS: So to summarize what you're saying is one way to think about performance and appraisal is to think about your personal feeling when you're receiving your evaluation, and I would argue that most people don't feel great, it's not something they're really looking forward to.   0:13:36.2 AS: And the second way you can look at this is look at the person who's delivering it. If you're having to deliver performance appraisals, is that like your favorite day of the year that you're working with that person? Yeah, so that's a good way to look at it so that you kind of understand that there's just something that doesn't feel right here, but continue on.   0:13:56.6 JD: Yeah, it takes a tremendous amount of time and effort. No one actually likes the process, generally speaking, and I think the thing that I wanted people would hold on to was that they don't get magically better when you're on the other side and being the evaluator. So my feeling wouldn't change whether I'm on the receiving or the giving side of the evaluation system now, I think for some leaders, unfortunately, I think that changes as long as they're on the other side, it's fine, but I think that's why I think putting yourself back in the shoes of the person receiving the evaluation is a good thing to hold on to. "I'm not special, there's not something about my personal characteristics that make evaluation unnecessary for me, but everybody else needs those things."   0:14:43.6 JD: So I think holding on to that as you move, especially if you move into a leadership role is a really important mental model. I think another key thing is after the evaluation, all of these people for the most part, are gonna still be working together, and so another key question that I learned from a Deming student named Peter Scholtes in a book called, The Leader's Handbook, a great book.   0:15:15.8 JD: He said, "what are the factors that differentiate highly effective versus lower rated people?" He outlined these five factors, so there's A, would be native ability and your early education, the second factor would be, B, your individual effort, how much work am I putting in as a teacher, as an employee. C, would be training, an orientation that I get as a part of the onboarding process or the ongoing professional development that I get as a part of the job. D would be variability of the processes and systems that are going on within my job, and E would be the system evaluation itself to some of those things that we just talked about, is it fair? Is it well constructed? Is it representative of my total work, that little sample that's seen by the manager.   0:16:17.0 JD: And if you look closely at those five items, really only one of them, that being, I think I call it D, that individual effort is under the control of the individual person working in the system. The other four factors really don't have anything do with individual performance, but what the performance appraisal system attempts to do is solve that equation, A plus B plus C plus D plus E equals my rating, let's call it 100.   0:16:54.5 JD: But if you can't solve that equation, if you don't know already what the variables A, C, D and E account for in terms of its contributions to the rating, the only thing you know as an individual effort, right?   0:17:11.2 AS: And you don't really know that either.   0:17:17.0 JD: Yeah, fair enough, fair enough.   0:17:20.1 AS: So it's a shifting sand that you're working on, which is what probably one of the counter-arguments to performance appraisals is that there's just... It's so subjective and difficult, particularly, okay, if you're a narrow-minded person and you've never thought about the fact that there is variable B, C, D and E as an example, then...but once you start to think about those things, you realize that not only is it difficult to quantify and all that what a person's doing, and how do you factor in the fact that that person just went through the loss of a parent over the period of time that you appraise them. How does that impact performance?   0:18:02.5 JD: Any number of things. Any number of things. Yeah, I can think of a lot of examples when you start to unpack those various factors, like when you're talking to the manager, "oh, well, we didn't quite onboard them like we typically do now, no one acclimated them to our curriculum system" or whatever it is.   0:18:27.3 AS: But they're still responsible for delivery.   0:18:29.8 JD: Yeah, they still move forward with that response. And again, it's not that there's not gonna be variation in performance amongst employees, it's just, are we getting what we think we are from this rating and ranking system. I think what we're doing basically is disregarding the contributions of the system on the performance of individuals that are working within that system.   0:18:57.0 AS: And I guess if you talk about that to people, they're gonna be like, "Now you're unleashing something that's just unmanageable." Okay, yeah, fine. We're gonna start talking about the system and the impact and that everybody's just gonna blame the system! John, don't you know people are just gonna blame the system, then if we start talking about why it's not your responsibility.   0:19:23.2 JD: Yeah, I think, yeah, we'll kinda get into what's the prescription in terms of...what would of the prescription be from the System of Profound Knowledge in terms of what to do instead, but one thing to do, if you did have some type of evaluation system, you could just remove the numbers and have a narrative feedback on characteristics or competencies or capacities that are important for your particular organization. I think that that would be one way to handle it.   0:20:00.4 JD: Another great tool that I learned from David Langford is a tool called the capacity matrix, where you outline what are the capacities that are important for a given role that you want to see develop. You define a series of dimensions of growing from more basic to more proficient in a particular capacity, and then you ask the person to track their own learning in those areas, and as they self-evaluate, they have to provide evidence, be it - maybe they give a presentation or incorporated a technique into their lessons on a regular basis, or maybe they presented at a staff meeting, something like that, but they have to link the capacity development to some evidence that it's been put into place.   0:20:51.0 JD: That's another way to handle... The point is to develop the person and build capacity, that's a much more powerful way to do it, and I think the goal of starting to use the Deming philosophy is transformation, and I think what Deming was talking about when he talked about transformation is this process from going from - starting to understand these assumptions and these myths and then working to move away from them. So one of the things...one of the lenses I have just in studying the Deming philosophy is to ask questions because so many of the practices like the performance appraisal, prior to studying Deming, I never even stopped and said, "well, what is the theory behind the performance appraisal? Where did it come from? Why do people think it isn't an effective practice? Are there practices that would be more effective?"   0:21:52.3 JD: So just as a starting place, you can start to ask questions about some of these things that you probably never even stopped to think about. I think that was true for me, whether we're talking about these myths or any other number of things that are common in organizations, work settings, and we have this...   0:22:14.0 AS: And for performance appraisals: what is the theory behind them?   0:22:20.0 JD: That's a good question. That is a good question. Where did they come from? Well, I don't know for sure, but I know that...a lot of corporate practices can be traced back to things like the military and early railroads, which were some of the first organizations to have a larger staff that had to be organized in a way, and I know that in terms of the rail companies that you know, when there was a crash, there did need to be somebody blamed. And so you had to nail down who in the hierarchy... Where did things break down? It had to be an individual to blame when two trains ran into each other or the train ran off the tracks. And I think what Deming is saying it is what was actually the system that led to that crash, that's what we needed to study in a lot of cases, and almost in all cases, whether it's the train running off the tracks or the Challenger space shuttle disaster, almost all of them were of system problems and it wasn't one single individual that you could pin those problems on.   0:23:37.2 AS: And you could argue that performance appraisals are not really there in that case, like what you're talking about let's say is a train crash, it's not really there to some extent to blame... To improve the system, it's there to blame someone and then, "okay, we got our scapegoat, now let's move on."   0:23:54.4 JD: That's right, yep. Yeah, so with performance appraisal, it's not quite as dramatic as the train crash, but what's happening is that it leads to this rating and ranking of teachers, we do the same things with students, students have their own form of performance appraisals, even schools within state accountability systems have their own rating and ranking systems. So they reward at the top and punishment at the bottom, that's the typical present practice. And I think the better practice, what we're trying to move towards when you're managing through the Deming philosophy is: abolish the ranking in favor of managing the whole organization as a system, and what you wanna do is study and understand how every part of that system, every component whether it's grade levels or departments, whatever, how do they contribute to the optimization of the system.   0:24:57.8 JD: And so that's... What's the aim of your system, how do you optimize that? And I think a big part of this performance appraisal thing is that that practice is running in the other direction from optimization. You are incentivizing individuals to look out for themselves versus contributing to the aim of the organization.   0:25:26.7 AS: One of the things that people say is like, "What do I replace it with?" Well, in a lot of cases in education, you may not even have that choice, but in private business, you do, and I always say that...I always say "imagine that you're lost deep in the woods, and after hours of walking in one direction, you realized that you're walking in the wrong direction. However, you're unsure of the right direction, but you've received enough information to know that you're walking in the wrong direction. What would you do?"   0:26:05.7 JD: Perhaps stop going in the wrong direction as a starting point.   0:26:12.3 AS: And the point is, is that you don't have to know the right direction if you've identified the wrong direction. And so that's one of the challenges that we often get with performance appraisal is, "what are we supposed to do if we don't do that?"   0:26:28.8 JD: Yep, yep. And I think... And that's - when you start to understand the System of Profound Knowledge, you start thinking about ways that it can offer you guidance on a practice like the performance appraisal. And so what I tried to think through is, in terms of performance appraisal, what do each of the components of the System of Profound Knowledge contribute in terms of learning about the way...in terms of your analogy: the way to move...start to move in the right direction.   0:27:08.5 JD: And so there's the four components of the System of Profound Knowledge, we have Appreciation for a System, Knowledge of Variation, Theory of Knowledge and Psychology. And so each of those components has contributions to make in terms of rethinking the performance appraisal. So I was gonna break those down as a way to round down out our talk today. Some of this is a recap, but when I think about Appreciation for a System, we've talked about this, but that system is responsible for most of the observed variation between the performance of the individuals. It's most...Deming said up to 94%, depending on the situation, even up to 97% of the results that come out of the system can be traced back to the system itself, and only 3% to 6% were attributable to the individuals.   0:28:08.0 JD: So the system is the overwhelming contributor to that ranking within that, doesn't help anyone, nor the system improve. Giving somebody a rank, sorting people into good and better and best does not point the way towards improvement for the organization. So that's the Appreciation for a System contribution.   0:28:34.1 AS: Yep. We could say changing seats on the Titanic.   0:28:37.2 JD: Yeah, exactly. Exactly. Then we have understanding variation or Knowledge about Variation. So we've talked about this a little bit, but ranking people, especially when we're ranking within a common cause system, is misleading. 'Cause remember, even if there's ups and downs in terms of the data, the question isn't: is it different? It's: is it meaningfully different? And in a common cause system, even though there are some ups and downs, there's no difference. It's not of a magnitude that you can say, "yep, that's significantly different from one point to the next." And another thing to consider is there will always be variation. [chuckle] There's always gonna be variation between students, between teachers, between schools, between school systems, between states, whatever that thing is, there is variation in a natural state of affairs. So we have to come to grips with that.   0:29:40.9 JD: In terms of Theory of Knowledge, when we rate and rank people, it's a snapshot. Kind of like what I alluded to my observation in Atlanta being less than 1% of the total time that I was with my students. So that ranking doesn't take into account and any performance appraisal system I've ever been aware of that temporal spread. So in other words, I'm really more interested in what's the performance over an extended time period. And so when people would ask Deming, okay, you're saying, the performance appraisal is something we should abolish. Well, how much data would you need on an individual worker before you could rate them? And what he would say is 15 or 16 years. [chuckle]   0:30:32.1 JD: And basically what he's saying is, I think, is that, that's the amount of performance data you would need to plot. If you're doing it once a year, once you have 15 or 16 years, you can kind of get a sense of how that data is performing over time. That last component, maybe the most important is Psychology. I think one big problem is that those performance appraisals at their worst are debilitating to people, at their best, they're perceived to be arbitrary, like what I talked about. Certainly wasn't debilitating to get my rating, my rank and my rating in Atlanta, but it did...I did see the rating and the points I lost as arbitrary and meaningless, to be candid.   0:31:23.1 JD: And then another big part of that psychological component, especially when it becomes to rating and ranking students, is that this thing called the Pygmalion effect begins and it can really start to destroy cooperation. Whether that's students or teachers, but you this is basically this idea that once, let's say a teacher has a set of expectations about students, they start to take on those characteristics, whether it's in a positive or negative direction.   0:31:57.2 JD: And they've done some pretty fascinating studies on this Pygmalion effect in classrooms. There's one where it's like in the late sixties, basically a teacher was told that a set of students had performed really well on a standardized test. In reality, there was no difference between this group of students and the rest of the students. But because the teachers thought that, over time what the researchers found is that they started treating the students differently and it actually resulted in those students scoring higher on the standardized tests at the end of the year just based on those teacher expectations. And so, talk about a powerful, powerful set of effects within a rating and ranking system. And I think that's something we really need to consider in any type of institution, but especially a school system. So, yeah.   0:32:55.0 AS: I was just reminded of a quote that Dr. Deming said, which is, and I'm gonna, I'm gonna read it for for a minute here. I'm gonna read it in my Dr. Deming voice. "So evaluation of performance, merit review, or annual review. The idea of merit rating is alluring the sound of the words, captivate the imagination, pay for what you get, get what you pay for, motivate people to do their best for their own good. The effect is exactly the opposite of what the words promise." [chuckle]   0:33:32.1 JD: Yeah. I think that's what I found in practice, before I discovered the stuff I tried to improve our teacher evaluation system. And in reality that's just an effort that's not worth my time.   0:33:47.9 AS: He also said, "Annihilates teamwork, and it's purely a lottery."   0:33:53.3 JD: Yep.   0:33:57.7 AS: I wrote a blog post on this many years ago entitled, Why We Stopped Performance Appraisals at Coffee Works, my company. And this was... I published in 2016, and I just would... Maybe I'll just read a little excerpt here. What I said is, "The system was an annual review during which bosses in our companies met employees and scored them as A, B or C. I read Jack Welch's book and I thought, yeah, kick out the C players, this has made sense in the days when I was buying into that. We would use this to allocate bonus mainly to pay, A's and B's. A's a lot, B's a little bit, and C's nothing. And for years we've been seeing the weaknesses of this system, but didn't have the guts to abandon it, because we didn't have something to replace it.   0:34:50.5 AS: And so before you ask what we did to replace it, let's consider what we didn't like about it. Number one, it was unfair. Number two, it was subjective. Number three, it fostered favoritism. We saw that certain employees were continually getting positive ratings from their bosses. Number four, it failed to recognize what quality godfather Dr. W. Edwards Deming taught was that the majority of the output of any one employee is attributable to the system. And number five, it was time consuming and costly. Number six, it did not enhance employee performance. Number seven, it increased fear and caused suspicion. Number eight, it caused employees and departments to compete against each other rather than compete against our competitors or just take care of the customer.   0:35:34.2 AS: Number nine, it was completely inward focusing, encouraging employees to shift their focus from the customer during the time of performance appraisals. It's like you can't take care of the customer 'cause you gotta get all these performance appraisals done." Is there anything that you would add to that list of what you see in the education environment?   0:35:51.3 JD: No, I mean that's spot on. I mean, I think the key summary or takeaway is for any of these practices, be it performance appraisal or otherwise, is that thing optimizing the system? Is it making your organization better at achieving its aim? And you just named a whole lineup of things that said, "no, this is why in this particular practice performance appraisals, this is why Dr. Deming railed against them." So I think that, yeah, I think that was a great synopsis of many of the things that Dr. Deming talked about in his seminars when he railed on performance appraisals.   0:36:33.4 AS: So, as we wrap up, the purpose of today's discussion is to open up people's minds to understand what are performance appraisals, what are the myths behind it? What are the weaknesses of it? We also kind of said, even if you don't have a substitute, you could argue that you don't have to keep doing something that's damaging if you know that it's damaging. But we also know in an education environment, you may not have the power to make that decision. Like we had in our coffee business, it was like, "this isn't working, we're stopping. No more resources to this." We have that flexibility. So, we haven't spent any time talking about ways to do things and the positive aspect. But let's just wrap up this whole conversation. How would you kind of wrap up the message that you want the listeners and the viewers to get from this specific discussion?   0:37:29.4 JD: Yeah, I think because a lot of this, a lot of Deming's ideas were targeted at leaders and leaders at all different levels. And I think, what constantly happened to me was someone would say "what's your leadership style?" And I would typically cobble together some type of jargon in response to that question. But what Dr. Deming offers is a management philosophy: the groundwork, the framework, the foundation, the philosophical foundation, the myths to stay away from, a set of guiding principles that actually, when you dig deep and you study these things, they offer a way forward, a lens through which to make better decisions for your organization. And that's really what I take from this.   0:38:22.3 JD: There are many better ways to run our organizations. Performance appraisals are just one component of this, but hopefully what people are taking is that, hey, at the very least, the next time I have a leadership team meeting, I'm gonna bring this up and say, Hey, why do we do this? Is it leading to the type of results - like what you're alluding to with your business - that we think it is. And if it's not, what else could we do? How can we replace this, make it better? How can we at least begin to ask these questions instead of just carrying on? Because it's the way that we've always done things. So, yep.   0:39:00.6 AS: John, on behalf of everyone at the Deming Institute, I want to thank you again for this discussion. For listeners, remember, go to deming.org to continue your journey. This is your host, Andrew Stotz. I'm gonna leave you with one of my favorite quotes from Dr. Deming. "People are entitled to joy in work."  

In this episode, John and Andrew unpack a few of the myths Dr. Deming identified that continue to destroy organizations from the inside. John explains how these myths also negatively impact schools and kids - and what to do instead. 0:00:02.0 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 discussion with John Dues, who is part of the new generation of educators striving to apply Dr. Deming's principles to unleash student joy in learning. The topic for today is, Management Myths that Keep Fooling Us. John, take it away.   0:00:28.3 John Dues: Andrew, it's good to be back, good to talk again. Yeah, I thought we could build on the last conversation, which unpacked these two education reports. One that had a seminal impact for the last 40 years called A Nation at Risk, and another Sandia Report that we talked about that has a much lesser known. And I was thinking what comes out of some of the reports often as a shake-up, and then there's various ideas about what to do about the crisis outlined in this case. But I think, a lot of the times, those management practices have the opposite of the intended effect. And I think... One of the things I was thinking about is that Dr. Deming, maybe his most radical idea that he put forth is that any outcome that we see within a system, like a system of education, is the result of more than the skills and efforts of the individuals who work within that organization. And what he would say is that most of the performance differences observed between individuals are generated by these complex and dynamic, adaptable systems, and workers are only one part of that system.   0:01:49.8 JD: And I think understanding that sort of core idea of Deming is one of the ways that we can start to move away from the common management and maybe understanding those management myths is maybe the most important part of understanding the new philosophy that Deming was sort of putting forth. I think one of the things that I learned in watching some of his videos from his famous four-day seminars is that he often began those seminars by saying, management is living in an age of mythology, and even though he was saying that throughout the 1980s and even into the early 90s, before his death in 1993. I think that idea applies just as well today across numerous sectors, including education, as it did when he was saying it 30 or 40 years ago, I think it applies the education, applies to government, applies to industry.   0:02:52.6 JD: And what he meant by the age of mythology, at least my interpretation of it, is that leaders in these various industries basically operate according to these assumptions and these myths, and these myths are harmful to our organization. And so when he talked about the transformation process, part of the transformation process is understanding these myths and then moving away from them, actively trying to move away from them. So I thought we could talk about a few of those myths today and unpack those myths, where they originated and what were they are and then what to do.   0:03:29.3 AS: Great, great idea. And I remember he would say something like, how could they know? They did their best efforts, that's all that they have. Who came up with the idea of rating and ranking? Someone just... And then you realize people just may make things up ultimately and then they stick, not based on science or something like that. Sometimes the science creeps in there, but most of the time, based upon emotion. You jarred my thinking process when you're talking about the role of an individual in a system.   0:04:07.4 AS: And I was just thinking about how the beauty of the individual is that the individual is malleable. We're malleable, we're able to be contorted. Whereas when you install a particular piece of machinery that only has... Can produce so many units or such level of quality, it's a very rigid part of the overall system. And I was just thinking how, one of the reasons probably why we're always chasing after the individual, despite the fact that the very, very rigid machine over there is what's setting the ultimate specifications of the output of this is because the human is so easily manipulated. Well, put them over here and we'll do this, we'll do that, we'll start early, go late, try this, try that, whereas with the machine, you just have a lot less flexibility. And so you just made me think about that as I was listening to you talk...   0:05:02.3 JD: Yeah, that brings a good point. One, I think some prescient on your part is you mentioned the myth of rating and ranking, which is definitely one of the myths that I wanna get to. And I think you talk about machines versus workers. I think a couple of things I think of there, one is our organizational systems have become increasingly complex as we moved from the farm field to more of the industrial age, and maybe even the post-industrial age now. And who bought the machine? I think that's a lot what Deming was talking about is who designed the system, who had control over the system. If the machine is a major part of the process, who designed the machine and who bought it? Probably not the individual workers on the line. And yet, they were held responsible, or maybe even still today, held responsible for the results when they didn't design or pick the machine themselves. So I think that's a really good place to start. And I think that also brings up like, where did these management myths originate? Because if we go back a few hundred years, I think there's probably the lack of complexity, there's the...   0:06:26.8 JD: Mostly what we were doing is managing the work of... Managing our own work, I think of the farmer in the field or the craftsman in their workshop, is that sort of first line of management. And then as things got a little more complex, they're management by directing. So think of the craftsman taking on an apprentice, but it's still a pretty simple system and it's the manager, in this case, the master is directing the apprentice directly. And then you get the Industrial Revolution and you get this sort of third wave of management thinking... And here I'm thinking about management by results. And this is numerical quotas come into play, this idea, this common quip of, "I don't care how you do it, just get it done" type thing. And I think this is third generation management, and I think that's the dominant sort of paradigm of the 20th century. I think that probably paradigm in a lot of ways continues to the present day. But I think what Dr. Deming was a proponent of was this sort of fourth generation management, which was "management by method." So he was calling on, especially leaders, management of organizations to work with people on these methods rather than judging them on results, to your point about rating and ranking.   0:07:57.1 JD: And I think that's sort of a big part of the Deming philosophy, is to move from just rating and ranking people and thinking about instead, what are the methods people... What are the processes people are using within our systems to get the work done?   0:08:13.1 AS: Yeah, one other thing it just made me think about is that when you manage people, let's say in the US, people don't wanna be micro-managed, they want... They like to be told, "Well, you figure out how you're gonna do it and then do it." And let me take responsibility for that, right? So it is a bit seductive to forget about the methods and just focus on the individual and say, "Make it happen." And there are times that, that can be a valuable tool, a valuable way of managing when there's just so much going on, but also juxtaposing that to the typical manager in Thailand, which I'm very familiar with, they don't wanna be told that.   0:09:01.3 AS: It isn't necessarily their desire to be independent in their work and to originate the method. There's many managers here that really appreciate the boss that says, "Here's how I want you to get there," or "how do you think we should get there?" And that there's a much bigger discussion on that, maybe it's because there was less of an industrialization over the years, and that that's a newer thing compared to where America is at, but I know that my experience with management here is that managers do appreciate that concept of, "Let's look at the method of how you're gonna get there."   0:09:46.1 JD: Yeah. I think method is important, and I think one of the first myths that I was thinking about is, now label these as we go, but I was thinking of this myth of best practices, which it wasn't exactly what you were talking about, but it sort of made me think of where do the methods come from that we are working with it in whatever sector we're working with.   0:10:12.3 AS: So is this myth number one?   0:10:12.8 JD: Yeah, myth number one.   0:10:16.8 AS: Boom.   0:10:17.3 JD: Myth of best practice, so I think you teed us up really well. And this is an area that I've done some deep thinking on this because this has been a very... With all of these myths, you gotta be careful. You gotta really think about what it is that Dr. Deming was saying. And I'm not... So I'm not saying when I say myth of best practices, I'm not saying don't go out and study what other people are doing and try to bring the best of that to your organization. I don't think that's what Dr. Deming was saying. But I think that you gotta be really careful when you label something a best practice, and then try to incorporate it into your organization.   0:10:58.9 JD: And I was thinking in my role over the last two decades or so, maybe decade and a half, I've been fortunate because I've been a part of an informal network of schools and I've been able to sort of leverage that network, and go on many, many school visits probably many than the typical educator, even one that's in a leadership position. Dozens, I counted them up a couple of years ago over the last decade and a half, I think I've gone on over 120 school visits, and that's all types of different schools. Traditional public schools, public charter schools, private schools, and all over the United States, in South Midwest where I'm based out of here in Columbus, the Western United States to northeastern parts of the country. And I think on one hand, these visits have been extremely beneficial. I was able to observe classrooms and school practices in these many different places.   0:12:00.3 JD: I was able to speak with teachers, building administrators, school district leaders about the many challenges they're facing, how they're counteracting those challenges and the solutions they've developed with. And I think I've always tried to pay very careful attention to what context is this particular school operating under - what's their student demographics? What resources do they have both financially and from a human resource standpoint? Where are they situated? Are they in a city or in a town? Are they in a rural area? Some of the factors associated with those different practices. So I pay attention to those.   0:12:45.4 JD: And every time you go into a school, each school has its own culture, it has its own feel. But I think that... Well, I have this appreciation of the context, I think as I've thought more about these various practices, I've grown more skeptical. I think there's really an under-appreciation for these contextual elements within which these best practices often operate. There's... I remember hosting my own school visit and we, in our own schools, in our elementary schools, we have these carpets where kids come to do reading, read-alouds.   0:13:29.5 JD: And after one of these school visits, one of the superintendent said, we're gonna go buy these carpets and we're gonna do this too. These carpets are great in the classrooms and I don't know how it worked out, but I got the sense that there was sort of like, there's a whole system, a whole set of processes and procedures that are set up. It's just not having the carpet in the classroom, it's how it's used, it's how the kids move to the carpets, it's what's happened once you get to the carpet. You can sort of under-appreciate all of the sort of thought went into something as simple as the read aloud carpet that you see in a classroom.   0:14:07.2 JD: And I think there's this part of about context, and then there's just also a part about, is this practice... Does it have a sound research-base as well? So you're looking at both of those things. And I think in education, those best practices, often the research base is very, very thin. And then there's this whole other side of things where you really have to understand what is the context, the different variables that went into making that practice work. It may have been something that unfolded over four or five years, and you just can't pull it out of that school and then drop it into your own setting. So I think one of the things that Deming said about best practices is "to copy is to invite disaster." And so I think there, he's not saying, "Don't go study other organizations," but it's not as simple as, "Oh, I see this curriculum or this teaching practice or this method in one place. We're gonna do that tomorrow." It's just not that simple. So I think this is, like I said, one of these myths that I've come to appreciate how important in the context that they're operating under is before you can take it to your own school or network.   0:15:20.0 AS: Yeah, a great way of thinking about this one is, imagine that you take a General Motors car. Let's take a, I don't know what's fancy these days, but let's say a Cadillac as an example. And we say, here is the design for the Cadillac and here's everything you need to know, all the parts and everything, and you deliver that to Toyota, and say, "You have a car factory, so build this car." What you don't realize is that in particularly with the Toyota production system, that the whole production operation at every company is built around an infrastructure or a context, as you said, that sets the stage for how that is done.   0:16:29.4 AS: And therefore, things are not interchangeable. And so if your idea is, I'm just gonna go around to these 120 different schools and look for best practices and bring them in, it's like an amalgamation of unnaturally developed things. And also the other thing that it made me think about is that the whole point of PDSA is that you're working in your own organization to build a deeper understanding of a particular problem and solution. And when you repeat that process, you are also building a unique competitive advantage. Now, whether that in, let's say, in the world of business, that competitive advantage may be kept secret or not necessarily shared - in the world of education, it may be made public, but it's very hard to duplicate something that has been constructed internally through process of learning. And so just putting amalgamation of different things onto a body or onto a facility doesn't make the combination of those something great.   0:17:35.7 JD: Yeah, and I think of, what's the idea of the day? For schools coming out of the pandemic currently, 'cause the impacts of the pandemic and learning loss and those things are still sort of obviously being felt by schools, and we're seeing that ramification show up and in test scores and other measures. So one of the things that has been sort of promulgated as a silver bullet is high dosage tutoring, which means like a significant amount of tutoring happening for an individual student or a small group of students on a regular basis where what happened three or four times a week. And you see this in education publications, you see this policy makers and even legislatures are pushing this idea.   0:18:33.3 JD: But the problem is, while the research base for that particular intervention may be strong somewhere and under some set of conditions, the question for a practitioner is, well, who are these tutors? How will these tutors be trained here? Who is training these tutors? What curriculum are the tutors using? What financial resources are there to pay these tutors and to acquire the curriculum? Where in the school day is that going to happen? What are kids that are going to high-dosage tutoring gonna miss in the school day to be able to attend that tutoring? If it's not happening during the school day, if it's happening before or after school, how will kids get home from that tutoring?   0:19:22.0 JD: Who's providing the management of the tutors? How are those tutors hired? How are those tutors replaced when they inevitably will turn over? I could go on and on and on and on and on and on about these things, well, someone tells me that as an educator leader that, yes, for sure high-dosage tutoring is the best practice that you should drop into your organization, those questions remain unanswered and those questions are actually the thing that will actually make the practice come to fruition and work or not, and oftentimes, when these different ideas are being thrown about, none of those questions have been answered. And so I think we do this over and over for certain in the school world that I'm in.   0:20:10.5 AS: It reminds me of that old time song that maybe our older listeners and viewers would remember, "Who takes care of the caretaker's daughter when the caretaker is busy taking care?"   [laughter]   0:20:22.9 AS: So who's taking care of all those different things behind the scenes and putting them all together? So that's a great one to help us realize that it's good to understand best practices, it's good to go out and survey and get them and consider them, but then what really matters is how do you take best practices that you see, narrow them down, the one that you think will fit in your system and then develop it slowly and steadily, so it becomes a permanent improvement in your system? I think that's what you're getting at. Would that be right?   0:21:02.4 JD: Yeah, that's exactly right. So I think of something that may come to us through something like a randomized controlled trial, like the effectiveness of high-dosage tutoring, I think looking at RCTs or other similar... That's sort of the gold standard research. But even...   0:21:20.4 AS: RCTs for the listener is Randomized Control Trials?   0:21:25.0 JD: Randomized Controlled Trial, a study where people are randomly assigned to groups and then there's a treatment for one group and not a treatment for another group, there's no real differences between those two groups, and then you see if there's an effect. I don't think there's a lot of the studies that sort of rise to the gold standard RCT, there are other types of studies in education for sure, but either way, I think that's to the difference between when an ideas come through a randomized controlled trial where it's worked somewhere for some group under some set of conditions.   0:22:03.5 JD: Versus the Plan-Do-Study Act cycle that we've talked about, I think reading the research base can give you a starting place, give you some indication of the types of interventions or the types of curricula, or the types of practices that may work, but the Plan-Do-Study Act cycle allows you to sort of take an idea in your context and try to get it to work under the very conditions under where the idea or the practice would ultimately have to be working for it to be effective in your organization.   0:22:36.4 JD: So I think that's the two differences. Those two things, the RCT and the PDSA cycles can be complementary, and I think that's how I actually think of those two things, but you can't just... Can't force these best practices into contexts that they weren't designed to be in. And you gotta figure out all those questions that I talked about with any idea, I use high-dosage tutoring, but those are the types of questions that you can start to... If you're gonna try that in your organization, you can start to hash that out through the PDSA cycle, so I may say... Instead of saying, we're doing high-dosage tutoring in our school district, what I may say is, "What would it take to provide targeted tutoring to one student for one week?" I'm gonna plan that, I'm gonna do it, I'm gonna study the results and I'm gonna act on it.   0:23:31.8 JD: And in that one week, what you may find is a whole host of things in your context that you did not consider where you can't even get this to work with one kid, [chuckle] let alone a 1000 kids, or if you're in a bigger district, 10 or 15 or 20,000 kids and even those kids, even though they're in your district, they might not even be all operating under a similar context 'cause they're in different buildings with different adults and those types of things.   0:24:01.4 JD: So things become much harder when it comes to implementation, when you start to think in that way, "How would I get this thing to work with one student?" Come do that with me and you see the challenges person pushing high-dosage tutoring and then you can extrapolate that out to 1,000 kids or like I said, 10,000 kids, and you can start to see how this stuff falls apart pretty quickly in practice.   0:24:27.9 AS: Well, I think that's a great description of this first myth of best practices. So what myth number two?   0:24:37.4 JD: This is the myth I call myth of the hero educator. I think we latch on the hero stories in all kinds of walks of life. Hero stories stretch back to ancient times and they capture our attention for good reason. Ya know, they have these archetypes and we can identify with those archetypes, but when it comes to education, I think... I'm thinking about outlier educators with some type of... Some center of exceptional and rare talents, and I think one of the best known movies that captures this from an education perspective is Stand and Deliver. You may...   0:25:22.4 AS: That's what thinking about when you... I couldn't remember the name of it, but I remember that movie.   0:25:27.5 JD: Yeah, it's a prototypical hero teacher, biopic. It's Jaime Escalante in Los Angeles, basically, the movie depicts him leading his 18 inner city math students from basic math to calculus in just two years time, but then when you actually... Jaime Escalante is a real person, he's a real teacher in California at Garfield High School, but when you go study what actually happened, it's very different from... The movie is very different from what actually happened in real life, so when you look at what he actually did...   0:26:08.9 AS: Funny that.   0:26:10.7 JD: Oh yeah, can you believe it? But we latch on and say, "Oh, if he could do it... Or this is based on a true story. We can do this in two years." And what actually happened was that Escalante, the teacher, it took him eight years to build this math program that's depicted in this movie, he completely revamped the Math Department at his high school, he had to start by convincing the principal to raise the sort of math requirements at the school in general. Then he designed this whole pipeline of courses to prepare students for what they ultimately were trying to get to is AP Calculus and then he hand-selected top teachers to instruct those courses along the pipeline, and he even went to the junior high schools that fed into his high school and convinced them to offer algebra to eighth graders.   0:27:07.8 JD: So he's actually... What is actually really doing is setting up this math system basically that hadn't been there before, so he's actually thinking like Deming and setting up a system of pipeline that makes sense, and none of Escalante's actual students moved from basic math one year to AP Calculus, the following year, that's a complete misnomer, instead, it was the sort of system transformation that unfolded through the cooperation of obviously numerous educators and students over this eight-year period.   0:27:42.3 JD: Now, putting that the side, it didn't happen like you didn't move is still a pretty amazing story, whether it took two years or eight years, he set up this pretty amazing system. So I think most of us are not gonna rival Escalante and his tenacity and the results that he got with his students, his results are so far outside the norm, they made a movie about this guy. So they made the movie for a good reason, but I think my take away and thinking about this myth of the hero educator is that knowledge about variation, this component that we've talked about, part of Deming System of Profound Knowledge. Knowledge variation... Knowledge about variation tells us that the vast majority of educators perform within the enabling and constraining forces of an organization system.   0:28:35.9 JD: So most teachers, most principals, most superintendents, do not have Escalante's tenacity to set up a brand new system. Most of us just don't have that in us, but we create these mythologies around heroes like this hero teacher, they're embellished, they leave out important details, and I think these hero educators do exist, but they make up a tiny fraction of the educators in the United States, and same thing on the flip side, teachers, especially in the last decade or so, have caught a lot of slack are often blamed for test results and other sort of ills of the education system, but what I've found, and I think what the research bears out is that on the other side of the hero spectrum, those that are unfit, that really shouldn't be in front of a classroom of students, that's also a very tiny fraction of the educator workforce.   0:29:37.7 JD: And that the point I would take away is that all of this points to the fact that it's really the system where the vast majority of the improvement potential lies. So you get this hero educator myth, it makes for good drama in Hollywood, but it's a really, really poor strategy for educational transformation and improvement.   0:30:00.9 JD: We sort of go back to these myths, whether it's best practices, "Why don't you guys do it like them? They can do that over there, you make it work in your system. Well, if this guy in California can do this, why can't you do it over here?" But it's really not about the individuals, it's about creating these strong systems where the vast majority of people that are sort of in that... A majority bucket, not the heroes, not those that probably shouldn't be in front of students, how could we make the systems work for those folks? I think that's sort of my take away from that myth.   0:30:42.2 AS: Yeah, in fact... So a couple of things I was thinking about. The first thing is, I bet you if we go there and look at what's the progress in what he did, that in some cases, you could see it's all gone, because some opposing person who was upset by it or didn't agree with it, or didn't like the idea of one person standing out to that extent knocked it down. I watched the education... There was a master's in marketing program here in Thailand at one of the universities that was, I would say, world class. The lady who ran it was amazing, and what she and another guy built out of it was really about 30 years of continuous improvement. They just kept improving.   0:31:30.6 AS: And so it really was an impressive program and there was a new dean of the school that came in and he didn't like it, and he didn't like that person, and he basically, between him and his forces, knocked it out and destroyed it, and it's completely gone, and that was an interesting example that I saw. So the first point is that, is it really lasting improvement? Well, we have to admire the people who have so much tenacity, and we definitely wanna get everything that we can to improve the system, but just that one person rising up does not mean that the system's gonna necessarily be improved.   0:32:12.6 AS: So that's the first thing I thought about. The second thing I thought about was, one of the amazing defining qualities of McDonalds is everywhere you go, and I've eaten McDonalds everywhere in the world, basically. Now, we can debate about the quality of the food, but I would say that the consistency is amazing, and it's done with... That back in America when I was young, it was done with 16-year-olds on summer break, and it was done because they continually improved the system to make it so that the worker could deliver that consistent quality, and any new idea had to be implemented... Had to be able to be implemented worldwide in that system or else it wasn't gonna get into the system. So those are two things that I was just thinking about. How do those relate to this myth of the hero educator?   0:33:10.7 JD: Yeah, I think those are spot on, and I think it could be... When you build a system like Jaime Escalante did in his school, I think it could be drove...The undoing could be nefarious, a new principal could come in that just doesn't like it sort of comparable to what you were talking about, or probably what happens in a lot of cases where an amazing system has been built but it's completely reliant on that hero, once Jaime Escalante retires, it's very possible that that system then collapsed and not because anybody was working against it necessarily, but it could have been just without him and he was such an important part of it. Which would probably speak to what type of system was set up in the first place. Now, without him sort of pulling the levers, then it's very possible, but that would be enough in and of itself for that system not to live on to this day.   0:34:12.8 AS: Now, I can imagine an educator or an executive administrative, he's like, "What are you guys talking about? That was my only hope is to find this hero that could take us to the next level, and now you're just saying, no, no." I'm just curious, thinking about it from that perspective.   0:34:34.1 JD: Well, it's better because I think this is better because it doesn't rely on the hero. I think the same... I think a group of people, certainly have to be dedicated, you have to wanna change the system, but a group of people putting in place a strong process, I think is the point of all of this. That that's really what we wanna do. Do you need strong leadership? Sure, sure you do. But it's necessary, but not sufficient to building systems, you need a group of people working together and putting strong processes in place, processes that are strong enough, whether an individual or individuals over time moving on as they are inevitably really gonna do that the system or that set of processes remains intact. And I think that's what a system like Toyota, who you talked about earlier, that's what they've been able to do.   0:35:40.3 JD: People have changed over the years since the Toyota production system was put in place, but a lot of those processes, of course, they're continually being improved, but they put the process in place that wasn't reliant on any single individual to remain in, say, the CEO position and to ensure that that process or those set of processes would continue over time, that's the whole point of this, so you don't wanna be reliant on a single sort of hero educator or a hero engineer or whatever it is, you want the process... The system be strong enough that it continues to work even after that person retires or moves on to another position or whatever.   0:36:22.9 AS: So we've got two myths here. First a myth of best practices, and then the myth of the hero educator. And in wrapping up, let me just briefly summarize. So in the idea of the best practices, the main point that you're pointing out is be careful about trying to build an amalgamation of best practices, you have to understand where that best practice was developed and what was the context that it was developed under, and then you have to think about how that best practice could potentially fit into your system, and that may be the best idea here is rather than trying to just pull together a bunch of best practices to think about one or two new ideas that could be built into the system to improve the system of education. That's number one.   0:37:16.3 AS: And the myth of the hero educator is just to remember that the outlier educators, both on the great side and on the poor side, are very small group of people, very... And so to think that we can create lasting change from the power and energy of, let's say that really exceptional person is probably making a wrong bet and it's better to then think about, "How can we take from the energy of this person and implement the things that they're doing in such a way that we can build them as some lasting improvement in the system of education so that it doesn't just disappear when that man or woman disappears?" Would that be a summary? Or anything you would add to that?   0:38:09.0 JD: Yeah, it's a great summary. I think the only thing I'd add to the best practices is coming up out of a Nation at Risk, many, many times the reforms were like, if you just do X practice, whatever that thing was, standards or a certain curriculum, there's that under appreciation of context over and over and so I think the PDSA, the Plan-Do-Study Act cycle is a powerful driver for testing ideas in your context on a small scale. First, before moving on to a larger and larger scale until you get to full system-wide implementation. So I think your summary is perfect, I'll just add in the power of that PDSA as a part of figuring out what works in your particular system, in your particular context.   0:38:50.8 JD: Yeah, and with the hero educator, you mentioned you got the hero educator on one side, the positive side, those that probably shouldn't be in front of the classroom with kids on the other side, tiny fractions, a lot of what came out of a Nation at Risk, especially maybe from 2000 on targeted individual teacher performance, thinking that you could get rid of the bad teachers. But again, it's a tiny fraction of the educator workforce, and even if you did that, it's not gonna make a difference because the vast majority of people are in this sort of middle ground that needs strong leadership and strong systems, if we're gonna transform schools.   0:39:35.9 AS: So to wrap up here, we have management myths that keep fooling us, we've got myth number one, best practices and myth number two, hero educator. And we've got more myths to come up in our next episode, which I'm really looking forward to. I think these have sparked discussions and thinking about how to create lasting change and improvement in education. John, on behalf of everyone on the Deming Institute, I wanna thank you again for this discussion. And for listeners, remember, go to deming.org to continue your journey, 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.”

In this episode, David and Andrew ask: should we tell people when they make mistakes? How do educators manage mistakes in a classroom setting, after their organization/classroom is transformed by learning and implementing Deming? 0:00:00.0 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 discussion with David P. Langford, who has devoted his life to applying Dr. Deming's philosophy to education, and he offers us his practical advice for implementation. The topic for the day is, "should we tell people when they make mistakes?" We are continuing a discussion about Dr. Deming's section of the book, The New Economics. If you have the 3rd edition, that's page 86. If you have the 2nd edition, that's page 125. And this is a list that Dr. Deming has given us of 14 points. It's not The 14 points that we normally talk about, but these are... The title of this 14 points is called Role of a Manager of People. This is the new role of a manager of people after transformation, and we are on point number six. And I'll just read it before we get David to start talking on it, and that is this.   0:01:02.7 AS: "The role of a manager in a new style," basically he's saying, "If he understands a stable system. He understands... " And I know we can also say she, "understands the interaction between people and the circumstances that they work in. He understands that the performance of anyone that can learn a skill will come to a stable state upon which further lessons will not bring improvement of performance. A manager of people knows that in this stable state it is distracting to tell the worker about a mistake." David, take it away.   0:01:41.2 David P. Langford: Thank you, Andrew. It's good to be back again. Yeah, I was just reflecting on this list is... It's such a great list. I'm sure that when people first read through this book they kinda just take 30 seconds to read through the list and then you go on. I've been studying Dr. Deming's work for over 40 years now and still find so much insight into all these things. So if you go through this and you start thinking about, "Well, what can I do differently and where do I begin?" I was also thinking that, when I got my Master's in Administration, I never heard of any of this. I never heard of a stable state, control charts, theory. I never got any of this or had a list on to how to manage people, which would have been very helpful, very insightful. So if you're working at a university right now and you're a teacher of classes of administration, here's some good advice, take people through this list and they'll actually come out with capability of what to do. But now back to the list. So, the first thing he says is you have to understand a stable system.   0:03:01.1 DL: So we did a couple of previous podcasts on stable and unstable systems, and on face value, a lot of people think: "Okay, well, stable system, okay, well, it's working well." But Deming's thinking around a stable system is much, much deeper than that, and it has to do with statistical stability. And so if you understand a stable system, then the first thing you're gonna have to do is you have to find out, "Do I have a stable system?" And so often when I work with people, I'll just start with sort of disarming questions and say, "Hey, how are things going?"   [chuckle]   0:03:45.4 DL: And they'll usually say, "Well, it's going pretty good." And, "Okay, well, how do you know?" "Well, 'cause people are telling me that it goes pretty good." "Well, how many people do you manage? Oh well, I have like 30 people on the staff." So you're telling me that 30 people are telling you every day that things are going really well? "Well, no, one person told me." "Well, do we know what the other 29 think?" So, right there you realize a manager does not understand a stable system. They have no idea what they're doing, and the phrase in America is "you're flying by the seat of your pants" which basically means you're just…whatever is happening from day to day, you're just going with the flow, but you're not managing a stable system nor do you really understand it.   0:04:39.7 DL: So the first thing I wanna point out is that this is telling you, before you do anything, you have to understand the system. So you have to figure out, "Okay, what am I gonna collect data on? What's really important? How do I really understand if I have a stable system?" Then you're gonna have to set up that process and you're gonna have to do that for at least 12 data points, if not 20 data points. And in education that could mean 12 days, 12 months. It could mean long periods of time. Or the other thing is you have to go back into history and get that data for previous years. That's another way you can get the data points, put them on a run chart and see, "Is this system stable?"   0:05:32.7 DL: So what does that mean? Well, once you do that, you'll find out you have average performance over a long period of time. Okay? And usually there will be variation in that. Some data points will be higher and some will be lower. There are only three possibilities for a data point, up, down or the same. And that's called variability in a process over time. And so you have to understand that, and you can't understand that just by intuitively sort of going day by day going through things, because psychologically you're constantly reacting to a situation.   0:06:17.6 DL: You go home at the end of the day and your wife or your husband says, "How was your day, dear?" And, "Oh I've had a terrible day," and duh, duh, duh. But they usually don't say, "Well, how do you know it was a terrible day? How do you know it was worse than any other day, or better than any other day, or..." Well, until you actually understand a stable system and understand what's going on, you don't know really. You're reacting psychologically to that, and that's part of human nature.   0:06:47.5 AS: I wonder, David, would it be...do you think it would be...would it be proper to say that most systems that are kind of running, and haven't been looked at as to whether they're stable or not, are probably unstable?   0:07:04.3 DL: Not... My experience, I'd say 90% of my work has been in education, not business, etcetera, but what I found out is that intuitively people will stabilize a system over time. If they don't unintentionally do that, they kinda go nuts, they go crazy. Because one day they're in euphoria and the next day they're in hell, and then they're just... The roller coaster swings are so great that they'll usually leave the profession, go find something else. I used to see that a lot with new teachers, brand new teachers. And they call it the Fall Wall. So you start school and everything seems really great, and then you start to realizing, "Wow, this is work, and this is managing people, and this is every day, this is..." You're on and you're working through that, and then there's the Fall Wall of this huge depression cycle, and...teachers that stay with it and really have a love of kids and a purpose behind why they're there, they'll start to normally just stabilize the system. They may not get great results, but on average they're no worse or not much worse today than they were yesterday, or vice versa. But they're not gonna get a breakthrough in that system.   0:08:35.4 AS: Yeah, and I'm thinking about even when I recently did like a fast and my weight went down, and I had it down for a little while, and then I went back to eating, of course, and then all of a sudden you've realized there's this rebound and now that you're back, and now I'm back up to where I was and it's stable. It's not what where I really want it to be, but it's stable. And so you realize like there's a...as you're saying, people can't deal with chaos every day, so it stabilizes at some point, but that point may be far from the optimum of what that system could produce or something like that, I guess.   0:09:13.4 DL: Well, that's a good example, 'cause the person says he understands the stable system. Well, before you started to do that fast and actually track your weight, you were probably...your weight was probably in a normal range. That's the way it is for me. If I don't track it at all, it's usually within five or six pounds, given what's going on over a long period of time. But as soon as I track it and I start to understand what's happening and I see what the average weight is, then I have to think about, okay, am I happy with the average? So, again, this is back to the stable system. I always tell teachers, if you're happy with your average and you know it, clap your hands.   [laughter]   0:10:00.8 AS: If you're happy with your average, and you know it, clap your hands. [singing]   0:10:03.4 DL: And you know it, clap your hands. Yeah.   0:10:06.7 AS: There you go.   0:10:06.8 DL: So yeah. And they all laugh and everything else, but how do you know if you're happy with your average? Well, you're gonna have to collect some data. So it really doesn't matter what system you're thinking about managing, you have to understand...do you understand a the stable system? So let's say that: "Well, these kids today, they're always late to class." Okay, well, set up a run chart, track that for 12 days or 20 days, and find out what you're talking about. Find out. Are all the kids late to class? "Well, no, they're...no, they're not all late to class." Well, okay, well how many are late to class and what's happening with the data over time?   0:10:46.7 DL: So you have to figure it out what's important to you and how you're gonna go about that. The example I often give is, I worked with a middle school principal and he said, "Oh well, the teachers are complaining that the buses are always late." And I said: "Okay, well, that's pretty easy to track, so let's set up a run chart and you track the buses for 30 days, the arrival times of buses." Well, he did that, and not only were they not late, they were consistently really good. It was a stable system.   0:11:23.6 DL: 20 buses were arriving within a five-minute span. These people knew their jobs. But then one day they had fog, and one of the buses got delayed with the fog for like two hours before they arrived, and then all...so all these kids get off the bus and they're two hours late, and everybody in the front office has to get them caught up, the teachers have to get them caught up, it's a big emotional deal. But that's what everybody is responding to. They're not thinking about the stable system. They're responding to this one special cause, and psychologically it was a big problem, therefore "these buses are always late."   0:12:05.3 AS: Recency bias.   0:12:07.0 DL: Yeah, there you go.   0:12:08.3 AS: And it's an emotional attachment. I had two quick stories I wanna tell you, David, about this, and then maybe you can help me understand them. But the first one was that I was teaching at...I teach a program called Masters in Marketing at a university here in - Thammasat University in Thailand. 75 students that are studying in the class. And then I teach at another program in another place. And one of the things you notice is that in the other program, the students are late. You just count on it. And so you kind of don't start until five minutes after, or 10 minutes after, and let them drift in. And with the Master's in Marketing students, I've never ever seen any of the 75 students late. And here we have Bangkok traffic, you got something to blame it on. And it's never late. So is it different students or is it a different system? Well, when I investigated it more, many years ago, to try to understand it, I realized that they set a rule. They said if you're not in the classroom five minutes before, we're locking the door. Come back next time.   0:13:14.1 AS: And for some people that was really harsh, but once people signed up and they knew that that's the way the system worked, the output of the individuals was very different, the activity of what they did, just because they knew what to respond.   0:13:29.4 DL: Well, you bring up... Yeah, you bring up a good point. One way that people often stabilize systems is to make more rules. Well, let's just make a rule like that, and if you show up late something bad is gonna happen to you, or you can't get into the door or something like that, and if it doesn't work then just make it harsher. And public schools...or not public schools, but all schools, K through 12 schools especially, go through that. So if somebody's late, what happens to you? Well, you know, this is gonna happen, and then if you're late three times then this happens, and if you're late six times then this, and then so many times you're gonna lose credit and.... Does it work? It will stabilize the system to a point, but every administrator knows, there's just students that are like, "I don't care. Do whatever you want. Because I don't wanna be here in the first place."   0:14:31.8 DL: "The system you're running is so terrible and I hate it so bad, that [laughter] only reason I'm here is to avoid the punishment". And if that's the system that you're running, and soon as you stop doing those things, the variation is just gonna go back to where it was before.   0:14:51.2 AS: And is there a difference when it's...in the case of the Masters in Marketing students, they're all kind of voluntarily there, they paid a lot of money to get this education. Does that make any difference? Do you have to handle it differently or would you do pretty much the same and say, well, just squeezing down on people may stabilize, but it may not actually solve the root problem?   0:15:16.3 DL: Well, the answer to it actually is in this point that we're talking about here. Because the next sentence, he [Deming] says, "The manager understands the interaction between people and the circumstances that they work in." Okay? "Understands that the performance of anyone...they can learn a skill in a stable state." And so the answer to the question is right there. I would like to think about, you're starting class, if you want everybody there immediately, you're starting class immediately. So if I'm late to class, and you better make darn sure that what you're doing immediately is really important and really fun and really interesting. So if I walk into class late, I know immediately I've missed something. But the reverse...   0:16:06.5 AS: So it makes me think of start with a hook, start with something that's a grabbing activity that they wanna be a part of.   0:16:12.7 DL: Yeah, it could be. And sometimes I've been in situations where I had to manage like that, and so I would just start the class outside. If you're late, you came to class, you'd show up and there's nobody there, and you're like, "Where is everybody, what happened?" So the next class, you're probably thinking, "Well, I better get there on time because they're gonna be doing something." Or what I used to always, or still do, is tell teachers is, "Start class before class starts." What's that? Well, that means, well, when people are on their way to class, what do you want them to be thinking about, getting ready to do? Well, that's probably gonna have to start at the end of the previous class.   0:17:02.4 AS: Hold on, David, that's so valuable. I'm just thinking about my own students tonight, that I have my Valuation Masterclass Bootcamp, and starting class before class with the idea, I have a communication channel and I know what I'm gonna talk about tonight, and I know what we're gonna be doing. So maybe in that channel I should be throwing out some things that get them excited about, "What are we gonna do tonight?"   0:17:31.2 DL: Yeah, or you actually go through a quick process with them to set up a little flow chart, how to start class before class starts, and get their feedback about, "Well, what should you be doing when you're stuck in traffic in Thailand and trying to get to the university on time? What should you be doing?" I should be going over about, "Hey, what are they gonna be talking about this time and what's gonna be happening?" "Well, how am I gonna know that?" Well, somehow through the syllabus or the previous class. Or that's why ending a class by going over what are we gonna start with next time, is really a good thing, because people are like, "Oh yeah, okay, and now I know what's gonna happen as soon as I hit the door."   0:18:14.1 AS: So that's another practical thing right there, and I learned this from attending an online course of a guy named Brandon Gale, and he had at the end of each of his presentations, he'd say, "Up next, I'm gonna show you da, da, da." And I was just like, "Okay, that just absolutely made me wanna go to the next one." So now in all of my presentations I always have this one slide that says, "Congratulations, you've made it to the end of this section. Up next, you're gonna learn the one thing that da, da, da." And then that really helps people. And I have another...   0:18:47.4 AS: Okay, so now here's another actionable thing that a friend of mine does. He issues podcasts out to the world, but they're directed at his students. And think about following up - a preview podcast about this material that then is published out there to the world, but his students know they need to listen to it when they're in the car on the way to the class. So, yeah. Okay, these are some great, great ideas, let's continue.   0:19:15.6 DL: Yeah, So that's a really great example that: here's the process that we're gonna go through. And so you need to have listened to this podcast because when you hit the door, you're gonna be put into random groups and you're gonna be asked to start a discussion immediately on the podcast that you were supposed to listen to. See? So now the responsibility is shifted from me as the instructor to them as the students: it's your responsibility, as soon as you hit the door, get together with three other people, you got 10 minutes to go over the podcast, and what were the significant points that you got out of that.   0:19:53.0 DL: Well, somebody that didn't listen to it, is gonna be in that group and they're gonna feel very foolish once or twice, and then they're gonna start actually paying attention and doing the podcast.   0:20:05.8 AS: So for the listeners and the viewers out there, here's a challenge, here's a challenge to you: take some of these actionable ideas and play with them, enjoy them, bring them to your students, bring that into the classroom. You highlighted something that I didn't think about either, but the idea of starting class with something like pleasurable, rewarding, something like that, and when I start...   0:20:31.3 DL: It doesn't necessarily even have to be that. It has to be something that needs to be relevant, needs to be timely and it needs to be engaging. So I have to do something as soon as I hit the door. I have a responsibility as soon as I get there or online, if it's an online class, and what do you want them to do immediately as they're sitting there waiting for the online session to start or something, right? Those are all processes that's gonna get you a different stable state than if you just wait and you're gonna tell them what to do when things start. And people learn from that too, because they'll learn that, "Oh well, don't bother to read the syllabus or understand what's going on because he's gonna tell us what to do as soon as we get there." They'll learn really quick that they don't have to think or plan, or do anything, because you're gonna tell people when they get there.   0:21:38.7 AS: Right. One of the other things that I tried something kind of bold, I know my team was a little bit worried about it when we did it with the Valuation Masterclass Bootcamp, we do live sessions at 6 o'clock, two or three nights a week, and basically, what we started was a breathing exercise and I recorded it as an audio clip where I just say, breathe in for four seconds, count one, two, three, four, hold it for four seconds, one, two, three, four, let it out for four seconds, one, two, three, four, and then we go through that cycle three times and it was a risk to bring that out. I felt like some people may think, "Oh, come on."   0:22:15.2 DL: It's a yoga class or what?   0:22:18.3 AS: What's that?   0:22:19.4 DL: Is this a yoga class?   0:22:21.8 AS: Exactly, so I went... By the time we got to the end of that first class where I tested this new idea, I asked them, "What did you think about that?" And they just absolutely loved it. And I know that breathing can actually stop your intensity that you've had from your day and kind of separate that from the actual class, but I can say for myself as the teacher, I enjoy that moment that we all have together where we breathe together. And I know it puts me in a different state, and I know that the value of that is, so that is something that I think students like to be a part of, they see the value in that, they feel the value of it, and therefore they wanna be on time to be in that. So that's an idea.   0:23:03.8 DL: There you go, there you go. So I wanna get back to this. So he [Deming] says he understands that the performance of anyone that can learn a skill will come to a stable state. So that's what we've been discussing, you've taught people a skill and now you stabilized it and it's coming to a stable state, that this is what we're gonna be doing. "Further lessons will not bring improvement or performance, a manager of people that in this stable state, it is distracting to tell the worker about a mistake." And so that's the topic for our session today, are way supposed to be telling people about mistakes?   0:23:40.4 DL: Well, Deming's thinking around a stable...the interaction to create a stable system goes also to why he was so adamant against grading people. That it's not just you doing your own work in a system, it's the interaction of all these people within the system that gets the result. So if you set up a system where you are doing that, you're actually forcing individual, individuals to work alone, don't share anything, don't talk to anybody, don't... Well, what's gonna happen is you'll have an isolated few people that'll really do well, right? They get the A's, they get the top marks, the top grades, whatever it might ever be, and then you'll have everybody else stratified layers, B, C, D and F or whatever you wanna say, on down within that, because what you're really doing is shutting down the interaction of people to create a different result.   0:24:51.1 DL: Well, even in that kind of a world, teachers learn to create a stable system within that. "I got rules and no, you can't do make up work and you can't do this, and you can't do that, because I've got my stable system that I must maintain the system over everything else," which flies in the face of understanding why people are there in the first place, right? They're supposed to be there to learn not to play this game or figure out what the game is for people to go through the system.   0:25:31.1 DL: So what [Deming] he's talking about is that if you're in a system and somebody's making mistake within that system, you're actually...and you're pointing it out or whatever you're doing, you're actually blaming them, the individual.... This is what I believe he's talking about. You're blaming the individual for that mistake when the mistake may have come from the system itself and they can't change the system, only the manager can change the system, whether that's the teacher or a supervisor in a company, or a vice president, a principal, whoever it might be. The individuals typically can't just change the system, right? They can't just come up to the teacher and say, "well, I'm just not gonna play your system anymore, but I'm gonna do this system 'cause it gets better results." Most teachers would kind of freak out about that and, "No, you're not. You're not doing that."   0:26:26.3 DL: If somebody did that to me though, I'd say, "Well, tell me about it, tell me about what you're talking about and why does it get better results, and maybe we should try that as a class and maybe we should learn from that and try to figure out...maybe we will all do that, if we can figure out that's gonna get a different result."   0:26:46.9 AS: And what would happen if you have a worker who just makes a mistake, they're supposed to have done a particular step and they didn't do that step or something like that, some people would feel like, "Oh, well, he should be blamed or she should be blamed for that."   0:27:03.5 DL: Deming often talked about, he went and visited a company, I think in Ireland or something like that, and a big sign in the company, that says "465 days without an accident" in the company, right? And then they go to walk up the stairs and the railing on the stairs was so loose that he almost fell off the stairs, going up the stairs. Well, that would have been an accident, and is that the individual's fault or is that the system? And when you start thinking like that, especially in a classroom, it's the same kind of thing: if somebody doesn't understand a concept, let's say you go through a process where you train people and everything else, but then you've got one or two people out of the group that didn't do it right, don't understand, etcetera.   0:28:00.9 DL: Well, whose problem is that? Well, that's a level of variability, a variation, that eventually you want to limit that variation, so instead of having one or two people every class period that don't understand, now I'm down to once a month, somebody doesn't understand. Now I'm down to once a year, somebody doesn't understand. Now I'm down to about once every five or 10 years, I'll run into somebody [chuckle] that doesn't respond to the process I've set up, and they really are a special cause and I need to treat them like a special cause. I'm not going to change the whole system for that one individual, but I am gonna help them individually because they're not part of the stable state that I've set up and that I'm working within that over time.   0:28:51.8 AS: And so would it be right to say that, okay, once we reach a stable state, really a lot of all the variability and the mistakes, people are gonna make mistakes, that's all kind of noise that's not.... That there's nothing meaningful about that, and therefore pointing out this mistake or that and why did this happen? It's just chasing around common cause variation, and truthfully, the job of a manager should be able to be to think way beyond that, and you wanna encourage everybody through education, not training, we're talking a lot about training here of getting people to a standard stable state, but then the idea is, come on, well look at the opportunities are huge ahead of us, and that is just normal variation.   0:29:37.2 DL: Yeah, I'll give you a personal example [chuckle] from me. I was in an honors English class when I was a junior in high school, and we're all supposed to be top kids in the school, and these English class and working very hard. Well, I was sick for the whole week. And we were studying Arthur Miller, the famous playwright.   0:29:58.5 AS: Death of a Salesman.   0:30:00.1 DL: Yeah, and I came back and I had missed what the assignment was and everything else, and I went up to the teacher real quickly and said, "What did I miss? And what am I supposed to do?" And she said, "Well, everybody in the class was assigned a different aspect of Arthur Miller where things through...so she said, "What I like you to do is I'd like you to make a bibliography of Arthur Miller." Well, whether it was because I was sick or whatever, I heard her say, biography. So I went home and spent a week writing a 14-page biography of Arthur Miller's life and everything, and even hand wrote it out three times to make sure it was all clean and everything else, I was so proud of it at the end of the week, brought it back in and handed it to her before her class started.   0:30:54.5 DL: And she looked at it, she says, "What's this?" And I said, "Well, it's my assignment," and she looked at it and she threw it in the trash can, and she said you were supposed to write a bibliography," and [chuckle] I was just like stunned. I'd made a mistake, but whose mistake was it? So verbally, those two things sound a lot alike and etcetera. I turned around and walked out of the class and went up to the principal's office, and I was gonna change this situation and get it changed. So I mean there's a good example that she was pointing out a mistake that was the interaction of parts to the whole within the process. Simple change would have been to have all the students listed out and all the things that they were supposed to do on a piece of paper and not just verbal announcements about what you're going to do, right? Because there's a certain amount of variability, obviously in a verbal announcement. That make sense?   0:32:04.1 AS: Yep.   0:32:05.2 DL: And so if you keep operating like that, it makes you as the manager in total control of everything, but it actually turns everybody else into victims to some degree.   0:32:17.3 AS: Well, let's wrap this up. I just wanna go back through this one and read it again, because there's just so much to it. Number six: "He understands a stable system. He understands the interaction between people in the circumstances that they work in, he understands that the performance of anyone that can learn a skill will come to a stable state upon which further lessons will not bring improvement of performance." And finally, to wrap it up in relation to what we titled this, "A manager of people knows that in this stable state it is distracting to tell the worker about a mistake."   0:32:51.0 AS: What a great discussion. I appreciate it. I got some actionable ideas out of it, and I think for everybody out there, put some of these ideas into place. And David, on behalf of everyone at the Deming Institute, I wanna thank you again for this discussion. For listeners remember to go to deming.org to continue your journey. And listeners can also learn more about David at Langfordlearning.com. 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."

In this episode, John and Andrew discuss what "transformation" means in education. John juxtaposes two reports, conducted a decade apart, that have influenced education for the last 40 years: A Nation at Risk and the Sandia Report. TRANSCRIPT 0:00:02.3 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 discussion with John Dues, who is part of the new generation of educators striving to apply Dr. Deming's principles to unleash student joy in learning. The topic for today is, Do we really need to transform our education system? [chuckle] John, take it away.   0:00:26.7 John Dues: Andrew, it's good to be back with you. Yeah, I thought... Sort of as a jumping off point from our other conversations, I remember, I think in our first conversation, you mentioned you graduated from high school, 1983 in Cleveland area, went to a solid...   0:00:44.9 AS: Hudson High.   0:00:45.2 JD: Hudson High, good traditional public school in Northeast Ohio. And your question was, if I went back to the high school 40 years later, would it look and sound the same, would it have gotten better? Would it have gotten worse? What's going on with our schools in United States, I think was the basic question, I think... When I answered you, I said two parts, there's the question about what most people probably focus on when you think about that question about Did a school get better? Did the test scores improve or decline over time? And then there was a secondary question of, Did the school transform along the lines of the Deming philosophy? And I think that those two questions would have different answers depending on which schools you're looking at, but I thought it would be interesting to sort of think about this question, Do we really need to transform our education system through the lens of a couple reports...   0:01:48.5 JD: Education reports, one that's well known in our world, one that's lesser known, that took a look at the... At least the test results question in the education sector, and then build from there this idea of whether or not we need to transform our schools. One thing, there's no shortage of calls to transform or some people would use the word reform our schools, and those two words probably in and of themselves, probably have different applications, but we'll use them interchangeably as we go through that question and attempt to maybe answer that over this episode and maybe a couple additional episodes.   0:02:36.7 AS: I find that fascinating as I observe education around the world from my own experience outside of the US, and I look at the US, and I think about the importance of education, the role of education. There's a part of education that you could say is kind of indoctrination in the way a country educates its youth to be a certain way or to understand things a certain way, so I didn't see that part of education when I was young, but now I see every country's got their indoctrination that they do within their school system, so I see it kind of broadly, but I'm just curious, really take us through what you'd like to explain about that.   0:03:20.4 JD: Yeah, I think the sort of start... I think there's this quote in The New Economics where Dr. Deming says that people are asking for better schools with no clear idea how to improve education, nor even how to define improvement in education, and I think if that's... And he's saying this roughly the same time that these reports are coming out, and if that's true, I think what happens is when reports come out about the state of our education sector, it's pretty easy to get pulled this way and that. When you don't have a clear picture in your mind for what schools should look like or how to improve schools, these reports have large impacts. And so the first report is well known. It came out about the same time you were graduating from high school, in 1983 in the first Reagan administration, called A Nation at Risk. It's pretty well known in the education sector, and it's had a lot of far-reaching impact in both time and place, where even today, 40 years later, we still... Some of the roots of the various reforms that we've undergone in our sector, it's still playing a role.   0:04:40.6 JD: The second report is, that I'll sort of juxtapose against The Nation at Risk is a report that came out about a decade later called the Sandia Report, and I think it's really interesting just to look at those two reports and the impact or lack of impact they've had over the last 30 or 40 years in the world of education. So I think I would start with, when A Nation at Risk came out, and it was commissioned by the Reagan Administration, the National Commission on Excellence in Education is the group that released the report and one of the leading statistics that's in the report is that the SAT, the college entrance exam that high school students take demonstrates a virtually unbroken decline from 1963 to 1980, where average verbal scores fell over 50 points, and average mathematic scores dropped nearly 40 points in that roughly 20 year time period. And there's these really memorable quotes that are clearly meant to awaken the public to the state of its schools that people still remember to this day, and I'll read one. It says, "We report to the American people that while we can take justifiable pride in what our schools and colleges have historically accomplished and contributed to the United States and the well-being of its people, the educational foundations of our society are presently being eroded by a rising tide of mediocrity that threatens our very future as a nation and a people."   0:06:24.0 JD: You couldn't get much more of wake up type people language, it's really, really interesting. Like I said, this report over the last four decades has been that foundation or bedrock for the various federal reforms that people are probably familiar with, starting with...   0:06:41.0 AS: And to put it into context, that's the kind of talk that was coming out of the Reagan administration, like government's not helping and government can be a problem and we need to pull ourselves up by our bootstraps and you need to take personal responsibility, so it's very... It makes sense that that type of language was coming out of the Reagan administration.   0:07:05.4 JD: Yeah, and I think... So this report is floating around, there's a convening of all the governors in the United States in about 1989, and some pretty strong federal education legislation starts getting put together, it starts with the first Bush and then it ends up being passed during Bill Clinton's years called Goals 2000. And has various goals around increasing graduation rates and test scores and things like that, and then that transitions to No Child Left Behind with many people are familiar with that. Came out in the early Bush years and had a lot of impact on schools when my career was first getting started down in Atlanta, but it was federal legislation, so it covered the entire country, and then it even played a role even into the Obama years when he released the Race to the Top legislation, and that was more of a competitive grant program federally that was lots of strings attached a lot of focus on test scores, a lot of focus on teacher evaluations and principal evaluations and using test scores in those evaluations.   0:08:21.3 JD: And so you can see this, I think, direct linkage between A Nation at Risk, to Goals 2000, to No Child Left Behind, to Race to the Top, and even to the stuff that you see at the federal level to this day. So when a report like this comes out, it's called A Nation at Risk, the thesis of the report is right in the title. A nation is at risk because of its education sector, and so it's like... Most people say, Well, we gotta do something about this. We need to take action. There's some serious implications. And so about a decade after this report comes out, the Department of Energy sort of commissions its own report. The point of this report, as you might expect, is the department of energy, they're actually looking to do some economic forecasting, so it's not directly about our schools, but they wanna take the same data set that The Nation at Risk authors looked at and analyze it.   0:09:32.3 JD: And interestingly, they entered this analysis thinking that they are going to verify the results from a Nation at Risk, but what actually happened is that on nearly every measure of achievement, the Sandia analysts found actually steady or slightly improving trends in the test data. So they were...   0:10:02.1 AS: And in the same test data or in new test data that was coming out?   0:10:04.7 JD: Same exact data. They actually didn't look just at test data, they were actually looking at graduation rates, dropout rate, college-going rates so on just about every one of those measures, it was either steadily improving or slightly improving. And so you go back to A Nation at Risk and you have this absolute decline in SAT scores from the early '60s to the early '80s, and the Sandia authors aren't disputing that, but they're looking at their analysis and they're saying, wait a second, this decline in average scores, actually doesn't mean that the high school students of the early '80s or early '90s, weren't as capable as their 1960s peers. And so then you start to think, Well, how could this be? It's really, really interesting. And what the Sandia report authors go on to say is that when they broke out the test scores and these other measures like I said, graduation rates and other things like that, they broke them out by race and socioeconomic status, class rank, gender, they found these steady or improving rates in all of these groups, and they chalked it up to this statistical phenomenon called Simpson's Paradox, and basically what that is, is when trends that appear in this aggregated data set, which is sort of A Nation At Risk analysis, that reverses when the data is separated into sub-groups, like it was in the Sandia report.   0:11:45.6 JD: So basically what they're saying is that there are a more diverse mix of students on any number of measure, socioeconomic status, gender, race, those types of things, class rank, that there's a more diverse mix of students taking this test, and that is what causes this sort of change in average test scores and other similar measures.   0:12:10.6 AS: Which I guess A Nation at Risk should have controlled for?   0:12:17.6 JD: At least... I think breaking the scores out in the way that the desegregating the data like Sandia did would have been an important step given that the population of test takers was very different in 1963 than it was in 1983 or 1993. So the Sandia researchers basically found these improving trends on dropout statistics, standardized tests, post-secondary studies, educational funding even, international assessment comparison, so all these different measures that... This sort of earlier report is raising serious alarm bells about. This new report is saying, Well, wait a second, if we look at this data and we drill down in a little bit different way, we get the opposite results, but hardly anybody knows about the Sandia report, and just about everybody in my sector, my age and older knows about the A Nation at Risk Report, it's cited all the time. Even to this day, I just heard someone on a podcast a week or two ago talking about A Nation at Risk.   0:13:24.7 AS: So I guess one of the lessons is be careful with how you handle data.   0:13:30.6 JD: Be very careful. I think one of the principless we use here is data has no meaning apart from its context, and this is a very good example of data taken out of context. I think one of the lessons for me is that when you look at our schools, and I think this is maybe what happened with A Nation at Risk, is that for most people, what you see in educational data that comes out of our schools depends, in large part, on what you thought about our schools before we looked. I think they kind of drew a conclusion and then they sort of found evidence to support that.   0:14:14.2 AS: Supposed to be the opposite way. Good research.   0:14:16.8 JD: Yeah, I think so. I think so, should have been an open question, and the Sandia Report had... I think maybe their eyes were a little more open or their willingness to consider alternative explanations was a little bit more because they were not inside the Education Sector, they were outsiders, they were physicists and economists in the Department of Energy, and so they didn't really have a dog in the fight. I guess you'd say.   0:14:41.5 AS: Well, I guess you could probably say we actually don't really know, but the assumption is because they're outside in the department of energy, they're completely neutral, but they may have had their own biases that they brought into that too, but still...   0:14:56.3 JD: Yeah, for sure. For sure.   0:14:58.2 AS: It's a great lesson on... What was it you said, data has no meaning without...   0:15:02.3 JD: Apart from its context. Yeah. Apart from its context. Yeah, I think that's a good example. Yeah.   0:15:06.6 AS: Yeah, and what it also makes me think about. One of the things that's so interesting about the stock market is that you can take a lot of data, you can analyze it and come up with your opinion, and let's just say that you're not that good at analyzing and you've missed some very key things in that data, and then you put your money down and the market will take it away from you, boom like that. Like as an immediate punishment for poor logic and reason, and I'd say that it's kind of one of the last places where that's kind of allowed and where it's kind of supposed to happen, but I think that the immediate punishment for bad logic and reason is not that common any place anymore.   0:15:53.6 JD: Yeah, I would agree. And the troubling thing is the, like I said, the wide-ranging implications that reports like A Nation at Risk can have even 40 years later.   0:16:11.9 AS: Yeah, and I guess that's another lesson from this, so first lesson is about understanding the data and being very careful of how you're interpreting that, the second one is that I like to say first to the mind wins. It's just... I have a funny story where I moved to Thailand and I didn't have a girlfriend and I lived with my best friend, and basically there was people at that time that took that circumstantial evidence and they said, Andrew is gay. Okay, that circumstantial evidence could point to that, and I didn't make any attempt to answer that question, so 20 years, 25 years later, a friend of mine was at a bar, and he said that he overheard two people talking about me, and they were talking about how I'm gay. And my friend went up and said, Well, actually do you guys know Andrew? And they're like, No, we've never met him. And he said, Well, I'm friends with him, and I can put this to rest that Andrew is in fact not gay. They refused to accept that. And I just thought, first of all, first opinions are very difficult to reverse. It takes a lot of emotional and intellectual energy for somebody to do that, and therefore that partially explains...   0:17:46.9 AS: Now, the second part that explains it, is that when you attach emotion to something, it also emboldens it or it makes it in your mind much more so if you think... If you ask an older person, Where were you when you heard that John F. Kennedy was shot? They know exactly where they were because that scary negative painful motion was attached to that particular event. So that's another lesson. But really, John, I wanna know. So my iPhones improve. The car I drive has improved. The TV I use is improved. Everything around me, the medical advancements have improved. Has education improved?   0:18:35.0 JD: Yeah, that's a great question because, What is education? I think probably in some places, and in some times it has and in other places, in other times it hasn't. And in the same place, in different times, the answer would probably be different and depend a lot on what it means to improve, going back to that original quote from Deming, What does improvement mean?   0:19:01.0 AS: So I'm asking a very non-specific general question, it sounds like what you're saying.   0:19:07.8 JD: Yeah. Well, and...   0:19:10.2 AS: Can I ask it in a little bit different way?   0:19:12.4 JD: Sure, because I was gonna say, before we move on from your story of the bar story, I think somewhere... There's a researcher named Zeynep Tulfekci, and I was listening to her on a podcast, I think she's some type of researcher. She said, I can't remember what they were talking about, maybe it was something COVID-related or something from a few years ago, and she said, "Whatever thing is that you're researching or just hearing about, go to the primary source and read the entire thing." And I wrote that down on a post it note.   0:19:45.7 AS: Nobody does that.   0:19:46.8 JD: 'Cause nobody does it. Now, in fact, I talk about being first to mind in some training or conversation or a book, I am sure that I heard or read about A Nation at Risk, and then I just repeated a few things over and over as if it was truth in fact, for probably 15 years before I went and read the thing myself, and my first impression reading it was, Whoa, this is all that's in here. I forget if it's 30 or 40 pages. There's not a lot of data in it. There are some compelling statistics like the SAT thing and some quotes that jump off the page, but I was struck when I actually read it for myself. There wasn't a lot there, certainly not enough to base 40 years of education reform work. That's for sure.   0:20:31.2 AS: And I think that's another lesson too, related to Dr. Deming's teaching. And let's say sometimes the Japanese were kind of famous about go to the location where the problem is coming from, get out of your office and go out. I think that Dr. Deming really highlighted the importance of valuing the workers and their inputs 'cause they know what's going on, and so that's something that I think if people aren't reading some of the basic research or originations of ideas, they're also probably not going down and checking out what's actually happening and you could find a very different story.   0:21:10.0 JD: Yeah, go to the Gemba, go to the factory floor, in our case, it's go to the classroom to see what's actually happening. Yeah. And you're gonna ask that question.   0:21:17.7 AS: So I wanna break my question then... I'm gonna break it down and make it a little bit more specific in hopes that you...   0:21:26.7 JD: You pin me down.   0:21:28.3 AS: Could answer it. The first question I have is that, If we go back 40 years, and I can remember, I had to take a French class and I wasn't particularly interested in France and French language, and I had no interest in that really at the time. And now, let's say it's 40 years later and a young kid like me has to take a French class: Have we come up with a better methodology for learning a language like, Okay, we've advanced, we've been teaching French for 40 years from that time to now, and now we know that there is a better way to acquire a language that cuts the language acquisition time from 40 hours to proficiency, or let's say, I don't know, 400 hours to proficiency to 300 hours to proficiency, this has nothing to do with education or the system of education, but: Have we come upon methodologies that can allow us to acquire knowledge any better or faster than what we did 40 years ago?   0:22:36.9 JD: That's a good question. I think... how would I answer that? I would say that in many areas of education there have been significant advances in the understanding of cognitive science or the application of cognitive science to improve teaching methods. In many areas, I think over the last 40 years, there have been advances, but like in other areas, whether or not those advances make it into the hands and the practices of the front line people is a different question.   0:23:23.6 AS: Which is separate. That's a separate point.   0:23:27.5 JD: When there's two things too, and let's take medicine for example. In medicine, there are a series of landmark trials that led to standard practices in medicine, so in education, I think in most areas, there's actually fewer of the landmark trials and key areas that everybody knows about.   0:23:52.4 AS: So I guess part of what I'm thinking about is one of the arguments I read in a great book called Future Hype, where the guy talked about how everybody hypes how things are moving so fast, but in fact, most of the progress that we've made in this world was made a long time ago. And he uses one example is jet airplanes, basically, we're flying at the same speed today as we did in 1950.   0:24:15.7 JD: 1950, yeah.   0:24:17.7 AS: There's been no advancement, and I can say flying back and forth from seeing Thailand and the US, there was a slight advancement where we had a plane that could fly from New York to Bangkok, but eventually they cancelled that because it was just too expensive and stuff, so it's like there really has been no... Maybe we hit the limit. And you could argue that when it comes to education, it should be quickly adopted if there's a new technology or a new way of acquiring knowledge, repetition or whatever that is, it's pretty quickly adopted, so it could be that we're at the... There's just so much that the human mind can take in.   0:24:55.2 JD: Well, yeah, I've heard that argument, and the second part too would be, to finish off that landmark trial thing is, in medicine where there have been landmark trials that it takes on average like 16 or 17 years for that landmark trial to then be sort of standard practice in practice by doctors and actual hospitals and clinics and even in that... In those sort of... Even when it hits that tipping point, that's far from majority...   0:25:23.3 AS: So you can tell the parents just wait 17 years.   0:25:28.6 JD: [laughter] And then we'll have this best practice for...   0:25:31.3 AS: I listened to somebody say that, We want you to make an investment in our education system, and the investment is your child. We'll do the best we can, but it's an investment, we're still learning and all that. So that brings me to the second part of the question is... And let's just say that education is mainly done through government in Thailand, in Asia, in Europe, in the US, I guess it's mainly done by government, but let's just say generally: Have we improved the way that we educate? Is there... I'm trying to ask it in a way that would be maybe a better way like... Okay. I don't know how to ask it, but I'll just say, like I said, my iPhone's improved tremendously. The camera that we're using on this, the microphone, the internet service that we're using to do this, all of these things have incrementally improved and at times made a major jump in improvement. And my question is, Has our ability to educate young people improved at the pace of other things or at a certain good pace?   0:26:50.2 JD: The way I would answer that is two parts, one, Have you ever heard of the Flynn effect?   0:26:56.9 AS: The what?   0:27:00.1 JD: The Flynn effect.   0:27:00.6 AS: No.   0:27:00.9 JD: Its name for the psychologist that discovered it. Flynn, F-L-Y-N-N. The fun fact is basically, this idea that IQs rose about three points per decade over the last century or so, I think I have that roughly right, in every population. So because of the modern world over the last 100 years has gotten more complex and there's sort of more to life that's like taking a standardized test. We've gotten better at that type of thinking over the last 100 years, so IQ has risen. So in that respect, we have gotten better, I guess, at least measures that purport to approximate whatever intelligence is. However, I don't think that we've closed gaps between groups. Those gaps that exist between different groups, performance wise, I think those... And that's sort of a key area of work for education reform movement that came out of A Nation at Risk. One of the things that people are working on is closing the achievement gaps between different groups, especially kids that are living in poverty, and their more affluent peers. I think those gaps, I think over time have been stubborn, because if you consider the Flynn effect, and that's not what's being measured on state exams, but when one group is going up and the other group is going up too, right.   0:28:45.7 JD: So both are relatively higher than, let's say, IQ scores were 50 years ago, but there's still this gap between groups. So again, it depends on exactly what you're talking about and determined what happened.   0:29:02.4 AS: And when I look at Asia, knowing the education system in Asia, first of all, over the last, let's say, 20 to 30 years, you have many, many families that have finally gotten their first kids into college, and you could argue that that's real advancement for that particular family and maybe for that society. The second thing is, you can see the culture in Asia still remains that education is very important, and so there's pressure from family and all of that in society, that it still is there, so whether American education is declining or improving, also you have to think of it in context of what's happening globally. And I think there's two ways to think about it. First is the quality of a country, ultimately the education of the people should have some effect on the quality of the country and the quality of life in that country. And then the second thing is that the position of that country in a global context should have some relationship to the level of education of that country. Those are just my ideas, it's not necessary something proven, but I feel like that could be true. So I wanna wrap this up a little bit, but how would you summarize what you want people to take away from this?   0:30:37.9 JD: Well, a lot of this stuff, there's sort of two counter-intuitive ideas here. When you look at these two reports that we were talking about, so on one hand, I don't think there's clear evidence that schools have been on a steady decline for the last, let's say 50 or 60 years going back to that, the early '60s that a Nation at Risk is talking about. However, on the other hand, I think that to achieve equitable outcomes for all students, that schools must undergo this transformation on an order of magnitude that's never really been seen or seldom seen in the history of organizations. And I think both reports are mostly looking at test scores and that's a pretty narrow definition of success, or there may be some uses there because we don't know how groups are doing and maybe where to allocate resources without some of those results, but they're definitely more of an inspection and in sorting mechanism than they are an improvement tool. So I think the other problem is, is that if there's this narrative that the nation is at risk, and then... Well, then you... You're saying that things are on the decline and then, Who do you blame for that decline?   0:32:12.9 JD: And I think what happened a lot in the last 40 years of the educational reform movement, deliberately non-deliberately, what happened was a lot of a brunt of that blame was placed on teachers and principals, the people that are working in schools. By the time Race to the Top comes out, using student test results in teacher and principal evaluations is sort of like part of getting the money that was there available through Race to the Top. And so I think my whole point with these types of reports is that, something like the Sandia report can have useful insights that maybe can facilitate some sound database decision-making, but so many times these reports come with these preconceived notions, political agendas, those types of things and the only way to make...   0:33:11.8 JD: To have a sound decision-making is if our education system sits on this solid philosophical foundation, and that's where I think Deming comes in, because if you have that foundation, you're not gonna make changes simply because of changes in test scores, you're gonna make changes based on whether or not something is principled and need to change according to the philosophy, and that's where I really see Deming coming in as this solid philosophical foundation, so it doesn't allow you to get swayed by a political agenda, it's a foundation that's grounded in principles, and so that's what I was thinking, we talk about in the next episode is: When you don't have those principles, what are some of the myths that emerge? And then when you identify those myths and can set those to the side, what are the principles that come in that then drive that transformation going forward. And I think Deming's work is at the center of that.   0:34:16.3 AS: And one of the things that makes me think about is: Can the system transform itself? And one of the ways to try to answer this question, it could be right, it could be wrong is, Is there an alternative solution for educating young people? And if there is, has there been an increase or decrease in people turning to that alternative? You could imagine that if there was a competing system and there was a huge outflow of people from one to another, then parents may say, Well, yeah, you guys can't measure what it is that is great output, but I can. That my student has homework that my child is learning, that my child is... Whatever their assessment is, and so there's someone outside, you could say the customer or the outside interested party just says, I vote with my feet. And I'm just curious, as we wrap up, Is there any knowledge that you have on what... Is there an alternative for government education in America? And has that been more or less popular over the last I don't know 10, 20 years?   0:35:31.0 JD: Yeah. Well, I'm gonna say the first part of your answer, I think your hypothesis, your instinct is right, is that you focused on the system. It's that focus on the system versus the focus on the individual, solely on the individuals within the system, like what was happening with the teacher and the principal evaluations and using the test data in those evaluations. So I think Deming said something like: He estimated that 94% of the problems in organization was due to the system, 6% special, and he meant 6% was maybe attributed to issues at the individual level. So the vast majority of the potential for improvement lies with the system. So I think that's what we're talking about here, the redesign of the system.   0:36:17.5 AS: And that also goes back to constancy of purpose, it also goes back to leadership. And is it possible that the system simply can't have constancy of purpose for political reasons or other reasons, and that... It's just a question I've never even thought about, but it is a challenge to think about, Is there constancy of purpose? Is there strong leadership without leadership...   0:36:45.5 JD: Yeah. There has to be fortitude there. Intestinal fortitude for sure. A strong leadership is a prerequisite. One of the things that Deming railed against was the transition, the frequent transitions amongst management leadership in the United States, because you do need that stability of leadership to maintain that focus on the aim that's guiding the system. So I think that is... That's sort of a part of the formula for success, for sure.   0:37:13.0 AS: I kind of interrupted you and you're, I think may be attempting to answer the question, Is there an alternative and has it grown or contracted?   0:37:22.0 JD: Well, so there's government-funded schools, that's traditional public schools, certainly where I am sitting in public charters, that's a government-funded school that has a slightly different governance structure. So that sector didn't exist 35 years ago, and so that now is maybe six or seven percent of the kids in the United States, something like that, attend a public charter school, and then the other component would be kids that attend a private school or are home schooled, now both of those, as I understand it, both of those populations of students rose sort of coming out of the pandemic, for sure. Yeah.   0:38:03.3 AS: Well, an interesting topic, and the original question is, Do we really need to transform our education system and maybe before... As we wrap up here. How would you answer that?   0:38:18.7 JD: So, yes, I think yes, but it's not for the reasons outlined in A Nation at Risk.   0:38:27.7 AS: Got it. John, on behalf of everyone at The Deming Institute, I wanna thank you again for this discussion. For listeners remember to go to Deming.org to continue your journey. 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."

In part 5 of this series, David and Andrew discuss the pitfalls of managers acting as judges versus the benefits of acting as a coach. They explore the history of traditional management practices, and how Dr. Deming's philosophy creates happier, healthier, and more productive workplaces. 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 discussion with David P. Langford, who has devoted his life to applying Dr. Deming's philosophy to education and he offers us his practical advice for implementation. The topic for today is: management through coaching and counseling. And as a reminder, we are reviewing the role of a manager of people in The New Economics that Dr. Deming wrote. And if you are in the third edition, this is on page 86, if you're in the second edition, this is on page 125. Now we've been through steps or the list, let's say, all the way up to number four was our last one, and now we're into number five. And what Dr. Deming says pretty short to the point, and that is the new manager, a transformed manager is a coach. He is coach and counsel, not a judge. David, take it away.   0:01:07.7 David Langford: Okay, thank you, Andrew. Yeah, so this seems like a pretty short point and pretty obvious on the surface, but the more you get into it, the more you start to really think about, Well, how do you do that on a daily basis? And once again, I'm applying all this to the field of education, so when we're talking about the management of people, we're talking about teachers, we're talking about principles, professors, we're talking about administrators, so we're not... It's not just corporate thinking that we're after here. So what does that mean managing through your, somebody's a coach and counselor? Well, why, I had to always think about Why did Deming say this? Why did he make that as a point? Well, through his lifetime, 80 years in applied management, he constantly saw people that were, sometimes is called Boss management. It's: either my way or the highway management. There were the years during World War II where there's military management, and if you didn't follow orders, you could be court marshaled, or shot or whatever. And so really after World War II, all those people in the military came back, and people who had been in the service went right back into management positions in corporations, and so what philosophy are they bringing back with them. Well, they're bringing back military management.   0:02:54.1 DL: It's my way or the highway kind of thinking. And all these phrases that have bounced around for the last 50, 60 years, you're not getting paid to think, you're getting paid to do. Well, Deming was just the opposite. He was always trying to get people to think. In the previous point, we spent quite a bit of time talking about creating training and learning for people, and on the job, all kinds of training and learning, not just things that are gonna help you with your job because you wanted people to think. And why. Why would he want people to think? Because that's where creativity comes from. You get everybody in an organization and you have a Thinking Organization going on, you've really got something fantastic happening.   0:03:48.8 DL: If you don't have that and you got boss management and everybody's just waiting around for the boss to tell them what to do, you're not gonna get creativity, you're not gonna get new thoughts. In fact, creativity gets shut down in a situation like that. I'll never forget, a friend of mine talked about working in an auto plant in California during the 1960s, and his job was to put in screws. And as the cars came by, he'd put in these screws and he kept noticing that the tool that he had to put the screws in was stripping the screws out every tenth screw or so. So he actually took his time to create a special little attachment and a tool to make sure that every screw that he put in would be perfect, and he wouldn't be stripping those screws out in these vehicles, and he was so excited that when his manager came around, he's shared with him this idea about...   0:04:50.2 DL: Look what I've done, I've created this tool that goes on the end of the rivet gun or whatever it is, and to make sure that the screws are always in perfectly. Well, he got in huge trouble. Manager just ate him out and one side down the other. You're not getting paid to think, you put it back on. And that was prominent thinking then and probably management thinking that Deming encountered in our auto industry and why the Japanese suddenly started beating us in the auto industry is because they had people that were thinking and not just doing. So Deming wanted... What does that mean for like a teacher? Well, you're trying to get students always to think on their own. I've helped teachers many times, especially young kids to come up with a flow chart with their students, what to do when you don't know what to do. And there's a lot of thought in that. Right. I have a whole flow chart, well, what do you do when you don't know what to do. Do you just sit around and goof around and bother other people? Do you... What happens in those kinds of situations?   0:06:11.5 DL: Or have you gone through a process to try to solve the problem yourself? I know after a couple of years of working like this with students in classrooms, I'd have students come up to me and they'd get ready to ask a question, and then they'd look at me and they'd go, never mind. I said, No, I'd say, No, wait a minute, don't leave, why don't you wanna ask your question? And... Well, I haven't really gone through the process of trying to solve it myself yet. Oh, okay, well, let me know how that goes. Because until you do that, you're not really thinking and you're not really... The neurons are not gonna connect in a pattern that next time around, you can actually think through and solve the problem yourself. And so there's steps to going through those things and getting students of all ages to be able to think and solve problems themselves, and unfortunately, we're not getting better at this in organizations, we are still reverting and going backwards in many cases, partly because once you become a manager, there's power in that and control. And if I think that people don't need me, does that make my job sort of worthless? Maybe I don't need to be there.   0:07:39.8 DL: Well, it's actually just the opposite, that if you have people taking autonomy, solving problems, figuring things out on their own, and when they come to you, you're giving them coaching and counseling. Have you thought about this, have you thought about this way? And what do you think would happen if you did this? And rather than judging them about it, you get people thinking on a higher level all the time. I'll never forget... I can't remember if I told the story or not, but the school district I was working in, in Texas, the State Board of Education asked me to come and speak to the state board and talk about what I was doing with the schools in Texas. And I said, Well, I won't come unless I can bring a hundred of my friends. And he said, What are you talking about? And I said, Well, I won't come unless I can bring some of these students that are already in classrooms functioning this way with Deming thinking. And he said, Oh yeah, that'd be great. We never get to see any students. Isn't that odd? State board of education never sees their customers. Anyway, so a school district brought a bus load students, and in that bus load of students was a teacher and her kindergarten, five and six-year-old students, and they had told me at the state board that I had 10 minutes to make a presentation.   0:09:16.3 DL: So I talked about 3 minutes, and it's about who was Deming and applied thinking, etcetera, and then I had these kids talk. Well, I'll never forget these kindergarten kids were at the microphones and they're talking about how autonomous they are in their classroom, how they solve their own problems, how they work together, how they support each other, they're just amazing. Going on and on. And one of the state board members says, "Now, I understand that you have a lot of control and responsibility in your classroom," and all these kids are shaking their heads, yes. And she said, "Well, if you have all this control and responsibility over what you do every day, what's your teacher doing?" And this little boy without hesitating grabbed a microphone and looked right at her, and he said, The teacher is not in the closet, you know. It was stun silence. There's like 300 people in the room, it's dead silence and you hear all those whispering, What did he just say? Deming said profound knowledge is not limited to age. At five and six, he knew that he'd had a coach and a counselor in the classroom, and he was able to do this and take this kind of responsibility because of the teacher, not in spite of the teacher.   0:10:44.4 DL: So if you're not allowing your students to take responsibility and own their own situation, then you can have a rebellion going on. And you might never even know it because it could be an underground rebellion going on.   0:11:00.1 AS: Yeah, by the time you know it, it's too late. I was just thinking about some of these words, just to make sure that we're super clear, like I was looking at the word coach online, and one dictionary says someone whose job is to teach people to improve at a sport or skill or a school subject. Another one was counsel, which is to give advice, especially on social or personal problems. Another one was judge: to form, give or have an opinion or decide about something or someone. And I'm also reminded of a very good book that I found helpful in the coaching space, written by Michael Bungay Stanier, and he has some questions, it's called The Coaching Habit, and he had the questions that being a coach, he said You should ask, what's on your mind? What else is on your mind? And another question is, what's the real challenge for you that you're facing? What do you want? How can I help? If you're saying yes to this, what are you saying no to? And what was the most useful for you in that process? So those are some of the words, and I'm just curious, can you really be a coach in school? Or do you need to be kind of authoritarian to control a classroom? That's one of the questions that I'm sure some people are like, Yeah, that sounds great, David.   0:12:24.9 AS: But my classroom is out of control and I've gotta really... I've gotta squeeze down here to get things together.   0:12:32.8 DL: We need some discipline around here.   0:12:34.8 AS: Exactly.   0:12:39.2 DL: Yeah, the beatings will continue around here until morale improves.   0:12:43.4 AS: Exactly.   0:12:43.5 DL: Yeah, exactly. Yeah, every time I hear educators talking about, Oh, we got a discipline plan, or these kids need more discipline or... Every generation says, These kids today, they don't understand discipline. And I often will tell teachers, have you ever looked up discipline in a dictionary? Most dictionaries, the first definition of discipline is training.   0:13:11.0 DL: So you have a discipline problem, Oh, you got a training problem. And that totally changes things, and it actually goes to Deming's point when he says, Don't sit around and judge people. Train people in the way that you want them to go and what you want them to do and how you want them to act and let them make decisions and... Don't just judge them and heap so many demerits, this is gonna happen to you, and three tardies equal an absence, and three absences is equal this, and that's judging people and you're not actually improving the situation at all. I just read an article that Los Angeles has a chronic absentee problem. Well, partly because nobody wants to go to school there, right? You're not gonna miss something you think is fun and you're involved in, and you're actually learning. Learning is the most motivating thing that could be happening, and if students are going to school and they're not learning, then why am I even bothering?   0:14:27.8 DL: Now, you can try to discipline by heaping judgments and punishments and all kinds of things on people, but the bottom line is people are gonna vote with their feet and they're just... They just don't wanna put up with it over time or they'll show up, they won't do anything, they won't learn anything, they won't get involved. And the thing is that we always wanna blame the people and not the system, and that's what Deming is talking about, not being a judge, stop judging and blaming the people in this system and start fixing the system. And you'll get a different result.   0:15:10.4 AS: I went on the dictionary again to look at discipline, once you said that, I'm your handy-dandy fact checker here, and in fact, the first word in the description in the dictionary is training, and it says, training that makes people more willing to obey or more willing or more able to control themselves.   0:15:30.7 DL: Yes, and that's ultimately what you're after is to get people to control themselves instead of you thinking that you have to do everything.   0:15:43.9 AS: Another way of looking at this too, is to think about, How would you like to be treated? I think one of the best questions in a job interview that I've learned to ask is, What's the best way to manage you? And sometimes, I'll ask it by saying, if I was to talk to your last boss and ask them, what's the best way to manage you, to get the most out of you? And then it's amazing what that opens up. Some people say, like for me, I often explain that I'm kind of an incrementalist, so if I have a project, I want to check that it's on track, and I wanna work on a bit of it at a time, and then go from there, whereas there's some other people like, Just leave me alone and I'll produce this thing at the end of the... And when a boss or a colleague understands that that's the way my mind works, then it's easier for them to understand that doing a project with me, it's better to have daily check-ins versus someone else that may not want that, so think about how you would describe yourself to your boss, to your administrator, and describe how you would like to be treated, and surprisingly, it may be the way you should be treating other people too.   0:17:04.0 DL: Yeah. So take that same thinking and translate it to a second grade classroom. Do you really know your students and know how to coach and counsel each of those students either collectively or separately? And rather than thinking that since I'm bigger and have a stronger voice, and I'm the authoritarian person here, I can just tell you what to do and if you don't do it, I'm just gonna make your life miserable until you do do it. It's not a really good way to manage, and...   0:17:36.1 AS: Yeah. I'm imagining a little kid saying, and a teacher in that classroom saying, So how do you learn? How do you learn to memorize something? And they say, I take the first letter and then I make a rhyme. Alice likes such and such, and then I sing it in my head, and then people are like, Wow, okay, I never even thought about doing it that way. I know for me, I write out, let's say the first letter of something that I wanna memorize and think about it as a neumonic, but the idea of sharing those things in classrooms, and that's one way to coach, Counsel and discuss.   0:18:16.0 DL: Well, when you hear athletes in interviews and there's great coaches and that these athletes have worked for and they say, what about this guy? What makes him a great coach? Invariably, they'll say things like, he's a teacher, or she's a teacher. And just an incredible teacher. So when you're a manager of people like that, like whole groups of people, whether in a classroom, a team or a company or whatever it might be, and over time, you are a coach and a counselor versus being a judge with people. What does that do for you? Well, when times of crisis do come along, Covid, whatever it might be, if you've trained people up well, discipline them to think and understand and to work well with each other and support each other to a very high degree, you are now capable of taking on challenges that just across the street, the same kind of organization, they can't cope with it, they just fold because they have no internal ability to work together to a high degree to support each other to get through a crisis kind of a situation.   0:19:34.9 AS: When I think about Coach, I think about my dad and my mom to some extent, because they kicked me out when I was 18, and they said, Go make it on your own, but the deal was at that point, that was when they stopped giving any advice, it's like, You gotta do it. And we don't have any right to say, No, you've gotta make it on your own. My parents were never big on advice, but what they did is they listened to me, and then they tried to understand and all that, but I don't really remember my parents giving me advice specifically, and I can say that I remember when I had a girlfriend a long time ago in Thailand and I had some difficulty in my life that was pretty bad. It was pretty tough. And she said, You know what did you do? And I said, Well, I called my dad. And she's like, You talk to your dad about something like that!?   0:20:27.9 DL: Oh, wow.   0:20:30.5 AS: Yeah, and I learned in Asian culture, dads are not necessarily as approachable as they may be in the Western culture, which was a real surprise to me because I had seen Asian families as being very, very close, but what I just recall is just the comfort of being able to talk honestly and openly about a problem that I was facing. That was half of the solution, right there is to get rid of the anxiety and then start to think through. And so from a coaching perspective, I feel like coaching and counseling is really all about listening.   0:21:10.5 DL: Yeah, you made me think about... I grew up on a farm, and my father intuitively understood a lot of these things, even though his father was never like that with him, but my dad would take me out, we'd go to, put in a new fence or would repair something or do something, and one of the first things he'd say is, Okay, now what are we trying to do here? And the first few times, I remember thinking, Oh, don't you know? [chuckle]   0:21:42.5 AS: Fixing this fence. What are you talking about?   0:21:43.5 DL: Right, that's right. But he was trying to get me to think, and then by the time I was like 15 years old, he could just send me out to go, Hey, go down there and fix that fence or put that fence in. And he knew it was gonna be done right and done well. Because he taught me to think about situations and work through it.   0:22:04.9 AS: Well, maybe I'll wrap up this topic by... First of all, I think highlighting... We're on point number five. And that's... These points that Dr. Deming has highlighted. There's 14 of them. It's different from The 14 Points. And remember, if you're in the third edition, this is on page 86 of the new economics, if you're in the second edition, it's on page 125, and before I summarize point number five, I do wanna go back to point number four because you highlighted that, the point about being an unceasing learner, and let's just review point number four. He is... So we're talking about the transform manager, he is an unceasing learner, he encourages people to study, he provides when possible and feasible seminars and courses for advancement of learning, he encourages continued education in college or university for people that are so inclined, and that brings us to number five, which we've just been wrapping up, and that is he is coach and counsel. Not a judge. You highlighted the idea that particularly coming out of World War II, when military management, boss management or this management style of trying to tell people what to do was brought back into American industry, and all of a sudden it didn't lead to the result that it was supposed to or maybe people didn't even think about that, but what Dr. Deming is trying to teach us is that you really wanna get people to think.   0:23:34.0 AS: Particularly I was thinking as you were talking about that, the idea of continual improvement in The 14 Points, he's talking about making a long-term commitment to continual improvement. You can't get to continual improvement if people are not thinking. And so that's where I think this coaching and counseling rather than judging, is all about getting people to think and getting people involved in it, and so you've raised some really interesting points in academic setting, such as talking with the kids and that type of thing, and getting them involved. Is there anything you'd add to this summary?   0:24:12.4 DL: No, I think that's basically it. And sometimes we think that it's so difficult to give up that power of controlling people and things and making all the decisions, but when you do give it up and you train and discipline people to know what to do, when they have that power, you see a level of performance and really a joy in learning and work at a level that you never thought was possible before. Over the years, I've seen teachers over and over and over, tell me just that, that... I'll say, How is it going this year? And then say, I'm having such a great time. This is the best year I've ever had in my whole career. And they say, Well, what's happening? He says, Well, everybody just seems happier because we all work together and support each other, and instead of the other way around that we use to work.   0:25:10.9 AS: Yeah, and that's a great way to end it by also just refocusing all of us on the point that there is always an opportunity to improve, and in order to see the next improvement down the road, we can't see it until we get through our latest work that we're doing that then opens our eyes to the next opportunity. So I really wanna challenge the listeners to be focused and remember there's always opportunity to improve. David, on behalf of everyone at the Deming Institute, I wanna thank you again for our discussion. For listeners, remember to go to Deming.org to continue your journey. Listeners can also learn more about David at Langfordlearning.com. 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.

Is there a secret weapon for improvement? Yes! John and Andrew discuss how students fit into improvement projects - and how that translates to businesses. TRANSCRIPT 0:00:02.0 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 discussion with John Dues, who is part of the new generation of educators striving to apply Dr. Deming's principles to unleash student joy in learning. The topic for today is "Engaging Students is the Secret Weapon for Improvement". John, take it away.   0:00:28.0 John Dues: Andrew, it's great to be back with you on the podcast. Yeah, this is sort of a revelation to me when I was working with... It's actually working with David Langford, and we were talking about, "How do you bring about improvement in schools," and at one point, he said to me, to kinda give it away at the top of the program here, "Students are sitting right in front of you, and they are the secret weapon when it comes to school improvement." Engaging them in those improvement processes is really the secret to improvement, because almost everything we want to improve in schools has to do with students, but we almost never directly engage them in this improvement process. It was so obvious they're sitting right there in front of me, but it wasn't until David said it that way that I said, "Oh, my gosh, all this time." Of course, as a classroom teacher or a principal, students were sometimes tangentially involved in improvement efforts, but how many times are they central to it, how many times do we put the data that we want to improve right in front of the students and elicit ideas for improvement as we watch that data move up and down over time? So it was a real sort of eye-opener for me to start thinking in that way.   0:01:50.8 AS: It's funny 'cause when I first started teaching many years ago, teaching finance, I was always worried that I would get a question that I couldn't answer. And what I came to learn from that was that a question that I couldn't answer is a great opportunity for a discussion. And then I would basically say, "Hmm, well, what do you think is the answer?" Now, in a way, I was playing a little bit of a trick 'cause I was deflecting the fact that I didn't have an answer. But I said, "What do you think? Okay, what do you think?" And then we started to construct and answer to that as best we could. And it took a lot of pressure off me because I realized that that discussion was a fine discussion to be had in the classroom around a topic that I wasn't exactly sure how to answer.   0:02:37.9 JD: Yeah, I think all of us try to hide our weaknesses, especially early on. We gain experience, it gets more comfortable to say, "I don't know," which is a fine thing to do as a experienced classroom teacher as well. And I'm thinking about in this context involving students, probably the best ideas for improvement are living right there with them, just like even if you didn't know the answer in your early classrooms, that sort of elicited a discussion that maybe was richer than it would have been otherwise. So I think, yeah in either case, involving students is a real sort of key to this improvement process, whether it's a single teacher in front of a classroom of college students in your case, or in my case, where we're trying to improve our system of schools.   0:03:30.7 AS: In my Valuation Master Class Boot Camp, which is like an online course, I have so much more flexibility than you have in high school. But I found one of the students was just really engaging and really supportive of the other students, so I hired him. And I said, "Why don't you become student experience? That's... Your job is about bringing that great student experience." And then whenever I kick off the Valuation Master Class Bootcamp, I ask prior graduates to come and speak and tell the students, give them some advice, and tell about the transformation that they went through in that course. So on the first day of class, they're inspired and encouraged, and then throughout the class, they've got a prior student guiding them and helping them get through where he knows are the most difficult parts. But you don't have that kind of flexibility, I would guess in your setting. Tell us more about that.   0:04:30.2 JD: Yeah, I think well, one I think that example that you just told is outstanding, and I actually think... I think it's a little bit of a misnomer. There are a lot of regulations, there are a lot of handcuffs on... To certain things in terms of what we can do and what we can't do. But actually we have fairly wide latitude. We're a small public charter school network, so we maybe even have more latitude than the typical traditional public school. We have the latitude of a district, so we're making decisions for district of schools, basically. And we're small, we're pretty nimble. We think innovation is pretty important. We think continual learning is important, and we put some processes in place to elicit that. Where there can be some roadblocks here and there, I think one of my jobs is actually find a way around those roadblocks, if they're in service of our mission and in service of helping students be educated at a higher level.   0:05:29.4 AS: So what I do is I ask the students at the end of the whole course, I say, "Tell me what you learned. What is the number-one thing that you took away," that type of thing. And I'm putting them in a pretty intense situation for six intense weeks, but then they've got a record of that, they've thought through that. And then when they come back, then they can share, "Here's what I went through, and here's my advice on how to get through it." And it is an idea in a school to say, having a list of the people who made it through the class on the wall.   0:06:03.4 AS: And then another idea is to find one or two students that would say... Come back and talk to the students to say, "Okay, this class is about American history, and the one thing that just lit me on fire is the story of Philip Sheridan when he was attacking... The US cavalry, was attacking the southern cavalry, and how he knocked out Jeb Stuart, and it just got me reading all this stuff from blah, blah, blah, blah, and then... " So, of course, that's big brainstorming, but that's an idea.   0:06:33.5 JD: Yeah, I think that... You said a six-week course. What you're describing is essentially that Plan-Do-Study-Act cycle, so I could see a scenario where in your six-week course where you run a PDSA on how are we gonna improve the class. And at the end, when you get to that act, you sort of decide with the class... What should I focus on for the next PDSA with the next class. And so in that way, you'd sort of be... Assuming you're re-teaching this class on an ongoing basis, you'd be sort of continually improving, and that's really the sort of... We talked about the Plan-Do-Study-Act cycle, the PDSA cycle, the last couple sessions, that's really what it is. It's where you leave off at the end of that cycle and you decide what you're gonna do next, feeds into that second cycle of improvement. So whether you called it that or not, it sounds like you're basically running PDSAs with the finance classes that you're teaching.   0:07:34.6 AS: Yeah. In fact, at the end of the class, I ask them another question, which is, what could we do to improve? And...   [chuckle]   0:07:43.3 JD: It's perfect.   0:07:45.5 AS: So the question... The problem that I faced was that the students said I want more one-on-one feedback, that they submit their assignment and they just get pass/fail or a grade and they don't get the feedback that they wanted. And really, I have to say, I was kind of upset about this reply because I felt like, "I can't do it, it's too many students," and my goal is to grow it so that I've got 100 or 500 students. How am I gonna scale it if it's about personal feedback? So we talked about it a lot for the next Boot Camp that came up, because we had seen this complaint coming up, and we came up with this idea. And I said, "Maybe... " And this... Part of this is talking to people like you and David Langford and others, maybe we need to do more work on clarifying the assignment. And so we went back and I said, "Look, every week we need to make it super clear on Monday what's the assignment for the week."   0:08:48.3 AS: And we even provided them kind of a score card of the way we're gonna look at it. "Did you do this? If you did that, you get a point. Did you do that? Did you check your grammar," whatever. And so we got much more clear, and then what we decided to do was to say, "Look, the teams will meet in the week, they always meet once a week, and they need to pick one or two people to present that on Friday." And then what we had is, we had the students present their work, just the best of the best, and I would say not the best of the best, but the ones that shows... Said, "I'm ready and I can do that," and then myself and my team gave them feedback after they presented, and said, "Okay, see that? Try to fix that. Make sure that you don't... " And then once we did that, what I then did is I took notes throughout those and recorded those, and then I improved again the description of the assignments and the common mistakes that people made. And so the next time that we did it, the next launch of the Valuation Master Class Bootcamp, we now had an even more clear focus on what you've got to do by the end of this week.   0:10:00.1 AS: And then finally, what I did is I called it Feedback Friday. And I said, "A whole week, we're working on a bunch of stuff but the end result is on Feedback Friday. One person, two people from your team is gonna present and you're gonna get critiqued and see how you do, and everybody's gonna watch that, it's gonna be recorded. Anybody can go through that." So we've been doing Feedback Friday now for three bootcamps and I would say all of the complaints related to feedback and not enough personal feedback are gone. And it wasn't through personal feedback that we resolved the issue of not getting enough personal feedback.   0:10:35.0 JD: Yeah. Well, that's a PDSA cycle for sure. Another thing I think of is what you... Sounds like you did over time as you iterated this class, and how you gave feedback, you actually found the actual root cause that was causing the problem. And the third thing I was thinking of, 'cause you talked about complaints, one thing we can do is overreact to complaints. So that's another thing that you could do is put the complaints on a process behavior chart, and if you get to a certain number, that might sort of signal that you have an issue. Otherwise, there may be an acceptable level... Number of complaints and... Or a third level analysis is, it's a stable number of complaints but the number is not acceptable to you as the instructor and so you wanna go about improving the whole system. It sounds like that's exactly what you did, sort of what we've talked about the last couple sessions, is you chart something, whether it's quantitative or qualitative data, you're keeping track of that, and then you're tagging it to this structured improvement process. And, yeah, it sounds like you're running the PDSA cycles for the class. It's pretty cool.   0:11:57.1 AS: That's a comforting message for the listeners and the viewers because what it tells you is that you don't have to be super official and have all of the tools that we learn from Dr. Deming's teachings that... First, is to start with the thought process. And my first thought process is, "I want my Valuation Master Class Bootcamp to be the best course in the world." That's all I want, just the best in the world, so I'm constantly wanting to improve. The second thing, I do not ever focus on competitors because my course is just so different, and all I focus on is the students. The third thing is I'm getting feedback on a consistent basis from the student about what they like and what it's worth to them. Because I also ask them, "Now that you understand exactly what's in the Valuation Master Class Bootcamp, what is the price that you think I should charge for this?" And my goal is that that price continues to rise as the perception of the value of the course rises. So I'm getting feedback, and then I'm looking at that feedback and I'm trying to identify what I think is the most important feedback that we've got to somehow resolve.   0:13:13.3 AS: And then I'm coming up with a theory that how, "Okay, wait a minute, if we clarify more about what we want, maybe that's gonna help, but even if we clarified our assignment, it wouldn't have helped the feedback. They still could have had the same problem of, "We're not getting any feedback." But then it was the idea of coming up with the Feedback Friday and really naming it. And that's what I've learned from the world of marketing and all that, is that you've got to name something and repeat it. And so all of that is... And then I keep wanting to repeat that process, which is why I love doing the bootcamp 'cause it's six weeks, every 10 weeks or so I do it again, and that gives us a perfect opportunity. And that's what teachers are doing, they're doing again and again, right?   0:13:53.9 JD: Yeah, yeah, and it makes me think... I'm obviously living in a different world than you in terms of who the students are and who the customer is. But we... In our network of schools, we have two elementary schools, two middle schools, and a lot of your description makes me think of this first ever PDSA cycle we ran a few years ago when we were working on an improvement project we called Eighth Grade On Track, which is just like what it sounds. How do we make sure that our eighth graders are on track to go to high school? We don't have a high school in our network, but we have a high school placement process. One of the things that parents expect of us is that their child is well-prepared to go to a good academically-oriented high school once they leave us, and, of course, high schools are also expecting that from us. So the parents are the customer expecting certain things from our schools. The high schools that we feed into are expecting certain things from our schools. So of course we can't fulfill our mission, we can't be an important part of that sort of education system, if we're not preparing our students to leave us as eighth graders and matriculate into a solid high school.   0:15:09.4 JD: And I remember working through, what does it mean to be on track in eighth grade to predict that you're gonna go on and be on track and do well in high school? One of the interesting things that, as I was reading some research out of the University of Chicago on this, was that when you look at students in middle school, you see grades start to drop that's actually a leading indicator of things to come in high school, which makes a lot of sense, 'cause if you start to experience academic issues in middle school, high school is a little harder, academically, plus some of the supports that are in place in elementary and middle school start to drop away so that makes perfect sense. Bs drop to Ds in middle school, and Ds drop to Fs in high school. And, man, if you're off track, even in your ninth grade year, students have a lot of trouble bouncing back from that. So I remember there was a student I was working with named James and this exact thing happened.   0:16:19.4 JD: I was looking at his grades, I was looking at his GPA, his attendance, his discipline record in sixth grade and everything was on track. In seventh grade, it was mostly on track. Things were looking pretty good. And then all of a sudden, here we are in the first trimester of eighth grade, and his reading grade dropped from a B in seventh grade all the way down to a D in that first trimester. In a lot of places, that's not gonna... Especially if the rest of his grades are pretty good, good attendance, he never was in trouble, he's not gonna get on a lot of people's radar. But we have this on-track system in place, so once we saw that data, our team, we said, "Wait a second, James was on track in sixth grade, on track in seventh grade, and now all of a sudden, he's off track in eighth grade," and we started asking why. So we're adults, we're sitting around the table in a conference room, "Why is James off track? Why is he off track in eighth grade? Well, his B in seventh grade dropped to a D."   0:17:25.8 JD: "Well, why is that? Why did that grade drop from B to D?" We're looking at his scores, and he's got pretty high reading test scores in his class. And then we look at his homework grade. His home grade's really low in his eighth grade reading class. And so then we asked this next question, "Why is James' eighth grade reading homework grade low?" And then we get stuck, and this goes back to this whole point of this episode, which is students are the improvement secret weapon. So we're sitting around this table and we say, "How do we figure this out? Why is his reading grade and homework grade, low? Let's go get it. Let's go get it." [chuckle]   0:18:10.5 AS: And for the people who are working in a manufacturing company listening to this, it's like sitting in your office above the factory...   0:18:19.1 JD: Exactly.   0:18:19.9 AS: And looking at the chart and thinking, "I wonder why this is happening."   0:18:24.0 JD: "Why this happening?" Yeah. So this is when the conversation gets really interesting. We had never done this before. We go get James on the spot from his eighth grade classroom and say, "Hey, we're doing this thing where we're just trying to figure out what's going on with your grades."   0:18:40.0 JD: We're asking some "why" questions. We're basically using the 5 why tool, we have a piece of chart paper and listing these things out, and so now we've invited him into the room, we just say, "Why is your reading homework grade low?" And he says, "Well, I really do the easier less-time-consuming homework first, math and science and history are fairly easy for me. So I do those first." A pretty typical answer from an eighth grade boy, and so what he's basically saying is he does his reading homework last, "Well, why do you do your reading homework last?"   0:19:28.9 JD: "Well, I don't like doing my reading homework, it's too much work." "Why do you dislike doing your reading homework?" "It's too much work. It takes too much time. I wait to the last possible moment." And we said, "Well, what is the last possible moment mean?" And he said, "Well, I usually not only do it last, I do it on the bus ride to school in the morning." It's dark. It's bumpy. That's the worst possible place to do the hardest homework, but that's what he's doing 'cause he does wanna get it done, he wants to turn in something, but he's not putting any type of effort, so now what we've uncovered is, why is it exactly that his homework grade is low?   0:20:02.9 JD: Now, if I was just an administrator sitting in my office, I could see that D and say, "James needs to go to after school tutoring," or "James needs to do this," or "James news to do that." But none of that, like what you were talking about with the student complaints in your class, none of that would have been the actual root cause of James' reading homework problem. So then we said, "Okay, now we know what the problem is, what are we gonna do about it?"   0:20:35.6 JD: And I had just learned about this Plan-Do-Study-Act cycle thing, and I said, "Well, let's sit down and write... Literally write out a simple PDSA with James." And the basic question was, if we could do reading homework first, could we raise that homework grade to at least a 70%? So we kinda looked at what his homework grade had been and what he needed to do to pass, and so that's what we settled on. We said, "James, what do you think about doing your reading Homework first?" And again, typical eighth grader here's where some of the psychology comes in, he says, "I don't know...   0:21:09.6 JD: I don't know if I really wanna do this. I don't think it's gonna work. I hate reading, I hate my reading homework," I said, "James, I hate getting up in the morning and running, but when I do it... When I get myself to do it, I feel better." He said, "Oh yeah okay, I could buy that." And I said, "Could you try this for just five days," and he looked at me, he kind of nods and I said, "No," I literally got up out of my chair, he got up out of his chair to go back to class and I said, "I need you to look me in the eye and shake my hand and tell me you can do this for five days." And he said, "Sure, I think I can do this."   0:21:54.1 JD: He said, "At the end of the day, when I'm sitting in my homeroom class, when we work on homework... Do you mind if I sort of sit in the back of the room so I can concentrate better?" "No problem. Great." So we write this down for the next five days, James is gonna work on is reading homework first, we tell the teacher that's in the homeroom so she can check to make sure he's actually doing that, and then we talked to the reading teacher and said, "Hey, can you give us James' last five assignments in reading and can you put the next five in this table to see if this is working." So just over the next five days, he does this, I check in with his homeroom teacher... Yep, he's working on his homework at the kidney table back in the back of the room.   0:22:33.5 JD: And then we start seeing the data come in, so whereas... Right before this intervention, it's one out of five, that's a 20%, three out of five, that's a 60%, three out of five... Those types of grades. First homework comes in five out of five, second homework comes in a three out of five. It's gonna take some time. Then it's 6.75 out of 10, it's five out of five, four out of five. And you start seeing this sort of momentum building, and after five days, he not only has a C on those assignments, he's very nearly got a B. And so we're studying this. And we're saying, "This seems like it's working pretty well." He sort of out-did even our predictions, and so we go to him and say, "What do you think about this sort of reading homework-first intervention?" And he says, "Yeah, it's going pretty well."   0:23:27.3 JD: "You're gonna keep doing it?" "Yeah, let's keep doing it." We design a second PDSA, We're gonna check in in two weeks now, so you can kinda see how this process goes, you create this very small plan, the student was hesitant, but he gave really great answers, insights into why his grade was low, he helped develop the plan, so now he's intrinsically motivated, 'cause this wasn't something that we did to him, we did it with him, and he's starting to get some momentum, he had some immediate success.   0:24:06.7 JD: And so you can see even just the small little change had this huge impact on this kid, and then he starts to build this momentum, and this has really changed a lot about how we approach changes, whereas before we'd sit in a room and plan, plan, plan, plan, plan, and then you go implement, you're like, "Oh man, I wasn't expecting this to happen, I wasn't expecting this to happen, I wasn't expecting this... " In five days, we went and saw "What would happen if we put this plan in place," and it worked pretty well, and all of a sudden we're gonna do it for 10 days instead of instead of five days.   0:24:40.3 AS: So let's just break it down for the... For the listeners to understand, we often talk about PDSA and all that, I think the first lesson that I would take from what you've said is that, yes, it can be a formal thing where we sit down and write down Plan-Do-Study-Act, and we go through it in a formal way, but it can also be just an informal process that we go through, but let's just break it down. They'll... Explain to us, P-D-S-A, how does that break down for this specific thing?   0:25:14.1 JD: Yeah, so the P would be the plan. And so I think the important thing to keep in mind here, is one... We wrote it down. You know, that sounds simple, but that's a big first step. We wrote the plan down, we made a prediction, we said, if James does this reading homework-first intervention, we predict that he'll have a 70% or higher on each of his homework assignments over the next five days, so we've quantified what we think is gonna happen. Then it's just the who, what, where, when, and of the plan. So it was literally like on March 22nd, 23rd, 26th, 27th and 28th.   0:25:54.7 JD: So on the next five school days, James is gonna work at the back kidney table, he's gonna work on his reading homework first, his homeroom teacher, Ms. Kramer, she knows that this plan is being put in place and she's just gonna check that he is working on his reading homework and then his reading teacher who is. Dr. Brennan, she said, "I'll record his homework scores as I get them over the course of each of those five days, so we can see if this is in fact having the sort of success that we think it is." So the plan is our hunch, it's really our theory about how we're gonna improve James' reading grade, but we don't know if that's actually connected to the real world in terms of if it's gonna be successful or not, until we actually put it in place. So we made a prediction, we made a plan that plan included who's doing what, when, and then it also included a plan for collecting just a little bit of data to see if this PDSA is on track so that's the P, the plan.   0:27:03.9 JD: In terms of the Do then after those five days, we just came back together as a team and just said, "What actually happened? Did James go and sit at the back kidney table? Did he do that each of the five days? Did he work on his reading homework first?" And it actually... This is a pretty simple plan and it's only over the course of five days, so in terms of implementation, the Do, everything matched exactly with what we put in the plan, and part of that is because the plan was simple, straight forward and on a really, really, really short time frame.   0:27:43.1 AS: So that is him doing the plan executing the plan.   0:27:44.4 JD: Us running the tests. Yeah us running the tests. Now on the study, the difference between the Do and the Study is the Study has... That the plan has been run, the test has been run, and now we have the data in and so we looked at what happened for the five days before we started the study, and over the course of those five days, he had gotten a 53% average on his homework on those five days pre-intervention, after the intervention began over those next five days, he earned a 79% average on his homework, and that 79% was 9% higher than what we had predicted, so the intervention actually went better than we thought at the outset, so that gives us evidence...   0:28:36.1 JD: That one, we know what we're doing in terms of creating the plan in the first place, and two, that the implementation can actually be put into effect in a real school, in real classrooms, with all the constraints that you have with time and all that, all that stuff. And I think another big thing besides writing it down, besides having the structure of this PDSA, we had James, we had James there, so I think it was a pretty good plan because of that. And so...   0:29:01.6 AS: And then, so what happened? Okay, so we've got the Study and what about Act? What does act mean in this case?   0:29:09.3 JD: Yeah, I think I mentioned this in one of the last two podcasts that when I think of Act, I'm gonna do one of three As, I'm gonna either Abandon the idea that we put in place 'cause it didn't go so well, I'm going to Adapt the idea 'cause some of it went pretty well, but maybe there are some things that need to be tweaked or iterated on, or I'm gonna Adopt it, this intervention went so well that it's gonna become a part of my system.   0:29:41.3 JD: So in this case, because we've only done this over five days and it was successful, but that's a pretty short time period, now we're gonna adapt it, we're gonna adapt it. And in this case, we're gonna... We call this thing reading homework first, that's the name of the intervention or change idea. Now, instead of five days, we're gonna do this for 10 days, and then one other piece of the Act is going back to the appreciation for a system component, that you can improve one part of a system and destroy the rest of it, that sort of idea. We're focused on reading. And everything else was pretty good when we started this focus, but we wanna look at James' whole system. In this case, we're talking about grades, so we're not gonna do sight of writing class and math class, and science and social studies, those types of things, because we're all focused only on reading, so we added that as a sort of a second component to the second cycle so we're gonna run a little longer. We're also gonna add his other grades to the data we're collecting just to make sure that those things stay on track.   0:30:53.4 AS: And one of the lessons I've learned, John, in the stock market where I basically spent most of my life is that you have to also double-check that your process didn't go wrong in some particular area or is biased, for instance, just the fact that we're paying attention to James... And maybe the teacher is gonna grade things slightly different now because they know that we're looking and we're trying for improvement, and so you also have to ask questions and try to understand where the biases are because you may come to a conclusion, "Wow, this is great." And then you wanna think, "I'm gonna apply this more across more students or across more systems," and then you find out that it starts to fail and why does it fail because there was some kind of fatal flaw in the process. Do you have any thoughts on that?   0:31:43.1 JD: Yeah, I think that goes back that I think... Something we've talked about very early-on in this series, maybe in episode one or two. This idea is there are goals for accountability and then there's goals for improvement, and I think... Now bias can happen at any point, for sure, because we are paying attention to this more, but when you're in a system and the goals are accountability-focused, you're much more likely to get that sort of nefarious or "I'm gonna change my behavior, maybe not in the best way, because I have to meet this goal - my job's at stake, or... "   0:32:30.2 AS: In other words, when you talk about goals for accountability, let's say that you went to that teacher and said, "You're gonna get a bonus if this one particular case is able to really improve." Okay, now you've brought in a whole another element into this thing.   0:32:41.1 JD: Yeah, that would be the carrot side or the stick side, you know, "If this kid's homework doesn't improve, you're gonna get a bad rating." Something like that, and that... Like I said, I think there's still always potential for bias or doing some things subconsciously in terms of how hard your grading him or something like that, but I think it's much less likely to happen if we're sitting down and saying as a group, "Hey, what can we do to improve James' approach to reading class?" Versus those things that we just talked about, whether it's a carrot or a stick, a ranking that could be impacted, those types of things.   0:33:20.1 JD: I think in focusing on improvement-oriented goals, you're much less likely to sort of see that... See that type of behavior. I think a lot of it goes back to what's the aim, what's the aim or objective of the PDSA, what's the aim of your system in general, what's the orientation you have in terms of how you manage as a principal, the teachers or the teachers managing the students, I think that's where you have to be careful. And this sort of improvement orientation, I think helps overall rating and ranking accountability-driven system.   0:33:58.4 AS: So let me try to summarize a little bit about what we've talked about, and for the listeners, this is kind of our way of trying to make sure that we all learn from what John's sharing here. So the first thing you were telling the story about how it's important when eighth graders leave because you're preparing them for high school, and you talked about the idea of being on track and when somebody starts to fall that it's hard to bounce back, and then you identified James.   0:34:26.8 AS: And then you said, "Okay, we saw something sliding there from a B to a D, and that was his reading grade," and you thought, "What could we do about this?" And your first reaction was to sit back in your offices looking at the data and thinking about it, but instead you say, "Well, let's just bring him in here and talk to him." So this is the secret weapon you're talking about is getting the student involved, then you went through a PDSA, so let's just try to review that briefly, so the plan is, you guys came up with an idea and you wrote it down, and you had...   0:34:58.6 AS: Like who, what, where, when? So that it was clear what was gonna be done, also you made a prediction, because if you don't make a prediction, you don't have some sort of theory, it's very difficult to really understand what happened, and as Dr Deming says, "Without a theory, there is no knowledge." And you also had a plan for collecting the data too, to make sure that you had that. Then Do, meaning that you ran the tests and James did what was planned... In this case, it went well, 'cause he actually did it, and then after that, you have to Study where...   0:35:36.1 AS: After the test was run, so the test has to be run first, the Do has to happen first, then you started to compare the outcome to your prediction, and as you said, it was slightly better than the prediction that you had made, and then you came to the Act section, where you had to think, "Well, do I abandon... " "Do we abandon this? Do we adapt it? Or do we adopt it?" And part of what you said was that it's about adapting a little bit, maybe and saying, "Okay, what we've... " "We've identified this as reading homework first, maybe now we're gonna test that on a 10-day basis," but you also had to think about it.   0:36:07.9 AS: This is a critical part, you had to think holistically, you had to think systems thinking, because your objective was not to increase the performance in one area at the cost of another, so you had to look at it holistically, and finally, we talked about the risks that something like, this can go wrong. And if you're tying goals to accountability to the people involved, and all of a sudden they're being punished or rewarded based upon the outcome of that result, it's gonna be much more risk that it's not gonna go properly compared to looking at goals for improvement, anything that you would add to that?   0:36:45.2 JD: I think that was a really perfect summary. I think it was spot on. Spot on and the only thing I'd say is not every PDSA is gonna work that smoothly, I think, but it illustrates the key points of what a PDSA is, how simple it can be, how to connect ideas that are sort of in the universe to reality, what actually happens in actual classrooms and schools when you try something. I think that's the power of the PDSA. I think you nailed it in your summary.   0:37:17.2 AS: So ladies and gentlemen, now it's your turn. What's something that you can do a PDSA on, just like John has described to us? And what improvements could that bring, and most importantly for the teachers and the administrators out there, my question to you is, do you realize that engaging students is the secret weapon for improvement? John, on behalf of everyone at the Deming Institute, I wanna thank you again for this discussion and for listeners remember to go to deming.org to continue your journey. This is your host, Andrew Stotz, and I'll leave you with one of my favorite quotes from Dr. Deming, and that is people are entitled to joy in work.  

What's the difference between "perfect" and "that will work?" We use them interchangeably all the time. In this episode, Bill and Andrew discuss what "perfect" means and why it's standing in the way of innovation and improvement at work and at home.  TRANSCRIPT 0:00:02.8 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. The topic for today is The End of Perfection. Bill take it away.   0:00:29.0 Bill Bellows: The finish line of perfection. [laughter] Andrew, here we are, session four. And welcome to our audience.   0:00:39.7 AS: Yeah.   0:00:43.0 BB: And the end of perfection is a topic of a number of presentations that I've done for The Deming Institute and for others. Part of the reason it's on our list is a focus, is that I come across people who are improvement specialists, continuous improvement zealots, specialists, professionals who speak in terms of striving for perfection. And I just start sort of become... Actually, for some time now I've been bothered by that concept, but so let me just say, if I walk into a hardware store where you work, Andrew, and I'm looking for a bolt or something, some tool, something for some project I'm working on, and I'm just hoping you have it. And I come up to you and you say, How can you help me? And I say, I'm looking for this, and you bring me over. And again, I'm just praying that you've got it. And you say, Is this what you're looking for? And I say, perfect. Oh man, I am so excited. I don't have to run across town. You've got what I'm looking for. Perfect.   0:01:52.8 AS: So easily pleased.   0:01:55.5 BB: Yeah, but when I say perfect, what I'm saying is that's exactly what I'm looking for. I'm not saying it's the best saw blade ever known to man, beyond which they'll never be a better one. So I look in terms of casually, I hear the reference, the context of perfection being exactly what I'm looking for versus as lean professionals will use it and other continuous improvement professionals use it, they're implying perfect means you can't go past that point. It's a... And so what it means, Andrew, is that continuous improvement stops at perfection.   0:02:46.5 AS: There's an event horizon.   0:02:49.4 BB: And that I have a problem with. And so what I like to say that people is... Again, I don't have a problem with... I walk into the hardware, I would call it lower case perfect, small p, not capital P. Capital P, I don't believe exist, or I would say to people, you can't believe in continuous improvement and capital P perfection. And people will say, "Well, Bill, but we're... When Toyota's striving in pursuit of perfection, they're implying that, we'll never get there." I say, I don't believe there exists. And I said, it's like getting in the car saying, are we there yet? Are we there yet? So I would say a mindset of capital P perfection is the antithesis of continuous improvement.   0:03:41.2 BB: And why is that important? 'Cause I think there are incredible opportunities for improvement in any organization. I'm not saying they're all worthwhile to pursue, they have to be worthwhile, meaning the benefits from it have to offset the investment of time and energy, so I'm not saying we should improve everything in the organization. And that mind set exist. That is alive and well, that we can improve everything, we can improve everything. I say, when... People don't improve every aspect of their home, they improve bathrooms and kitchens, 'cause that's the highest return. And so likewise, we have a... I think there are people out there in their personal lives of a very pragmatic sense of we don't improve everything. So I think that's understood, but I think there's some confusion. So there, I just wanna say that capital P perfection, I challenge what that means, but where I wanna go next is how that mindset comes about and how prevalent it is. And in a future session, we're gonna talk more about this, but I just wanna hit the word perfection today. I gave some examples of where that thinking comes from. So we were talking earlier of, that Dr. Deming's Red Bead Experiment, and we appreciate, Andrew and I appreciate there are people in the audience that are wondering Red Bead Experiment, what is that all about? Another is saying, I've got a red bead kit right here in my office.   0:05:11.6 AS: Exactly.   0:05:14.3 BB: In fact, I've got a red bead kit right... Two kits right behind me.   0:05:18.0 AS: So for those people that don't know, Red Bead Experiment, we have that on The Deming Institute website. You just type in Deming Red Bead Experiment, and you can get there. There's videos also on the YouTube channel and in DemingNEXT, so there's a lot of resources and of course, there's also other people that are doing it. But for those people that know it, we've decided we're not gonna go through all the details of it, but rather talk about it.   0:05:44.1 BB: Yeah, so as a refresher for those who are familiar with it, and again, if this is brand new to you, then the suggestion is you pause here, go watch the videos on Deming Institute's web page and then come back and join us. But for those who are familiar with it, Dr. Deming, came up with this. I think someone at Hewlett-Packard exposed it to them him in the early '80s, and the way Dr. Deming had run the Red Bead Experiment as it's called, is he'd have a bowl with roughly 4000 beads that are you used to make a necklace, very small beads, maybe an 8th of an inch in diameter. And then the bowl would be mostly small white beads, and then roughly 20% red. Same diameter, roughly, again, about an 8th of an inch, and he would start off by having the beads, the mixture, and one bowl poured into another to mix them up and then pour them back into the other bowl, and then he'd have willing workers from the audience one at a time come up and put a paddle in. And the paddle is maybe the size of a 3 inch by 5 inch pad. And he put a paddle in with small holes. In those holes, the beads would collect. And in a given paddle, there would be 50 divots for the beads to collect, and so the workers with Dr. Deming's instructions would put the paddle in, shake it a little bit, remove the paddle, go to inspector number one, who would count how many red beads are in the paddle, go to inspector number two, count how many red beads, and then they'd be announced, the total is 13 red beads.   0:07:37.2 BB: Andrew, dismissed. Next worker. And so he would go through and have one worker at a time, go through this four or five times, each time being, say, a day of production. So what are red beads? What's implied in... Again, there's a chapter in The New Economics on the Red Bead experiment. The implications is red bead are defects, things the customer doesn't want, the customer wants white beads. So what are the red beads? Things that don't meet requirements: scrap, rework, defects. And if we go back to last our previous sessions, the difference between white beads and red beads is, question one, white beads meet requirements, they are good. Red beads don't meet requirements, they are bad. And so in the Red Bead experiment, Dr. Deming would go through and collect data from four workers, perhaps four times each, and the data being a spreadsheet, and then he looked row by row and point out there's highs and lows in the number of red beads in he'd start...Dr. Deming as the manager of this white bead factory, would start to berate the workers who created more red beads as if they did it all by themselves. And so the punch line, the reminder punch line for those who have seen this before, what Dr. Deming, what he was doing was blaming the workers for the red beads.   0:09:04.8 BB: And the workers had no choice but to think that they were causing the white beads. And so one of the big takeaways for people in the Deming community who really love the Bed Bead experiment is that the red beads are not caused by the workers, they are caused by the system, which includes the supplier of the red beads and the white beads, the instructions, the bowl, the paddle, the worker, the instructions. And you don't blame the workers separately, and so that becomes a really big takeaway. Well, where I would like to go with this beyond that, what I like doing in an audience or a class in a university class is we'll get to the point of collecting the red bead data, the number of red beads per day per worker, and we'll move it from a control... From a run chart to a control chart. We'll will calculate control elements, we'll talk about common cause variation, and the idea that the system is most likely not gonna produce special causes because the system is semi-closed, unless there's an earthquake and the paddle is broken or something like that.   0:10:18.0 BB: Well, the question I'd like to ask people is, now we appreciate that the red beads are caused by the workers... Are caused by the system which includes workers. But what I like to ask is, is your understanding of the Deming philosophy that the objective everywhere in the organization is to strive to eliminate all the red beads everywhere in the system, which can include going to suppliers, no longer buying them, working with their suppliers? And so I just like to ask people this, and I've had a couple of hundred people in the room and I'd just say, is that what you think where Dr. Deming is talking about, that the objective, one, is to understand that red beads are caused by the system, not the worker, but then we go the next step and say, let's strive to eliminate all the white beads everywhere, and if we do achieve that, are we done?   0:11:10.8 AS: Right. Wipe out all red beads everywhere?   0:11:12.8 BB: I'm sorry. Wipe out all the red beads everywhere? Are we done? Have we achieve perfection? And people will say... Or I'd say, but simultaneously Dr. Deming told us about the value proposition of continuous improvement. So then I'll say to the audience, do we stop at a 100% white beads, or can we improve? And if we can improve, what does that mean? And then we get, we can make them faster. I say, Okay, fine. We can make them cheaper. I say fine. I said, but can we make them better? And then people will say, "Well, we can make them faster," and I I'd say fine, we can make them cheaper, and I'd I say fine. And we're going around, around, and they'll say, everything can be improved. And I say, well, but how do you improve the white beads once they're all white? And people will say, you can always have a better mouse trap. Then I'll hold up the beads, and I say, I'm not talking about a better mouse trap, I'm saying, these beads, you can't get any... So what I love about the red bead experiment is, it's not a mouse trap with springs and wires, it's a really simple... It's just a bead.   0:12:24.4 BB: We've got white ones and red ones, how can you make the white beads better once they're all white? Now they're stumped. They are stumped, and they are... And when I lead them to... And this is the part of the Red Bead experiment that I enjoy is this piece, and the punch line is, it comes from what I learned from Dr. Taguchi is that the white beads are not uniformly white, they actually have different shades of white, which is question two, they have different diameters, which is question two, different weights, and point out that you can continuously improve the white beads once you understand that there's, questions two, that there's degrees of white degrees of diameters and things like that. And the idea being that in order to understand why that variation matters, now we get to what we look at the end of module three is we have to look at how the beads are used.   0:13:33.9 AS: And just to summarize, question one is, does it meet requirements, I think is right?   0:13:38.6 BB: Yes. Question one is does it meet requirements? Is it white or is it red. Well, it's white.   0:13:45.0 AS: Yep. So that was a fine...   0:13:48.1 BB: Good question.   0:13:49.5 AS: That was a definite or yes or no answer, as you said. So...   0:13:54.7 BB: Absolutely. That is a question one, does it meet requirements. Yes or no. Black and white thinking, we also talked about it. Question two is, there's shades of grey. And in this case, there's shades of white, there's shade... They're different diameters. And now we begin to understand, again, that the impact of different diameters and different shades shows up in how they're used, in terms of how they're used to make a necklace or however they're being used by the person downstream. And so at the end of module three, we talked about what are the types of things we could do at the end of module three to help people begin to understand the implications for Dr. Deming's work. And is go downstream and see how your work is being used. So instead of striving to make sure all you send downstream is white beads, not red beads... Again, I'm not underestimating the value proposition of getting to that point. But what I'm saying is, that's not perfection. Actually, if you look at it as perfection, then we say we are done, now let's go elsewhere, get all the red beads done and get the white. So the strategy is to... I think the overall strategy is, what's the best use of our time? Is it going from some red to all white, or is it going from all white to then look at the variation in the white, which is then looking at what are the opportunities for improving the organization by looking at how the beads are used?   0:15:28.4 AS: And if we think about this, it made me think like, let's just say that somebody's implementing Deming's teachings, and they've done a lot of great work to get down to that point of, let's say eliminating red beads, we've rooted out the red beads, and there is a huge gain there for the organization, for the customer, for costs and all of that. So you could even say that in some ways, that that's what they call the low-hanging fruit, but what's fascinating that you've talked about is going through the looking glass to the other side, and now you go to the step further where you have... It seems like it's incrementally not worth it, in some cases, because it's just tinkering around with something that's pretty close enough, but yet, if you go deeper to that, it's very possible that you reach a level of precision that brings an exponential improvement, not only in the system, but also in the outcome and also in the competitive position relative to your peers.   0:16:38.4 BB: A few things on what you just said, one, is... And I really like the metaphor you're using, and I like to say that people is that you have no idea what's on the other side of the doorway. So question one is getting to the point of, we want all the beads to be white, and then we're done. That's perfection. And so what I'm saying, there's more, there's more, and the more is going through the doorway and beginning to look at how are the beads used and what opportunities are there. But right, there's this economic sense of diminishing returns and measuring returns. I'd tell you, the excitement you're hearing is that I've seen so many situations where the gains are so significant for such a small additional effort, that I no longer... This idea that we run out of opportunities for improving. Nonsense, absolutely nonsense. What I say to people is, if you don't look, you won't find. If you do look, there's no guarantee, but also, as I said, there's three things, One is get to the doorway and move through the doorway and look at the variation in the white beads, and that gets us beyond perfection into the world of continuous...   0:18:06.8 BB: For the time, we'll call it continuous improvement. In a later session, we'll switch to continuous investment. And the reason I call it that investment is that it has to be worthwhile. We don't improve to improve, we improve because the gain we get in the marketplace, economically, market share, has to be more than what we're putting into the effort. It's gotta be worthwhile. But the other thing I wanna say is, I've seen people strive to make things... Well, just, I will save this for later. There's a lot more than meets the eye when it comes to everything being good. And again, which is why we've been talking for four sessions now about question one and question two, and the idea that I've not seen anywhere in quality management, let alone management, period, an appreciation of question two, whether it's program management, have the requirements for that task been done? In program management, they'll talk about red, yellow, green, green is good. We passed the floor. What does green mean? Mean green is good. So even in the world of program management, I see the same mindset of striving for everything being good, missing opportunities to manage the variation of things that are good to improve integration. And ultimately, everything has to integrate.   0:19:46.0 AS: Yeah, it's making me think a lot about the idea of once you get through the doorway, through the looking glass to the other side, that you're now really investigating what's happening further on down, and you may even find that the requirements, that the setting actually can be improved, then maybe they didn't even come with improved requirements 'cause they thought, Well, you can't even meet the requirements I've given you, so forget it. But then you just see that opportunities start to open up. And I think the other thing that...   0:20:21.6 AS: I remember a light bulb going off in my head about the Plan-Do-Study-Act, and thinking about it a lot and thinking about if you were to do a Plan-Do-Study-Act on one particular operation in a business, and let's say that you did it properly where you did it, you learn new information and you incorporate that information into the training manual for the people that are working in that operation, then you do another Plan-Do-Study-Act, and then you again, improve and then codify that in training. Then you do it again, and then you codify that in the training, so that you're never going back, number one, so you're never making prior mistakes, and you're bringing your operation to a higher and higher and higher level. Let's say you go through 10 iterations of that. The fact is that you've got all kinds of different improvements that have happened, but the biggest improvement is you have acquired knowledge in your company that your competitor doesn't have.   0:21:26.9 BB: Well, and let me add to that. Again, in the world of: if you don't look, you won't find, and if you do look, there's no guarantee, I've seen many a PDSA effort lead us in a direction we were not expecting, which can be disheartening. And essentially what you're discovering is not what you plan to discover. [chuckle] And I've seen people kind of fall off the horse because we discover something in the experiment... We discover something in the PDSA process which we never knew about, which turns out to be vital information, but because it wasn't what we were looking for, there's a disappointment more than a chagrin, of "darn." It's like we're using this piece of equipment, and we're trying to improve the equipment and in the process, we find out there's something wrong with how it's plugged in. Well, now, we know that. And so I've seen PDSA efforts result in great improvements, I've also seen the result and great learning. What do I mean by learning? From Russ Ackoff. Russ would say, learning is what happens when things don't go as planned. And what does that mean? It means there's financial pain, 'cause we spent a whole lot of time not expecting...   0:23:01.9 BB: Yeah, It just we fall flat. I've fallen off my bike. And as a result, changed how I ride my bike, which is a learning process. Ended up in physical therapy for months. So I say to people, learning could be financially painful, emotionally painful, physically painful, but improvement requires learning. Ackoff would say, "If we're not learning," which means making mistakes, "then how can we improve without that?" So you have to have a mindset. I think where we're coming from is, we wanna go through that doorway, we wanna continuously look for opportunities to improve, but we have to also be mindful. Let me throw another Deming quote based on what you were saying earlier. Dr. Deming would say, "The bigger the system, the more complicated to manage." So we can keep it really, really small. Deming says, "The bigger the system, the more complicated to manage, but the more opportunities... " Well, the reason I wanna throw that out to our viewers is, you may have... I've seen people focus on little things, little things, little things, and unknowingly create big trouble over here that they couldn't see. But what I don't want them to do is use that to become gun-shy that we shouldn't change anything.   0:24:25.6 BB: It's just the idea that don't underestimate how connected these aspects of the system are. Now, we go back to learning. And so it takes... It's so easy, Andrew, to just stop at the doorway, to stop at all white beads, to not go downstream and see how people use our work. What differentiates the Deming philosophy from all the others is going through the doorway, realizing that the white beads... The Red beads are not caused by the workers, they are caused by the system. But also realizing there are opportunities to improve the system, and you can't talk about system without asking how are the beads used?   0:25:08.9 AS: Yup. When I think about what you've described, to get to the door, that, I guess what I'm thinking about is, what do we call that? I wrote down some notes when you were talking, I said System of Profound Knowledge, implementation, improvement.   0:25:25.7 BB: Yeah.   0:25:27.5 AS: Getting in control, fixing the system. It's just the simple awareness of System of Profound Knowledge and that systems will get you to the door.   0:25:37.7 BB: Yes.   0:25:41.3 AS: And that's step one, and you're way beyond where you were in the beginning, so congratulations. Now, I'll use a little analogy, in that I'm in a 12-step program, and in this 12-step program, they had a thing called the 12 promises, and they said, you're gonna know a new freedom and a new happiness. You won't regret the past nor wish to shut the door on it. You're gonna know freedom and all these different things. And I thought, I want every single one of those. But what I found when I went to that 12-step program, which I've been in now for more than 40 years, is that there's many people that go to a meeting to stop drinking or stop using drugs or stop, let's say over-eating or whatever that thing is, and then they stop there. And they don't take it to the next level of really pushing themselves to dig deep and follow the 12 steps to get to the 12 promises. And that's kind of what I'm thinking about because there's a great word in the 12 promises called... It says, "If we are painstaking about this phase of our development, we will be amazed before we're halfway through," and I thought about that word, painstaking. And if you reverse it around, it's called taking pain.   0:26:50.3 BB: Yes.   0:26:52.8 AS: And that made the difference of whether someone went through the door. Getting to the door is good enough for most people, but getting through the door and to the other side is the real Holy Grail.   0:27:03.8 BB: Well, let me come back to that point you just made. There's a point of time, and I thought that I had co-workers, I thought, whose wish was for a job that I could take where I can kinda do the same thing every day for like a career, and then retire. That's the kind of job I'm looking for, where I don't have to learn new things. I could just come in, hang out, get into the routine and then go home. Do you have jobs like that at your company that I could apply for? And I think there are people that... I think there are people that have that attitude.   0:28:00.5 BB: Now, I would also say, given our mutual understanding of System of Profound Knowledge, I think people have developed that attitude by working in organizations where they're blamed, and that becomes, just get me out of here. I don't wanna raise my hand, I don't wanna be blamed, so I'm gonna keep my head down. So I'm not saying these people grew up that way, I think they become conditioned that way. But what I would also point out is that, [chuckle] for those people that want that job, I would say, how many of you would like a cell phone which has far more capacity in terms of storage and speed than your current one? And it's also cheaper. Andrew, can I sign you up for that? Or maybe a television system.   0:28:48.5 BB: Can I sign you up for that? Oh yeah, so you wanna be... What you're saying, Andrew, is that you wanna be the beneficiary of people out there doing things above and beyond, but you just want a job where you can just kind of do it... Is that what I'm hearing? You wanna receive blood, but you don't wanna donate? Because that, I think, becomes the societal compact, is we come into this world receiving... Well, we have an obligation to contribute. And I think... But again, I'm not saying people... I'm not trying to imply that people are bad, I think we have conditioned people to want that. But I don't think that's their real nature, I think organizations that follow the Deming philosophy, I've seen people have incredible turnarounds in attitudes and to become people that are willing to take on challenges. Of course, there's variation. I'm not saying everyone's gonna be watching how the beads are used, so maybe that's not you, maybe that's somebody else. But I'm gonna need you in the implementation, Andrew.   0:30:03.1 AS: Yeah.   0:30:04.2 BB: And that goes back to variation. It's hard to say that. I think we all want the same thing. And I think for many people, it gets beaten out of us in terms of our obligation to society.   0:30:19.9 AS: Okay, so let's try to pull this together, the end of perfection, what we've talked about is the idea of... We've used the red bead experiment to get through this, but I think that tool is now served it's purpose. What we're really talking about is that in the initial stages of maybe implementing Deming's teaching or getting a particular system into control, there's a lot of fantastic gains that happen, and they get you to a point that is very satisfactory.   0:30:54.4 BB: Yes.   0:30:54.4 AS: And some people may confuse that point to perfection. But the reality is, is stepping through that point brings us to a whole another phase where there's so much more that we can consider so that we can improve the outcome for the end result that we're trying to do. But we'll never get there if we don't go through that doorway that goes beyond perfection.   0:31:23.1 BB: Yeah, and it's... The bigger thing I'd like people to appreciate, continuous improvement is a real deal, that... I mean we are constantly surrounded by technologies that are advancing. We have opportunities to get to continuously learn, and that's "continuum thinking" as opposed to black and white thinking. And what Dr. Deming is talking about is... With an appreciation of the System of Profound Knowledge, we have organizations with people with joy in learning. Learning is about making mistakes, trying to figure it out as we're talking about. So again, so let's not underestimate that to really love learning, is to really love the pain of learning [laughter]   0:32:12.9 AS: Painstaking.   0:32:13.1 BB: And in willing to... If you're leading a team, you need to know this, maybe the others don't, and you need to help them get back on the horse, you need them to understand that what we've learned is not what we expected, but that's all part of this journey that we're on. And so I think it's important for those that wanna lead these efforts to be vigilant and not... Just realizing that learning is about... As again Ackoff would say, "Learning is when things don't go as planned." Russ would also say, "When things go as planned, we have an illusion of understanding."   [laughter]   0:32:54.1 AS: Shall we...   0:32:54.7 BB: We just don't know when that learning is gonna happen.   0:32:58.7 AS: Shall we wrap it up?   0:33:00.1 BB: And the other thing I was going to say is, relative to achieving perfection, I would say Thomas More, I think an Englishman, I don't know, in the 14th century, whatever, wrote a book about a place called Utopia.   [laughter]   0:33:19.7 BB: And so what I wonder is, Andrew, do you think people in the Utopia were having conversations about continuous improvement?   0:33:29.4 AS: Okay, so I think we'll leave it on that? What do you think, Bill?   0:33:34.1 BB: Okay. [laughter]   0:33:35.5 AS: Alright. Bill, on behalf of everyone at The Deming Institute, I wanna thank you again for this discussion. Fascinating. For listeners remember, go to deming.org to continue your journey. 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."  

Dr. Deming encouraged lifelong learning for everyone, but particularly for managers and leaders. In this episode, David and Andrew talk about Deming's fourth point in his list for The Role of the Manager of People After the Transformation: "He is an unceasing learner. He encourages his people to study. He provides when possible and feasible seminars and courses for advancement of learning. He encourages continued education in college or university for people that are so inclined." TRANSCRIPT 0:00:02.4 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 discussion with David P. Langford, who has devoted his life to applying Dr. Deming's philosophy to education, and he offers us his practical advice for implementation. The topic for today is Learning to Learn. And just as a reminder, we're going through the section of The New Economics third edition, it starts on page 86 for those who want to follow on, and for those who have the second edition, it starts on page 125, and the title of the list that we're going through is called Role of a Manager of People. This is the new role of a manager of people after transformation. And we are now talking about the fourth point on this list, which reads as follows: He is an unceasing learner. He encourages his people to study. He provides when possible and feasible seminars and courses for advancement of learning. He encourages continued education in college or university for people that are so inclined. David, take it away. 0:01:16.8 David Langford: Yes, good to be back, Andrew. So I always have to caution people, Dr. Deming wasn't into all the pronouns and everything that we use today, so he just means everyone. So if you're a manager... Yeah. So all of these points I, over the years, have taken to heart, and even as a classroom teacher I started figuring out, "Where do I start? What do I do?" Once I have been to a Deming seminar everybody wants to know, "What do you do Monday morning?" And these are really good places to begin, and you certainly can't do them all at once. It's sort of an inter-related system, and so when you start concentrating, you're always wondering, "Well, what do I do next as a manager?" Go back to one of these points to say, "Okay, have I done anything about that?" And so when you think about your role as a manager and if you think about yourself as a teacher, you're a manager, you're administrator, you're a manager, he's talking about... Anyway, if you're a parent, you're a manager of a family, right. And so you wanna think about it in those terms all the time. 0:02:31.2 DL: I never forgot even the very first seminar or the very first time I ever got to talk to Deming, and he was really interested in talking to me because there weren't very many educators at the time talking with him, and he was an educator. He was taught at New York University for 40 years, so I was really interested in talking to him about education and we were just chatting about the application of his thinking and theories to education. And while we're talking, he says, "Just a moment," and he pulls out this little notebook and he starts writing down what we were talking about. And I was just like, "Dr. Deming's writing down something I said, or we said, or we were talking about or whatever." And then come to find out his whole life he kept these little notebooks and sometimes if you were around them at the end of the day and people would be talking, he'd pull out his notebook and he'd say to people, "Look what I learned today." And that was just - flabbergasted about that, and not only is this guy 90, 91, 92 years old, but he was actually living this point every single day of his life. He was consulting... 0:03:48.8 AS: Yeah. And you can realize that when you read his work too, because he's always highlighting, someone said in a seminar or so and so said this, and that you now picture, he's taking a note and then later he's put in into his book. 0:04:03.2 DL: Yeah. When you're at the seminars, you hear him say, I'm eternally grateful to so and so for this point, or the Taguchi loss function, or all these amazing economical ways of thinking and management and all those kinds of things. He's really great at giving credit like that, but he was also very great at explaining that, hey, he'd learn something new. Even at his age, 90 years old, he was still learning things that were new to him. 0:04:35.3 DL: I was living in Alaska, at the time we were remodeling a house built in 1898. I happened to find a box of photographic plates in the attic, and when I was cleaning out stuff and everything, and these were late 1800s, and they were photographic plates on glass. The wedding that had taken place at the house that we then owned and we were remodeling, so that was pretty cool. As I was looking at the box, it said if you find any defect, anything... I can't remember exactly the wording on it but, "If you find anything wrong with these photographic plates, please contact us at this address, and also please add the box number of photographic plates, so we may find the person guilty of making the error and remove them." [laughter] 0:05:41.6 AS: What? [laughter] 0:05:41.6 AS: They're terminated. 0:05:44.4 DL: "Thereby improving the quality of our product." And this is... I'm not gonna say the name of the company, but it was a major company at the time, and I was so blown away by this so I took the box, took the plates out. I took the box to Dr. Deming at one of the seminars and brought it up to him and said, "I have a gift for you," and he said, "You do?" And I said, "Yes," and I told him where I found it, and I said, "I think you will really enjoy this label." And he read it and his mouth dropped open. He said, "Oh my god." I said, "I'm gonna give it to you as a gift." And he said, "Oh no, this is too valuable for you to give it to me." And then... So he made somebody go down and make a copy of it and turn it into an overhead thing, and he started using this at seminars because it was exactly everything that he was reversing in management thinking at the time, for the next 100 years he was reversing that thinking. 0:06:50.0 AS: It was just to put some context... 0:06:52.8 DL: And I was always so proud of that that I was one of those people that said... 0:06:57.3 AS: Look at this. 0:06:57.8 DL: Thanks to David Langford for this. That was my big contribution. 0:07:01.7 AS: There you go. And for the listeners out there who... To put this in a frame of reference, back in those days, the way that we presented, and I didn't so much 'cause I was pretty young when I went to my first Deming seminar, is that we had acetates or meaning transparent pieces of A4 or letterhead paper, letter paper, the size of that, it was just a clear plastic thing and then you would write on it, and then you would put it onto a screen which would then project up on to a wall. And so it was either that or we had rollers where you could roll the acetate across, so you'd write a little bit and then you'd roll it, and so that was the way that he did his presentations in those days. 0:07:46.5 DL: Yes. He was constantly rolling forward, rolling backwards and drawing right on the screen and working through, so... He was well-known for being very, I'm going to say, curt, but very direct, very short with people. When they asked a question, like people would line up at different points in time and get ready to ask him a question, somebody would come up and ask a question, and he'd say something like, "We already covered that this morning. Where were you, in the parking lot? Next question." 0:08:23.2 AS: Yeah, which is kinda scary for people in the audience. 0:08:25.4 DL: Yeah. Well, a lot of people viewed that as, "Oh well, he's not really interested in people learning about things." But no, it's just the opposite. If you are trying to ask a question simply to discredit him or to take him down in front of, or make yourself look better in front of other people, or things like that, he had no time for you and he would openly say, "I don't have time for this. I'm 90 years old or 92 years old. I don't... " 0:08:57.0 AS: I'm on a mission. 0:08:58.7 DL: "I don't have much time left and I don't have time to waste on you." And he wouldn't ever say that... 0:09:00.7 AS: But he would... 0:09:01.7 DL: But he would cut people off, for sure. 0:09:04.8 AS: And I remember that I felt pretty safe as a young guy with pretty innocent questions coming to him. I felt like he was very welcoming to the majority of people. But there was a certain thing that either someone that completely missed what was going on and he could get a little bit annoyed with that, or if it was someone at a senior level that should know this and they don't know it and, "I'm gonna make sure you never forget this interaction." And I remember the one that I remember from being in the seminar was when someone got up and said, "Since you're the father of TQM, I wanted to ask you a question about X, Y, Z." And Dr. Deming looked at him and he says, "What is TQM?" 0:09:48.7 DL: Yeah. He knew full well. 0:09:50.9 AS: And he goes, "Wait, wait, what? Wait, what? I don't understand 'cause I didn't know what he meant." 0:09:56.4 DL: Yeah. Well, not only was he an avid learner like that himself, he wanted everybody else to be like that too. You wanna do continually questioning, continually trying to understand, continually learning, apply, thinking on a level that most people were never taught to think on that level. 0:10:19.3 AS: I wanted to ask you a question about this from a bigger picture perspective, and that is to say that you're a learning company or you're an unceasing learner or we're into learning and all that. It's such an easy thing to say. 0:10:36.9 DL: Cliche. 0:10:39.4 AS: Yeah, it's cliche, yes. But it feels good to be able to say, we're a learning organization. We're trying to learn. But the fact is, is that he's... The reason why he's raising this is maybe most people really are learning or they're not a learning organization. Can you put it in that framework before we get into a little bit more detail on it? 0:10:58.8 DL: Yeah, absolutely. I thought the first time I went to see Deming, I was a year out from getting my Master's degree, right. And so I'm thinking, well, yeah, I'm a learner, right? I got my Master's degree and like you have a whole bookshelf behind you, yet people just listening can't see it, but you have a ton of books behind you, and I might have an entire library here myself, etcetera. And so I'm a learner, but at that time, I suddenly had this realization in probably the very first four-day seminar, I had never read anything that wasn't assigned to me. I've been going through school my whole life or being a teacher myself and teaching a curriculum or dictating what other people should read based on that curriculum, but I'd been... I don't know, probably since I was a little kid that I just went to a library and looked around and just picked out a book I wanted to read. And that started really my journey of thinking, "Okay, I have to be just learning all the time, I have to be reading all the time and thinking all the time," and have never forgotten that. And so that also causes you to have a very open mind about things. 0:12:23.7 DL: In the politically charged realm that we are now, there are so many people that you can't even talk about the opposite point of view. It's just a complete shut down of, "No, I'm not gonna talk... I'm not even gonna talk about that." I think Deming would just be shocked and dismayed about that, that if you can't argue with your boss he's not worth working for. 0:12:53.8 AS: Yeah. And also as a person that's lived outside of the US for many years and look back at the US, I realize that the collision of ideas and opinions is actually the whole process of learning. 0:13:09.0 DL: That's the whole point. Yes. 0:13:10.5 AS: That is how... That is kind of the history of how we've acquired new knowledge. 0:13:18.9 DL: Quickly and move a society for it or a business forward or whatever it might be. And so what he's talking about here in a company or a school, etcetera, if you're not constantly encouraging people to think and to learn and to understand, you're gonna become stagnant or not only stagnant, you're gonna go backwards, and I think about things. 0:13:44.1 AS: Can you explain this again? Going back to the big picture. I bet you that if you and I did a survey of top US companies that are successful, or the companies they're gonna all say... They're gonna all say, we're a learning organization. 0:13:58.5 DL: Right. 0:13:58.6 AS: And I just want to understand... 0:14:00.5 DL: When I started this journey, yeah, I studied Toyota because Deming had done a lot of work with Toyota and everything at the time. And one of the things I learned from one of the managers there, I said, "Well, how much time do you spend in training and development of employees?" And he said, "20% of the time." He said, "We're hoping to get to 40% of the time." "What? You mean 20% to 40% of the time you're actually training, developing people, giving them information, etcetera, instead of actually producing their products?" That didn't make any sense. So I went back to my school, I did an analysis, how much time did we actually spend with our staff and faculty in training, and it came up to be like 5% of the school year was actually spent in us training them in new concepts or ways to think, etcetera. 0:15:00.5 AS: And it's a great point... 0:15:03.8 DL: And I thought how much time do we spend training the students in thinking? 0:15:09.6 AS: Yeah. 0:15:10.4 DL: Well, zero. 0:15:10.6 AS: Yeah. It's a great point to stop for a moment for the listeners and the viewers to ask yourself, how many hours, what percent of the time, of the week, of the month, of the year do you spend or does your school or your firm spend in learning and training, in both training and education? I bet you it's not 20%. 0:15:39.5 DL: Well, the students that I was working with, these were just high school kids, and so we were going through these points and we're having this discussion, and I showed them the data, and they said, "Well, when do we get to learn?" And... "So what are you talking about? You're going to school." And they said, "No. You're learning all this stuff about Deming and discussing it and watching videos and everything. When do we get to do that?" And I realized I wasn't doing that with students, and so I put them to work because the teachers all said, "Oh, we don't have time for that. We're already crammed. We can't get through the curriculum. We don't have time for anything like that," and so I put the students to work to come up with a new master schedule and then come back and present it to the staff, and they came up with two... I think it was 60 or 90-minute sessions per week that they wanted to come together and just and learn, and it was just an amazing way to think about it. 0:16:42.7 DL: So one of those sessions I had each week with the entire student body, and basically I'd show them a Deming film or I'd show them something new or something that's happening in education, and I'd put them into groups and have them discuss about it, and what do you think about that and how could that be applied here, and what should we do differently? And then the other session was a session where they wanted to go anywhere that they needed to go in the building to get help and catch up on anything they needed to catch up on. And this is totally a foreign concept because we were constantly following every kid down, "Where are you going? You're going to the bathroom. Here's a bathroom pass and you're gonna go here and... " What? We're going to actually trust these kids to do stuff? So it took us probably a whole year to convince the staff, the administration and everybody that, "Okay, well, let's at least try this." Right. 0:17:41.0 DL: So the first time we ran a session like that where the students could go any... They could go to the science room, they could go to the computer lab, any place they needed to go to learn and catch up and get help or work or however they wanted to do, but they just had to be learning during that hour session. Well, the principal went around and actually counted kids in all these rooms and everything else, and lo and behold found out there were like 10 kids that took off and went to town. Right. So he calls an emergency meeting after that day and says to the whole staff, "We can't keep doing this. We got 10 kids that took off and just blew the whole thing off, and so we gotta change the whole master schedule and redo it and everything, and we gotta start over again." And I'll never forget 'cause we're just sitting there, sort of stunned. Trying to think, "Well, okay, now what are we gonna do? And then we're gonna have to redo everything." 0:18:46.0 DL: And all of a sudden, the science teacher said, "You know, in my room, I must have had 60 kids doing science, and he said, I'd say a majority of them weren't even doing stuff that was assigned to Science class. They were exploring all kinds of new concepts, asking me questions about all kinds of things in Science." And English teacher said, "We were having the greatest discussion about applied Romeo and Juliet to modern issues." She said, "I never had time for that in my classroom, but a whole bunch of us just ended up sitting around and we just started talking about the application of these things in a modern society." And almost every single teacher said the same thing. And then finally somebody said, "Well, how many students we have?" And I think at the time we had about 300 students, so 10 of them left. That means 290 students were actually engaged in learning and doing exactly what we want them to do, and we wanna throw this out because of special causes. And that's when I realized, oh, special and common cause - people are getting it. Our training is actually seeping into the terminology and the way of thinking about people. So we didn't throw it out and we kept it, and within a few weeks there wasn't anybody gone, because the kids that had took off came back. 0:20:19.3 AS: They got it out of their system. 0:20:21.5 DL: While the other kids said, we're talking about the great time they had, and not only that they were catching up on work that they didn't have time to normally, and all kinds of other things that went on. It even happenened in sports, a whole bunch of them went to the gym and just worked on basketball techniques, and even the PE teacher was amazed that I just had all these kids in their learning and wanting to know about, "How do you do a shot and how do you do this and how do you make this happen?" And teachers were just sort of dumbfounded about this, that students would actually learn on their own without being given a grade or forced to do something. 0:21:01.9 AS: And what I wanted to also think about is the idea that if we read the 14 points and trying to understand what Dr. Deming is telling us, there's this, number one, constancy of purpose, there's this real focus on improvement, there's a focus on the customer, not the competitor, to try to improve what you're delivering to the customer, and then you combine this focus on learning and training. You bring these things together and in some way, it's almost like you've created kind of a tunnel vision that's between your company and the customer and your company and the suppliers, and it's this obsession on these things. And at first, it's hard to understand, but as you start to see this obsession you realize this type of focus can... And because you're learning, everything you're gaining it's taking you to another level and another level, and then you're applying it for your customer, for your student, for your school, and next thing you know, you do that over and over again, and you will be at a very different place, and you'll also be at a place where people really feel great about it. That's not what's happening in learning organizations, companies that say we're a learning organization. Tell me more about that? 0:22:25.4 DL: Well, if you're continually learning like that as an organization and constantly expanding the ways of thinking, etcetera, when you get to major hurdles like Covid, etcetera, you have a whole staff, learned staff that's used to learning and used to figuring things out and used to thinking and coping with disasters or anything that goes on, and so the system doesn't fall apart, that's what I saw happening over and over in companies and schools and universities that I worked with for a long time, that those organizations could just overcome obstacles that would just be a huge thing to other systems, because they weren't used to learning or coping or understanding. They're usually used to just being told what to do. The same thing in education, the curriculum is coming down from the state or the national edict on X and... Oh, well, we just got... So they just learned to constantly be in a response mode, so they're not in a mode of constantly innovating, thinking, what can we do next. 0:23:41.7 DL: So I know in my school, I started... Not only did we have this one time a week where we could work with all the faculty and...or all the students, we just started having a faculty come in and learn with the students, which was a novel idea. Right? 'Cause normally we segregate them out and the faculty goes off and learns this stuff and comes back and does it to people. Right? But we just set up this learning session with students, faculty, everybody and faculty were learners and lo and behold, that's probably the best model that you could be in a school, is to show students that you're constantly learning, that you're constantly reading, you're constantly figuring something. "Hey, I read this thing last night. This book, it's really great. Da da da da da." 0:24:38.9 DL: I didn't fully realize the impact of what we had done until after the first year that we'd really tried to implement this and get stuff going. And during the summer time, teachers are usually... The school year ends and all the kids leave and you never hear from them until start the next school year up, right. So I'm out mowing the lawn in the summer time and my wife comes out with the phone and she says, "Hey, one of your students is on the phone." Well, I'm thinking that there must be some kind of accident that happened or something that goes on. And I'll never forget because when I'm talking to this student, I actually stopped. I was looking at the phone like, "Who are you?" Because he said, "Hey, I read this book and I just wanted to know if you read and there's some really interesting concepts that I picked up on it and wanna know if you'd heard about it." And I was so stunned 'cause 15 years, no student had ever done that. It never ever come up to me like that? Well, that summer, I had 12 students do that. Twelve of those kids called me over the summer, and I started to learn... When they'd call up, "Hey, what have you been learning?" And they, boom, they just tell you, because we had taught them to be learners, learning to learn. 0:26:00.9 AS: And what about people that are listening that are in, let's say, public schools or other places, and they feel constrained, they've got the mandates from on high, as you mentioned, and I think what I guess what I'm hearing is the idea that you may be less constrained than you think in that there may be more room to do and still be able to follow what you got to follow. What would you advise to them? 0:26:27.6 DL: Yeah. Well, if you have management of your organization, etcetera, that wants nothing to do with this and they're not really interested in making big changes or doing anything differently, etcetera, that doesn't preclude you from doing something as a teacher and I did the same thing. I'll give you an example, one of the classes I was... I can't remember the title of it now, but it's media management or something like that. I can't remember what we called it. But I just set up the first 10 minutes of class, I said the first 10 minutes of class we would get all the newspapers from the library that were used up the previous two or three days. And you got 10 minutes to go through the paper and pick out the most relevant things happening, and then share that with the rest of the group, and then we're gonna talk about Deming Management as applied to those issues. And it was such an amazing, amazing thing because the kids would talk about how stupid some of the things were happening politically, or this was happening, and it was totally contrary to what Deming talked about, and then they talk about what should happen, etcetera. 0:27:37.6 DL: So after about three or four years, I started taking students out on a tour, and we'd take any students who wanted to go and we'd raise money throughout the year and everything else, but we wouldn't go just on a field trip just to go to Disneyland or something. We went to universities, we went to major corporations, we went to places where we could learn stuff. And I'll never forget, the kids were at Motorola, Motorola, I think, it was in Phoenix, Arizona. And they had heard all about us and everything, and they set up all this thing, and our students would come in and give this whole presentation about Deming management applied to education. Well, when we got there, we walked into this room that they had set up for us, and there was literally a red carpet laid out, and in the back of the room was this whole banquet of seafood and just huge tables of food and everything else. Kids all walked in. And the CEO from Motorola is there and everything. And the kid says, "Who's this for?" And he says, "It's for you, we think you're the most important people in the country right now." 0:28:49.6 DL: These kids, a lot of them Native American kids, a lot of them from very rural background, you could literally see them grow 14 feet in that instance. I'll never forget because after we finished our presentation the CEO got up and he said, "I wanna know two things." He said, "Number one, how do I get my son in your school because he's not learning this in his school? And number two, I'm gonna set up a room across the hall, and I just wanna start interviewing people so you can come to work for us when you get out of high school." And some of those kids did actually get hired and go there. 0:29:32.3 DL: I'll tell you another story. The same thing, we took a group of kids to Texas and we went to one of the, I think, it was one of the oil companies, I think it was. And so the whole thing was, we said, "Hey, we'd like to come in and give you a presentation about what we're doing, how we're applying quality methods and thinking to education. We'd also like your managers to give us a presentation about what goes on here, what do you do, how do you apply these things and work things through." I'll never forget, we've finished our presentation at 45 minutes, kids were very efficient, they were all... That was part of it. Everybody was helping everybody do the presentations and work through that. And so their manager, I can't remember his title, but it had something to do with quality, the quality manager for the corporation or something, he gets up and start... He's got his presentation stuff and he starts giving a normal business presentation after these kids giving multimedia presentations for 45 minutes. And he talks for about 30 seconds about some of the things they're doing, and he said... He said, "Forget it," he said, "You guys already know more about this than we could ever hope to know about it." So he said, "What we wanna do is we've got all of our executives in the room, we just wanna pair up with these kids, high school kids, 15, 16, 17 years old, and have conversations about this and why it's applied. 0:31:00.3 DL: And I'll never forget, I walked by this girl that was talking to this high level manager at this petroleum corporation and they're arguing about intrinsic motivation and how employees have to be extrinsically motivated and everything else, and this girl, 16 years old is not backing down and she's just taking this guy to task. And finally they end their conversation and she leaves, and I walked over to him and I said, "Do you realize she's only 16 years old?" And he just looked at me, he said, "I forgot all about that." 0:31:34.1 AS: Yeah. 0:31:39.2 DL: See. And... 0:31:39.4 AS: Potential. The potential. 0:31:40.2 DL: Yeah. Deming often said that profound knowledge is not limited to age, and I didn't know what that meant for a long time until I started seeing young kids adapt these... Or absorb these concepts and take them to heart and be able to do it much better than us as adults, learned a different management thinking and we had to sort of transform ourselves. These kids they didn't know anything different. I think somebody asked one of the students one time how did you learn to do this or how did this happen or whatever? And they just looked at him and said, "Well, doesn't everybody do this?" 0:32:20.9 AS: Yeah. We stamped that out. 0:32:24.6 DL: They couldn't understand. 0:32:26.3 AS: We stamped that out at an early age. 0:32:26.3 DL: I'll give you one more quick story. We took the kids to visit a huge high school in California at the time, and that was probably about around 1991 or something like that. So computer technology was really starting to get into the schools, but our schools are already one-to-one technology and we had advanced technologies for all kinds of stuff and STEM and things like that. And so the principal is... Big high school in California, a pretty brand new high school, that's why we went there to cut and I wanted them to see what a big high school looked like, and we were going around, and he goes and he says, "We're really proud of this room," and he goes and unlocks the door. And this was in the spring probably around about March, unlocks the door and turns on the light and there's like 60 computers in there, all set up, all ready to go and everything. And one of the kids says, "Well, where is everybody? Why aren't people using them?" He said, "Oh well, you know, we haven't got the teachers trained and we're not ready to start using this, but we got it all purchased, we got it all set up and we're gonna start using it for... We're starting, using it next fall in September." And I'll never forget one of our students said, "Can we just take all those back with us and we'll ship them back to you in September." [laughter] 0:33:48.9 AS: Yeah, exactly. 0:33:50.8 DL: Said, "We know what to do with those." 0:33:52.3 AS: And if you unleash group of kids in there, before you know that they would be training the teachers on that. 0:33:57.7 DL: Yeah, absolutely, they'd be training the staff about how to do the stuff so. 0:34:01.2 AS: Yeah. I wanted to wrap up with a little bit of kind of discussion about the idea of... I'm gonna talk briefly just about business, just 'cause that's something I understand pretty well, and that is a lot of times when managers in businesses see the same mistakes happening, they're like, "We've got to stop. Who is responsible for this?" Or as you started the whole discussion, "We got to get rid of the person who's the problem." Or, "Why is everybody making these same mistakes or whatever?" And that's really the problem actually at leadership level, really it's the idea of how can we study this situation, how can we get together, pool our resources and our knowledge and make some scientific style analysis, like a PDSA, a Plan-Do-Study-Act, and try to understand and learn here what the problem is and how can we solve this problem. And that is the process of acquiring knowledge through the scientific method, but acquiring knowledge is meaningless if it's not continually applied, so then we take that knowledge and we build it into our training of the new workers or new employees that are gonna be in that area, so we never go back and make the same mistake. We've fixed it permanently, and we've trained people to another level. But of course we're gonna come up with another common problem that's showing up all the time, and we do the same thing, and then we improve that and we gain knowledge on that, and then we train so that everybody's operating at that next level. 0:35:33.4 AS: Now, when you do this over a period of years with this constancy of purpose of continually focus on learning, what ends up happening is that you have actually acquired a large amount of knowledge in your organization that does not exist in your competitor. 0:35:52.2 DL: That's right. 0:35:52.4 AS: In addition, you've codified it, you've quantified this to be in the behavior of your employees. So let's say you do that for one, two, three years, all of a sudden you have created a deep level of knowledge on a particular topic that your competitor does not have that deep of a level of knowledge on that particular topic. Now they may be... If they're a good competitor then they may be learning in another area, but let's just say that most new companies aren't learning. And the end of, end result is that you start to build a competitive advantage and that... 0:36:26.3 DL: Even though. 0:36:27.2 AS: Competitive advantage just shows that... That competitive advantage just could last for decades. 0:36:34.7 DL: Yeah. Even though defeating your competitor was not your aim. Your aim was learning and getting better all the time, but by doing that you became a very fierce competitor, you became very good at solving problems, moving forward, understanding new concepts, applying things quickly, adapting to new technology, whatever it might be. You become a very good competitor even though you're not actively trying to compete. People sometimes blame Deming saying, "Oh, you don't want... You're against competition," 'cause he talked about cooperation a lot. And he said, "No," he said, "The best thing you could have is a good competitor. Right? Somebody else that's innovating, somebody else that's thinking something. Getting you to think differently about things." So the great irony is the greater you cooperate and learn together, the greater you compete, even though you're not necessarily trying to compete. You see the same thing in sports. We have March Madness going on now. If you listen to coaches at the end of games or coaches getting ready to play really big games coming up, they'll say things like, "Well, this will be a good learning experience for us, or this will be a really good test for us." Those are the really good coaches because they're looking at every single game about, "What can we learn, how can we apply that to the next one, and how can we move forward?" 0:38:03.0 DL: One of those trips I took with students, I took them to an electronics corporation in Phoenix, I can't remember the name of it, I don't really remember what they were making, but it was very sophisticated electronics with chips and all of that kind of stuff in a dust-free environment and it's a huge room in which these panels... I think it was very sophisticated art tablets that they were making, but they had all these lights up around the room and everything red, yellow and different things, and so most... Every one of the stations had green lights and everything, and then all of a sudden a yellow light came on at one of the stations. And I said to the guy giving me the tour, I says, "Well, what happens now?" And he says, "Well, immediately, any managers that are available, we rush to that center to find out what's going on. There's an error or a problem or somebody has observed something that is going on there, and we try to actively fix it and try to understand it and fix it for tomorrow too and make sure it's not gonna happen again. 0:39:13.3 DL: And I said, "What's the red light for?" And he says, "Well, anybody in the entire corporation has the ability to stop the entire line and turn on the red light. And when the red light comes on the whole place shuts down." And this was like 300 employees that they had. The whole place shuts down and everybody has the authority to do that. And I said, "What happens then?" He said... Then he said, "All management empties out, comes down in a learning environment and tries to study what's going on, what has happened, how do we fix this, how do we make this." Well, that's totally different than if you make an error or you screw up, you might get fired. And if that's the case, you're not gonna share an error or a problem that's happening, right? You're gonna keep that and hide that or cover it up or do something else, because you have managers that don't understand this thinking so. 0:40:08.7 AS: Yeah. I saw just the opposite of that when I was working in Pepsi, that in the production and process, basically, you constantly running around trying to patch things up and not raise them to a higher level, and so you're constantly making the same mistake. I wanna wrap up this discussion by just going back to point number four now that we've been through so much about it. So this is, again, we've been reviewing the role of a manager of people. And the fourth point that he talks about here is, he is an unceasing learner, he encourages people to study, he provides when possible and feasible seminars and courses for advancement of learning, and he encourages continued education in college or university for people that are so inclined. David, is there anything you would add as we wrap up this discussion? 0:41:03.6 DL: Yeah. He does mention college or university classes, things like that, but he also was a very strong proponent that they just need to be learning. Learning a new language, learning new concepts, new things that are happening because you have active minds then and you have people making new connections and thinking, and it does something to your personality and the way you think about things, etcetera. And so he just said it could be anything, they can be learning basket weaving, but they just need to be learning all the time. 0:41:38.2 AS: Fantastic. Well, David, on behalf of everyone at the Deming Institute, I wanna thank you again for the discussion. For listeners, remember to go to deming.org to continue your journey. And listeners can also learn more about David at langfordlearning.com. 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."

In this episode (part 4 of the series), John and Andrew continue their discussion from part 3. They talk about how to use data charting in combination with the Plan-Do-Study-Act cycle to gain the knowledge managers need to lead effectively.  0:00:00.1 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 am continuing my discussion with John Dues, who is part of the new generation of educators striving to apply Dr. Deming's principles to unleash student joy in learning. The topic for today is Prediction is a Measure of Knowledge. And John, to you and the listeners, I have to apologize. I'm a bit froggy today, but John, take it away.   0:00:30.9 John Dues: Yeah, Andrew, it's great to be back. I thought what we could do is sort of build off, what we were talking about in the last episode. We sort of left off with sort of an introduction to process behavior charts and importance of charting your data over time. And sort of the idea this time is that, like you said at the outset is prediction is a measure of knowledge and prediction is a big part of improvement. So I thought we'd get into that. What role prediction plays in improvement, how it factors in and how we can use our chart in combination with another powerful tool, the Plan-Do-Study-Act cycle to bring about improvement in our organizations.   0:01:15.1 AS: And when you say that prediction is a measure of knowledge, you're saying that prediction is a measure of how much you know about a system, or how would you describe that in more simple terms that for someone who may not understand that, that they could understand?   0:01:31.4 JD: Yeah, it took me a while to understand this. I think, basically the accuracy of your prediction about any system or process is an observable measure of knowledge. So when you can make a prediction about how a system or a process, and I use those words interchangeably, is gonna perform the closer that that sort of initial theory is, that initial prediction is to what actually happens in reality, the more you know about that system or process. So when I say prediction is a measure of knowledge, that's what I'm talking about is, you make a prediction about how something's gonna perform. The closer that prediction is to how it actually performs, the more you know about that system or process.   0:02:19.1 AS: I was just thinking about a parent who understands their kid very well can oftentimes predict their response to a situation. But if you brought a new kid into that house that the parent didn't know anything about their history, their background, the way they react, that the parent doesn't really have anything to go on to predict except maybe general knowledge of kids and specific knowledge of their own kid. How could that relate to what you're saying that prediction is a measure of knowledge?   0:02:52.3 JD: Well, I think that's a great analogy. One of the things that Dr. Deming said that it took me some time to understand was that knowledge has temporal spread - just a few words, but really causes some deep thinking. And I think what he meant was, your understanding, your knowledge of some topic or system or process or your kid has temporal spread. So that understanding sort of increases as you have increased interaction with that system process or in this analogy, your own kid. So when you replace a parent who knows their kid well with some other person that doesn't know that kid as well, they haven't had that sort of, that that same, that shared time together. So there's that, they don't have that same understanding. It's gonna take time for that understanding to build. I think the same thing happens when we're trying to change a system or a process or improve it or implementing a new idea in our system or process. And so the prediction at the outset is probably gonna be off. Right, and then over time, hopefully as we learn about that system or process or kid in this instance, that that prediction is gonna get better and better, as we learn over time, basically. I think.   0:04:15.8 AS: Yeah, it's interesting because saying the words temporal spread kind of gives way to the idea that Dr. Deming was educated in 1910, 1915, in speaking, reading, writing. And then he also, he said things, that his objective wasn't to just completely simplify. And I think that the messages that he was bringing were difficult to simplify, but you could say that, "improves over time" is what temporal spread may mean. Right? Okay. Let's keep going on this. This is interesting.   0:04:55.0 JD: Yeah, I think, maybe it'd be helpful if I share my screen and we can sort of connect the dots from last time to...   0:05:00.8 AS: Yep. And for the listeners out there, we'll walk you through what John's showing on his screen in just a moment. All right. Now we can see a chart on his screen.   0:05:11.7 JD: Yeah, I think, so we see a process behavior chart sort of orient, the watchers and then even the listeners. So the chart is a process behavior chart. That terminology can be a little bit confusing. Some people would call this a control chart, some people would call it a Shewhart chart, my sort of preferred terminology is process behavior chart because it's literally charting some process over time. So the example I used last time was charting my own weight. So you can use, you can chart personal items, you can also obviously chart things that are important to you in your organization. But the main thing is pull numbers out of a spreadsheet. That's what we talked about last time. Pull numbers out of the table instead plot that same data over time. So you can see how it varies naturally, perhaps, or how it varies in, special ways over time. So the, for the watchers, the blue dots are individual data points. The dates are running along the X-axis of the chart. And so you can see those moving up and down over time as I weigh myself every morning. Then we have the green line.   0:06:30.6 AS: At the beginning of the chart, we see those individual data points hovering around maybe 179 to 80, something like that.   0:06:41.8 JD: Yeah. Bouncing around in the 180, 178, 176 range. And then...   0:06:48.8 AS: And just for the international listener, John is not 180 kilograms [laughter], he's 180 pounds. Okay. Continue.   0:06:56.8 JD: That's right, that's right. On the Y-axis, we have weight in pounds. And so in addition to the blue dots and we've added a green line that is the average over time. And then we have sort of the last component of the process behavior chart, we have the red lines, which are the upper and lower natural process limits, or some people call them control limits sort of are the bounds of this particular system at a given point in time. And so, as we watch this data unfold, we can see that it does move up and down in different ways, in different patterns, but it's far more illustrative than if I was just looking at that table of numbers. So when I do this daily, I don't wanna overreact to any single data point. Instead, what I'm trying to do is get a sense of how this data is performing over time, right? So I can see this unfold over the course of days and then weeks and then months and all along, my knowledge of my weight system is increasing.   0:08:09.7 JD: Even if you don't know anything about process behavior charts, you could do this on a simple line chart or run chart without the limits, and you'd still learn much more than what you would with that table of numbers. But with the addition of the red lines, the natural process limits, what I am doing is sort of saying based on some simple mathematical calculations, that these are the bounds of my system that I would expect because of the data empirically based on the actual dots on the chart, these are the bounds of my system. And if a point would happen to fall outside of those red lines, I know something special has happened because it's so mathematically improbable that it's not to be expected. And there's a few other patterns in the data too that you can look for besides a single point outside of one of those red lines.   0:09:08.4 JD: But I'm looking for those patterns to see if something special has happened or I'm seeing if my data is sort of generally bouncing around between those red lines. And in either case, there are different approaches to trying to improve that, improve that data over time. And one other thing that I like to do, I always make my data blue, my average line green and my process, my natural process limits red. And then whenever I do this internally with data from our own organization, whether it's attendance data or test data or financial data, whatever the data is, I always use that same pattern. So people get used to seeing these colors and they associate blue with data, green with the average and red with the limits.   0:10:00.7 AS: So tell us more about, I mean, one of the things before we even talk about PDSA, what's happening here is that the upper limit and the lower limit at two points in this chart shift down. So you're, if you didn't change the upper and lower limit and you just had your, that standard one across the whole chart, then it probably starts to lose its value because the process that you're describing is going back in time to such an extent that things were different. Tell us about why you've made this adjustment.   0:10:46.0 JD: Yeah, I'd say if the natural process limits, so the red lines sort of stay in the same spot. So if I don't see those special patterns, basically what I can assume is that that system is, despite the fact that the data is bouncing around a little bit naturally, that, there's nothing sort of significant that's happened either in terms of my weight system getting worse, or in this case I want to get better. Obviously, I wanna lose a little bit of weight. If I don't see those patterns in the data, then nothing has changed. So if I'm trying something new to bring that weight down and I don't see any of those special patterns that tell me to adjust the natural process limits, that means what I'm doing is not having an effect. Right. So there's one, you wanna know what reality is for whatever the thing is that you're talking about.   0:11:37.7 JD: So on the very first day, you can see, when I weighed myself, it was like something like 182 pounds or something like that. And I could say I weigh 182 pounds, but that's not really reality, except that I weighed 182 pounds on the morning of November 28th when I recorded that data. But the very next day it goes down a little bit and then it goes down quite a bit that third day, and then it bounces back up, and then back down, and then back up and then back down a little bit. And that's the real sort of reality. And I don't really weigh 182, I'd probably weigh somewhere closer to that average of 179 across those first two weeks or so. Right? But I don't know that until I've collected, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12 data points, what my reality is.   0:12:30.0 JD: And that's why this charting is so important. It helps me understand reality in a much more accurate way. So when we're trying to improve, I think, in this case, I decided to gather data on a daily basis. And I think when that's sort of another important consideration, when you're doing improvement work and charting, you wanna gather data in a rhythm that matches whatever it is, whatever that metric is that you're concerned with, you want that, you want the data to be gathered in a way that matches that metric. But in general, more frequent is better, as long as you're not overreacting, like I said earlier, to any single data point. Instead, you wanna gather data, you wanna have those 15, 20 data points, see the patterns, and then start to look for changes in those patterns. The three that I happen to look for are, a single point outside the natural process limits, or I'll look for eight consecutive points, either above or below that average line, or I'll look for three or four points that are closer to the red line than they are to that average line.   0:13:41.4 JD: Any of those three patterns emerge. I know something has changed, and I'll go ahead and shift the limits. If I know, when I'm looking for those patterns, I wanna know why that change has happened. So sometimes when I see a pattern, and if I don't have an explanation for why that data shifted, even though it shifted in a way that was mathematically unexpected, sometimes in those instances, I won't shift my limits. So I generally will only shift when I see a pattern and I can sort of pinpoint a reason for that, for that shift.   0:14:18.4 AS: And when you say shift, you're saying shift your upper and lower process limit?   0:14:20.0 JD: Yeah. I shift the limits at the point where I saw one of those special patterns begin, basically.   0:14:29.6 AS: Okay. All right. Keep going. So you got PDSA on there now.   0:14:32.9 JD: Yeah, so I think, when I think about continual improvement, there's a lot of different tools we can use and a lot of tools that are valuable, especially when you sort of facilitate an improvement team, a group of people working together, especially because those various tools can help you visualize what people are thinking. But if I had to boil continual improvement down to two tools, it'd be the process behavior chart combined with the Plan-Do-Study-Act cycle. So sort of the theory of variation is the process behavior chart, and then what Deming would call the theory of knowledge, the PDSA or Plan-Do-Study-Act cycle is a key component of that theory of knowledge part of the system of profound knowledge. So you can see on my chart, I have three cycles that I've gone through so far.   0:15:24.6 JD: So I've basically run three experiments to try to bring the weight down. So PDSA cycle one, then I made a slight adjustment based on what I learned adjusted after about 30 days, I ran another Plan-Do-Study-Act cycle, ran that for another 30 days to see how it'll impact my weight. And then I've started a third cycle, and I've been running that now for about 45, 50 days. So the idea is, you run a, basically a structured simple, it doesn't have to be overly complex, simple experiment. And then you see if what you're doing is working, and in this case it's resulted in two, two shifts or two patterns of data that tell me that that actual improvement has happened. Not that I just decreased my weight, but it decreased to such an extent that it showed up as a mathematically unlikely pattern in my data.   0:16:33.3 AS: Well, I think all of us who wanna reduce our weight, kind of wonder, what did you do that caused your weight to fall and be consistently lower?   0:16:47.5 JD: Yeah, [laughter] that's a good question. I mean, pretty simply, mostly I focused on what I was eating. I sort of cut out the sort of typical culprits, the extra carbs, the processed food, and the sugar and focused mainly on meat and vegetables, across all three meals. And I added a little bit of exercise, there's a little more detail to it than that, but that's the basic, the gist of it. But the thing was, I wrote it down in a template, a Plan-Do-Study-Act cycle template. So I had a simple plan written down. I had the dates during which I was gonna do this, and then I was gathering the data and charting it every morning to see how the experiment was working. And then after 30 days or so, I would study it a little more closely, revise the plan, and then sort of keep going with it. So it's not, certainly not rocket science, but it's a powerful method when you combine these two things. And again, you can do this for just about anything, any data that occurs over time in your organization, you can run these same experiments.   0:17:58.5 AS: So the power of the chart is that it gives you feedback to try to see if your prediction came true?   0:18:10.7 JD: Yeah. And you have the historical results. And then you can also look to see, again, if those special patterns emerge that tell you that actual improvement happened, verse, an insignificant, in this case, decline in weight.   0:18:29.0 AS: And what's interesting is after PDSA number three, you've gotten your weight down to an average of let's say 172, 173, something like that.   0:18:38.1 JD: Yep. That's right.   0:18:39.6 AS: And it's just kind of bouncing around tightly, somewhat within that level.   0:18:47.0 JD: Yeah, I mean, basically what you see is you'll see three or even sometimes four, or even close to five days in a row where it's below that average line. And so you're saying, "Oh, I'm getting close to being able to shift again." And then what actually happens is the weekend [laughter] So I'm way more disciplined during the week when I have to go to work and those types of things. And then, but you can learn from that. You can learn that that's what's showing up in the pattern. And I've also gotten to a point where it's gonna be harder. Those first five eight pounds are much easier. And then, from there, depending on what you wanna do goal-wise, it could be harder, it could require a sort of a slightly different plan because PDSA one, two, and three are all variations of each other. There wasn't a lot of change from each of the cycles, but there was some learning that happened.   0:19:35.1 JD: Yeah, I mean, I think that's, I mean, that's a good point to maybe go little deeper into the PDSA cycle. So I mean, I think, for me, it took some time to sort of understand the PDSA cycle, even though it's, again, it's a relatively simple tool, and I think it's just one of those where you just need to do it, and over time you're gonna learn. So I think the first thing, you make a plan, you do it, you carry out the plan, you study what happened, and then at the end you act and you decide what to do. And I think really, the most powerful part for me was this realization that during the plan phase of the PDSA, it is absolutely imperative that you make a prediction.   0:20:29.0 JD: And if I'm doing team-based work, I have everybody on the team make their own prediction independently. We actually record that prediction in the PDSA cycle. And then during the study phase, we compare the data that actually was produced from that system or process, and we go back and compare it to what we predicted. And the difference between those two things is the learning that drives the next cycle, basically. So it's this iterative process. So you're, you don't just run one PDSA cycle, you basically run it until you've brought about an amount of improvement on that system or process that's acceptable, not, and then you may turn your attention to some other metric in your organization that's important to you.   0:21:22.0 AS: So I think what's important about this is that what he's describing is the way to acquire knowledge within an organization. But many times we see organizations lose the knowledge that they had. And I think that brings us to the concept of training and making sure everybody understands how we're improving the system based upon the knowledge that we gain. And if you can hold that, then the next time that we wanna try to improve the system, hopefully we go to another level, and then we hold that other level through training and making sure that everybody understands the knowledge that has been acquired in the system. And once we feel comfortable with that, then we go to the next level. And let's say that we do that 10 times in a particular process. That means that we've acquired, at 10 different points in time, we've acquired additional knowledge about the system.   0:22:23.2 AS: Now since I'm a finance guy, I like to bring that into finance terms and say, and that's how you build a competitive advantage in your company. It's the acquisition of knowledge of your system and continuing to improve that. And by doing that, you start to get to a point where your competitor doesn't understand nearly as much as you do about that one area. And if you can solidify that through training, then you now are operating at a different level than your competitor. Now your competitor may be doing the same thing in another area, but you've built some competitive strength. And the end result from a business perspective is that you start to produce slightly better profitability relative to your peer until either they catch up or maybe they build some competency in another area. But I'm talking and thinking all about, business. Tell us more about how to apply this in education.   0:23:25.7 JD: Yeah, I mean, I think there are all kinds of applications, and I think you're exactly right. I think what most people have is streams of information coming to them in the form of various types of data every day. But they have very little knowledge, actual knowledge about that data, lots of information, little knowledge. What the PDSA does is allow us to gain that knowledge in combination with the with the process behavior chart. And I think having this structure is very important. I mean, I think you talked about building knowledge over time in your system. I think the fact that the PDSA, when you plan it, you write it down, just doing that is a huge advantage over how most people operate, and you write it down in this structured way.   0:24:23.0 JD: So there is this knowledge store, there's this written record that someone can go back to to see what you did on whatever area you were trying to improve at that time. You have this written record, you have this plan, you understand how that plan was put together, who was doing what, when were they doing it, where were they doing it, how were they doing it? Who was doing it? And then you can see how it actually worked in implementation. And then you can see the actual data that sort of came back when you tried something. And you can do these PDSA cycles on a very, very tight timeframe. So when I got some training on this, they suggested, some of the trainers suggested you, you do this, you can run a PDSA for one day, one hour, depending on the situation.   0:25:09.5 JD: I think in general, what I've seen is that PDSAs that I run are generally somewhere in the two to three to four week timeframe. And I try not to ever go beyond four weeks with the PDSAs. I wanna get back some learning... It may not mean that I know everything about whatever it is I'm trying to improve, but I wanna give back some data that tells me sort of what direction should I go next? What direction should I go next, and I'll keep going in that way until I learn sort of more and more over time. I do think it's helpful to have just a very simple template, which I'm happy to share with folks, in terms of the plan, I'm writing out a question or two that's most important for us to answer. And again, I'm making predictions around those questions. What do I expect to happen when we do this change, when we make this change.   0:26:07.6 AS: Like cutting carbs down to 30 grams per day from 60 grams per day, will, my prediction is that will bring my weight down over the next week or two by one or two pounds or something like that.   0:26:23.6 JD: That's right. That's right. If we have an attendance problem, we're gonna try some attendance intervention, and I predict that if I make this change, it's gonna improve X amount in the next three weeks. Right it's a concrete prediction and I, again, I mentioned that I have everybody on the team do that because then you can start to see too how people are thinking about these ideas, how much they believe, what degree of belief do they have in the change idea. You see that show up when you see their prediction and then you literally, it's the who, what, where, when of this idea. And you get, when I do this, I get very, very specific, John will do X, Y, and Z on Monday, Wednesday, or Friday for each of the four weeks of this cycle. Catherine will do this, Ben will do this, you're very specific.   0:27:11.4 JD: So everybody knows their role, what their job is in this PDSA, and then the two other things that are a part of the plan. First one is super important, it's the operational definition. So whatever the key concept or concepts are that are under study, we operationally define them. So it's very, very explicit how we're gonna measure those things when we start actually running the experiment. And then we have a plan for collecting data. And I like to put the data right into my PDSA template, so everything's in one place. Sometimes it'll be a link to a Google sheet and a series of charts, but a lot of times I'll just create a table and then link the charts. So you can see, you can see the data right there in the PDSA.   0:27:58.5 JD: I think from there we just, we run the test, we run the test on a small scale, and after the test, as the plan's been implemented, we're going to describe what happened. We're gonna talk about what data we collected and what observations we made. Now in this Do phase, you're not actually doing any analysis. All you're doing is describing how the plan was implemented in when the rubber met the road, when you actually put things into action, how did implementation go compared to how you said it was gonna go in the plan. And almost every time I do this, there is some sort of aberration, some change from the plan that needs to be noted because I didn't anticipate, or we didn't anticipate, something happening. In schools, maybe I was gonna do this for three weeks and, on the third day of the test cycle, the experiment, we had a snow day that was unanticipated, or a key person in the experiment was not there. A student that we were working with on a PDSA cycle missed three days of school because of the flu, you report those things back because they're gonna impact the data that you collected.   0:29:22.4 JD: So that's what you're doing in the Do cycle. You run the test and then you describe what happened, verse the implementation plan. I think probably the most sort of important part then is that study phase, so we're gonna analyze the results and again, compare 'em back to the prediction. So this is the absolutely critical part of the Plan-Do-Study-Act cycle. I almost think of it like a mathematical formula. The analysis minus the prediction equals the learning. This was a sort of aha moment for me. And this is where you...   0:29:58.6 AS: Which is where Dr. Deming said, what is it? Something like, testing without prediction, doesn't acquire, you don't acquire knowledge. The only way to acquire knowledge is to make a prediction and then look at the results relative. Otherwise you're just messing around. You're not necessarily acquiring knowledge.   0:30:26.7 JD: Yeah, that's exactly right. Yeah. There's like, no, there's no theory without prediction. There's no knowledge without prediction. That's what we're doing in the study phase. We're, again, we're, why, why did what we see happen? Why did that happen? Why was it so different from my prediction? Or why was I able to make that prediction? What did I understand about our system or process? So again, it's not a test, one of the first PDSA cycles I ran with a teacher, the prediction, was very different than the outcome. He said, "Oh, the test failed." And I said, no, we learned something on a very small scale before we did that same thing. Instead of with one student, we could have been doing it with a whole school of students and imagined the time and the resources that it would take to do that sort of failed effort.   0:31:22.3 JD: We learned on a very small scale not to do it that way. And in PDSA cycle two, we're gonna adjust, right? And that's what we're doing. So in the study phase, we're comparing prediction and what actually happened. And then in that act phase, basically we take what we learned and make the next test, right? This on this continual basis. And I always sort of say, think about the Act as the three A's. We're either going to Abandon that change idea because it went so poorly. Now, that's not gonna happen very often in that first cycle, or two or three, but down the road, maybe it is, we need to abandon this idea and let it go. But more generally, what happens, especially early on, is that you Adapt each cycle a little bit. Like I was doing in that weight example, I was just adapting, I was sticking with the same basic diet plan and making some tweaks as I learned.   0:32:19.4 JD: So I was adapting each of those PDSA cycles. And then the third sort of option is to Adopt. And by adopt, I mean, you're gonna make this sort of a standard approach, standard work in your system. This is how we're gonna do things from now on. And generally, we're not gonna make a decision to adopt something, an intervention, until we've tested it across, four or five, six, seven test cycles. And, as we do these iterations, in a school example, maybe we're gonna try an attendance intervention with one student, and then we're gonna try it with 15 students. If the test with the one student went pretty well, and now I want those 15 students to vary a bit from that original student, I want this next group to have, some other characteristics, whatever that may be, than that, that original kid, and then maybe I'm gonna test it with a whole classroom and then maybe I'm gonna test it with a whole grade level, and then maybe I'll test it with the whole school. But that's sort of the mindset. You sort of go up this ramp of testing, and as you go up that ramp, you sort of increase the sample size of who is included in that test. So that if you're gonna adopt this into your system, you wouldn't be pretty sure it's gonna work broadly within that particular context.   0:33:51.5 JD: So that's sort of the basic idea. And then, what I stick in all of the footers, and I stole this idea from the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, but in the footer of my PDSA template and in all my sort of improvement templates, I put this phrase "probably wrong, definitely incomplete." Because that's the sort of the mindset that you have to have with continual improvement in general. And definitely with the PDSA cycle, because those first cycles, you're probably gonna get a lot wrong as you're sort of turning information into knowledge early on. You're not gonna know a lot about that thing, you're gonna learn over time. And so you sort of have to adopt this as your sort of mantra for PDSA cycles.   0:34:32.1 AS: Great. I was just looking at quotes by Dr. Deming, and the quote is, without theory, there is no learning. All right. So how would we wrap this up?   0:34:45.8 JD: Yeah, I mean, I think that's a great quote. And I think, so it doesn't, I mean, theory can be a little intimidating, just the word theory. I sort of originally thought of these grand academic or scientific theories, but that's not really what he was talking about. Generally, a theory can be a hunch. A theory can be an idea you have, a theory can be at one time I had a student that wasn't doing their homework, and I just, said, can you do this piece of homework first? [laughter], when you have study hall, you're never doing your reading homework when you go home. Can you just do this before you leave school? So that's a hunch, that's a theory, a theory to make things better.   0:35:28.1 JD: So I think, what I would do for folks that are listening to this, just grab a PDSA template, which you can find on a simple Google search. Just start plotting your data for something that's important to you. Get a bit of a baseline 10 or 12 or 15 points, and then try to run one of these PDSA cycles. I mean, I think it's this whole idea. I was in this IHI Improvement Advisor Program, and they would say, Okay, you got this whole hospital or this whole school, or this whole school system or hospital system, you need to improve. What are you gonna do on Tuesday? What are you gonna do on Tuesday when you go back into the office or the school or the hospital? That's sort of this idea of PDSA, do something, try something, get some change ideas going and see what that does to your data. It doesn't have to be this huge, huge scale thing. Try it on a small scale and see what happens. See what you'll learn.   0:36:31.1 AS: Well, there's a challenge. John on behalf of everyone at the Deming Institute, I wanna thank you again for this discussion. For listeners, remember, you can go to deming.org to continue your journey. This is your froggy host, Andrew Stotz, and I'll leave you with one of my favorite quotes from Dr. Deming. People are entitled to joy in work.

In this episode, Bill and Andrew discuss variation, the impossibility of true interchangeability and why we need to apply "shades of gray" thinking at work. Bill shares the key question that will take your organization beyond "meets specifications" and help improve your processes, so you can delight your customers. TRANSCRIPT 0:00:02.8 Andrew Stotz: My name is Andrew Stotz. I'll be your host as we continue our journey into the teachings of Dr. W Edwards Deming. Today, I'm continuing my discussion 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. The topic for today is 20th century quality, Bill take it away.   0:00:28.2 Bill Bellows: Thank you, Andrew. So the running joke on the 20th century quality is we could have said 19th century, and sadly it's still 21st century. And what do I mean by that? In our second episode, we've talked about the two questions of quality management. Question one, does this characteristic, does this product, does this thing meet requirements? There's only two answers. That's 19th century quality, that's 20th century quality, and by and large, that's 21st century quality. And my hope is that our conversation inspires people to move into question two, which opened opportunities for as you're talking about opportunities for investment, opportunities for doing amazing things, when we get out of the black and white of question one into the shades of gray, of question two. That's, that's so...   0:01:26.5 AS: So what century are we in now?   0:01:29.1 BB: I think the 21st.   0:01:30.5 AS: 21st. My goodness. People always get, I always get confused. We're in the two thousands, but that's a 21st century. And 19th century is the 1800s.   0:01:46.7 BB: Well...   0:01:47.5 AS: 20th century would then be from 1900s until 2000 or 1999.   0:01:54.3 BB: The... And just for some more clarity, and I was doing some research earlier today, but there's a great tie between question one and 19th century 20th centuries still: question number one, does this meet requirements? A lot of that ties back to this whole concept of interchangeable parts. Which is not what we do in the garage when we're in the garage building something - that's 21st century quality, because we design it, we buy the stuff again, whether you're building something in the kitchen, in the backyard, and we put it all together with a 21st century, a Deming-Taguchi approach to quality, which means we're not looking at the parts in isolation we're looking at how they come together, the idea of interchangeable parts, and the... A name that I usually find as being the father of this concept of interchangeable parts. People talk about Eli Whitney.   0:03:02.3 BB: But Eli Whitney heard about interchangeable parts from the first American to hear about this concept, who was Thomas Jefferson. And he heard about it when he was US Ambassador to France, in 1802 timeframe, he was Jeff, he was George Washington's ambassador to France. And while there he came across a Frenchman by the name of Andre Blanc, B-L-A-N-C. And Blanc is considered the... Not the father of interchangeable parts. There's a French general in the 1770s had this idea of you're in the battlefield, you've got all these broken weapon systems and I can't cobble together this cannon with these wheels to be able to continue fighting the battle because they're all crafts built with craftsmanship, which means these things don't come together. So this general had the idea, and I like to tell people, Blanc is the one who got the marching orders to go put this concept into practice. And so he's given credit for being the one to work through the details.   0:04:17.1 BB: And what I was reading earlier tonight I've done other reading on this before, but it was, Jefferson went to a presentation by Blanc, heard about the ideas. Jefferson wrote a letter to John Jay and I don't know exactly, I, John Jay's name, I... Name I've heard before. I don't know exactly what his role was in government. But he wrote a letter back that there's this thing, this guy Blanc, this concept of interchangeable parts. And as the story goes, Jefferson offered Blanc the opportunity to come to the States 'cause Jefferson saw this, not just on the battlefield, the ability to repair weapons quickly, quickly, quickly, but what this means to a growing society. And Blanc had no interest. And so Jefferson took the idea, gave it to Whitney. Whitney gets credit for the first contract with Congress ever for a product with interchangeable parts, which turned out to be rifles. And it took on the order of 20 years for him to figure out how to do that. But in the process, he was working on the design protocol, the quality system, which is 18th century quality, which is looking at all these parts, giving them requirements. And that's what we do today.   0:05:39.8 AS: So the US Congress kind of funded that research and development basically.   0:05:44.3 BB: Well, there's a fun story and [chuckle] is it a true story? It has the making of a true story 'cause he figured Jefferson is the, you know, the godfather of this movement. And the story is in the early 1800s John Adams is president and Jefferson goes to the Oval Office with Whitney to give John Adams an update on this thing called interchangeable parts. And so he brings in Whitney, you know, this is, you know, Mr. President, okay, this is Eli Whitney. And evidently Whitney comes in with two rifles and Jefferson says, okay, make me proud. And he takes the rifles apart and he moves the parts from one to the other and shows them this is what we're working on. And evidently Adams is blown away by the whole thing. Well, the punchline is that Jefferson working with Whitney's, hoodwinked Adams because the parts were handcrafted to be identical. What took another 18 or so years was his effort to create the tooling to mass-produce these, not hand-file them. It took some time. It took some time. But Whitney gets all that credit, but it goes back to Blanc. And also, in the very same timeframe, I've read of incredible efforts by the British in using this for pulleys and warships. And so this was going on elsewhere.   0:07:24.6 BB: What I've also heard... And I'll just throw out, I don't wanna go there. But I've heard accounts that the Chinese centuries before were looking at this. If somebody's thinking, "Well, was it them or... " I don't know. And so in the Google searches I was doing about an hour ago, I didn't find anything on China. But the important thing for our conversation is the idea of taking a product, breaking it into parts, giving the parts requirements, and having this sense of, "All these springs meet requirements. They're all good," which is question one. "All the bars are good, and we can interchange them." What I also say is that the concept behind question number one, saying that all these things that make requirements are good, all the barrels are good, all the locks are good, I would define that as absolute interchangeability, meaning the sense that any one of these can be put together with anyone else, and I could take any doctor, any of this, and I can absolutely plug and play. And what that ignores is variation. From a Deming perspective, which is question two, when you realize that all these parts that meet requirements have variation, that means they're relatively interchangeable, but they're not absolutely interchangeable.   0:09:01.2 AS: Which makes me think about the before interchangeability, which we're so familiar with in this modern world. Before...   0:09:08.4 BB: Everything is.   0:09:09.3 AS: Interchangeability, there was craftsmanship, whereas the difference is in those parts of a shoe, even though they may... My uncle and myself got the same shoe, there are some unique differences to those exact same shoes that the craftsman's not trying to get rid of. They're part of what... It's not a pressure that the craftsman feels.   0:09:33.7 BB: Well, handcrafted is expensive. These are handcrafted, a handcrafted guitar, a handcrafted... There's a place down the street where they... Essentially, it's handcrafted car wash, by hand. In the early days, handcrafted was the only thing. Then we went to interchangeable. And so we could have handcrafted truck, handcrafted this. But the point I wanted to make for our audience is question one does it meet requirements. There is a sense of absolute interchangeability, that I could replace this doctor with this doctor because they're both board-certified, this engineer with this engineer. It's like in the world of computers and software, it's this idea of plug and play. "I can take this one out, plug this one and just move on." And we have that sense of everyone in the organization is relatively interchangeable. The idea of interchangeability from a Deming perspective is workers are treated as interchangeable, products are treated as interchangeable, and what's missing is a sense of differences, that the people are actually different. They're not... And that's what we... The running joke we used to have with friends is that we've got... People are making parts that are interchangeable, and we're treating the people as if they are interchangeable.   0:11:03.5 BB: And that mindset of interchangeability is alive and well. Now, another thing just throw out, just for those that might not be familiar with this conversation, is that when requirements are set and I just like to say to people is, "Can a company go to a supplier and say, 'We want this part to be exactly 1-inch thick'?" And they'll say, "Yeah, we can pull that out." And I say, "Well, technically, no." 'Cause what exactly does 1 inch mean? Does it mean 1.000 inches? Does it mean we're gonna have that thickness all the way around the table? And what that is ignoring is variation. Even if I measure it and it's exactly 1.000 all the way around, well, when I ship it to your company, Andrew, and you measure it, are you gonna get the same value? And if you get a different value, does that mean I can't sell it to you? What we do is we take the 1.00 and we say, "Plus or minus some small number." We can say, "10 plus or minus 1/16 of an inch." And then we get into the world of requirements where there's a maximum and a minimum. And now what we're saying is good, which is question number one, is everything in between. And my explanation is, if we didn't allow for that wiggle room, we couldn't have commerce because we're not acknowledging variation.   0:12:49.3 BB: And that goes back to... Again, it goes back to Whitney and Blanc is a sense of, "We're gonna put bounds on it, anywhere in between." In the world of American football, that saying... Or international soccer, "Anywhere within the net is a goal. Anywhere within." What's missing from that is if, is what happens if we're at different values within that range, what, where does that, what do the differences in meeting requirements mean? And what I point out is the differences in how we meet requirements shows up when you take the thing from me and try to do something with it.   0:13:37.9 AS: So it's related to the application that it's being used in.   0:13:43.6 BB: And I don't... A question that I like to ask that I don't, I'm not sure if we've gotten into in the first or second session is, I'll ask people, what do you call the person that graduates last in their class in medical school? Doctor. They meet the requirements. So does the first person in class. Well, they, that's from a question one perspective, those two doctors are absolutely interchangeable. I need a doctor. Well, what I ask is, is there a difference between those two doctors? And if there is a difference, when does that difference appear? And that's what you're talking about. From a question two perspective, the difference between those two doctors shows up when they walk into your room. They know when they're providing the whatever procedure you need, when they interact with you and your family, when they interact with other professionals at the hospital. The difference between any two things that meets requirements shows up when they, when all these things come together. And my excitement over Deming's work is he learned about that from Dr. Taguchi, who I learned it from.   0:14:47.1 BB: And what Dr. Deming did was integrate that sense of understanding variation and systems with the psychology of theory of knowledge of the system of profound knowledge. And that's provides an incredible theory by which to run organizations. That's the potential of 21st century quality that I hope we can inspire.   0:15:08.7 AS: And if I kind of try to piece together what you're putting out there, I think the first thing you're saying is that absolute interchangeability doesn't exist.   0:15:18.7 BB: No, no.   0:15:18.8 AS: Because nothing can be perfectly interchangeable. The other thing...   0:15:22.5 BB: If no two snowflakes are the same, if twins aren't identical, then you can't have absolute, absolute interchangeability. If you understand variation, it can't be.   0:15:32.9 AS: Okay, so then the next thing is that because we can't have absolute interchangeability, we need to understand some parameters or requirements and of what we need for this application. And then the other part of that is to understand that then there's variation even within, once you've set those parameters or requirements, there's going to be variations within that. Help me to continue to understand this.   0:16:06.4 BB: Well, first, let me give you an example outside of manufacturing just to make it easier to understand. So one is you put out a job search that you're looking to hire someone with these skills and 10 people meet the requirements. And does a given company take those 10 people and say, "Okay, put their names in a box, we're going to randomly pull them out?" I don't think so. We narrow it down. We take the ones that meet requirements. We call them up. We do an interview. What are we doing? We're sorting amongst things that meet requirements. Why? Because they aren't absolutely interchangeable.   0:16:50.3 AS: But when we're sorting amongst those, we're sorting, as you just described it, we're sorting by different characteristics like from the way they respond to something, or.   0:16:58.3 BB: Well, we're saying these... So we're saying these 10 people all meet the requirements of number of years of experience, a bachelor's degree, this and this. But now what we're doing is seeing through phone call, likely the scenario would be we're going to interview them by phone and get it down to three, bring the three in. What we're looking for is, what we're saying is those 10 are different. They all meet requirements, but they're different. And what we're looking for eventually is which one's the best fit. Why? Because fit is relative, not absolute. If fit was absolute, we would just roll the dice and say they're all the same. It doesn't matter. No, we don't do that. And like I say, I kid people, "Is that how we find a spouse? We just go to some dating app. We end up with three people. We say, this one?" No. We're looking for which is the best fit.   0:17:52.9 BB: So this idea of understanding fit as relative is an everyday thing. All the parking spots meet requirements, which is the best fit for what I'm doing that day? That's what we're talking about. And I mean, aside from manufacturing, it's the same concept. We're saying all the fruit is not the same. I want one which is about this juiciness. These applicants are not the same. What we're looking for is which is the best fit into the system of the product or the service or the company.   0:18:29.7 AS: And this discussion helps people to think about the idea that it's kind of nonsense just to think that by defining something kind of loosely, like I want this one inch long, as an example, that there's just so many flaws to that, that it's not the best way to do it. We need to understand more. What does it take away from this?   0:18:58.6 BB: Well, let me say this, because I don't want to make it complicated, but there's a time and a place for absolute interchangeability and moving on. We go to McDonald's, that's how they make their food. We're just saying, okay, I mean, I'm not saying absolute interchangeability, get rid of it. What I'm saying is use absolute interchangeability where it's not worth doing more than that. And then where it makes sense, whether it comes to staffing, a relative... And even in every feature of a product that you make, not every aspect of it has the same fit issue. So the big thing is, where fit is most difficult, or most important, that's where you apply the meaning of question two. So if it's not worth the effort, then you don't do it because the strategy is the amount of time I put into sorting the things that are good has to pay for itself.   0:20:06.9 BB: So I go through all that trouble when it comes to who I wanna date, who I wanna marry, where we're gonna have the reception, where we're gonna go on vacation, alright? But it doesn't mean we apply that same degree of effort everywhere. Again, when you're selecting a doctor, you might wanna go to that extent. When you're selecting an attorney, but the idea is that you can, as we've talked prior, is become aware that's it's a choice. Do we focus on question one, which is absolutely interchangeability. It's a very simple model. Does the application... Is it worth any more time than that? No. Then that's the way to go versus question two. Let it be a choice.   0:20:49.5 AS: So let's wrap it up by thinking about the listener here and saying, okay, they're gonna go back into their job after listening to this. And what part... What can they do with this knowledge? Let's say an exercise at work or a way of thinking about how this can help them in their everyday job.   0:21:11.2 BB: I think the big thing is, and it's very straightforward, I don't know how much work it takes, but pay attention to how people use what you give them whether it's data you're handing off in a spreadsheet. Last week I met with our CPA who does our taxes year after year. And for my business, I give him a spreadsheet with a bunch of different columns and rows, and every year I add a couple more columns and a couple more rows. And I cut and paste and put it into a PDF file and send it to him. And I was talking with him last week and I said," You know, Mike, I can put that in a spreadsheet. It's a little bit more work for me." Because I said, "How legible is that fine print?" And he said, "It would be helpful if you did that." I said, "Boom, I can do that. I'm gonna do that." But if I didn't know, I would keep sending it to him, and he's squinting, squinting, squinting.   0:22:14.1 BB: And that's exactly what I'm talking about, is pay attention to how people use your work. It's as simple as that. Going around the corner and just asking for more clarity 'cause then the question is, "Is it possible that with a little bit more effort, I could save you a lot more effort?" [laughter] And that's what we're looking for. And relative to our accountant, it's not that hard for me to cut and paste and send him a different spreadsheet. That's a few seconds, and I think I could save him a lot more than a few seconds. So that's... The big punchline is in the world of interchangeable parts, I just say, "Hey, this is good. It meets requirements." Now what I'm paying attention to is, "What if I put a little bit more effort in this, can I make your life easier?" And that's the essence of teamwork.   0:23:11.8 AS: Yep. Well, I think that's a good place to wrap it up, Bill. On behalf of everyone at the Deming Institute, I wanna thank you again for this discussion. For listeners, remember to go to Deming.org to continue your journey. This is your host, Andrew Stotz, and I'm gonna leave you with one of my favorite quotes from Dr. Deming: "People are entitled to joy in work.”

In this third discussion in a series on the Role of a Manager, David and Andrew discuss how a manager should view, and treat, people. Deming wrote, “It’s just not ranking people, it is instead recognition of differences between people and an intent to put everybody in position for development.” David applies this to education: literally looking at how to support everyone with limited resources. 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 discussion with David P. Langford, who has devoted his life to applying Dr. Deming's philosophy to education, and he offers us his practical advice for implementation, and before we get started, David, I have to apologize my voice, I got a little bit hoarse. The topic for today is Optimizing Diversity. David, take it away.   0:00:28.7 David P. Langford: Well, you've been talking too much, Andrew. So we've been working in this section in Dr. Deming's book, The New Economics, and we've talking about the role of the manager, and the reason we're doing that is because I often get asked all the time, well where do we begin, and what do we do and how do we start stuff? And people get fired up about Deming concepts, and then they wanna know what to do next, and so that's why we've been talking about this about the role of a manager in a system and studying the aim of systems so on and so forth.   0:01:06.5 DL: So this is point number three, and I will just take a stab at just reading it. First off in Deming's words, so he says "A manager of people understands that people are different from each other. He tries to create for everyone interest and challenge and joy in work, tries to optimize the family background, education, skills, hopes and abilities of everyone. It's just not ranking people, it is instead recognition of differences between people and an intent to put everybody in position for development." So in today's lingo lingo, we would call that diversity, and there's lots of different diversity, of course, there's diversity in cultures, there's difference in languages, there's diversity of thought. There's lots of different ways to think about this.   0:02:01.9 DL: And I really like what Deming is talking about here. He said... He's talking about, what's your role as a manager? And so in this podcast, we're always talking about what are these things mean in education, obviously, Deming was talking mostly to corporate managers and people like that in business, but he was also an educator himself, so I always applied all these things to education in the same way. So as a teacher, you are a manager of people in a classroom, and when that group comes into the classroom, your job is to optimize the ability of them to work together, and that's what Deming is talking about here. And so there's lots of ways to do that. One of the ways that I picked up on a concept that was in Lean management called huddles, in which the Lean managers are taught to have a huddle with your employees first thing in the morning, well I transferred that into education and taught teachers all over the world have a huddle first thing in the morning. I just read a local research paper that came in on the web the other day, and a teacher was talking about the value of morning meetings.   0:03:28.5 DL: Well, call it whatever you want, but a huddle is just that basically, you just get everybody together. And it works fantastic, even kindergarten, whatever it might be, and get a chance to optimize their diversity. What happened over the weekend? What was memorable or not memorable. Does anybody have anything they wanna talk about? Something that happened that maybe you need support with or you don't have to say anything, but if you wanna say something, you can. And I've always found those things just to be amazingly helpful to everybody, because once somebody in the group knows that somebody else is hurting in some way throughout the day, they can do little tiny things, and kids have amazing hearts and will help people if they know that they need help. Another way that I've taught people to optimize the diversity through the classroom or problems and issues that people have is an exercise called fear and a hat, and with fear and a hat you get people to write down what are their fears, and works really great, like when you're trying to form a group, like in the beginning of the year, maybe even like day one, what are your fears about this year and what's happening or this class or just anything. You don't have to put your name on it.   0:04:58.8 DL: In fact, we don't want you to put your name on it and then just drop it in this hat, and everybody drops it in a hat and then you rummage them around and you pull one out. I've had kids put in things like, well, I don't know how to swim, and I'm afraid that other people are gonna find that out, and I'll get ridiculed for it. And these are high school kids. And so all we do is get in the huddle and just say, Okay, this... If you had a friend that had this fear or you had this fear, what advice could you give them about how to operate or what to do. And amazingly, kids come up with just fantastic ideas about how they could help somebody else, or sometimes kids will say things like, well, you could tell somebody else, you could tell somebody that you don't know how to swim, and so maybe they could help make accommodations for you or help you work through that, or you could take a swimming class and learn. It's never too late to learn how to swim.   0:06:03.8 DL: I have a good friend in Texas said she started taking a swimming class when she was, I think, 55 years old. Never learned how to swim really had convinced herself she doesn't know how to swim, and she started taking the class and lo and behold, she actually learned how to swim. You can overcome problems at any stage in your life, and when I read this point that Deming's making is that your job as the teacher/manager in that class, is to find out what is the diversity that you're dealing with in that class, and then learn how to optimize it within the group, because chances are the next group that comes in next year, you're probably gonna have somewhat the same diversity of thought and culture, you don't often get radically different groups in communities, you pretty much get the same kinds of kids coming through a system, unless they come from outside the country or outside the state, etcetera. And that diversity or those differences between people is something to be celebrated, not to be looked down on. And... Yeah, so I just found that to me, that's what Deming is talking about, is your job as the manager is to understand all these things about people, and then learn how to optimize that. And he goes further about... Go ahead what?   0:07:43.2 AS: At the end of that sentence. At the end of that whole section, he says, in an attempt and an attempt to put everybody in position for development. What... Is he talking personal development, is he talking development of the organization. What does he mean knowing that next section, he's gonna talk about learning, life-long learning and coaching and things like that, what do you think he meant by this word development?   0:08:10.1 DL: I think just that, that the development of the person. I've had students in classes that I didn't hear this one girl I had in class she didn't make a sound, didn't ever... You'd call on her she just look down at her desk. So I quickly learned, I can't really do that, I can't single her out, she was so embarrassed about that, and it was finally about January or February, one year, about six months into the school year, she was in a group, and they were going around the group and you could either participate or just say pass, and she couldn't even say pass. She would... It would just get to be her turn and all the kids just knew, Okay, well, we just waited a little bit here and then we're just gonna go on because she's not gonna say anything, and I'll never forget that it got to be her turn and all of a sudden, she looked up and she said, in the softest voice. Well, I think that... Around the kids and they were just like, everybody froze and it was like, oh my God, she speaks. And don't say anything, don't do anything, don't intimidate her in any way or she'll never speak again.   0:09:24.8 DL: But this was a girl that two weeks later, I had her giving a multimedia presentation in front of corporate heads at Motorola Corporation, and I'll never forget at the end of that that one of the managers came up to me and said, "Where do you get these kids?" Well, there's no way that he could see a nine months process in place, and this child had come in, and in many cases, sometimes people would have just written her off, but just gradually, tiny little challenges and getting the group to understand that their job was to support people that... You're always gonna have an issue or a problem going on. Well, that all came from this point, number three, of Deming's right here.   0:10:17.1 DL: And so when I would take students out to do presentations, we would talk about this very point, and everybody had a job of supporting everybody else. So when somebody got up to do a presentation, there was somebody running their video, there was somebody running this, there was somebody making sure their sound was correct, there was somebody who was doing this. And every time a student got up, there was this huge support network, and I will not forget, I went to a major state department, education state department at a capital in the US, and these kids gave a presentation, and I had just tons of people in education department, coming up to me saying the same thing, "Where do you get these people." And I thought, wow, you don't really even know the background of these students, some of them, we had to take them downtown and show them a stop light and go over the rules of the stop light, they'd never seen one before in high school, and these are the very same kids that are giving this presentation in front of all these people. So...   0:11:26.4 DL: To me, that's what he's talking about here, is getting everybody to work together, challenging them different levels, giving them experiences where they're learning new things and working together, but you're actually... You're creating a team, you're creating an interactive team, and it's a conscious effort that you're doing that, it just doesn't happen organically or by itself, it's a conscious effort that every day you're thinking about how can I optimize this team and move people forward? And if you do that and you think like that, pretty soon you have this amazing team of people.   0:12:10.2 DL: So I remember, I think in one of the videos that The Deming Library, there's a superintendent that I worked with in Texas for years, and he was talking about. People would come to his district and experience being around his staff, big staff, 3000 teachers in his district, and invariably superintendent from outside the district would say to him, "Where do you get these people?" Even in a system that big, and the first couple of times that would happen, he would just look at them kind of blankly and just say, "Well, I get them the same place you do, but I guess we just go about working together differently and thinking about supporting each other differently."   0:12:58.5 DL: The other thing I found out that through this process is that you have to be very patient because whether you're talking about students in a classroom whether you're talking about employees or entire student body or whatever it might be, you have to be patient that they're gonna come around over time, if given the right amount of support and challenge through that process. And be very cognizant of the small little ways that people are actually are moving forward and they are learning and they are feeling like they're supported, because if you don't have a very supportive classroom, you're not gonna get kids to take risks. You don't get kids to take risks, they're not gonna learn new things, they're not gonna try new things, and basically the only ones that achieve in an environment like that are the ones that really didn't need to be in the class in the first place, probably they could already aced everything that you are gonna have them do in that class, but you have to always remember that your job is to optimize the system and as... Get as many of these people to the highest level possible in the time that you have to work with them.   0:14:14.4 DL: And people that do that are very profound, and that's why Deming calls it Profound Knowledge, because when you see people like that, you are truly amazed that this can go on, so...   0:14:29.0 AS: One last thing for me is, why did he need to write this point, it seems so obvious that we should be trying to get the most out of everybody and get the uniqueness out of each person and bring that into value to our system, to our customer. I'm just curious, why isn't this being done?   0:14:56.1 DL: He's saying that, this is not about ranking people, so if you think your job is to rank people, you're not gonna be thinking like this, you're not gonna be thinking that, oh no, my job is not just to find out the weak ones and get rid of them or the people who can't do what they need to do, my job is to develop everybody as quickly as possible, giving them new opportunities and being supported within that organization. When you do that, you get amazing creativity at the same time. Because creativity gets shut down any time people feel intimidating... Intimidated, those kinds of things. This is also where bullying comes in, so if you're setting up the classroom where you're more concerned about ranking and rating people and grading people, then you are about optimizing the whole... Everybody's learning in that class. You're really opening it up for bullying and all kinds of things that go on. I've run into so many examples of parents telling me that all of a sudden their child was doing really good the year before, and all of a sudden this year, they're in a class and they just... They wanna quit, they wanna give up, they wanna get out, whatever it might be, and people wanna blame it on bullying, but you have to realize that 98-99% of the bullying is systemic.   0:16:33.8 DL: So the degree to which you have that going on in your organization, you need to be thinking about, okay, what am I doing that's actually encouraging bullying. And when you're grading people to 1/1000 of a point and ranking them and holding people up as being superior to other people, and things like that you're gonna get bullying, because the only way to exceed an organization that's like that is to put somebody else down. If I tear somebody else down, then somehow psychologically, that makes me look better, kind of thing, or even to the point of I'm gonna get rid of them 'cause they're a threat to my ranking and what I look like. And so... It's deep, it's profound. That's what the word profound means is deep. When you think about it in an organization, the last point I would wanna make about this is that because he's talking about your role as a manager, well, if you take this on as that, this is your job, I will guarantee you, you will be happier. You'll come every day, when you meet those students, you're just much happier about being with them because you're supporting them, but they're supporting too. They're supporting you as well.   0:18:01.5 DL: I used to do low ropes course training, and some of you may have heard of things like trust falls and things like that, where you fall back and somebody catches you, but we did a lot of those kinds of things with teachers and students to get teachers to learn to trust their students, and I'll never forget, I was in a middle school one time and I had taught all the teachers about how to run certain events and said, okay, well, here's how you do the first trust fall and then you can go all the way up to having somebody stand on a table and have all the students lined up behind them, and then they have to really trust and fall back and have the students catch him. Well, I was just kinda going around to all the groups, making sure everybody was safe and they were doing things correctly, etcetera, and I came by this one group in the cafeteria and this pretty veteran lady a teacher, she was really great at getting all her students that were in the group to do this trust fall and they well, clap and they were all happy about catching somebody and supporting them and stuff, and then this one little girl turns to her and she said, now is your turn.   0:19:12.0 DL: What this teacher came up with, oh, well, it's this, I'm too old to this, I can't do that, and they just let her go on with all these excuses, and finally one of the little middle school kids said, "Oh, but you have to." And you could just see the blood drain out of her face, but everything was... She had to step up on this step and then step up onto the table every time she would make an incremental leap in performance, kids would cheer like crazy. And she finally did it, it took a long time, but she finally crossed her arms and closed her eyes and fell back in those middle school kids caught her.   0:19:58.2 DL: And she burst into tears. And she told me later, she said, "You know, when I hit those kids hands my first thought was, in 20 years of experience, I had never really trusted my students with anything." And I thought, oh that was amazing. And I checked in with her a months later and a year later, and everything she said my whole life changed because of that kind of experience. So either you lead and you do these kinds of things to optimize the group and the diversity of the group that you have then and teach people to work together and support each other, or you end up leaving them up to their own devices, and then you end up managing the behavior that it produces all the time, because I can tell you that teachers that work in this kind of environment and really work diligently to optimize the diversity within their classrooms, they're not dealing with behavior problems, they're not dealing with bullying, they're not dealing with all the kinds of things that a lot of teachers think that that's their job. I'm supposed to keep track of all that and punish people that are doing it and etcetera. And Deming would say, well, you don't know what your job is.   0:21:23.2 AS: Well, let's wrap it up by thinking about optimizing diversity with the idea that the objective of a manager is really to get the most out of people and to get them to work as a team, and I think about it in the business world, it's the same thing and bullying that happens in schools, goes into the business world, and when you start ranking people, you start... And you have a scarce reward, you know, it just turns into pitting people against each other. You've talked about a couple of tools, one of them is the huddles, which is one way a morning meeting or a huddle, a very short morning meeting to check in with everybody and the value of that, and the second tool you talked about was "fear and a hat" and anonymously putting fear into a hat and then discussing those, sharing those in a group. You talked about the importance of supporting each other and working together to overcome challenges, and ultimately the idea of getting the most out of people and out of the system is also about creativity and getting that creativity, you never know where things will go. Is there anything you would add to that, wrap up?   0:22:38.1 DL: No, I think that's done well with that, except the final thing we talk a lot about... Deming talking about people have a right to joy in their work. Well, the same thing in schools, students have a right to joy in their learning, and if it's mudville every day and I hate going to school, there's something systemic probably going on that needs to be looked at and understood. And it all depends on the largest system that you have to work with it. So you may not have a supporting school, but it doesn't mean you can't optimize your classroom and these 30 students that you see every single day.   0:23:22.4 AS: Well, David, on behalf of everyone at the Deming Institute, I wanna thank you again for this discussion for listeners remember to go to Deming.org to continue your journey. Listeners, can learn more about David at langfordlearning.com. This is your froggy host, Andrew Stotz, and I will leave you with one of my favorite quotes from Dr. Deming, and it's very appropriate for this discussion, "People are entitled to joy in work."

Education is often touted as data- or evidence-driven. But in this discussion, John Dues contends that educational data is often fiction, given how easy it is to distort, both via the inputs and outputs and through manipulation. 0:00:02.6 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 discussion with John Dues, who is part of the new generation of the educators striving to apply Dr. Deming's principles to unleash student joy in learning. The topic for today is Data is Meaningless Without Context. John, take it away.   0:00:28.3 John Dues: Yeah, thanks for having me back, Andrew. I'm thinking a lot about educational data, and I think about how it's often presented, and I think so often, what we're actually doing with our educational data is what I call writing fiction, which is taking a lot of liberties with the data that comes into our system, whether it's state testing data or some other type of data that gets reported out to the public, and we often sort of manipulate that data or distort that data in a way that paints our organization or our school system or our state in a positive light, and I think we do that sometimes at the detriment of actually working to improve those organizations or those systems because we spend so much time trying to paint this positive picture instead of just putting the data out there.   0:01:26.3 AS: And it's interesting you talked... One of the interesting things about what you're saying is that it could be accurate and good data, but it's just the context or the structure of how it's presented makes it meaningless.   0:01:39.9 JD: Yeah, we try so hard to sort of paint it in this positive light to make it look like we're doing a good job. Everybody wants to do a good job, but I think we often do that at the detriment of our systems.   0:01:54.7 AS: One of the things that made me think about it, in the financial world, we have a code of ethics, and that is basically that... Particularly for CFA charter holders, financial analysts, that you have to present a complete picture of your performance. So if you have 10 customers that you're managing their money and one of them, you really bombed out and you decide you're gonna do the average of the nine that you did well on and then go out to your clients and say, "This is my performance," that's a very... You have an obligation to accurately represent your performance. And when I think about it in all the charts and graphs that people are making in education all around, I would say that most people probably are just, I would call it CYA, cover your ass type of charts [laughter] of, "How do we make this look good?"   0:02:43.9 JD: Yeah, I think... I read somewhere that there's sort of three ways you can respond to your data. You can actually work to improve the system, which would be a positive, and then the other two ways are two forms of a negative, one is you could distort the system itself, or you could actually distort the data. And a lot of times, there's not sort of a nefarious motivation underneath that distortion, but there's sort of, again, this desire to paint your organization or your system in this positive light. So sometimes they're straight up unethical behavior or cheating, but most of the time, that's not what I'm seeing and that's actually not what I'm talking about here today. It's more of this sort of taking liberties, writing fiction. "Okay, we declined from two years ago, but it's up from last year." Those types of sort of distortions of the data that I think are fairly common in education sector, probably all sectors too, so.   0:03:49.9 JD: I think... Maybe I'll share my screen for the folks that have video and I'll talk through it for the listeners that don't have video, but one of the things I often think of and focus on is state testing data, because so many people are looking at that data all the way from State Departments of Education, the school system, the individual schools, the individual teachers and classrooms with their students, and then of course, families get these state testing reports as well.   0:04:23.8 JD: And a handful of years ago, I was looking at one of these reports from the Ohio Department of Education and sort of picture this fancy, glossy, colorful PDF. It's got this big headline on it, it says, "Ohio students continue to show improved achievement in academic content areas." Then it's got a table with all the state tests, all the different grade levels, and three columns for three different years of data. And then in the last column, there's these up green arrows for where there's been improvement from year over year and then these red down arrows for where there's been a decline, and I was thinking to myself, "Well, in some of these areas, one, some of the percentage changes are so small that just on that... In that realm, they're sort of meaningless, like fifth grade science goes from 68.3% in one year and it goes up to 68.5% in another year. That's essentially a rounding error when you're talking about 100,000 or so students that are taking the test. I think calling that improvement is a stretch at best.   0:05:39.0 JD: And then I was focusing on third grade reading specifically because that's such a critical area. In Ohio, there's actually a third grade reading guarantee, so if you don't pass the test, there's the potential there that you could get held back in third grade, so there's a lot of focus on that data. So I was reading on in that state education department document. It said, "Well, third grade did see this decrease this year, but when you look back two years, it actually had... Third graders actually had an increase of proficiency." So again, you actually have a decline from this previous school year to the more recent school year in this document, and they're still making this claim because if you go back two years versus this most recent year, you do see improvement, and so you start to think to yourself, "Well, what is improvement? Do we have a definition of improvement? And if so, what has to be present?"   0:06:43.4 JD: And a few years ago, I came across this definition in sort of a seminal work in our area called The Improvement Guide, and the author sort of outlined a definition for improvement, and it sort of has these three components, and this made a lot of sense to me. If you're gonna claim improvement, you have to, one, alter how work or activity is done or the makeup of a tool. So you had to change something. Basically change something about the work you're doing. That change had to produce these visible positive differences in results relative to historical norms, and then the third thing is it had to have a lasting impact. And so when I go back and I think about that state testing data or really any type of data, you start to ask this question, Is this really improvement, or again, is this writing fiction? Is this not really improvement, but we're twisting the numbers to sort of fit our narrative?   0:07:45.0 JD: So when we think about that state testing data, do we have knowledge for how worker activity has been altered systematically. And if I can't point to that, then how am I gonna take the so-called improvement and bring it to other places in the state that may not have had those same improvements? Do I have these visible positive differences in results going back and comparing to historical norms, not just last year or even two years ago, but five or six or eight or 10 years worth of data. And then have I been able to sustain that improvement? Has there been a lasting impact? Have I been able to hold the gains? And if I haven't been able to do those three things, point to what we change compared to historical norms and then sustain that improvement, I would argue that we haven't really brought about improvement. We can't claim that we've improved our system.   0:08:46.9 AS: It's interesting. Before we go on the numbers that you were showing, roughly, the average there is something like 60%. What's the 40? That 60% is what? And that means 40% is not that.   0:09:07.7 JD: Yeah, I'll go back. So when you're thinking about state test scores, most states have some type of threshold, like we have this goal that X percent of our students are gonna be considered proficient on any given test. So in Ohio, that threshold is 80%. So the state says, in order to meet the benchmark, any given school needs to have 80% of its students, let's say, on third grade reading test have to meet this proficiency standard. And so what we saw in this particular data is that in the 2015-16 school year, 54.9% of the kids met that proficiency threshold. The following year in '16-17, 63.8% of the kids met that threshold, and then in the most recent year in this particular testing document in '17-18 61.2% of the kids were proficient. So just about 40...   0:10:04.8 AS: So even if it was a sizable increase, it wasn't just statistically insignificant, it's still roughly 40% of the students aren't proficient. No matter even what the government says about what's the minimum standard, it would be hard to really argue too much about improvement when you're so low. [chuckle]   0:10:32.8 JD: That's right, yeah. And that's what you often see in these types of these documents. So 40%, a significant minority of students are not proficient on the third grade reading test, and 60% are, and there's these incremental increases and decreases depending on the year that you're looking at.   0:10:54.6 AS: It's like the Titanic heading for an iceberg and you say, "I've turned the ship one degree, but we're still gonna hit the iceberg."   0:11:01.9 JD: But we're still gonna hit, yep, yep.   [chuckle]   0:11:04.3 AS: Alright, keep going.   0:11:06.0 JD: Yeah. So I think what's really important thinking about data in context, when you start actually stepping back and saying, "Okay, let's look at third grade reading over the course of 16 or 17 years versus three years," this very different story emerges. Part of that story is that context, so what has changed about Ohio's third grade state reading system over the course of those years? So if you go back all the way back to the 2003-2004 school year, you see Ohio is giving a particular test called the Ohio Achievement test, and you see as that's administered each year for six or seven or eight years, the results are sort of bouncing around this average, somewhere in the neighborhood of 77-78%. Then you have a change in about the 2011-12 school year. Now, we're given this test called the Ohio Achievement Assessment, but it's pretty similar, just the name has changed, the test itself is still the same, and you see basically these very similar results. And then all of a sudden, you sort of fast forward to the 14-15 school year. Anybody that's an educator from back in that time period, they'll sort of recognize that now we're getting these new common core standards, these more rigorous college and career-aligned standards, we start giving these new tests.   0:12:38.7 JD: So Ohio switches to the PARCC Test for the '14-15 school year for one year, and even then, the test itself changed pretty significantly in terms of format, but you still see pretty similar results that you've seen for the past 11, 12, 13 years. Then all of a sudden, that next school year, that 2015-16 school year, so that's the first year from that testing document, you see the results drop off a cliff and you start thinking, "Well, what happened to third graders?"   0:13:11.7 AS: Right. From, let's just say about 77 down to the next data point is 55.   0:13:18.6 JD: Yeah, just under 55% now. So you have this just about a 20, 22% drop in one school year. Now, the test did change again. Now it's called The Ohio State Test, it was called the PARCC Test, but the test itself, the format itself isn't probably what brought about that precipitous drop. Instead, what's happened is the legislature in Ohio has changed what it means to be proficient on the test. So basically, each sort of proficiency level has a cut score, and the cut score has increased for an individual child to be considered efficient. So the kids are no different in '14-15 than the new crop of third graders are in '15-16, but what has changed is what you need to do to be called proficient, and so because of that change, you see this huge drop in test scores along with this new test, and then over the course of the next three years, you sort of see an increased in test scores, and then a decrease in test scores, and then an increase in test scores, and then a decrease in test scores. And the Department of Education is claiming that there's improvement happening, but really what's happened is a whole new system has been created. You really change that third grade reading state testing system into this brand new system, whereas the average had been bouncing around 77% or so. Now you sort of have this new average bouncing around that 60% mark.   0:14:56.9 JD: And again, the kids are no different from those previous years, it's just the test and what you need to do to be considered proficient has changed. And the problem is, is that if you don't look at data like this, if you don't sort of...   0:15:11.5 AS: As a run chart or as a continuum of genuine information that's coming out of the system as measured by some measurement style.   0:15:21.0 JD: Yeah, and annotate it with point to the year that the new test goes into effect, point to the year that the definition of proficiency has changed, point to the year that schools had to switch from paper and pencil test to computer-based test because just a year or two or three after, those sort of memories become really fuzzy, that context becomes very fuzzy and you start to forget, "What year did we switch to computer test? What year did the standard switch? What year did the proficiency cut score switch?" And so if you don't have that sort of running record, that gets completely disconnected, the data gets disconnected from the context, and then you're likely not to make sound decisions because of that lack of context.   0:16:09.2 AS: And maybe I'll raise a few points here about the chart that we're looking at, and this chart is fascinating to me. The first thing that I think about, as a financial analyst in the stock market, basically, if anything is wrong in my chart and in my data and then I put my money down on that, it's gonna get taken from me in the stock market. And I have to really be very rigorous in how I'm looking at data.   0:16:39.1 AS: And when I look at this, I just think this is just so full of so many different ways that could go wrong in the way that things are measured, the way people are incentivized, those types of things. And the other thing that you realize is what you're showing here is that it's a description of the system. It's trying to describe things that are going on, and you're trying to describe certain points, which you can't do in charts that are... Bar charts and things like that. A line chart or a continuous point chart or a run chart really illustrates that. But also I think... I just realized that so much of almost every bit of charting is meaningless or just... Or is even giving you a wrong signal. There's so many things that I think about that and I'm just curious, 'cause you also said something before to me about how maybe people just don't pay much attention to it and then they just accept it for what it says and they don't go and look at the data, think about it and go into more detail. Those are some of the things that come out of my head as I'm looking at this, but what else do you want us to take away from this?   0:17:58.0 JD: Yeah, I think one thing, without the context and the annotations on a line chart or a run chart, data shown over time, you do forget. That's one thing. That's just human nature. You're gonna forget. I'm not gonna remember what happened 10 years ago in my testing system. I'm probably not gonna remember what happened five or even three years ago. The second thing I would say is that the vast majority of data that gets presented is in a table or a spreadsheet, and that data is usually what I would call limited comparison, so this year's data compared to last year's data or this month data compared to the same month last year. And so we're usually trying to draw conclusions with just two or maybe three data points, and that gets even worse when we sort of layer sort of a color-coded stoplight type system where we label certain data red and certain data yellow and certain data green and then we look for the red and the green data, even though the differences between those two, the scales that we use to to assign those colors is often arbitrary and meaningless.   0:19:11.0 AS: One last thing I would add to it, and I think you're gonna show us a good, an example of a good use of data, but also you have to ask the question, Are the people who are preparing this data incentivized to produce a particular outcome, and when you understand the incentives involved, it helps you also understand where it could go wrong.   0:19:33.2 JD: Well, I think that's exactly right. I think what happens oftentimes is the state testing data is a part of an a accountability system, and the point of an accountability system is to sort the good from the bad and to issue sanctions and rewards, and we sort of point to that data and say, Well, your scores are low, you need to improve. And so we sort of conflate this idea of accountability data or accountability goals and improvement goals, and those are really two different things, and so you brought up sort of this idea of CYA or cover your ass type stuff, and when we point towards accountability data, that's what people are gonna do because they are being held accountable for this data, they're gonna cover their ass. If we're truly using data for improvement, there's a completely different mindset. For one, the data tends to be local and well-known to the people that are using it, and if there's not sort of sanctions tied to it, then there is this ability to be more honest and candid about that data because we're using it for improvement purposes rather than using it for accountability purposes.   0:20:51.9 AS: Okay, that's great, great description. Alright, keep going. What do you wanna show us next?   0:20:56.8 JD: Yeah, I think this last chart. And so for the listeners, I've taken the five most recent years of third grade reading test data and put it in an actual process behavior chart, or some people call them control charts, and the advantage here is like the run chart, we're seeing data over time, we're seeing the variation, we're seeing the data move up and down over time, but with the process behavior chart, we're adding these upper and lower natural process limits or some people call them control limits and define, sort of, predict the future of what's gonna happen in this particular system, as long as things move along at the current steady state, and so remember, I was gonna say, just remember in that third grade reading data, and they sort of said, "Well, we improved, and then we did decline this most recent year, but if you look back two years, it's actually an improvement," but actually what you see is, if you play that out over five years, you see the data increase and then decrease, and then increase and then decrease, and that's a very sort of common occurrence with this type of data where there's this natural variation, it becomes obvious when you plot the dots over time, and you really see what is happening with this data is it's just sort of moving about an average, about a 60% proficiency rate.   0:22:35.1 JD: Some years it's a little lower than that, some years it's a little above that, but it's all within the limits of the system, so that tells us that all of that's present is common cause variation, just sort of this every day sort of expected up and down in the data, there's sort of nothing special that's happened to use Deming's terminology, there are no special causes present that would be... So there's these signals we can look for based on patterns in the data, but that's not to say that we're satisfied with this third grade Reading System. So to your point earlier, that average proficiency rate for the state, so we look at all of the third graders in the state of Ohio, and they took this test over the course of five years, about 60% of the kids were proficient in any given year. So that means 40%, two of the five kids that are taking this test are not proficient. So we have a stable but unsatisfactory system, but because there's no special causes, no special events to study or point to what we need to do is improve that third grade reading system across the state.   0:23:47.0 JD: And so that's a completely different mindset than pointing to a single data point saying, "Oh, we've gone down, what are you gonna do, or issue sanctions to this school or to this teacher", that's not the way to improve. What we need to do is improve the system of third grade reading instruction across the state, so a completely different mindset.   0:24:08.1 AS: That's a great explanation. The idea that I get from you is the idea of taking all of the emotion out of it, and let's say how do we use this to improve? And what you're describing here is, and what you've done is you've taken the most recent period of time, now, some people would say, "Oh well, you should look at it over a longer period of time", but what you've described is that the system has changed.   0:24:30.1 JD: That's right.   0:24:31.9 AS: There's been some significant change, and so it may not make sense to look at that prior period, so now you brought it down to the most recent period, what's operating under the same type of system, and what you find is that it's pretty much random variation, which I'm even surprised for 2020, 2021, given COVID and all that, I would have thought that instead of coming down to 53 or so, that that would have come down to 40 or something, just because now maybe it does in the next year, I don't know, but... Okay, that's a great illustration. Now, you had an example to try to show the good use of a chart.   0:25:11.2 JD: Yeah, I have a personal example. I can sort of talk through, this one is a little busier, but I think what I'm trying to illustrate is one, I think when I think of continual improvement, I think that is the same thing as what I would call intermediate statistical methods, that's equivalent to continual improvement. Those two things are the same thing. So what I mean is that in order to bring about improvement, it's very, very powerful to use one of these charts, whether it's a run chart or a process behavior chart, but the point is display your data over time and see how it's performing, and then what you can do then is run these systematic tests, this is sort of that theory of knowledge component of Deming System of Profound Knowledge, specifically the Plan-Do-Study-Act cycle. So you sort of run this structured test to try something within your system, in this case, if you can see the video of this, I'm displaying my weight over the course of three or four months, and you kind of see that over time, it's slowly shifting down, but there's a lot of ups and downs in this data as I'm trying various things, so I have PDSA 1 marked with a vertical dotted line, I gave PDSA two marked with a vertical dotted line and PDSA three marked with a vertical dotted line.   0:26:46.5 AS: And for the listeners that don't know what PDSA is, it's Plan-Do-Study-Act. It's that cycle.   0:26:53.0 JD: Right, Plan-Do-Study-Act cycle, these scientific tests where I'm trying something, maybe it's related to my eating habits, or maybe it's related to my workout habits, or maybe it's sort of a combination of those two, but I'm writing those things down in this Plan-Do-Study-Act cycle. And then the second thing, I'll describe for those that are only listening, I'm also annotating when special events have happened that then lead to signals in my data. So for one, I have in December, towards the end of December, it's probably not hard to guess I have these holiday cheat days marked because you see this jump in weight that goes above the sort of upper limit, which says to me, "Oh, wait, something so different has happened in my system, and that I really need to attend to that", right. Now, if I had waited until February 21st, the day we're recording this, to look back and see this highest data point in my system over the last three or four months, I probably would not remember what caused that. Because I annotate it as it happened, I have this picture, I have this narrative tied to my data that allows me to think back and reflect and figure out what happened to make the weight in this case jump off the page. Over time, what I'm trying to do is both shrink the limits, so lessen the variation around the average, as well as again, in this case, it's weight, so a decrease is good, so I'm also trying to bring that average data down over time and so the idea would be the same no matter what type of data, whether it was those state test scores, whether it's attendance rates, whatever it is, homework completion, whatever it is that you're trying to improve, this sort of same combination of understanding variation, combining it with these Plan-Do-Study-Act cycles. This is the method, This is continual improvement, I think in a nutshell.   0:29:00.2 AS: Fantastic. Alright, I think that illustrates it well, and maybe if you stop sharing that screen and then I'm gonna show you something, John, and for the viewers, they'll be able to see it, but for the listeners, I'll explain it. I'm gonna walk over to my other part of my room here for a second, I'm gonna grab the chart that I fill out each day.   0:29:26.9 JD: Oh my.   0:29:27.8 AS: And this is my chart, and for the listeners out there, I'm holding up a big chart paper, and it's related to my top three goals. I ripped it by... But my goals are related to sales, to health as in yoga and doing exercise every day and my sleep patterns. And I'm tracking how many hours I work on each one, or how many hours I slept, how much time I did on yoga, and I'm not even putting in any kind of limits into it. What I like to do is to track data and just observe, don't try to think about it, don't try to work towards it, just chart it and start observing, and one of my goals is to sleep more. I wanna sleep seven hours, and on average I sleep about six, and I don't have a solution for it, but I know that charting it and observing it and starting to think about it just raises the awareness and gets me thinking, "Okay, I'm far away from my goal, what do I need to do"? So charting is just fantastic, and I think that what you've described is a great way of understanding it.   0:30:34.0 JD: Yeah, I think when you read Deming stuff or listen to him talk, there's often these sort of short phrases that he'll refer to or say, and over time you start to understand what he was saying in just a few words, these powerful statements. When I think of looking at data in a chart over time, Deming said, "Knowledge has temporal spread", four words, knowledge has temporal spread, so what does that mean? So it's not until... Sorry, it's not until you understand or look at data unfolding over time and how it's moving about, how it's varying from point to point, it's not until you see that over the course of 20 or 25 or 30 points that you really start to know how your system is performing, and I think that's really what I was trying to show with the state testing data, with this personal example in a process behavior chart. I think that's the power of the Deming methods when you put all this together.   0:31:43.7 AS: Fantastic. Well, let me try to wrap up a couple of things, we start off with the title of our discussion, which is Data is Meaningless without Context, and you were asking the question like, Are we really improving or are we just writing fiction here? And I was thinking about a lot of cases, people are of massaging the meaning of it. And then another thing that you raised was the idea of what is improvement, do we have a definition? What does it mean? And then you reference the improvement guide book, which talked about the three things that are critical for being real improvement, first that it alters something, second that it produces visible results, and third, that it has a lasting impact. I wrote after that, I was taking notes and I thought, Is it repeatable? Was kind of what they're saying, but I think from a business perspective, and maybe from an education perspective, the better word is it replicable, can it be implemented at other places and brought the same type of improvement? And then finally, I'll wrap up my summary of what you said with your discussion about accountability data versus improvement data, and how improvement data, it's important not necessarily to tie it to incentives, that data is really for how do we understand the system and how do we think about improving that system through a PDSA and other things. Is there anything else you would add to that summary?   0:33:11.5 JD: Yeah, I think that this idea of what's the purpose of the data? Is it for accountability? Or is it for improvement? I think that it sort of gets at one of Deming's 14 points, which is drive out fear, he said, "Where there is fear, there will be wrong figures", and I think that really ties to that idea of Well, what's the purpose of this data? If there's fear and people are thinking that they're gonna be sanctioned in one way or another, then you're not gonna get correct figures, that's just sort of human nature, and I think that's why all this stuff sort of fits together, and you need the sort of full picture about the four components of the system of profound knowledge, the 14 points like drive out fear. And it's bringing all those things together at the leadership level to create the conditions for improvement to actually occur in an organization.   0:34:04.7 AS: Yeah, and I'd imagine as your organization really improves, you'll kinda laugh at all the charts and graphs you used to produce or you used to talk about, and now you're really making use and making data meaningful. So John, I think that's a great discussion. And on behalf of everyone at the Deming Institute, I wanna thank you again for it. And for listeners, remember to go to Deming.org to continue your journey. 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".

What is quality? Does it mean always meeting specifications? What if the calculus for specifications means little and tells managers almost nothing about the process or its potential for improvement? Dr. Bill Bellows discusses the negative consequences of this kind of black-and-white thinking and what to do about it. 0:00:03.0 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 am continuing my discussion 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. The topic for today is: What is quality? Bill, take it away.   0:00:27.5 Bill Bellows: Thank you Andrew. That question brings me back literally 30 plus years. I was at home studying on leave from work. I got a bunch of books on quality. I bought every book on quality I could find at the Yale Bookstore. I started reading them. And I'm reading Phil Crosby, I'm reading Six Sigma Quality, I'm reading Genichi Taguchi, I'm reading Deming. And I, naively, am thinking that quality means the same to all of them. As a heat transfer engineer, in the world of engineering, heat transfer engineers have a common language, they use common terms, so I naively thought everyone in the world of quality has the same explanation of quality. And I'm looking through these books. I had met some seasoned experts in the field. I started calling them and saying... I remember talking one guy and I said, "I don't think these books are the same." And he laughed. He said, "Bill, you're onto something."   0:01:24.0 BB: Well, the traditional way of looking at quality in most organizations gets me to what I now refer to as question number one and that is, Does something meet requirements? Does the task meet requirements? Does the dimensions meet requirements? Does the product meet requirements? And, Andrew, there's only two answers to that question, yes or no. That's how most organizations look at quality. Boeing's advanced quality system... How do I know? I worked for a company that was owned by Boeing for nine years. Boeing's advanced quality system, which is no different than anyone else's quality system, is question one, Does is meet requirements? Yes or no.   0:02:08.5 AS: Is that like go/no-go?   0:02:11.4 BB: That's go/no-go. It's black and white thinking, Andrew. It meets requirements or it doesn't. Question two is, How many ways are there for this thing to meet requirements? And there when I tell people if you take into account decimal places, an infinite number of answers, I have somebody laugh and say, "Infinite?" And I say, "Okay, 463." But the idea is there's variation in how you meet requirements. And so going back to the question "What about quality?" what I began to see is that most quality thinkers are thinking question one. I had been exposed in that same timeframe to Dr. Taguchi and his thinking is more about question two. And what got me really excited by Dr. Deming's work when I saw The New Economics is that I realized that his quality focus was also question two and that's what got me really, really curious. But the big thing was, holy cow, we've got different explanations of quality.   0:03:15.0 AS: And can I ask you a question about this? When you talk about how many ways are there for this to meet the requirements, are you saying how many methods are there to get there or how many outcomes are in the range of what is quality?   0:03:31.6 BB: What I'm saying is question one is, Does your car have gas? Yes or no.   0:03:38.2 AS: Yep. Yes it does.   0:03:39.3 BB: Question two is, How much gas is in the car? Is it a quarter of a tank, an eighth of a tank, a sixteenth of a tank, a full tank? So there's a lot of different answers. And that's what I mean the infinity is, there's a lot of degradations from empty to full and that's a much different question than, "Does the car have gas?" Now, why is that important? What I began to realize when I started my first job as a quality professional after leaving engineering and joining Rocketdyne as a quality professional, people were coming to me because things were broken, which was like out of gas. And the exciting thing was I got to work and help them solve it but the pattern I started to notice is that most often when people came to me, it was because the process, the product was out of gas.   0:04:42.5 BB: And I began to realize that if we operated with a gas gauge mindset and not a black and white mindset, we could have seen these just as you would driving a car. You see you're on E. Yes, I have gas but being on E and being full. But the people in the organization weren't equipped to think that way and that's when I began to get very excited by Dr. Deming's work and after learning about Taguchi's work 'cause they both helped me realize that most organizations view quality from question one. Is this good or bad? And then what we do is we leave ourselves open to running out of gas 'cause we can't see the trouble coming.   0:05:24.7 AS: I was just thinking about when I worked at Pepsi in our factory in Torrance, California, many years ago. There was a group of maintenance engineers that worked on the production line and all that. But there was one guy, he could solve any problem and he would come in and solve every problem. And he took great pride in that and everybody saw him as the problem solver. But when you think about it, it just perpetuated the system.   0:05:49.0 BB: Yes.   0:05:50.9 AS: And so who was the hero was the guy that can come in and fix it. "I'm the fixer."   0:05:55.9 BB: Well, and to that point, I came into a new organization, very excited to move across the country with the family, a lot of excitement moving into this new career, and I could not have been happier working on problems. That's the good news. But then I began to see that the customer was getting frustrated with this pattern and that was leading us to lose business. And now I'm thinking, yeah, I'm excited being called in to be the hero but I'm thinking this is a lousy way to run the company. We ought to be preventing these problems. And I just thought, here I am using sophisticated techniques from Dr. Taguchi when all we needed was a simple gas gauge to see trouble coming. And so, yeah, I was happy being the hero for a while but the more I understood where Deming was coming from, the more I realized it would be nothing but selfish to maintain that system.   0:07:02.0 AS: Yeah, because when you say selfish it's because you're kind of the hero saving the day, fixing.   0:07:06.1 BB: I'm loving it.   0:07:07.4 AS: Yeah.   0:07:08.2 BB: I'm receiving awards. I'm going to NASA headquarters, presenting solutions. You get priority. People get out of your way. You're working on very high-visibility issues. But what I was thinking was, "Holy cow. We could prevent these problems from happening in the first place." Not all problems, Andrew, 'cause I can't know everywhere to put a gas gauge. But now you have to start to think about where is that an issue. So if the light bulb in the kitchen burns out, okay, I can deal with that. But there's other situations where I don't wanna deal. I don't want the car to run out of gas. So then you start to think about, Where does the variation in good, which is question two, cause me heartache? And when is it just go get another light bulb? And this led me to become aware, to start to think about our thinking patterns. Are we thinking black and white, good and bad? Or are we understanding, which is question one, two answers?   0:08:12.6 BB: Question two is viewing things on a continuum, shades of gray. And, holy cow, how about we start asking how much gas is in the car, not, "Do we have gas?" And so I would go in to audiences, big audiences within Rocketdyne, within Boeing and suppliers and what not. And again, I mention Boeing. Rocketdyne was owned by Boeing. Most companies around the world that I've interfaced with think the same way. It's the same pattern. A standard question I have asked at lunch time presentations, "How much time do you spend every day discussing parts that are good, that arrive on time?" I've had 110 people in the room laugh, just emerge in laughter. That's what they do. And so that's when I became aware this is not just a Boeing thing, not just a Rocketdyne thing. This is a very elementary way of operating, even in our personal lives at home.   0:09:09.6 AS: Describe that again. Describe that. You talked about talking to the people in the factory and asking them. Tell us an example of that or kind of help us understand more about what you're saying there.   0:09:21.3 BB: Well, when I would ask audiences, "How much time do you spend discussing parts that are good, that arrive on time?" And they'll say, "Very little." And I say, "Why is that?" And the standard answer is, "If it ain't broken, don't fix it." But then I say to them, "Hold that thought. What if you use that thinking to drive your car, what would happen?" "We'd run out of gas." "What if you use that thinking relative... " I said, "If you use that mode of thinking, when would you put gas in the car?" "When it runs out." "When would you call the plumber? When would you go to the doctor?" And the idea is I think we are unnecessarily in a mode, we're putting ourselves in a mode of being reactive without realizing we have a choice to be proactive. The gas gauge gives us a choice.   0:10:11.3 BB: Lacking the gas gauge, we slip back to, "Well, it's working, it's working, it's working." And then we get into the rut of spending precious time focusing on the past to find out why we had the problem and simultaneously what we're gonna do is blame the driver of the car, which creates a mess within the organization. And next thing you know, people become reticent. When I look at the System of Profound Knowledge, I look at the variation piece. Lacking this awareness, Andrew, we don't see variation in good. We wait for bad to happen. We then blame whoever is close to it because we don't understand the system. And then you tie those together, we create this rut that I think many organizations are stuck in.   0:11:01.8 AS: So it sounds like, if I was to think about what you're saying, a lot of this is about the idea of becoming proactive? But I know that that's a tiny part of the puzzle but that sounds like that's one part of it. Tell me more about that.   0:11:18.9 BB: Well, I'm not suggesting that being proactive is better than being reactive. What I'm suggesting is that being reactive is a choice and being proactive is a choice. I don't think there's anything wrong with being reactive if we've planned it that way. So the light bulb in our kitchen when it goes out, we'll replace it.   0:11:42.5 AS: It's just not worth putting an inventory together and having to deal with all of that.   0:11:46.2 BB: All of that, and in that regard...   0:11:47.2 AS: It's just down the street.   0:11:49.0 BB: Well, good point, Andrew. Depending on how far the store is, I'll carry a few bulbs, right? But the idea is that if I'm going to be reactive then I need that spare. If I'm going to be proactive, then I get out of that rut of waiting for the crisis and I get to save that time, whether it's waiting for the heart attack, being on top of my health. Paying attention to the plumbing system and hearing that it's beginning to slow down and, well, keep using it, keep using it. Next thing you know, Sunday night at midnight, your spouse says, "The toilet's backed up." You're thinking, "Well, there goes Monday." That's at home, and I see the same thing at work.   0:12:32.0 AS: Yep. What I was thinking about was some experience that I... When I teach finance and I teach people about the balance sheet, the accounts receivable and the accounts payable and, specifically, give credit terms to companies and you have inventory in your factory, what I like to tell them is that giving credit terms is a choice.   0:12:52.3 BB: That's right.   0:12:53.2 AS: And they say, "No, it's not a choice. I have to do it. The customer demands it and my competitors do it." And I always say, "That doesn't mean it's not a choice. You're now making the choice to just follow what your competitor is doing."   0:13:07.3 BB: That's right.   0:13:08.7 AS: And what Dr. Deming talked about too is the idea of focusing on your customer, not your competitor. And then I started to talk to them and then I show them some companies that have no inventory or some companies that have no accounts receivable. And then they start thinking, "How do they do that?" And then we start discussing it and I show there is some interesting ways to do this, or thinking about accounts receivable from a strategic perspective. So I have a company that I show my students that has massive inventory. This is bad in the world of finance, for sure, in the world of business. But they have a 50% gross profit margin versus 25% for their nearest competitor. What do they do? They hold the inventory of their customers on the site of their customer. The customer only receives the inventory when the guy takes it out of the bin and then puts it into the production process. So on the one hand, their inventory's super high but on the other hand, they're making a huge profit from it. And I'm telling people that you gotta think differently about these things and not just think that it has to be done this way. What are your thoughts on that?   0:14:30.9 BB: Andrew, what you're saying fits in very well. We get stuck in these ruts of thinking "always". Inventory is always bad. It's always better to be... Why would I be proactive? I think that's a brilliant example of the value proposition of choosing. Choosing. A big thing I've seen in the industry going back 30 some years is what people call a single piece flow. We don't want a batch. Batching is bad. And so I went through a couple of days of training and the big theme of this training was a single piece flow. We're gonna make one at a time. One at a time. We're gonna process one at a time. One at a time. So then I thought, well, wait a minute. So we have this cleaning tank that can handle thousands of parts in this tray that go into the solution. So now that I've taken this training, Andrew, now I'm being told, no, I'm gonna clean one bolt at a time, one bolt at a time, without understanding there's a place for lots of bolts and there's a place for one. And so what you're getting is we get stuck in these solutions that don't quite make sense when you begin to look at things as a system, which is what you're talking about.   0:15:50.6 AS: Yeah. And this is where, when I went through the intro, it's how you help people become aware of how their thinking is holding them back from the biggest opportunities and I think that this really is what we're talking about.   0:16:07.7 BB: Absolutely. And it's understanding choices; the choice to be proactive, the choice to be reactive. And I also use the analogy of I say it's like, Andrew, you got to the end of the road, you made a right hand turn. You're like, "Yeah, I made it right-hand turn." Well, the right hand turn is being reactive. You made a right-hand turn, Andrew. Why didn't you turn left? "There's no left-hand turn." I say, "No, Andrew. There is a left-hand turn but it's in your blind spot." And so we have these ruts, as you're describing, these ruts of "inventory is bad" and all these other things. And as, I forget, Deming quotes... I think it's Will Rogers who used this quote and Deming has a quote similar to it in the beginning of chapter one, "I'd rather know less than so much that ain't so."   [laughter]   0:17:03.9 AS: Yes. And that's where I would say what's interesting about this discussion is it kinda reminds me that so much of my behavior in this life was shaped from when I was a young guy learning and studying Deming's teaching. And then you start to see it come into your thinking like this idea of teaching finance in a way that helps people open up their mind to a different way of thinking about it. And then I show them a company that's massively profitable because they made a choice to hold all the inventory of all their customers.   0:17:39.3 BB: With an appreciation of a greater system.   0:17:42.0 AS: Yeah. And Bill, I'd like to tell you a funny story of my uncle, Uncle Ham. He was in the military, he was logistics, retired as a Lieutenant Colonel. He was in Germany and he ran this huge base and logistics on it. And he said the Commanding General was coming the next week so they got everything ready and they really spit shine the whole place. The Commanding General comes through the whole place and they reach, finally, the parking lot were all the trucks and tanks and everything are out there. And then they were standing there in front of this row of trucks that was really long. And he said, "Well, sir, how was it? What did you think?" And he says, "Ham, it was excellent except for one thing." And he says, "What's that?" And he looked down the front of the vehicles, as he could see all the vehicles lined up, and he said, "Next time I come, could you line them up in a row so that the front of each of them lines up." And then Ham said... He got the General, he said, "Well, can you walk with me over here." And he walked up to the back of him and he saw that they were lined up in the back but they were of different lengths. So Ham said, "Sir, would you like them lined up in the back or in the front? But you can't have both."   [laughter]   0:19:05.8 BB: No, it's a choice.   0:19:09.3 AS: Yeah. I just love that and I think I'm gonna summarize what we've just talked about because I think there's a lot to that. So let me go through a few points and then maybe you can add any final bits to it. What you were talking about was the idea that when you first got into the quality movement, you started realizing that people had different ideas of what quality was but ultimately you came down to this, the idea that most people had was, Does this meet requirements? This is kind of a yes or no answer. It's a black or white. No shades of gray. And then the second part you talked about another question, which is, How many ways are there to meet requirements?   0:19:50.3 AS: And you also talked a bit about how people kept coming to you with things that were broken and how you can be a hero putting out fires all day long but you didn't really advance the business as opposed to starting to prevent problems and see how we can fix things rather than saying if it ain't broke, don't fix it. And then finally, we've wrapped this session up by what I think is the most powerful point of the session, which is that being reactive or proactive is a choice. And you're trying to help people see that just doing it the standard way, they're making a choice and there are consequences to that choice and it may be the right choice. But once you become aware of your thinking, that you have choices on every single thing, then it starts to open up people's minds. What would you add to that summary?   0:20:43.7 BB: A couple of things. One, what I didn't mention that I think is worthwhile pointing out is what did Dr. Deming mean by quality. So I mentioned the traditional quality, Bill Crosby, most others, is quality is conformance. It meets requirements, yes or no. So what I didn't mention is how did Dr. Deming define quality. In The New Economics, Dr. Deming says, "A product or a service possesses quality if it helps someone and enjoys a sustainable market." So what I think is really neat about that is, and that's more about question two which I'll get back to, question one is I define quality. When I hand off to you, Andrew, I say, "This meets requirements." I didn't ask you for your input. I'm just saying, "This met requirements. Boom!" And then I hand it to you. If you don't like it, you say, "Bill, it's not done." But if I give it to you and it meets requirements, I have let go of it physically and mentally.   0:21:48.7 BB: You call me up later and tell me the car had a quarter of a tank of gas, I said, "Andrew, the car has gas." Because we're focusing on question one. Question two. What Dr. Deming is defining is quality, a product or service possesses quality if it helps someone, now I'm saying, "Andrew, what do you think about... How does my work affect you?" Whether I'm giving you a report or a part or something to put together, now I'm judging quality by how well were you able to catch the pass that I gave you, the information that I gave you. That makes quality a relationship issue. And question two, for reasons we'll get into in future sessions, question two is about relationship quality because the infinite number of answers to the question of number two is how well can Andrew catch the ball depends upon how well I throw it to him. And I could throw it a little bit to his right, a little bit to his left. I can still meet the requirements of throwing it within two or three feet of him but I'm not thinking about how easy it is for him to catch it if I'm more direct about that.   0:23:04.3 BB: So question one is traditional quality. Dr. Deming is more about question two. And the other thing I'd say is relative to the choices, I think in terms of organizations as unusual, unusual as adopting Deming's work or business as unusual. And I couch it with shift from big problems, which is focusing all of our time unknowingly fire fighting, to great opportunities in the subtitle. And the caveat there is opportunities for investment, where can I be spending time to save time, and we're missing that category. The more time we spend on black and white thinking, question one, the less time we have to think about how can we improve the system which, again, in our future sessions involves looking at things in context, not in isolation.   0:23:57.9 AS: Fantastic. All right. Well, that I think is a great start. And Bill, on behalf of everyone at the Deming Institute, I wanna thank you again for this discussion. For listeners, remember to go to deming.org to continue your journey. 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.

In this episode, Andrew and David discuss how managers can help people to see themselves as components in a system, working with those before and after them in the process of educating children - for the benefit of all. This podcast series is inspired by chapter 6 in The New Economics, Andrew and David apply Dr. Deming's 14 points for "the role of a manager of people after transformation" to the world of education. (Note: this is not about Deming's 14 Points for Management.) TRANSCRIPT 0:00:02.3 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 am continuing my discussion with David P. Langford, who has devoted his life to applying Dr. Deming's philosophy to education, and he offers us his practical advice for implementation. Today's topic is cooperation with proceeding stages in education. And ladies and gentlemen, we are going through a checklist or a list that Dr. Deming put in his The New Economics book on page 86 of the third edition, or page 125 of the second edition. And the title of this list is Role of a Manager of People.   0:00:45.4 AS: This is the new role of a manager of people after transformation. The first point on the list, which we previously talked about was, number one, a manager understands and conveys to his people the meaning of a system. He explains the aims of the system, he teaches his people to understand how the work of the group supports these aims. And today we will be talking about number two. He helps his people to see themselves as components in a system to work in cooperation with preceeding stages and with following stages toward optimization of the efforts of all stages toward achievement of the aim. David, take it away.   0:01:26.7 David Langford: There you go. If you understand that, then the podcast is over. [laughter] So yeah, I think the profound nature of Deming's work was his ability to take these simple concepts and just state them. And for me, working in education, people, they start to get the philosophy and they start to understand Deming, et cetera, and they always wanna know where to start or what to do. Well, here you go. These are all steps of what to do, where to start. So the last podcast we were talking about the development of an aim. And so you... The first question you have to decide is, do I have an aim of the system? And is that being communicated? And we talked a lot about that going through that. So the second point actually feeds on that, and remember this whole section is the role of the manager of people, see, what are you doing with the people in the system?   0:02:25.7 DL: And so this whole point is about understanding a systems' perspective in any organization. But in education, it's really clear. And we've said several times that the product of education is the learning itself. It's not students. And I think people really get screwed up on that, when they start to think about that, "We're producing students." No, you're not. Yes, students are going through the process, but they're gaining a level of learning that's gonna, that's getting them closer and closer to the aim of the system, right? And so those things are measurable, and then you can begin to understand those. So what he is talking about here in step number two is... Often when I work with educators, no matter what level, university, K through 12, whatever it might be, I'll throw out the idea that, let's say you're a 10th grade math teacher.   0:03:32.8 DL: What's the one thing you could be doing this year that would significantly increase the performance of your students next year? And a lot of times people say, you know, better technology and they'll go through this whole list of all these kinds of things they could do. But that's what Deming is talking about here. You could keep right on doing the same curriculum, the same thing you've done for 15 years, but if you start working with preceding stages, where did these students learn math before they got to you? Right? And so if you're a 10th grade math teacher, one of the best things you could do is start working with the ninth grade math teachers. Like going over, what are they doing, how are they teaching it? What's happening? How are they going through stuff?   0:04:22.4 DL: And you're actually preventing your own problems. Later in The New Economics, Deming talks about that prevention is the key to quality. And that's what he is talking about here. If I am going upstream in the process, so to speak, and preventing my own problems, right? I could actually just keep doing the exact same thing I've always done. I'm gonna get better results because I'm now preventing problems that I used to have to work with all the time. And some people say, well, you know, our students are coming from outside of our organization and I don't have the chance to do that. Well, you sort of think of a class that you're teaching as a system in and of itself.   0:05:06.7 DL: So what I could do is the first week of school is not gonna be, you know, really getting to the subject at all, right? I'm gonna become my own preceding stage [laughter], I'm gonna make sure that all these students have the same base knowledge that I need them to have in order for the rest of my teaching, the rest of my curriculum to actually work really well. That might take a week, it might take two weeks, but it'd be worth it to you [chuckle] to go back and do that rather than just keep on doing the same thing and expecting a different result and then putting pressure on people to make, sort of make them think it's their fault that they're not achieving.   0:05:48.9 AS: One question I have just because I'm not familiar with education so much, more business, if I think about business and I think about the preceding stages. You've got a manager in that department and he's got his own motivations, or she got their motivations, they've got their KPIs, and they've got all these things that are preventing cooperation. But it must not be true in education, David, when people are so dedicated to helping young people, it must be that the ninth grade math teacher is absolutely ready and willing to cooperate with the 10th grade math teacher. Wouldn't that be?   0:06:25.4 DL: Oh, when I started working with schools I often would have teachers come up to me at breaks and stuff and say, you know, I taught with this guy across the hall for 11 years, and I can't tell you anything that he does over there, or she does over there. The silo mechanisms of, you know, close my door, do my thing and don't communicate was just rampant. And it's still largely that way. And especially in a lot of universities, just people working in silos, you know, the college of business has no idea what the College of Education is doing and vice versa and so on and so forth. And you begin to break down those barriers. Deming talks about that later too. But you break down those barriers between departments, you start to see everybody wins. Student are better trained. The whole system seems to work together.   0:07:24.6 DL: I remember when we first started having visitors come to our high school where we'd been working with Dr. Deming and trying to implement these things for several years, after about three or four days, I'd have people that were visiting would say, you know, everybody here seems to know what everybody else is doing. And I'd say, isn't that the way it is in your school? And they said, no, I have no idea what other people are doing. And so I had to really start to think about, well, what had we done? Well, one of the things we'd done was we kept reiterating this point, right? Work with preceding stages, understand what's going on.   0:08:08.3 DL: We actually formally set up time where you could actually get together as a department or get together and look at a whole curriculum throughout the entire system. Now, some districts have over the last 30, 40 years, you know, they'll have a K through 12 curriculum alignment, right? And that's getting towards this point so that we're all working in preceding stages. So I don't have fourth graders, fourth grade teachers spending time doing stuff that has already been done in second or third grade, right? And the kids are just going, you know, they might be really dutiful kids and they just don't say anything, but they're just bored out of their minds because they already did this, right?   0:08:54.7 AS: When you were speaking, it made me realize the importance of step number one, about identifying the aim and getting everybody on board with that aim and communicating that and helping people see their role in that aim. Otherwise, there's like no incentive for people, oh, why are we having another meeting to talk about this? You know, what's the point? Well, when the aim is clear, all of a sudden the intrinsic motivation just explodes.   0:09:19.0 DL: Yeah. I mean, my own children is a good example. Remember one of my kids came to me and said, you know, dad, this is the third year we've done an insect collection in science. So were they really good at collecting insects by the end of the three years? Well, yeah, but they could have had a much higher knowledge about insects or something else that was going on rather than just this mundane project of going out and collecting insects and categorizing them.   0:09:51.4 AS: One of the questions I have, there's two points to this that I was thinking about. One is kind of the academic freedom of a teacher to be able to, you know, particularly in a university, they want to feel like I can do and say what I want. The second one is that they're so damn busy trying to prepare their lectures that it's hard. David, cooperation is difficult to bring a system to optimization. You realize like one of the reasons why people don't do it is it's just hard. It's way more coordination. Tell me your thoughts on that.   0:10:24.2 DL: You just described why Deming calls it Profound Knowledge, so the places that it is happening, right? Or making it, making sure that it's important. Setting aside time, talking about specifically how we can do that. You get a new professor in, you got economics 101 and Economics 102, right? So are they aligned? And the benefit in the end is for the students, right? Because they're not going through the very same thing that they just went through in economics 101, right? And the students will recognize things like, wow, these people are actually really working together. They really understand what's going on.   0:11:11.2 DL: And if I'm teaching economics 201 and I can constantly refer back to now when you took 101, I know that you went through this exercise and you went through this and you had this kind of experience, and this is how we're gonna build on that in 201 and... Right? So that's what Deming is talking is about here, is that if I carve out that time to work with preceding stages, the benefit is for me and my students and my classes and, in that, everybody wins, right? Because as a professor, I can go on to a higher level knowledge with the assurance that these students had this level of knowledge and mastered it before they got to my class. And that's the whole idea basically about why we've set up classes like 101, 201, 301, right? That's supposed to be the philosophy, really understanding that.   0:12:12.6 DL: And I'd say most departments or school districts, they loosely sort of do that. But from experience, if you consciously put in the effort to align curriculums, communicate with the preceding stages you get a huge benefit out of that that's just unbelievable. And Deming goes on to say, you know, and the following stages, right? So let's say we're using this example of Economics 101 and 201 or whatever you might be, right? And then some of those students are gonna go on to 301. Well, I would wanna know that my students were much more prepared going to the next stage. So how am I gonna do that? Well, I'm gonna start talking to the teacher in the next stage and saying, hey, how are my students doing? And were they prepared to come into your class or not prepared or, you know, what's happening?   0:13:18.7 AS: I was thinking about how one of the... I had a discussion with someone this past week, and it's a guy my age, you know, young and healthy and happy. [laughter] And getting close to 60. And he said, young people these days, you know, blah, blah, blah and all that. And I said to him, I said, you know, I think basically the young people these days realize they've kind of been let down by us and we've done all kinds of, you know, whether it's safety or whether it's education or whether it's, you know, whatever. There's so many things where I think that they just don't trust it. And then we go to online learning and all of a sudden all of these adults are giving us these super boring presentations. And it's like, we are not delivering to young people.   0:14:10.4 AS: And then, oh, add on 32 trillion in debt. Oh, by the way, you gotta pay that also. And the streets are, you know, cities are on fire and all of that. And then you just think, yeah. Part of what's happening is that when we incentivize teachers to optimize their classroom, that's what they're gonna do. They're gonna do their KPIs and they're gonna focus on that, and they're not gonna be thinking about how are these kids going through this process and getting to a result that we want? And yeah, you just made me think about that, but I don't know. What are your thoughts on that?   0:14:45.6 DL: Well, Deming talks about in the last sentence, that work with preceding and following stages for the optimization and efforts of all stages towards achievement of the aim. So what are you trying to accomplish with the achievement of this aim? I'm working with a college of business now, and through the pandemic, almost all the classes went online and now students are graduating and going to work and stuff. And what are employers saying? These people aren't trained as well.   0:15:20.4 AS: The communication skills.   0:15:22.5 DL: Yeah. The university is struggling because they know this online thing doesn't work as well, but they're struggling with, how do we change this? Because the following stages are telling you the learning that these people are coming out with is not the same as it used to be. We used to be able to depend on the quality of the students coming through the system. And now we can't depend on them. Well, that's dangerous because that could lead employers to say, okay, we're no longer going to hire people from this university. We're gonna go to some other university and look for places. So I always think about, you know, Deming is talking about the system, but how big of a system are we talking about, right? Could be talking about a whole university as a system, and the more I can get the entire university to talk to each other, work together, align curriculums, right? Well, who wins in the end? Well, students going out into the world, right?   0:16:24.8 DL: And they get to employers and employers start to realize, wow, I never knew that I needed somebody with this kind of knowledge. And so, who's first on your list to hire next year? I want more of these. Very simple example, the first couple of years that I was leading classes and teaching my high school students about this, well, in Alaska, the popular summer job is what they call the slime line. So working in fish plants, salmon processing plants on the line where fish comes through and you have to process them and gut them and take their heads off and do all this kind of stuff. So we didn't tell students about anything, but after about two years, I got some phone calls from these canneries, managers in these canneries and they said, hey, do you have any more of these students? And so I called them back up to talk to them about what was happening.   0:17:31.5 DL: And they said, well, we found out that every place there were students from your high school that were on the slime line, productivity improved. And sure enough, they started talking to these kids and they said, well, we took this to heart. And one kid said, all I did was I just said to the guy next to me, when you pass that fish to me, it'd be really helpful if you just turned it like this. And then all I have to do is do this. And then he said to the guy next to him, he said, what do you want me to do? What would be most helpful for you? And that guy says, well, that girl says, oh, well turn it like this or do this, and then this would happen.   0:18:14.2 DL: Just that, that's a very simple example. But employers loved it, [laughter] because productivity started to go up. One student said, yeah, it actually got to be more fun because I put a chart up behind me and how many fish we were processing per hour. And it sort of became a game to see if we could increase not only the quality of what we were doing, but the number of fish that we were processing per hour. Well, you might say, well, you know, yeah. What's the big deal about that? Well, guess what? Those canneries wanna hire those people again next summer. [laughter], you got a guaranteed job if you wanna come back.   0:18:50.6 AS: It's interesting because when you actually ask that question, or when you ask someone, hey, would you mind when when you send it over to me, could you put it in this way? People would be like, I never even knew that you needed it that way.   0:19:06.2 DL: Yeah. Or you'd find out that people have been ticked off at you for some cases years because you just keep on doing the same darn thing, but nothing ever changes because that person never doesn't ever say anything to you, and you never asked. You have to be proactive in all this too, going to the following stages and saying, hey, what could I be doing differently that would be significantly helpful for you?   0:19:36.6 AS: Yeah. Also, you reminded me of a story, when I was head of research in a research team here in Thailand, I had about five analysts. And our objective is to write high quality, big reports. I hired the best analysts. They know exactly what they need to do. They love doing it. And what I did is I put up on the wall a bar, a stacked bar chart showing each person's output each week. And what I did is I just put it up on the wall. I didn't explain it. I didn't, you know, I just looked at it occasionally, I went back to my office and and I didn't, I mean, I never really explained or said anything. And then one time one of the younger analysts came to me and she said, I think I've just figured you out. And I was like, what do you mean? And she said, I had lunch with a counterpart, like at another, a competitor, and she covers the same sector.   0:20:30.2 AS: And she asked me, how many reports did you do last month? And I said, you know, meaning my employee said, I did, I don't know, 10. And she's like, oh my God, how did you do 10? And she said, how many did you do? And she said, well, I did three, and there's similar style reports. And she's like, well, what's Andrew's target for you? And that's when she looked at me and she said, I realize you never set a target. You just put that information up on the wall. And it got all of us looking at it and thinking about it. And then I realized that I was producing 10 reports compared to my competitor was producing three. And that just made me think of that when you were talking about putting that up on the wall.   0:21:15.4 DL: The genius of Deming, Dr. Deming is when he went into manufacturing plants. And here you have a manufacturing plant where this person is stuck doing the same thing all day long. Right? Well, from early studies, from Hawthorne studies back in the 1920s and thirties, what did we try to do? Well, we gotta motivate these people, right? So, let's turn up the heat. Let's turn down the heat, let's play music for them. Let's do this, let's try. And what they found out is everything that they did actually, productivity worked, but they couldn't figure out what was it for a while.   0:21:52.5 DL: But, in the end, what was really happening is employees were perceiving that that management cared. And so they were trying to do stuff to make things better, but the genius of Deming was he just said, put people to work improving their own process and taught them how to do that, how to do a PDSA, and how to look at improving their own process. And it actually work started to be enjoyable. And that's what we're trying to do. And yes, you gotta do stuff. I've had teachers, especially math teachers tell me, well, not everything can be fun. Sometimes math is just hard. Well, maybe in your class, but I'm sure there are places that people make...   0:22:45.1 AS: How about if you just smile?   0:22:45.5 DL: Yeah. Make math really fun. And kids look forward to coming every day and being a part of it and learning the next level of what they're doing. And change the situation, you get a different result, rather than what we've always been taught to do is we leave the situation alone, but then we manage the behavior, it produces either good or bad. You know, we reward the good and try to get rid of the bad, which is a classic example of what Deming said don't do.   0:23:15.3 AS: So, let me wrap it up by asking a question and then I'll review kind of what we talked about. Based upon this discussion, if I was taking over at let's say a high school or something like that, and I thought about this specific lesson of what we're talking about today, I made the aim clear, everybody knows, and now I'm thinking about it. Would it make sense to say, alright, what I really want is I want each teacher to know the one proceeding stage and the one... What would you call that? The stage after.   0:23:51.1 DL: Following stages.   0:23:52.4 AS: The following stage and the previous stage. And therefore, what I just wanna do is start a discussion where they have to have kind of like a regular meeting or some way to get them together to talk and just focus on one step behind and in front. And if you did that, it's like the whole place would be on fire with conversation. Would that be a good place to start with this?   0:24:16.3 DL: Yeah, absolutely. You start with the largest system over which you have influence. And it depends on what your job is. If you're just hired as a teacher in a system and you realize these people don't talk to each other, they don't work together, well, you don't have to go get permission from anybody to talk to preceding stages. You just go into that person's room at the end of the day and say, hey, you got a few minutes I wanted to chat with you about something, you know.   0:24:44.0 AS: Make a new friend.   0:24:46.3 DL: Or yeah. And or following stages, you go to them, I guarantee you, you go to them and you say, what could I be doing that would significantly help you next year?   0:24:54.7 AS: Well, sit down, let's talk.   0:24:57.7 DL: Oh my gosh. Yeah. They would love you to death, right? And so it's a great way that you actually start to gain power of changing things in the system because all of a sudden then your department actually seems to get along and function well together and students are doing well. And then I guarantee you somebody from another department is gonna say, what are you guys doing over there? What's happening? Well, why do you ask? Because students in my class are saying, why can't we do what's happening over there? See? And so that's how you actually start to expand influence. And pretty soon you're operating on a bigger and bigger system, even if that wasn't your original role, but Deming said the source of power is knowledge. So you become very powerful because you know how to improve processes and systems.   0:25:51.5 AS: It reminds me of a... When I was writing Transform Your Business with Dr. Deming's 14 points. I had a friend of mine help me with the editing, and he would come over sometimes and he was... He never heard anything about Deming and he didn't know much about even business that much. He just seen all kinds of negative things happen [laughter] in the business world. But what he said is, he said, you know, I've been reading what you're writing and understanding this, and I think Dr. Deming is a humanist. He really cares about the human potential. And I was just like, that's it, it's not about this, charts and the graphs, and it's not, it's about how do we tap into the human potential.   0:26:34.0 DL: Yeah. Well, the average workers in corporations loved Deming mostly because he just berated management, totally, that you were the problem. You know, let these people do their job and get out of their way and you'll be fine. Instead of you trying to manipulate and incentivize and manage and punish and all the things that you think your job is.   0:27:00.2 AS: Let your people free. So let's wrap up. We've been talking about the list that Dr. Deming gave us in the third edition on page 86, the second edition on page 125, and it's called Role of a Manager of People. And Dr. Deming said, this is the new role of a manager of people after transformation. The first part we talked about, he talked about understanding a system and making sure that people understand the aim, but now this discussion has been about number two, he helps his people to see themselves as components in the system to work in cooperation with proceeding stages and with following stages towards optimization of the efforts of all stages toward achievement of the aim. And what we talked about is that the product of education is the process of learning and the idea of working with teachers in maybe prior grades, prior processes. And maybe a lot of what we've really talked about is communication and alignment. Is there anything else you'd add to that?   0:28:07.9 DL: No, that pretty much sums it up. I would, I will say that if you're listening to these podcasts and you're in education and you're trying to figure out where to start or what to do, we're explaining to you what to do. And so each one of these podcasts, if you just went back and did one thing we're talking about, and by the time we finish going through all these, you'll have a massive transformation of your classroom, your system, whatever it might be going on within that. But here's a great place to start right here.   0:28:36.5 AS: Wonderful. David, on behalf of everybody at the Deming Institute, I want to thank you again for the discussion. For listeners, remember to go to deming.org to continue your journey. Listeners can learn more about David at langfordlearning.com. 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.

Andrew talks to Justin Marcharia, Round Table Training Africa's Managing Director, about his collaboration with The Deming Institute. His goal is to help new and small businesses in East Africa use the Deming philosophy to grow in sustainable ways. TRANSCRIPT 0:00:02.2 Andrew Stotz: Hello. 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 here with featured guest Justin Macharia. Justin, are you ready to share your Deming journey?   0:00:17.2 Justin Macharia: Oh, yeah, I'm ready.   0:00:19.5 AS: I'm excited to learn... I mean there are so many things that I would like to ask you about your Deming journey and where your Deming journey is and all of that. But let me introduce you to the audience. Justin Macharia is the managing director of Round Table Training Africa Limited. Justin has been working with the Deming Institute over the past couple of years to enable DemingNEXT access into a number of East African countries through his organization. It's gonna be beneficial I think for all of our listeners to learn about this partnership and the impact that we think the Deming Institute can have in East Africa. And also, it's a great opportunity for you, Justin, to share why you think that Deming is important part of development in your part of the world and why you see the opportunity as kind of first time opportunity to enable businesses to learn and apply the Deming method. So maybe you can just talk a little bit about what you're doing first, and then we'll get into your Deming journey.   0:01:29.9 JM: Thank you Andrew. Yeah, so Deming Institute in Africa, basically East Africa, that's Nairobi, Kenya started off in the year 2020. And we've walked the journey with Kevin and Tim. And basically what we've... We've found that there was an opportunity to instill best practices in manufacturing, hospitality, and any other organizations that are moving from either raw production or the value chain addition. So what inspired us into getting into and partnering with Deming was basically the... We have a lots of trainings, consultants in our area, but however we found that they were lacking in terms of the depth and the philosophy and the models and tools. So what happens is, basically is we reached out to the Deming Institute and we did a presentation and asked if we could partner with them. And of course we had to give a little bit of background about ourselves.   0:02:34.9 JM: And what is basically happening in East Africa right now is... 'cause East Africa is be in in agribusiness, but agribusiness is on only probably small scale to large scale and mostly of the cash crops for export. But more and more now people are getting into value addition and processing. And that comes with a lot of systems, processes and management skills that are required for that. Apart from that, there's a lot of manufacturing going on and it's probably sometimes ad hoc and learning on the job which can... It can be very expensive and a little mistakes and system and processes or a lack of there of. So that has actually created the need and the appreciation and like probably Andrew had mentioned that, just a little bit earlier, is that everybody knows Deming, anybody who is in a management course, 'cause they always talk about Deming at some point during the introduction as the gurus of quality management. So the take up has been gradual and slow, but we're getting somewhere with it right now.   0:03:42.3 AS: And maybe for the listeners out there I'll explain about, what the Deming Institute is doing with DemingNEXT and trying to get, obviously all the video material that's available about Dr. Deming's teaching, but also providing all the resources necessary for training. So for those that are listening that think, God, I really wanna get more training into my company related to Deming. Well, the Deming Institute has made so much of that available through DemingNEXT. So I think that's an important message to everybody out there, is that it is a resource not only for your own personal development, but how you can bring some of that training into your company or any company that you're interacting with. Maybe you just tell us briefly about what your expectation is or what you expect to be doing with that material and with your own material and how are you doing that training. And maybe just tell us a little bit about that.   0:04:39.9 JM: Well, thanks Andrew. So what the DemingNEXT actually offers a lot of resources like you mentioned. There are PDFs, there are case studies. Because as much as we train a local organization, it's always good to give them a case study of basically where it has worked before, the successes because the industry and the verticals, probably is it the service industry, is it the telecommunication, we find 'cause somebody believes in the credibility of a process by basically seeing it has worked before with somebody else. And this what... The challenges they went through. So it shortens the learning curve because you don't have to go through the mistakes they did. They share with their case studies. And this improves like what Deming talks a lot about is the continuous improvement.   0:05:30.0 JM: Continuous improvement. So you progressively improve as you go on, get the feedback from the customers, feedback from the system itself. And this has really helped in terms of... The resources that are online on DemingNEXT has really helped in fortifying what the facilitators are actually telling and teaching the participants.   0:05:52.7 AS: Fantastic. So for all the listeners and viewers out there, make sure that you go to DemingNEXT to understand what resources are available and if you are in East Africa what's the website, your website that they could go to to learn more about what you guys are doing?   0:06:09.8 JM: Well, yeah, thanks. Our website is www.roundtabletraining.co.ke. There you'll find a wide array of programs and also the links to the Deming resources as well.   0:06:24.5 AS: Fantastic. So tell us about... You know, now it is time for some of the fun stuff where we talk about your Deming journey. And as you and I talked about before we turned on the mic, the recorder, you're early in your Deming journey. You've started recently and you're learning. And I know there's plenty of listeners that are early in their Deming journey. And I know there's some old timers also that are listening that are like, okay, so what's it like? So maybe you can tell us about the story about how you first came to understand and learn about Dr. Deming's teachings. And what was it that hooked you that made you think, I want to bring this training to other people?   0:07:02.6 JM: Thank you. Yeah, so my journey basically, my career has been spanning over 20 years, actually about 23 years. But actually within my career I have interacted with so many training institutions from ICT to management and leadership. However, there's always something lacking in them. There's always something I was feeling we're not giving them the depth and the case studies and proven models, things that have worked. So that's basically around 2020. Basically around the COVID time.   0:08:25.7 JM: I went actually searching and interacted with... I saw Deming. I saw... There is a Deming Institute in the US and we decided, okay, let's approach them because we know about Deming and Dr. Deming's philosophies. It's been trained and taught. But what really caught me and I remember and many people remember is the PDSA cycle, the PDSA that one... Everybody knows about that cycle. So when we reached out and they actually said, all right, we can give it a try. And hence we started off the journey in East Africa like that. So the PDSA and appreciation of systems and all that, those are the ones that basically caught us on teaching.   0:08:27.9 AS: And maybe we can talk a little bit about what's happening in Africa for I know a lot of listeners they may not really know all the stuff that's going on in your part of the world in East Africa. And I know Kenya is going through a lot of growth these days. Maybe you can just tell us a little bit about what's going on there in particular in relation to business and development. You mentioned the idea of being a resources exporter and trying to add more value to that. Yeah, maybe walk us through a little bit about what's happening in the economy of Kenya.   0:09:01.1 JM: So Kenya is very strategically positioned in Africa. It's basically the gateway of the East and Central Africa region which covers the DRC, Rwanda, Tanzania, Uganda, Ethiopia, Southern Sudan. So the economy is basically very robust especially in the... Recently the financial market, the mobile banking. Maybe some of you have heard of the mobile banking actually was actually birthed in Kenya with something called M-Pesa. So the service industry apart from the Agro and the traditional products that have been traditionally produced.   0:09:44.7 JM: There is hospitality, tourism. I know you've heard of the big five safaris. So tourism is really huge in East Africa. Not only Kenya, but Uganda, Tanzania as well. So with that is the traditional ways of commerce and the GDP relies heavily on that. However, the service and the technology has been growing recently. And thanks to the internet there is are a lot of resources as well. People are either going to school or they are self-teaching themselves. So a lot to offer from this point of view in terms of tourism, Agro-business, service, telecommunication and all that. So it's a great place to be.   0:10:32.8 AS: I'm curious, I've lived in Asia almost the majority of my life, let's say the last 30 years. And as I look back at America, I see a reason, one of the reasons why Deming has a hard time is that people are so individually focused. Like individual, they want individual compensation. They want individual rewards. They do not wanna be part of a system so much and all of that. And you can see that compares to let's say Japan where they really value being part of that system and society. They do not want the individual rewards the way that it's done. And you see every country is different. And I'm just curious, what are the motivations that drive, what are the things that drive people there that the way people think about business and doing business so that we can then understand what part of Deming is most appealing?   0:11:28.0 JM: Oh yeah, so yeah, actually it's a... I can say probably East Africa and Kenya has a lot to borrow from Japan 'cause people do get a lot of value by coming together and they value that. So there are these things we call Chamas, is like coming together maybe 10 people pulling resources and getting to a certain business investment. So it's really big all the way from the ground up we call it table banking. It could be from, let's say ladies coming together. So it's a big thing. So but what normally lacks in moving it... The transition to growth is what is normally the difficult part. They could get to point... From point A to point B but managing the growth, the change by instilling processes, systems that will enable them to grow and scale up now becomes a challenge.   0:12:28.0 JM: Hence that's why DemingNEXT and also the membership. The membership which we are also... Introduced to the market which we have individual membership for DemingNEXT and the corporate membership is what we actually been proposing to even these what I call the Chamas basically pull in and learn from the rest of the world how processes and they're very simple processes actually, DemingNEXT, actually has very simple way of breaking things up to people. So that kind of people come together in terms of business and investment but the growth trajectory is what that lacks and that's why DemingNEXT has come with this philosophies to push guys and help people move to the next level.   0:13:11.3 AS: Yeah moving to the next level is interesting 'cause I know when I moved to Thailand Justin I went out I taught a Just-In-Time inventory management class in 1992 and at that time the Japanese had really come to Thailand and producing cars. So I took my students out to a Toyota factory and I remember that the guy, the Japanese guy said I have to apologize that most of our managers are Japanese. In the beginning we just have a lot of training that we've been doing and over years you know it will grow where we'll have more of the Thai people in management. And then what you see now is when you visit Toyota and you realize wow that they've really done a huge amount of training. And many of the Thai staff that started at a low level have moved up into management and you know carrying on.   0:14:02.8 AS: So I can imagine that part of what you're talking about is that transition to just developing the core skills and then slowly developing into management and how to manage that business or your own businesses better and better. I guess that's kind of the transition that you're talking about. Would that be right?   0:14:21.2 JM: Oh yes yes. Because what is normally said managers normally they're not appointed. They grow into the position. So as they grow into the position there are some skills that we may lack in terms of managing the teams. And I like what Dr. Deming's philosophy of the psychology the soft skills part of it and relying on the process and not the big stick approach. So yeah it really helps especially new managers to fit into the role and get the rest to follow and emulate the good practices.   0:14:56.6 AS: Tell us something about let's say the characteristics of people there. And I'll give you an example. In Thailand, obviously in America if you raise your voice and you shout and you yell and say I want this and that, it... People, nobody likes that but they don't mind that, it's not a big deal. But in Thailand you never raise your voice and you just would never do that. Or else it would be people just wouldn't buy into that. And maybe tell us one characteristic that you see in Kenya that is part of the characteristic of the workforce or the way people feel socially like something that maybe an American as an example may come and think that they're bringing their culture but in fact they're not very sensitive to let's say some feeling or way that people do their... They live their lives and they think about things. Maybe you can give us some example.   0:15:51.8 JM: Alright yeah. So basically like sometimes it is very common with Kenya and of course it's spread a little bit across the region as well is appreciation the soft skills. It's continuous, celebrating small successes as well. So the populace, the employees would like to feel appreciated in the workplace. Otherwise if it's like over reliant on the processing and the system like okay it was part of your job you don't need a pat on your back. That kind a thing sometimes like oh a little pat would've helped. So it gives a smile to people. So it is the same with thank you did a good job. Even though it was part of the job. It's something that the populace really appreciate. So sometimes when you get maybe some probably managers from a different place and it is none of that it creates the silos and people pull out a little bit and it becomes an eight to five job. They're not enjoying it. It's like okay I'm just doing my job. But that's what I can actually think about right now.   0:17:00.5 AS: Yeah it's a great point and it obviously people around the world want intrinsic, they wanna feel that they're contributing to the value. And I think different societies have different need for that. I would say for Thais, they don't have as strong of a need for that but everybody likes to know when I'm contributing to the success of the organization and the role that I'm playing. So that's definitely and I'm guessing that people you know a lot of times when you look at Thailand's got an agricultural history, America has an agricultural history but it didn't last for very long because it turned into kind of in commercial and industrial agriculture. But when you look at countries that just have such a foundation in agriculture you have to work together or else in harvesting in planting villages work together in Thailand. Is that part of the history and part of the culture there? Or what's it like as far as teamwork versus individual work?   0:18:00.8 AS: Teamwork has actually been part of the culture. Because let's talk about the "Good old days" is when you're going to the farm you would go as a team. If you are ploughing, you'll plough as a team, harvesting you'll harvest as a team. So that's the same thing that has come down the generations. And even at work even though you are in the service sector you'll decide okay let's get together and let's do this. Let's get together and do this investment or let's do this team building. So it has carried on the generations and the only time maybe individualism comes and it's silos and like corporate politics, some groupings form within the organization. But that is... A good manager will know how to break the silos and to get people communicating again. So when Deming as well it gives... Has multiple courses that you can basically custom-make to break the silos which is a very popular one especially engagement, emotional intelligence and all that.   0:19:05.1 AS: Yeah. And in fact, what you learn is that the natural state of things is people don't want silos, they don't wanna be put up against each other like that.   0:19:14.8 JM: True, True.   0:19:16.5 AS: And so by breaking that... I'll tell you a funny story, when I was first working in an investment bank in Thailand, it was 1994 maybe at that time, and the Human Resource sent around a memo or a survey and they asked us to just tick what we thought and... The question was, "Would you like to have a company uniform that you would wear to work?"   0:19:41.8 AS: Now, as an American, I was like, "What? Why would I want that?" I'm an individual, I got my clothes, I don't need that. And so I just thought, nobody would answer yes to that, and then the next day then Human Resources said, "Well, it was unanimous, everybody wants a uniform, and we're gonna be working on getting those uniforms for everyone." And I was like, "Okay." I really didn't understand that about Thai people versus American people, and it just is a funny story about the idea that people wanna belong, and it's interesting that it's... In America, it really is like that individual and independent, which has it's value for sure. But that feeling of belonging, I think, is what I really like about the Deming content and what... The message of Dr. Deming. And it makes me think about... One of the questions that I like to ask is why Deming? Why now? And I'm curious, what would you answer to that, 'cause some people would say, "Oh, it's the old stuff and it's been around for a while, and there's new philosophies and new books and all that." but why would you say Justin, Why Deming? Why now?   0:20:56.1 JM: Yeah, Why Deming? Why now? Is really simple because we are in a transformational transitionary period for East Africans, and a lot of things have probably been done a little bit ad hoc, you're learning on the job, which is, we all know is costly, it's costly to learn on the job. So Deming philosophy brings forth a lot of tools and methodologies that you can basically move to the next level using international best practices. So basically what we know is a lot of tools of Deming also have been adopted in different ways, there are probably some software, have actually been designed and the background is basically the Deming philosophy, you know the PBC cycle, is it variations, understanding variations, all those things that help you to move to the next level. The PDA cycle again that again is known with the Toyota, everybody knows about Toyota and Japan after the World War II and how Deming, Dr. Deming really contributed to that. So it is done, proved, luckily also Deming Institute has also modernized the PDA cycle, there is the modern one now that it is now... It is in cognizant to the current challenges that we have today. So Deming... Right now it's in the right place, everybody should go back to the roots, those who deviated from the roots are finding themselves in unknown territory, they need to come back to the roots and we move forward.   0:22:31.3 AS: Fantastic, and I know for the listeners out there, whether you're in East Africa or wherever you are in the world, one of the things that I always see nowadays, it's like everybody thinks that KPIs and particular individual key performance indicators are the way to manage people, and I think one of the things that I really enjoy about the Deming material and the Deming method is that it's miles beyond just tracking someone's behavior, it goes much deeper than that, and it's about the psychology and bringing out the intrinsic motivation of people and getting them involved and when you do that, ultimately you unleash a power of the people that's fantastic. Maybe as we wrap up, one of the things I'd love for you to do is just share maybe one of your experiences in your training over the years that you... A story or something that you have felt like is a proud moment for you.   0:23:31.2 JM: Alright. There could be a couple I'm trying to see which one could it be but I can... Let's see. There's a time we actually had some group in-house trainings 'cause we offer open trainings, so that we get people from different organizations, but this particular one where we got into an in-house training, and so the facilitator basically got... Was sent to the organization and it was basically, the soft skills, so it was a three-day program, and what came out of it was not... Basically was not even the training, that was... Had been positioned to be trained the moment, the psychology of pains, and the breaking of the silos that came up, it became like a team building and that team building now changed the whole perspective of the training and in fact we had to change the course trajectory mid-way so that now, people can now... Because what we realized was that there were just silos, all over the place, and the training itself would not have earned any... Gotten any dividends, if it went on like that. So it was changed and they actually called us some time later to come and give them their training that had been planned, so that is why I remember that we had to change the course in between because the silos were just crazy inside there, so that one was memorable.   0:25:00.5 AS: It's interesting that you referred to silos many times in this discussion, it's clearly an issue that Deming can help solve, which is...   0:25:08.1 JM: Yes.   0:25:09.8 AS: It's happening all around the world, but it's great to think that you've got a solution, and for the listeners out there, again, if you're in East Africa, reach out and figure out how you can get some of this great stuff and this great training to your business. Well, Justin, on behalf of everyone at the Deming Institute, I wanna thank you again for coming on the show. And let me ask you, do you have any parting words for the audience?   0:25:36.9 JM: Alright. I'd like to... If you're in East Africa, you can go to our website at roundtabletraining.co.ke enroll into any program or contact the number that you'll find there, and we can come and have a visit and talk to you more about what and how Deming can transform your organization.   0:26:00.1 AS:  Fantastic, and that concludes another great story from the worldwide Deming community and how... We learn how Deming is making a footprint in East Africa. Remember to go to deming.org to continue your journey. 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.

Most people come into education familiar with classroom management and curriculum, but the concept of Profound Knowledge changes the way you view the entire field and your part in it. In the second episode of the Deming in Schools Case Study, Andrew and John talk about applying the System of Profound Knowledge to education.  0:00:02.0 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 discussion with John Dues, who is part of the new generation of educators striving to apply Dr. Deming's principles to unleash student joy in learning. The topic for today is applying Deming's system of profound knowledge in education. John, take it away. 0:00:26.8 John Dues: Andrew, it's great to be back. And excited to talk about this. One of the things I was talking about after... Thinking about after our last conversation was a moment I had where I realized as I worked with some senior leaders here is we have these two buckets of knowledge, one bucket I would call subject matter knowledge, and we talked about this a little bit last time, by subject matter, I don't mean knowing, reading or social studies or writing, but I mean the things that you need to know in your field, so for us it's classroom management, how to deliver a lesson, how to design a curriculum, those types of things, and that's always sort of been a part of my work and gained proficiency in that bucket over time, but what I realized in studying Deming is there's this whole other bucket or type of knowledge, what Deming called Profound Knowledge and that was missing across most of my career, and it was a revelation to understand that, "Hey, we need both of these things together to have any chance at improving our schools." 0:01:35.4 AS: It's interesting because the whole focus in most of education is to become a subject matter expert, and that's what's rewarded, that's what we're doing. And this whole way of, how do we see the world? Is such a unique thing. Maybe you can just go through a little bit on the system of profound knowledge as when you first came to it, and what does it mean to you?   0:02:04.4 JD: Yeah, I've been studying it for a handful of years now. Increasingly, it became this sort of foundational philosophy, and it really changed how I view the world, honestly, it wasn't only sort of in my work, although that's sort of where I started thinking most about Deming's ideas. It changed also sort of how I thought about my personal life, family, my own kids in school and their experience in school, so I had a profound impact on just about everything I was doing in my life, that's pretty foundational to discover a philosophy like this... 0:02:51.3 AS: Yeah, that's... I remember when I first understand... For me, it was variation and randomness that really kind of hit me because I was also working in the stock market, and I could see that there was a lot of randomness in the movement of stock prices, and then it was like all of a sudden, what I learned from the randomness aspect and the variation aspect was just like, it's like there's carpeting that we're walking on that nobody even realizes it's underlying everything, and it is this randomness, and we are trained to reject randomness because we're rugged individualists who are setting our own path and it's up to us to make a difference. And that type of thinking basically has to reject the role of randomness, so I know what you're saying about... That started to change the way I viewed the world. Continue on. 0:03:54.2 JD: I think building off what you're saying, there's a variation component to that, and that was sort of an entry point for me too as I read Donald Wheeler's Understanding Variation, which is sort of completely changed how I looked at numbers and data in our work here in schools, but I also think of what I'm hearing in what you're saying is complex systems, and so I think there was sort of an appreciation for systems thinking prior to Deming, but not in the same way, but I think for a lot of folks it's if we do A to B then C is gonna happen. And that's just not how things sort of unfolded in a complex system, be it schools or a company or a society or whatever you may be looking at, if you do A, then that may impact B, C, D, E, F, G in a certain way, and the outcome is gonna be impacted by all of those things, all of those changes, and I think that's sort of... You can start to see that when you start to understand variation, and then that other component, or first component of Deming's Profound Knowledge is Appreciation for a System. 0:05:07.4 JD: And I think that's sort of what he's getting at, that it's really hard to find causal links between things and if we're gonna search for those, then we need to appreciate our organizations as a system, how all of the departments or all of the grade levels in the case of a school are working together or not, and how something you do in one part of that system can impact positively or negatively, other parts of the system, even if what you did in the part of the system was a positive for that part of the system, they can actually destroy the system, and so all of these things were revelations or at least confirmations of things that maybe were in the back of my mind, before I had this understanding in writing from studying Deming's philosophy. 0:06:00.7 AS: And for the listeners or the viewers who aren't familiar with the System of Profound Knowledge, maybe you can just review the four points of it or the four parts, a little bit more. 0:06:12.2 JD: Yeah, System of Profound Knowledge. So four components, Appreciation for a System, Knowledge about Variation, Theory of knowledge and Psychology, and he called them a System of Profound Knowledge because the four components work together, that's the system part. And Profound Knowledge, what I learned over time, is that, what he meant by that is just sort of the deep understanding that comes through viewing your organization through the lens of Profound Knowledge, so when you bring those four things together, you get a different view of your organization, than without Profound Knowledge. And without Profound Knowledge, you are often misled, you often don't know when to react or not to react to something that's going on in your organization or system, with Profound Knowledge you now have a management philosophy by which to interpret that data that comes streaming at you, no matter what industry you're in, and gives you a way to map out how to react or again, not to react to that data. 0:07:18.8 AS: It makes me think there's a saying in Thai language about a frog under a coconut, and when you lift up the coconut, the frog kind of wants the coconut back on because that's their world. And I think about when you really come across the System of Profound Knowledge and you understand it, it's like that coconut comes off and you realize, Oh my God, I am part of a much bigger system, and all of a sudden things just open up and what was your experience when you first kind of started really realizing how this all works together. 0:08:00.3 JD: Well, maybe unlike the frog, I didn't wanna unsee it or I didn't want to be recovered, however, there certainly was... Well one, it took time for me to sort of understand what exactly Dr. Deming was saying, and I'm still trying to understand that fully, but the hardest thing was probably talking to people, really smart people, about Profound Knowledge and maybe them not sort of seeing the importance of it or the same level of importance that I thought that they should see or where we'll talk about it, it would be well-received, but then people would turn around and sort of revert back to the old way of thinking. And for me, it was just realizing that this just takes repeated practice, because it is really a completely new way of thinking. 0:09:00.9 JD: It's a completely new way to look at data or your systems, it's a completely new way to think about how do you bring new ideas to your organization, how do you test those ideas, it's really getting away from simple things like setting a goal without a method, it's appreciating the psychology of introducing changes to your organization. I found people are generally very open to new things, what they're not open to is being sort of yanked about constantly when we try this thing and that thing, and education has the same sort of problem in this area that other sectors like healthcare do, where the frontline people, teachers in our case, nurses in the case of healthcare where they're often being pulled this way and that with new initiatives to the point they get this initiative fatigue will wear people out and burn people out and then they leave because each leader comes in with their own pet idea and it's not grounded in this sort of solid philosophical foundation. 0:10:13.3 AS: One of the things that's interesting about the system of profound knowledge is that it can be a bit overwhelming for someone who's first coming upon it because it's like, Oh my God, there's a much bigger aim, and one of the reasons why we don't think in a systems way and why we do think silos is because it's easier, and so for some people it can feel like, Oh God, this is just overwhelming, and I'm just curious what your perspectives are on that, either for yourself or the people that you're working with there, and how do we make sure that you don't get overwhelmed by it? 0:10:57.6 JD: Yeah, it's a challenge because I originally came to the Deming Institute website and the profound knowledge page and went away because it didn't make sense to me initially, and it was two years later when I came back, and not that it was sort of some divine revelation, but I slowly, over time, it started to sink in, something caught my attention that this was worthy of study. So one thing I read, Dr. Deming said, you don't need to be eminent in all four areas or even any one of the four areas, but it does require serious study, so you're not gonna understand it in a day or a week or a month. I would also say anybody that gets serious about studying this philosophy, I would highly recommend reaching out to somebody that is further along in their understanding, and that's sort of a turning point, I think I mentioned in the last episode. Reaching out to Kelly Allen, who turned me on to David Langford that accelerated my learning, 'cause I could ask specific questions, and David could give me specific applications of Deming's ideas in schools, and that certainly helped to clarify a lot of things for me. 0:12:08.3 JD: So that's something I would highly recommend, but I would read widely, watch the videos, you can go to a four-day or sorry, two and half day seminar that the Institute does, and then reaching out to someone that is further along is something I'd highly recommend. 0:12:27.1 AS: Yeah, great advice. And just this podcast already is a starting point for the listeners out there. 0:12:33.2 JD: Yep, absolutely. 0:12:34.8 AS: One of the things that I say to my students in my valuation master class, they come to my class because it's like, Andrew, you got 30 years of experience as a financial analyst, and you were voted number one and you... This and that, and I really wanna learn from you. And when I come into class, I announce a couple of the things... And one of the things is I say, You Are Always Wrong. And I call it YAAW. And I try to help the students understand it, in the world of finance, there is no precision, like in the world of physics or the law of gravity or something like that, that you're always going to be wrong and therefore don't freak out over that. Understand that it's a system. The second thing that I tell the students, and this one I think really gets them, they don't really figure it out until the end, and that is in my class and in the world of finance, what I teach is, if I'm successful as a teacher in this specific area that I'm teaching, if you feel less confident when you finish my course, I've succeeded. 0:13:48.7 AS: And I think that students freak out because of I'm here to be more confident Andrew, and what I'm exposing them to is that it's a constant... We're walking on quick sand. We're operating in a world where even in the world of finance, just observing the world of finance, observing market prices and stuff can influence actions that we're taking in the market... Can influence market prices. So the complexity level is so high. 0:14:27.1 JD: Yeah, yeah, one of the things that makes me think of is sort of a... I don't know if I'd call it paradox, but one of the early places that I went even prior to sort of coming across, Deming's work is the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching and they have it as their mission to bring the science of improvement to the education sector. And they have an annual Improvement Summit. The first time I went, I realized that they had this footer on all of their materials and it said, "Probably wrong, definitely incomplete." And that was a really great entry way into the science of improvement because that's the mentality you need when you start any type of improvement work, improvement project in your organization, and I sort of stole that idea and stuck it on all our materials. 0:15:27.8 JD: And I think the reaction from a lot of people first is similar to how you're describing the reaction of your students is that, wait a second, aren't you supposed to be an expert, don't you know what you're talking about? And I said, "No, that's not what this is about." This is about humbling yourself, realizing the complexity of the organizations that we're working in, and that at the outset of any improvement project, that there are gonna be things that you discover along the way that were completely unknown at the start, and so if you don't take that mindset and you rush in and you're sure of yourself, then you are set up for failure from the beginning, in my opinion. 0:16:09.7 AS: So if we go back to the title of this episode, Applying Deming's System of Profound Knowledge in Education, part of it is it starts to open you up beyond subject matter, and also it starts to help you understand that there's just a much more, a bigger world out there of influences that are driving us, and I think one of the things that's interesting about that is it... Young managers in the world of business are seeming to latch on to KPIs and feeling like it is a simple solution, we just define everybody's KPI, we nail them with it, we repeat it to them, we have them write it out in their goals and we measure it, and if they don't achieve it. Boom. And what Deming is teaching is just the opposite, that when you understand the system of profound knowledge, you understand that optimizing the output of any organization is a much more complex reality than just putting a KPI and a number on it. 0:17:18.8 JD: Yeah, I think of a colleague of a contemporary of Dr. Deming, who is still doing great work, Dr. Donald Wheeler said something to the effect of goal setting, KPI setting, goal setting is often an act of desperation, meaning like you don't know what else to do, so you set a goal, you don't have a method, you don't have a theory for how to improve, so you set this goal and then say something to the effect of, "I don't care how you get it done. Just get it done." Right, and then all hell breaks loose. And what do you think he's talking about is, if you don't understand the capability of your system, if you don't understand whatever area you're talking about, whatever area that KPI is in, if you don't understand how that data is varying over time, if you don't understand if there are just common causes, there are special causes in that data, you have no idea how to react nor do you know what your system was capable of the first place. 0:18:26.1 JD: That's sort of one of the sessions I led with leadership team here, and everybody kind of looks and says, Well, aren't we supposed to set goals? and there's really nothing wrong with setting goals in and of themselves, but we often set them in ways that are completely detached from reality, both in the magnitude of improvement that we're expecting and is a lack of understanding of how that same data has performed over time. 0:18:52.5 AS: Yeah, and it reminds me of Dr. Deming's statement of 'by what method?' 0:18:56.2 JD: By what method, yeah. 0:18:58.9 AS: So for, in wrapping up our discussion, I wanna go back and review some of what we've just talked about, so we're talking about applying the system of profound knowledge in education, and what you've talked about is the idea of coming into education, most people are very familiar with subject matter knowledge about classroom management and curriculum management and all that, but what was missing when you started your journey was this concept of Profound Knowledge, and once you started to understand it, it changed the way that you viewed the world, and then we just briefly talked about the idea, I wrote down something which was "probably wrong, definitely incomplete", and I would say that there are plenty of places where they think "definitely right. Probably complete." [laughter] 0:19:47.3 AS: And then you just mentioned the idea of setting goals, and I think Deming is not against goals, it's that goal is just one measure, I would say, if you set goals for individuals that incentivize them individually, you've created a big problem of competition, but most importantly, I think what you're saying is the idea of just setting a goal like, We wanna increase test scores by X or in my business, I want revenue growth to be up by 20% next year, the question really becomes by what method is there anything else that you would add to wrap up our discussion? 0:20:28.2 JD: Yeah, I think goals or quotas, especially if you're optimizing one part of the system, very likely to destroy the system as a whole, or at least sub-optimize it make it worse. I think Deming said something to the fact of quotas can be a fortress against improvement. Right. I think he was exactly right, because people start to do all kinds of weird things when you start to set quotas or goals, especially again, if they're incentivized as an individual, whether that's an individual worker or an individual department, things start to sort of happen in the opposite of what you wanted to happen when you do things like set goals, without that appreciation for the capability of the system in the first place, or an understanding of the data or an idea for how to improve, because it's like, well, if our goal... If we're gonna set a goal to increase test scores, let's say by 10% next year, why don't we do it this year? If we knew how to do that, what were we waiting on, why do we think we can do it next year, if we couldn't do it this year... 0:21:33.8 AS: Great points. Well, John, on behalf of everyone at the Deming Institute, I wanna thank you again for this discussion and for listeners, remember to go to Deming.org to continue your journey. 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.

In this, the first in a series of episodes on Awakening Your Inner Deming, Andrew talks with Dr. Bill Bellows about his journey. He started with Taguchi, read his way through other quality "gurus", and finally found Deming in unexpected places - solving big problems in space shuttles along the way! 0:00:02.1 Andrew Stotz: My name is Andrew Stotz. I'll be your host as we continue our journey into the teachings of Dr. W. Edwards Deming. Today, I'm here with featured guest Bill Bellows. Bill, are you ready to share your Deming journey? 0:00:15.7 Bill Bellows: I am ready. I've got my seatbelt on, crash protection devices. I'm ready to go, Andrew. [chuckle] 0:00:23.3 AS: And I am ready indeed. So let me introduce you to the audience. Bill's a 35+ year specialist in the field of quality and engineering management. In addition to adjunct professor roles, he is president of InThinking Services, partnering with clients to facilitate the understanding and application of the Deming philosophy. So, Bill, can you tell us a bit about how you first came to even learn about the teachings of Dr. W. Edwards Deming and what hooked you? 0:00:57.8 BB: Well, I was minding my own business. No. Actually, I finished my graduate studies in 1983 and went to work in the aerospace industry with a sense that I wasn't gonna... [chuckle] I wasn't quite sure I was gonna like it. I greatly enjoyed what I was doing in the field in graduate school, and the work I was to be doing in industry was very similar. So I felt okay, but it didn't take long before I just didn't like it. And I found myself teaching some college classes and then wondering what I wanted to do. And it took about... Two years after I was working at this company, I took a class in problem solving and decision making. A one-week class. And I loved it. I started looking at everything through this lens of a model for decision making, a model for problem solving. 0:02:13.4 BB: And shortly thereafter, I was approached by the training director of the company. We were growing leaps and bounds in terms of business and employment. And this guy came in and was really cool in terms of bringing us what he thought was some really professional development training. And he knew I was excited by this one-week course. And he said, "Bill, how'd you like to be the person in engineering trained in that and to teach this course?" And I was like, "Yeah. Yeah. Sign me up." So I went away for a two-week train the trainer, very intensive training. And what was interesting is I was the only one in the room, two dozen people that wasn't an HR and wasn't a trainer. I didn't know how to train... I was gung ho on the material, but I did not know what it was like to get in front of an audience. And in fact, the instructors used to kid me that I was almost afraid to move beyond the podium. I just wanted to hide behind it. 0:03:17.0 BB: And so I came out of that having been... I have to we prepare for the next day, five minutes, 10 minutes, 20 minutes. Next thing you know, we're preparing these one hour long teachers. And I love... I liked it. And then back at work, the plan was that, given this role as the auxiliary instructor for this material, when people in engineering, my organization, have a need for this training to be used, I'd be called upon. And that was really cool. It got me associated with people I wasn't working with, and it was a much more exciting than what I was doing. And Lo and behold, the guy in training, the director says, "Hey, you know this... " He mentioned Deming's name, and I was a sponge. And I really respected what he was doing. And he gave me... He introduced me to Deming's work. And I remember, I think it was Quality, Productivity and Competitive Position. And I looked at that and I thought, "Okay." 0:04:30.4 BB: But then going back to the problem, we'll come back to that. That was my exposure to Dr. Deming's name. But in parallel, I was working on a very big problem on the... On our number one product, which were gas turbine engines, you could think of as jet engines, for applications in the US Army's battle tank. And we were making 120 of these a month. And I mean, it was a big, big... It was the biggest business of the company. And once or so a year, there'd be a major crisis. We can't ship hardware and the Army would come in and say, "Stop production until you solve this." And I had been dragged into some of those before. And that kind of got me in the realm of, "Hey, why don't you go off and take this training?" So now I'm not sitting in the back of the room. Now I'm in the front of the room but leading the facilitation of these techniques for problem... Mostly problem solving. What is a problem? The car won't start. It used to work. 0:05:38.5 BB: And so we're working on one big problem. And it was... It had incredible relevance relative... This is the height of the Cold War, Andrew. This is '87, '88 timeframe. And there was reason to believe by the Army that the majority of the battle tanks had a problem. And those tanks were the front line of defense of the allied forces in Europe. And so, we were running tests 24/7 trying to solve this, solve this, solve this, solve this, solve this, and we weren't going anywhere. And at one of the meetings, once a month, somebody had to go explain to the army, essentially our lack of progress. At one of those meetings, somebody said General Motors makes the transmissions for the tanks, and whenever they have an issue like this, they use this thing called Taguchi methods. So we're gonna contact General Motors and ask for their help and you're gonna send somebody then in Indianapolis to find out what it is and is it relevant. 0:06:49.8 BB: And so I go to this meeting and I learn about these goings-on, and I turn to the manager of the tank engine program. And I said, "So who's gonna go to Indianapolis?" And he said, "You are." And I looked at him dumbfounded and I said, "Why me?" He says, "You're the problem-solving guy." He says, "I want you to go." And Andrew, I had no interest in going. I was looking for reasons why it made no sense. And in the back of my mind anytime I get into a situation where I'm not happy with whatever it is, I look for something positive to make it appeasing. And believe it or not, I didn't wanna go to Indianapolis, but I thought, but I can go to the Indy 500 Museum, which a neighbor did years ago, and if nothing else, I can go to the Indy museum. And that's really what I was looking forward to, is going to the Indy museum 'cause I thought this meeting was just gonna be a waste of time. 0:07:49.7 BB: And I go into the meeting and I'm... And this is what hooked me on Taguchi then we'll come back to Deming. I go into the meeting and there were these transmission division's top people in Taguchi methods. Well, their senior people, their top most person had recently left the transmission division to go work for a new part of GM called the Saturn Corporation. And I'm thinking, holy cow, your top Taguchi guy is at Saturn, which I knew about. So now I'm thinking, 'cause prior to going out, I did a literature search. We didn't have the internet and I pulled up a bunch of stuff and it was just a mishmash. But when he said, "Our top guy who wrote this book... " and he showed me the book, "went to the Saturn Corporation," I'm thinking, now my ears are perking up. 0:08:56.4 BB: And then he says the other thing that's funny here. They brought in their chief transmission designer and he looked at the drawings of the parts that were failing in the engine. And he says, "This looks like a German design." I don't know anything about design, but he looks at the drawings and he says, "This looks like a German design." And I said, "It is a German design." In fact, I said, "The people who designed this engine designed the very first German jet engine in the late '30s for Hitler." I said, "It's the same team of people." And so anyway, he looked at it and he had some ideas, but that wasn't why I was there. But then the other two guys were there, and the first question they asked me is, "How do you come up with ideas for what's wrong with this tank engine?" I said, "Everyone's got an idea." And I said, "And what if that doesn't work?" He says, "Here's what we do. Somebody comes up with an idea and every idea we come up with, we write it down and we go run a 10-hour test at a thousand bucks an hour, which I thought was expensive. 0:10:01.5 BB: And then at the end of the test, we decide to go forward or not. Are we onto something or not? And he said, "What if it's not?" And I said, "Well, then somebody's always got an idea, somebody's always got an idea. We're running test, we're running test. Well, why are we here?" Because we're running through ideas, running through ideas, and we ain't finding anything. So then he says, "What do you measure?" And it's so funny. I don't know anything about gears other than the gears have teeth. I'm a heat transfer guy. [chuckle] So I said, "After each test, somebody goes to the manager in the gear group and shows them the gears that contact each other," and he holds 'em up and he says, they look good or they look bad. He says, "How does he do that?' I says, "He just looks at 'em." He says, "He doesn't measure anything?" I said, "No, he just holds them up to the light and he says, that looks worn, or that doesn't look worn." 0:11:01.3 BB: And I said, "Based on that decision, we run the next test." Well, he says, "Here's our first piece of advice." He said, "Stop thinking of it as being it's worn or it's not." He said, "It's really shades of grey." And he says, "What I want you to do is measure each tooth on each gear before and after." He said, "You're throwing away a lot of information based on this measurement." And I thought, okay, okay. And I said, how do you do it? Blah, blah, blah. And I went back about a week later based on what he shared with me and we put together a test plan that solved that problem in about two weeks later. And so now I'm all over Taguchi's work, I am all over Taguchi's work, all over Taguchi's work, and it became my next look. 0:11:49.0 AS: What does Taguchi have to do with just measuring versus eyeballing something? 0:11:54.9 BB: Well, that's a good question. I'd say Taguchi's work in that situation was the use of fractional factorial testing, but the issue was that we were treating the data as black and white, which is, in terms of statistics, it is a poor way of doing things, but that's... It wasn't... 0:12:19.0 AS: So either you accept or reject as opposed to measuring? 0:12:22.1 BB: Yeah. And I was... I took an undergraduate class in statistics and I just... It wasn't a field I didn't know that much about. So I just bought into it and he just brought it to my attention, and I said, okay, and it kind of makes sense where he's coming from, but the... So really, the biggest thing that came out of the meeting was not so much... It was driven by you gotta look at this Taguchi guy and it was a combination of running tests using Taguchi's ideas, which would've included using variable data and not... What was it called? Category data. And so that, it was just incredible. This was a problem that was going on with incredible high visibility at the Pentagon, and it got us out of a big jam. And we just couldn't, the answer was right in front of us, but we couldn't see it based on not so much the testing method, the evaluation method. So then that got me in love with Dr. Taguchi's work, so... 0:13:40.4 AS: Let's stop there for a second and think about the listeners for a second, and the viewers. How would you describe the lesson that you learned from that experience? 0:13:56.2 BB: I say a really big lesson is that a simple shift in our thinking, kind of like putting on glasses allowed us to see what we couldn't see that was right in front of us. 0:14:11.7 AS: And it happened by you going outside of the organization also, it sounds like. 0:14:15.7 BB: Oh inside... Oh, the organization. See, I had no reason to challenge the organization. These were the gear people. I'm a heat transfer person, so I don't challenge the gear people. What is that all about? That's why I'm just going along with the guy says, "What do you measure?" I said, again, I was out of my element relative to how organizations operate, out of my element relative to... Now I just looked at that and say, they're the experts. Why would I... I mean, [chuckle] I was just gullible. And I don't think that's uncommon. Where I worked, I found that there were fields in which everyone was an expert. And then there were fields in which... Meaning that if you... Where I worked in Connecticut, if you had some skill with statistics, people would get outta your way and they would just treat you like you walked on water, even though you were full of it. They just bowed to Andrew because you... 0:15:33.2 BB: And so I think it was something like that. I just didn't... And again, I don't think that's uncommon in organizations. But to your point, in fact, back to your point, when I walked away from that very first meeting, and here's what was cool is, it was the two of them, the designer left the room and were in a small conference room. And here I am with two instructors and me, two instructors and one student. I had a ball. And I'm taking notes and I'm writing everything down. And I'm asking this one, asking this one, asking this one, asking this one. And the plan was I would come back in a week, take the ideas, go back, talk to the experts. Well, one of the things we did when we went back is we threw out everything we thought we knew about those experiments because every decision we had made was based on this premise of look and hold a part up to the light. 0:16:27.6 BB: So I said, all this testing is meaningless. So now we've gotta go back to the original list and go forward 'cause typically you'd think, like with Edison, you try this, try this, try this. You don't go backwards. We went backwards based on what you're talking about is that I lost trust in everything we thought we knew. So we went back to the original list, which was... And the original list was what a bunch of recent design changes. So we went back to that list that had been tested, and using a shifting from black and white data to continuum data, we discovered what no one else could see. And it just jumped right out. It was just so damn obvious what was going on, but we couldn't see it. And so that got me intrigued in Taguchi's work. I was then on a mission to learn everything I could. And I then began to see my role in the organization as the facilitator of training that I was doing, and then training in this and helping the organization on applications. 0:17:41.9 BB: And it didn't take long. We were solving some pretty big problems after that. And the VP of engineering liked what was going on. And I went to one day and I said, "I'd like a job," I said, "There's incredible opportunities for us to use this, and I'd like to be the person leading that effort." And he smiled, and... "Andrew, this is the height of TQM, this is 1988. TQM is huge." And he's kinda nodding to me. And sometime thereafter I told him, I said, well what is I brought the Taguchi people in from Detroit to do a big seminar, $30,000. And I'm in charge of bringing them in. I'm in charge of who's coming to this. I remember I went to the HR training guy and I said, "Who do I invite to this training? This is out of my league." And he gave me incredible advice, and I'm sure you've heard before, he said, "It's easier to ask... " He said, "It's easier to apologize than ask permission." 0:18:48.5 BB: He said, "You are in charge of the whole damn thing." He said, "You invite who you think needs to be there." And I was like, whoa, [laughter] And I said, when did he had to tell me that. And I had so many from engineering, so many from operations, so many from procurement, invited the people in, took the course, we were able to as part of the course show what we had done and we were on a roll. And eventually I went to the VP of engineering and I said, "This is what I wanna do." And I even... In a nice way, he and I got along really well and I said, "The job I want, I've shared with you," and I said, "And I really hope it comes to be." I said, "But if it doesn't come to be, it will be because I found that job elsewhere." [laughter] 0:19:44.0 BB: "So if I come to you and say I'm leaving, this is why." 0:19:50.0 AS: It's for that job. 0:19:50.6 BB: This is why. And then in the very same time frame that I'm out looking, looking, looking, looking, looking 'cause it would... Did not appear to be coming. And then I heard about Deming again and I heard that he was speaking about an hour away from where I worked. And at that point, I had taken an introduction to Taguchi's course, an advanced course where I drove to Detroit and self-funded a week's vacation. I was intense. And I hear about Deming speaking in the area and I thought, "Being a student of quality, I need to go find out what this is all about." So I... 0:20:28.0 AS: And what year is that and what city was it that that was happening in? 0:20:34.8 BB: Dr. Deming was speaking in February of 1990 in Danbury, Connecticut at Western Connecticut State University, and he spoke three times that day. I was there for all three and I have videotapes from the inviter, the professor. He shared with me two of the three videotapes, and one of them, the evening lecture about an hour and a half long I believe is on YouTube. I can get you that information to the link and... But Dr. Deming spoke for about an hour to the faculty, an hour to the students, and what was so cool is I attended with two colleagues from a graduate school who were in transition and I said, "Hey, there's this Deming guy appearing." He was about... He was appearing about midway between where these classmates were. So they drove and got there and I got there and we're driving around campus trying to find where this is. And what's so cool was we found the building, and found this auditorium which was empty, and as soon as we find the room, we turn, and there's Dr. Deming getting out of a limo. [chuckle] 0:21:49.9 BB: And it's about noon time, and he's with his host and all in there, and I guess they went off for lunch. So we're in the room before any... So when we found the room, we see this guy that looks like Dr. Deming. So, okay, this is the right place. So we just kind of made ourselves at home there, kind of sat. Found the place where we wouldn't be sitting kind of in the back, and he came in and started speaking, and he was entertaining. But so much of what he was saying, he was using a language that was nowhere near anything I had learned from Dr. Taguchi, who in my opinion, I was just in love with Taguchi's work. So I'm looking at Deming by comparison, I'm thinking that doesn't fit what I know from Taguchi. That doesn't fit, that doesn't fit, that doesn't fit. [laughter] So he gave pretty much the same presentation to the students and the faculty and then a little bit longer in the evening. And so much of what he said was interesting. 0:23:02.6 BB: And some of it is entertaining, I mean, entertaining in the sense that I could tell it was a joke. I mean, some of his jokes are in the context of his work and I wouldn't laugh at that 'cause I don't understand the context, but others were, so it was interesting. And then a few days later, the two guys who went with me, who lived in my hometown, I went to see them and a third classmate who got his MBA when we were getting Masters in Engineering, he showed up and he knew of Deming and he said, "So what'd you learn?" And the thing that stood out more than anything else, I said, "I don't quite... " [chuckle] I said, "I don't understand the majority of what he said." I said, "But what did stand out... " I told this classmate, I said, "I've never heard anyone speak ill of competition," 'cause Dr. Deming referenced Alfie Kohn's book, the case against competition. I can't remember the... "No Contest", right? 0:24:12.8 BB: And the guy says, "Well, what's wrong with competition?" And I said, "I don't know." I said, "All I know is he distinctly did not like it." And I'd never heard anyone... When I say people, until Deming, I've never heard anyone speak ill of competition. People always say, it brings out the best in people, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, but here's Deming railing against it, and that was what stuck in my mind from Tuesday through Saturday was, he doesn't like competition. 0:24:45.1 AS: And when he was talking about competition, was he talking about competition, setting up competition within your company? Or he doesn't like companies competing with each other? 0:24:54.0 BB: No, and that's a very good point. And he's... And I believe that in Deming community there's some confusion. It was hard for me to distinguish competition within the company from competition between Ford and GM. All I knew is he didn't like it. 0:25:14.4 AS: Yep. 0:25:15.0 BB: And yeah. I mean, fast-forward he's very... 0:25:17.6 AS: In America, that's just a bizarre concept. 0:25:19.9 BB: He's talking about competition... Well, he's talking about competition within the team and he would say, "Naturally, Ford and GM are gonna compete in the marketplace, so they may find opportunities to collaborate." But at that point, what just blew me away was this guy doesn't like competition. That's the only... I mean, he'd mentioned special causes and common causes. That didn't mean anything to me. I never heard those words before. So, I mean, nowadays when I go back and watch it, I can see how... What an incredible set of material he was presenting, but I didn't have anything to hold onto to be able to... I'm looking at what he's doing through a Taguchi lens, looking for the black and white and the shades of gray and some other things. But there's so much of what he was saying didn't come close. 0:26:11.9 BB: But going back to the comment of the colleague... The classmate, he said, what's wrong with the competition? I distinctly remember saying to him, I said, "I don't know." I said, "But maybe because we did okay. And graduating getting master's degree," I said, "Maybe we like competition because we won - that we did okay." And what I was also thinking about when I said that was I had a summer job in college and a factory in my hometown, and in the factory people I went to grade school with, and I was thinking of them. And so when he said,"What's wrong?" I'm thinking, I've got a PhD in mechanical engineering. I didn't drop outta high school and go work on a factory. And that's what I was doing. I'm self-reflecting on, maybe it worked for me, but maybe it didn't work for the others. And that's pretty much... And I believe in that timeframe. I mean, Dr. Deming hands out an article at that time on Profound Knowledge, two or three pages and yeah, okay. There's four elements, but I pretty much put it in the back burner. 0:27:24.0 AS: So what happened next and how did you move on in your Deming journey? 0:27:29.6 BB: Well, that was February of 1989. Later that summer, I took an advanced class in Taguchi methods, and I'm interviewing with Dr. Taguchi's company. I didn't have gray hair. I didn't have any training experience. I didn't quite fit the mold they were looking for. And so I'm trying this, and I'm just trying every opportunity, I want a job in Taguchi methods. And towards the end of the year, I met some people and they gave my resume to RocketDyne where I eventually was hired and now I'm working full-time as a Taguchi expert. You know who is an expert. If I know more than you, that makes me an expert Andrew. [laughter] 0:28:18.5 AS: One step ahead. 0:28:20.6 BB: But where Deming came back to me was 1993, The New Economics comes out, and occasionally, I go to the bookstore, that's just before Amazon. So I go to the bookstore and I was subscribing to the American Society for Quality. So I was in that community of quality practitioners learning about it. And I literally went to the bookstore... A brick and mortar bookstore, got a copy of The New Economics, and what do I do when I look at it? First thing I do, I go to the index and say, what does this guy think of Dr. Taguchi? [chuckle] And I go to the end and it's Genichi Taguchi. So I go to the page's reference, and what floored me was chapter 10, the very last chapter, the last six pages is all about Dr. Taguchi's work. And I'm thinking, I like this guy, I like this guy. 0:29:27.5 BB: So the vote of confidence in what he is talking, I'm thinking. So I think Taguchi stuff is everything and Deming's liking it too. And when I read The New Economics... So meanwhile, in Connecticut, when I was brought in to solve, help, support issues, once or twice a year, I pretty much stopped my day job, went full-time into this problem solving practitioner facilitator mode, which could take a month or two months. And then I go back to my job. Now in Connecticut, I'm the full-time problem solving guy. This is not a part-time thing. It's a full-time thing. And the exciting thing is I'm working on some very big issues, some of which were a couple months old. One in the spatial domain engine was a year and a half old. And this is exciting, but then I'm starting to realize that there's something wrong with the business model at the organization. 0:30:28.7 BB: And when I looked at Dr. Demings, when The New Economics came out, again, I had spent three years working on major problems in the special domain engine, major problems on space station hardware that RocketDyne was developing, the electric power for. I'm briefing very senior NASA people on problem solved, problem solved, problem solved. But I'm starting to hyperventilate thinking we are kept in business by being able to solve problems. The problems we don't solve, what NASA does is they call you up and they say, "Andrew, we've given you the contract to develop the engine." You're like, "Yep, yep, yep." "And we've given you the contract to produce the engine." "Yep, yep, yep, yep." "But we understand you've got a problem on this component. We're looking to have somebody else make that." 0:31:19.7 BB: And what I saw in front of me was I'm working on a problem that's a year and a half old. There's other problems on the engine. NASA's getting frustrated saying, we're gonna outsource this work to a competitor. And I'm thinking we're gonna lose the engine one component at a time. So I'm working on a big component. And before that problem was solved, a bigger dollar value component was given to a competitor. And I'm thinking one after another. So when I read The New Economics, the first thing that jumped out is, what I'm experiencing is not unique to where I work. What I read into Dr. Deming's work, my interpretation of Deming's work was kind of reinforcing that problem solving is the result of how we see the world, that we're stuck in a rut, because I'm looking and thinking... 0:32:16.7 BB: Again, the good news is I'm kept in. I'm being kept incredibly busy working on some very high visibility problems, going to very senior people at NASA headquarters to present solutions with the president of the company. I'm feeling really good. I mean, relative to having fun, but I'm thinking, but fundamentally how the company is running is not sustainable. And so, I'm looking and thinking, "I'm enjoying this. I'm keeping busy." But we shouldn't have these problems. If we understood what Deming's talking about, my interpretation was we could be preventing these problems, not solving these problems. And I'm not saying all problems, but I'm just thinking that we're behind the eight ball, and I looked at Deming's work as how to get out in front of it, not behind it. And the big part of it was we didn't understand variation. 0:33:15.9 BB: And so what I looked at it was, if you're ignoring variation, then you're... And we'll get into more detail in another session, but what I found was we didn't see the warning signs, the way it was... This goes back to the black and white, and I liken it to things are going well, which is like, your car has gas. Okay, the car has gas. Should I go get gas? No. How do I know we shouldn't get gas, Andrew? Because the car is running. 0:33:48.2 AS: The car has gas. Yeah.   0:33:50.0 BB: And so I'm thinking, "So why are people coming to me with a problem?" Because when the car is running, they don't think they need gas. [chuckle] And now I'm thinking, "If we just had gas gauges, simple devices to monitor and get away from the car has gas or it doesn't, which is the black and white thinking that I grew to, not despise, but just become aware of its limits. And now I'm realizing it, if we looked at things along a continuum, we could be preventing these problems in the first place. And then I'm thinking, "I mean, we've got an incredibly sophisticated engineers and hardware, but we're falling victim to a mindset that says the car has gas, but nobody's asking how much." But so I, from that moment on, reading Deming's book one, it was holy cow, because the riddle I was trying to solve was, why do you come to me when the car runs outta gas? 0:34:54.2 BB: And what it didn't dawn to me was why should they come see me when the car has gas? [laughter] And Deming was... Again, and I'm not saying everybody looks at Deming's ideas the same way. And we both know that's not the case, but what excited me about him at that point was that what I was dealing with was not... The solution wasn't technical. The solution was a shift in mindset. And I then very distinctly began moving from all about Taguchi to all about Deming. And what was interesting is when I started to share that influence with people, really good friends in the Taguchi community, they looked at me, some of them down their nose. Then I've...   0:35:53.3 AS: A traitor to the cause.   0:35:56.5 BB: I'm just like I had discovered a new religion, but they looked at me like, "Deming? Deming?" And I'm thinking to myself, "Well, first of all, I was, I had great... " These were really sharp people in the Taguchi community that I had greatest respect for. And I thought they'd be excited by that. And what I was sensing was kind of a weakness. And I then, from that point on, I went from the solution was Taguchi training and advanced training and blah, blah blah. And then began to think that the reason I can't get in to do these things that I wanted to do with Dr. Taguchi's work, which is focusing on things that are good and making them better. Why am I focus... I'm applying Taguchi's ideas to go from bad to good. And all the training I had is that his ideas go the other way from good to better and better and better. And I'm thinking, "I'm stuck in this rut. And Dr. Deming's giving me great insights as to how to get out of the rut." And you can tell from my excitement it was a game changer for me and a game changer for how what we did in terms of how we were deploying Taguchi's ideas and Deming's ideas where I worked.   0:37:25.0 AS: So if we go back, I mean, let's... Now that's a good breakdown of kind of your history with it. And I'm just curious, if we think about a young person right now who doesn't know much about Deming, how would you describe what they can gain from starting their Deming journey? What would you describe now? I mean, in the beginning you've described kind of simple solutions to simple problems, but there's so much more that you started discovering.   AS: Let's just talk about when I think about young people these days and I look at the management that they're learning in universities, their MBAs and all the things, and I'm looking at the KPIs and things like that, that are going on in this world, I see some strong reasons why people should pay attention to the teachings of Dr. Deming. And I'm just curious, the question I like to ask is, why Deming? Why now? BB: Yeah. I'd say my approach is to use examples with people of all ages that are new to Deming, right? So you don't have to be right out of college. But I like to look at it as how can I help you understand through questions and examples the degree to which you have the ability to see with new eyes right now, meaning that when I talked earlier about the limits of black and white thinking, versus shades of gray thinking. Shades of gray thinking is looking at a gas gauge and see the gas gauge is going from full to less to less to less. It's time to get gas while I still have gas. Black and white thinking just says I have gas. What about now? I have gas.   AS: Accept, reject. [chuckle] BB: And it's not to say that black and white thinking is bad, but it's simple versus shades of gray thinking. So what I point out to people is in our personal lives, we use both modes. Throughout the day we're in one cat... We're in one mode or the other not paying attention. And it may well be that the mode we're using is the proper mode to use in that situation. But if we became more aware of those modes, if we had the ability to flip the switch deliberately, 'cause right now what I found is I can ask you a question and get you to go into the black and white mode. You don't know that, and I'll give you another question. And to me, you're jumping between modes, you don't know it. So my strategy, is how people become aware. Why? Because what Dr. Deming's... I'll give you an incredible, a great quote that Russ Ackoff shared in a conversation with Dr. Deming, and Russ says, the... BB: And for those who don't know, Russ was a professor at the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School of Business and he passed away about 10 years ago, or so. And he and Dr. Deming were colleagues, very deeply, deep admirers of one another, but 19 years different. Dr. Deming was 19 years older than Russ. And Russ says, "The characteristic way of management we have taught in the western world is to take a complex system, break it in the parts, and manage each part as well as possible." And then he goes on to say, "And if that's done, the system performs well." And I ask people to complete the sentence and they'll say... And actually the sentence I pose it as, "And if that's done," so the character's way of management is to take a complex and then breaking into parts manage the parts as well as possible. And if that's done, okay, how would you answer it? And they'll say, "things go well, things go well."  BB: Well, what Russ says is, "And the system will behave badly and perform well." And then that's absolutely false. And so what I then try to show to people is that what Russ is describing is what we do at work. And then, I gradually point out to them that what he is describing we should be doing is what we do at home. [chuckle] And I try to get 'em to realize that at work they're responsible for machining a whole... Delivering, converting some data from one form to another and passing it on to the next person. But they don't know what the next person does, and I point out at home, whether they're planning a vacation, planning a wedding, buying a home, they're handing off to the next person. And they are the next person, and then they are the next person. And so I try to point out to them the differences between how you would behave if you were the next person. And by comparison, what do we do at work. BB: And I try to use examples that show the incredible shortcoming of how we treat the next person at work versus how we treat the next person at home, who is me. And so I just give them the same scenario and just say, "So why at home, do we do this and at work we do this?" And then they'll wrap their heads around it. "Because at home I'm dealing with wood and at work, I use metal." And I've had that happen, people will say, "In the garage, I have... I'm working, making a project at wood, and that's why I do that at home. And at work, it's all metal." And I try to point out, "Who designs it at home?" "I do." "Who buys the materials at home?" "I do." Or the elements of whatever it is I'm making and I try to point out, "At home, you are the ones who conceive it, bring together the elements, buying them and putting 'em all together. Then you are the user, but that's not the case at work." BB: And so what I try to do back to your point is show them how much more advanced our thinking at home is in terms of how we treat the next person, me, versus what we're allowed to do, the next person. Try to point out to them is that, "At home, you, the receiver and you are receiving from you the provider, and at home, the person upstream may not be as generous. Nor will you at work be as generous for the next person downstream. So I try to use examples like that of how... And get into the realm of what does it mean to look at things as a system versus looking at things in isolation. And I find examples like that can grab their attention. But it's not uncommon with these people. I'd be learning about what they do and try to use examples from what they do and point out. BB: And again, like we were talking earlier, the difference between a shades of gray approach and a black and white approach versus, am I looking at the thing in isolation? So I try to point out those types of things. Now, I mean depending on who it is, I may look at other aspects of Dr. Deming's System of Profound Knowledge, if I think that will get me a toe into the door. AS: Yep. So let me ask you, in wrapping up, what would you say is the most influential part of Dr. Deming's teaching for your life? BB: The concept of the System of Profound Knowledge is... That has been a... That has changed my life. That there isn't a day that goes by that I don't look at things through the lens he's describing. The other thing I'll say for people that are new, to the Deming philosophy, and you come across this thing called the System of Profound Knowledge. And Dr. Deming would say, "If you have a better name, please help me." You have to call it something. And then you go to a Deming seminar and you learn there's four elements, and then you learn the psychology piece and this piece. And it's not uncommon, we go to school and we learn things a chunk at a time, a chunk at a time, a chunk at a time. And the challenge is that for people that are new to this, study the pieces in terms of Ackoff, in terms of the system of profound knowledge, if you're looking at variation. Dr. Deming's vast experience in education is all about variation and Shewhart's work. BB: But if you wanna study psychology, you have to do what Dr. Deming did, was read books on psychology that are not written by Dr. Deming. Read books on systems such as from Russ Ackoff. And so what I find is my strategy was, I mean, the simplicity of the Deming philosophy relative to the System of Profound Knowledge, no one else put together those elements like that. But what I also point out to people is you're gonna have to go beyond Deming's writings to study systems and bring it back to that focus, study psychology and bring it back to there. Now again, depending on who you're reading in, may not fit the psychology Deming's talking about. But I think a big thing is you gotta be able to go beyond The New Economics to go into depth in those areas. And what you'll find is in the beginning, we think of psychology as separate than variation. BB: And what you'll find is over time, you can't separate, and so that's what I would say is that, I know as you're coming across it and you see it for the first time and you think, "Okay, that's over there, that's over there." But don't be surprised as you continue on your Deming journey that these things come together, and then you realize that that separation is just a teaching device. And that teaching device is in every course we take, we break it in to parts and then at the end of the semester it's a whole. And that's what I would say is, what I find just breathtakingly remarkable is how that system has enabled me to think about things in a way that I would never be able to think about before. And I'm not saying I see everything, but it has enabled me to be in situations where I can turn to colleagues and say, so where do you think we're gonna go based on this decision?   BB: And we can use Dr. Deming's work to get a sense of how that might go off the rails or whatnot. And so if you think of... Dr. Deming would describe his work as a theory of management. And what is a theory? It's a prediction, so I find it's a fascinating crystal ball to look at a situation or a decision being made and start to anticipate what could happen. And I'm thinking, how can that not be invaluable to people? Yep. Well, Bill, on behalf of everyone at The Deming Institute, I wanna thank you again for coming on the show. And I ask, do you have any parting words for the audience? BB: I'd say, if you're new to the Deming community, welcome. [laughter] It's never too late to join. And if you're part of the community, I would say don't stop learning. AS: Fantastic. That concludes another great story from the worldwide Deming community. Remember to go to deming.org to continue your journey. This is your host, Andrew Stotz. And I'll leave you with one of my favorite quotes from Dr. Deming, and that is, "People are entitled to joy in work."

With this episode, Andrew and David P. Langford start a new series on the Role of the Manager in Education. Inspired by chapter 6 in The New Economics, Andrew and David apply Dr. Deming's 14 points for "the role of a manager of people after transformation" to the world of education. (Note: this is not about Deming's 14 Points for Management.) 0:00:02.6 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 discussion with David P. Langford, who has devoted his life to applying Dr. Deming's philosophy to education, and he offers us his practical advice for implementation. Today's topic is the beginning of a series, The role of a manager in education. David, take it away.   0:00:29.9 David Langford: Hello, Andrew. So I always wanna say good morning or good evening, but you're in Thailand, and I'm in Montana, so there's a problem there.   0:00:39.8 AS: [laughter] They both work.   0:00:41.8 DL: So yeah. [chuckle] So glad to be back again.   0:00:43.4 AS: Great to be with you.   0:00:44.8 DL: So yes, I wanted to dive into this, because I actually had a number of comments that people have sent me, both email and Twitter and all those kinds of things, yeah, asking questions about it, et cetera. And even at seminars, I get questions about it. So we're working from Dr. Deming's book, The New Economics, in chapter six, and I have the third edition, so in my case, we're on page 86. And Deming... And the whole chapter is about the management of people. So Deming laid out about 14 different points about what managers should do, how should you operate, and what should you do, and et cetera. So I thought it'd be really good for us to kinda work our way through those and discuss what does that mean in education. Because, do we even have managers in education? So probably the first thing I wanna point out is he has a whole chapter on leadership, which is different, I think, than management. And so, I think this is getting more to on the day-to-day operations, what are we supposed to be doing or how do we operate?   0:02:03.5 DL: And he even makes the distinction, the role of the manager of people after the transformation. So that basically means, okay, you've read about Deming, you've... Or you read The New Economics, or you've watched videos, or you learned about it. And you kinda made that transformation that, "Hey, this is where I wanna go, and this is what I wanna do." Well, then comes, "Okay, well, what do I do Monday morning?" is the big... Always the big question I get. And if somebody can't help you figure out what to do Monday morning, then they really... I don't think they really understand themselves about what to do, and you should probably find another coach or another leader to [chuckle] help you sort of figure that out. So let's take the first point, and maybe you wanna read it off for our audience and...   0:03:00.2 AS: Yeah. So the first of these points is, "A manager understands and conveys to his people the meaning of a system. He explains the aim of the system. He teaches his people to understand how the work of the group supports these aims." Simple stuff.   0:03:26.6 DL: Well, it... On the surface, it does sound simple, but doing it is another matter. So I wanna take this right down to the classroom level and say that as a classroom teacher, you are a manager of people. And it doesn't really matter what age they are, if it's talking pre-school all the way to graduate school, you're a manager of people. So the first thing he says, "The manager understands and conveys to his people the meaning of a system." So people always wanna know, "Where do I start? What do I do?" Well, there's a pretty good place to start right there. What is a system? So a system has inputs coming into it, and then it has the system itself, which is made up of processes within that system, and the system then has outputs, right. So in education, I remember back when Deming first started to get well-known, and people from business especially would come into education circles and try to tell educators what to do or how they should be managing to achieve quality, et cetera. And one of the first things they would do is they would talk about students as products, like you would think about in a company.   0:05:00.5 DL: And I kinda went for a couple of years thinking through that, and then all of a sudden it dawned on me, and a lot of it had to do with reading this section here. Students are not products, right? And if you think of them like that, then you're gonna think of them like inanimate objects that you do things to basically. And if I just adjust the process here, then suddenly all the kids will just be better, they'll learn better, et cetera, et cetera. Or I just throw in a new curriculum, and everything is gonna be fine, or you're not actually involving them in the process at all. So when I started giving seminars and working with people, I started to explain that the product of an education system is the learning itself. So what are they learning and to what degree do they... Are they learning, and how are you managing the people in that system to optimize the learning? And if you think of it like that, then you start to think of students as basically workers like in a company, in an organization. They're there to actually help you produce a product and tell you when things are going well and when things are not going well and how to make adjustments and everything to get a different result, right. And I find that when people sort of make that understanding in a system, especially as a teacher, you start to think of kids totally different.   0:06:46.6 DL: I remember when I first started and encountered Deming, teachers used to talk about students in a very derogatory way, and, "Oh, that kid isn't even worth this," and, "That kid's not worth that and can't... " That they didn't actually think of them as part of the... Of a system. And so when I started... Part of the problem is the nomenclature that we use, we have system, we have teachers, we have students, and along with that comes certain definitions that have evolved over the last couple hundred years. So when I started actually teaching teachers to stop using the term students and start calling them colleagues. Well, at first there was sort of an uproar [chuckle] about that. I remember one teacher telling me, "I mean, that snotty-nosed kid that says duh all the time, I'm supposed to think of him as my colleague?" and "Well, yes, you are, [chuckle] because that's your job," right, is to sort of... And Deming's talking about it here, is to optimize the system. Alright, so your job is to get those students to work with you as colleagues to study the system of learning, understand is it working or not, right? So how would we know it's working?   0:08:20.7 DL: Well, if you understand a system, you understand that there are outputs. So when students go on to the next level, is it working? It's pretty... It's actually pretty easy to measure that, right? So if I'm a third grade teacher teaching third grade math, am I sending students onto fourth grade math, continually getting better and better every year, and more and more of them are achieving to higher and higher levels every single year? Well, I can measure that pretty easily. I can just get the fourth grade math scores, or I could go to fourth grade teachers and find out, how are these kids doing?   0:09:01.2 AS: It's such an interesting... You're making me think about it, because really what education is, is it seems to me like it's a service, and it's a process, and if... And it's something that's repeated over and over again just like on a... In a business, we have many processes that are repeated over again. And when you improve that... Imagine that one school went on a mission to continually improve. And they're constantly looking at how to improve, and they have iterations every term as they go through these lessons. Imagine if they were focused on that, students would flock to them from around the world to come to get that transformation of learning and that experience and of learning the output and say, "I wanna come out of this process where those other people are, where I've really gained that knowledge." So am I right about that? Is there anything that you would add to that?   0:10:06.2 DL: Yeah, no, that's exactly right. And I think that's what Deming is giving here. I mean, it sounds simple, that as a leader or a manager, you're supposed to explain what a system is and how it works, but there's a lot of depth there about... And you mentioned continual improvement. Well, is your system continually getting better year after year, or are you just doing the same thing, you're no worse this year than you were last year kinda thing? I used to... I had an uncle, he's in his 90s now. But he taught eighth grade social studies, I think for something like almost forty years. And every year or two, family reunions or something, I'd get together. I'd talk to him about what I was doing and things [chuckle] like that. And we were talking about the system in the classroom and getting better every year, and he just looked at me blankly like I was a complete idiot. And I said, "Don't you do that?" and he said, "No." He said, "Give me a date." I said, "What do you mean give you a date?" And he said "Just give me a date." And I said, "Okay, March 15th," or something. "We'll be on page 286 in the textbook, we'll be studying this, 77% of the kids will be failing the test." I just...   0:11:31.1 DL: My mouth just dropped open, because it was a system totally set up for poor performance, and he didn't see it's his job at all to help kids understand the system they were in or try to optimize it or try to make it better, or... That wasn't his job, right? And I remember at Deming conferences, Deming would often say, "A lot of people don't know what their job is."   0:12:00.2 AS: Yeah.   0:12:00.8 DL: I remember, oftentimes people would get up and ask questions, and he would [chuckle] say, "Sounds like you don't know what your job is." [laughter]   0:12:07.3 AS: I remember being a 24 year old...   0:12:07.9 DL: And that's sad confronting it. [chuckle] Yeah.   0:12:12.1 AS: Twenty four year old kid listening to that when I was in my Deming seminars, and I was just like, "Whoa," listening to the way he responded to these older men and women that were in the audience was kinda shocking for me as a young guy.   0:12:23.3 DL: Yeah, a lot of times he's talking to CEOs, he's talking to major [chuckle] people in the military or politics or whatever kinda thinking. But to me, that's how deep this point is. So are you explaining the aims of the system? Well, that first implies that you do have an aim of the system. So, go back...   0:12:45.5 AS: Yeah, and so just to highlight for the listeners. So this very short point, number one that he makes starts with this discussion that we've just had about the meaning of a system. And now David is going on to talk about, "Okay, not just the meaning. Okay, now you got that. The question is, What is the aim of this system?"   0:13:07.0 DL: Right. So again, if we go back to our example of it was a third grade math teacher. Well, what is the aim of the system? [chuckle] Right? What are you... And are you working with students to actually produce the aim of the system, aim of this classroom, right? And it's not just a matter of just coming up with a phrase that you're gonna put on the wall or something, it's the idea that you're gonna keep communicating that constantly to people, what's the aim of this system. So if you think about if you're supposed to optimize a classroom, well, optimization, we're gonna get the highest number of students to the highest possible level we can get them to in the time that we have to do that, right? And so, if you start thinking like that, this changes your job, because you start to realize, "Wow, I'm supposed to optimize this group of students to the highest level I can get them in the nine months or however... 10 months or however long you have to work with these people. And that is confronting. And if you start to understand that, you start to realize why Deming was so adamant against grading systems, how grading systems just defeat kids.   0:14:36.4 DL: So instead of thinking that we're supposed to be spending all of your time figuring out a grading system... Oh, my gosh, over the years, I have heard so many grading systems. And teachers talk about five points for this and 10 points for that, and then I deduct 10 points if they don't do this and if it's not on time and... Wow. Well, pretty soon you start to think that's your job. That my job is to create this grading system, and then you forget all about, "No, my job is to optimize the system." So if I go through a chapter in math, and I'm teaching a particular concept, and then maybe I give students a test on that. And Deming's not saying he's against testing, he says he's against grading and ranking people. That's totally different. And if I give this class a test, and they all do really poorly on [chuckle] this section of math, I just don't say, "Oh well," and go on, because I haven't done my job, I haven't really optimized that. So one of the first things in the system you'd wanna do is to go back and figure out, "Hey guys, what happened?"   0:15:50.0 DL: We only got an average of 66% for the whole class on this concept, or... Did I not teach it well enough? Did I... And when I started asking students like colleagues and saying, "Hey, what happened?" they told me things that I didn't wanna hear, like, "You talk too fast," or, "I couldn't understand your accent," or, "We didn't have enough time to work," or just a whole host of real issues from their perspective about what was going on, how you could optimize the system. So then I've got two problems. I got the problems of today, that we gotta re-work this chapter, right? We gotta go back and do it again and optimize that so people do understand this concept. And then the problem of tomorrow was how do I make sure this never happens again, that I never find myself in this same place? But I don't just accept poor performance and just go on, because when you're doing that in a system, especially a system in education where learning is the product, right? Well, what I learn in... What I don't learn in September is going to be magnified by March, April, et cetera, 'cause I didn't learn those concepts back there that I need for subsequent concepts, and therefore, I'm gonna get further and further behind. So as teacher, you're actually just...   0:17:18.6 AS: That's so much damage.   0:17:19.7 DL: Yeah, you're just shooting yourself in the foot when you just go on and just accept poor performance. And so...   0:17:27.8 AS: Well, that... The corollary is of course in manufacturing, in any process, if you're not focusing on the beginning of that process and the design aspect, you build in all kinds of problems that multiply. And that's so critical. I'm just curious, so we've got the meaning of a system, and we've got the aim in the system, and you've talked about highest number of students to the highest level in the time that we have. Also, I'm thinking about my own... In my valuation masterclass boot camp, I always say, and I repeat it, and you said something about repeating, and it made me think, I always say... I mean, every single time I speak to my students, "The valuation master class is about transformation not information." And I set in their minds, the point is I want them to make a true transformation in their thinking. And just by identifying this aim, they become... They think, "What am I talk... What is Andrew talking about? I don't see a transformation, where would that come from? What would that be?" But I'm telling you at the last time that we meet on the final of the six weeks, each person explains the transformation that they went through.   0:18:45.2 AS: And it wasn't due... It wasn't mainly due to the content, it was due to the process and all the experience as a whole. I'm just curious.   0:18:58.2 DL: So you're making it clear...   0:19:00.9 AS: How does that clear?   0:19:00.9 DL: Yeah, you're making it clear the aim of that system. I'll ask, sometimes I'll ask teachers, I say, "What's the aim of your system?" And they'll look at me blankly. Sometimes I get answers like, "To get through it." Well, if that's your aim, that's exactly what you're gonna do, right? "I'm just gonna get through it. I don't care if people learn it or not. I don't care about the product of learning, I'm just gonna get through it. That's my job." And if upper level management is pushing that, and, "You must be here on January 12th, and you must be here on February 2nd. And if you're not, then you're gonna get in trouble, right?" Well, you're not really caring about the product of learning at all, right? Your job is just to get through it.   0:19:49.0 AS: And how does this differ from, let's say another... I don't know if you would call it an aim or not, but there's a final assignment in my valuation masterclass boot camp, which is that you've gotta do a complete valuation of a company, submit it and then present it. And that's the final... If they can't do that, they don't graduate. What's the difference between that final assignment versus me talking about transformation, not information?   0:20:18.0 DL: Well, I think what you're saying is really good, but I'd wanna look at my statistical data, the variation of that class, and if 40% of the students can't do that, there's something wrong with my process, right? So I've gotta spend extra time with these students and get them caught up and get... Because they weren't able to do that. And then I wanna take the feedback that I get now, apply it in the systems thinking can to my next master class and say, "Okay, how do I prevent the very problems that I had before?" And it's actually pretty easy to track until you get down to maybe only one student is not able to do that at the end of the master class. And then you lower the variation even more, so only one student every three years doesn't make it, right? Because I'm so good at dealing with special causes, issues, setting this up in the beginning, and talking about the aim, et cetera, that I've lowered the variation until it's just very, very rare. And that's really a special cause.   0:21:38.4 AS: Yeah. Well, we have cases...   0:21:38.4 DL: You have to visit a specialist.   0:21:40.2 AS: Where someone's gotten sick, or something in there.   0:21:42.4 DL: Of course.   0:21:42.6 AS: But I just to follow up on that, what I was noticing in my first couple of the... We're now on the seventh iteration, and in my first couple ones, I realized these final reports are not that great, because what's happening is, I'm overloading them with information for the first four weeks. And then in the last two weeks, I'm saying, "Now, finish this report." So I work with the team, and I said, "Why don't we assign them the company they're gonna value six weeks from now, on day one, number one. Number two is, the students were complaining there wasn't enough feedback, so why don't we break the assignments down week by week, and we're gonna tell 'em what they gotta get done by Friday, and then we have feedback Friday, where one member of their team presents that. And then, we give them feedback on it, and all of a sudden we're starting to build towards this final report week by week, and I just realized I should have been doing this all along as we go through this iteration, so it's a good reminder.   0:22:43.7 DL: Yeah. But you learned, and you listened to the students and they said, "Oh, we gotta have this kind of feedback all the way through." Okay, well, that means you as the manager, you have to make an adjustment in the system and the process of what you're doing, and then it's a PDSA cycle, right? You try one class and you say, "Okay, I'm gonna make this adjustment, and I'm gonna look at the data now and compare it to the data before and see, did it work? If it did, I'm gonna do this with all my classes, because I found out something that's making a huge difference for people through that process, so...   0:23:17.1 AS: Yeah. And the feedback was hard to get, David, when I could see the problem, the students talked about the problem that they were overwhelmed, and but what the answer to that was, was that, "Oh, man, they are asking for one-on-one feedback, and how can I do that with 100 students, with 500 students?" And then, the point is, is that once you raise the problem, then it opens your mind to think, "How could we solve it?" And my solution was, "Well, wait a minute. That they're making the same mistakes a lot of cases, so if we just create feedback Friday, we tell them, "You are getting feedback," and then we focus in on a small number of them, but let them all observe and then we accomplish the same thing that they wanted, but they wanted it in one-on-one, which wasn't scalable for us, which would have been difficult. So getting the information back, that's a bit painful, and I'm like, "I can't do that," but being aware of it then allowed us to come up with some alternative. So yeah.   0:24:19.1 DL: Because I don't know how many times I heard Dr. Deming say at seminars, "It's not the answer that's important, it's the question. And do you have that right?" So when you start asking the question, "Well, how do I do this with 100 students?" Okay. Well, now you're asking the right question. Right? And there's always a way. There's always a method. But instead of saying, "Oh, I can't do that, it's not possible. I don't have time for that." Well, okay, then it's never gonna happen then, is it?   0:24:49.3 AS: David, is that what my mom meant...   0:24:49.7 DL: But as soon as ypu start asking the right...   0:24:51.3 AS: When she said, "You're jumping to conclusions?"   0:24:53.1 DL: Yeah. As soon as you start asking the right question, then you'll start to solve the real problem. So I wanted to get to the third sentence here before we run out of time. There's a lot in just this one...   0:25:06.2 AS: It's amazing.   0:25:06.5 DL: Point he makes. But he says, Dr. Deming wasn't into all the pronouns and everything that we use today. We always just used he, so, but he says, "He teaches his people to understand how the work of the group supports these aims." Ah. So I've got this group of students, right, and so I've explained to them what a system is, and that we are a system, and we work to develop an aim for that system. Okay, now I have to optimize these people working together to achieve that aim, right? I remember when I first started, I couldn't get rid of just grading kids, and keep my job, I still had to... So I had to figure out, "Well, how do I do that within a grading system, even though Deming says we should get rid of the grading system. And so, when I started talking to students, I said, "What would be the aim here?" And somebody said, "Well, our aim should be that everybody in the whole class would get an A." And I was just shocked, because at that point, that never happened in my history.   0:26:23.0 DL: Well, and partly the reasons that it was never gonna happen, was a huge part me purposely was doing things to make sure that everybody wasn't achieving at a high level, and then that sounds just like heresy, but most of education is built on that. I can guarantee you, especially like a high school teacher, if suddenly all of your kids are getting As and you're turning in your grades and everybody's got an A...   0:26:49.5 AS: You're in trouble.   0:26:50.2 DL: Yeah, you're not gonna get an award. [laughter] You're gonna get visited, alright.   0:26:56.8 AS: The statistics guy will come down and say, "No, this is impossible."   0:27:00.1 DL: Yeah, the principal, or the superintendent, or, "You're destroying the whole grading system," all those kinds of things will come into play, but in reality, you should be having that person teach all the other teachers, what are they doing? What are you doing? And we're not talking about just giving them As just for the sake of giving them As. But they've established a system that almost everyone always get... Does A level work. Well, you're gonna have to do what Deming talks in this third sentence about how the work of the group supports these aims, so how do we work together as a class to support each other, so everybody can get there? That's totally different than the stereotypical classroom where I say, "Sit down, don't talk, don't talk to your neighbor. If you talk out loud, you're gonna get points taken off your grade," and those kinds of things. That's much different when I say, "Hey, we need to all work together." And so what happens if somebody struggles, or takes a little longer? Or what could we do to support them? That's a whole different kind of a way to think.   0:28:20.2 AS: Ah. There's so much to that, and the idea too, that sometimes teachers, and maybe managers in companies are really busy, and so they feel like, "I just don't have time to explain all of this." And so they end up leaving either employees, or students in the dark knowing that it is a little bit like driving in the foggy conditions. All the students see is ruts right in front of them, they're not seeing the aim. And as a result, they really... It's just a routine. "Just go in and do whatever they say, because we don't really know where we're going."   0:29:02.1 DL: Right. So we use the example of a classroom as a system here today, but whatever level of a system you are, if you're a principal, oh, well, your system is the whole school, right? If you're superintendent, your systems the whole district, or whoever you are he's talking about, your job is to do the same thing. Are you explaining to everybody in the entire organization what the system is, number one, and does it have an aim, and how can we work together to optimize this aim for the whole system? And I remember talking to a major CEO of a huge multi-international corporation, and that she was... Had worked with Deming also, and I said, "Well, how do you go about that?" She said, "Every single year, at the beginning of the year, I do 10 days of training with all managers worldwide." I thought, "Holy cow." [chuckle] That's huge, right? And who's doing the training? She is, the CEO, because she wants it coming directly from her, "This is our job, this is our aim, and our job is to optimize the system."   0:30:20.7 DL: And she didn't just do it once and then go back to her office. She said, "No, every year I've got new managers, and I've got new people come on board and we have new levels of discussion and new depth to take it to." Well, it's the same thing in a classroom, right? I'm better and better, I get faster and faster at setting the aim with this group of students. I get better and better coming up with metaphors of how to explain a system, even to preschool kids, or... And I get better and better at coaching people to support each other and help each other to achieve the overall aim. And then I use my statistics to see "Is it working? Am I actually getting better at that?"   0:31:08.2 AS: I was just thinking kind of a little bit of an inspirational thing, is to tell students that, "The aim here is to figure out the best way to get to where we're going for the benefit of the next class, the next group of students. And how could we take the way I'm explaining this particular subject and improve upon it so that the next group gets it even better? What an inspirational thing. So...   0:31:41.8 DL: Yeah, I remember a teacher that really took this to heart, and so what she would do is, she would take next year's students that she was going to have, and she'd have them come to a sort of a field trip to her class this year, and have her current students explain how we do things here, and what we do and everything. Now she's going upstream in the process in the system, and so kids were actually anticipating, "Hey, when we get to her class, oh, we have to do this, and we have to think like this." And then she had... She went to students that had left her class and asked them, "How did I do? Did you have the kind of learning that you needed for the next stage in that class," and then she used that feedback to change the system that she's in now, so...   0:32:31.9 AS: And that also makes you think about the wider system of a school, where there's a connection between the curriculum so that people see like, "Okay, there's a reason why our teacher, Mr. Tyler, that taught me pre-algebra, made me underline and write out each step in the solving of that algebra equation, because he knew I was gonna need it in the next level."   0:33:00.6 DL: Yeah, very good.   0:33:03.5 AS: So shall we wrap up?   0:33:05.5 DL: Yes.   0:33:07.3 AS: Okay. So just to wrap up for the listeners and the viewers out there, we're talking about... We're just kicking off a series on the role of a manager in education, and it's based upon Dr. Deming's writing in "The New Economics," in the Third Edition, it starts on page 86. And in the Second Edition, it starts on page 125. And the title of his list of 14 things is, "Role of a Manager of People. This is the new role of a manager of people after transformation." And just to review some of the things that we went through with that just first point, the first thing that we had talked about, is that classroom teacher is a manager of people ultimately, and we talked about three things that come out of that. The first thing that comes out of this first point is, you wanna teach what is the meaning of a system? The inputs, the process, the output, you've gotta start with that. If people don't understand that they're operating within a system, then they can't make the progress. Remember that students, as you've said, David, are not products, they're not inanimate objects, the product is actually the learning itself, and so the objective is to manage to optimize that learning process.   0:34:23.8 AS: The second thing that we talked about was that people need to understand what is the aim of the system? Okay, fine, it's good enough that we need to understand that things work as a system, but what are we aiming for? And you propose, "Well, maybe highest number of students to the highest level in the time that we have." So once people understand the aim, they understand where we're going, and then it brings the third part of this one, which is, so how does the work of the group support the aim? And I would say that this is part of the concept that Dr. Deming talked about, about bringing meaning to work, bringing the value to work that you have a role in this, and that is to get to that aim, so we have a common mission, a common goal, and we're working towards that, and that's an environment that I think everybody wants to either work in, in a school environment, or in a work environment. Is there anything you would add to that wrap up?   0:35:20.1 DL: Well, there's these phrases like joy in work that Deming talked about and joy in learning. How do you get there? Well, here you go, here's the first step. [chuckle] Because when I understand my job in that system, and my job is to help other people also achieve, I have joy in what I do. My relationships can flourish, right? I can share information, I could support other people, and that's really part of the human condition, and it makes it actually fun to go to school.   0:35:55.9 AS: Well, what a great way to end that discussion, fun to go to school. David, on behalf of everyone at the Deming Institute, I wanna thank you again for this discussion. And for listeners, remember to go to Deming.org to continue your journey, and we are talking about "The New Economics," so you can get that on Amazon, just go to amazon.com and download it, or buy the hard cover. And listeners can learn more about David at langfordlearning.com. This is your host, Andrew Stotz. And I'll leave you with one of my favorite quotes from Dr. Deming and this discussion today kind of explains where it comes from, "People are entitled to joy in work.”

In this new series on applying Deming to education, Andrew talks with John Dues, Chief Learning Officer at United Schools Network and long-time Deming practitioner. This is the first in a series of 12 episodes using John's school system as a case study for applying Deming in education. 0:00:02.3 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 here with featured guest, John Dues. John, are you ready to share your Deming journey? 0:00:17.7 John Dues: Yeah, Andrew I'm really glad to be here and looking forward to speaking with you today. 0:00:22.6 AS: Yeah, we've been talking about this for a while, and so it's exciting to kick it off. So let me introduce you to the audience. Ladies and gentlemen, John A. Dues is an accomplished education systems leader and Improvement Science scholar practitioner with more than two decades of experience. He is the Chief Learning Officer of the United Schools Network, where he directs the network's continual improvement fellowship and serves as an Improvement Advisor. He draws heavily on the work of Dr. W. Edwards Deming and his System of Profound Knowledge. He's currently continuing his education through the Improvement Advisor program at the Institute for Healthcare Improvement in Boston, Massachusetts. John, can you take a little bit and tell us about the story about how you first learned about the teachings of Dr. W. Edwards Deming and what hooked you? 0:01:21.8 JD: Yeah, happy to do that. I sort of, I'm about 20 years into my career as an educator, and I sort of think about my career across four stages or so. Stage zero, I was a teacher, I didn't really know anything about classroom management or how to lead a class, it was a lot of trial and error type learning, and then I start to figure stuff out over time and stage one, I transitioned into now working at a series of Public Charter Schools is on the founding team of seven schools or non-profits sort of than this next stage. And I think a lot of my learning was sort of what I would call subject matter learning, so cognitive science, curriculum and lesson planning, how to use data to drive instruction, those types of things, and then about 2016 or so, I started learning about improvement science. I got an e-mail, it mentioned a book called Learning to Improve, and that got me sort of started on this path to learning the tools of improvement science, and I did that for four or five years, and then in about a couple of years ago, I stumbled across the W. Edwards Deming Institute website. 0:02:53.0 JD: And I had previously come to the website a couple of years earlier, and truth be told, I went to the System of Profound Knowledge page, it didn't make a lot of sense to me, and so I sort of let it lay for a year or two, and I came back to it in 2020, and not that all of a sudden it made sense. But there was something there that sparked this interest that's been going on for three years now, where I've devoured books, listened to interviews, and really gone on this journey to learn exactly what Dr. Deming was talking about with the System of Profound Knowledge. 0:03:36.5 AS: And when you think about the improvements that you're trying to do, or the problems that you were trying to solve, and then you started to see, let's say the System of Profound Knowledge, what was it that stood out as, Oh, that explains why this is happening, that explains why... What were some of those revelations and things that you could then bring back to your work... I'm just curious. How did that unfold? 0:04:06.2 JD: Yeah, it took some time. I mentioned sort of discovering the Institute website in about 2018 or so, and it not initially making a lot of sense, there's probably two things. One, candidly, I saw a System of Profound Knowledge, and I was like, Well, who talks like that? What is that... Like who calls their stuff profound knowledge? And then the second thing was when I looked over the four components, systems theory and the theory of variation and the theory of knowledge and psychology, frankly, most of it was incomprehensive to me, and a couple of years later, I come back, I'm a little further in this learning journey, and I go back to it, not that I had any type of instant revelation or anything like that, it has taken a lot of deep study, it did start to slowly make sense and what I realized... In one of the books I was reading is sort of this idea that there's these two complementary types of knowledge, one is subject matter knowledge, so in my case, it's those things I mentioned, knowing how to plan lessons, knowing how to do classroom management, the things that an educator that needs to know how to do. 0:05:28.3 JD: And then there was this whole other bucket of knowledge, which I realized when Deming said System of Profound Knowledge he meant the components interact, that's the system part. And then the profound part is just that you have a deep knowledge about your organization across those four components, and I realize there's this whole other sort of bucket of knowledge that we're not attending to, that tells us some of the most important information we need to know about our organizations, and it's only when you bring those two things together, the subject matter knowledge with the profound knowledge that you actually then can transform your organizations. And so that realization along the way was a big part of me sort of latching on to Dr. Deming's philosophy. And I'd say the second thing that I did very early on, besides reading the books and listening to a lot of the Deming Institute's podcast interviews was I started talking to people that appeared on those interviews, and so I reached out to Kelly Allan and then he turned me on to David Langford, who's probably the guy doing Deming in Education and started relationships with both of them, and they were very, very generous with their time and expertise, and that really allowed me to clarify my thinking now because I have this expert in Deming philosophy helping to guide me answer questions, and sort of that rounded out some of the knowledge I was doing in my self-study. 0:07:02.4 AS: Which I guess accelerates things. In my age when I was young, I sat into two seminars with Dr. Deming teaching and yeah. Okay, that answers a lot of questions, but we don't have that luxury anymore, so it's gotta be number one, reading the materials, watching the videos and all that, but also checking our understanding. And I know both Kelly and David are great resources. Kelly helped me when I was writing my book, Transform Your Business with Dr. Deming's 14 Points to help me think about things, and I know there's even more, so much more to learn, and I think that's where... What I think about the profound knowledge aspect, and I think what you said was, there's kind of... You have to have these two components. And its subject matter aspect, that's just a given when you're teaching and understanding how to teach, but then this whole other thing about the system aspect of it, the psychology aspect of that. 0:08:09.0 AS: And I have a question for you about education, let's say I graduated from high school, from a pretty good public high school in Ohio, and I'm just curious, if we went back to that school today, and I spent... I don't know what it was, seven hours a day at school, arrive at 8:00 and leave at 3:00 or whatever that was. I spent X amount of time at school and I accumulated X amount of knowledge during that time, and my question to you is, if we go now from 1983 when I graduated to here we are 50 years later, or so or 40... 50 years later, so now we're... Here we are in the future with so much knowledge, so much experience, our students are attending high school for either the same time and accumulating much more knowledge, or are they attending school for a much shorter time and accumulating the same amount of knowledge, or are we doing the same thing? 0:09:28.3 JD: Yeah, that's a really good question. I think there's sort of a relevant Deming quote that's something to the effect of "experience teaches nothing" and it's, basically it was saying, you have to have an underlying theory and then you build the knowledge and testing that theory and see how it works in the real world. So in a lot of respects, I think in the 40 years or so since you were in high school, probably a lot of schools haven't changed much, they do the same thing year in and year out, they're not really learning, they're... Like I said, across that 40-year time period, it's just sort of a repetition. Now, of course, if you went into that high school, there would be differences like the type of technology you'd see in classrooms. I think by and large, when you're talking about school, effectiveness people will argue about this, I think depending on how you're measuring that outcome, I think that schools are, generally speaking, better maybe than they were 40 years ago. Now, the problem is that better typically means that test scores are better, and of course, there's variation in this in both time and place and the variation, I don't think it's linear. 0:10:58.1 JD: I think there are ups and downs in different places based on a whole host of factors like the pandemic or even... There's less spending in schools out of the 2008 hiring crisis... Oh sorry, housing crisis, and those had an impact on things like test scores, but I think with Deming, and he was very interested obviously in education, he was a professor for 50 years, as you know at New York University. The subtitle of his last book had education in the subtitle. What he was really talking about when he was thinking about talking about education was transformation, and that was a complete change in state. And so when I hear your question, that's what I think of... I think of have schools, if they know the Deming philosophy, have they undergone a transformation following Deming's teachings, and I would say by and large, the answer to that question, not withstanding the sort of test score question, the answer to the transformation question is no. I think by and large, that's not what I've seen across my career. 0:12:11.6 AS: And if we think about a person listening into this conversation who's an educator and they're looking for new answers to maybe old problems. [chuckle] And they come across this podcast, they come across the material like you did, what's the hope that you can provide to them about how they could benefit either individually by thinking about and learning about Dr. Deming's teachings for their performance as a... Maybe as a teacher or as an administrator, and what hope or excitement can you provide them if they're an administrator of a school thinking, "Hmm, this is interesting, maybe this could provide me some things that I need to start to think differently about it." Tell me a little bit about the journey of you then learning about Deming and then start to... Bringing it into your institution. 0:13:11.2 JD: Yeah, there's a few things that I think of. So one thing is, if I've discovered the Deming philosophy and I'm an educator, how do I bring that to my school, or how do I bring that to my classroom or if I"m a systems leader, how do I bring that to my school district? And I think one of the things that I learned from David is you preach to the masses and work with the willing, and so thinking about intrinsic motivation, which I know David has talked about on your podcast, is you want people to opt in to going on this sort of learning journey with you, so that's one thing I think of. 0:13:50.8 JD: The second thing I think of is, and this was from David as well, when he started doing the Deming philosophy in his classroom and using the System of Profound Knowledge, he was a classroom teacher. And so everybody has this circle of influence, this circle that they have control over, and in his case, he didn't have control over the school building, the high school where he was... He didn't have control over the school district at the time, but he did have control over his classroom, and it was basically through applying the Deming ideas in his classroom that people started coming and saying, "Hey, what are you doing in here? There's something very different that's going on here," and then the principal got so interested in it, he said, "I'd like you to sort of teach people how to do this building-wide," and he became the director of continuous improvement there at his high school in Alaska. 0:14:42.6 JD: And then ultimately, he was encouraged by Deming to go off and consult across the world to bring these ideas to schools all over the world. So I think that's another thing that I think of. I also think that in some sort of ways, you can learn aspects of the Deming philosophy and start to apply them tomorrow. So when I think about something like knowledge about variation, I may know nothing about the technical aspects of a control chart, for example, but what I can do is I can take any data that I have that occurs across time and just plot those dots on a simple line chart and start to understand what that data looks like versus having those numbers in a spreadsheet, and then there's other aspects that do take time. 0:15:34.1 JD: I think one thing that Deming said in one of his books was, there's no instant pudding, and basically he meant that when it comes to organizational transformation, you're talking about a four or five or even 10-year journey and beyond to get this to take root in an organization. At the same time, it doesn't take 1000 people. And I heard David talk about this, and I heard Deming talk about this idea of you need to capture and educate and bring along about the square root of the number of people in your organization that really have a strong grasp of the System of Profound Knowledge and so if you're in a roughly 100-person organization, like mine I need 10 people that have learned these ideas and are interested in spreading them to their classroom or to their school, or in our case, into the network as a whole. 0:16:32.2 AS: And how did it go finding those people, and as you say, it's voluntary, you want those people to come, you wanna attract them, attraction rather than promotion. How did that journey go for you internally? 0:16:43.9 JD: Well, it's definitely ongoing. It's definitely ongoing, and I think it's going really well, it's a process, we're probably about two years into that process, and so in some ways it's now a core part of who we are. So a good example of that is going back to this idea of knowledge about variation two years ago, none of us had any knowledge of what a control chart or a process behavior chart was, and now we have dashboards that are shared system-wide on all kinds of measures that are important to us, where we're now looking at data over time and realizing that until we sort of understand the patterns that we see in that data, we don't really know anything about whatever that area is. So that's something that's taken hold and we've spread it pretty quickly across the network. Before we would say we overreact to maybe like a single test score or attendance is down this month. Now we step back and say, "Okay, what does that look like over 12 months, for 15 or 20 months? What are the patterns? Is it sort of a common cause, is it just a part of our system, or is there a signal here that we need to pay attention to." 0:18:01.4 JD: So in many aspects like that it's taken hold and in other aspects, it does take longer to implement and that... A good example there is, Deming said abolish grades, and he was pretty unequivocal about that he didn't good grades in his graduate statistical courses at NYU. That's a much harder thing to change, it's a much harder thing to get people to understand why he said that, even for myself to learn sort of... Why did he say that? Is it feasible? What's the replacement? Those all have... There's practical considerations when you're in a school system, you have to give grades, you have to have report cards, or you think you do anyway, and so things like that take time, and we're not there yet on some of Deming's ideas, like abolishing grades or changing our grading practices. 0:19:01.4 AS: It's interesting, one of the beautiful things about having a private company is that you can implement these things without kind of... I don't know, kind of regulatory oversight or that type of stuff. You just can implement it, and so there's an enormous constraint in that field. Now, let me ask you about the charts that you talk about. I wanna ask two questions. First question is, from your experience of having, looking at different charts related to education, if someone's listening to this, that it is working in a school or a classroom or whatever, they're looking at it, what would be one chart that you think that they could start on today and implement? And that's the first question I have, and the second one is about how do you prevent people from obsessing about the data in a chart and help them understand that this is about understanding a system, it's not obsessing about some KPI type of thing. So, curious what you would say to that. What would be a chart that someone could start with? 0:20:13.8 JD: That's a really good question. I have a lot of different ideas. One thing because it's so prevalent in our education system it's pretty much across the United States, is state test scores. Now in some of the aspects or... Yeah, I mean in some aspects, it's not the best thing to put in a chart because they typically only happen one time a year towards the end of the year. So it's hard to gather enough data to sort of use in practice on a day-to-day basis. On the flip side, I do think it's helpful to put something like state test scores, even though they only happen on an annual basis in a control chart or a process behavior chart, because I think people forget, frankly, they forget what happened just a couple of years ago in their system when it comes to state test scores. And so you see all these documents created all the way from State Departments of Education to individual schools that are marketing to parents in their area that basically are writing fiction about their test scores. "We improved from last year." Well, yeah, technically, maybe it went up 2%, but then it's down 5% from two years ago. And so I think plotting the dots to your test score data over 12 or 15 years gives a sense of how the data is bouncing around in average probably. 0:21:41.8 AS: Okay. 0:21:43.0 JD: And not in a meaningful way. I think in most circumstances. And I think allowing them to see those patterns is really important. And I think another sort of helpful layer to that is annotate that chart with things that have happened in either your school, your district, or even at a state policy level. Label when the test format changed. Label when the state standards change. Label the year that what kids needed to do to be you considered proficient, the cut score for the proficiency, label when that changed, 'cause these are all things that have happened in the last five or six years in most states, including Ohio where I am. And when you start to label those things and then you see the ups and downs that are associated with those labels, you start to say, "Oh, this picture of what's been happening in my system makes a lot more sense." And most of that is completely sort of out of the picture for most people. We don't really remember what happened three or four years ago, even if we have a general idea, we don't have it pinpointed to a specific year. When do we start testing on computers instead of paper and pencil? That's another example. Those all have impacts on tests scores. 0:23:01.2 AS: Okay. That's a great one for the administrators, but if you were in a classroom and you say, "I don't really have control over what goes on in my school so much, but I do enjoy this Deming journey, and I want to start to bring some of that into my classroom," what would be one chart that you would make? 0:23:23.1 JD: A couple of ideas that come to mind, maybe two, I'd share with you. One would be something like homework completion. What percent of the kids are doing either in class or it doesn't have to be homework, it would be in-class assignments? And I think the key here is, one, you have to operationally define what completion means. And that can vary by a classroom as long as everybody's on the same page. And then with that, put it up on the wall, on a piece of chart paper, because so often the things that we want kids to improve are hidden from them. They don't... Oh, I didn't know that 35% of the kids in this class didn't do the assignment from the day before right, but if they start to see that, and then we start to talk about it, and then we start to say, "Well, what are the barriers or obstacles to completion?" 0:24:13.9 JD: And then kids start to say, "Well, how can I help you?" You start to create this completely different mentality in your classroom. One classroom also that we had in our network of schools, it was a fourth grade Science teacher, she started tracking how much joy did you find in today's lesson? And so she would actually... The kids would do a short little survey and assign a number out of 100%. And then they would also have us. There was a spot in the survey to say, "What did you like about it, what didn't go so well? Or whatever, what could I improve?" This is the teacher saying that to fourth graders and they're charting that on a piece of paper. And then she's starting to learn, "Okay. These types of lessons are engaging, these types of lessons are not so engaging. The kids want more of this, enjoyment goes up when we do this as a class." And then they did that over the course of three or four months, and slowly over time, you see the engagement levels, the joy raising, kids are happier. They're more engaged in class. The teacher is having more fun. And so those are just sort of two things that I've seen done in our network of schools that I think had a really positive impact. 0:25:33.9 AS: That's exciting. And I think it goes back to the intrinsic versus extrinsic motivation. And ultimately kids wanna be engaged, everybody wants to be engaged in what they're going through. And the reason why they disengage oftentimes, is because we don't involve them. 0:25:55.9 JD: Right. Yeah, I agree, 100%. I think kids are really... Students and schools are the improvement secret weapon. I think a mindset shift for me was when you think about in your system, who is the worker? And a lot of educators think when you ask them that question, they'll say, "Well, teachers." And not that there's a right or wrong answer to this, but I think it's actually the students, because the thing that has to be created, high quality learning has to happen in their minds. So if they're the ones where the work has to happen, they have to be the workers. So I think of students as the workers and I think more of the teachers as the supervisors of that work. 0:26:43.6 AS: That's a great way to think about it, because it also kind of pushes it down for the teachers to think that their objective is really creating that environment for learning. I wonder when you started bringing the Deming philosophy into schools and your operations there, was there one point that was like there was resistance to or what do you think is the hardest to digest for teachers or a school system when they're looking at this? 0:27:21.6 JD: That's a really good question. I think in my own sort of personal opinion, I think that a lot of the Deming philosophy is paradoxical to typical management practices. And I think there's a lot of counterintuitive ideas in the philosophy. So I think you have to sort of be open to that from the start. And so when I first started talking with people about these ideas, I did it, both internally and with some people externally, and I just put together a presentation, I said, "I'm gonna show you this thing and I wanna collect your thoughts." And one of the first things I said is, "Before I say anything, I want you to have in your mind preemptively that you're gonna experience some serious cognitive dissonance with these ideas because they're so different than what you've heard before." So I did that as a primer, so people sort of had that expectation. I think, generally, what I find from folks is openness to the ideas. I think there's a challenge in unpacking, going back to something like I was talking about abolish grades. Unpacking why exactly did he say what he said? Whether it's abolish grades or any number of other points that he made. 0:28:52.4 JD: I think there's this sort of realization for a lot of people that when you say, "Well, what's your philosophy, or what's your educational philosophy, what's your management philosophy?" They don't really have an answer. I didn't have an answer, frankly, before I started studying this stuff. And that's a little bit convicting. And then once you decide to go on the journey, you realize, "Why do we do the things that we do?" You could ask that about a thousand things a day, whether it's a policy, a practice, just something we do, 'cause that's the way we've always done it here. And again, it's a little daunting when you start to think about, "Well, what is the underlying reason that we do this?" And so... 0:29:40.3 AS: It kind of shakes the foundation of your thinking. 0:29:43.1 JD: Yeah. It shakes the foundation, so you have to be open to that. And I think that's where the, "No instant pudding," quote from Deming comes in, is that you really have to be committed to this. And I think about a story I read in a book, Henry Neave's book, The Deming Dimension, where he basically says, "A Board engineer, a quality control guy comes to a Deming seminar one week, a four-day seminar, goes back the following week and he read the 14 Points. And one of them's about inspection and not relying or overlying on inspection. And he went the next week and fired all the inspectors in his plant." I think it was a Ford Plant. 0:30:32.7 JD: And basically, Henry Neave says, "That's not the right approach. You have to understand why you're doing what you're doing first before you do it." And you have to remember that that thing, in this case, it's inspection is a part of your system, so you can't remove it before you understand why you're doing that and what you're gonna replace it with. And that should probably happen deliberately and probably over time and not the next Monday after you've heard this idea. So it's a little of both. It's how do you start moving the needle and then how do you do it thoughtfully with an underlying understanding of the theory under all of these ideas? 0:31:13.7 AS: Another question is, if we think about the... Really, you have to, if you're bringing the Deming philosophy into a school as an example, you have to kind of convince administrators and you have to kind of... Let's say educate administrators, you gotta educate the teachers, and also there's the kids. And I'm curious, what are the things that teachers really get from the Deming like, "Okay, that makes sense." And let's strip away some of the complexity sometimes in the way that it's presented, but let's just take some of the basic principles, what are some of the things that the kids would naturally get like that makes sense to them? I'm just curious what your observations have been there. 0:32:01.8 JD: That's a really good question. How would I answer that? I think I'd start with myself first. I think because Deming talked about an individual transformation has to happen as a precursor to a larger organizational transformation. And so for me, it was starting to take many of the ideas I was reading and then think about the application in my own life, maybe as a student myself. And as I did that and I thought through those things, I never came up against something that didn't make sense to me. I think the trick is, especially for adults, is that I think in a lot of ways, a lot of people would latch on to the ideas for themselves, but this won't work for... Other people need something different. [laughter] 0:33:06.1 JD: I think that's... A good example of it is like performance appraisals. They've never been effective for me. I never have gotten great feedback from them, or I've felt they're unfair, or I got rated on my use of technology in my classroom early in my career, but there were no working computers, but everybody else needs a performance appraisal. So you come across a lot of stuff like that I think what you have to say, "Yep, that works for me in my life." And we have to take that same lesson and apply it to others, that's one thing I think about. It wasn't the exact question you asked, but that's one thing I think about. I actually find... There's things to learn in terms of teachers, but I actually think a lot of teachers sort of have a natural inclination for the general Deming perspective, Deming philosophy. I think things like grading, I think teachers would latch on to Deming's idea of abolishing grading, I think actually much faster than maybe the administrators would in a lot of ways. 0:34:13.3 AS: I think that would be a hard one for them. I remember when I went to my first Deming seminar and I was a young supervisor at a Pepsi factory in the US. And I appreciate that Pepsi put me into those seminars 'cause it really helped me, and I think I brought back stuff to the Pepsi factory in Torrance, California. But the one thing that really struck a cord with me is I didn't realize I was operating within a system. I saw individual efforts of myself and others and everybody running around trying to get things done, but I didn't see that the limitation on the output of our activity was, to a large extent, determined by the system within which we were operating. If we didn't have the resources, if we had an accounting department that was just trying to cut cost, and so we couldn't get the replacement parts for the machinery. I totally understood that once I studied Deming and learned about that. And so that's why I'm kind of thinking about what makes sense to teachers. 0:35:27.8 AS: So let's talk about kids for a moment. I think about joy in work, as Deming says, and just the intrinsic motivation. And I think about kids, they're just full of positive energy and rolling around, and there's just so much positive energy and it's like the world just starts beating them down over time. It's hard enough to overcome some of the challenges you're facing with your family at home, and then you come into a school and you've gotta operate within this framework. And it's like, I suspect that kids would appreciate the idea of bringing joy to the classroom, but what have you seen from kids? 0:36:11.5 JD: Well, I think you're onto something when you say, as kids sort of go on in their educational career, a lot of times are sort of beat down by certain aspects of the educational system. So I think one thing is there's a process to undo some of that. And that's probably what I see most with my own kids or students that I'm working with in our network. So if you ask a student or if you ask your own kids something like, "How was school today? Or how are you doing in science?" What they'll often tell you is a grade. "I got... I got... " "Okay, you had a test today. How was it?" "Well, I got a B." "Well, what did you learn?" And often times it's really hard to pull that out because they've been so trained to think about school as a series of grades or a series of silence, a series of percentages versus what did you learn? What are you taking from that? What does that mean? So I see a lot of that. I also see a lot of... There's a lot of reward and punishment that is a part of a lot of school systems, whether it's treasure boxes or reward systems in the classroom. And I was just as guilty as a teacher and frankly as a principal in that other school of having those systems. 0:37:49.0 JD: But when you say at the end of the day, "How was your day?" And they sort of tell you back what they were doing in the behavior point system versus what did they learn, and who did they talk to that day, and what did they take from the day. I think you quickly realize that even if the behavior system or the grading system had good intentions behind it, that kids are often experiencing those systems in a very different way. And so I think kids are very open to it, just like adults when you explain it, I think what's... The tough part is that they've been in the system that has all of these different sort of things that are wearing them down. And I think you have to unpack that and untie that and sort of re-educate I guess this, re-train them to think about school and academics and how they're interacting in school in a different way. 0:38:46.0 AS: And it makes you think that students are the secret weapon of the implementation of some of this, because I think there's a lot of... At first, when you come across the Deming material, it doesn't feel intuitive. It feels hard sometimes to understand, it can be confusing, but once you start to realize and understand it, you start to realize that there's a lot of intuitive nature of things. And a kid can observe random outcomes, and then they see adults rewarding random and then they're like, "Well, Johnny just got lucky in that particular thing or whatever." And so they can understand a lot of things, so maybe we can say that there is a little bit of a secret weapon there. 0:39:33.0 JD: Yeah, and kids are very intuitive, and so I think in going back to some of those rewards systems, I think one of the things that happens and we maybe don't pay enough attention to it, is as soon as there is a reward system, there's a game that starts. And so a good example of this is there's a number of reading, online reading programs where kids read a book and then they take a quiz that sort of assesses comprehension. And on the face it seems like a positive thing, oh, kids have read X number of words, I'll hear there's a lot, or X number of books, and they weren't reading before and this program gets him to read. But when you start to unpack that, you go ask a kid, "Well, what do you think of this program?" "Ah it's pretty boring, but I do get prizes." Or something like, "Well, I'm impressed, you've read 10 books this in the past couple of months, and that seems to be because you're doing this program." And he's like, "No, I just pick short books because I know I can read them faster." 0:40:41.9 JD: And so as soon as you start to put those you take sort of intrinsic nature of enjoying a book for the book's sake, for the story, and you instead tie it to some type of point system. There's all types of things, many of which are hidden that are the motivations just under the surface for why kids are doing what they're doing that you're missing because you're not talking to them, and not really listening to how they're responding to that reward system. So like even a positive thing like a reading program, that seems good on the face can often have an underlying darker nature that's going on. 0:41:17.9 AS: Yeah, and I think... I wanna wrap up this section of the discussion, and I think what I would like to wrap that up with is taking on what you were just saying is that when you are measuring anything and you find yourself wanting to add on additional measures, because they're getting... Things are getting disincentivized. So okay, now you say, "Okay, well, we've gotta track it by the length of books or we gotta track their eyeballs, or we gotta... " Every time that you find yourself having to add on some different type of measurement, I think it's a good time to step back and say, "What are we really doing here, and do we really understand the incentives that we're... The activities that we're really incentivizing by this, and are we really getting to our goal of that." And that's a painful discussion because as you say, you're still sometimes, you're gonna have to search for what's the replacement, what's the solution. But when you find yourself trying to add on more things to try to box the kids in, you're probably now caught up in this system of testing and scoring and measuring that is going out of control. 0:42:41.2 JD: Yeah, I think that's right. And the thing that I think of, and I can't remember where I saw it, if it was a Deming thing, or maybe I heard it from David Langford, it was a shift in perspective. In terms of your role as a teacher, or if you're the CEO of a company or the principal school, whatever it is, many of those folks myself included at one point, when you ask them what their job is, many people will tell you it's to motivate my students or motivate the people that work in my company. But probably a better frame is not to motivate them, but rather to remove the obstacles to them finding joy in learning or joy in work, and that's a different mindset, right? And so instead of incentivizing or coming up with different metrics in the case of that reading program, what I would be thinking about is, have I created a comfortable spot for kids to read in the classroom? Is there a good supply of books with lots of different interesting topics? Have I talked to kids about what they're interested in reading? Have I carved out a time in the day where everybody is reading? And so then instead of me pushing, now I'm removing obstacles that would prevent kids from reading in that example, and creating an environment that makes it much more likely that kids are gonna enjoy it and wanna keep doing it in an intrinsic fashion, rather than trying to monitor extrinsically. 0:44:11.0 AS: So let's wrap up by talking about what you've been working on, you've been working, you've been writing and maybe you can share where you're at and what you're producing. And then after that, I think we'll highlight to the audience what we're gonna do in the future episodes. So maybe tell us about what you're working on and kind of where that's at, and then why you're doing it, and what's the value that you think it can bring. 0:44:37.9 JD: Yeah, I'm actually, I'm writing a book on applying Deming's ideas to schools, it's sort of the tentative title is Win-Win, W. Edwards Deming the System of Profound Knowledge in the Science of Improving Schools. So I've actually found a publisher, I've completed a draft and submitted it to them, and so we're working right now on getting the book published. And so I'm hopping by the end of the school year that'll be out and published and available for folks, so that's the big thing I've been working on, I actually started in September of 2020. So it's been quite the project to bring it from just an idea to an almost published project, so hopefully soon that'll be ready. 0:45:25.6 AS: Exciting, and I think that leads us into we're gonna... You and I are gonna have some conversations about that book and about the things that you're learning and teaching throughout that, and we'll have a series that we'll be going through, which I'm excited to learn from you. Ultimately I have businesses, and I apply Deming's thinking in business, but also I'm a teacher so I enjoy everything that I can learn from people like yourself and David, and I know the audience will learn. So let me ask one last question, and that is, why Deming? And why now? Why is it important that it's Deming and why is it important that we are looking at this now? 0:46:14.1 JD: That's a really good question, I would say I consider myself a learner, I read a lot, I watch a lot, I listen to a lot of podcasts, and across my 20 years I've never found anything quite like the Deming philosophy. You search for these magic or silver bullets and they really don't exist, but the Deming philosophy really has been that thing for me, because I think what I didn't realize is the importance of an underlying philosophy for then everything else that you're doing. And that foundation is what the System of Profound Knowledge has really provided to me in my work. And I also mentioned as I thought through the ideas pretty deeply, and wrote about those ideas in the book, every time I had some dissonance initially with the Deming idea and then I put it in my own life, I worked it out and said, "Yep no, that... He was exactly right. Have we thought about how we interact in our organizations, how we interact with each other." And so not that the dissonance has gone away, not that I understand all of the ideas perfectly, but every time I've tested it and tried to falsify the philosophy or the theory I haven't been able to do it. And there's nothing else that I can say that I've worked with that has held up to that scrutiny like this philosophy. 0:47:49.7 AS: Fantastic. Well, John, on behalf of everyone at the Deming Institute, I wanna thank you again for coming on the show, and I wonder, do you have any parting words for our audience? 0:48:00.1 JD: Yeah, I think one of my favorite Deming quotes is really short and to the point, he said, "I make no apologies for learning." And I think that's a really good way to end the conversation, and what he meant by that was, you might have not have been doing it right before, but there's this opportunity to learn this new way. And that's sort of the opportunity that I've taken as I've discovered Deming's work.\ 0:48:28.4 AS: And that concludes another great story from the worldwide Deming community, remember to go to Deming.org to continue your journey. This is your host Andrew Stotz, and I'll leave you with my favorite quote from Dr. Deming, and that is people are entitled to joy in work.

Are tests like the SAT - and a potential National Merit Scholarship that goes with a good score - the same as grading or ranking students? David and Andrew discuss the differences. TRANSCRIPT 0:00:02.4 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 discussion with David P. Langford, who has devoted his life to applying Dr. Deming's philosophy to education, and he offers us his practical advice for implementation. Today, his topic is, The Difference Between Testing and Ranking Students. David, take it away. 0:00:29.4 David Langford: Okay, well, if you're an educator, that should be a trigger enough for you to pay attention and listen to this. [chuckle] So I wanna tie this in with Deming thinking and the difference and what people are trying to do with equity and all kinds of things that are going on today. And it's pretty relevant too, because I just watched a newscast that a school district was delaying or even not announcing their National Merit Scholars because of the fear that it would make other children feel bad because they weren't recognized like that. So it's kind of like what Dagwood set in the comics one time sounds like a good idea till you think about it. I wanted to discuss that today because over the last 40 years, I've run seminars and talked about Dr. Deming's focus of rating and ranking and grading, and he's just really against grading, and I pulled up a quote from The New Economics, he says, our educational system would be improved immeasurably by abolishment of grading. Okay. So there's a difference between grading and actually just testing. So let's just talk for a minute about the National Merit Scholarship Program. So I just read some stats on that, about one... Over one million students actually apply for a National Merit Scholarship each year, and only about 50,000 are selected, and how are those kids selected? 0:02:09.4 DL: Well, when you're a junior in high school, you take the SAT test, and if you have one of the 50,000 scores of the highest in the nation, then you could be named as a national merit scholar, and that could mean a lot of things. I mean, it could help you get scholarships to universities, it could really look good on your resume for the rest of your life, it could mean a lot of things. So is that the same thing that Deming talks about by grading and ranking people, and I would say no, because what really should be happening instead of thinking that by honoring or naming people that, or recognizing people that took this test and got one of the top 50,000 scores that that's gonna make other people feel bad, therefore we're not gonna announce that or we're not going to recognize that is not the same thing. When you're grading and ranking people, you actually have to grade them, grade their performance in order to rank them, and talking about Deming's concept of profound knowledge, the variation in that is huge, and the psychology in that is huge. I'm sure that almost every single person can relate to a classroom where they probably told somebody, I just, I don't think this teacher likes me. I don't know why but I just don't think they like me for some reason, and no matter how hard... 0:03:42.4 AS: And it's confirmed at the end of the semester when I get my grade. 0:03:46.9 DL: Yeah, no matter how hard I try or whatever, I just don't think they like me, and I know it's happened to me at times, and I just... Well, I just, I got choices that I could drop the class or I could just put up with it and go through with that. So psychological things like that could enter in and then all the social-economic stuff that we've got going on now could enter in and ethics could enter in, and all kinds of things could enter into someone giving someone a grade, like in a classroom and then ranking them against other students, right? That's a totally different thing. If I could give this, the school district and I'm not gonna name them 'cause I don't wanna get in trouble or anything. But if I could give this school district advice, what you should be trying to do is get as many students as possible into that level of National Merit ranking, because it's not limited, as far as I know, it's not limited that you can only have one per school or something. You could have as many as qualify, and that would show what an elite school you are actually, that you have more people qualifying for a national merit scholarships than any place else. And drive other people to think, Okay, if they can do that, I can do that, right. 0:05:11.1 AS: And can we... Can we go into that more detailed, just so we really break it down. To understand when someone, I guess, voluntarily as a student does with this National Merit Scholarship, goes into some sort of competition or measurement or something like that, that that's different from a school teacher and a school administrator observing the behaviors and actions of the students and then coming up with a ranking of that environment that they're living in every day. Explain how that's different. 0:05:43.4 DL: Yeah, just a test that they take and they all go in to the room, 300 kids go in a room and they take this test and whoever gets the best score qualifies. That's all there is to it. So you have no idea if they're a male, female, tall, short, skinny or not. None of that enters in, so there's no real psychology to it, you just go in and take the test and if you gotta... You get the score, you get that, you get to ranking or it's not really... It's not a ranking it's, you just achieve that level of being able to pass that test. 0:06:17.6 AS: And as a... Okay, so from a school perspective, I can see that, then the next question is, from a bigger picture society perspective, is that person now ranking themselves or is there some problem with that from a country perspective that people are entering a competition like that? 0:06:37.4 DL: Well, would I want to put in the hard work it takes? Because when I look at kids that achieve that level of performance, I see years and years, 10, 12 years, some cases of hard work of always working hard to be a top student, and they may or may not be ranked as the 4.0 students in their schools. That has nothing to do with that, but they may be really good at taking tests or they'd be really good at studying for this, or they may have family members that are super supportive, maybe you have two parents that are both college professors, right. Well, I would think that they would have more emphasis on a National Merit Scholarship and the importance of that and be communicating that throughout this child's entire life than a sharecroppers child in Georgia, that has nothing to do with the school system, except taking his kid to school every day, right? Those are totally different situations. 0:07:46.3 AS: And in that case, if that person, let's say that person's... Let's say a family has... This is the first kid to have a chance to go to university as an example, and if that family found out about this National Merit Scholarship and they told their son or daughter, Hey, why don't you set that as a goal to try to take that exam when you are 14, or 16, or 18? Is there a problem with that? 0:08:14.8 DL: No, I don't see any problem with that at all. You have a bar that you're setting, and if you get over this bar, then basically you win, but it has nothing to do with rating and ranking the individuals. 0:08:28.4 AS: And it's part of it that it's like a third party, a separate entity that you're going to. It's kind of a voluntary thing as opposed to a system that's imposed on the teachers and the students, and everybody in the school. 0:08:40.8 DL: Has nothing to do with your school, basically, you could be the best or worst schools in the world and either pass this test or not pass. And it's not about passing his test, it's who actually gets the best scores. One of the top 50,000 scores for you to be named this. 0:09:02.3 AS: And if we look at these teachers in that school that have decided and the administrators who have decided to do this action, let's just say that their intentions are good, in the one sense that, like we've talked about here, when a student does really well in assignment, the idea that you've talked about is, Hey, how did you do that? Why don't you explain that to the other students and share what you're doing and stuff. I suspect what they're afraid of is that it's glorifying these really elite students within the school, and that the other students don't, either don't get the opportunity or they feel less of themselves. The teachers are trying... Let's just assume that the teachers are trying to do something good, but they're maybe misdirected. What would be a better idea within the school? 0:09:56.6 DL: Well, I wouldn't refrain at all from recognizing those students and saying, Hey, these are the ones that took the test and are now National Merit Scholars and, I suppose there could be an over-glorification of that, that you could go overboard with that, but to those students that are actually taking that test, they obviously know what it means, right. And the recognition that could come with it, and that could be at their college scholarships that you're a National Merit Scholar and that, I could look really good going to a major university or something, and it could actually end up in dollar values. And I think that's what are the things that the parents were complaining about is by not naming these kids in a timely fashion, apparently they withheld the names of these kids, because they withheld the names of these kids, some of them would miss out on being able to put that on their scholarship applications to universities, or even if you're just going to go get a job, that would look good on a resume and things like that, but the difference to me is that's not a rating and ranking, it's simply a count data, right. 0:11:15.7 DL: Everybody takes the test and whoever got the top scores, then they get the recognition. So, I think is all there is to it. 0:11:23.8 AS: If we were to look at another parallel and just trying to understand how Deming thinks and this concept, let's take a wrestling team as an example, where there is a team score kind of thing and an individual performance as opposed to, let's say a football team where really it's a team performance. And let's say that the wrestling coach has worked hard with their team and they're doing really well, and they've got a couple of really strong wrestlers and they compete and they win the state championship, and two of their wrestlers win the best in their weight class or whatever that is. Should that be celebrated by the school as an accomplishment, or is that rating and ranking, how do we view something like that? 0:12:15.2 DL: No, of course, it should be celebrated and kids recognized, etcetera, because those things take a tremendous amount of hard work, I don't know if you've ever were a wrestler, but I did that once upon a time. 0:12:28.4 AS: I looked at it once and I thought, Yeah, I can't work. I'm not gonna work that hard on that 'cause that looks brutal. 0:12:35.1 DL: Yeah. So not only do you get your own personal score, but those scores are all added up as a team, and that team score is what determines if your team beat somebody else's team, or you become the state championship team, etcetera. But the schools that are really good at developing wrestlers, right, they don't think about just having one person who's state championship level, right. They're developing a whole deep program that year after year after year, they have a plethora of top wrestlers that are moving into that upper echelon and can work that through. And there's also a good example, when I was the first year band teacher, the school I was at the high school was really into wrestling, and so I asked the wresting teacher, I said, Would you like to have a pep band at the wrestling meet and first he thought it was kind of nuts and he says, why, you know, I don't know, he said, Let's try that. Let's see what that was like. So I got a bunch of volunteer kids and we get a whole drum core and everything, we choreographed this whole thing. So there was still like music going, announcing the wrestlers, there was music in between and then there were drum beats going on, everything. 0:13:55.6 DL: Well, we ended up wrestling against this school that they had hardly ever beat and we just clobbered them, because the psychology of what we created was this momentum of... 0:14:07.9 AS: Energy. 0:14:09.5 DL: Wow, we're invincible, and we're one of the top programs in the state, and so on, amd so forth. So I thought the wrestling coach was gonna kiss me afterwards, and so he really liked that, but I mean, that's really kind of a good example I think that you can manipulate these things to a large degree, psychologically, if you think about profound knowledge and the psychology behind things, you can manipulate things to get the data to show different things. Were these kids all the best wrestlers? Now, I'd say probably we intimidated the other wrestlers and in an equal environment, some place, our kids may have not been able to beat these other kids because of what went on. 0:14:57.2 DL: But the point is that you're trying to develop the depth of a system in a program, so that you continually have great wrestlers, not relying on the fact that once every 12 years, we just have some naturally gifted kid that comes in. I saw this when I was a teacher in Alaska, and we had this student as a junior in high school, and he could pick up a 50-gallon barrel of oil and pick it up and put it in the back of a pick-up, and that was his job, and he came to the school and the wrestling coach said, Well, how would you like to come out for the wrestling team? And he said, Well, I've never done that before Junior in high school. Well, he ended up being state champion two years in a row, and basically he didn't have near as much training or talent as anybody else, but if he ever got a hold of somebody, they were done because he would just like... 0:16:00.2 AS: He'd put 'em in the truck. 0:16:00.3 DL: And just force them to the ground. So to me that's... And that had nothing to do with our wrestling program or the development, or anything. It's just a kid that had grown up super talented, or super strong. To me, it's also sort of the basic same kind of thing we're talking about with this PSAT test and the National Merit Scholarship, etcetera, etcetera. Are you really recognizing who's the most brilliant or who's just really worked the hardest. There's probably an element of both from the neuro-science standpoint, there's development of all of those neural structures and everything else that enabled these kids, but I would also submit that probably some of those kids were just much better at photographic memories of remembering stuff and excelling. They're just born with that, and it just was much easier for her, them to get there, but that doesn't preclude other kids that really wanna work really hard at preparing for that test and really working for them, and that's a goal or an aim that they might have that they really wanna try to do that. 0:17:09.1 AS: I would love to wrap this up by just kind of circling back to what's the objective of school, what's the objective of a business, what is the function of an individual within that system, what is the function or the objective of the management of that system and of the individual? What are we trying to do so that we just go back to first principles to make sure that the listeners, the viewers are going back to those first principles to say, Let's make sure we're doing the right thing. So can you describe for, as simply as possible what you think.   0:17:45.7 DL: To wrap this up, I will give you two words that I learned from Deming that just became imprinted on me over the years, and that's artificial scarcity. So when you're creating an artificial scarcity of top marks or top performance or anything like that, then that's bad, that's gonna have a detrimental effect on people. And we've talked about valedictorians and all those kinds of things, those are... That's really an artificial scarcity, you're actually... That's why some of the school districts are grading kids to 1/1000 of a point, et cetera, because they got too many valedictorians. Well, that's just the opposite of what you should be thinking about. You should be thinking about, can we get more and more and more people to this level, the same thing that we're talking about with the wrestling program, can we have a program that's producing more and more and more better athletes and that's a true system and a program. And that's the same thing. So you always wanna watch out, it might create an artificial scarcity. I have five children, and the example is, would I ever rank my five children, and say, Who's the best or who's not? 0:19:06.4 DL: Well, anybody who knows anything about parenting would say, No, that'd be a very stupid thing to do. Right. It'd be very foolish to do that, and they all have different gifts, they all have different skills and gifts and the backgrounds, et cetera. 0:19:21.8 AS: I'm thinking about also natural scarcity, where let's say a family does not have the means to put all five of their kids through school, and they have to choose one and say, Look, we're gonna put everything behind, and everybody knows that Bobby is the one that we think can be successful with the money that we have for University as an example, which I would say it's more natural scarcity than artificial scarcity. 0:19:47.0 DL: Yeah, even that, to me, that's a concept that may have been true 60 years ago, it's not true today, every single kid that wants to go to, even if you don't have the scores to get into a certain school you wanted to get into, okay, go to a community college for two years. And in many States, the State pay for it and it's for free, so that's a level of trying to level the playing field that... So it's not just reliant on the rich that can get to that level. 0:20:18.9 AS: So let's go back and try to... I just wanna try to wrap up what you're saying about the goal is to try to... How do we get more people to this level? And what I'm thinking about is PDSA, what I'm thinking about is training, figuring out what's working, and then bringing that... 0:20:36.7 DL: Systems thinking, Psychology, understanding variation, it's Deming System of Profound knowledge is what you need to be applying, that your system gets better and better and better and better, so that virtually anybody that comes to your school, maybe they won't rise to that level of one of the top 50,000 in the country, but everybody is getting better and better and better, and what are we doing in the system that's preventing more and more kids to get to that level of performance, just's the way you wanna think about it. So you're not creating an artificial scarcity of people. 0:21:13.8 AS: I remember Elon Musk being quoted as saying something like, We need to launch more Rockets, when he was talking about how to get better at what they were doing with landing and reusing the rockets and all that, and I just think about in my case with my valuation masterclass Boot Camp, which is a purely online system focused on a very specific thing, it's voluntary where people are signing up, and so it's very different than, let's say a public school. But the point is, is that every time we launch, we have new things that we apply from what we learn in the prior one, and as I tell my students in the current valuation masterclass boot camp, number seven. If they'd studied at number five, it's a completely different course, and I'm just thinking about all the different iterations and we stick with the things that work, and then we build and add on the next thing, and that's ultimately, I guess the job of us inside of business, inside of school, inside any process is, how do we find what works. 0:22:14.2 DL: What you're trying to do is to create a system where people are gaining knowledge that's useful and applicable in the future. One of the quotes that Deming had was, Why would I rate and rank my students, how can I determine who amongst them is gonna be great in the future, so why would I wanna limit them now with a grade. It took me years to understand what that meant, but until you've actually seen hundreds of students move through and students in high school and stuff where you think, Oh, that kid's not gonna, they're never gonna amount to anything, and all of a sudden they're state senator or they're doing something 20 years from now that you have no idea. But maybe they had to overcome your rating and ranking in order to think that that was possible, or that they were capable of doing that kind of thing. 0:23:11.1 AS: Yeah. And I went back to my high school records and I found that my GPA in high school was 2.6, I was firmly in the middle of my ranking in my high school. I was getting high basically most of the time and doing other stuff, and I wasn't really paying attention, my parents weren't pushing me that hard, they were just like, Try your best and whatever, and they didn't wanna see me drop out, but I was definitely on that path, and I think most people thought I wouldn't succeed. But then my last semester of university, I had seven classes and six of them I got As, and the seventh one I took at another university and I got a B. And something switched in me and I overcame that rating and ranking, and the fire of learning was lit under me, and I think maybe we'll wrap it up by saying that part... The whole objective of what we're trying to do is develop systems and processes that really work to set children on fire with the excitement of learning and figuring things out and finding things out with the objective that they're gonna live a better life, they're gonna have more joy and more, they're gonna understand things around them, they're gonna be able to make an impact around them, and if we can do that, I would say we're doing a pretty darn good thing. Anything you would add to that? 0:24:32.9 DL: Yeah, well, it leads into... And maybe we can discuss this in a later podcast too about, I've worked with a lot of universities and stuff, and I'll meet with them and I'll hear phrases like, Oh, we're one of the most selective universities in the state or the nation, or whatever, and we turn out the best graduates. Well, just go to our random selection of students, have a bar that you want everybody to get to a certain level, and when they do, everybody's name goes into the hat, and you draw out however many slots you have open. Now, everybody would know how they're chosen and if you can take those randomly selected students and turn out the best graduates in the country, I would acknowledge that, yeah, you've got a tremendous school, but if all you're doing is selecting, going through a rigorous process to select the people that are gonna fit your program, you're probably not doing much of anything, and you're not really developing a system of greatness where virtually anybody that comes here is gonna become great. And I want to submit kind of to wrap this up that every teacher is going through that very same thing, because students are thrown into their classrooms, usually and just randomly... 0:25:55.9 DL: Random selection, right? So if you can develop a system by which, no matter who is thrown into my class, even kids with special needs, I'm able to move them to a level of performance that nobody else is able to get these kids to, the very same kids. And next year they go into another class and they're not able to achieve that. Right. I would say you probably have created a fantastic teaching system, that no matter who I get, I'm over time, I'm able to get them to a very high level of performance. And I think that's the same thing that this whole podcast is about, you should be thinking about getting everybody to that level, and what are we doing as a system that's standing in the way that's preventing people from getting to that level of performance. So you mentioned a company, right, you don't just want one great worker, right. You want everybody to be great, otherwise you don't have a system that's continually producing great products. 0:26:58.3 AS: Yeah. Well, David, on behalf of everyone at the Deming Institute, I wanna thank you again for this discussion, and for listeners, remember to go to Deming.org to continue your journey and listeners can learn more about David at langfordlearning.com. This is your host, Andrew Stotz, and I'll leave you with one of my favorite quotes from Dr. Deming, and it just never gets old. People are entitled to joy in work.

How many people need to be "on board" in order to start implementing Deming ideas in an organization? Andrew and David P. Langford discuss Dr. Deming's answer and what that means for folks trying to make changes. TRANSCRIPT 0:00:02.6 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 discussion with David P. Langford, who has devoted his life to applying Dr. Deming's philosophy to education, and he offers us his practical advice for implementation. Today's topic is, What is the Critical Mass for Transformation? David, take it away. 0:00:27.6 David Langford: Thank you, Andrew. It's good to be back. So this idea about transformation, what is the transformation? What are we talking about? We hear a lot about the political transformations and things like that. And I stopped shaving, so now I have a beard, and is that a transformation? And what do we do with that? I also get the questions a lot over the last 40 years about, well, how do we get everybody on board? In fact, almost anytime I do a seminar, I almost always get a question from a principal, superintendent, or somebody in education, how do we get everybody on board? Well, and Deming talked a lot about that transformation starts with the individual. So you've got to get yourself on board to begin with. And I remember when I started learning about Deming and started reading the books and kind of going through things, it was a mental transformation for me individually. So that's probably the first step if you're thinking about transforming an organization, whether that be a classroom, a school, a company, a family, whatever you might want to think about, is, getting yourself on board. 0:01:46.8 DL: And then the second thing is, okay, well, now we're going to transform a larger part of the organization. What do we do then? So I actually put that question to Dr. Deming one time, and he said, well, "I like to think about having the square root of the organization to cause a transformation of the organization. And this just blew me away because, let's say you have 100 employees or 100 staff members on a school or whatever it might be. And if you have the thought that you're going to get everybody on board before you do anything, well, if you understand Dr. Deming's concept of Profound Knowledge, you're never going to get there. You're never going to have 100 people on board before you start anything. You're going to have variability. You're going to have variation in people. And even if you had 100 people say, "Oh yeah, we're not bored, let's do this," well, what's the degree of their commitment to doing that? That's a huge amount of variation in the organization. So when I asked Dr. Deming, I said, "Well, how do I begin transforming a whole organization like that?" And he said, "Well, I like to think of the square root of the organization," that you need the square root on board to cause a transformation. 0:03:15.3 AS: So I was thinking about the square root and I was calculating it. So if we have 100 employees in an organization, that's 10 people. If we have 1000, that is 32 people. If we have 100,000, that's 300 people. It's a relatively small number. 0:03:34.2 DL: Yeah, think about that. And that as a leader, sort of liberates you from thinking that, "Okay, I've got to get everybody on board before we can start doing stuff." And that's just really not true at all. Or in a classroom, you've got 25 kids in a classroom. I really only need about five kids in that classroom that are kind of on board with me and the thought processes, and we can begin a transformation in that classroom. I've told that to so many teachers and it's like this huge revelation in their mind is like, "Oh wow, I just never had thought about that." And it enables you to sort of get to work. Almost anybody can like pick off the names of five students that would be supportive of working with you or 10 employees out of 100 that would be really supportive to working with you or 100,000, what'd you say? 320 or? 0:04:32.2 AS: 100,000 would be 316, just 300 people. 0:04:32.7 DL: Yeah. And it actually makes it doable. And so I used that for years... 0:04:39.8 AS: I'd literally go out and ask people to volunteer, to say who would be interested in being involved in a transformation and that type of thing. You're going to get more than 300 people out of 100,000 that are going to volunteer. 0:04:54.2 DL: Yeah. Dr. Myron Tribus was another one of my mentors and he was a colleague of Dr. Deming. And he used to go with me to universities because he'd been the Dean at Dartmouth. He'd been the Dean at MIT and he just had a tremendous university background and stuff. And so we would go together and give presentations and we were at a major university. I won't name it. But the Dean of Education was being pressured by the President to have us talk to faculty members. And so we, first we talked to the Dean of Education and Dr. Myron Tribus was sort of a genius at working people in higher ed. And the Dean says, well, "I'm very interested in Dr. Deming's thought processes and I would be willing to do this, but we just won't have... We just don't have that many staff that would be willing to start learning about this and applying it in classrooms," et cetera, et cetera. And Dr. Tribus said to him, he said, "Well, if you did have people that were interested and willing to start learning and get on board, would they have your full support?" 0:06:05.1 DL: And he was like, oh yeah, they definitely have their full support. So we go do a presentation in front of a hundred and some faculty members at this university and Myron Tribus at the end of the presentation, he says, "The Dean has said that he'll give his full support for anybody that wants to start learning about applying Deming in their classrooms and moving forward. So raise your hand if you'd be interested in getting on board." Now, if that 100 faculty members, there must have been 60 or 70 hands that went up. The Dean disappeared and we never saw him again. And we never got a chance to actually go further than that. But it's kind of a good example about this, that, wow, that's way more than the square root that wanted to get on board and wanted to start learning. But the problem is so many... 0:06:57.2 AS: And that goes back to the intrinsic stuff that we've talked about that people are there. They want intrinsic. 0:07:04.3 DL: Oh, yeah. They want it. 0:07:05.8 AS: They want to see change. They want to see improvement. They don't want to see nonsense going on. 0:07:08.9 DL: Well, the problem with most leaders that I've encountered and etcetera, is they spend a huge amount of their time sort of trying to placate the naysayers. So anything you want to do, whether that's bringing in Deming principles or not, but any kind of a change or any kind of a movement or whatever you want to do, you're going to have resistors and people that resist and don't want to get on board. And leaders spend so much time trying to massage their egos and help people get on board thinking, "Oh, I've got to get everybody on board," where actually you just need to leave them alone. The people that actually need your support is that square root. They're the ones that need your support and actually protection from the mob basically, because they're going to come under attack as well, within that. But one of the things that lessens the attack is when you can just say to people, "Look, you don't have to, you don't have to do this. This is a choice." And we learned about that in intrinsic motivation study that we did, right? 0:08:20.9 AS: Yeah. 0:08:21.0 DL: This is a choice. You don't have to do this, but you also don't have the right to take other people down. That, to me, that's a real strong role of leadership is that you have to be the one that's going to protect other people that are trying to get on board and create their own square root for that transformation. So it's no doubt it's challenging. If you don't and... If you don't have that individual transformation and you don't have that depth of knowledge of what it is you're trying to do, I'd say, take more time to just work on that first before you think "I have to get other people on board." 0:09:06.3 AS: Just to put it to work. 0:09:06.4 DL: But that's about every organization where I've said, how many people would be interested in learning more about this and studying it. I get way more than the square root of the organization and then that. 0:09:16.9 AS: I was just, while you were talking some, you may hear me tapping away as I was kind of looking for what's the definition of transformation. I thought, hmm, okay. And Oxford languages dictionary, as well as Google, the ultimate, maybe, says, "Transformation is a thorough or dramatic change in form or appearance." And what it makes me think about when you said about focus on yourself first, is that you've really got to make a thorough or dramatic change before you can lead a thorough and dramatic change. 0:09:56.7 DL: Yeah. Or larger and larger organizations. So the other... So Deming called that the critical mass. You have to have critical mass. He talked a lot about critical mass. And I didn't think too much about that for years. And then I realized that Deming was also a physicist. And I looked up critical mass... And you're tapping away trying to look up critical mass. 0:10:23.0 AS: Yeah. Exactly. 0:10:25.4 DL: But it's the... From what I understand, it's the tiny amount of material that it would take to create a nuclear reaction. 0:10:33.8 AS: Exactly. 0:10:34.5 DL: And you're talking about almost infinitesimal amount to create this nuclear reaction, whatever that might be, powering a ship or a bomb or whatever you want to use it for. That's more of a study of values than anything. 0:10:52.6 AS: Yeah. "The minimum amount of fissile material needed to maintain a nuclear chain reaction or also the minimum size or amount of something required to start or maintain a venture." But what's interesting, when I think of critical mass, I think of big. But what I get from what you've just said, and this is, actually, critical mass is small. 0:11:08.6 DL: Yes. Very small. 0:11:10.7 AS: It's the minimum. 0:11:12.7 DL: And if you think of it, I want to cause basically a nuclear reaction in my organization, right? I want to get us from point A to point Z or wherever we're going to go. Well, what's the fastest way to do that? That small critical mass of people that are committed to moving forward. And it's amazing how fast an organization can change when you're thinking like that. Not thinking, "Well, I've got to get everybody on board." 0:11:42.2 AS: I don't know about you, but I know for the listeners out there and the viewers that it's exciting and it's inspiring. I feel excited by this when I think about... Because sometimes when you think about transformation, you do think about "How am I going to deal with the naysayers or the people who aren't going to go along? Or, "Oh, I need everybody on board." But what you're explaining that Dr. Deming said to you was that it's actually not as daunting. And maybe I can tell a kind of a funny story about critical mass. And I was in... I was asked to give a speech in the Philippines and I went to the Philippines and my speech was in the afternoon. And I was talking about my worst investment ever podcast and the lessons I learned. My audience was 900 people who are young students. 0:12:27.3 AS: And so I was pretty excited. I went to the venue early in the morning and they were just starting. My speech wasn't until 3:00, but it was like 9:00 AM. And the organizers had said to me... I said, "How are you doing?" And I know them pretty well. And they said, "We're doing terrible." I said, "Why?" They said, "Because our keynote speaker that's going to speak at 10:30 just told us that he can't make it because he's got to take his mother to the hospital." And I said, "Well, can I help?" And he said, "Well, can you give a speech on ethics?" And I said, "Oh, yeah, I can." And so I said, "If you give me an hour and a laptop computer and one of your staff, I can pull together something and get up on that stage." Well, at the end of that, in an hour or so later, I was ready. I got up on stage and I gave a knockout presentation of something I had given before, but I packaged it for that audience. And the crowd went wild and it was 2000 people for the keynote session. But what they didn't know was that once I finished my preparation, I went to the back of the audience and I knew that they were university students in groups. So I went to the back left-hand corner of the audience and I said, I'm going to be speaking next and I'm going to ask the audience to shout out, when I get up there, like, "Who over there is ready to," and I said, "When I do that, will you guys like stand up and shout out?" 0:13:42.2 AS: And they're like, "Yeah." And "What university are you from?" And then I did the same at the right hand side. So when I got up on stage and I started to get the crowd going, I said, everybody over on the right hand side of this, on the left hand side, I called out and basically the crowd went wild. And what they didn't realize was it was just a small number of people that I had, basically so, started in this process so that they were prepared to be a player in this process when it started to happen. And then that tiny critical mass led to the explosion of the audience. So that's a little, a fun example of my own case. 0:14:19.3 DL: Yeah, that's perfect. And what happens in, whether it's a classroom, a school, university, whatever, as you start with that critical mass and as you bring more people on board and that expands, there becomes less and less room for things that are the antithesis, what it is you want to have happen. And then my experience is that people will either eventually start to get on board and start to learn about what you're teaching and what you want to have happen and etcetera, or a lot of times they'll just find another place to work, which is fine too. And then you get to, move it forward with somebody new coming in, etcetera. But either way, you're not spending all your time trying to placate people and bring them on board and soothe their egos and etcetera, etcetera. And you just keep moving on. And pretty soon there's just less and less and less space for those negative comments and people that aren't doing anything. 0:15:26.9 AS: So let's take it another step further. Let's say you get that critical mass. Let's say you've got 100 people in an organization, in a school, in a company, and you've got that 10 and you're starting to work with them and maybe you're doing some study groups and you're starting to really open up and they're starting to see. How should someone proceed from that position? Should you proceed by bringing out things and starting to test them or should you wait until you really have a deeper knowledge? I'm sure there's a tension between those two, but I'm curious what you think about that and what you think Dr. Deming said about them. 0:16:01.5 DL: Well, there's another reason that this is a almost magical way to approach a transformation, is that you yourself are probably... Let's go back to the 100 people that you have in the organization. If you had 100 people all of a sudden get on board and asking you questions all the time and "What do we do and how do we do this," and all of that, you couldn't handle that, right? You couldn't handle that much change, but you could probably handle 10 people that really want to know and really are trying to understand and work through stuff and thereby get them to think about the small ways in which they can begin their own transformations, whether that's a department or a classroom or whatever it might be through that process. But it's liberating in that way too, because it's giving you a time as a leader to learn as well, what does this mean and how would this apply and what would we do in this circumstance? 0:17:06.5 AS: And I guess in that... 0:17:07.5 DL: It's a powerful concept, and I've used it so many times and it's just, it's really caused a transformation in many organizations, no matter the size. 0:17:15.4 AS: One of the things I was thinking about is that the transformation that those 10 people are going through in that organization is probably going to mirror what their next group of people go through as the organization starts to understand. So maybe keeping notes, identifying what are the questions and maybe having like a Frequently Asked Questions document where, okay, what are the questions we have and how do we come up with some ideas of how do we answer these questions based upon what we want to do with this transformation? And then that way we're prepared when we go out and say, we're going to get the same questions from the people as they start first being exposed to the transformation. 0:17:58.5 DL: I use the example a lot about, Jesus only had 12 and he changed the world. And he changed the world. Or Confucius or any movement like that always started with just a small, minute number of committed people willing to move forward. 0:18:20.7 AS: Well, I think that's interesting and I want to wrap it up just by summarizing a couple of points. And the first one is that, the first thing that you talked about is that people often say, "How do I get everybody on board?" And your point that you've made is, you're not going to get everybody on board and that shouldn't be your aim. And what you said, is Dr. Deming said, when you asked him how many people does it take to start that, to make that transformation? And he said he likes to think of the square root of the organization. So 100 people, maybe 10 people out of that. A 100-person organization, maybe 10 people. A 100,000-person organization, maybe 300 people. And I think that you've also talked about how people are hungry for that because we've already talked about intrinsic motivation. So if you go out and say, "Hey, who would like to be involved in making this a better place and making a transformation?" then that's cool. And I think the other thing that, talking about the critical mass, which I had kind of a misunderstanding of that, but the critical mass is the minimum amount to cause a massive change. 0:19:33.0 AS: And so also you mentioned about, that we're not forcing this on people. You've got a choice, but the one choice that may be a hard choice is just staying in place and not changing and improving. And therefore there are times that you have to say, this may not be the culture for you and there's other places that have them. Anything you would add to that summary? 0:20:00.0 DL: No, it was very good. But I mentioned Dr. Myron Tribus, but he used to constantly tell me, "You preach to the masses, then work with the volunteers." 0:20:10.4 AS: That's beautiful. 0:20:11.9 DL: Yeah. You have that 100-person organization. You're going to preach to the masses and you're going to explain what this is all about, etcetera, etcetera. And then you're going to work with the volunteers and let other people just go back to doing what it is they were doing, because they're probably not going to do any worse or better. And it's going to give you time to work with the people that are volunteering to actually transform the organization. 0:20:36.4 AS: Preach to the masses, work with the volunteers 0:20:38.5 DL: And work with the volunteers. 0:20:42.7 AS: Love it. What I wanted to do before I end this episode is, I want to speak directly to the listeners and the viewers. This, what we're doing with this material is to try to help all of us think about a transformation. And I don't know about you, but from what I just heard from David and what Dr. Deming said about the square root of the organization, it really fired me up to think about how can I bring that transformation to my own organizations. And it inspired me, but it also helped me to understand that it's not as difficult as it is sometimes in our minds. So let's lay down the challenge. Time to start the transformation in your organization and in yourself. And David, on behalf of everyone at The Deming Institute, I want to thank you again for the discussion. For listeners, remember to go to deming.org to continue your journey and listeners can learn more about David at langfordlearning.com. 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.

Your "meaning network" of neurons includes the subjects (like math wizzes) and relationships (like friendships) that are important to you. In this episode, Andrew and David talk about helping folks find the "why?" that intrinsically motivates them to do something. TRANSCRIPT 0:00:02.5 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 am continuing my discussion with David P. Langford, who has devoted his life to applying Dr. Deming's philosophy to education and he offers us his practical advice for implementation. Today's topic is tapping into meaning to release intrinsic motivation. David, take it away. 0:00:28.7 David Langford: Thank you, Andrew, and good to be back. 0:00:32.3 AS: Good to see you. 0:00:34.1 DL: So we have been on this journey of five elements of intrinsic motivation and these are the ones that, through my research at least, are the most important elements if you want to see intrinsic motivation emerge. Why are we doing that? Because Dr. Deming was the one that really made it clear that you have to have intrinsic motivation and stop extrinsically motivating people. So that's why we're concentrating on, what are these elements? So the first element was the element of control or autonomy in a situation. The second element was cooperation and we talked about the support network that's necessary and the previous podcast was all about the challenge and today we're talking about the meaning. How did... That meaning is the fifth element to tap into. So in every human brain there is a preponderance of cells in your meaning network. Some of it is... Some of it you're born with, some of it you acquire through life, but it's what... It's the cells that are activated when you get a sense of meaning about, why are we doing something or why are we here, what's happening? 0:02:04.0 DL: And the more we can tap into that network with people and tap into their meaning network, we start to see more intrinsic motivation emerge and therefore more joy in learning and work emerge and therefore a higher level of workmanship that often comes out of that same thing. 0:02:23.3 AS: And when you say meaning network, sometimes when I think of network, I think of a network of people, but you're talking about a neurological network. 0:02:30.5 DL: Yeah, we're talking about the actual neurons in your brain that form the network of meaning behind your life. It's... Sometimes we're just born with a preponderance of cells in certain areas, like I have five children and one of them was just born with the gift of mathematics and that's just the way it was. And another one was just born with his gift of music and another one... On and on. And those are just there at birth. And I don't think we had anything to do with it until we started to uncover that, oh, wow, this meaning... This has a lot of meaning for this individual. In other ways, you can also acquire a meaning network over time. That's for myself and probably for you too, Andrew, that the meaning in network now includes Deming, and the work of Deming, but that had to become an acquired kind of thing. So when people go through that process of learning about it, sometimes they say, my brain hurts because you are readjusting the actual neurons and the network of neurons in your brain that taught you to think about something. 0:03:50.9 DL: So if you had a network of neurons for management and maybe even went to college like I did or university, got a master's degree in management, et cetera, it taught you to think in a certain way. And Deming's work actually, sometimes trashes all of that or sometimes just causes you to have to think in a whole different way. And so then you have to start to readjust your meaning network. So it's been a lifelong interest for me to figure out, well, how do we get more of that to happen? So probably the very first element I want to talk about is relevance. So when you're trying to get somebody to do something, whether it's just work or we're talking about learning in schools, et cetera, is there a relevance? Why are we doing this? Kids don't ask, why is the sky blue or things like that just to make you mad and make your life miserable. They're actually trying to seek meaning in their life and try to understand what's going on. So the tool we often use is five whys. When you're starting to work through something, "Why do we have to do this?" 0:05:13.0 DL: And you have to answer that question and then, "Okay, then why is that so?" And then so on and so forth. And each time you ask, "Why did I say what I did in the previous why and think through stuff?" But that actually gets people to tap into the level of meaning. I never forget I saw five whys one time on, I think it was a group of first graders or something and they'd done this five whys and on why do we have to learn to read? And they'd gone through all these kinds of things, but I'll never forget that the fifth why was we have to learn to read because if we don't, we'll be homeless and die. [laughter] So there's... 0:05:57.9 AS: Right to the point. 0:05:58.5 DL: As a group of kids. Yeah, that's pretty important, right? And so tapping into that is really important. And so when you get that kind of relevance, you also get a joy that happens in learning because you're happy about it because it's relevant to you and it's meaningful. They have the age old question, why do we why do have to learn math and people often talk about that, that, I'll probably never use this again in my whole life. 0:06:28.6 DL: And well, if you are not helping students understand the meaning behind that or tap into their own meaning network about why math is important, it's going to constantly be a struggle or other areas that sometimes we think of as boring like accounting or things like that. Certain people just look at those numbers and love working with numbers and they get a joy in that and they have relevance within that. So relevance is really important and that gets you a level of joy of learning. 0:07:03.6 AS: Right. Can we just go back one step and just describe what you mean by meaning? 0:07:11.9 DL: Well, there's a group of cells in everybody's brains, neurons called the meaning network. And these are the connections that you've made over time. And just like what is describing before that either you were born with or you've acquired over time, but it's a meaning network. And so two people can sit and listen to the same podcast or broadcast, et cetera. And one of them just thinks it's totally boring, boring and worthless. And the other one is just totally engrossed in it. And it all has to do with your meaning network and your brain and whether or not that podcast is tapping into your meaning network or challenging your meaning network. 0:07:54.2 AS: And in a classroom, what would be the opposite of tapping into the meaning network? 0:08:01.9 DL: Somebody says, "Well, why do we have to learn this?" And the teacher says, "Because I said so." 0:08:07.1 AS: Okay. It's clear. 0:08:09.7 DL: Yeah. That's not good learning. It's not gonna motivate somebody to want to learn something. It's just gonna motivate them just to avoid punishment or seek some cheap reward. And that's often why we resort to those extrinsic kinds of motivations because we don't wanna tap into the meaning network. It takes a lot more time to go in depth and to get people to really... To get a deep understanding of it. I think about my journey, understanding Deming and maybe yours is the same way. It didn't happen overnight. It took actually several years and I'm still on that journey after 40 years of really trying to understand what he was talking about and why it was important and how it applies in my life, et cetera. So that's tapping into that meaning network. 0:09:01.6 AS: And you said something that sometimes people don't want to tap into their meaning network. Maybe that's an interesting thing to understand. Why is it at times, maybe each of us don't want to tap into it? Or there's some people that may say, I never want to tap into that. 0:09:16.2 DL: Well, we get caught up into just running things, and making stuff happen without wanting to think about, why are we doing this? And when you do that, then you end up just resorting to getting people to do stuff. And if you don't do this, I'm just going to make your life so difficult you wish you would have, which is not good management. 0:09:41.2 AS: So for the listeners and the viewers out there if you find yourself just running in circles, doing a bunch of stuff and realizing that there's no meaning to it, maybe that's the time to stop and listen and let's continue on about bringing this... You talked about relevance, continue on... 0:09:58.0 DL: Yeah. So another way you could tap into the meaning network is just to concentrate on the quality of the work. And that leads us to a pride of workmanship. And when you're concentrating on the quality of it, instead of just production or just getting through it, you get a whole different level of thinking about something and you tap into a level of relevance that is not normally there. 0:10:32.1 DL: So like in school, if I give them this... If I gave an assignment and we were just talking about math and they say, "Well, you have to do these 30 problems." Well, if we talk about how to do that in a quality way, we start to tap into a pride of workmanship with that. So what would that mean to do this in a quality way? Well, the numbers have to be lined up and sometimes kids will say things, well, it should be neat. Well, we might have to define, what does neat mean? What would it look like if it was neat? But you're tapping into a level of relevance and understanding that's deeper than just do this to get through it. So we can go on to the next chapter which really means there's not much meaning to that, right? It's more of a survival, just get through it and get onto the next thing. 0:11:19.4 AS: And I'm thinking about in the corporate sphere, Deming talked about quality in the eyes of the customer and develop... The process, improving the quality of work and then seeing the customer being satisfied or achieving their goals through it just like with a student to see them achieve their goals... There is true joy in and meaning to what you're doing. 0:11:46.3 DL: Yeah. Well, just before we came on, you were showing me some feedback that you had from your students, which are ultimately your customer in your college class, et cetera. And you were really excited about the feedback. Well, it had a lot of meaning to you about the quality of what they were trying... That they got out of that experience, et cetera, and how they were relating it back to you. And it made you feel very proud of the work that you'd done with them. 0:12:12.1 AS: Well, it's raised the question, why the hell would we not be having meaning in everything that we're doing? 0:12:22.6 DL: Yeah, that's a good question. Why do people do that? Well, a lot of times they just do it just to get through it. Like I said, not enough time and I don't have time to concentrate on meaning. And well, if you don't concentrate on that, then you're going to get whatever it is you get, right? You're going to just get poor quality work and they're going to have to figure out how to motivate people. And these people aren't motivated. But Deming also talked a lot about constancy of purpose, right? And that's tapping into the meaning network. So when you're developing a constancy of purpose, whether that's with a corporation, a classroom, a whole school, a school district, whatever it is, why do we exist? Why are we here? And you're really making that explicit and getting people to align what they do every day to the constancy of purpose. Well, in schools you end up with getting a lifelong learning going then because you have a deeper purpose for going to school other than just to get a grade or just to get through it. 0:13:27.7 DL: I remember asking a group of fourth graders one time I said, "Why do you go to fourth grade?" And one of the kids said, "So we can go on to fifth grade." [laughter] Well, if that's the surface level that you're concentrating on, that's actually the kind of workmanship you're going to get in pride that you're gonna get in the people going through it because they know that you don't care either. Right? Just a step going to the next thing. 0:14:00.4 AS: And when Dr. Deming talked about cleaning a table and he gave the example that you really can't have someone properly clean a table unless they know what the table is going to be used for, is that part of the meaning of understanding the final... 0:14:12.1 DL: Yeah, that's tapping into the meaning network? What are you going to use this table for? Are you going to operate on it? Oh, well, it's certainly not clean enough for that right now. It's going to eat off of it. That's a whole different purpose that you're using for that. So yeah, that's a really good example about tapping into people's meaning network about things and then you get a higher level of quality and commitment out of people when you're actually just creating the environment for that. The other thing is vision. The more you concentrate on the vision of where you're going, what's happening and it ties into constancy of purpose about why do we exist and what we're doing too. But when you have vision, you're tapping into people's prefrontal lobe in their minds about looking towards the future. What are we trying to accomplish? Where are we going with this? And we may not be there today, but this is where we're headed and this is what we're tapping into. So there's a number of ways that come out of a lot of different research about what, makes a good vision. Number one, it's usually always leader initiated. So it doesn't necessarily mean that the person with the formal position is initiating it, but you can be a leader and not necessarily have a formal position. You just, you're seen as somebody who's very knowledgeable about a situation and therefore you start to become a leader within that. 0:15:49.1 AS: And that the good vision is leader initiated concept is contrary to some people that think about, "Oh, well I want empowerment. I want my employees involved and all of that." And when I heard Dr. Deming talk about that this is the responsibility of the leaders, I realized that, yeah, my leaders in my company, were just dumping it down on me. "Well, you tell us?" 0:16:14.8 DL: Yeah. And that's really an escape mechanism because then if it doesn't work, it's your fault instead of our fault. Whereas, where if it's leader initiated and we work together to constantly revise and revisit the vision and it's sort of a living document is what I call it, that it's constantly, it's not the thing where you go in a room and you come up with a vision statement and then you put it under glass on the hallway and then you don't visit it again until you get a new leader again. That's not what we're talking about. We're talking about something that's lived on a daily basis about the vision of what it is we're trying to accomplish. And in that, it's also has to be shared and supported, right? And one of the ways you get it shared and supported is involving people in the making of a vision rather than having a board meeting and coming up with a vision and then trying to disseminate that to everybody. 0:17:12.4 AS: Right. 0:17:15.3 DL: It has to be comprehensive and detailed, a vision. So it has to have enough detail so that everybody in the organization or everybody in a classroom can see how their part relates to that vision of what it is we're trying to accomplish. And finally, it has to be positive and inspiring that I really want to do this. I really... 'Cause it's just... It's really inspiring. It's not simple, but when John F. Kennedy said, "We're gonna put a man on the moon by 1969, by the end of the decade," well, that was very positive, inspiring. Did anybody know how to do that? No, not really. And we were really behind in making that happen, but it was leader initiated. He initiated that and this is what we're going to have. And it became shared and supportive and it became very comprehensive and detailed about how we're going to make it happen. And sure enough, the country made it happen. So that's a good example of what vision can do for you. 0:18:20.5 AS: So there's relevance, there's vision... 0:18:22.7 DL: Yeah. Relevance and then the quality of what it is you do and then purpose and vision. And the last element that I'd like to share is a way that you can tap into the meaning network is to leave a legacy. Where the work means more than just the immediate result or you're trying to improve society or you're thinking about passing the torch to the next generation. This leaving of this legacy, I think is really important. When I started to tap into this was the high school where I first started and was working with Deming, some interesting things happened. The English teacher tapped into this and she would take kids over to the pioneer home where it had all the elderly people there that were in the state of Alaska at the time of statehood. And so every year she'd take kids over and they would meet with these elderly people and the people would tell stories about all the way back to 1900 and 1920 and what life was like in Alaska. And then it was their job to write up these stories. They put all these stories into a book and then bind the book for that year. So that's an example, leaving a legacy. That's much different than... Because those kids could look back at that legacy for the rest of their lives. 0:20:01.7 DL: That "I was a part of that." I helped document something that was going on or the science class had a project where every year they would take one square kilometer of the ocean floor and then kids would work to get scuba diving skills. And at the end of each year, then they would go down and they would clean up that one section of the ocean floor. And then other kids would be on the surface and, take the junk to the dump and everything and pass it on. But that's leaving a legacy that "we did this and cleaned this up" and that's passing it on to the next generation. So if you think about... It can be so simple as a fourth grade class passing on a legacy to a third grade class that's coming up and meeting with them and talking about what you do in fourth grade and being excited about that and having a vision about how great it's gonna be to be in fourth grade and what you're going to do. So I'll never forget my oldest son when he was going into first grade and we were talking all summer long about, I may have shared this story, I don't know, but we were talking all summer long that, oh, first grade is going to be so great, you're going to learn to read and you're going to be so excited, et cetera. 0:21:24.4 DL: And so we picked him up after the first day of school thinking he's gonna be all excited about stuff. He said, "How was first grade?" And he burst into tears. And we said, "What's going on is... Did you get in trouble or something or something happened at school or whatever?" And he just shook his head and he said, "I didn't learn to read." But the vision and the meaning network was incredibly strong with him going into first grade. It's just that we had neglected to explain it's going to take more than one day to reach that vision of that. But obviously in our family, reading was very important and it was very stressed. And he could see his siblings reading and all those things are part of tapping into that meaning network. 0:22:19.6 AS: The legacy is a fascinating one. And I think it's a challenge for anybody listening or viewing, what legacy are you leaving? A lot of times we just get so busy in what we're doing and we forget about that. I'll tell the quick story of when I had to go through a few different rehabs when I was a young guy because of addiction to drugs and alcohol. And the third rehab that I went into was a long-term treatment center. They only had 12 beds there and one bed opened up. It was in Northeastern Ohio. And so I went into that treatment center and when I arrived, I arrived for the graduation ceremony of the outgoing student and they had a toolbox which was an open box with a handle on it. And he stood up in front of everybody and, said he was graduating and all the things that he gained from this. And then he emptied out his toolbox and he handed it to me and he said, here's your empty toolbox. Good luck at filling it with the symbols of the intangible tools and physical tools that you develop over the next seven months. And then when I graduated, I took my tools out of the box and I gave that empty box to the next person. And yeah, it's just like... 0:23:33.8 DL: Great example. 0:23:35.1 AS: It's connection with the future. 0:23:39.4 DL: And obviously that tapped into your meaning network because you remembered it. 0:23:45.6 AS: Here we are 40 years later. 0:23:46.0 DL: They want to know what kind of experiences tap into the meaning network? Well, it's usually the ones that you remember, right? Because the other experiences, your brain just quickly gets rid of the connections because it has no meaning. 0:24:01.7 AS: So I want to wrap up and also review the five points or the five elements that you've brought up. Maybe you can just run through them briefly if we're at the end of talking about meaning. 0:24:16.6 DL: Yeah. So these aren't the only factors for intrinsic motivation, but the ones that have never failed me over the last 40 years, whether I'm working with US military or colleges and universities or a kindergarten class or a corporation, I always go back to these five and usually you'll find some fault there that people don't feel like they're supported or there isn't a high level of cooperation or they don't feel like they have the autonomy to be able to make decisions in an organization or there's a lack of challenge, that work is not challenging, or there's a lack of meaning that the organization or whether that's a classroom, a school, a company or whatever is not really tapping into that meaning network and really emphasizing purpose and vision and what it is we're trying to accomplish here and how are we leaving a legacy and passing that on. So it's the interaction of those five factors. That's the key. 0:25:27.1 AS: Right. So maybe I'll summarize... I'm gonna attempt to summarize what I think was a pretty substantial discussion today. The first thing that I got from it was why are we even talking about intrinsic motivation? As you said, Dr. Deming said, stop doing all this extrinsic motivation and start focusing on intrinsic motivation. And basically, we talked about this final point meaning, which triggers the meaning network, which is the thing that we tap into. You talked about relevance and if something is relevant to a person, then it brings more meaning. And that means, think about asking, we talked about the five whys and understanding that and just running things and running activities and doing lots of stuff without meaning becomes, well, meaningless. We also... 0:26:29.2 DL: Right. [chuckle]. 0:26:30.3 AS: Yeah. We talked about quality and the focus on quality and seeing the outcome too of that great focus on quality and the joy in work that that brings. We talked about purpose and vision about constancy of purpose and that brings meaning as opposed to constantly shifting directions. And you said that vision basically about where we're going taps into people's minds about looking forward and starting to think about that. 0:26:57.4 AS: And you mentioned a few things that I thought were really good about what makes good vision and good vision is leader initiated, it's shared and supported, it's comprehensive and detailed and it's positive and inspiring. And I think that last part really is a part that gets me excited when I look at the things that I'm involved with. And then finally, you talked about leaving a legacy and I think that just speaks for itself. Anything you would add to that summary? 0:27:24.4 DL: No, that's a really good summary. So I will pretty much guarantee people that if you're struggling with the level of quality you're trying to achieve or your people don't seem like they're motivated, you might want to take a look at these five areas of intrinsic motivation and see what you need to change in the organization to see intrinsic motivation emerge because it's always there. It's built innately within us. And if we're not intrinsically motivated, you don't learn to eat, you don't learn to talk, you don't learn to survive in the world before you ever get to work or school. So it's there in individuals, you just have to find ways of managing to uncover it. 0:28:11.1 AS: I don't know about you and I don't know about the listeners and the viewers out there, but I can tell you just this discussion was inspiring in itself. So David, on behalf of everyone at the Deming Institute, I wanna thank you again for our discussion. For listeners, remember to go to Deming.org to continue your journey. And listeners can also learn more about David at langfordlearning.com. This is your host, Andrew Stotz, and I'll leave you with one of my favorite quotes from Dr. Deming and it really applies in what we're talking about today. "People are entitled to joy in work."

Cooperation is built into the human condition - we don't survive without it. In this episode, Andrew and David talk about the connection in our brains between intrinsic motivation and cooperation - and how you can use that to help cultivate intrinsic motivation in an extrinsic world (and even make your organization more competitive!) TRANSCRIPT 0:00:02.9 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 am continuing my discussion with David P. Langford, who has devoted his life to applying Dr. Deming's philosophy to education, and he offers us his practical advice for implementation. Today's topic is, how to apply the neuroscience of cooperation. David, take it away. 0:00:31.3 David Langford: That sounds ominous to me. So... 0:00:35.1 AS: Impressive. 0:00:35.9 DL: Yeah, we're not gonna do brain surgery, but we'll get pretty close to that today, so... [laughter] 0:00:40.4 AS: This is brain science. 0:00:42.5 DL: Yes. So we're continuing this five-part series on intrinsic motivation. So Dr. Deming was adamant that intrinsic motivation was key, and that we're all just born with intrinsic motivation, and it's our systems and the people that we encounter over time that sort of drum it out of us. So how do you get it back, especially from people that have been beaten down from both the school systems and the businesses that they've been, et cetera? And Dr. Deming said, we have a right to joy in work and learning. And if that's true, we have to try to create these environments to make great joy in the work environment. And why do you do that? Well, when you do that, you're gonna get better productivity. You're gonna get more output. 0:01:38.5 DL: People are gonna be happy, or they're gonna stay longer. They're not gonna be looking for other jobs, et cetera, et cetera. So it all makes perfect sense to me that you wanna concentrate on creating intrinsically motivating systems even though you might be in an extrinsic world all the way around you. So in the first session, we talked about control or autonomy or ownership as being key for intrinsic motivation. And there's five key factors that we're going through. And what I wanna impress upon people is that this is a system of intrinsic motivation. So it's all of these factors together. Yes, you can just do one factor and get a result. For instance, you can just apply more cooperation and you'll see a higher level of intrinsic motivation. But if you really wanna see people rise to the true heights of what they're capable of or what their potential is, you have to think about all five of these factors. 0:02:40.5 DL: So that's why we're taking time to go through all these. Today we're talking about cooperation. And that's much different than setting up a competitive environment where people are competing for isolated resources or they're competing for a medal, a gold star, et cetera, et cetera. But cooperation is built into the human condition, thousands of years ago when we first started creating villages and people working together, and people had to cooperate to make armies, people had to cooperate to build houses. There's a myth about how the west was won in the United States, that it was the rugged individual, but yeah, there was some of that. But largely it was wagon trains of cooperative people coming west. And if they didn't cooperate and worked together, they didn't survive, the people that were the rugged individuals often perished either from native American attacks or just the environment itself. So cooperation, to me, is built into the human condition. 0:03:53.0 AS: And before you continue that, let me just ask you about competition versus cooperation. Is competition also built-in, or is cooperation more built in? I mean, that point you just made about how for survival, humans need to depend on each other to some extent as a society, but do humans need to compete with each other? 0:04:20.1 DL: Well, the great irony is, the better you cooperate, the better you compete. [laughter] 0:04:27.7 DL: So if you're at a corporation, for instance, or even a school, and the higher the level of cooperation that you foster and create, you actually do become competitive because you actually become better than other people in your field, et cetera. 0:04:43.2 AS: And how... I love that statement, the better you cooperate, the better you compete. How is that rooted in facts? Is that rooted in... It intuitively makes sense to me that a team or a group that really cooperates well together can achieve amazing things, but is it scientifically correct to say that? 0:05:13.6 DL: Well, can we point to... We could point to obviously numbers of examples of either schools or businesses, et cetera, that have high degrees of cooperation involved. You can get... You can seize part of the market in a competitive thinking or a competitive environment or pitting people against each other to achieve inside of an organization, but to me every example I ever looked at, it doesn't last. Pretty soon, what Deming said is, the only people you're left with are the people who can't get a job someplace else. [laughter] 0:06:01.2 DL: Because they're not happy. It's not fun. You don't feel supported, so... 0:06:06.7 AS: And that brings us back to intrinsic in the idea that it's inherent in us to want to be in a cooperative environment. Like we want to stay in a cooperative environment. 0:06:19.2 DL: Well, it's more than that. When you think about the neuroscience involved, that when you're in a cooperative environment, whether that's a small team or a company or whatever it might be, there's an endorphin released in your brain that actually makes you feel good. It's a really good feeling. The opposite happens. There's two different types of stress levels, and that's a positive sort of stress level. It can still be very stressful work, hard work, et cetera, but when you're working together to make that happen there's a positive stress hormone that's released in your brain. The opposite is true in competitive environments. So the only person that really actually gets that same kind of endorphin is the winner in a competitive environment. Everybody else becomes a demotivator. 0:07:14.9 AS: So it's kind of the endorphin distribution is what it is about. David, I have a situation at my home where I have caregivers helping me take care of my mom. And one of the caregivers left almost eight years as a nurse at a hospital, because she said, "You really couldn't give good care because of all the... Not only the competition amongst people, but also all the things that just took all of the joy out of it." But also the point where you need to push the patient to do what they need to do is the point that everybody would give up. And now when she's working here with my mom and she's made tremendous progress with my mom, it's like we're high fiving and talking about how we're cooperating. I'm looking at kind of bigger picture stuff she's implementing, and mom is getting the benefit. And when you talked about endorphin and the neuroscience of it, I really kind of just felt that, and for the listeners and for the viewers, think about that time that you've cooperated and been successful and it's worked, or even when you failed, but you are in it together. Like that is the endorphin released. 0:08:18.2 DL: Well actually, I think you should have her compete against other caregivers. [laughter] 0:08:24.1 DL: And then to find out who is the best caregiver in... We laugh about that. 0:08:30.4 AS: Now for our trusted listeners out there, they know that you're kidding, right? 0:08:33.3 DL: Yeah. So yeah, we laugh about that here, but people are actually caught in those environments, and those things are being pushed on them and pressured and et cetera. And just like what you just described, your mom's caregiver finally just said, "Look, I'm outta here. I do not want this stressful environment. It's not fun anymore, actually." But I was also thinking about a presentation of a group of second graders, and they were talking about Deming principles that were in their classroom and all the kinds of things that they were doing. And somebody in the audience asked them a question and they said, "Well, how does it make you feel to work like this cooperatively and in a classroom like this, et cetera?" And this little boy without even hesitating said, "I really like the dolphins." He meant endorphins. [laughter] 0:09:36.7 AS: Fire up those dolphins. 0:09:38.8 DL: Yeah. But it was very clear that the teacher had been having discussions with them about that, about how do we feel about this when we cooperate and we sort of work together? So there's... I kind of break it down and there's two different kinds of cooperation we often see, we see natural and we see forced cooperation. So forced cooperation is like, "You, you, and you, get over there and start cooperating, and then we're gonna see who's the top cooperating group in the room," and things like that. That's sort of like competitive cooperation. Whereas natural cooperation is when you basically just set up the environment and encourage people to support and help each other, they will naturally seek out other people to work together. 0:10:33.5 DL: Now, you may... In education, you may have an objective that you want people to learn to work together with people that they wouldn't normally work together. Okay, well, that's a different aim that you're trying to accomplish. And to do that, I would probably do something like just total random selection, just throw everybody's name in a hat and draw out four names and this is your team. Because then everybody knows how team members were chosen to be in that. But where we get into trouble is when teachers think, "I have all the control and I have all the autonomy, and I'm... This is my role, and so I'm gonna pick people. I'm gonna pick this person to work with that person and this person." And students of all ages, even all the way down to kindergarten, preschool, know they're being manipulated [chuckle] when they do that because they can tell that I've obviously been put with this person because I'm supposed to be helping them or something. 0:11:38.7 DL: And so that's not a good way to operate. Pretty soon you'll just have people who hate being in teams, hate working with other people, et cetera, et cetera. Also, you won't see a level of cooperation emerge if you've got a heavy duty grading system going on, ranking system in a corporation, et cetera. Because the bottom line is we're all trying to survive in this world, and if the only way I can survive is to not work well with others, [chuckle] I will do that. So, a friend of mine was getting his MBA in Australia, and he was telling me that they would automatically get together and sort of form study teams with people that they already knew or they knew well, et cetera. But then they'd be in classes and the professor would assign certain books to read or something. 0:12:40.1 DL: And so some of the teams would send out part of their team over to the library to check out all the books so that none of the other team members in the class could have access to the books, or they would have to drive great distances to go to a different library to get the book. And we tend to point at individuals and wanna blame the individual, like, "Oh, well, look what defective people they are." No, they're in a defective system that's forcing them to sacrifice their integrity to get an artificial scarcity of top marks in that class. And so when you see that kind of stuff going on, we always wanna blame the individual because that takes the pressure off of the system or the managers managing a system, whether that's a classroom, a school, a company, or whatever it might be. You can just say, "Oh, well, just look at these defective people and the behavior that they're having." Well, 98% of the behavior is coming from the system itself. Don't like the behavior, then change the system and you'll see a different behavior emerge, or like what we've been taught to do in schools. We leave the system alone and then come up with all kinds of management systems to manage the behavior it's producing, so isolation and putting kids outside in the classroom and depriving of recess and... 0:14:11.0 AS: It's a good point because I think that there's a lot of people in education and also in management that feel like, "Oh, it's an endless cycle of trying to close loopholes that people are breaking through, they're breaking our system, and it's just endless." And you see very intricate systems, well, we've got a way to deal with that. We've got a way to deal with that. They're gonna be punished on this, they're gonna be rewarded on that. And you realize that actually they're causing all of this, and then they're trying to fix it by tampering with all of these things out there. So when you set up a cooperative environment, it's like you start to... You go back to the source and stop the cause of a lot of the issues that you're dealing with. 0:15:01.5 DL: Yeah. I'll never forget, one of my children was going to high school and she was in an honors chemistry class. Okay? So this is supposed to be the best of the best kids in the school. It was a very big school. They're all in this chemistry class. Well, almost all these kids had a perfect 4.0 grade average at that time in that class. And they all knew that something's gotta give because we're not all gonna be valedictorians even though we would all be qualified for it. So my daughter came home the first day of the class and she said, "Dad, I think I'm really gonna like this chemistry class and the chemistry teacher and everything." And he said, "We're all top students. We all work together, we all wanna have great results in chemistry, everything." And she said, "I think he might be really interested in some of your methods and concepts and et cetera." So great. Second day of school, she came home, she said, "Dad, I think I'm gonna drop chemistry." [laughter] 0:16:08.1 DL: I said, "What happened in two days?" And she said, "Well, he spent the entire class explaining how he grades on a curve." And I'll never forget her face. She looked at me and she said, "Do they just think we're complete idiots?" She said, "We've all had advanced math courses. We can't all get A's if you're grading on a curve." The process. So anyway, third day she comes back, she says, "Well, I think I'm gonna be one of the top people and I'll probably get an A anyway because... So I'm gonna stay in the class." So I didn't hear much about the class until the end of the first semester. And she comes home the last week of the first semester, and she said, "Dad, you'll never guess what happened." And I said, "What?" And she said, "Well, a lot of the kids in the class that were on the borderline between grade levels, like from a C to a B or from a B to a... " Especially a B to an A, well, not only had they kept track of their own performance, but they'd kept track of other kids' performance also in the classroom. 0:17:24.0 DL: Were able to single out several individuals in the classroom that no matter what they got on the final, they were still gonna get a B or a C or a D. They could not even take the final and it wasn't gonna change their status or their grade or whatever. But if they could get enough of these kids to do poorly on the final, it would bump some of these other kids up into the top grade level to get an A. And they actually paid kids in the class, [laughter] I can't remember, it was like $20 or something to do poorly on the final. 0:18:03.8 AS: Oh my gosh. 0:18:05.2 DL: So anyway, the principal finds out, the teacher finds out and there's this whole Spanish inquisition, and they're bringing kids in and interrogating them and everything. I couldn't resist it, I had to go in and talk to the principal and I said, "What are you doing?" He said, "Oh, we're gonna have to kick these kids outta class 'cause they obviously cheated." And I said, "They didn't cheat. They played your game better than you." 0:18:28.5 AS: [laughter] That really pissed him off. 0:18:30.4 DL: Yeah. These kids ought to be getting awards of student of the year. This was amazing, amazing thing that they figured out and doesn't feel good because they turned the game back on you and found a way where we could cooperate at a high degree to get greater rewards. 0:18:49.0 AS: And the man behind the curtain has been revealed. 0:18:51.4 DL: Yeah. So, he didn't like that at all. That teacher didn't like that. 0:18:56.8 AS: Sure. 0:18:57.9 DL: And... Oh yeah. So it was later on that year that I had to go in to talk to the principal about something else. And he said to me, jokingly, I think he said, "I know I'm having a bad day when your car is in the parking lot." [laughter] 0:19:12.9 AS: Langford! Now let me ask you, in wrapping this up, I just wanna think about the educator out there who likes what they've heard, but they are operating in somewhat of a competitive environment. What would be kind of step number 1, 2, 3 that they could do to begin to bring a more cooperative environment into their classroom? 0:19:35.1 DL: Well, you have to start looking at what are the barriers to cooperation that are going on in your classroom? Are they outside barriers, outside forces? You may have awards and all kinds of things that are going on, but you don't have to emphasize those. [chuckle] You don't have to daily say, "Well, if you don't get your work done, you're not gonna win the award." And constantly go over that kind of stuff. Instead identify that learning is the aim or the goal, and we're all here to get high levels of learning. I think also there's this misnomer about teams and teamwork. And we think that just because we put people in a team that that's teamwork or cooperation. And that's not really true either. Unless you're actually teaching and training people how to work in a team cooperatively would help set people up. I know many, many students that just almost refuse to be in teams, even at the university level because they say, "I end up doing all the work and then I got these three slackers that'll just go along and we all get the same grade." 0:20:44.1 AS: Right. 0:20:44.1 DL: That's another just convoluted process. On the other hand, if you want people to work well together, then start thinking about, how do you set up an environment so people will naturally work well together? So I created a tool in my tool time book called Code of Cooperation. And it's pretty simple. You just start off asking everybody, what leads to a high degree of cooperation? What would it be like in this class? And you just list those things off but that sort of becomes the code of how you operate. And that's a different message right at the very beginning of the class that, here's our code of cooperation and we can talk about it when we sort of start to fall down and not cooperate. 0:21:40.3 AS: Okay, great. So maybe I'll summarize some of the things that we talked about. The first thing that I was thinking about when you... I love the statement, intrinsic motivation is beaten out of us, basically. It's like we set up systems that destroy that for most and that people have a right to joy in learning. And ultimately when that happens, there's better output. Now, we had talked about control, autonomy, ownership previously, and these are kind of foundational things that begin to lead into cooperation. And then you talked about the different factors and understanding that really there's a system of intrinsic motivation, and you wanna try to apply all the different parts of that system. And so the thing that I thought was interesting was the idea of cooperation is different from setting up a system of competition, like competition for resources as an example. 0:22:42.0 AS: Now you said something that I thought was interesting also, which is the better you cooperate, the better you compete. And I was thinking about in one of my courses, I don't have them do group work, I have them do group support on their individual work. And the end result of that is they really become very close to each other. And so I was thinking that cooperation leads... Competition leads to a lifetime of enemies and cooperation leads to a lifetime of friends. And that partially tells you why the endorphin release is such a major thing. And then you talked about forced versus natural and you wanna set up that natural environment and oftentimes we blame the participants in the system rather than blaming the system. And as you've described the idea of students are really good at gaming the system. 0:23:39.3 AS: And finally, I asked you for some implementation ideas, and you talked about, first for those educators out there, look for barriers that are outside the things that are putting competitive pressures on the students and deemphasize those in your classroom. Those are fine. Let them do that outside, whatever, but try to deemphasize that. The other thing is to understand that teamwork is a cop out for teachers oftentimes because it just ends up work going on to individuals. So don't necessarily think that, "Hey, we're gonna set up teams that's gonna lead to cooperation." And number three was, how do you set an environment for cooperation? Ask this question to the students, discuss it, and when you do, you're gonna come up with a more cooperative environment. Anything you would add to that? 0:24:27.5 DL: Just lastly in Dr. Deming's System of Profound Knowledge, understanding variation is really critical. And if you are setting up a system where you have an artificial scarcity of top marks or top grades, you will not see people cooperate to a very high degree and really they can't. So you always have to be cognizant of the System of Profound Knowledge when you look at these things 'cause it's telling you what to stop doing, [chuckle] and what to start doing. 0:25:01.4 AS: And for educators and managers out there, it's hard to break free from those systems. But if you first just become aware that that bell curve is forcing the grading on that curve or we get rid of... We give bonuses to our 'A' employees and we kick out our 'C' employees, like these types of structures that are built into systems is what Dr. Deming taught about, that you don't have to become aware of these things and the influences, you may not be able to change them right away. So, great point. 0:25:34.2 DL: Well, you're always gonna have the bell curve no matter what system you set up or whatever, but the real aim is to move the whole bell curve up. So now I have only a finite number of people doing top level work or 'A' work or the best type work. I'm actually moving the whole system up so I have a greater and greater number of people all reaching that level. 0:25:58.0 AS: Yeah. So it's like the application of the bell curve, it's a tool to understand what's going on, but it's not a tool that works for rewarding and punishing, which seems like that's what we see when we see a bell curve oftentimes. 0:26:12.7 DL: That sounds like a whole 'nother podcast right there, so... 0:26:15.5 AS: Boom, we're gonna be rolling into the next one on that, I think. All right. Well, David, on behalf of everyone at the Deming Institute, I wanna thank you again for this discussion. And for listeners out there, remember to go to deming.org to continue your journey. Listeners can learn more about David at langfordlearning.com. This is your host, Andrew Stotz, and I'll leave you with one of my favorite quotes from Dr. Deming, and it's particularly pertinent to our discussion today, People are entitled to joy in work.

How do you tap into intrinsic motivation when the assignments (or jobs) are boring or feel irrelevant? Andrew and David talk about the role of challenge in intrinsic motivation, including why being challenged is key to innovation and improvement. TRANSCRIPT 0:00:02.7 Andrew Stotz: My name is Andrew Stotz and I will be your host as we continue our journey into the teachings of Dr. W. Edwards Deming. Today, I'm continuing my discussion with David P. Langford, who has devoted his life to applying Dr. Deming's philosophy to education and he offers us his practical advice for implementation. Today's topic is the role of challenge in intrinsic motivation. David, take it away. 0:00:30.6 David P. Langford: Hello, Andrew. Good to be back. 0:00:33.2 AS: Good to see you. 0:00:33.3 DL: So how challenging is challenge, that's really what we're after about here today. So this is part four in a five-part podcast series we've been doing on intrinsic motivation, and so when I first encountered the concept of intrinsic motivation and it's actually when I was getting my undergraduate degree and I was so intrigued about it, but even like today, there was no training in it, there was no real... There was just, "Here it is, and yeah, intrinsic motivation is really good, so good luck with that." And all the training was around extrinsic motivation, how to motivate people, and it's the same today. I get calls and I get emails and stuff, and people always wanna know, can't we use bonuses and can't we use this and... You can use those kinds of things. I always think of the phrases that Dr. Deming had, he said, "The destruction has to start somewhere." [laughter] 0:01:40.2 DL: And people would ask him about those kinds of things like, yeah, you could do that, but... You're on the road to destruction. So I've been trying to explain the five researched key elements of intrinsic motivation that Deming talked about, and how do you actually change the system, whether that's a business or a school or a classroom, or whatever it might be. So you have people becoming more intrinsically motivated, so we've gone through a couple. So we talked about control or autonomy in the situation, we talked a lot about, in podcast number two, about cooperation, and then podcast number three is support, and now we're gonna talk about the role of challenge in intrinsic motivation. So, it's not so easy as just to like flip a switch and say, "Okay, now we're gonna intrinsically motivate people." It is a complex thinking that has to take place in management to create an environment where people can be intrinsically motivated, right? 0:02:51.2 AS: Yeah. 0:02:51.9 DL: And usually, if you find people looking like they're not motivated, Deming talked about probably 94% to 98% of the reason they're not motivated to come to work, is the work itself, the job. So when we start to talk about challenge, you wanna think about the job itself, is the job that say you're having a student do... If I tell people, "Memorize these 10 spelling words for Friday," well, yeah, for some students, that could be really challenging, for others, it's just sheer boredom of, "Why are we doing this? Where did this come from? There's no real challenge to it." So, you can take just about anything that you have that you want people to do... 0:03:39.6 DL: And in fact, Deming was actually a master of this, he went into some of the most mundane manufacturing places in the world where people are just sitting all day long and doing the same darn thing all over and over, thousands of times, and then leaving and then, how do you motivate those people? Well, let's just pay them more, let's do this or that or the other thing. And it didn't work. And the Hawthorne Studies showed that, oh yeah, you could turn the lights off and productivity goes up, or you could turn the lights on, productivity... Or you have music, or you can do all these kinds of things, but what they discovered was that it was the fact that management actually cared. [chuckle] That made the difference, and they were actually doing and trying to do something to improve the working environment is what was really discovered through that. But, Deming was the master of going in and teaching people to use their brains and to begin to improve their own situation. And that's a challenge. I'm sitting here doing this all day long, the same tedious task all day long, but all of a sudden somebody gives me the keys to improve this situation, make a change here, do something... 0:04:57.2 DL: And that's where PDSA came from, or originally PDCA was Dr. Shewhart. But Plan-Do-Study-Act, make a plan, do it, study it and act on it, did it work? It could be just that simple of a process. Now if we get together with a few other people and we study the process of what's happening, and we're given the authority or the control or autonomy, like we talked about earlier, to actually make a change, ah, well, that's pretty challenging. That's pretty interesting. And in my work with education, over and over and over when I go in and start working with people and teaching them this same kind of concept, I hear all the time administrators saying that, "We got dead wood on our staff," or, "We've got people that just don't care," or... Well, it's probably because you taught them to do that, or somebody previously taught them to do that because that's not normal if people are acting like that, etcetera, and yes, they have to make money, and yes, they have to live, and so they'll just learn to quit work, but keep the job. [chuckle] And I'll show up every day and do what I'm supposed to do, but it doesn't mean I'm gonna put in any extra effort in or any thinking or anything else, so... 0:06:21.0 AS: I can imagine a listener or a viewer listening to this and thinking to themselves, "Yeah, let's do a challenge. Let's do a competition." [laughter] 0:06:29.1 AS: Not realizing that when you're talking about challenge, and when talking about intrinsic motivation, it's not about a challenge to compete for a spelling contest or something, it's a different type of challenge, so tell us more about what kind of challenges people respond to. 0:06:46.7 DL: Yeah, so some of the ways that you can get challenge into a mundane task or a situation is you wanna think about excitement, how can I bring a level of excitement into this situation? And well, how do you get excitement going? Well, you have to think about the level of difficulty. And so, in neuroscience, there's actually sort of a learning zone. So, too much challenge, I'm gonna be overwhelmed, I'll be frustrated, I'll get the deer in the headlights look, I just can't do anything. Too little challenge, I got boredom going on. So there's a learning zone where the challenge has to be just right, and the problem, especially with teachers, is teachers are always trying to assess that with the students that they're working with, right? They're trying to set the level of challenge, but what I learned over the last 40 years is, the only person that can really know what is challenging is the individual himself, even like kindergarten, first grade, second grade students know if something is challenging or not, and when you set up a situation where they can sort of choose the level of challenge involved with that, you get a level of excitement that you didn't get before because the level of difficulty is there. 0:08:20.2 DL: So, I think we talked a little bit in one of the previous podcasts about gaming and video games, and so many education institutes, institutions, they wanna ban gaming and they wanna ban all those kind of stuff, but why are those things so addicting? Why are kids spending so much time on that? Because they're setting the level of challenge. They're setting the level of excitement that they can handle, and if they go up too many levels too fast, this game becomes so overwhelming and so difficult that they just can't cope with it, and so will end up just quitting or backing down a level or two until they sort of master that and move forward. So, being cognizant of that level of difficulty and getting the individual to understand how to set that level of difficulty is where it's really at. I remember the story of, I think it's Secretary of State with, I think it was Nixon administration or something... Anyway, there were some... 0:09:26.4 AS: Kissinger. 0:09:30.0 DL: Yes, Kissinger. You got it. Yes. See, there's a level of challenge for you and you win. [laughter] But, Kissinger wanted some kind of a plan or a military plan or something from one of the generals about something that they were doing or whatever, and gave him a timeline, and so the general came back with a plan, and Kissinger listened patiently to the plan and said, "General, is that the best you can do?" General thought for a while and said, "Well, actually, no. Given the time and resources we had, etcetera, we thought, well, this is the best we can do." "Well, why don't you go back and re-look at it and do it again, and see if that's the best you can do." Well, the general came back two or three more times and each time Kissinger said, "General, is that really the best you can do?" And finally the general said, "By golly, we worked on this, and I believe this is the best we could do at this point in time." Kissinger said, "Okay, that's all I wanted." [laughter] 0:10:29.8 AS: I'll read it. 0:10:30.0 DL: That's right. He just really wanted to know. So even in schools, kids learn to play the game of learning really quick. How do you get through school? By giving a teacher what they want. You don't get through school if you're super innovative... Well, you'll get through school, but you're not gonna probably get the As and master stuff if you're actually being innovative all the time and thinking outside of the box, and I think it was even Einstein got a D in physics or math or something because he kept challenging... 0:11:01.4 AS: Messing around. 0:11:03.0 DL: Yeah, he kept challenging the teacher's theories all the time. Well, that's not the way to get through school. You wanna give people the answers they expect, right? 0:11:15.8 AS: Yeah. I have a... 0:11:17.5 DL: That's the level of challenge that we're talking about. 0:11:20.3 AS: Right. I have an experience when I was 18, and I went to work in this factory, and it was a plastic molding factory back when plastic molding was done in America, and it was a very mundane job, and I would go crazy all day long waiting for the break and it would just drive me nuts. And I would be thinking about stuff all the time, and the way the company did it is they gave us three months, and at the end of three months, they'd tell us whether they're gonna keep us or not, and I started the job with a couple of other guys, some of them didn't survive, but this one guy did survive, and it was the night before we had the decision date, and I said... I asked him... We were talking about it and he asked me, "What do you think?" I said, "Man, I hope they don't offer me a job 'cause this is just gonna kill me, this is just... There is no challenge in this job." And I was like... 0:12:13.2 DL: I don't care how much they pay me. 0:12:14.5 AS: Yeah, exactly. Which I felt like must be the same answer that he was gonna give, but he gave a very different answer. He said, "Oh, I hope I get this job." And I was like, "Why?" And he said, "Because I just... I like it, I know exactly what to do. I don't have to bring the job home, I'm not facing all this stress and I can deal with that." And that was a wake-up call when I later became a supervisor at Pepsi, I was able to understand that different people have different objectives from work and different things they want from it, and some people want a big challenge and some people don't necessarily. So my question to you is, how do you handle different people that have different willingness or desire to take on challenge? 0:12:57.7 DL: Yeah, and Deming talked about that a lot in his seminars too, and one of the responses I often remember was, he said, "Sometimes people are just not in the right job." So, maybe there's another job within the company that would be much more challenging for them, but... 'Cause everybody has their own expertise that they bring to a situation, whether that's in a classroom or a job or management or whatever it might be, people have this level of expertise and maybe you're not just... You're just not being challenged to use your level of thinking and background and expertise in a new way. 0:13:40.2 AS: But in this case, that guy may not... I don't know if that would have changed anything 'cause what he was looking for from the job was not necessarily challenge. He wasn't a bad employee. In fact, he got the job in the next day, and... 0:13:54.3 DL: Well, there's two different kinds of stresses, right? There's eustress and there's distress, right? So eustress is when you are challenged by the job, and you're like, "Oh, yeah. This is great. This job's really challenging. I gotta figure this stuff out and I gotta work through this," or distress like, "These people are trying to kill me," or, "This is a... This is no fun for me. I don't like this at all. It's not something I wanna be doing," right? So a manager has to be acutely aware of who they're working with. And part of that happens in the hiring process, are you asking the right questions? And we have the phrase, "Do you have the right people on the bus?" Well, do you actually know what the bus is? What do you really want them to be doing? 0:14:46.3 AS: In fact, the person that was in trouble in that case was me. They probably... Yeah... If I had an education and I had more understanding of the world, I could have said, "Hey, could I try something else?" But I didn't have that understanding. One of the things I was thinking about that you said earlier that made me think about this situation was also that there's one thing that that other guy would respond to. And that is identifying errors or mistakes or problems because everybody is frustrated by that and because they gotta repeat their work and they just don't like that. So you could, I guess, argue that in fact, continuous improvement is something that people will be... Feel the excitement of that challenge about. 0:15:34.9 DL: Yeah, and I've encountered that with educators as well. I've had teachers just come up and tell me flat out, "I don't wanna have to think. Just tell me what to do, and I'll go do it." The problem with that is all of a sudden you're faced with, say 30 students, coming from random variation in the system coming in, and all of a sudden you're challenged with dealing with a level that you've never had to deal with before, right? And if you haven't learned to think and change and adapt and understand that situation, you're just gonna blame the individuals. "We just need some new kids here," right? Well, that's like you get that... You're in a band and you get feedback from the audience that, "Well, what you're doing really sucks," and you're thinking, "Whoa! I just need a different audience." [laughter] 0:16:37.6 AS: That's why I go to talk to my mom, 'cause she always applauds. [laughter] 0:16:41.8 DL: Yeah. There you go. So another way we can get challenged is through just novelty. So too much sameness does the opposite of challenge and it puts people into boredom and stuff. I always tell people, "If you don't believe me, just go to a local church and watch what happens after about 20 minutes of one method, one person talking, everybody just sitting there listening. And then you start to see a whole audience of people nodding their heads in agreement. But really, they're just trying to keep their heads up, their eyes open," right? And this is the same thing in a classroom. Past 10 minutes, if you're doing the same lecture format, the same thing all the time, there's no novelty there. There's nothing to look forward to. There's no challenge, or... 0:17:31.5 DL: I remember I was in a Master's Degree statistics class and it was a 3-hour class, two times a week at night, and the first class was just all lecture. This guy lectured on statistics and so everybody got it. And I remember it was not a very big class, only about 12 students, but the next class, there were only half as many there and when he got ready to start the class, these people would all get their tape recorders out and just punch all these tape recorders because students all realized that there's no point in me sitting here if that's all we're gonna do is just sit and listen for three hours, right? And the professor didn't care either. He didn't care if you're there or not. So that's kinda the opposite of challenge. 0:18:22.6 AS: When I see those heads nodding in my classroom, I always basically say, "Everybody come up to the board. I'm gonna show you something," and then I just do the next lecture with everybody standing." [chuckle] 0:18:35.1 DL: Yeah, so that's really good. So how do you get novelty? You can get novelty through music, adding color, and what you just described, adding movement. Change the situation and then watch how the behavior changes instead of leaving the situation alone and expecting a different behavior, which is, insanity kind of a thing. So you're exactly right. As soon as you see that, you should be changing the situation immediately. Do something different. 0:19:02.5 AS: I've been teaching an ethics class, and that's kind of known for being really sleepy. So what I do is I created a... This is gonna sound kind of funny, a cheat sheet for my ethics class. But basically I teach a little bit and then I tell the students, "Okay, write this down on your cheat sheet." So they have to do a physical activity and then after that we go back to a little bit of a lecture. And then I say, "Okay, now take a quiz question." Then they do that and then we look at the scores and see what they understood, and what they didn't, and basically by doing this type of thing, I'm trying to bring variety, novelty is the word you use. And yeah, and if I didn't do that in that topic, it's gonna be all sleepy, sleepyheads. 0:19:48.4 DL: Yeah, sometimes people interpret that as "Oh, alright, we're going to do an ice breaker." No, that's not novelty. Just a lot of people just look at that and just say, "Oh, just skip the icebreaker," right? 0:20:02.1 AS: Yeah. 0:20:02.2 DL: You have to bring novelty to the learning situation. So I remember when I was in college, I had a class called the Assassination of American Presidents. Fantastic class, but I remember one time we were talking about eyewitness accounts in murder cases and assassinations like that. And while the professor starts to talk about this and he's going through his points and stuff, probably he could never do it today, but these two people burst into the room with masks over their heads, demanded something from the professor, and actually got one of the students and pulled them out of the classroom with them, etcetera. And then while everybody's sitting there in panic, the professor says, "Okay, I want you to take out a piece of paper, write down everything that you saw." 0:20:53.9 DL: 80% of the students in that class swore up and down that these two masked individuals had guns and were holding people hostage. And then they had... He had the mask, people come back in. None of us got it right, because the adrenaline was there and there's novelty and all this kind of stuff, but it turns out these two guys had bananas in their hands, but we were all sure that they were guns and... But that's the problem with that, but that was so novel that every time you went to class, there was something, and then by the third class, you're kind of wary that there's some trick... Is there some trick to this or not? 0:21:39.5 DL: But still, you're paying attention, because there's something going on there. By the way, to get it challenging is to make sure it's compelling. And Deming talked a lot about the purpose of an organization and the aim, etcetera. But is the work more compelling than just the work itself? You think about... Like building the space shuttle is a good example. Well, I'm not just putting in rivets in the side of this space shuttle. I'm actually creating something that's a national heritage and we're doing something that's never been done before and... The work is compelling in that sense. Also, think about... I think Deming talked one time about most of the work in manufacturing during World War II was being done by women, as men were in the army for the most part, and they worked in teams, they communicated, they had fun in their work, but the work was also compelling. You knew you're actually building that airplane for your uncle in the South Pacific. And if you had errors in it or problems that that plane wasn't gonna fly right, you could be... Your family member could be in trouble. So, sometimes that has to be explicit that you have to understand how to make work compelling. 0:23:11.6 AS: Yeah. And I'm gonna wrap it up and then I want to also hear kind of a final word from you about a challenge to the listeners and the viewers to think about how to make things compelling. But let me go through a couple of things that we learned from this discussion. Of course, we're at part four of five part of intrinsic motivation. And right now, we're talking about the idea of challenge. And what was interesting that you said from the beginning was that, we don't get any training on intrinsic motivation, we get all this training on extrinsic motivation. Okay, here's how you do this and here's how you do the scores and here's how you do the competition. And what you also said is that it takes some complex thinking to think about creating an environment of challenge. And you also mentioned that too much challenge for some people could be overwhelming and too little would be boredom and so you've got to try to judge that for the students and people involved. 0:24:13.9 AS: And then you talked about also different types of stress and how are people responding to that stress? And I think that... When I think about that, I think about a lot of managers just wanna deliver stress. You didn't hit your numbers or whatever. And then just to wrap it up, you talked about the idea of how novelty in making things not the same all the time, whether it's music, color, emotion, whatever that is, can bring some excitement and some challenge. And then I think you wrapped it up with what really brings the most powerful challenge is to understand the aim or the purpose of what you're doing. And that purpose basically is what can raise your level of challenge. So if there's anything to add, please add it, and otherwise, let's give everybody a little challenge to bring challenge into their classroom, starting from after listening to this podcast. 0:25:14.5 DL: Yeah, I'd say just the last thing I would add to that is that, you can always get a level of challenge by having creativity involved in the process. So we're studying the Pythagorean theorem in mathematics, and so the creativity is you're to go home and apply the Pythagorean theorem in some way and come back and present it to the rest of the class. Well, that's a much different challenge than do Problems A through Z, and just come back with the answers. But thinking about introducing a level of creativity into the work is very challenging, so... 0:25:55.2 AS: So what would be a challenge for the listeners that they could bring into their own life, their own classroom, their own workplace? 0:26:05.9 DL: Yeah. It really doesn't matter what workplace we're talking about. Once you understand that these are the factors that create intrinsic motivation, you can start looking at your environment and say, "Okay, how could I make this more challenging? Could I add a level of excitement to this that was probably never even there before, a level of novelty? Or could I make this work compelling or add creativity?" I grew up on a farm in Colorado, and I used to sometimes hate that, I'd have to go out with my father to build a fence or something. And one of the first things he would say is, "Okay, so what are we trying to do here?" "Just tell me what to do." Well, what are we trying to do here, and go through this, and then why do we need to build the fence in this way?" And I'd go, "Well, 'cause its stock gets out and... " "What happens if stock gets out?" And he was doing with five whys stuff just intuitively, but after a few years, he could just say, "Hey, go out and build this fence 'cause you know how to do it," and the challenge was much greater of figuring it out on my own and having to work that through. So even something so simple as that can have a level of challenge to it. So think about how you can make just about anything you do, challenging. 0:27:28.0 AS: Great challenge for all of us. What is the purpose of what we're doing and let's bring that out. Well David, on behalf of everyone at Deming Institute, I wanna thank you again for your discussion. And for listeners, remember to go to deming.org to continue your journey, and listeners can learn more about David at langfordlearning.com. This is your host Andrew Stotz, and I will leave you with one of my favorite quotes from Dr. Deming, "People are entitled to joy in work."

In this episode, Andrew and David discuss one aspect of cultivating intrinsic motivation: the role of support. Cooperation and collaboration don't just happen, and leaving a group of people - particularly kids - to just do as they please isn't cultivating motivation. So how do you support intrinsic motivation? 0:00:03.0 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 discussion with David P. Langford who has devoted his life to applying Dr. Deming's philosophy to education and he offers us his practical advice for implementation. Today's topic is The Role of Support in Intrinsic Motivation. David, take it away. 0:00:29.5 David Langford: Thank you. So we're working through five factors that lead to high levels of intrinsic motivation. And we started off with control, autonomy, ownership, however you want to think about that, but that's number one. And then we had a discussion around that you have to develop levels of cooperation. And today I want to talk about the idea of support. So I'll never forget a kindergarten class, so students was giving a presentation to the State Board of Education and they were telling the state board about all the ownership they had in class and how they cooperated and how they did all these things on their own and they just knew what to do and had high degrees of ownership. And one of the board members said, "Well, if you're doing all these things, what's your teacher doing?" And without hesitating, I'll never forget this little boy grabs a microphone and he says, "The teacher is not in the closet, you know." 0:01:39.7 AS: My gosh, insightful. 0:01:42.1 DL: Oh yeah, the room was, there was probably 300 people in the room, at this state board meeting, and you could, the whispers were just, "What did he say? What is he talking about?" See, he knew intuitively that he was being allowed to do these things and supported to do these things and to work together and have a real community in the classroom. And that just didn't happen by itself. 0:02:12.4 AS: That's interesting because in that case, you sometimes would think, oh, the teacher's just, you know, letting the class go free or something like that. But it takes a lot of work. I mean, just as you talked, I was thinking about how confrontational America is in the world. You know, here I am in Asia and most people outside of the world do not think that America is a cooperative partner. In fact, people around the world oftentimes say, you know, they don't know whether it's better to be an enemy or a friend of America. And there's that just competitive. There's just not that cooperative. How do we work this out? How do we work together to get a better result for all of us? So continue on. Tell us more about support. 0:02:57.6 DL: Yeah. So if you if you want to see more intrinsic motivation emerge, you need to take a look at what you are doing. And you know, when you point a finger there, what is it that saying, there's three fingers pointing back at you? So yeah, what am I doing and how am I managing in such a way to not have a high degree of cooperation or a high degree of performance in a group? And so there are some very key factors that I've learned over the last 40 years that will either hinder or help intrinsic motivation to come out. And the first one I want to talk about, how do you support people is the area of feedback. So feedback versus evaluation. 0:03:53.9 DL: So you know, we always think that our job is to evaluate people, evaluate performance, evaluate a paper that you write and then give it back to you, put a grade on it, etcetera. People don't respect evaluation very well. There are just so many opinions in it, etcetera. Performance evaluations, Deming talked vociferously about getting rid of performance evaluations, but they do respect feedback. So when I'm in a classroom and I have an assignment, let's say it's a paper to write and you hand it in, yeah, I could go through it, put red marks all over it and then hand it back to you with a B minus on it and you'll probably just throw it in the trash can on the way out the door and that's the end of it. 0:04:50.6 DL: But if we've gone over what a quality standard is for that paper and what it should look like to meet that standard and now you hand that in and I start to give you feedback on it. I sit down with you and I say, "You know, this paragraph doesn't quite make sense. I think you really should rework these sentences and go over this and your punctuation is not quite right here and if you make these changes, I think you're going to be very close to being there, to meeting that standard, right?" Well, that's much different because I have a way to get out of my hole, right? But if I just have a B minus on it or C plus or whatever, there's no way for me to get out of that hole or to fix it. So it also brings into the whole grading thing. That's partly why Deming was so adamant about getting rid of grading in both corporations and schools, etcetera. Because it just limits the masses of people trying to achieve a high level of quality in anything they do. So moving to a feedback system is extremely important to get support for intrinsic motivation. 0:06:08.4 AS: And what do you say about the teachers and administrators and people who say, "Yeah, but feedback takes a lot more time." 0:06:19.2 DL: Exactly. So we have to think about things like that. If I'm having to spend way too much time giving feedback to people, it's probably because the upstream process wasn't very good. And I needed to go back and look at that and see, wow, if I want to have fewer and fewer students needing feedback to get it to a high quality standard, I might want to look first at the process I'm using to... The explanation of the assignment or how we went over it or examples that I show people up-front or whatever it might be. But that process is producing the end result. If I don't like the result, don't blame the people. They're just part of the system. 0:07:00.4 AS: It's interesting because I have a course that I've been teaching for a long time. And I have a lot of students going through it on a regular basis. And I can see the weaknesses when the reports are submitted. And then I go back and think, Okay, how do we resolve this? For instance, I want them to write in a very clear format. I want three bullets. I want some supporting arguments. So when I started teaching that, what I did is I made an Excel file that had a limit. You could only type in a certain amount of characters. And I said, "Okay, your first assignment is to operate within this limit." And then what I did, David, was I created a macro that would take a picture of that in that student's Excel file. And I said, "Submit your picture to the group. And then let's discuss those." 0:07:52.0 AS: And once I then have them present, five or 10 of them, randomly call on students to present your ideas, very quickly, all students can start to see, "Oh, crap, I see the weakness here. I wasn't that clear on this." And they started looking not only at common principles, but they also see their weaknesses. And then that then goes back into my lecture as I revise it for the next group to say, "Okay, how do I make sure that they don't make those mistakes the next time?" And that's one of the things about the manufacturing process that made Deming such a, it's so, it's sometimes simple to apply in a consistent process that's just cranking away. How do we think about how we apply that in a classroom that we do once a year or once every semester or once every term? 0:08:37.6 DL: Well, one of the previous podcasts, we talked about the Bell curve or the histogram responses of somebody. So your job as a, especially in education, is to not flatten the curve so that you have greater distances from top performers to low performers, but to actually sort of tighten the curve up so it's very tight. So what used to be top performance is actually being achieved by some of your lowest level students, and the top students are actually doing things that are just unbelievable because the whole curve is much, much tighter between the haves and the have-nots, so to speak. 0:09:29.4 AS: And are we also trying to shift that, once we've tightened it, then we have the ability to start to shift it to say, "Okay, what next level of output could we get with students," or something like that? 0:09:40.7 DL: Yeah, my job is to see that the average performance goes up, overall. And the only way to get a higher average is for everybody to achieve, you know, moving that up. So there's some other key factors that are critical for supporting intrinsic motivation. So the next one is what I call fail forward. So you're going to have to put people in a fail forward loop. So either you just didn't do the assignment at all, in which you're going to have to fail forward a lot, right? Because you didn't, you have to produce something or you produced something, but it didn't, it doesn't yet meet the standard for high quality work. Well, I'm going to give you time to get it to that standard because that's my job. My job is to see that you learn this material. My job is not to come up with sophisticated rating and ranking methods and spend all my time tracking that and figuring it through. That's not the job of teaching and learning. 0:10:48.7 AS: Can you explain fail forward a little bit more? It's not something I've heard before. 0:10:54.2 DL: Well, I have five children and they all learned to walk, whether my wife and I helped them or not. But it was always great fun for us when they got ready to walk and we knew they were standing up. And so I'd stand them up and my wife would maybe get 10 feet away. And then she'd say, "Come on, come on, you can do it." They don't really know what they're supposed to do or what's going on. But they're glad that we're both there supporting them learning to walk. But invariably, our kids would take about three little steps and then they'd fall back on their little bums. And, you know, and so what did we do intuitively as parents? 0:11:37.7 AS: Go pick them up. What did you... 0:11:39.1 DL: That's right. 0:11:40.5 AS: Yeah. 0:11:41.1 DL: Or we would applause or say, good job or right. But this doesn't happen in schools. You know, my wife and I were both teachers, so we gave our children D's and F's on walking the first time around as motivation so that they'd learn to walk. 0:11:58.1 AS: You go in the corner. 0:12:00.3 DL: Yeah. So, yeah. So when we look at some basic things like that, we realize as part of the human condition, somebody that was actually grading the performance of a toddler walking like that, we would probably report them to social services or something that this is so dangerous. But why would we want to do that to them when they are in first grade trying to learn math or they're trying to write an English paper at the high school level. Right? You would want to have the same philosophy that, hey, you made an attempt. Your attempt wasn't quite reaching the standard yet, but you'll get there. You'll get there. And I'm here to support you. And my job is here that you, as long as you keep making these attempts, you're going to keep failing forward until you get there. 0:12:47.2 AS: Right. 0:12:49.2 DL: And then it's pretty amazing when you understand the neuroscience behind all this, right? Because we talked earlier about the control issue, about time, but everybody's going to learn at different rates of speed and different time. And the more I understand that variability built into the time factor, I can manage a system so that more and more and more people are all achieving very high levels of performance. And that's my real job. 0:13:20.8 DL: So another area that I want to talk about under the area of support, how to use support in an environment of intrinsic motivation is sharing. I just over the years just found that sharing is so intrinsic to people. So that's whether I have students just pair up, "Hey, pair up with the student next to you and share, you know, what did you do and how did you do it and what did you learn from that experience, etcetera." Or all the way to I have exemplary performance in my classroom by five students, and I'm going to give them a chance to share what it is they accomplished. Now, that's vastly different than me saying, I've got these five students and they're all going to get an award for being most improved students in the class or something like that. Everybody else in the class has no idea how those people got there. So they intuitively will make up their own stories. Oh, well, you know, the teacher just likes her or he's a brown noser or he's this or that. Right? That's where all of these terms come from. 0:14:34.1 AS: Right. 0:14:34.5 DL: Because they have no idea how they actually accomplished this great thing that they did because that wasn't shared properly. 0:14:43.3 AS: Right. 0:14:44.8 DL: And sharing is also a way that you can honor people that have made breakthroughs. It doesn't always have to be your top performers. Right. It could be somebody that really worked hard on something and had a big breakthrough. Is it as good as the top performer in the classroom? No, because I understand variation in the classroom. But... 0:15:05.5 AS: And you just said that somebody that went... What I was thinking about is they had a, somebody had a major breakthrough. But actually, if somebody follows the process of failing forward and they don't have a massive breakthrough, they're still going through the right process. And I was recently interviewing a lady named Annie Duke, who talked about, who talks all about, you know, that the process is more important than the outcome in decision making. You may have had a good outcome only because of luck but if you're improving your process of the way you're doing it, your probability of a better outcome over time is great. So even if somebody, you know, having someone share their experience of failing forward and keep falling down and, you know, how does it feel and what is it that's motivating you to keep getting up and, you know, yeah, because I want to do this or that. I want to, you know. So that's what I was thinking about when you were talking about that. 0:16:04.5 DL: Yeah, even inside of a grading system, when I started learning about Deming I couldn't just stop grading students. But I could apply these methods and this thinking to have more and more and more of the students all do A work. Right. So instead of like 5% of the students getting A's, could I get it to 20% of the students doing that level of work? And now can I get it to 50% of the students getting that work? And just like what you're talking about, it all has to do with the process of, you know, what are we doing and how do we do explanations? Or maybe I shouldn't even be doing an explanation. It's just getting in the way of people. And using that data to try to understand is my process producing the result I want. So in a classroom as a teacher, I have a process. I always taught my students you have processes, too. Right? So if your processes are not getting you to the level, you may be want to start talking to some of your colleagues and saying, hey, what are you doing or how are you going about that or how did you make that breakthrough? Because they may have insights that you've never thought about before. 0:17:16.5 AS: So if we look at these five key factors for a system of intrinsic motivation, control, cooperation, support, challenge and meaning, right now, we're talking about support. And would it be about also you're creating a supportive environment, encouraging people to support each other and giving them feedback? And that's part of being in a supportive environment. 0:17:40.6 DL: Absolutely. Yeah. 0:17:42.1 AS: So let me... 0:17:42.7 DL: That's why I keep saying it's a system of intrinsic motivation. These are interrelated factors. And the more you think about each one of them and how it relates to the others, you become sort of a guru in the classroom that no matter who comes into your classroom over time, you will start to see them more intrinsically motivated when you change that situation. And so lastly, I would want to say that this takes a role change, takes a role change, whether you're a teacher, administrator, a parent, a student. It's going to take a role change to think about working well with other people and cooperating. Right. And sharing what I have. See, I can't, what we talked about earlier is I can't really share my great process if it's going to be a detriment to me. Right. If there's going to be... 0:18:48.3 AS: My grade is going to go down on a curve, if it's graded on a curve, I have this amazing way of really thinking about this particular topic. So I think I'll just keep it to myself. 0:18:58.3 DL: Yeah. So, and we see this in really, you know, big systems. I won't mention the name of the university, but I was working at a university and they caught 200 students cheating on electrical engineering exams. Well, in the investigation, not only were they cheating, this cheating cycle had been going on for 12 years. The students were passing down the answers to this professor's tests for 12 years from generation to generation. They were actually being intrinsically motivated to share, you know, to the next generation about what was going on. But what did they want to do? Well, they wanted to expel the 200 students that were caught cheating and all this. But without understanding, you created a system forcing people to sacrifice their integrity to get an artificial result, because all the classes were being graded on curves. And so... You're not going to get the grade you want unless you cheat. And so the system is forcing people to do these defective behaviors. 0:20:12.5 AS: And, David, I have the most horrible response to that by the teachers or the administrators that you're telling. And they say, yeah, but we're preparing them for work. 0:20:23.0 DL: I don't want those people working for me. 0:20:24.2 AS: Yeah. 0:20:25.5 DL: Right? 0:20:28.2 AS: Yeah. But it's... 0:20:29.7 DL: We're preparing them to sacrifice their integrity when they come to work. Yeah, that's really what we want. 0:20:35.2 AS: Disaster. And it is. There's so much of that in the workforce. And so I think what you're talking about is so critical related to education, because if we can get these seeds planted right, I mean, we already know that people are, and you've talked about it, that people are intrinsically motivated naturally, people are naturally wanting to cooperate. And if we can continue that cooperation and intrinsic motivation, at least they know in school, like this is the best way to get the best out of people instead of whipping them like a horse, you know, as an example. So maybe I'll wrap up. Yep. Go ahead. 0:21:11.0 DL: Well, it's funny that you mentioned horses because I actually raise horses. But I, one of the things when people come to visit our horses and stuff, I have to explain to them that, you know, we don't use whips and we don't use carrots and we don't give them treats because you start to give a horse a treat for whatever. Pretty soon they're biting somebody and they're trying to dig in your pockets. And again, defective behavior that I'm encouraging or I created. And even the horses have an innate sense of wanting to work and do a good job. And when they see that you're really supporting them, that's our topic today, supporting them in doing that job, they can achieve amazing things, that even works with animals, so. 0:22:02.5 AS: Yeah, that's a great point. I know for anybody that's watched anything like The Dog Whisperer or The Horse Whisperer and all that, it's all about, you know, if you ever watch that show, The Dog Whisperer with Cesar, Cesar Millan, you know... 0:22:17.5 DL: Millan. 0:22:17.8 AS: Yeah. What you realize is it's all about untangling the mess that the adults or the people cause with these dogs. And it becomes so clear. 0:22:31.3 DL: He even says, you know, I don't have bad dogs, we have bad people, so. 0:22:35.8 AS: Yeah, yeah. And that's a lot of what we're talking about in the whole education space is how do we, you know, instead of focusing on the kids, focus on how we improve the system, because ultimately that's our responsibility. And if I just would share one last thing, it is that I remember going to my first Deming seminar, it was in 1990 and I was about, I don't know, a 24 year old guy, and I was working for Pepsi, and I saw a lot of the stuff that Deming was talking about. But, man, when he turned and went after some of the leading managers in that room and I wasn't one, I mean, I was a supervisor on the factory floor, and I heard that, I was like, whoa, that was a wake up call to me to say, take responsibility. You know, it is our responsibility to set this system so that there is an intrinsic motivation. So that just brought me back to that moment. 0:23:28.2 DL: Yeah. Any of us that ever saw Deming have great stories, but your story made me think about I was at a conference with him one time and an Admiral got up and asked a question and Deming said, "We already covered that this morning. Where were you, in the parking lot?" [laughter] 0:23:49.2 DL: That was the Deming wit. 0:23:51.9 AS: Yes, it could be biting, biting. Well, let me summarize some of this now. Again, we've been talking about the five key factors for the system of intrinsic motivation. And today we talked about support. And one of the questions you kicked it off with is like, what am I doing to impede cooperation? You know, how do you start to ask that question? You also talked about the value of feedback instead of evaluation and the idea that people respect feedback. And also you talked a lot about how we can think about like, what's the quality standard and how do we give feedback? Is our quality standard clear and how do we give feedback, but also adjust ourselves and our system of teaching to improve that? And also, I like the discussion that we had about the Bell curve because it is something that it's abused. 0:24:43.5 AS: It's abused all the time around the world. But you talked about the job is not to flatten the curve, but to tighten it. We're not trying to get these extremely bad and extremely good outcomes. We're trying to get a more narrow and then to try to shift that curve. And that means that the average is going up. You also talked and you gave the example of a baby learning how to walk and failing forward. And part of support is creating a supportive environment where people are. Finally, the last part is we talked about was the idea of sharing, and sharing... Getting people to share their experience. Instead of awarding or rewarding them, having them share their experiences, not only of the people that have hit a particular milestone or whatever, but also the people that haven't done that. And then the last thing I think is really the big challenge for all the listeners and viewers out there, which is this - to be supportive takes a role change. It's about working well with others and helping other people to see how to share and work together. Anything you would add to that? 0:25:51.9 DL: Yeah, I'd say ultimately, we want people to take risks because if they're not taking risks, we're not going to have breakthroughs. We're not going to have new levels of learning in schools. And in order to take those risks, they have to feel like they're supported, whether it worked out well or it didn't work out well. If it didn't work out well, what did you learn from that? And it may be what you learned was, I'm never going to do that again. Okay, well, you learn something from that, right? But if they're in that highly supportive environment, you'll see their intrinsic motivation for learning and work come out at a level that you never thought possible before. I can guarantee it. 0:26:32.3 AS: Wonderful. Well, on behalf of everyone at the Deming Institute, I want to thank you again for this discussion, David. For listeners, remember to go to Deming.org to continue your Deming journey. Listeners can learn more about David at Langfordlearning.com. 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."

In this second episode of the Motivation series, Andrew and David P. Langford discuss how power dynamics impact motivation and why autonomy is a big factor in motivation.  TRANSCRIPT 0:00:02.6 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 am continuing my discussion with David P. Langford, who has devoted his life to applying Dr. Deming's philosophy to education, and he offers us his practical advice for implementation. Today's topic is, Who Controls Motivation? David, take it away. 0:00:29.4 David P. Langford: Thanks, Andrew. So we're starting this five podcast series. In the last podcast, we talked a lot about the difference between intrinsic motivation and extrinsic motivation. Here in this five-podcast series, we're gonna discuss how do you actually create intrinsic motivation environments so that people want to do [chuckle] the work or the learning or whatever it is you might be getting them to do [chuckle] or task them to do. Right? So the first element, and I've been researching this for now over 40 years, and I've never found anything that contradicts what I'm gonna share with the listeners over these five podcasts. And these are five elements of intrinsic motivation that I guarantee you, if you start applying these, you will see either your students, your own children, employees, yourself, [chuckle] you will see people more motivated to do the work that they're doing, if you think about these five factors that we're gonna be going over. 0:01:48.8 DL: So the first factor that I wanna talk about today is the element of control or autonomy in situation. So when I have control over a situation, I have autonomy, I'm self-motivating. I'm doing things in that environment by myself. So we have a lot of buzzwords in management words like empowerment. And well, even a word like empowerment means I have all the power, and so I'm gonna give you some of it. [laughter] I'm gonna empower you to... But you can only do this a little bit, I don't want you to do a lot of stuff. I just want you to do... Be empowered to just do this thing, kind of a thing, and that's also an element of control, so. 0:02:38.6 DL: But control is... Our economy is built into the human condition, and when we tap into that in managing people in either in a classroom or a workforce or a whole group of teachers, whoever it might be, yes, the more I set up an environment where I'm allowing people to take control or have autonomy over what they're doing, the more I will see them be motivated. The more I take that away, and I start controlling everything and running stuff, I start to be really motivated, [chuckle] and I see this a lot with teachers. They're really motivated by controlling everything, controlling all those kids, controlling the process, controlling having... And they have total autonomy in the classroom to do whatever they wanna do basically, and so they're really motivated by that. Well, when they start giving up that control or that autonomy to children, a lot of times, they become de-motivated. 0:03:43.5 DL: [chuckle] I'll never forget this story. I was working with a university,in California, and I had one of the teachers, one of the professors, that really wanted to learn about this and how to run a classroom, so we talked a lot about... I've worked with him individually and talked about, "How do you set up your classroom so that when the students come to your classroom, basically they start to have autonomy and control over the process and what's happening?" Well, one day I get a phone call, and I answered the phone, and this guy is whispering to me. He said, "I think I need some quality therapy." And I said, [chuckle] "Why? What, what's going on?" And he said, "Well, I had a flat tire on the way to school. And so the university has a policy if the professor doesn't show up in the first 10 minutes, everybody can leave. So I was 30 minutes late, and I was just sure I was gonna walk into the room and everybody's gonna be gone." But he said, "I walked into the room and nobody even knew that I was missing.They were all working in teams and working on their projects and discussing stuff and doing what is they're doing?" He said, "I need some therapy." [chuckle] Because for him, that was de-motivating that they didn't need him. Right? So it's a very powerful, powerful concept once you start to get it, but you also have to understand that you, as the manager, of that situation are part of the equation, that as well, right? So you almost have to start the... Your motivation by seeing other people taking on the control of the situation and having autonomy to do what it is that they need to do. I was in a kindergarten classroom in North Carolina years ago, and the teacher had been through my training and stuff, and she invited me to come to her classroom. 0:05:34.6 DL: And so I went there early in the morning and just watched, and those little kids came in and they just knew what to do. And they all went to their tables and they got their stuff out. They were talking with each other and interrelating. And it was probably at least 40 minutes before the teacher intervened in some way. It's the kinda thing where I have to interrupt your learning to [chuckle] motivate you or tell you something. But those little kids had... Five and six-year-olds just had total control of that first 40 minutes. And were happy about it. And yeah, there was a child or two that weren't quite doing what it is they were supposed to do, and what'd the teacher do? She goes over and sits down beside them and starts working with them and explaining stuff and, "Oh, I see you might be having a little trouble with this and... " Right? 0:06:36.4 AS: Maybe just had a bad family day. 0:06:39.0 DL: Yeah. Now, that's totally different than, "Everybody get in here, sit down, be quiet, don't talk to each other, don't touch him. I'm gonna control this situation, and I'm gonna tell you what to do and... Okay, this is what I want you to do, and you go do it, and once you've done that, come back and sit down again." Well, that's the old teacher mentality [chuckle] that I have to control the situation, and there are times where you need to exert that kind of control. If there's a fire in the building, you might have to control the situation, but sometimes teachers will bring that up to me and I'll say, "Look, what if there's a fire in the building and you were incapacitated or taken out by the fire? Would all your students know what to do? [chuckle] Or maybe you were out of the classroom when that erupted, that... Would they all know what they're supposed to do, regardless of whether you were there or not?" 0:07:40.1 AS: Right. 0:07:41.6 DL: Or are they just gonna burn up, because they're waiting for somebody to tell them what to do? So, that's the element of control. So, how do you get that? One of the ways to get that is to give people more knowledge of the situation. Just the example that I just gave you. When those students have the knowledge of what to do if there's something that goes on or something happens, and they have the autonomy to do it, and so maybe you actually practice that. Well, I'm giving you knowledge of what to do in that kind of situation. And when people become more and more knowledgeable about what's going on, they feel like they have much more control over their situation, what's happening. That makes sense? 0:08:36.9 AS: Yeah, and I think what I'm thinking about then is talking with kids like, what's the objective? If there's a fire, get out of the building. And, we have... That's our objective. How do we do that? Well, we try to stay in line because we hold hands, and that helps us keep, but... 0:08:52.8 DL: And we don't wanna run over each other, and... Right? 0:08:55.1 AS: It reminds me of this story of when Dr. Deming talked about cleaning a table. And he was saying something like, "How could a worker really know how to clean a table if you don't tell them what the table is gonna be used for?" 0:09:13.0 DL: That's right. So that's knowledge, right? Are we gonna operate on this table? We're just gonna eat lunch on it? Oh, well, just... Those are two different types of cleaning, aren't they? [chuckle] And so, how can I do a good job if I don't know? I don't have knowledge of that situation or... And, you see this in little children. They're asking why. You're telling them to do this and they say, "Well, why?" Well, because... 0:09:43.4 AS: 'Cause I said so. 0:09:45.1 DL: 'Cause I said so, right? Well, and if you don't do it, I'm just gonna make your life so difficult that you wish you would have. 0:09:52.0 AS: Right. 0:09:52.6 DL: That's not good management, that's just manipulation of somebody. And yeah, you can get the result. But in the end, somebody's not gonna wanna... They're not gonna wanna do what you want them to do on their own. I remember a teacher came up to me one time, said that in the 1960s, he was working in an auto factory in California, and his job was to put these types of rivets in some part of the automobile. But he noticed that the machine that he was using to put the rivets in, would strip the rivets out every once in a while, and he got really tired of having to re-work this situation. Not rivets, they were screws, I think it was. 0:10:45.1 AS: Right. 0:10:45.5 DL: So he actually built his own little tool so that it would only go in at the proper depth and every screw was going in perfectly, and he was very proud of it. So proud of it that when his supervisor came by, he showed him, he said, "Look, look what I built, I built this, and you may wanna think about doing this for everybody," and well, his supervisor just lit into him and told him, "Your job is not to think. Your job is to put these screws in and you go back to doing what you were told to do in the first place." And I asked him, I said, "Well, so what did you do?" He said, "When the supervisor was around, I used the tool that did a bad job, and every time he would leave, I would get my tool out and do it properly." So he was still in that environment, intrinsically motivated to do a good job, but because the supervisor wanted that autonomy or control of that situation, and it's the "not invented here syndrome" that... 0:11:49.1 AS: Yeah. 0:11:49.3 DL: "I didn't invent it, I didn't tell you to do that, so therefore, it can't be a good idea," kind of a thing. 0:11:56.7 AS: And I'm thinking about... There's some teachers out there that are... Have a really hard time. "If I give up control, this classroom is gonna go chaos." They are making themselves really important in that, and let's say... Let's put those people aside for just a minute and let's just take the people that are kind of in the middle, they're open to that and all that. And I just wanna tell a quick story in my life. I remember, my father never... My father didn't tell me his personal problems. He talked to my mom about that, and occasionally, I knew a little bit of what was going on. But I remember, when I turned about, I don't know, 25, and I really had become a much more mature guy, and my dad started telling me some of the things he was dealing with, some of the ways he felt about things, and it's like the whole thing flipped. I just really saw a different side, a human side. 0:12:49.1 DL: They're human. [chuckle] 0:12:50.9 AS: Yeah. And I saw a different side of him, but also I've wanted to be a different participant in that. I wanted to be a participant and someone that could listen and understand where my dad was coming from. And I think about classroom, then I'm thinking about what you're talking about, a classroom. So for a teacher who's kind of open to try some new things, part of what you... Maybe what you're saying is, flip the script a little bit and talk about why are we here, what are we trying to do? What am I trying to do. What's my job? What's... 0:13:17.8 DL: Yeah. When I see intrinsic motivation emerge, it's there, right? It's there. All you have to do is manage the situation differently, and you'll start to see it emerge and come out. So you can take something so simple like the start of a classroom. Well, I could just have all the children come in and talk and goof around and everything else, until I stand up and tell them what to do. That's a way to control the situation or like I was saying, I could start to give them the knowledge of what to do. So let's talk about... Let's do a flowchart. Let's do a flowchart about what to do when you come in the door. Where do you go? What do you do? How do you get things set up? Well, I've now just transferred a level of control to them or a situation like, somebody doesn't know what to do next. 0:14:24.3 DL: So we talk as a class and maybe we come up with a flowchart that's what to do. What to do when you don't know what to do. So we're now giving them knowledge about that situation and being able to take action. So then if I have a child that says, "Well, I don't know what to do." "Oh, have you looked at the flowchart?" Let's talk about that. Remember we talked about, okay, the first thing you wanna do is do this and then do that and maybe talk to somebody else and see if they know what to do. But there's a process of what to do when you don't know what to do. Now, that's different than me saying, "Well, if you don't know what to do, come up and ask me." 'Cause it's putting me... 0:15:11.2 AS: And then I'll tell you. 0:15:12.1 DL: Yeah. It's putting me in total control of that situation and that's very motivating for me. But it's very demotivating for the individual because they can't take control because they don't know what to do next. 0:15:24.1 AS: Yeah. 0:15:25.3 DL: So change the situation, watch how behavior changes versus what we've been taught to do, especially in schools, is leave the situation alone and then manage the behavior that it's producing. See? 0:15:40.2 AS: So we're back to the system 0:15:42.2 DL: Yeah, absolutely. So, couple of other factors, before getting control of the situation. The more you have people self-evaluate their own progress, you'll start to see intrinsic motivation emerge. So as long as I'm evaluating you, write this paper, hand it in. I'll grade it. I'll go over it, I'll find the mistakes, and then I'll put a grade on it and I'll hand it back to you, well, that gives me as a teacher total control of that situation. I reverse that, and I set up processes for you to self-evaluate your own work, so when you think you're finished with this, here are the steps that you wanna go through, so check to see if it's this or nowadays, have you run it through Grammarly, online? But I'm putting you in a position where you have autonomy to self-evaluate your own work. And then if you think it's finished and you've finished your self-evaluation, you might wanna share it with somebody else. I'm gonna look at it, see if you can get some feedback from them. See feedback is very motivating, but evaluation is not. 0:17:00.7 DL: I can give you some feedback on the job that you're doing and support you and how you can do a better job. That's much different than me saying, "You're doing a lousy job, Andrew." Or, "I'm gonna put B on this paper." No matter how hard you worked, you're gonna get a B. So the example you gave in the last Podcast about only 10 students are gonna get A's. Well, that's an artificial scarcity of top performance. And so I'm pretty certain people looked around the room and they said, "I'm not one of those 10 people, I know that." 0:17:37.0 AS: I'm outta here. 0:17:38.4 DL: I'm outta here. 0:17:39.5 AS: And that's not achieving the goal... 0:17:40.9 DL: Right. 0:17:41.5 AS: Or the aim. 0:17:42.3 DL: Or we have other ways that people get control of their situation when they feel out of control. We call it cheating. So when the situation won't allow me actually to achieve what I'm supposed to achieve, maybe I'm a university class and I have to have this grade, have to have this class to get my degree, but the class is so horrible, I'm not learning anything, there's no way I'm gonna pass this test, and so I end up sacrificing my integrity and cheating 'cause it's worth the risk. Because the system is not gonna allow me to learn this material and get to the level I need to get to. So that's when we start to see the effective behavior emerge. It starts really very early in schools. Kids feel like, "I can't get this, I can't understand it, so I'm just gonna have to cheat, copy somebody else's paper, or steal it or something." And we wanna manage that behavior, wow, oh, we caught that, we're gonna... So we come up with sophisticated methods of catching the cheaters. Right? 0:19:00.0 DL: So you see it in the SAT tests and all kinds of things. What? You got to have monitors. It has to be one monitor for every 50 students or because we gotta catch those cheaters. [chuckle] But nobody's looking at the situation or the system and saying, "What's causing people to cheat?" Because they're feeling helpless and hopeless and, "I can't get this. And so, the only way I can get it is to cheat." There's some other ways that we can impart or get people to have more control in situations. So when you think about neuroscience, the human brain taps into mapping and patterns and systems actually. And again, we're back to Deming's work. And Deming tapped into that, actually. So when I put learning into maps or patterns or gestault kinds of things, the human brain actually responds to it better. 0:20:00.9 DL: So in a classroom, instead of me just verbally talking about stuff all the time, if I take that same information I want people to know and understand, and I put it into some kind of a map or a pattern or a flowchart, I'll see a new level of intrinsic motivation or ownership start to emerge, because I've just changed the situation and tapped into something. So I'm not just dealing with just the auditory learners, I'm really tapping into... I'm giving control of everybody over to learn. I created a tool to do that, actually, to take curriculum and put in into a map or a pattern and then give that to students at the beginning of a learning experience. And all of a sudden, you see ownership, this is all the stuff that you need to know and learn in this two weeks or whatever the time has to be. That's much different than me saying, "Well, read this book. Well, what do I need to know in this book? What's gonna be on the test?" "Well, read it just in case I put something on the test." That's a school game that puts the teacher or the system in control, but it makes the learner feel helpless in that environment. 0:21:21.9 AS: You used a word, ownership. How do we think of ownership versus intrinsic motivation? What does that... What does that mean? 0:21:29.0 DL: Ownership, autonomy, control of the situation, those are all of the same kinds of concepts that you're trying to get people just to have more ownership of their own learning, their own situation. And my job is to manage the whole system, right? So if I've got 30 kids in my class, I want all 30 to be well motivated [chuckle] to learn whatever it is that we're working on and going through. So another level of control is choice. The more choice I give people in a situation, I'll see their intrinsic motivation emerge. And it can be so simple that you can choose to do this, or you can choose to do that. [chuckle] That's an element of choice. 0:22:14.4 AS: Mom, mom, you can either walk after breakfast or twice in the afternoon. [chuckle] 0:22:20.7 DL: Yeah. But that's a level of intrinsic motivation, right? You're giving her the control of that situation. "Well, no, I'd rather do it in the afternoon." Okay. Right? That I'm managing differently by giving people choice, or in a classroom, you have the choice to choose what you wanna write about or how you wanna write it or... And now, for some children that can be overwhelming, right? 0:22:48.3 AS: Yeah. 0:22:48.6 DL: So I can say, "Well, you can choose whatever you wanna do, or I'll choose it for... Or you can have me choose it for you." Right? 0:23:00.5 AS: Right. 0:23:00.6 DL: If you want me just to give you a topic, I'll be glad to do that. Maybe it's you can't really think about what you wanna do, right? 0:23:05.5 AS: Right. That may take some pressure off of them. 0:23:07.7 DL: But still it's your choice, right? 0:23:10.3 AS: Yep. 0:23:10.9 DL: So you start to see rebellion go away when you incorporate levels of choice because I can't really rebel against myself. [chuckle] 0:23:21.6 AS: Right, yep. 0:23:21.9 DL: I chose to do this, but no, I really don't wanna do this. [laughter] But you chose it, right? 0:23:27.9 AS: And that circles back to the title, which was Who Controls Motivation? Maybe I'll just summarize some of the things that I took away. We're talking about five elements of intrinsic motivation and a lot of it has to do with creating the environment so that people wanna learn and they want to get the benefit of that. And the first element is control. And the point is when you give someone... You, if you're holding onto the control, you're not really empowering or you're not really giving autonomy and control. Just give that control to the other people, to the kids, to the other people at the company. They're gonna know what to do with it. And help them and guide them. How do I... What do I do? Give them autonomy. And also you talked about the idea that give people more knowledge. And I think that that's part of what I was telling my story about my father, is like the idea he was giving me more knowledge of what's going on. There's more there than I knew. And the more knowledge that someone has, the more they can really figure out what to do with that. You also said a good one, which was intrinsic motivation, it's there. Just change some things and watch it emerge. 0:24:41.1 DL: That's right. 0:24:42.2 AS: And then you went through a couple of different things that are really helpful for helping people take control, to get that intrinsic motivation. You talked about self-evaluation of your own progress and that helps people. And feedback is motivating, but evaluation is not. So think about constant feedback. "Hey, that was good. Oh, did you see why that happened? Why do you think that happened?" That, and also you said when people lose control, they often cheat to cope. And I liked... One of the things that you said was that the brain taps into maps, patterns, and systems. And I use that a lot when teaching. I need that to see how does this all connect? And then you alluded to the idea of appealing to maybe the left brain and the right brain type of people in the room that maybe some people are seeing things more logically, whereas other people will see things less linearly and that type of stuff. And then final thing that you talked about is choice gives control. Anything you would add to that? 0:25:55.0 DL: Yeah, there's a couple of other factors quickly. One is just-in-time learning, so when I'm getting the knowledge I need just in time. So I'm working on a project or something, and I need to know a level of skill to complete this project, well, when I discover that I need that knowledge, right, that's just-in-time learning. So if you need to know this, come to the back of the room and I'll explain it, but if you don't need to know this right now, then just keep on working and keep doing what you're doing 'cause I don't wanna interrupt you. Well, that's an element of choice. It's also a just-in-time learning. "So when I'm ready, I'm gonna go get that," versus, "I'm gonna teach this now whether you need it or not." Well, that's when you get kids sleeping in class, bored out of their minds, because maybe they don't need that at all. They don't need that explanation. 0:26:54.7 DL: I already know this, right? So I'm just gonna screw around and pass notes or do something else that's more fun than sitting and listening to you. And the last thing for control is time. So the more you have an understanding of how to manage time or teach people to manage their own time, the more, yeah, control that they'll feel like they have over a situation. They'll understand how to work it through. So I often use the example, when you have a two-year-old, right? And you have an appointment that you have to get to, and so you gotta get the two-year-old in the car and get him buckled in the car seat and you gotta go, right? And so you're in a hurry, and so you grab them up and they're yelling and they're fighting you to get in the car seat 'cause they don't wanna go, and... Right? And so, "Well, if you get in your car seat, I'm gonna give you a lolly or a sucker or a piece of candy, or... I'm gonna bribe you to do what it is, what I wanna do. 0:27:54.8 DL: Or I'm just bigger, so I'm just gonna force you into that seat and buckle you in, Right?" Well, that is a way to accomplish the task, or you could do something differently. At breakfast, you're saying, "In about an hour, we're gonna get ready to go, and we're gonna go to the doctor's office, and it's gonna be really interesting for you to see the doctor's office, and we're gonna talk about everything we're gonna do and everything else. So now we're gonna get our coats on and we're gonna walk out, and I'm gonna wait for you to climb up into your car seat, and what do you need to do now? We need to get buckled," right? That's all gonna take a lot more time than me grabbing you and forcefully [chuckle] putting you in that car seat and buckling you. You see, but the urgency of the situation was not that two-year-old's problem. It was yours. Your lack of planning [chuckle] caused the crisis. And if I change any element of that, I see that two-year-old be more intrinsically motivated to do what I want them to do, right? 0:29:05.6 AS: Yeah. 0:29:05.7 DL: 'Cause we're doing something together, and that's the relationship that they're craving more than anything. So I'll leave you with that. 0:29:12.4 AS: So just-in-time learning and teaching people how to manage their own time and it gives them control? 0:29:19.0 DL: That's right. 0:29:19.5 AS: Fantastic. That's a lot of stuff that we covered in that, and personally, I learned a lot. I did like the just-in-time learning 'cause I feel like that's my job. As a financial analyst in the stock market, I come across things I don't really know much about, and I was just looking at, "Well, green energy doesn't seem to work." Germany tried to do it, and they weren't able to replace what they lost in traditional energy. What about nuclear energy? Okay, where does that come from? It comes from uranium. Okay, where is uranium? The country that has 40% of uranium production is Kazakhstan, a former Soviet Republic. And now, all of a sudden, I put together that, wow, Russia and Kazakhstan together all control 50% of the uranium in the world. All of a sudden, you realize that Putin has control of the supply chain for nuclear power. So now, what is this country, Kazakhstan? I remember studying it 'cause I had to, but now I'm interested just-in-time to learn, "Okay, how does this all fit together?" And that to me, I just went through that process for a global investment strategy report, and I was able to tell my clients, "I don't know a lot about Kazakhstan, but here's what I've learned, and I have a feeling this will become a name of a country that we're all gonna know in the next 10 years." 0:30:42.5 DL: Well, you know, Kazakhstan is right next to, "Don't-Understand," so. [laughter] 0:30:50.2 AS: Yes, right? Under... Understand. Yeah, that's right. [laughter] So David, on behalf of everyone at the Deming Institute, I wanna thank you again for this discussion. And for listeners, remember to go to deming.org to continue your journey. This is your host, Andrew Stotz. And I wanna remind you that listeners can learn more about David at langfordlearning.com, and I'll leave you with one of my favorite quotes from Dr. Deming, "People are entitled to joy in work."

In this episode, Andrew and David introduce the broad topic of "motivation." David describes intrinsic vs extrinsic motivation and how motivation practices are usually manipulation tactics that don't work over the long term.  So what do we do instead? 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 discussion with David P. Langford, who has devoted his life to applying Dr. Deming's philosophy to education, and he offers us his practical advice for implementation. Today's topic is, The Best Way To Motivate. Take it away, David. 0:00:30.2 David Langford: Thank you, Andrew. It's good to be back again. 0:00:34.4 AS: Indeed. 0:00:35.6 DL: So, yeah, I wanted to start actually a whole series on motivation and in this podcast, we're gonna talk a little bit about two different types of motivation and how people go about motivating people and things like that. But then, we're gonna start a five podcast series breaking down the five key elements that I found over the last 40 years that really cause motivation to happen. So in this introduction podcast right now, I wanna talk a little bit about motivation. So the topic of that, what's the best way to motivate? You can't. So let's kind of get that out of the way. 0:01:20.7 AS: Don't bury the lead, David. [laughter] 0:01:21.9 DL: Yeah, you can't really motivate somebody. You can't even motivate your dog to do things. You can manipulate your dog to get a result but in the end, your dog or your child or students in classrooms or your employees or whatever, they all have to come to the conclusion that they're motivated to do this job for their... Whatever that might be and that it's their idea. And so it's all about creating an intrinsic versus extrinsic motivation environment. And I know this is contrary to all the literature that's out there and everything, and every motivational guru on the planet that's trying to get you to buy something that motivates us. And I was recalling that I was on an airplane one time and I was sitting next to this guy and you strike up a conversation sometimes and he said, "Ah, what do you do?" 0:02:30.4 DL: And so I told him a little bit about what I do and how I help school try to transform and get better results and what they do and everything. "Oh, that's really interesting, tell me more about that." And so we did and we got onto the topic of intrinsic motivation versus extrinsic motivation. And I just started talking about you can't really motivate people with trinkets and gimmicks and awards and all kinds of things like that. And we got in a big discussion about trophies and sports and all kinds of things like that. [chuckle] And just as we're starting to land the airplane, I said to him, oh, I said, "Well, you know, I never got around to you." I said, "What do you do?" He says, "Well, I have a company that makes trophies." [laughter] And then it was like dead-silence. Oh, we landed the plane and got off the plane. 0:03:26.5 AS: You went your separate ways. 0:03:28.2 DL: Yeah. He did say, oh, I think I understand, but he's gonna keep making his trophies and making money, so... 0:03:39.4 AS: Yeah. 0:03:39.9 DL: And there's a lot of money to be made in it, especially in education, there's just whole catalogs. I get catalogs in the mail even today, about all the awards and trophies and everything and how you can motivate kids to do this and that and it's... Deming was the first one that kind of took a board and slapped it up inside of my head and just said, "Stop it." In fact I remember one of his conferences, somebody asked a question, "Well, Dr. Deming, I'm in a company that's trying to motivate us with a pay and pay for performance and games and gimmicks and sell so much stuff, and you get a free trip to Aruba and what do I do?" And his response was, "Well, you can always stop doing something that's stupid." And that, it was just... He had this knack of these phrases that would just cut through to people. Yeah, you can stop it. You can say, "Okay, I'm not gonna participate in that." I'm not gonna play it. I'm not gonna play that game. And so what do we do instead? 0:05:01.4 AS: And before we even get into that, what does it mean? What does motivate mean? Because you've used the word, manipulate and you've used the word, motivate. Can you define... 0:05:13.3 DL: That's kind of emerged over the last 100 or 150 years or so, as a way to try to get people to do something that basically that you don't think they wanna do. [chuckle] So whether that's kids learning math or it's an employee not getting the productivity that you think that they should get. But basically, I'm the leader, I'm the manager, and I want you to do something that you're currently not doing. And so, I'm gonna do something to you to make you do it. 0:05:55.1 AS: Which sounds like external pressure or external... 0:05:58.7 DL: External pressure. We're gonna motivate you to do stuff. And typically that's what we call extrinsic motivation, I'm gonna do something to you or I'm gonna take something away - that's really popular in schools. "Well, you're gonna have to stay in a recess, you're not gonna have any recess if you don't get that done" or "You don't do what I tell you, you're gonna be sitting in the hall. So what we're gonna do is we're gonna take away all of your relationships and isolate you." And, well, that's the same concept we use in prisons, right? We isolate people. We put them in confinement and if you're really bad, then you get into total isolation. Don't even get to talk to any of your other inmates. Well, it's the same depth of motivation that is in schools today all over the world. 0:06:51.6 DL: People are still using those techniques to try to get people to do something that they're either not doing or they want them to do. So, it's really important to figure out what do you do instead? If you're gonna stop doing something stupid, [chuckle] and what are you gonna do instead? And that's where Deming really reinforced intrinsic motivation. That your job is to create a situation where people can be intrinsically motivated, that they actually want to do the job. And that's a whole different way to look at what you do. How do I set up a classroom so that kids can be intrinsically motivated? Now, none of these things are a light switch, where you can just switch it on and switch it off, "I'm going to switch on intrinsic motivation and switch off extrinsic motivation." In fact, with children, if they've been addicted to intrinsic motivation tactics for years, everything from grades, to prizes, to awards, to just little trinkets that they can get, stickers even, all kinds of things, sometimes it takes time to wean them off of that over time, and have it have the less and less meaning. 0:08:32.1 DL: I'll give you an example, the thing about stickers... I'll often get elementary teachers say, "Well, you know what's wrong with that? Somebody does a good job, I'm gonna give them a sticker." Or, When I was a child in piano lessons, I got a gold star if I did a good job in my piano lesson and the teacher would put a star on it, by it and... The problem with those things, it's not that it's evil or anything, it's just that you're taking away the emphasis towards working towards the thing that you want 'em to do and love and understand. So, if the only reason I'm doing this is to try to get a sticker, [chuckle] you've just reduced the thing that I'm doing to the value of a sticker. So there's no real conversation or a relationship going on where you're saying, "Hey, man this... You really did a great job on that. How does that make you feel to be able to understand that or explain something to that degree?" You wanna tap into that inner person about that understanding something is probably the greatest motivation. "I just feel really good about that." That's why you get children that when they finally get it, a hard concept of something and they're like, "Oh! I got it." They're really forward in... 0:10:08.9 AS: They're really enjoying the process, too. 0:10:11.0 DL: Yeah, they're really forward in their emotions and they actually put that out. But employees in business, sometimes when there's a breakthrough like that, it's more internal for them. They're just like, "Oh yeah, okay, I got this. I really worked that through." And if you come in and just reduce it to some type of extrinsic motivator... Even if I just come in and say, "Atta boy, good job, well done, Frank." And then you leave the room, and then Frank is sitting there and thinking, "I put hours and hours into working through this and going through this, and all I got is, "Good job, Frank,' and a pat on the back." 0:10:51.3 AS: "You're gonna get Employee of the Month, Frank." 0:10:55.4 DL: Yeah, so the message is, "Next time, stupid, don't work so hard." You can always stop doing something stupid. And Frank learns just do whatever the boss wants, don't put any extra effort in or go through stuff. All right, but some people will come back and say, "Well, I like to have more money." And that's a motivation. And it's actually not. Yes, we have to have money to survive, but the examples are millions of people that are making tremendous amounts of money, but they're not motivated to do the job. We can look at pro athletes. They make millions of dollars and some of them are still not motivated. [chuckle] 0:11:54.5 AS: Right. Or when the motivation stops, money can't re-ignite it. 0:12:00.7 DL: No. 0:12:00.8 AS: Let me ask you a question about this from let's say a classroom perspective. Let's say I'm a teacher in a classroom, and I'm a piano teacher, as an example, and we've got a group of 20 kids and yeah, there's a few of them that are really into it, and then there's a lot of 'em that just don't wanna do it. David, can I just use the gold stars for those ones just to kind of like, [laughter] a doggy bone, like, "Come on, over to the piano." What do I do? 0:12:27.1 DL: Or what used to be the norm in Catholic schools, "Can't I just whack 'em on the back of their hands with a ruler and get them to shut up or do whatever it is I want them to do?" Yeah... 0:12:42.7 AS: Carrot or stick. 0:12:42.8 DL: You can do those kinds of things, but eventually, you're going to have to tap into an intrinsic motivation. And so your example in a class, if I got a few kids that are really into it, whatever it is we're doing or working on or whatever, and they're really working at it, I'd probably give those children a chance to talk about, "Why are they into that? Why do you like this so much? Or why do you like practicing so much if you're learning an instrument? And how do you go about that? What do you do? And how do you find a place in your house that's quiet and where you can concentrate if you're trying to read or" Because what you're trying to do is you're trying to use the people that are already self-motivated, and to give insights to people that are not self-motivated, to try to understand that it's not just because you're just smart, right? Probably doing a number of things that are making you be successful, and those things could be shared with other people. In the same way with employees, instead of just giving an employee of the month, I'd probably have somebody that's really doing a great job explain, how are they doing that great job? What's the process that they're using? How do they go about it? How do they set up their workspace? Whatever it might be, because I want other employees to go, "Oh, that's what they're doing. I could do that." [chuckle] 0:14:13.1 AS: And is that because you want them to try to explore where is their area that they can bring them so then... Okay, you're not gonna... I got 20 people in this room, and all 20 of them are not gonna be piano lovers and virtuosos. So it's not necessarily the process of getting everybody on that piano all the time, it's the process of who are the people really love it, let them shine, let them share, and let other people say, "Okay, I don't like piano, but I do like working on fixing my neighbor bicycles, and people bring bicycles to me every day, and I fix them, and I just love that feeling," or I don't know. I'm just trying to think about it. How would you describe it? 0:14:54.7 DL: Yeah, that's right, and that goes back to Deming's concept of understanding variation, that you're going to have variable degrees of performance or ability or whatever it might be. And Deming talked about sometimes people are just in the wrong job. [chuckle] And maybe you can move them to another job in the same company that they might like more or they might be well-suited for, or the same thing in a school, right? Like example of what you were talking about, that somebody is much more suited to and enjoy working on motorcycles versus just playing the piano or something. But it doesn't mean that they can't reach a minimum level of skill and understanding about how to play the piano, maybe to the point where they decide, "Okay, I know I don't wanna be doing this." [laughter] 0:15:57.6 AS: Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. 0:16:00.7 DL: That's also motivation, right? And what is your motivation? What do you wanna do? 0:16:07.2 AS: Yeah, yeah. 0:16:07.4 DL: And I get... So in my seminars, I get teachers coming up to me all the time, and I always think, "Oh, they're gonna ask a complicated question about, "I've got this kid in my class, and how do I get him motivated and everything." I'd say probably eight or nine times out of 10, they come up and they wanna talk about their child. [laughter] "My son is having a problem in this class. How do I get... " "My daughter can't get along with her teacher. What would we do about that?" Because that's really a very personal thing that's going on within them. But then to get them to see that, "Okay, well, the kinds of things that maybe you're doing in the class is demotivating a large number of students." It's all kinds of things. There's variability in time, for instance, right? So if I give you a... If I give a group of people a complex math problem, there probably is somebody in that room that could solve it in a matter of minutes. 0:17:14.7 AS: Right. 0:17:15.5 DL: But there'd be others of us that might need a lot of help. But we could probably get to a level of... Minimum level of solving it or understanding it given enough time, but the problem is, like in schools, we wanna truncate the time always, right? 0:17:34.1 AS: Right. 0:17:34.6 DL: "Gotta get this done in the next 10 minutes," or, "You gotta get it done by Friday." We don't have this deep understanding of variability and how to manage variation in performance. And so what we do is we make time rigid, but we make learning flexible. So basically, you learn any amount you want as long as you get it done by Friday because we've made the time rigid. 0:18:00.4 AS: Right. 0:18:00.5 DL: And we talked about that earlier, about a deadline and... Right? Well, when you reverse that and you begin to understand how to manage a system and manage the variability of the people in that system. Then everybody starts to be more well-motivated by themselves internally, which means you have to do less and less external motivation. You just have people coming in and doing their job and going to work, same way in the company. Yeah. 0:18:32.0 AS: I feel like even just having a discussion with your students or employees about the difference between intrinsic and extrinsic motivation is right there something interesting, just to have that discussion. 0:18:48.0 DL: Yeah, I have five children, and we started those discussions, my wife and I started those discussions with them when they're two or three years old. "You're not doing this to get a sucker... If you do this, I'll give you a sucker or a lolly." No, we want you to clean up your room because that's the right thing to do. So maybe I'll come and help you clean up your room and we'll do it together, and that might be a lot more fun then. And then we could talk about how can you keep your room clean so you don't find yourself in this mess, because how do you feel when you have a really messy room? 0:19:32.1 AS: Yep. Yeah, I'm sure that you would have some great tips of, "Okay, here's the way I would do it if I... When I've had this problem," and 'Oh, okay, I didn't even think about that, put all my whites in a pile over there and put all my dark colors... " 0:19:49.1 DL: Exactly. 0:19:50.3 AS: Over there just to have a... Make a game out of it or something like that. 0:19:50.6 DL: Yeah, and that's totally different than me isolating you as punishment and saying your room is dirty, go to your room until that room is cleaned up. 0:20:00.4 AS: Yeah. 0:20:00.6 DL: Right? It's the same thing we talked about earlier. I'm gonna extrinsically motivate you to get that done and work that through versus trying to spend time, and part of it is just kid's probably really happy that you're there. 0:20:16.6 AS: Yeah. 0:20:17.4 DL: Right? I got a relationship now with somebody and let's work on this together and over time... 0:20:23.4 AS: Yeah, I don't want to be in my room alone. 0:20:25.9 DL: Yeah, and this over time, then let's figure out how do we make sure it always stays cleaned up. 0:20:32.1 AS: Yeah. 0:20:33.8 DL: But you have to understand the difference between a clean room and a dirty room, and how that makes you feel. And you'll have kids that will say, I have kids that say, "Well, I like it messy like this." "Really? You couldn't find your book yesterday because it was under a pile of clothes. You have been wearing dirty clothes to school, because... " 0:20:57.9 AS: "Your room's stinky. People can smell... " 0:21:00.4 DL: Yeah. 0:21:00.6 AS: Yeah. 0:21:02.1 DL: Right. And it's not necessarily all just about you, it's how does it affect other people that you're dealing with, right? What do you think other family members are thinking about you when your room is a disaster and you're not taking care of yourself and you don't smell good and... 0:21:22.4 AS: Right. 0:21:23.9 DL: Right. 0:21:26.4 AS: I wanna explain an experience that I had when I was young, and maybe you can help me understand the extrinsic and the intrinsic aspect of it. I went to Kent State when I was kind of first starting out, and I didn't really know what I was gonna study. I thought I was gonna study maybe Psychology, but the first professor I had, I was really not impressed. I felt like he just read this book about Psychology, and so I was searching and I found an Economics 101, Ecom 101, and I went into this classroom and it was huge, it was 200 students in there, hustle bustle. I got in the room, I sat down, the room was divided by a walkway down the middle, so there was 100 students on one side and 100 on the other. The teacher came kinda bounding down the stairs and came in front of all of us on that first day and he said, "There is 200 people in this room, a 100 of you will be gone by the time we get to the end of this term, and there will, out of the 100 that will remain, I will give 10, A's. Let's get started." 0:22:29.6 AS: Now that guy set a fire, it's just... I don't know why, I never had somebody say something like that. And all of a sudden, what I started doing is I sat right in the front row, and I told myself, I'm gonna get an A, I'm gonna survive and I'm gonna get an A. And then I started to study differently, every day after class, I sat down at a cubicle outside the room, and I re-wrote my notes with the book open and I went through it and everything, and then I would ask the teacher questions either at his office or in the room. When I had questions as I was trying to clarify. And he sparked a whole new way of studying for me that really carried me through university, but also sparked a fire of wanting to learn and the challenge of learning. And I think I read, I don't know, 3000 to 5000 books since that day. And he lit a fire in me, and I always tell my students, "I wanna light that fire in you." Now, part of that was extrinsic and then part of it was intrinsic. But can you tell me what happened to me on that day? [laughter] 0:23:35.1 DL: Well, it sounds to me like a professor that doesn't know what his job is, right? 0:23:40.1 AS: Yeah. 0:23:41.6 DL: His job is not just to weed out the bad ones, or weed out the ones that are not motivated to learning Economics, right? 0:23:49.6 AS: Mm-hmm. 0:23:49.6 DL: He's got 200 students in that class. His job is to produce 200 people who love Economics. So Deming talked about that a lot. So you don't know what your job is. That's not motivation, just to weed out all the people that don't adapt to the style that I have in the classroom, right? 0:24:18.9 AS: Right. 0:24:18.9 DL: Yeah, what happened with you... 0:24:20.1 AS: Yeah, me too. I'm sure that didn't motivate majority of people the way it motivated me. 0:24:23.4 DL: Oh yeah. 0:24:24.2 AS: It worked for me. 0:24:25.7 DL: I probably would have gotten up and walked out of that class right there. Because I would have been in the 100 people that aren't gonna be there. Or the old thing, look to the right, look to the left, one of those people won't be here at the end. That's not motivation, that's survival, right? 0:24:43.2 AS: Right. Right. 0:24:44.4 DL: You're just trying to survive that experience. Now, you personally decided the way you're gonna survive it, is you're gonna work hard and you're gonna learn this. But there was probably also a level of intrinsic motivation for Economics that you tapped into, right? 0:25:06.2 AS: Right. 0:25:06.6 DL: You realized, "Hey, look like I like numbers." 0:25:09.1 AS: Mm-hmm, yup. 0:25:10.4 DL: "And I like working with this, and I'm getting it, and I understand it." 0:25:14.7 AS: Yeah. 0:25:15.9 DL: Yeah. And then you did a number of things, you changed where you were sitting, you changed your attitude, you went in and you started working with the professor. 0:25:28.4 AS: Yeah. 0:25:28.6 DL: So even though you're in an environment that was hugely extrinsically motivating... [chuckle] 0:25:39.4 AS: Or demotivating. 0:25:39.6 DL: Yeah, demotivating everybody. 0:25:39.9 AS: Depending on which side of the room you're on. 0:25:41.4 DL: Right, you chose to rise above the situation and do something different, and you tapped into your love of Economics, which carried on far beyond the class, what you learned in that class, right? 0:25:55.1 AS: Right. 0:25:55.4 DL: Because like you said, I read 3000 books since then, well nobody was telling you to do that, right? 0:26:02.9 AS: Yeah. 0:26:03.1 DL: You weren't getting graded for it. I'll tell you that I never read a book for pleasure until I met Deming. You think of that. 0:26:14.1 AS: Wow! 0:26:14.2 DL: My master's degree, years of experience working schools. It was always because I was being told to do it or forced to do it, or for a grade or whatever it might be, but until I tapped into Deming and intrinsic motivation, that was the first time I thought, "I'm just gonna read this book for pleasure." And it was... The same kind of thing was kind of a weird thing that I had to go through because my whole life had been spent on extrinsic motivation. And I guess... And I was one of the ones that excelled in that, right? I got the grades, I got the scholarships, I got the prizes, right? 0:26:55.9 AS: The gold star. 0:26:57.7 DL: Right. And when all that ended, then now what? Well, there was no love of learning there. I had to find a way to find that. And that's what you tapped into. 0:27:08.6 AS: Yep. I feel like, just in wrapping this up, that the story that I remember I've read it, but I also remember Dr. Deming telling it at the seminar when I was there, was the story of the little girl who wanted to make the Halloween outfit to be like an angel, and her and her mom worked together on this outfit for weeks to get ready to go to the Halloween party. And of course, it wasn't beautiful, but it was handcrafted and they had such a great experience. And then they went to this Halloween party, and she was so proud to show it off and all that. And then one of the adults came up with the idea of, "Let's have a competition. Let's give a prize to the person that... " And in the end, of course... 0:27:51.8 DL: "Has the best costume." 0:27:53.5 AS: Yeah, the best costume. And in the end, of course, she didn't win. 0:27:55.5 DL: And we as adults are gonna pick the criteria for the best costume. [chuckle] 0:28:00.9 AS: Exactly. And in the end, she didn't win. She was far down the list. And all of a sudden, she was completely demotivated and realized like they reduced this whole couple of week process down to something just awful. And I always remember that story, and part of what I've always said about Dr. Deming is he's a humanist. He cares about how people feel. 0:28:28.4 DL: Yeah, we're really good at creating situations to kill the joy of learning, [chuckle] so... 0:28:32.8 AS: I did it right there. That was a story. 0:28:35.5 DL: Yeah. 0:28:37.9 AS: Let me review some of the things that you've talked about. First thing is we're gonna be talking about five key elements that cause motivation or talking about motivation. And one of the things that you said right off the bat is you can't. You can't motivate. You can manipulate and do other things. And I think we're gonna learn more about this over time. We talked about intrinsic motivation also being a bit about setting up the right environment for that intrinsic motivation. Talked about extrinsic means - giving away something, giving some incentive, a carrot or a stick, and that you're much better off using intrinsic motivation rather than trying to reward people with a gold star, because when you do that, you just reduce it down to some... Even people who are intrinsically motivated can be suckered in to just going after the gold star and... 0:29:38.6 DL: Or money. [chuckle] 0:29:39.6 AS: Yeah, or money, right? Definitely. And they may even sabotage the business or whatever to get that gold star or that money. And then you talked about the idea of the piano thing of when you've got a few students in the room that are really doing well with them, having them talk about why they're... What happened. What they like about it, what's going on for them, because maybe it's not gonna be that everybody's gonna be a piano star, but if they could learn the process or share the process of the excitement, that may be able to be applied in other areas too, for some people. And then you talked about understanding variation, and part of it is understanding that not everybody's gonna be that star. And I think also the last thing that I think about is that... The thing you said is that people may just be in the wrong job too. Like you can't necessarily get the best out of someone sometimes because they're just in the wrong job, and I think that's kind of a critical one that we oftentimes overlook. Is there anything else that you'd add to that? 0:30:50.9 DL: Well, I was just thinking about special needs kids too. I was talking about teachers coming to me and wanting to talk about their own child. 0:31:00.2 AS: Yep. 0:31:00.3 DL: They say, "Oh my son has ADD or he can't do this, or he can't do that, or he's got this thing in classroom. How do I motivate him to do stuff?" And invariably, I'll say, "Does he ever do anything on his own over a long period of time?" And invariably, they'll say things like, "Oh yeah, he loves to make model airplanes, and he'll go to his room and he'll spend just hours making model airplanes." Well, he doesn't have an ADD problem. He's got, [chuckle] a motivation problem, right? 0:31:32.2 AS: Mm-hmm. 0:31:33.3 DL: He loves doing that, but he doesn't love what's going on at school, so... 0:31:40.2 AS: Turn that. 0:31:40.9 DL: It all depends on the kind of an environment that you're gonna make, but because we have so many kids that are, like your story, are being demotivated by school, right? Well, what do we do? Well, we're gonna classify them, we're gonna call these ADD and we're gonna call these kids this, and we're gonna call this that and then we're gonna medicate this group and not medicate that group, but nobody's ever saying, "How do we change our system so we have less and less and less of this kind of behavior?" 0:32:11.6 AS: Yeah. 0:32:13.6 DL: And that's what we're gonna get to in the next five podcasts. 0:32:17.2 AS: It reminds me of that ACDC song when I was young, "Problem Child." I'm a problem child. I've been labeled. I know exactly what I am. 0:32:25.1 DL: Yeah. 0:32:25.8 AS: Well, David, on behalf of... 0:32:27.5 DL: I'm proud of it. [laughter] 0:32:28.6 AS: Yes, exactly. I've got my spot. On behalf of everyone at the Deming Institute, I want to thank you again for this discussion. For listeners, remember to go to deming.org to continue your journey. Listeners can also learn more about David at langfordlearning.com. 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."

In our latest Deming in Education podcast, Andrew and David talk about a controversial subject: cellphones in classrooms. Should teachers have them? Students? Should they be banned? Or is there another way? TRANSCRIPT 0:00:03.2 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 discussion with David P. Langford, who has devoted his life to applying Dr. Deming's philosophy to education, and he offers offered us his practical advice for implementation. Today's topic is, "What would Deming say about cellphones in classrooms." David, take it away.   0:00:31.9 David Langford: Thank you. I just find this topic so relevant today and just so interesting, I just wanted to have this little discussion about what's going on because I'm reading articles that some high schools in Massachusetts, I think it was, are now banning cellphones completely, and so when kids come to school they have to put their cell phone in a hermetically sealed plastic bag that can only be opened by a teacher or an administrator at the end of the day. So, sort of like what Dagwood said in the comics one time, "It sounds like a good idea till you think about it." So those schools now have become the cell phone police. Alright?   0:01:23.6 AS: Yeah.   0:01:24.0 DL: They have to have people at the door, and if you think you're gonna outsmart a high school kid and get him... "Well, I didn't bring my phone today... " What are you gonna do then? You're gonna search 'em? You're gonna have a Geiger counter kind of the thing that they go through that will go off then, "You got a cell phone and... "   0:01:44.6 AS: You have got a cell phone or a gun, I'm not sure.   0:01:48.7 DL: And then you lied. And so now we have to have punishments for that and one cell phone misdemeanor will get you half an hour after school, and then so we have to have somebody to monitor the after school program and then we go on and on and on and on. And is that really the business you're in? And on the other hand, I can understand a teacher's complaint about, we got these cell phones and they're going off and everything, but I also want to tie it back into what are we supposed to be trying to do in education, what's our purpose? And Deming talked a lot about constancy of purpose, and so when all these students that are going to schools with banned cell phones get out into society and they go to work for companies like yours or other companies, what are companies gonna expect about their cell phones are we still gonna be taking cell phones away from employees when they hit the door? I would say... [cough] Excuse me. Generally, that people just make up, not necessarily even rules or regulations but ethics around cell phones. I remember as an administrator having that problem that we'd have administrative meetings and you might have 20 or 30 people in the room and there's people answering their email and they're looking up stuff on their cell phones and this and that, checking this.   0:03:25.2 DL: And in some cases, it could be an extreme emergency and they need to be paying attention to that, so do you just wanna ban that and say, "Okay, no, no answering email or doing anything like that." Or can we put some guidelines about what we believe? So it ties into Deming thinking, because the first thing that I've encountered this over and over, schools all over the world, and the first thing I would say is, "Okay, what's the statistical variation that you have on cell phones?" And they'll look at you blankly like, "Well, you know, it's just bad." [chuckle] Well, I can understand that, but does every child have a cell phone in the entire school? Are you dealing with that, well or either that system, or is there a system of inequity where only 30% of the kids can actually afford cell phones and what are parents views on cell phones and all the it's other kinds...   0:04:26.2 AS: I was just thinking that, I'm sure whatever challenges you're facing in the classroom that parents are also facing that challenge, so you actually have somewhat of an ally. I was looking at an article by CBS News, that just came out, and a quote from a guy named Tyler Rablin, a high school teacher in Sunnyside, Washington, he said, "It's a losing battle for kids and their brains."   0:04:55.6 DL: [laughter] That sounds like somebody that doesn't really wanna join the 21st century.   0:05:01.3 AS: But also the other thing is in business now, we have apps where you're communicating and you're expected to be online and respond and all that, so it's not like we're gonna get rid of...   0:05:12.0 DL: Yeah you can take that away as well. Well, and then there are developing countries, like I'm pretty sure that it's Nigeria that is actually issuing cell phones to every student because it's a miniature computer and it's affordable, and they can use it in multiple ways, working stuff through. So the idea of just, "Well, we're just gonna ban something, we're just gonna completely take it away, and so that's gonna solve your problem is actually creating its own problems, and I'd actually wanna know the data on how many interruptions are you talking about per class period, per day, what's a Pareto chart from highest to lowest of the type of interruptions with cell phones all the way to the lowest interruptions with cell phones. Have you actually come up with a cell phone etiquette for your school about how you agree to operate and have the students been a part of that, coming up with that etiquette, and what's normal and what's not normal?   0:06:15.9 DL: I know even with, as a school administrator, administrative groups, we actually had cell phone email time built into our work sessions, 'cause people said, "Well, I do need to check in and do this and there's stuff going on at my school that I need to be aware of and... " Great, so we decided to have cell phone time, there was like a 12-minute period or an 18-minute period, and they would tell us how much time they needed to do that, and everybody would go out and talk on their cellphones and call home and to see how the kids are doing, or whatever you needed to do. But then when you come back to the meeting, we're back in session and we're concentrating and we're doing the things that we need to do over there.   0:07:00.8 AS: There's a couple of things I'm...   0:07:01.2 DL: There are ways to deal with these things.   0:07:04.2 AS: I was thinking about a couple of things. Sometimes when I see a lot of distraction in a classroom, I basically tell people to turn off their phones and you can access them at the break, so we're gonna talk for an hour and a half. If you can't get away for an hour and a half, maybe you shouldn't be in the classroom, for someone that's coming for a training or something like that, no, you can't. If you say that to a kid, they'll say, "Yeah, exactly." But the other thing...   0:07:34.3 DL: Think about how if you've got that kind of thinking in your classroom, what do you need to be doing before you get to the classroom? Well, I need to be making my phone calls, I need to be doing my texting or whatever I'm going to be doing, so when I get in the classroom, I'm not gonna be tempted to be distracted from those types of things. To me, it's going back to Deming's concept of understanding the system, what is this system that you're trying to either prevent or create or work through? And I can absolutely guarantee you those kids are gonna run circles around those administrators and those teachers in those schools, they are going to find ways to make stuff happen. I'll never forget when cellphones were actually first sort of coming out and my kids were going to university, Allison got this text from my son, who was in a business class listening to a lecture that he was bored out of his mind, and that's back when we had the cell phones with buttons on 'em. And he said, "I'm texting you from my pocket because I'll get in trouble if I take out my phone." And he was doing the whole thing by feel 'cause the class was so boring, this was a whole lot more fun to see if he could pull that off, [chuckle] so that's what you're gonna be up against is...   0:08:55.7 AS: But the other thing is, I teach here in Asia, and most of my students are not native speakers, so they use their phones to record sometimes. Or yesterday, I had a class and we were running late, I had to run, but I needed to give them some advice on the next assignment, I told 'em, "Turn on your audio, I'm gonna run through seven things." One, two, three, four, five, six, seven. "I'll see you guys later." Boom. So there's that also. But what I'm coming back to, David, is that, it is really a battle for attention on what I can see the curse course of young people right now...   0:09:30.4 DL: Attention and control... And control. Who's in control here? Right?   0:09:34.1 AS: Yep. But what I can see is that I see a lot of young people that are unable to focus because they're constantly distracted, even for me, who didn't grow up with this type of thing, it can be distracting. And so I do things like, I'd leave my phone outside my office, I start work early in the morning where I know nobody is gonna send me any messages, all kinds of little tricks and stuff. But it is a challenge, which raises another issue in education, do we have a concentration time? Maybe we need to teach children about, "Hey, what is the value of going 30 minutes on this? No distraction." And teaching something like that.   0:10:17.1 DL: Yeah, I'd much rather that you had a Deming-focus in your school and you're thinking about, "Well, how do we manage this cell phone issue?" Because when students leave the school, they're gonna have to know how to use cell phones properly in work environments or in any environment that they go into. And so if we're not teaching 'em how to do it and they're not understanding how to work that through, it's just gonna be chaos on the other side of that.   0:10:49.8 AS: What about this? I remember a fund management client that I had in the UK, and I tried to get a hold of him in the morning, and he contacted me, he says, "Sorry, I didn't talk to you in the morning because our company doesn't turn on the email delivery until noon."   [laughter]   0:11:08.0 DL: Again, you're not trusting your employees to make good decisions, and so therefore, we're just gonna take care of it for you. That's another... Another way that you could do the cell phone thing is you could have a bubble over your school that prevented any cell phone access.   0:11:30.1 AS: There you go. A shield. A dome.   0:11:32.8 DL: A dome or a shield over it. We laugh about it and stuff, but and it's a very big problem for the teachers in schools and etcetera. If I was a teacher now and in a high school, I'd actually probably be requiring all of my students to have cellphones. Because I talked with one teacher about this one time, and that's what she did and she had everybody's numbers, she had everything, she would text stuff out and she said, "Oh, the kids were just like, take her cell phone away." 'Cause she was saying, "Remember we're gonna have this test on Friday, and remember you to study this." And she's blanket that out to everybody in the class, and so they're just constantly getting these text messages from her. But it's the same thing as in business, the eight-hour work day is a myth, it doesn't happen anymore. I know I'm on a 24-hour schedule because you're in Thailand and your're 11 hours different than where I'm at and... And that's happening worldwide, and if we're not teaching students how to deal with that... That's the whole advantage of having a cell phone is that I can get messages and that I can receive them and answer them on my schedule and on my time, and when I wanna do that and work through that.   0:13:00.0 DL: From a systems perspective, it's much, much more powerful to teach students how to make responsible choices and decisions, and then you're gonna get the question about, "Well what happens when if they don't make responsible decisions?" Well, are we talking about special cause, we got a thousand kids in the school and we got one kid or 10, right?   0:13:22.8 AS: Yup.   0:13:23.8 DL: Well, they're gonna need some special help, 'cause obviously they need help learning how to control themselves. But in general, 99... 98% of the students don't have this problem.   0:13:35.4 AS: So what I'd like to do is just wrap this up by thinking about a teacher who's listening to this and thinking, "Yeah, this is a challenge I'm facing in my classroom and I'm looking for different ways to handle it, and from this conversation, next week when I go into class, I'm gonna take a different perspective on this, and that is gonna be based upon what you're saying and your interpretation of Dr. Deming's ideas about this." So what kind of specific steps would you say? Like, "Maybe try this, try that, do this, do that, re-evaluate what your goals are and what's your aim?" What would you say it is?   0:14:09.7 DL: The answer to these questions always is; it depends, right? [chuckle] So...   0:14:14.5 AS: Oh, David...   0:14:16.7 DL: The control may be totally out of that teacher's hands, where the school or the district's saying, well "This is our policy, and this is what we have to do." If that's the case, then you don't really have much. But even a single teacher within a whole district, or a school, can change the system. So if I wanted to do something differently, I might go to my principal and say, "Look, can I run a PDSA; Plan, Do, Study, Act experiment on cell phones? And my students actually wanna have cell phones in their classes, and so we'd like to take a month, and in just my classes, we're gonna have cell phones and we're gonna learn how to use them really properly, and we're gonna collect some data on improper use and proper use, and try to understand the situation." And generally, I'd say that most administrators would probably say, "Yeah, that sounds like a logical solution," right? But to actually understand it...   0:15:24.9 AS: You're getting the students involved...   0:15:26.1 DL: Getting the students involved...   0:15:26.3 AS: That's part of their key...   0:15:29.0 DL: That's the whole key, the students are always the secret weapon. If you're not getting them involved, you're just shooting yourself in the foot, so I can guarantee at these high schools that are banning cell phones, there's probably not a single student that came up with this idea that, "Oh, we need to ban cell phones."   0:15:45.5 AS: Yeah.   0:15:46.1 DL: [chuckle] It's just not what's gonna happen.   0:15:49.7 AS: I was thinking about one idea could be that students may come up with this, maybe we could use this two... We could do partners, like two people, one cell phone. And how do we explore, see what we can find on a particular topic? Or how do we... Just all kinds of ideas would come up, and plus these guys, they know how to use these, that it is a tool, and maybe through that process, you would be teaching them to see it as a tool, not as a burden or not something that you gotta restrict, but how do you get the most outta this tool?   0:16:24.1 DL: Well, that's... I'm sure that your day is much like mine. Any time, any second, that I think, "I wonder what the answer to this is?" Or "I need to do a little research on this," or etcetera, I don't run to my computer 'cause it's... I'll pull out my cell phone and within 30 seconds or less, I've got the answer to that, and...   0:16:49.6 AS: It's funny because I...   0:16:51.0 DL: I wouldn't wanna deprive students of that in a school.   0:16:54.5 AS: I was talking with my mother and she was talking about one of our houses that we lived in, in New Jersey, and I remembered a picture of that house. I asked her, "What's the address of that house?" And she could remember it, even though she's getting older. And I went on Google, and I zoomed in, and I go, "Mom, is that the front porch of the house," and she's like, "That's it." And just, like, there's so much that you can do with this tool, so...   0:17:21.6 DL: Yeah, so just think of, you're just blanketly depriving people of access to using that tool. I mean, to me, it just doesn't make any sense, and from a Deming perspective, I think it's not tenable. It's certainly not sustainable. And I absolutely could guarantee you that, in five years, those very same high schools are gonna be done with that policy and, because they don't wanna be the cell phone policemen anymore.   0:17:50.2 AS: Yup.   0:17:51.9 DL: So eventually you're gonna have to learn how to teach people to use them properly within the existing systems. It's gonna come...   0:18:03.1 AS: So, maybe I'll summarize by thinking about some of the questions about cell phones, even is, does every kid have a phone? And...   0:18:11.1 DL: That's right...   0:18:11.8 AS: What's the situation?   0:18:13.8 DL: Yeah, could be an equity issue, right? Oh, we're gonna ban cell phones because only 25% of our kids can actually afford to have a cell phone. Okay, well, that's a whole different issue than we're just gonna ban this...   0:18:29.0 AS: Well, that's why I was thinking about teams, if you had a room where a certain number of people didn't have a cell phone by setting up... If the students came out and say, "Hey, why don't we work in teams?" Boom. You also talked about, maybe we should think about cell phone etiquette, maybe get parents and, obviously, students involved. And the other thing you said, are you trusting your employees? Are you trusting your students? And you also talked about, maybe, the thing to do is, let's study it, let's do a PDSA on cell phones; how to use them properly, how to use them in the classroom and try to learn and develop something that you're developing with the students, and finally, see the phone as a tool for reaching the goal of the system. Which is, let's say, to educate young people. Anything you would add to that?   0:19:21.4 DL: Yeah, I'm sure there's people listening to this and saying, "Well, those guys don't understand our reality," well, you can create your own reality. [chuckle] I'd rather be in a school system where everybody's responsibly using cell phones, even the administrators, and teachers. Where was I? In Australia or some place, and I said something about, "Some of our schools think they have a cell phone problem," and the administrators said, "You mean with the teachers?"   [laughter]   0:19:55.3 DL: And I hadn't even thought about that. He said, "We have a really big problem with that, the teachers are just always on their cell phones and using... Texting, and doing all their stuff, and... "   0:20:03.0 AS: Yup. Well, if you're listening to this podcast, you're like, "You guys don't know, and this and that... " Well, if it's getting you a little bit frustrated, you're questioning it and stuff, that's the part of the process of learning, is getting some new information and thinking about that. David, I wanna thank you for challenging us to think about cell phones, 'cause even in my case, I kinda went into this with a little bit different view, but you've got me convinced to get the students involved, and maybe their parents, and think about what's our real aim here. On behalf of everyone at the Deming Institute, I wanna thank you again for this discussion. For listeners, remember to go to deming.org to continue your journey. Listeners can also learn about David at langfordlearning.com. 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.”

In this episode, Andrew and David talk about chaos, authority, and when calming the chaos can feel like a loss of control. They explore the "psychology" aspect of Dr. Deming's System of Profound Knowledge, and how that applies to classrooms and and school systems. TRANSCRIPT  0:00:02.4 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 discussion with David P. Langford, who has devoted his life to applying Dr. Deming's philosophy to education, and he offers us his practical advice for implementation. Today's topic is Thriving on Chaos. David, take it away.   0:00:28.4 David Langford: Thank you, Andrew. It's good to be back again.   0:00:30.9 AS: Oh, yeah.   0:00:31.0 DL: So, yes, Thriving on Chaos. So I started thinking about this because of my work with executive coaching, both with principals and superintendents and people like that. And it's sort of like a pattern or if I go and visit a campus and actually start to see what's happening at the campus, either a university or a school or whatever, and it applies to Deming's concept of Profound Knowledge and the concept of Psychology and how does psychology fit in with the variation systems thinking and so on and so forth. So this whole idea about thriving on chaos comes from... You have to start to think about the neuroscience behind it as well, about who's in charge or who's in command of something. So if you're talking about a military a military commander, well, that's all based on your rank. Or you might have a formal position in a company, right? You're a vice president or you're president, and along with that there comes a certain level of authority too.   0:01:46.3 DL: Well, in a school, it's the same kind of a thing. In a classroom, a teacher has a built-in level of authority in that classroom and especially like in younger years, elementary schools or primary schools, you're physically bigger than your students or your clients or your workers or however you wanna think about students in a school system. So sometimes people get away from... Get by with a management style that, it's just based on... That is bigger and sort of is threatening, and it's scarier. And imagine if you had a boss that was like 20 feet tall and... Compared to you and stuff. It'd be kind of a scary thing, right?   0:02:38.0 AS: Definitely.   0:02:39.8 DL: Yeah, but I think...   0:02:40.9 AS: He could just squash me by just putting his foot down.   0:02:44.8 DL: Yeah. So just because you're getting stuff done doesn't necessarily mean that you're doing things well or planning things through or something. You're just getting things done because maybe you're the loudest voice in the room or the squeakiest wheel or you're the... All these other kinds of things. But along with that, when you have that formal position, I've sort of found that people have to go through a phase where they're tired of the chaos, they're tired of the craziness, but at the same time, the craziness gives you authority. "I'm the authority figure. And so, I've gotta fix this, and I gotta always be in control." And so, Deming talked about moving from one burning fire to the next to the next to the next and managing the way of thinking like that.   0:03:44.5 DL: So if you really start applying Deming kind of philosophies to your management style, whether that's in a classroom, school, company, whatever it might be, I've always found that over time, things start to calm down. [chuckle] Attitudes calm down, students just know more about what to do, how to do things. Maybe they have flow charts or operational definitions, and so they start to actually take control of the situation, etcetera. And that actually becomes threatening to somebody who has spent a career thriving on the chaos. And you walk into a classroom and none of the kids are doing what it is they're supposed to do. And so, you get really angry, and you get upset, and yell at them and then everybody does what they're supposed to do and that puts you in a position of authority.   0:04:37.9 DL: That's much different than if I walked into a classroom and the students didn't even know I was gone. They all know what they're supposed to do, how they're supposed to do it, they're all working together, they're all communicating with each other back and forth and there is no chaos. I'll never forget the... I worked with a university in Southern California and I was coaching a number of the professors. And this one professor, I get a phone call one day and he's whispering. He said, "I had a flat on the way to school this morning, and I was 20 minutes late. And we have a philosophy at the school that if a professor is more than 10 minutes late, you don't have to stay. You can leave."   0:05:28.1 DL: So he said, "I was totally sure that I was gonna get to my class and everybody's gonna be gone. There wouldn't be anybody there." He said, "I came into my class, and they didn't even know I was gone. They were all working in teams and they were working on their projects and communicating and going through stuff." [chuckle] So he calls me whispering, and he said, "I need some quality therapy. They don't need me." Well, it's just the opposite. Those kinds of environments don't happen by accident. And he had steadily been turning the management, so to speak, of the class over to the students and... "You know what to do. You know what you do when you hit the room. Why would you even come to class? What's my role? What's your role? How do we define things?" And...   0:06:18.1 DL: So he actually had turned into much more of what we all wanna do, is become a facilitator of learning, that's a very common term in education, but people don't often realize you truly become a facilitator of learning, it's kind of threatening. Because you've been thriving on chaos for years, and running stuff and being the person in control and everybody has to come to you for an answer and for a decision, and that in itself psychologically is a pretty heady thing. And if you start to change that, it becomes threatening.   0:06:56.1 AS: From your own experience, I'm guessing that there's a small proportion of people that will never change that style, everybody line up when they in, everybody be quiet. Okay, you do this, you do that, and then you've got this group that on the other end of the spectrum, it's like, you guys do it, but then you've got a lot of people in the middle, how do you convince the people in the middle that shifting... I guess what you could say is empowering one group dis-empowers another, it must.   0:07:31.0 DL: Yeah, what Deming says, leaders have three sources of power, so yes, you have your formal position, and then you also have your knowledge about things, and then there's the psychology of how you manage and what you do and all that kind of stuff, but he often talked about formal leaders don't use formal position. But you absolutely have to because you're not gaining authority or you're not gaining power or authority to change things by going through that. So yes, yes, you have the role. Yes, you have the position. Yes, you have the responsibility. And ultimately, the buck stops with you, whether that's a teacher in a classroom or a CEO in a company, but you're only gonna use that formal position to make decisions or overstep things, basically in a time of crisis or an emergency. But even then, as soon as you finish that time of crisis or that emergency you wanna spend time trying to figure out how do we make sure this never happens again. A really great example is every school in the world practices fire drills. Oh, why did we do that? Well, a child could go through entire school systems some place and never ever have an actual fire.   0:09:00.6 DL: Right. Well, we do that because... We have to practice that because the danger is so high, and if something did happen, that special cause, that one special cause, one time in 12 years or 20 years, the cost is so great that we have to practice it, we have to be ready and everything else, 'cause we can't rely in a moment, on the leader being there to tell us what to do. Everybody has to know what to do in those kinds of situations. The same thing's true today in lockdowns, schools, things like that, the danger level is so high, we have to practice it nowadays, and we have to go through the scenario, even though it's such an extreme special cause, it may... In a whole teacher's career of 40 years, they may never, ever experience an actual threat going on, but we practice it to make sure it doesn't... This doesn't happen again. So it's the same thing, if you find yourself in chaos, again, something's going on or some project didn't go well, or whatever it is that you went through, the best thing is to just figure out how do we get through this? And then secondly, start using the people that were part of the process and part of the dysfunction to actually fix the process. What do we learn from this?   0:10:21.6 AS: And would we equate when we talk about, let's just say we create a run chart on a production in a factory, and our job is to get the system in control to reduce variability, that type of thing, I guess that's reducing chaos or chaotic outcomes. So is it a corollary here that as we start to apply the principles in education, one of our goals is to reduce that variation or that chaotic, chaotic-ness? I don't know. How does that compare to what we would think in a factory, as an example?   0:10:56.0 DL: Yeah, no, that's exactly the same kind of thing. You know, it can be so simple. I remember asking teachers all the time, How's it going today? Oh, I'm having a really bad day, or I'm having great day, or these kids are driving me crazy today, it must be... Gonna rain. Well, they're just constantly victims of their own reality, and so until you have that understanding of your variation or able to sort of step back and it very well could be that it's gonna rain and that's a sort of a special cause, except if you're in Thailand it rains all the time, so it's a common cause. But... And that could be having some kind of effect, but until you have some level of data to try to look at over time, then you're on this constant psychological roller coaster.   0:11:53.2 DL: Great day and bad day, or I hate this job, or I don't like this job or... Because you're just riding those waves of psychology of the variation that's going on, and especially in schools, there's just so much random variation, like we try to control it to some level, but for the most part, still you really have no idea the variation, and students are gonna come into your classroom every year, right? So they could be coming from different countries, they could have different languages, they could have different backgrounds, all kinds of things within that. Now, unlike in a K-12 system, like we have in the United States and other places around the world, we do control that to some degree, because a certain percentage of those students are gonna stay in that system for the entire time that they're going through that system, and then they... A high percentage sometimes are transient students that are coming in and out all the time.   0:12:54.4 DL: The real key is, are you just thriving on that chaos of that and it's just, "Oh, woe is me, and I'll look at this, we got all these transient kids and kids that speak 52 different languages and everything else," or are you starting to understand that, "Oh, no, this is probably the norm of our system, and what are we doing about it?" How are we managing differently to bring all these cultures together and to manage it on a whole different level.   0:13:21.1 AS: So maybe I will try to summarize what you've been talking about. First of all, you're saying this is part of the psychology aspect of the Theory of Profound Knowledge that Dr. Deming talks about. And when you talk about psychology in a statistician kind of background or education that Dr. Deming was in, it's always kind of interesting like, "Wow, he really, really thought a lot about the human... The person involved in whatever activity is going on." You also talked about who's in charge or in command, you talked about in military it's a rank. In a business, it may be like, "I'm a VP, I'm an executive VP." So we see that, but one of the things you mentioned, which is so interesting, I hadn't thought about it, is that the teachers are just physically bigger, and so there's a certain level of power right there. And the other thing you were talking about is how people may be tired of the craziness, but the chaos makes them feel in control, like [snaps] get everybody lined up, and tell everybody what to do, and they're perpetuating the problem that they're kind of suffering from. And then you mentioned that Deming's methods, when you start to implement them in a classroom, in a school, that things start to calm down. That...   0:14:44.6 AS: And that is a threat to the person that wants to thrive on chaos, and then finally the last part you talked about was the three types of power, formal power that's derived from knowledge and power that's derived from psychology, and you said ultimately, you only wanna use the power that comes from formal position in very rare cases, but the idea is try to get the... I guess what I would say is by empowering students, you're reducing your power and let them produce from that. Anything you would add to that?   0:15:20.8 DL: No, you got it spot on.   0:15:26.4 AS: Well, there we are.   0:15:30.3 DL: Yeah, Deming talked a lot about that. Somebody that becomes more and more knowledgeable about managing situations and helping people becomes very powerful, and you may not have the formal position, so you could be a teacher in a building that has 160 teachers, but you become actually very powerful, and in some cases, more powerful than the principal, because you're constantly applying knowledge and thinking to situations versus just reacting to the chaos.   0:16:00.9 AS: It's interesting, 'cause I think about in my young days, what I did is I learned Excel. I learned how to use Microsoft Excel intensely, and that was when it was pretty... It's still pretty basic, but still the point was, is it...   0:16:13.8 DL: And that's when you could have memorized all the formulas.   0:16:16.5 AS: Exactly, exactly. And therefore, people would always go, "Go see Andrew, he can help you solve that." And I had derived a certain amount of power through my knowledge, and I loved that, and I love people coming to me and going, "How do I do this?" "Oh, that's easy to do it like that," and my power and maybe respect for my knowledge rose over time, and so I definitely see that. In fact, I would say that that was a big part of my own education, my pursuit of education, is I saw knowledge as a source of power for me or a source of controlling the situation for good or bad.   0:16:55.3 DL: Yeah, when we talk about, Deming, talked about the three sources of power, when he... I said that psychology, I was really talking about personality. So somebody... You may have worked with people that they just have a great personality, they're just fun to work with and easy to get along with and everything. Well, they actually get a lot of stuff done, right? So the most effective managers are concentrating on knowledge and personality as a way to get the stuff done and not just issuing orders through my formal position.   0:17:27.0 AS: Well, that is a great discussion on Thriving on Chaos and the pros and cons of it. David, on behalf of everyone at the Deming Institute, I wanna thank you again for the discussion. For listeners, remember to go to deming.org to continue your journey. Also, you can learn more about David at langfordlearning.com. 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."

Now that we understand Operational Definitions (see Part 12), it's time to figure out how to use them to get the improvements and results you want. Andrew and David talk about examples of useful Operational Definitions and how they can impact all aspects of education (and beyond!) TRANSCRIPT 0:00:00.0 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 discussion with David P. Langford, who has devoted his life to applying Dr. Deming's philosophy to education, and he offers us his practical advice for implementation. Today's topic is how to start setting operational definitions. David, take it away.   0:00:27.1 David Langford: So in a previous podcast, we talked a lot about the need for operational definitions, and how that improved systems, and why do you wanna do that. Well, that's part of what Deming talked about with profound knowledge and systems thinking, and it's really important. But the nuts and bolts about how do you begin doing that. Well, the first thing you need to do is to figure out what system am I working on, is the number one thing. What am I trying to improve or design? Am I trying to improve the system of behavior? Am I trying to improve the system of the learning in the classroom? Or whatever it might be. Or maybe you're a principal and all of a sudden you realize, "My teachers, they don't all show up on time to the staff meetings," Right? So staff meeting's supposed to start at 3:40, and we don't ever get a staff meeting going till four o'clock, so... I know when I go places and they're not getting started promptly, etcetera, I'll say things like, "What time do you usually start your eight o'clock meetings?"   [laughter]   0:01:42.3 DL: Yeah, it usually gets people to go, Oh, yeah... Sometimes they'll say, "Well, usually about nine o'clock, so."   0:01:47.9 AS: And, David, I have a story I wanna share that I think can kind of lead into this, is that I was involved with a master's in marketing program here, about 75 students every time. And then I'm also involved with a MBA, an executive MBA program with another university. And one of the things that's interesting is the master's in marketing program, 75 students, so these classes are big, pretty big, 75 students, not one of them was late, ever. All 75 were in the classroom, door closed, when it was time to start the class and I started. And the other one I was just meeting out there, and we were at an event where I was teaching, and they said, "Look, really sorry, we try to pull everybody together but they're always late," and all that.   0:02:31.4 AS: And I was just like, this is interesting, the difference here. 'Cause it's the same cohort of people, it's the same group of executives and smart people in Thailand that are pursuing a degree. And the guy asked me, and I told him the story about the other university, and he said, "How do they do it?" And I said, "Well, they set a pretty clear standard of, look, this is important to us that you're on time, and we're gonna lock the door, and if you're not there at the time that it starts, you can't go in until the break. And we're gonna get class leaders to support this, we're gonna get alumni to support this, to say, this is part of what makes us unique."   0:03:06.9 DL: There you go.   0:03:08.1 AS: And I saw a very different outcome.   0:03:10.7 DL: So there you go. That's an operational definition. And whether or not you agree with it or not, you can see by having that operational definition at the one university, you've got a level of function that you don't have at the other university, you got a level of dysfunction, because they haven't taken the time to really do that. Really define what does that mean? And so when that happens, then you're dealing with all this variability, variation from students, variation from professors, variation from everybody in the system, and the overall system is not optimized. So it just keeps coming back to what we talked about before, but in this session we wanted to get into a little bit about, how would you begin setting an operational definition? What does it look like?   0:04:06.1 DL: When I work with, say, elementary teachers, I say, start the very first day, the very first thing, so... And start operationally defining what kinds of standards and what kinds of things you wanna have happen. Something so simple about, "Every time you hand a paper in, we want you to put your name on the paper." Okay, well, let's have a discussion about, let's operationally define, what does it mean to put your name on a paper? And sometimes people look at you and say, "Hey, what are you talking about?" Well, do you want first and last name? You just want a first name? Do you want it in the upper left-hand corner? The upper right-hand corner? Do you want it just anyplace on the paper, you don't really care? Well, if it's just random, if it's just anyplace on the paper, but my name's on it, well, that means that you as the teacher, every time you get a paper you're gonna be searching, trying to find somebody's name, right?   0:04:58.9 AS: Does it need to be clearly written?   0:05:01.3 DL: Yeah. Yeah, and what is clearly? I have no idea what that means. So we might have to have a discussion as a class and start to talk about, what does clearly written mean? There are some things to that. Well, clearly written means all the lower case letters need to be the same height. Oh, okay. So I'm thinking about that and I say, "Is my name clear, all my lower case letters the same height? Well, no, they're not." Okay, well then I can fix that, can't I? Right? So you can get clarity around these things if you really are thinking like this from the very beginning of bringing people into a system. As things get more and more complicated, and let's say that you wanna have a whole group of people come to a common definition, or a common operational definition on something. I started a process years ago of, in my classes, working with students and staff too, but anytime we needed to define something everybody would write it down, and then we'd pass it around and start to share those definitions and begin to talk about it.   0:06:20.9 DL: But then over the years, that sort of evolved into a tool that we call... Nowadays we call P³T. P to the third power T. So what it actually stands for is, the P³ is the paper passing purpose tool. And that came from one of my students one time, he said, "Oh, this is P to the third power." And so we just named it that, and it's become a popular way to define things. But what you do with that... I've done this with school boards. They wanna define certain terms with the school board and everything. So let's do a P³T. So what you do is you take... You wanna get everybody's opinion without it being tainted by other people, you just start having a big discussion about how you should define something or you can take a vague word, like we talked about last time discovery, but you could take a word like behavior or discipline or anything you want and you realize that everybody's got their own definition of what that means, but to optimize the system, we all have to have a common definition of what that means.   0:07:33.6 DL: So you take all the people in a group, usually try to... If I've got more than about five or seven people in a group, then we'll break that up into multiple groups, so it might have... So let's say I'm gonna do this in a classroom, and I wanna get everybody in the classroom help contribute to an operational definition. We might just put everybody into groups of five to say eight people, and just start the process, and so then we state, "Okay, well, we wanna have a term on a quality work." There's a vague term, we want all the work...   0:08:14.1 AS: Good quality around here.   0:08:15.7 DL: Yeah, quality work, we want everything that comes in to be quality. So well, we better define what that is. So first thing I'm gonna have everybody do is write down their own personal definition of quality work, right, and they're gonna write it on this paper, and then very simply, everybody then just passes it to the right or the left, and when you get somebody's paper, then the first thing you're gonna do is read that person's definition of that term. Whatever it is you're trying to define, and as you're reading it, you're gonna automatically come to certain phrases or words where you have an affinity for that and you're gonna go, "Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, I agree with that." So if you agree with that, what you do is you just underline it, okay, and so when you get finished, that paper has a bunch of things underlined and some things not underlined and then when you're finished with that, you pass it to the right and everybody keeps passing your paper around until you get your paper back.   0:09:14.5 DL: And if something's already been underlined once, then when I get it, if I also agree with that then I'm gonna underline it again, or if there's not enough space for that, maybe I'll put a check mark by it or just something that identifies that, okay, I agree with that, or I think that's a good idea, right? So when I get my paper back, I actually have the feedback from five to seven other people about what they thought about my definition, which is pretty interesting, right? Did I have a lot of people agree with me on certain things or maybe things that I thought were really important, nobody agreed with me on that, or nobody underlined that. They didn't think that was important at all. So you got all these definitions and papers, but you've got a chance for people to see everybody else's definition. And now we wanna start combining that into an operational definition agreement with the group. If you try to...   0:10:16.4 AS: And before we get to that.   0:10:19.0 DL: Go ahead.   0:10:19.7 AS: Before we get to that step. Can I just highlight? You talked about this idea of each person writing down their opinion so that they're not tainted by the influence of others, and that really is such a powerful first step. Because you could imagine that somebody would write down, "We've gotta be on time. That's what makes quality work to me." And now you end up... You start to expose pet peeves, maybe you call them, and then once you start... That starts going around those pet peeves kind of all of a sudden you realize that nobody underlined that, and then you think, "Oh, okay, that's interesting, I guess that's really important to me, but maybe it isn't." So that first part of the process that you've just defined of passing that paper around, I think is really valuable. So now, let's imagine that that paper has now come back to you. You're going, "Holy crap. I see some things that people agree with, but nobody underlined some of the things that I thought was important." Now you go to that next step. Tell us about that.   0:11:21.5 DL: Yeah, well often when I start with groups, a lot of times they'll have somebody that says, "Well, can we just discuss this before we start?" No, no. Absolutely not, because I don't want to give you the chance to intimidate somebody else in the group. Well, everybody here just knows what on-time performance is, right? And everybody here knows that it's this, and everybody here agrees with me. No, so psychologically, you don't wanna give people that chance to dominate a group ahead of time, and a lot of times our meetings are like that. Just full of that stuff. And by the time you actually get around to doing something or doing some work, people are so jaded, so upset that they just don't say anything, they don't wanna participate.   0:12:14.3 AS: And that's because let's say one person is kind of... They're persuasive, they have strong opinions, they tend to dominate of what it is, and we can say... There's a common word I hear a lot in America is inclusive, and one of the objectives of those people maybe is not to be too inclusive, and what you're saying is that when you're passing around that paper, it's a raw experience, you are forced to be inclusive of all people's ideas. And then you start to...   0:12:44.6 DL: And opinions and you may even have it, this is common students, that kids blow off things right, they just... They don't do it, or they put down something frivolous or silly or whatever it might be. Well, when they get their paper back and nothing on there was underlined, they start to get the picture like, Oh, okay, well, that was kind of a waste of time, right? That was just silly. And so next time around, you're probably gonna see that person take things a little more serious, a little more focus, think about things themselves before they get started, and you haven't had to say anything. They got the picture. Alright, so you got this paper back and you got these certain things, so now how do we move from... So we started with the individual and then we went to the group, and then how can you move that to a whole, say a whole class or a whole system depending on the size of the group.   0:13:39.9 DL: So probably the simplest way I've ever done it is I'll just ask somebody to start and say, "Tell me one thing that is underlined on your paper." People say, "Underlined a lot or a little or?" It doesn't matter. You decide, what was underlined on your paper that you think is important? And they'll tell me something, so we'll write that on the flip chart or the board or whatever it might be. Then you go to the next person and you say, "Okay, what do you have that's different?" And then you go to the next person and you say, "Okay, what do you have to add that's different?" And what you're doing is you're removing redundancies, you're removing all kinds of things as you go through, and people are starting to think harder and harder and look at their own paper and start to say, "Okay, these three things have already been listed, so I guess I don't have anything else to add." So once I go all the way around a group like that and I've removed all the redundancies, now we've distilled this down into what this group thinks is really important.   0:14:50.4 AS: And when we list those down, we're now listing down everything that's different. So we could have seven different things on that list.   0:15:00.0 DL: Oh, yeah.   0:15:00.2 AS: Would that be correct?   0:15:00.3 DL: Oh yeah.   0:15:01.1 AS: Okay. So now we got a long laundry list kind of thing. What do we do next?   0:15:06.7 DL: It can be, or it actually usually comes out much more concise than you think it's gonna be.   0:15:15.6 AS: Okay, because they've already kind of brought it down by underlining...   0:15:19.0 DL: That's right.   0:15:19.6 AS: And not underlining. Okay.   0:15:21.2 DL: That's right. There's other prioritization tools you could do and all kinds of things, but it takes a lot more time and etcetera. So now I've got this list.   0:15:29.3 AS: So let's say what, three... Two to five things that people have said?   0:15:34.0 DL: Yeah, it could be more like nine, 10, 12 things on this list.   0:15:38.7 AS: So we've got a long list?   0:15:40.2 DL: Yeah. So now how to... Let's say that I've got six groups of people in one room, each group has 5-7 people, but I wanna end up with a common operational definition for the whole room, right? Then I simply go to one group and say, "Okay, what do you have on your list?" And basically, I'm doing the same process but with groups. And this group says, "Oh, well, we said this in our group." Okay, so we're gonna write that down. I go to the next group, "What do you guys have that's different?" Then I go to the next group, "What do you have that's different?" And you just keep going around until everybody's... There's nothing left. Nobody has anything left.   0:16:18.6 DL: You talked a little bit about standards-based learning, how ambiguous that is. Well, here's a great way to take a whole staff and say, "Okay, well, let's try to define what we think this is, what does standards-based learning mean?" So first, what does it mean to you as an individual? And then how does my opinion sort of... What's the juxtaposition of my opinion with a group and then the thinking overall with the bigger group? So if I do the exact same process now with a group of 30 people within 10-12, 15 minutes, we've distilled it down to all the kinds of things that we think are really super important of this concept.   0:17:04.6 AS: Can I just go back? Okay, so first thing we did, we had... We broke people into different groups. So let's say we have, I don't know, five groups of six. And each person wrote down what they said their definition of that particular thing is, quality work or whatever, and then we push it around in a circle and people underline the things that they agree with, then we have... We then go up to the board and we say, "Okay, let's just get a laundry list of the different things," and we may have five, we may have 10, we may have 12, whatever, we have our list. Now, all of a sudden, you got other groups that have their lists. Now, what I'm trying to understand is that the next step, when you bring the other groups lists of 5-10 different things, are you...   0:17:49.4 DL: So basically, I'm doing this exact same process. I'll go to one group and say, "Okay, tell me something that you have on your group list... "   0:17:56.8 AS: That's different from this.   0:17:58.0 DL: "That you thought was important." And they're gonna tell me one concept. And then I'm gonna go to the next group and I say, "Okay, what do you have that's different?" And they'll tell me something else. Then I go to the next group, "What do you have that's different?" So I'm doing the exact same process, only with groups. And so I'm limiting redundancies again.   0:18:14.6 AS: And let me ask you a question. If you ended up... When you did the first group, you ended up with let's say 10 things. Then you go out to a group of groups, then you're gonna add probably on another one or two because one group had something that was different. So now you've got a list of 12 things or what happens by the end of that process?   0:18:35.0 DL: Could be. It's gonna distill it down, and sometimes it's phrases or even sentences or things that you wanna have in this operational definition. So at the end of this, you've got this concise document. Now, it's not a flowery paragraph or a statement or anything like that yet, but it is a list of everything that everybody in this room said is very important with this operational definition. And everybody in the room should be able to see how my contribution was folded into the whole. Because I can look at that list and go, "Oh yeah, I was the one. I said that."   0:19:15.8 AS: Because we didn't eliminate... Well, we could have eliminated something. If you had an idea, for instance, about quality work, let's say that it's on time and nobody else underlined that, well, then you can say, "Well, the group really doesn't see that as valuable as I saw it. So, okay, that's off." So we've eliminated some maybe pet peeves or frivolous things, and now we've a solid list.   0:19:37.1 DL: Yeah, and that's exactly what happens.   0:19:38.2 AS: We've got a solid list.   0:19:38.5 DL: Yep, that's exactly what happens.   0:19:41.4 AS: And then once we've got that solid list is what we wanna do then is just say, this is a list of everything, or do we then prioritize it, reduce it down, tighten it? What do we do from that point?   0:19:53.2 DL: Yeah, the answer to those questions is, it depends. [chuckle] So it really depends on what it is you're trying to do at that point. I find that a lot of times we're trying to operationally define something that's been kind of vague in the past, once we get that list and get it to that point, that's about all we need to do right now. We could spend weeks or months arguing about commas and coming up with some kind of statement that brings it all together, but you don't really need to do that because we've all agreed that these are all the things that we think are really important about this concept, and so that is our operational definition. Now, when I used to do this with students in classrooms... Yeah. But I'm gonna define something like quality work or on-time performance or any of those kinds of things or tardiness or anything. I'm trying to get rid of problems, right?   0:20:52.0 AS: Right.   0:20:52.7 DL: And so I'm gonna do any of those kinds of things. At some point, I would stop and have everybody take that list and try to combine those things into a paragraph or a statement.   0:21:03.3 AS: Okay.   0:21:04.8 DL: And have great fun doing that, where everybody's creativity and taking that list of items and turning it into some kinda paragraph that incorporates it. And students are amazing at this stuff. They come up with the most interesting concepts and ways of phrasing things that you could put a group of adults in a room for a year and they'd never come up with something so interesting. So, usually, at that point, I just have people go around and read what they wrote, and maybe we'll take certain phrases, and we could. We could turn it into a paragraph or something that was... Combining all that. But we're using that as a learning experience about how to take concepts and create definitions and paragraphs out of it.   0:21:50.6 AS: So let me try to summarize what we talked about. First, you highlighted the idea of like, wait a minute, what system are we trying to improve? We need to understand that first. And then to optimize that particular system, we need some common definitions. Now, when we started the conversation, I thought we were gonna end up with some really narrow, tight definition. I kinda was interested about where you ended. But before we get to where you ended with this, you talked about doing what you call P³T, or one of your students called it. I think you said paper passing purpose tool.   0:22:24.8 DL: Yeah. P to the third power.   0:22:26.1 AS: Yes. P to the third power T. And basically what you said is, "Don't let that start off as a discussion, because maybe one person could dominate that or try to influence what other people think about it." Rather, get each person to write down their definition of, for instance, we used the idea of what is quality work. And that's a pretty vague thing, so that's a good one for people to write down what are their opinions on it. And that way, they're not tainted by the influence of others. Once they've written it down, then pass it to their right, and let the person on your right underline the items on there that they agree with, and then pass that around. And by the time it comes back to you, you'll find that some of the things that you highlighted are agreed with, and some may not be. Then you basically take that and you go up on the board and say, "Alright, let's start with you." Start with one person and say, "What's one thing on your card that you've written down," and you wrote that down, and then you go to the next person, say, "What's one new thing on there that was not... That's not that?"   0:23:26.3 DL: Something different. That's different.   0:23:28.8 AS: Something that's different. And then you come up with a little bit of a laundry list. It could be five, it could be 10, it could be 12 of different things from that particular group of people. And then you can take it out to a bigger group where you have a series of groups that are doing the same thing. You then go around, you may add some things onto it. And then where I thought it was interesting where you ended with this, David, you said... You were kinda like, "Sometimes you don't have to go further than that right now. Just that is valuable process." And I thought, yeah, that's interesting, because just doing that, you can say we never have to do... 'Cause remember, before I was talking about discovery, and you were like, "I don't know what discovery is. I don't know what you mean." Well, you just described a pretty good process of discovery of what everybody thinks. Now, we don't ever go through that again. Do we have to tightly define that beyond that right now? Maybe not. Maybe we revisit it six months from now and tighten it up.   0:24:24.1 DL: It depends. So let's put this into practice. This is gonna be our definition of quality work. And so now we're gonna put it into practice, and then maybe later on, we can come back and re-look at the list. I've found that when you just have things in a list like that, people are more apt to wanna change it later on than if you have this flowery, nice paragraph that somebody's really worked on everything, and then people are like, I don't really wanna do that. But a lot of times, later on, after it's in practice, people come back and say, "Oh, we said this, but really, that's not really even relevant anymore." We can actually cross that thing off the list. That's not the most important thing. Or you were asking about prioritization. You could do a follow-on, you could do an NGT prioritization, nominal group technique, or you could do... Use just sticky dots to prioritize. Or if you need to. If you need to. But sometimes, most of the learning is in the process. So since every single person was a part of the process, every single person at the end of the process knows the definition of something, because they were a part of it.   0:25:35.9 AS: Yeah, yeah. Well, for the listeners and the viewers out there, what a great step-by-step guide that we can all try to put into practice. But most importantly, it kinda took the intimidation of operational definitions, it took some of that away from me that we're not... It doesn't have to be some... We've worked for hours crafting this statement. No. Here's a list of what we think is important. And that's good enough for a first step. And that, ultimately, is what we're talking about in this particular...   0:26:09.1 DL: And it's fun. It's fun. [chuckle]   0:26:11.8 AS: Yeah. And it's inclusive. It's inclusive. Well, David, on behalf of everyone at the Deming Institute, I wanna thank you again for the discussion. For listeners, remember to go to deming.org to continue your journey. Listeners can also learn more about David at langfordlearning.com. This is your host, Andrew Stotz. And I will leave you with one of my favorite quotes from Dr. Deming. "People are entitled to joy in work."

Operational definitions are clearly defined words, phrases, and concepts that everyone working together agrees to use in the same way. Making assumptions about words like "tardy" or "good" is a fast track to confusion and disengagement. In part 12 of our Deming in Education series, Andrew and David talk about operational definitions in education - for students, faculty, and administrators.  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 discussion with David P. Langford, who has devoted his life to applying Dr. Deming's philosophy to education, and he offers us his practical advice for implementation. Today's topic is operational definitions for life and learning. David, take it away.   0:00:30.5 David Langford: So, hello Andrew. And so today, I was thinking about the concept that Deming offered to the world could be very profound, and that's why he called it profound knowledge about looking through stuff and deep and it can see... Seem kind of overwhelming, but at the same time, some of the best concepts or ways to think about things are really pretty simple, actually, and amazing, if you adopt just a few principles consistently and really get it in your psychic about how to operate, it can make life so much easier either for your own children or if you're a teacher in school or administrator or whatever, you might be in education... So one of those concepts is the idea of operational definitions. So one of the elements of profound knowledge is systems thinking or appreciation for a system, and so you have a system whether that be a classroom or maybe you're taking your own children on a summer vacation or whatever it might be, that in itself is a system as well. And a lot of the dysfunction that we deal with, especially in schools, actually is coming from the system itself. In fact, Deming talked about that 94% to 98% of the problem can be systemic, right? And the other 1% or 2% is probably special cause variation.   0:02:21.0 DL: So how do we go about making the common cause variation the norm? [chuckle] Now, in schools, what I was taught as a teacher was how to manage dysfunction. Nobody ever taught me how to prevent dysfunction, I sort of had to figure that out over time, that's where you get experience, and... But how do you actually prevent dysfunction, behavior dysfunction, learning dysfunction... Whatever it might be that you've got going on? Well, one of the simplest ways is to take a look at what you could do with operational definitions, so what do we mean by that? Operational definitions, basically just defining, how are we going to operate? So I'll never forget when I was... I think it was about fourth grade, I'd come in early from lunch and I remember I was sitting on the heat register on the side and the bell rang, and I jumped up and ran to my seat, and just as the teacher came in, seeing me run to my seat, and she pulled me out and I got into really super big trouble over that, et cetera, that because I was running in the classroom, okay. So there is a place where you could start to think about operationally defining about where do you want people to be when the bell rings? Something so simple as that, or if you have people late to school in the morning, well, what does that mean? What do you want them to do? Where do you want to be? How can you operationally define it? In the operation of what's going on, how are we gonna define that?   0:04:17.9 DL: I remember when I first started down this pathway and started thinking about things, I asked about 20 different teachers, I said, "What does on time mean to you? Just pick a card and write that down." Well, we got 20 definitions, and some of them were really good, really excellent and well thought out, and I want people in the room, in their seat with their writing utensils and whatever it might be, but when you start thinking about it in a school with a staff of 20... And if you're a student in that school and you're encountering these 20 different individuals with 20 different operational definitions of being on time, that's likely to cause variation in the system, right? And even from, say, one classroom, and you move to the classroom across the hall, if you could eliminate some of that variation, you're gonna eliminate some of the dysfunction. You know, what do we really want? But it starts to get into... Deming talked about... One of the elements of profound knowledge was understanding psychology.   0:04:38.4 DL: Well, it's the very same thing in the school, so if I'm gonna work together with all the other teachers in the school to come up with a common definition of what is on-time performance, or what does that look like, I may have to give up on some of my pet peeves about what I want, right? So that we end up with a very common definition of what goes on, and why would I do that? Well, because if I do that, chances are I'm not gonna be spending my time dealing with a lot of dysfunction. We've got an operational definition of what this means, and it's the same thing with a paper that you might write or... I remember even in college, many different professors had different criteria for how a title page should be and how it should be spaced and what it should be like and how it should... And if they just as a university gotten together and said, "Hey, at this university, here's a very common way, it's very common in life. Everybody should have a title page which you're gonna hand in the paper and it's gonna look like this". And...   0:06:46.3 DL: You then... So as a student, you wouldn't have to go from professor to professor to professor and learn a different strategy every place you go. So it's that working together to create common definitions that creates function within a system. And why would we wanna do that? Well, as a teacher, I don't wanna deal with all the dysfunction. [chuckle] My job was, I wanted to teach business applications or computer technology, or I wanna teach music or... I don't wanna have to deal with all the stuff that happens on a daily basis. Well, one of the ways to do that is work together to create operational definitions for the good of everyone in the system.   0:07:34.3 AS: And one question I have about that is, is an... Sounds like half of the benefit of an operational definition is agreeing what are not our operational definitions for that particular thing. If you say that 20 people have their opinion, then you have a discussion about that, and everybody agrees that, Okay, we're not gonna do all of those. And, okay, our operational definition may not be the best, and we could change it later. That's actually... That's less important than the idea of constantly communicating different operational definitions, or that's a... Different definitions from people. Would you say that that's half the value of it?   0:08:18.9 DL: Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. But it takes this thinking, systems thinking for everybody in an organization, whether you're talking about a business or schools or whatever you might be thinking about, to have a common definition of what's happening. Even with my own children, we have five children, my wife and I thought we were so clever one year, it'd been snowing like crazy, and for months and months and months. And so we set up this whole trip to go to Disneyland. And we didn't tell anybody. We just got up one morning like, We're gonna go to school and... And we... My wife gave everybody a card and said, "We're leaving. We're getting out of here. Are you tired of the snow?" And everybody's like, Yeah, yeah, we're getting out. Well, where are we going? And it was a big surprise and... So I don't know. But, yeah, we got everybody there and we're going to all these places, Knott's Berry Farm and Disneyland, and we're doing all this stuff and everything. And I noticed about the third night at dinner time, everybody's just kinda depressed. And my wife and I were really frustrated that, What are you... Why are you guys so depressed and everything else? Well, this is all great and everything, and it's fun and everything, and... But we just wanted to go to the beach. 'Cause we live in Montana and we don't have beaches, and they'd never seen the ocean, and...   0:09:45.2 DL: So if we'd just spent a little time operationally defining ahead of time, what do we wanna do in our trip and what would be the most fun thing to do, etcetera, we probably could have saved thousands of dollars of doing stuff that we thought people wanted to do, but instead...   0:10:01.6 AS: And, David, you and your wife would have been sitting in comfortable chairs in the sand...   0:10:07.0 DL: That's right.   0:10:07.1 AS: Relaxing, rather than...   0:10:09.3 DL: Chasing people around, so...   0:10:10.4 AS: Yeah. Another question I have is, say, Okay, what do you do with a situation, I'm thinking about, you're a leader of a school, and you come in, you go, We're gonna set operational definitions. And then you've got all these people like, Oh, that just sounds like engineering, it sounds like a business, and we gotta get all of this and everybody's gotta do the same thing and we gotta all... And you're definitely gonna get a lot of people that say, No, we need variety, and we need all this creativity and that type of thing. How do you draw that line between that tension there?   0:10:41.1 DL: Yeah, you're exactly right. We do wanna promote creativity and we do want to have things different. But I'd much rather have creativity in my history class and kids being very creative around history versus being creative around common practices within the school. And it's not like you can actually, like you said, you're... Let's say you're an administrator coming into a new school, that you can just sit down and just operationally define everything you wanna operationally define. Doesn't really work like that. It's more of a living document or a living way to be, right?   0:11:16.6 AS: Yup.   0:11:19.1 DL: So as you start to see, when... It's often talked about with Deming's profound knowledge, it's like putting on a different pair of tinted glasses. You start to see the world and you start to see everything differently. Well, this is one of those things. As soon as you put on these... These glasses and start to think about operational definitions, you start to see all the kinds of places, dysfunctional places where operational definitions would be great. And basically, it means, How do we agree to operate? So one of the ways that you get rid of the resistance to operational definitions is getting people to agree to operate in a certain way. And on my consulting business, I've got several different tools and practices of ways to do that, how do you quickly get people to agree on something. But the bottom line is, when you're involving them in the process of setting an operational definition, they're much, much, much less likely to not wanna do it in the end, right?   0:12:29.2 AS: Right, right.   0:12:30.4 DL: That's much different than me just coming in as the administrator or whatever authority figure it might be, boss, teacher, administrator or whatever, and I just start telling people, This is the way it's gonna be. Well, if you start doing that, you're gonna have resistance.   0:12:47.5 AS: Yeah. Yup. So then I'm...   0:12:49.2 DL: And then you go to spending all your time dealing with the resistance.   0:12:51.1 AS: And I'm... I guess what I'm taking away from what you're saying is that maybe if that administrator was coming in and he's facing all kinds of problems, whether it's tardiness or whatever, that maybe he works with his team to say, Let's identify our top five problems that are causing us the most variation in our outcome, and let's get some definitions around these things, we don't need to define everything that's happening, but these are things that if we can work on these they can improve our outcomes, and that to me sounds like he'd win a lot of or she would win a lot of support because people are struggling dealing with all these things all the time, like well, Mr. Jensen says that five minutes late is not late. You said it's late, and I don't care whatever, I don't wanna deal with that.   0:13:40.0 DL: And then you got a battle and then you're just dealing with their resistance instead of dealing with the system itself and things that are in vogue now, like standards-based learning. Well, I've talked to different schools, nobody can define it clearly. Nobody can even define it within a district, they all agree that they would like to go forward with that, but there's a good example, if you wanna introduce something or move forward with something and get people on board or committed to doing stuff, hey, let's start operationally defining what is standards-based learning or standards-based grading, and how can we get some clarity around these common terms about what we have. It's also something for the future. So you got a new employee, you've got new teachers coming in, whatever, hey, I'm gonna hand them this document that defines... Okay, we're doing standards-based grading here. Now, it may not be the same exact definition of what you thought about where you came from before, but here's how we think about it, and you could bring new knowledge and creativity to this to help us refine our definitions of what are all these things under this one concept. And so to me, that's how you get continual improvement. It's not...   0:15:08.8 AS: I guess that is a type of training to say, Okay, we've found that these... Once we understand these things, that if you can understand these things, now you're gonna be able to bring a consistency to the students that is gonna be valuable. One last question for me on this is that, let's just say that the kernel, the core of learning is that interaction between the child and the book and the teacher, and the process of going through this discovery, which I'm wondering, when we look at operational definitions, again, someone may say, you're just trying to put rules about all of this stuff, or are you saying that there's a lot of outside things that we've got to resolve so that we can have more time for this real quality learning experience, or are you saying that we even wanna have operational definitions within how we're doing all that learning?   0:16:06.6 DL: Yeah, absolutely. So you mentioned the term discovery, I have no idea what you're talking about. [chuckle] What are you gonna tell a third grader? Well, we want you to do discovery. What the heck is that? What is discovery and what's the process of discovery that you want them to go through? Well, when you go to the library and randomly grab three books, spend a little time thumbing through them, there's a process to discovery. You don't just leave it up to the randomness of people that already know how to do that, right? Your job is to optimize a system, so you want everybody to be able to do discovery-type kinds of things, and when somebody comes up with a new innovative way that they do discovery, say in science or something, okay, let's hear that and let's try that, let's do maybe a miniature PDSA and let's have everybody try it and see what we learn from that and see if this is a better process for the process of discovery. And there you go.   0:17:16.0 AS: So then for the listeners and viewers out there, there you go, David called me out right there. I'm coming out with vague statements without providing operational definitions, and there is the benefit of it. And I was just thinking about what does discovery mean to me? I think it means something different from what it means to others. As a financial analyst, the way I did discovery is I find the strongest opponent to this idea and the strongest supporter to this idea, and I try to get them on the phone.   0:17:45.6 DL: But there's a process right there, that's a process of discovery.   0:17:48.9 AS: Yeah.   0:17:50.4 DL: And it's not like you have to be locked into a definition, you could have five or six different processes of discovery that you want people to choose from, or if you've got your own, let's define what that is. Right?   0:18:11.4 AS: Yeah.   0:18:11.9 DL: But as soon as you start to do that, you start to get clarity and then you start to see, Well, if it doesn't work, but we defined it well, let's go back and re-look at our definition and redefine it. And you could define things just in a paragraph, in words, in sentences, but you can also define things with flow charts, process charts, ways to look at things, those are also operational definitions.   0:18:39.8 AS: So this brings me to... I think my closing thought on it is, it brings me to the idea of PDSA, it brings me to the idea of how do we gain knowledge in our company or in our school, let's say, and how do we make sure that we don't lose knowledge, like we're constantly losing... We understood that before, but nobody uses the manual anymore, and those people left, and now we're back to...   0:19:08.1 AS: Going back to the same process and what I... The breakthrough I had when I really started to understand what Deming was talking about, was that if you're constantly going back and looking, Okay, what is discovery? Okay, we've just taught it... This definition, we've just taught it for a year, what did we learn, how can we improve it? Oh, there's three different ways that we now see and then how do we learn and how do we continue to modify that definition until it's a clear definition in our organization and what that does in a business is it builds a competitive strength that your competitor doesn't have because they haven't been rethinking and improving their knowledge and sustaining that knowledge and bringing it up to another level, and that is the concept of competitive advantage in the business world that I just think is such a breakthrough, and I would say that Toyota is probably the one that really built so much into their "just in time" and their Lean and all of that type of stuff, and that they built a whole system of brilliant knowledge within it. How would you relate that back to the classroom and school and organization?   0:20:12.2 DL: Well, it's... You're basically doing the same thing in a classroom, if you're a teacher in a school, you're getting a competitive edge, just so to speak, not that you're competing against anybody else really, but you're optimizing things in a way. I just remember after a few years, I'd have teachers come in to visit my classroom to see what was going on and they couldn't understand what was happening because they'd say, Well, you're just not dealing with stuff that I deal with every day. And a lot of that came from working with the kids when they came in and we'd set operational definitions about when do you need to be in your seat? There's times that, yeah, you need to be in your seat and there's times that, no, that's really stupid, you know what, I don't want you in your seat and so let's get some clarity right at the very beginning of the school year so that we're not dealing with that all the way... All the way through the school year.   0:21:15.0 AS: Right, so let me try to wrap this up, we talked about a lot of stuff, but ultimately our topic was operational definitions for life and learning, we talked about how operational definitions can make your life easier. We also talked about the idea of understanding systems and systems thinking, and that a lot of dysfunction is coming from the system and operational definitions can help you try to actually prevent that dysfunction or eliminate it because now those things are clear. And also, what I heard from you too, is the idea that different definitions, if you allow many different definitions to go on, you are adding variation to your system, and therefore you're bringing trouble for yourself, and then also we got into this discussion about what is discovery and what is the process of discovery? And then we came up with the operational definitions that we could have two or three of them, but ultimately that we discuss it, we work on it, and then if we can build it into our organization, then it's something that we're building step-by-step, competency in what we do. Is there anything else you would add to that?   0:22:32.6 DL: Yeah, in one of the podcasts we did, we spent a lot of time on optimization, and this is around that concept, how do you optimize a class for peak performance, meaning you're getting the highest number of students to the highest level possible within the shortest amount of time, you're optimizing what's going on within that. Well, one of the ways you do that is setting operational definitions, working together with people to set those definitions. I guarantee you, you will see performance go up as a whole, which is your job.   0:23:08.2 AS: Fantastic. Well, that was a great episode with a lot of stuff. David, on behalf of everybody at the Deming Institute, I wanna thank you again for this discussion and for the listeners, remember to go to deming.org to continue your journey. Listeners, you can learn more about David at langfordlearning.com and this is your host Andrew Stotz and I will leave you with one of my favorite quotes from Dr. Deming, are you ready? "People are entitled to joy in work."  

Dr. Deming listed 7 Deadly Diseases of Management in Out of the Crisis, and one of the more surprising is #3: Evaluation of performance, merit rating, or annual review. In this episode, David and Andrew discuss the harmful practice of awarding "teacher of the year," "student of the month," or other traditional recognition practices. David also offers practical suggestions for alternatives. TRANSCRIPT 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 discussion with David P. Langford, who has devoted his life to applying Dr. Deming's philosophy to education, and he offers us his practical advice for implementation. Today's topic is the deadly disease of having an employee of the month. David, take it away. Langford: Yeah, this is actually one of my favorite topics. So I thought it'd be fun for us to talk about it today. So… Stotz: You just may win employee of the month by, coming up with this. Huh? Langford: There you go. So right away, if you don't understand any teachings about Dr. Deming or background or things like that, you might be saying what do you mean? And maybe, maybe you were employee of the month one month or teacher of the year or student of the month or whatever we wanna think about in terms of singling people out. So what's wrong with that? And how could that be a deadly disease? Well, in one of the previous podcasts, we were talking about special and common cause variation. And we kind of went through that and talked a little bit about what Deming called deadly diseases. And he just said that there's two deadly diseases; treating special cause variation as if it's common, and treating common cause variation as if it's special. Langford: So why is having employee of the month a deadly disease? Because it falls into category number two, you're taking common cause variation in the system and treating it as if it's special. And it happens everywhere. It happens in the military, it happens in schools and we've been sold a bill of goods years ago in management. And it's become pervasive in the way people think about what to do. So a manager doesn't know what to, what to do to motivate their people. And they think their job is to motivate people. So they say, wow, we'll have a teacher of the year or we'll have employee of the month or employee of the week. And that ought, that ought to have fixed things, right? Stotz: Student of the week, student of the month. Langford: Student of the week, make people happier. So I'll never forget, when my, one of my daughters was in third grade and she came home and she had a certificate as a student of the month. And, I looked at it and cuz she brought it up to me and showed it and she was somewhat proud, proud of it. And I looked at it and then I did, I was thinking, how do I handle this? Because I know the problems that psychologically these things can cause and bullying and all kinds of things that can result from it. And so I looked at the certificate and I looked at her and I said, well, honey, tell me this. So what did you do this month? That was especially great, that sort of singled you out overall the rest of the losers in the class. So and she looked at me and she looked at the certificate, she did that a couple times and then she got this big grin on her face. And then she looked up at me and she said, dad, you know it was my turn. Stotz: We have 360 students, 365 students in the class and they give it every day. So we all get it at some point, Dad. Langford: Yeah. So, yeah. So in third grade she saw through this, she knew it's, this is just this silly game, dreamed up by the people who are running the place. and even as a student is, is if you figure out that this is, this is nuts, can you do anything about it? Well, not without becoming insubordinate or sent to the principal's office or… right? There's obviously something wrong with you if you've pointed out a problem with the system about, how they're managing everybody in the system. Instead, we should be saying, ‘Hey, well, tell me more about that. Why, you know what, what's the problem with that?’ And student a month, can you be student of the month, nine months in a row? Stotz: Yeah, that was what I was gonna say. Cuz you could also have an abuse, one abuse of it is just to kind of randomly go through students. Another abuse is constantly giving it to one person. Langford: Yeah. I always ask people that don't believe that they're doing anything wrong or damaging to children with these kinds of things that they'll say, oh, well, you know I can judge or I can, pick out who's who's best or whatever. Well again, can you be student of the month nine months in a row? And I've done this for 40 years now and I've never had a teacher say, ‘well yes,’ but statistically the answer is yes if you have a student that actually is exceptional and deserving of being pointed out to other people as, as the top student, well, they probably just don't do that one month out of nine. Right? They're probably working like that or being like that all the time. And you're not actually helping them sort of cope with the situation when you're singling them out above everybody else and then pointing to them as the model. Stotz: So, and if we go back to the basics and we think about that goodhearted teacher or administrator who's thought, ‘Hey, I wanna bring recognition. I want to, I want people to feel better about, things and so Hey, employee of a month, what a great idea.’ They’re coming from a good intention, but you know… Tell us more about that. Langford: Dr. Deming said we are being killed by good intentions. And, that's exactly right. And he often talked about too, sometimes the best thing to do is nothing. If you, if you don't really understand what it is you're doing and the effects of it, and maybe you're just doing what was done to you, passed down from one generation to the next, etcetera, etcetera, and you don't really understand what it is you're doing, you’d be much better off just to do nothing. Do none of those things. It's always fascinating to me, schools that have a lot of bullying also have a lot, lot of this singling people out and pointing them out as either on the top end or the low end of the system, etcetera. And then what happens after school? Well, I'll show you student of the month. It kind of reminds me of that bumper sticker. Langford: There's bumper stickers that say my, my student was student of the month at such and such elementary, etcetera. And then there's the bumper stickers that say my student beat up the student of the month or beat up your student. I've seen those where people are, they're proud of of that, or they think it's funny or whatever it might be. This is tampering, with society and with the systems and management and people's feelings and all kinds of things. And it has long lasting effects that we have no idea what we've done to students 60, 70 years later. My own mother who died at 86, she often would tell a story about, that she really loved to draw and etcetera, etcetera. And then she got into an elementary classroom and they were in an art class and they were supposed to draw something. Langford: And, teacher chose only the best drawings to put on the wall. And these, these are the best drawings. From that point on, she decided she couldn't draw. And for the next 80 years, she would not ever even attempt a stick figure or anything because of that one small instance where we, when to hold somebody up and say here, why can't you be like this person? And it's very damaging. So what, what to do instead, right? Yeah. What are we doing instead? So let's say that you're in a classroom and you do have somebody doing some something exemplary, whether that's writing a paper, making a drawing, performing on a musical instrument or whatever it might be. And, instead of pointing them out and giving them some kind of an award or student of the month award or whatever it might, one thing that you could do is honor them by allowing them to share what it is they've done. Langford: I got this idea actually from Dr. Deming, but Hey, here's something really exemplary. And the way I would approach it is I would come back to that student and say, I really like what you've done here. This is, this is really amazing. Would you be willing to share with everybody else in the class, how you did this? How did you work this through? Now, that’s much different than me coming in and saying, oh, this is the student of the week. And I'm so I'm so proud of Johnny and da, da, da, da, and all the rest of the students in the class look at that and say, well, obviously he's brown nosing the teacher and or they come up with some kind of a reason about why you're doing that. Totally different if I say, Hey, in this last project, there were several really interesting projects and I've asked a couple people if they'd share what they did and how they did it and how they worked that through. And they've agreed to share that. And so maybe they read their short story or whatever, but then we're gonna ask them, well, how did you do that? How did you think that through and how did you create the plot and what did you do to do that? Well, when you're honoring somebody in that way, the rest of the people in the class are sitting there listening to that, and they're thinking, ‘oh, oh, that's how they did that.' Right? It's not just saying, oh, you're, you're just, you're just an innate great person. Right? You actually did something that enabled you to do something great. Langford: And so other people in the class could start to say, 'oh, I could do that.’ And it's an amazing thing. Like in elementary schools, something so simple as a student says, well, the way I did this is I found a place at home that was quiet and I made sure I went there every day and worked on this paper in that quiet place. Well, we could now take that special cause, right? And we could transfer that common cause. And we got a discussion in a class, Hey, everybody in the class, think of some quiet place that you could work, or you could do something. I remember one elementary school, there was one, one child that consistently kept doing really well. And they said, well, how do you do this? And he said, well, I got a desk at home. And it was a very, very poor school. And, kids were coming from very, very poor families, etcetera. And teacher found out that almost only one child out of 30 had actually had a desk of their own at school. So she started asking the students, what can we do about this? And students came up with, I thought was an ingenious idea. And they got old cardboard boxes and they all created their own desks. Langford: And that became a class project. And everybody took their own desk home and was information that goes home to the parents that says, Hey, it's really great. If your child spends some time at their desk each night when they're doing their homework or getting caught up on things or what they're working through. So special causes are not always bad. Sometimes they can teach us things that can be applied to the entire system that can make a big difference. Stotz: And, so what I wanna understand now, let's just imagine that, okay, we start to kind of celebrate something about a student. I have a student of mine in my ethics class that I teach and that guy did a picture of the whole class on one big piece of paper and he laminated and he gave it to me. And it's just amazing. Now it's not the way I think, cuz I think more linearly, but he really liked pictures. But for the people in the class and others that I've shown it to, it really helped them kind of pull it all together. So that was, sharing, trying to get him to share, what he's doing. Langford: But it's not just what, what he did it has to be how he did it. Right? That's what you have to get them to share. Otherwise it comes off as an award. I’m awarding this person because I'm gonna, I'm gonna get, have them come up and share that they did this great thing. Well, the thing is great and I'm sure everybody in the class could see, wow, that's, that's really awesome. But if you want to transfer that to other people doing great stuff, they have to have kind of some insight about ‘how did you do that?’ And would you be able, willing to sort of teach side class on how to do this for other people that might wanna do this? Langford: I think that's, that's a fantastic honor. You're still honoring that individual and rewarding them in a way. If you wanna think of it that way, because think what you've done, you've taken the class time of everybody to allow this one individual to share something. Well, that's a great honor. It's a huge honor within that. But as a teacher, you want a large number of the other students to start to be able to do these kinds of things, right? You'd like to see the same level of development, same level of capability, with a lot of other people. So you have to think about, well, how are we gonna get there? Well, one way to get there is to have these students explain it. Stotz: And you can imagine an employee of the month. I know how it goes. in companies that people are like, 'oh my God, tomorrow's the deadline for employee of the month? Who should we do?’ Langford: ‘We gotta, we gotta cram for employee the month.’ Stotz: Yeah so the point is, is that, a lot of times just like performance reviews, it's just some mad rush at the end. Is what you're saying that instead of doing an employee of the month type of reward, that what we should be doing is incorporating that in our daily life, instead of saying, incorporating, seeing things that are happening that are valuable for the whole group and bringing that to light on a regular basis, rather than setting on every month, we're gonna do this or something like that. How would you describe it from that perspective? Langford: Yeah. I thought of another example. I remember one time my flights were all messed up and connections were bad and I was supposed to start a seminar at, for the military the next morning and I was actually staying on the base hotel and so I got in really late. It was like one o'clock in the morning or one thirty and then I had to get up and I was tired and exhausted anyway. So I go to check in and this person that's checking me in is, they're doing a really great job and, talking to me and everything else. And then I happen to look up on the wall as employee of the month. And I can’t stand it, I have to say something. I said, ‘wow, I didn't, I didn't realize I was talking to employee of the month.’ And she got all embarrassed and everything. And I said, so what did you do this month? That was so awesome. And she said again, she said, ‘it was my turn.’ Langford: So if you think about it, all the money spent making the picture, giving the honor. They probably had some kind of award ceremony where they had brought all the employees in and you, you had to be there. And then she gets announced as employee of the month, and are you happy for the employee of the month? But immediately psychologically. And that's what Deming talked about with profound knowledge is psychologically, you start to think about, well, I worked hard this month, and the person next to me, I know was working really hard this month. Why, why didn't they get employee the month? And so then your mind immediately starts to wonder, oh, well it's gotta be some kind of game or there's something going on. Or the manager just likes her that there's some kind of sexual thing happening or all kinds of crazy stuff can happen. Langford: But if you took the exact same thing where you said we have an employee and things were crazy one night and this person handled it with grace and ease and organized things and everything. And I'd like so and so to explain to us, how did you do that? How do you cope with that? How did you sort of hamper down the angst that was coming your way and how did you deal with that? And what did you think of, and you could actually learn something from somebody who's done something really exemplary. Stotz: You could imagine that person saying, well, what I did is I stepped from out being, I stepped from behind the counter and I went to the person that was most vocal. And I talked to them about where are you going? ‘Yeah, it's a birthday I'm trying to get there. I'm so frustrated. I've been delayed’ and other, okay. I tried to listen to them and try to, then, if I could convince that person to just hang on or whatever, and that type of thing is the type of thing that we could learn from it. So maybe I can summarize what, what I'm taking away from it. The first thing you talked about was the idea of treating a common cause as a special cause the employee of the month, when in fact, it's just a rotation in that case really. Stotz: You also talked about the idea that, be careful because signaling… Singling out one person can lead to bullying. If you put someone on a pedestal, someone's gonna say ‘I'm gonna knock 'em down.’ So that's also kind of an unintended consequences of that. And then you also highlighted, this one I thought was interesting was the impact on non recipients, how do people feel? And that didn't get it. And, now you also talked about the idea of maybe an alternative is letting someone share, you see something impressive, interesting, different, let them share. And in particular you said, have them share how they did it, not what they did, but how they did it so that people can learn. Because yeah, if, if a guy started sharing how he did this drawing and stuff, it may not mean that much to me cuz I'm more linear. Stotz: But if he talked about it, you know what, instead of talking about what he did, if he talked about, well, I thought, how do I make these connections between this? And I did it through this, but you could do it through that. And then you also talked about honoring and rewarding, and trying to give people a chance to share. And then the last thing I thought about what you said is of an employee saying, ‘but wait a minute, I worked hard this month too.’ is this just favoritism? Is this just a game? Is this just a random thing? Those are… Langford: Maybe I should only work hard when the manager's watching. Stotz: Exactly. exactly- how do I game this thing? All right. Well, anything you would add? Langford: Yeah, just, you made me think of a, another quick story, but in one of my seminars with teachers, we're going over this very concept and I was trying to get them to think about ways that they could operate differently to optimize their whole class or the school, etcetera. Anyway, at the break, a teacher came up to me and he said, oh my gosh. He said, this happened to me. I said, what do you mean? He said, ah, he said, well, I got outta college. I didn't really know what I wanted to do. And I ended up getting a job at, selling insurance at this insurance company and everything. Well, they had all these extrinsic rewards and he said at, at first it was, just really great, sell so many policies and you could win a trip to Aruba and you, you can do this. And then they're always having to dream up, dream up a new, a new cuz you have to keep upping the ante if you want to keep seeing people sort of jump through the hoops to get there. He said after about five years of that, he said I was so sick of playing that game and being manipulated. And he said, and basically I had won everything that they could come up with. Langford: And I just got to thinking about what's the, what's the, what do I really enjoy? And what's the really purpose of being here. And he said, I quit and got my teaching degree. Now I'm a teacher and I make half as much money or less than I did before. And he said, but I'm happy. This is a rewarding profession of what I'm doing. And I don't wanna see this same kind of manipulation coming into the system. He said that I'm kingly aware of this with my own students. And ‘is the administration trying to bring this kind of thinking in to manipulate me' cause he's been through it. Stotz: Yep. So to wrap it up, I think I'm just gonna challenge the listeners, the viewers, if you've got employee of the month, if you've got student of the month, if you've got teacher of the month going on, this is permission to start questioning it, start discussing it, start thinking about alternatives because there are many, many challenges that David's raised today. So David, on behalf of everyone at Deming Institute, I want to thank you again for the discussion. I think it was very interesting for listeners. Remember to go to deming.org to continue your journey, David, what's the best way that people can contact you if they wanna learn more, Langford: Probably the best way and the quickest way is just to go to our website, which is at langfordlearning.com Stotz: Great. This is your host Andrew Stotz, and I wanna leave you with one of my favorite quotes from Dr. Deming. People are entitled to joy in work. 

In this episode, David and Andrew talk about Common Cause Variation vs Special Cause Variation, and the problem of confusing the two. Using the example of transgender students, David describes how a system's capability should be expanded rather than using that special cause situation as a weapon to destroy the entire system.  TRANSCRIPT 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 am continuing my discussion with David P. Langford, who has devoted his life to applying Dr. Deming's philosophy to education, and he offers us his practical advice for implementation. Today's topic is weaponizing special causes. David take it away. Langford: It sounds very dangerous, and it is. So I wanted to get into a little bit about special and common causes about what Deming talked about. So once again, we'll go back to Deming's system of profound knowledge. And as part of that he talked a lot about understanding variation in systems and without getting too statistical about things, he basically got people to identify two different types of variation. So there's common cause variation, which typically makes up anywhere from oh 94% to 98, 99% of what goes on in any system or any process. And then there's special cause variation, which is generally less than 2% or less than 1% of what goes on. So that sounds pretty innocuous until you actually start thinking about how that works out in society and systems and classrooms, especially in education in schools and Deming said over and over and over that there are basically two problems with special and common cause. So people treat special cause as if it's common, okay. Which is, and he called these deadly diseases, or they treat common cause variation as if it's special. Langford: So sometimes it's difficult to sort of understand what is, what does that mean? So let's take an example like in a, in a school common cause variation would be say the, the performance of a whole school or a state or a nation or whatever it might be. You can chart that out over a long period of time and start to see a certain level of predictability of performance on anything you wanna look at, whether you're talking about behavior or you're talking about test scores or grades or kids showing up for school every day. Doesn't really matter what system you wanna look at. When you start looking at it from a systems perspective, you wanna look at as much data as you can.So at least six or seven data points, but preferably 12 and some, a lot of statisticians will say up to 20 data points. Langford: So if you're just looking at, say test scores over a long period of time, well, you'd wanna actually look at average test scores over a 20 year period. So that, that could take a really long time to see data systems like that emerge, especially in education where we have what I call slow data that emerges. You’re familiar with like manufacturing environments and business, where you have a lot of fast data. So you may be making something and you're collecting a hundred thousand data points in a single day or a month or a week where in education, it, it really doesn't really work like that. Stotz: I have an example that may be helpful for those people that aren't familiar with the topic. And that is in my coffee factory, we fill bags of coffee with, let's say a hundred grams of coffee. If we fill it with 101, well, we're giving away. If we fill it with 99, we're not delivering what we say. And what first lesson that we learned is that nobody's perfect. No, there is no way to consistently hit 100 is always gonna be some variation. Now that variation may be 100.0 1, 4 7, but ultimately variation around that is bad. And what you find is that maybe when the system is not that strong, you could be putting in 95 grams on sometimes and you could be putting in 105 on sometimes and something in between those. But those are all kind of common causes. Stotz: There's just there's variation about that average, let's say. And then the only way to improve that would to be say, ‘oh, well, we need to have a more precise piece of equipment.’ It’s not that the workers weren't working hard enough or something, but we just didn't have, so we replace a piece of equipment that's measuring and all of a sudden we weigh more consistently the old clunky one didn't work that well, and now we're getting more and more narrow. And then one day the electricity goes off or we have a, a problem with the electricity and all of a sudden it's throwing the whole system off. Well, that would be some special cause as opposed to this common variation around the 100 that we're aiming for, would I be describing it? Right or how would you add to that? Langford: Yeah, that, that that's exactly right. And so if we charted out filling your coffee bean bags over a long period of time, we'd probably find out that you'r, you probably have a really good system, right? So let's put it in terms of like grams or something. So you might find out that your variation is anywhere from 98 grams to 101 or a hundred, two grams. Right. And this also ties in with the last podcast we did about loss function. Because if you say, well, we're selling hundred gram bags, well, the further we move away from optimization or the optimum of a hundred grams, like what you were saying, if we're filling it too much, we're losing money. And if you're filling it too little, well, there might be a customer out there that feels cheated and might not ever buy your coffee ever again, because they, they weighed it and said, oh, this is only 99 grams. Langford: Right? So there, and if you, the further that you would go away from that optimum 100 grams, and let's say that all of a sudden, you sent out a coffee bag that only had 90 grams in it. Now somebody could get really upset, right? Because that's a long way from the optimum of a, of a hundred grams or the opposite, right? If, if you're all of a sudden, randomly filling bags at 111 grams, well, now you take that 11 grams times the price of coffee beans. And like you said, you're losing a lot of money a lot of time. Stotz: So it's one, one thing I would add to it is that now imagine that we’re measuring it very well, and we're getting a little variation. We're getting 101 sometimes. And 99, occasionally we get 102, occasionally we get 98, but it's in a relatively tight range. Now imagine that I start rewarding the employees when it goes, you know to a certain level and I start to identify if you hit this, that you're gonna get a bonus, I'm gonna dock your pay. Well, I would just be messing around with what are really just common causes of variation that have nothing to do with the employees. They have to do what that system can do. Langford: That's what Deming called tampering. You're tampering with the system and you're, and you're making false assumptions, cuz you’re assuming that, oh, by holding somebody up as employee of the month that'll make everybody else work harder. So your assumption is that everybody else is not working harder. And the only way to get 'em to work harder is for me to manipulate 'em in some way. And Deming said that you you're now tampering with the system. You're making things worse, not better because pretty soon you have employees that say, well I'm not gonna do a really good job this month because you're offering that bonus you know, for most improved employee. Well, I can't be most improved if I'm always great, right? So one month I'm gonna look bad so I can look really good the next month. Langford: So I can win that trip to Aruba, right? And now your coffee, the grams per sack are going down. And so everything's going haywire and everything else. And then, then you wanna blame the people in the system and not understanding that as management, you did this. You caused this to happen. And it's exactly the same way in a school classroom for education. If you start tampering with learning systems in the classroom. So most of the variation or performance of a system is built into the system. And that's what Deming talked about. Statistically like in 98, 98% of the result is coming from the system itself. Stotz: Right. So don't like the results? Don’t blame the people, blame the system. So are, are there people problems and systems that are special causes? Absolutely. And what do you do when that happens? Langford: So like in your example, with your coffee company once in a while, maybe you just, you hire someone that hates coffee, really shouldn't be there, they're there for the wrong reasons. They don't really love what's going on, you know? So what do you do? Well, instead of like changing the whole system based on that special cause person, right? Now, everybody has to do something different because we have this one person who's got defective behavior, so to speak, you just, you deal with the one person. Maybe they're just in the wrong job. I mean, they, they should be answering the phone in the company, not actually dealing with products or, or vice versa. Maybe they just can't deal with people. So maybe they should be in a position. So you're gonna make an adjustment. You're gonna shift that one person. And ultimately, maybe they're just in the wrong profession and maybe you need to help them find another job. Stotz: And I just, I just wanna go back because it's such a common thing that people talk about about what Deming says about the output of the system is coming from a certain amount and the output the impact that a worker has for instance. And one of the sources of that is looking at the standard deviations. From the average, if you look at one standard deviation plus and minus you come up with 68% are within that range. If you go two standard deviations, now you're at 95%. And I believe it was that two standard deviation where he's saying, look, if something's happening within these two standard deviation, it's just common cause variation. No. He was actually talking about three standard deviations. Stotz: Yeah. So three standard deviations would be what? 99.7% Langford: Yeah. St yeah. Statistically it's like 99.9999998%. Right. Of something. And you know, why three standard deviations away from the, the mean, or the average? Well, because when you get to that point, if something is falling in that less than 1%, you could be pretty sure that's, that's, that's a special cause. Right? This doesn't normally happen in our, in our system. Well, the same thing in a classroom, if, if a teacher's teaching a lesson and every year when they, he or she teaches this lesson, everybody in the class scores, like, let's say 95 to a hundred. Right, right. And every year I get better and better. And my variations shrinks. And pretty soon I've got, now I'm getting an average about 98 percentile of people when they go through this lesson, right? Well, that's telling you that most of the variation is good within that system. So when people are randomly thrown into that classroom, that teacher is so good they can get that same result with almost anybody thrown it into that classroom. Stotz: And then now. Langford: What happens, that system is like that it becomes predictable. Now I can predict that next year. I'm probably gonna get an average somewhere between 95 and a hundred percent, if I keep doing what I've been doing. Stotz: And what happens to that teacher when they see, oh, wait a minute, we've got this one kid who's getting a 62. Langford: Then obviously, because you understand systems performance and you understand a little bit about special and common cause data, obviously this is a special cause there's okay. So it could be a learning difficulty. It, it could be home situation. It could be something psychological, it could be, could be a lot of things. Right. And so what do you do with a special cause? Well, typically like in the education system, we basically tried to get rid of 'em for years and we get, we would get rid of them in many different ways. Like, I'll, I'll just give them a failing grade and that that'll get rid of 'em eventually. I’ll send 'em out in the hallway, isolate them. I'll, we'll send them to special education classes. We don't we don't wanna have a mainstream in the class because it's a special cause. Langford: And it's gonna take special effort to do, to work with that special cause and work through that. So veteran teachers that are really super good at dealing with students with special causes are amazing. Just amazing how no matter what the difficulty is or what the special cause that child starts to feel like they're part of the system, part of what's going on. Now, they may never get the same data as 98% of the rest of the students that come through that system, but they can also get better and better and better with, within that same system. And you that’s the exciting thing about education is to think about how special causes can be transformed. Stotz: You remind me when I was in living in West Hartford, Connecticut, when I was just a little kid, I was all kinds of trouble in the classroom. And I was just, I just was all kinds of trouble. And they sent me to some special class to get some special help. And I ended up reentering the normal class and coming back kind of into a normal behavior, cuz they helped me kind of work on some of the things that were issues for me. And I ended up becoming a good student. But imagine... Langford: You had, you had shock shock therapy or something. Stotz: Yeah. They, they got me, they just a minor lobotomy this, but so now let's think about this cuz the, the title of today is weaponizing special causes. We've had a great discussion now about what are common, what are special? And I'm just imagining, like, let's just say that a teacher's doing really well, but they have this one student doing poorly and we know it's identified as a special cause. And then all of a sudden they decide, wow, I've gotta redo my whole way that I'm educating because of this particular unique situation. Would that be wise? Langford: Well, it be insanity is what it would be. And we don't have to go very far, especially in the United States right now to see this happening. So there are transgendered children that that's, that's a fact, everybody knows this is happening, etcetera. But because I have one transgender child in my classroom or my school does not mean I changed the entire system based on a special cause. And now I'm disrupting 99.8% of all, all the students and parents and everybody else that comes through the system because I'm making this system twist to accommodate only a special cause. So and Deming said, this is one of the deadly diseases. So I'm gonna, I'm gonna change the whole bathroom structure into building. I'm gonna change the whole, how PE is run. I'm gonna, we're gonna change. We're gonna change everything because we have two children out of 1400 that may be transgender. Langford: So I don't want to, I don't wanna offend anybody by this or anything else, but I just wanna point out that you can spend literally millions of not billions of dollars. go weaponizing special causes. And this is, this is just one example and PE uh districts are now building schools., where's, they're changing the bathrooms and getting rid of gender and all kinds of things based on only a few special causes. Whereas what should be happening is what do special causes needing these special, special help? So if they need a special bathroom, that's, that's fine. And there's a transition or gender bathroom for those two students out of 1400. Yeah. But just suddenly you start making rules, regulations policy I've seen district policy. That's just crazy based on maybe one instant instance every 10 years or so. And you're, you're changing an entire system based on that. is it that maybe gonna help that one individual? Yeah. But it's the same example as, as you gave, right? instead of changing the whole school because you were having difficulty in a classroom, what did we do? Well, we got you some help, right? Yeah. And basically you need discipline and people don't, people don't understand what discipline means. The first definition of discipline and the dictionary is training. Langford: So you needed some training, right? This is what you do and this is what you can't do and in a classroom and everything else. And when you got that kind of training and it was better for you because you felt like you were belonging and you didn't have to be disruptive anymore. And it was better for everybody else because they could accept you. Right. They didn't, they weren't all of a sudden afraid that you were gonna fly out the handle or go crazy. Stotz: Yeah. It's, it's interesting about the transgender stuff because in Thailand Thai people are just really accommodating to transgender. It's not a big deal. I mean, and in fact, the transgender people here are people who really speak up for kind of their rights. They're more outspoken. Whereas other people kind of go along more than let's say we're used to in the west. so they're there, it's just been fascinating to watch. And I think that the point is, and it's a little bit like handicap as an example we did decide to put in ramps to, to locations. And that was an adaptation to the system to accommodate the needs of that small group, but we didn't reshape a huge amount of things and other people in... Langford: That. Well, what you're trying to do is well we see it now in medicating children with drugs and all kinds of stuff to help them learn better. And and in some cases, some schools and places you're, you're talking about 20, 25% of the population is now being medicated. Well, that's the, that's the opposite of what Deming talked about is treating special causes as if they're common that this is a common thing. So we're gonna do this with everybody. But these special causes are very, very rare, whether it's some kind of a mental thing or transgender thing or whatever it might be, you're talking about less than 1% of the population generally. And when you start to transfer a special cause to a whole population, that's what I'm talking about, about weapon weaponizing a special cause. And then ultimately you can do that with anything, but what you're really trying to do, and you comment about the, the handicap access, etcetera. What you're really trying to do is expand the capability of a system so that there are fewer and fewer and fewer special causes, not going the opposite direction, where the system becomes less and less and less and less capable. And so pretty soon everybody starts looking like a special cause. Langford: And and that becomes hugely expensive and not very productive when you're treating everybody like their special cause. Stotz: So let me try to summarize a little bit about what we've talked about. First of all, we talked about the importance of understanding variation. And we talked about the idea that 94 to 99% of variation is actually common cause, and only maybe one or 2% is special cause, and you, you mentioned about treating special causes as common was what Dr. Deming calls deadly diseases. You also talked about tampering, which is when you're chasing around common cause variation and either rewarding it or punishing it or highlighting it as success when in fact you really are having false assumptions. And the best way to think about that is that you walk into McDonald's and it's got a picture of the employee of the month and it's just a rotation. And then you talked about identifying the special cause, let's say it's a poor performing student. Stotz: And then thinking about how do we how do we deal with this special cause? And it doesn't make sense necessarily to change the whole system because of what we're seeing with the special cause. And finally, I'm gonna add in my last little bit I wrote down when you were speaking is let variation run! Allow variation. It is the beauty of nature. It is the beauty of human. It is the beauty of system. Stop trying to attack every variation through medicine or through all these different things. Let variation free. Let variation run. Anything you'd add to that. Langford: No, it's no, that's, that's good. It's a good summary. Yeah. It's in some ways it's very, very simple to think about. But in other ways, it's, it's very complex and in many ways, very contrary to the common society and businesses and schools and the way they’re run today. Stotz: It's simple. But not always easy. Langford: Yeah. And I think that's why Deming calls it profound knowledge. You have to have profound knowledge and profound means deep. You have to have a deep knowledge of something if you're gonna manage properly. Stotz: Fantastic. Well, David, on behalf of everyone at Deming Institute, I want to thank you again for the discussion for listeners. Remember to go to deming.org to continue your journey. David, what's the best way that people can contact you if they wanna learn more? Langford: You could go to our website, which is LangfordLearning.com, and there you can find out resources and support material etcetera. Stotz: Fantastic. Well, 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.

What is the Taguchi Loss Function and how does it apply to education? In this episode, Andrew and David talk about statistician Genichi Taguchi's idea that the further you move from a measurable quality target, the more quality is lost, even if the item still "meets specifications." David shows how you can apply this to education. (For more about the Tachugi Loss Function, visit Wikipedia or Christopher Chapman's Digestible Deming blog post.)   TRANSCRIPT 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 discussion with David P. Langford, who has devoted his life to applying Dr. Deming's philosophy to education, and he offers us his practical advice for implementation. Today's topic is, Taguchi loss function. David, take it away. Langford: Thank you, Andrew. And I liked how your eyes got really big when you said Taguchi loss function. Oh my gosh, it sounds frightening, doesn't it? Stotz: It does. It's a little bit overwhelming, it's exciting. I'm interested to learn. Langford: And in education, it's probably less known than it is in business. Usually when I'm working with a group of business leaders and I mention that I can get pretty strong - two-thirds of the audience probably knows something about the Taguchi loss function. I was at a conference with a whole roomful of school superintendents and I asked them, Anybody know what the Taguchi loss function was? And not a single hand went up. So less well known, but just as applicable. So in one of the earlier podcasts, we were talking about the concept of optimization of the system. And I just wanna refresh our memories and the memory of our listeners that it's really based on Deming's System of Profound Knowledge as well. So the four parts that Deming had was, Appreciation for a System, Understanding Variation, and especially statistical variation, Psychology and Knowledge of Theory. And I always add neuroscience to that mix as part of profound knowledge, because it's really critical to understand, especially in education, how the brain actually processes information. Langford: So when we're talking about the optimization of a system, we're actually talking about all of those factors being optimized, especially in a classroom or a school. So you can't just sort of optimize one thing, for instance. So over the last 30 years, I've known principals that are just really, really good managers, excellent at running the building. They never do anything out of the ordinary, everything is always perfect. The trash cans are always where they're supposed to be. They're just really good managers. They're the kind of people that if you're gonna take a school trip and they have to organize something complex, that's the kind of people you want. But if you're gonna do something really super innovative, change the system in some way, do something that's never been done before, that's not the kind of person that you want. Stotz: Right, it's interesting that you just mentioned that optimizing so many different factors, that's part of the reason why people don't do it because it is complex. David, I just pulled up Wikipedia and I thought maybe it would be interesting if we see what Wikipedia says about what is the Taguchi loss function. Would you like me to read a little bit of that? Langford: Yeah, so, go ahead. Stotz: According to Wikipedia, the Taguchi loss function is graphical depiction of loss developed by the Japanese business statistician, Genuichi Taguchi to describe a phenomenon affecting the value of products produced by a company. Praised by Dr. W Edwards Deming. It made clear the concept, of the quality does not suddenly plummet when, for instance, a machinist exceeds a rigid blueprint tolerance. Instead, loss in value progressively increases as variation increases from the intended condition. This was considered a breakthrough in describing quality and help fuel the continuous improvement movement. Langford: So now that we've lost about 80% of our audience... Stotz: Oops, sorry about that. Langford: No, that's... It's actually correct, and Taguchi was actually a contemporary of Deming, and Deming always referred to Taguchi as having one of the best, the greatest breakthroughs in systems. I really wanna focus on in education and applying this kind of thinking to education and what would that mean? So I think we looked at a Taguchi loss function diagram and if you could pull that up on the screen? Stotz: Yeah, let me pull that up for the video viewers and I'll walk you through and we'll walk you through for the audio listeners. Langford: And then we'll put a link in the show notes for that. Stotz: Yep. Langford: If you wanna contact it later. So basically you have to start to think about... And then, in the diagram right in the very middle of the diagram, is the target or what Deming would talk about as a system that's perfectly optimized. And in that, there's not losses on either side. And basically, without getting in into too much statistics or math or anything like that, the further you move away from that optimum state, the greater the loss. So, I wanna talk... Stotz: And maybe for the listeners, I'll just describe it. We're looking at a parabola. So we have... On the Y axis, we have the level of loss. In other words, if it goes down on the Y axis, the loss is going down. And on the X axis we have the value of the characteristics, meaning we wanna hit some target and the parabola is going up if you go too far away. So loss is rising if you go too far to the right or loss is rising if you go too far to the left. So, in fact, that's kind of interesting. Both if you're off target either way, it's still gonna bring you loss. Langford: So let me give you a very practical education example. My good friend, Dr. Doug Stilwell in Iowa, when he was a school superintendent, his problem was that, parents were complaining when... The time that they would get called when there was a snow day or a school cancellation during the winter. And so these complaints just had gone on year after year, after year for 20 years. And so finally, when I taught him about the Taguchi loss function, he did a little study with parents to find out the optimum time to be called. And so sent out surveys and said, "What would be the optimum time?" And if I recall, it ended up the perfect time was like 6:20 in the morning. So the further, the earlier you did it as you move towards say 6 o'clock or even earlier, if you went all the way to 5:30, then the losses became huge. There's these tons and tons of people did not like that. And on the other side, if 6:20 was the optimum, the closer and closer that you move towards 7 o'clock, there's already people going to work and making other plans and not being informed, etcetera. Langford: And so the losses are mounting on that side as well. And so he ended up implementing a system that in explaining parents always even new parents coming into the system that, "You will receive a notification by 6:20 every morning whether or not there's gonna be a school closure." And guess what? Complaints virtually disappeared completely. So I think it's a really good example about you can optimize... Even sometimes people say, "Oh well, that's not a big deal, and I'll just put up with the complaints." But why would you wanna do that? Why would you wanna have parents calling board members and calling the school and complaining about this and that. And it goes back to really making people happy within the system, but you're not just making them happy just for happy's sake, you're making them happy because you're doing a really good job of managing with the input of the people in the system because they're the most knowledgeable about the systems. Langford: So, so many managers will make a decision like that, it could be based on what's best for the front office. It could be that the decision is what's best for me as a manager. I don't like to get up before 6 o'clock in the morning and check the weather and have that to be the first thing I do during the day. And so I'm gonna do it at this time, but have no systems knowledge. They haven't taken the time to actually solve the problem or understand even what the problem is. And that is where I think Taguchi loss function really comes in. Same kind of an example I wanna share would be like in a classroom, if you're talking about the speed at which you're moving through material that you're teaching kids as they're learning about stuff, well, you go too fast, the losses are gonna be students who can't keep up, don't understand, get frustrated and get mad, etcetera. That's on one side. Langford: And on the other side, you go too slow, you have all the students that really do grasp things quickly and wanna move forward. So understanding that optimum zone, and often times in neuroscience, scientists will sometimes call it the learning zone. That there's a zone or speed that you can go in, but there's another way to optimize learning within the classroom too. And that is, as a teacher to stop managing the pace yourself and let each student learn to manage their own pace. And so now each student is starting to optimize learning based on their pace. Well, the reason we don't do that is if I've got 30 kids in the class and I got 30 kids at different paces, that's a lot more work for me as the teacher, right. Rather than me setting the pace and forcing everybody to work within that. So I would have to learn to manage the system much differently if I'm gonna optimize learning for every child within a classroom or think about a whole school that's optimized like that. Lots of teachers trained and in how to manage like that. Stotz: Yeah, I was thinking about... I love some of the quotes from Thomas Sowell in America. And he's a wise man and he says, "There's no solutions, only trade-offs." And in a way, I feel like the Taguchi loss function is really kind of the Taguchi trade-off function with loss on both sides. Whereas a lot of times we think about, there's a specification and that's what we're aiming for. And that's what is really interesting about the Taguchi loss function is that it makes you aware that either way you go, you're gonna have a trade-off. Let's say you could speed up a production process in a factory, but it will impact other processes or that type of thing. So everything is a trade-off. Langford: Yeah, and it's exactly the same concept, the same thing in a classroom or a learning system as well so... Stotz: And one other question about that is, you mentioned about optimizing in this case for the parents. Now, you could see that some people... Some teachers in a school might say, "I don't really care about the parents. I wanna optimize for my convenience and I leave for school at 6:00 AM, and I wanna know at 6:00 AM if we're gonna be closed or not, so I don't have to go in." So how does that work? Like you've gotta decide. Also, you talked about optimizing, you could optimize for each individual student versus optimizing for the group of students as a whole. How does someone figure that out when they're in that system? Langford: Yeah, so that comes back to the constancy of purpose. And that was Deming's number one point out of his 14 points is, "Do you have a constancy of purpose?" And so like for a school, if the constancy of purpose is so that you always have a place to park your car and... You always get out of the building by 4 o'clock in the afternoon, and whether that's individually or written or unwritten within the whole school, you are implementing a constancy of purpose. But if your constancy of purpose is to continually create learning experiences for youth in its day, in order to add value to society, that's a much different purpose. And that means everybody has to be focused on creating those learning experiences and looking at students as if they were in a company. You'd say they would be the customers, but they're the clients or they are the people receiving the service. And the schools that really get it, understand that that's why they exist. They exist only for student learning and no other purpose, and so everything becomes optimized around that purpose. Stotz: Great. So, maybe I'll just summarize some of the things that I took away from that. I think the first thing is, I kind of see now Taguchi loss function as it's kind of a trade-off, and we can see that the objective is to identify what are you trying to optimize for, and then understanding that deviating away from that on either side will bring loss, and ultimately what you wanna try to do is find the optimum point where that line, that parabola is having the least loss in relation to what is your constancy of purpose. What is the purpose of what you're doing? Anything else you would add to that? Langford: No, that's exactly right. And I'm sure that there are parents that are listening and they say, "Well, you know, my child's gifted in school and they really like to move fast, and if you sort of optimize the pace, my child is gonna start to be bored." But then there's other ways to think about that, that if you finish everything very quickly, you have a lot of options now, right? You could help somebody else and is somebody gonna bully you if you've been helping them on a daily basis, understand a concept or work through something. You could go ahead at your own speed, you could go faster if you wanna go on, or maybe you're not as good in another subject, and you need to spend that time optimizing the performance in Math or English or something else that you're not as good in. And so I used to always teach students that your job is to optimize your own system, right? And my job is to operate the system... Optimize this system and the superintendent and so on and so forth, all the way up to the whole nation optimizing performance. Stotz: I wanna just tell a quick story before we wrap up, and that is, I was teaching a finance course and I knew that my students did not understand finance and they were kind of terrified, and so what I had was... I would teach a little bit and then I would give them a practice problem, then I would teach a little bit more and I'd give a little practice problem. And what I did... Here's what I did and tell me what you think of it. So what I did is I basically told the students, I said, "Stand up when you've calculated the answer." So what happened was, after I did the first couple of questions, but first of all, I like to keep students moving just because I feel like make it a little bit more exciting. So, the students would stand up and you could clearly see that there was a group that would stand up first. Stotz: So what I then did, is I said, okay, now after assessing this a couple of times, I was able to see that there was five students in the class that were just not getting up really fast. I said, "Okay, now five students come down." It was a big class, it was at a university, and I said, "Okay, you five students come down to the front of the classroom and line up." So they lined up in a line, and then I told the other students, come down and get behind one of these students until we have, let's say, six people in each line. And so the students all came down and they got in line with the one that they know or whatever. And then once they were done, I said, "That's your groups." So the next time that I got, I did the next problem, I had to move around each other, the next time I had the problem, I said, "Okay, solve this problem, whatever team, where every member of the team has finished and you gotta make sure everybody's finished, that team stands up first." And then I tried to use the power of the knowledge of the senior people, or not senior, but the ones that really got it quickly to help the others, and they were helping the others just like what you said. Langford: Yeah, so what you did is it's the System of Profound Knowledge again, but from a neuroscience standpoint, yes, you're right. Students of any age have to be up and moving, we need that spinal fluid moving up and down their spine and moving back and forth in order to get blood flow going to the brain and everything, so that part's really good. What I probably would have adjusted would, I would have said, "Okay, as soon as you understand this, I want you to stand up and find somebody still sitting down and go explain it to that person and go over it until they understand it, and then now there's two of you that are gonna stand up and you're gonna find somebody else still sitting down. And so you sort of exponentially start everybody in the room, and then the noise level goes up, and the fun level goes up, and then everybody is actually looking for somebody still sitting. And sometimes... Stotz: And would you do that every time, every time? Let's say you have 20 quiz... Twenty test questions that you're giving them throughout a three-hour time period, let's say. Would you do that each time where you would just say, "Go help whoever's sitting down," or would you eventually allow them to get into groups or not? Langford: They're gonna get faster and faster and faster. Again, it comes back to your constancy of purpose. Do you have a constancy of purpose or a meaning about why you want them to get into groups? Are they struggling with group, being able to be in a group and communicate in a group and those kinds... Okay, if that's my purpose that's much different.   Stotz: Which it's not, because one of the unique things about Thais, when I teach them in Thailand is that they're much more comfortable in groups compared to let's say Americans, so they don't need group work. But I also see that what you're telling me, that method will accelerate, the process won't take as long, I think it would accelerate pretty quickly. So alright, well, I would say I learned something from today's lesson and I'm gonna test it out because my purpose for that class, I had 50 people in the class, many of them were very scared of finance, and I said, "I'm gonna get all of you to the level of competence that I want, that's my goal." It is... That was my goal in that class, and so that's part of why I did it that way. Langford: When you're optimizing it, what you're saying is correct, you're optimizing, 'cause you want every single person to really enjoy... And I have a joy in learning for finance, right? Stotz: Yeah. Langford: So how am I gonna get there? What's the quickest way I'm gonna get there? How I'm gonna optimize that? Stotz: Fantastic. Well, David, on behalf of everyone at Deming Institute, I wanna thank you again for our discussion. And for listeners, remember to go to deming.org to continue your journey. Stotz: 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."

In this episode, David and Andrew discuss the dreaded standardized tests, including how they evolved, how they're used (and not used) now, and what Deming said about them. David also offers practical tips for educators who want to move away from standardized tests in their classrooms. TRANSCRIPTION: 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 discussion with David P. Langford, who has devoted his life to applying Dr. Deming's philosophy to education, and he offers us his practical advice for implementation. Today's topic is, what would Dr. Deming say about today's standardized testing? David, take it away. Langford: So one of the things when I started learning about the Dr. Deming's field is, there's a lot of people that know about manufacturing, a lot of people know about management, etcetera, a lot of people don't, but everybody knows about education, everybody went to school somewhere, someway, homeschooling, charter schools, whatever it might be, so everybody went to school, so everybody's sort of knowledgeable on that. And one of the things that's pretty common through that process is the emphasis over the last 30 years is of standardized test, as the way to sort of measure, not only the performance of a system, or a teacher or a student individual kind of thing, but also the success of how a nation is doing, right? Can we compare the US to Japan and Australia and Thailand? And where do we rank? And who's 14th? And all these kinds of things. So I just wanna go back a little bit about, where did this evolve? Hundreds of years ago, we didn't have standardized tests, and amazingly people survived, people got jobs, became entrepreneurs, they did all kinds of things, and they didn't have a standardized test scores to be able to rank them, to be able to do stuff. Langford: So one of the reasons these things did evolve, was a quick and easy way that we could rank individuals or rank systems, and that was one of the things that Deming was most opposed to, ranking people, either through performance appraisals, grades, standardized tests, whatever it might be. So a lot of the purpose of why we do it, is a simple way to rank schools and try to understand, "Well, who's number one? And who's not?" And that kind of a thing. And then the second one... Stotz: And let me add something there just 'cause I wanna make sure that this comes out clear, is that obviously Dr. Deming was against the idea of ranking, but from a sincere perspective of some leaders out there, they may say, "Well, I'm not using it to rank so much as I'm just using it to figure out where is the trouble spots that I should be focusing on." Langford: Yeah, maybe you're not doing that, but people that are getting your scores are doing that, I can guarantee it. And then now it's gone to parents looking up scores online and comparing schools even across the street to try to see, "Oh wow, that school has higher test scores than this school, so it must be a better school." Deming had a lot of comments about standardized testing, but one of the ones I remember was, he said our education system would be significantly improved if we could get rid of standardized tests and grading as a performance measure. And it goes back to... We keep talking about the purpose of the system and the constancy of purpose of the system, and so is your constancy of purpose to get good test scores? Is that really the only thing you're trying to accomplish in a school? And if that's the case, you're gonna do all kinds of really, very dysfunctional things in that school to get test scores. Like for instance, well, one of the first things we're gonna cut out is music programs and sports programs, right? 'Cause we don't test us for those, and so we don't need those, we can cut that out, and then we spend more time on this. Langford: And I know the schools that are now mandating 90 minutes of math a day, whether you need it or not, you're gonna get 90 minutes of math a day and just waste and all kinds of stuff, and then it causes all kinds of crazy stuff within the system. And the tests themselves have slowly started to change, and one of the things that, especially that people used to say when you'd say, "Well, we should get rid of standardized tests." People say, "Well, how do we get people into colleges then? 'Cause they won't have an SAT score and they won't be able to get into college." And I think interesting thing is that there are numbers of universities, they're now throwing those things out and just saying... I know that in California, there's universities that do not require SAT scores any longer to go to the university as a measure of how well you're gonna do. Stotz: And would just abandoning that and say, "Well, college is open for everyone." Would that be the smart thing to do? Or is it to say, "Well, let's create a system that tries to optimize for something else."? Or does that add a huge amount of complexity for a school that doesn't have a lot of resources, let's say? Langford: Well, you want my method or do you want... Stotz: I'm only here for you. Langford: So I don't mind that there should be some kind of a base level, you need to have graduated from a high school, you need to have done certain things, and then all the people that meet that certain baseline that wanna go into college or wanna go on to a particular college, it just goes into a lottery. And now, let's say you have a thousand spots open, so you draw out a thousand names, all those people get to come to your university or your college for that year. Now, if you weren't chosen, you know why you weren't chosen. Stotz: Pretty clear. Langford: Yeah, it's pretty clear. And you could put your name in for multiple universities, and if you somehow got drawn for several universities, you could make a choice, "Which one do I really wanna go to?" And you would stop all this crazy stuff about people paying to get their kids in certain universities, and some universities are so expensive that only very rich people can get their kids in those universities and just on and on and on. Stotz: Yeah, but it could be abused. The legislators or the people in the university would say, "Well, the good news about our student body, David, is that they're all lucky." Langford: Yeah, that's right. But if you had randomly chosen students at your university and you were still churning out some of the top students in the world in these professions, you're really doing something. You've really optimized the system in some way. On the other hand, if all you're doing is choosing the very best people that are probably gonna be successful at any place they go, you can actually get away with a lot of dysfunctional stuff, and these students are still gonna be successful because they're just gonna overcome any barriers that are put in front of them. So there's no incentive to actually optimize a system moving forward with that. Stotz: I guess unless you're... If your method... What you're optimizing for is "I just want the top, top, top smartest, smartest as measured by score, young people in the world or in my state, or my city, or my country that's it. That's all I'm up to, man. I'm not trying to bring education to everyone," but that's not what Cal State Long Beach was doing, when I went there, they were trying to bring education to everybody. Langford: Yeah, so it's much different constancy of purpose of what you're trying to do. The other thing about standardized tests, and we all grew up with multiple choice tests, and I remember one time somebody asking Deming at a conference about that and he paused for a long time and he said, "What do you think about multiple choice questions?" And he said, "It's ridiculous." He said, "I would much rather you have a multiple choice questions which students have to answer: in what circumstances would A and B be correct? And in what circumstances would A and D be correct? And what would be the system if none of these were correct?" Because that would require thinking, and responses, and deep level understanding of something. But this game is still being played, especially in K-12 to get test scores, teachers are taught to teach children to guess. If you don't know the answer, just guess, because if there's four things there, you got 25% chance that you guessed right. Well, this is ridiculous, because all trying just to get your scores up. So if you really wanna find out if somebody knows something or doesn't, you certainly don't want them just guessing, that's not gonna tell you anything. And maybe 25% of the time they guess correctly, and so you're getting scores that's not telling you anything about the system. Stotz: I was in a senior level class in my final year in university, taught by an amazing woman who had actually lived in pre-Nazi Germany, and she had just seen communism, fascism and democracy in action, and that was the name of the course. And the final exam was a essay exam, and we went in and it was, I don't know, three hours, and when I got that exam back, it said A plus, and I just felt like I just really, really understood the material, I enjoyed writing that exam and I was proud of what I accomplished. And I can say there's no multiple choice exam that I took that I'm like, "I'm really proud of what I did there." Langford: Yeah, the same thing. We could all look back at experiences that we had, and usually they don't involve Draconian methods of testing, and standardized tests and things like that. One of the best classes I ever took in college, and I still vividly can recall or remember the name of the class was "The Assassination of American Presidents." And we went through every attempted assassination, everything, all the way up through Kennedy, and on through and analyze Zapruder films, and I don't ever remember a test in that class. Basically he just said, "Nick, if you show up every day, you're gonna get an A. Now let's start learning about this." And he had just amazing love for that whole concept and that whole thing, and that got translated to the students, and there was a waiting list to get into that class. Stotz: And what do you say to a listener, a teacher who's listening and says, "Yeah, that's easy to do and easy to say for a senior level class or an advanced level class where you've got 15 or 20 students. But I'm teaching a freshman class of 200 students, I don't have the time to read 200 essays," How do you respond to that where they see multiple choice and standardized as kind of a weeding out, a culling, I don't know. How do you respond to that? Langford: Well, there's lots and lots of different methods, but I would still probably require somebody to write an essay or write an explanation and go through stuff and then bring it to class, and now pass your essay once you left, and that's the person's job is to go through it and give you feedback. And then you're gonna get it back again, and then you're gonna get a chance to correct it and take that feedback, and you can do that multiple times if you want to in the class, because now you're making everybody into a teacher as well. And we all know in a classroom, the person that learns the most is the teacher. Stotz: I'm gonna explain in a way that I've done something and then give me some critique on it or help with that. I have the valuation master class and when my students get into the advanced levels, I say, "Look, I've taught you everything I know now," and they're valuing companies, "so how much is Apple worth?" And they've gotta go through a whole pretty structured process that I put them through, and then I tell them, "Okay, when you're done, post your results up into the group, and then I'll assign another student to review the process," review what they've done and give them feedback. And then they'll have to revise, and it could be five times before I eventually look at it and give a final review and say, "Okay, here's a one little thing that you missed." And a lot of times I'll figure out, "Oh, I didn't actually teach that part," and it's being exposed because Apple is a very complex company. But the point is that, on the one hand I've been a little bit nervous about to do it because I've also felt like in an academic environment, would they say, "Well, wait a minute, are you just pure scoring or are you as the expert and the professor giving the score," how do you respond to what I'm doing and how could I improve it also? Langford: Yeah, you have to understand that feedback is much different than rating and ranking, right? So if I write this paper and I hand it in and you give me an A minus or, you know, I might be really happy about that, or I might be just really, totally upset about that because you're ruining my GPA at the university, and it doesn't tell me a darn thing, I have no idea. You can get an A minus in one school and it's a C minus in another school, and it's an A plus in a third school, and its exact same work in all three schools, because of what Deming talked about, the variation within a system, the variability of what goes on with that. Really what you're after is feedback though, the human brain, back to neuroscience, the human brain thrives on immediate feedback, so the faster you can get that feedback to people, the better. Now, if that's peer-reviewed feedback, and that's the fastest way you can do it with 200 students at a class, that's awesome. But I always remember my son in high school was in an advanced English class, wrote a 14-page paper, worked really hard on it in September, got it back in January, and he came home with this paper and it had a grade on it, and he said, "I don't have any idea why we even wrote this thing, I don't even remember anything about it," but I got scored and moved on. Langford: And if that's all you're after, 14-page paper, check, been there, done that and then let's move on. But if you actually wanna give people feedback, then maybe there's the whole fallacy of a 200-person class is not workable, right? Stotz: So, in wrapping up the discussion about standardized testing, how should somebody think about it, particularly somebody that's a victim of it or in the middle of it, or being forced to do it. What's your advice? Langford: Well, all I know is that over the last 40 years after I left high school, basically, nobody ever asked me what my standardized test score was. [laughter] No employer ever wanted to know, nobody did, they just wanted to know, Are you capable of doing the job? Are you capable of doing something? Right? And that score wouldn't have told anybody anything, even if it was a perfect score, chances are, I wouldn't wanna hire that person 'cause all they could do is just be really good at standardized tests, I need somebody with people skills in psychology and understand statistical variation, back to Deming's System of Profound Knowledge. So I would much rather our systems were preparing people to be successful in life, rather than preparing them just to take good tests. And it's not like you can just throw the baby out with the bath water and as a teacher just say, "Well, I'm just not gonna do that anymore. I'm just not gonna test people." But there are ways that you can continually diffuse that for students so that they see it for what it is and move forward. On the other hand, you can also use a standardized test to see as a teacher, how am I doing? Langford: Countless times I heard Dr. Deming talk about his own classes and he said, "That's what I wanna know, is how am I doing as a teacher?" Like you said, Oh, I forgot to go over certain concepts, and so a standardized test could tell me that 80% of the class didn't get this concept, and I could look back at what I did and say, Oh, no wonder, I didn't even go over that, I didn't even discuss that. So why would I wanna penalize them because I didn't do my job? Stotz: Right. Let me try to summarize kind of what I took away from this discussion, what you were saying was that there's an emphasis on standardized tests over the past 30 years, kind of thinking maybe how is a nation doing or that score we can use to compare how different schools are doing, how different individuals are doing, and your first thing that you mentioned was, how did we survive in the past, did people learn things in the past without standardize? Of course they did. And so it doesn't mean that this is some kind of solution, and then you said that, this is the interesting part, I felt like when you were saying that it evolved as a way to rank people in systems, but ultimately it will be misused, and that is that somebody is gonna use it for the purposes that it wasn't really meant to be used for. And so it just becomes a dangerous tool. And then we talked about is the purpose to get good test scores? Because if that's what our purposes of our education system then, Yeah, go for it. Let's get the best test score. But that's not really our purpose, we also talked about how we could get people into college, maybe you talked about the random concept that they have to meet certain minimum standards, and then a random, which I found fascinating. I think it would take a lot of guts for an institution to do that, but I do think that there's definitely some interest in that. Stotz: And then we've kind of ended up talking about feedback and using student feedback when you have a big class or you're trying to teach something at scale and how important it is to get feedback as quickly as possible. And when you were talking, I was thinking about a young person may be more concerned about what their peer thinks about what they're writing about something than the teacher. And you actually may be able to use peer pressure in a sense that they really feel like they gotta write something good, otherwise their friend next to them is gonna go, "What's this crap?" They may get more truthful response, and then finally, you talked about ultimately, our education should be about preparing people for a successful life, is there anything else that you would add to that? Langford: I don't, you did a really good job of summarizing that up to complex subject. And it can be really fraught with emotion and there may be people listening to us that agree that that's not how we should be judging systems, but they're caught in the system itself, so you may not be able to change the system totally but you can do something. And what is that something you can do Monday morning to sort of optimize learning for the students that you're working with? Stotz: What a challenge and a great way to end it. You may not be able to change the situation that you're in and the system that you in but you can do something, and the beginning of that something is changing your thinking. And I think that's what we're trying to get at in our discussion. So David, on behalf of everyone at the Deming Institute, I wanna thank you again for this discussion. I'm learning a lot and I know the audience is too. For listeners, remember to go to Deming.org to continue your journey. And also, David, what's the best way that someone listening or viewing this can get in touch with you to learn more? Langford: You can go to my website at langfordlearning.com. And if you go to langfordlearning.com/booklet, you get and download a free booklet that tells you about the services that we provide in our company, so, all Deming based. Stotz: Fantastic. Well, this is your host Andrew Stotz, and I will leave you with one of my favorite quotes from Dr Deming, "People are entitled to joy in work," and I'm gonna add learning. Langford: Learning.  

In this episode, David and Andrew discuss going beyond solving problems in schools to preventing them from happening. David also shares a tool for finding the area where optimization of the system would have the greatest impact. In the episode, David shares his screen with Andrew and fills in a diagram. The beginning version has post-it note images around the sides, and the final version has lines drawn between all the post-it notes. See below: TRANSCRIPT 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 discussion with David P. Langford, who has devoted his life to applying Dr. Deming's philosophy to education, and he offers us his practical advice for implementation. Today's topic is: optimization of a system to prevent problems. David, take it away.   Langford: Thank you, Andrew. It's good to be here again. So yes, today I wanted to talk a little bit about just the optimization of the system and what does that mean. So to go back to Deming's System of Profound Knowledge and understanding systems is critical part of the System of Profound Knowledge. And within the System of Profound Knowledge, what is a system? And so there's all that, and we talked a little bit about that in the past, but today I just wanted to talk a little bit about the optimization of the system and what does that actually mean? So it's not a matter of just trying hard. I'm gonna optimize, so I'm just gonna work hard, I'm gonna try hard, I'm gonna get better.   Langford: In fact, Deming was famous for saying that we're being killed by people's best efforts, and in education that runs rampant. He also said that copying can lead to disaster. And just those two phrases probably discounts 80-90% of what goes on in education now, because every time I do a seminar, somebody says, where else is this happening? Or Can I have a copy of that? Or somebody will go and they'll do a presentation somewhere, and everybody will just wanna copy that. So it's a sort of like, no thinking involved, just copy steps one, two, three, and four and things will get better.   Stotz: Cookie-cutter.   Langford: And that... Sometimes that just copying to try to optimize a system is better than doing nothing at all, but it's also a trial and error process. Trial and error is very expensive and very time-consuming, and you have a great chance that you're not going to improve anything, right? Because systems that were developed at other places, so somebody, some leader comes into a school system somewhere and they do a great job in reading or whatever it might be, because they start studying their system and figuring out a process, and then they decide they're gonna market that to other people. And so you see the results of what they did, but it doesn't take in any understanding of the variation in systems, and you could have variation in schools when they're right across the street from each other. Totally different clientele and makeup of the student body and the staff and background, and all kinds of variation, so it doesn't necessarily work just to copy and apply something that was successful someplace else. Now, it is...   Stotz: And one question about that is that, I guess part of that is because the aim may be different.   If I think about when I was writing research in investment banks, the aim was to write a big, long research report. We had a lot of resources and all that, but when I set up my own firm, my aim was, how do I make this more efficient? And so I created a whole different system with a different aim, and therefore, if somebody wanted to go from my company to work in that company or vice versa, it wasn't like you could just copy what we were doing, there's a whole operating system that we created based upon a different aim.   Langford: Yeah, I remember when I first started things in classrooms with Deming help, and then people would come to visit classrooms and I'd always have the students explain what was going on and what they were doing, and invariably, my kids got really cagey because the visitors would say, "Oh, that's really cool. Can I have a copy of that?" And the kids would say, "Yeah, you can have a copy of it, but it's not gonna do you any good." And they'd say, "What, what, wait, wait, what do you mean?" And they said, "Because you don't understand the theory." So you don't understand what's going on here, and you just think you can just copy yourself to success and it just never works.   Langford: The other problem I see in optimization of systems is that people sort of come in with preconceived ideas about what they think is the problem. In fact, I had a principal at one time in one of the seminars, and he said, "I don't need all those PDSA stuff and tools and process and... I just... What the problem is." And, well, if you have that kind of divine intervention, why would you even come to a seminar on improving schools and learning if you already know, and if you already know it, why haven't you done it? Deming often said, "Well, you've been snoop goofing around for the last 20 years."   Langford: If you're that smart, you should be able... You should have already done it. So I guess seminars I typically try to coach people, I say, "You can come with a list of possible problems and opportunities that you might wanna work on," and therefore, that's why we use the word probletunities, and my students said all of our problems are... All of our problems start looking like an opportunity, and that's a great kinda way to go through life, that, "Okay, we got a big problem and okay it's an opportunity, it's an opportunity, we can make it better. We can do something here".   Stotz: Yeah.   Langford: The problem also shows you the deficit within the system or the problem within the system, and... So I wanted to kinda get into a little bit about, well, how would you go about sort of sorting out what to work on or how to move forward when you're trying to optimize the system. So I'm gonna actually share my screen.   Stotz: Great.   Langford: And I'm gonna take a chance at trying to do a tool here, and we're gonna do... If you're   watching the video, it's pretty simple, but we'll try to explain it with the audio as well as we go along. But what we're gonna do is what's called an interrelationship digraph, okay? And I've got five common areas here that we often find in schools. Teachers will say things like, "We have a lack of effort around here." Even say, "Students don't understand the concepts." "Oh, the teacher attitudes around here is... They're bad," and, "Oh, we gotta work on the student attitudes. We gotta do something to them until... Make them have a better attitude." And "there's no time to do all these kinds of things."   Langford: So if that sounds like your system and you're starting to think about, "Well, okay, here's all the kinds of problems that we're kinda working on," so what we do here is we pick a color and we start off, we say, "Okay, is there a relationship between lack of effort and don't understand the concept?" And understanding the concepts is really important in neuroscience, that taps into the sense of meaning with people, et cetera. And so you have to say, is there a relationship? And so, usually, we do this in a group, being able to discuss and you say, "Yes, I think there's a relationship." So if you think there's a relationship, you just draw a line between the two.   Langford: There's a second question, which affects which the most. Does our lack of effort affect not understanding concepts, or does not understanding concepts affect lack of effort? And so usually, I get the... People go into higher order thinking, it looks like this, with their mouths open and...   Langford: Because their brain is having to figure out, "Okay, how does that work?" So we have the... Let's say we have a discussion and we decide, "Well, if we understood the concepts, we're probably gonna get more effort out of people, so I'm gonna put an arrow going that way." Then we have a lack of effort and teacher attitudes. Well, is there a relationship? If there is I draw a line. There's not, then I don't draw a line. Secondly...   Stotz: For the viewing... For the listening audience, just to highlight what David's got here, he's got a blank piece of paper with a kind of a circle form. And in the upper right hand corner, it says, "Lack of effort." Just below that, it says, "Don't understand the concept." And at the bottom, it says, "Teacher attitudes," and then on the left side, it says, "Student attitudes," and then in the upper left, it says, "No time," and then you're starting to draw lines connecting these two things to show the relationships. So continue on.   Langford: Okay, so we've decided that lack of effort and teacher attitudes are connected, because if my students had a lot more... Put in a lot more more effort, that would probably affect my attitude as a teacher, I would probably like that. So we're gonna make the arrow going that way. So then we have lack of effort and student attitudes. You have to say, "Are those connected?" What do you think, Andrew?   Stotz: I would say yes, lack of effort and student attitudes? Seems like it would be.   Langford: So if they put in more effort, they probably have a better attitude?   Stotz: It seems to me that, that would be the case, but I don't know. I'm gonna follow your lead. I'm learning, man.   Langford: So we make the arrow go that way. So then we have lack of effort and no time. So I would say yes, those are connected, and so I'd say, "Wow, well, if we were using... If we had more effort going on, we'd probably be making better use of our time." That would be... Or we could say, if we had more time, we could probably have better effort. So sometimes it's a 50/50 kind of proposition. And so I often tell people, if it's 50/50, just flip a coin, because whichever way it goes, if you end up working on one, you win. You work on the other, you win too, so.   Stotz: Right.   Langford: So let's say that no time... Not enough time is affecting our lack of effort. So we've already gotten one time around the circle, and so this is gonna get a lot faster now. And so, now we're gonna go to the next concept in the circle, and then we're gonna go through that in a relationship. So we have "don't understand the concept" and "teacher attitudes." Well, if students understood the concept better, I would say that's probably gonna affect teacher attitude. And then now we have "don't understand the concept" and "student attitudes." I would venture the same thing there, that if they understood the concepts, they're gonna have a better attitude. And how about "don't understand the concept" and "not enough time"?   Stotz: Yep.   Langford: So probably, that's affecting not enough time. Okay. So now we're gonna pick a different color, and we're gonna go to teacher attitudes, and it's getting easier, we're almost there. So now we have "teacher attitudes" and "student attitudes." Here's an interesting problem. Which of that... Well, number one, is there a relationship?   Langford: What do you think, Andrew?   Stotz: It's symbiotic, it feels like to me, but I don't know.   Langford: They're related in some way, right?   Stotz: Yup.   Langford: Yup.   Stotz: I guess if you asked the students, they'll give you one answer, and if you ask a teacher, they'll give you another answer.     Langford: Yeah. So here's a chicken and egg question, which affects which the most? Do teacher attitudes affect student attitudes, or do student attitudes affect teacher attitudes?   Stotz: I would say that ultimately the teacher is the one responsible for making sure that the aim of the classroom is being achieved. So if their attitude wasn't right, it would be very hard for students to get it right. What do you think of that answer, David?   Langford: Yup, I would agree with you. So students are often victims of the system, and they're gonna respond in ways to whatever the teacher's attitude is.   Stotz: Yup.   Langford: So then we have "teacher attitude" and "not enough time" or no time. So I'd say those are definitely connected, 'cause I hear that all the time, "Oh, we don't have enough time to do these things." So I'm gonna draw a line there. Which affects which the most?   Stotz: I think that the reality is we all have not enough time, so the attitude of the teacher probably is the most important thing to resolve the issue of not enough time.   Langford: Yeah. But if you're feeling hurried all the time and rushed and can't get everything done, and that's gonna be affecting your attitude.   Stotz: That's the true.   Langford: Is that what you're saying?   Stotz: Yeah, I mean, if you're overloaded, and you can't achieve what you want to achieve, that definitely will hurt your attitude.   Langford: Okay. And then I... And we just have one last connection, we have "not enough time" and "student attitudes." So I'd say, yeah, those are definitely... I'm gonna draw a line, 'cause those are connected. Then I have to say which affects which the most. And same thing for students, is, if I don't have enough time to get this assignment done and get it to the level of quality that is being asked for, and maybe I've got that going on multiple other classes, and I'm feeling rushed and pressured, etcetera, that's probably gonna affect my attitude to some degree.   Stotz: Yup.   Langford: You have to draw a line. Okay, so when we get all finished with this in a relationship digraph, we go around, and we simply just count the ins and outs, how many arrows coming in and how many coming out. So for lack of effort, we've got two arrows coming in, and we've got two   arrows going out.   Langford: So I'm gonna just put two-comma-two next to that. For, "Don't understand the concept," we have zero arrows coming in, and we have four arrows coming out, meaning that, that area is affecting four other areas. And then down at teacher attitudes, we've got three coming in, we've got one going out, so a lot of things affect the teacher's attitude. And student attitudes, we've got four arrows coming in, and we've got zero going out. And now, with "no time", we've got one coming in and three coming out. So when we get all finished with this, what we try to look at is, we wanna think about in optimizing a system, what are we gonna work on that's gonna give us the very biggest bang for the buck, so to speak, right? 'Cause we... All of us, no matter if you're in business or school... Education or whatever, you only have so much time and money to do things, right?   Langford: And so we look for the area that has the most arrows coming out of it. And in our simple little example here, that's, "Don't understand the concept." So if this was a school I was working with, and these are the five key areas that... Complaints or problems that they identified, I would be pushing them to say, "Look, start working on teaching concepts better, ways that kids can understand the concepts," etcetera. And if you do that, teacher's gonna have a better attitude, student's gonna have a better attitude. They're gonna make more efficient use of their time, and they're gonna put in more effort.   Stotz: Fantastic. That... And that's very clear. For the listeners out there, it's a diagram with a lot of arrows going in and out of the different topics. But ultimately, what's very clear is there's one topic, "Don't understand the concept," that is impacting a lot of other things, and therefore it appears as though that is the one that should be worked on.   Langford: Yeah. The big "aha" on this too is that, what... Traditionally, where do schools spend their time? They spend their time trying to improve student attitudes, or they're gonna spend their time trying to improve teacher attitudes. And it's especially relevant now coming out of the pandemic, because across... At least across the US, I'm sure it's probably world-wide, that teachers are feeling really overwhelmed, and now they have all this video stuff to work with, and they still don't have all their students coming back, and there's all kinds of issues and problems and stuff going on. And so we need to do things to improve teacher attitudes, right? We need to have some teacher parties and maybe have a Teacher of the Year Award and those kinds of things to try to improve people's attitudes. And it's not understanding where attitude is coming from the system itself. Deming talked about that anywhere from 94-98% of the effects of the system are coming from the system itself. And if you're not addressing that, you're not doing anything. You're just spinning your wheels, and next year you're gonna have just as depressed of teachers as you do this year. And so, then what are you gonna do? Well, we're gonna have to have more pizza parties, and we're gonna have to have other kinds of ways to sort of bribe people into feeling better about the... Their situation, "Oh, I feel better about being in a horrible school," kind of the situation.     Stotz: Right. And it feels like the idea of changing into a very, very comfortable chair from a very uncomfortable chair on the Titanic.   Langford: Yeah, that's right.   Stotz: Fantastic. But let...   Langford: And what Deming said, I think one time at a seminar, was that, pretty soon you're only left with the people who can't get a job someplace else.   Langford: Because all the people that could go some place else and work are gonna... We're gonna get out of here, 'cause nothing ever gets better year after year after year, but we're having these wonderful parties and everything, but that only lasts a little while.   Stotz: Yeah.   Langford: So it kind of leans us back into the discussion of intrinsic motivation versus extrinsic motivations, and so these types of tools help people spend their time wisely working on an opportunity that could actually have a significant benefit.   Stotz: Right.   Langford: But sometimes when I do this with groups in schools as special aid, we get all finished and people will say, "But we don't wanna work on that. That's hard."   Stotz: And there's the secret.   Langford: Yeah, because... And that's what happens, is that we often work on the things that are really easy, right?   Stotz: Yup.   Langford: We don't wanna work on something that's really hard and difficult, nut to crack, right? It's much easier just to do this thing over here and wave the magic wand and then wish we had better students, or better teachers, or better parents, or...   Stotz: Well, it's definitely a road to competitive advantage in the business world if you take on hard projects, because you know majority of people won't do it, and therefore you can achieve another level and basically not be attacked from your competitor. I wanna summarize what I took away and then maybe you add in a little bit and we'll wrap it up. So first of all, we're talking about optimization of a system to prevent problems. You talked at the beginning about, it's not just   about trying harder. You also talked about the idea of copying can lead to disaster as Dr. Deming had said, you know that you could... You're bringing something that works for one system into another, and no systems are identical or even close maybe in some cases. The next thing you mentioned about was best efforts, which Dr. Deming said, "We're being killed by best efforts, and it's not enough. It's the right effort put to the right problem," which then brought us to your discussion about viewing problems in a positive light and seeing them as opportunities. And finally, you went through the interrelationship diagram to help us identify what particular problem of many is having the biggest impact or the most detrimental impact on the organization, and a tool to identify that, and then to identify that: "Okay, that's where we're gonna focus." Anything else you would add to that?   Langford: That's well done, Andrew, you were paying attention.   Stotz: Yes, I sometimes have a blank stare, ladies and gentleman, but actually I am trying my best to listen and learn, and in fact I...   Langford: No, that was an excellent wrap up.   Stotz: Yes. Fantastic. Well...   Langford: So, I would say, yeah, just to wrap it up, the optimization of a system, in Deming's Profound Knowledge he also talks about, you have to have a theory. What's your theory, theory of knowledge? Well, is your theory optimization of a system? So you kind of see how all these things start to work together to make things happen, and so if I have that constantly in the back of my head, "How am I gonna optimize the system?" So you and I have been working on trying to optimize the podcast system, and we've gotten better microphones and better cameras, and better lighting, and we just keep working because it's a continual improvement, right? As soon as we think we've got it better, then there's probably gonna be a better camera that comes out, or something better, and you have to think about...   Stotz: David, I got a little depressed when you said that trial and error can be really expensive, I think we definitely got some trial and error going on here.   Stotz: Well, let's wrap it up. On behalf of everyone at the Deming Institute, David, I wanna thank you again for this discussion, and for listeners: remember to go to deming.org to continue your journey. Now, this is your host, Andrew Stotz, and I wanna leave you with one of my favorite quotes from Dr. Deming, "People are entitled to joy in work."

With nearly 2 million students not returning to schools and educational institutions after COVID, David and Andrew explore the question "how do we create quality education systems so students are excited to come to school - and stay there?" TRANSCRIPT 0:00:02.8 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 discussion with David P. Lanford, who has devoted his life to applying Dr. Deming's philosophy to education. And he offers us his practical advice for implementation. Today's topic is, "Quality is not your problem, it is the answer to your problem." David, take it away.   0:00:30.4 David P. Lanford: [laughter] Thank you, Andrew. It's good to be back again.   0:00:32.6 AS: Great to be with you.   0:00:33.8 DL: So and thinking about this topic, we want to think about what is quality in education and just some of the stats that are coming out in the United States alone, something like 1.3 million students have not returned to the school systems after the pandemic. So.   0:00:56.2 AS: That's unbelievable.   0:00:58.0 DL: The public school systems.   0:01:00.4 AS: Right.   0:01:00.5 DL: And, the stat I heard in the universities is they're down 600,000 students from where they were two years ago before the pandemic. So...   0:01:09.4 AS: So we're talking about almost 2 million students not coming back?   0:01:13.9 DL: That's right. So there's the pandemic caused a lot of systemic shifts. Some of them good, some of them not so good, but it also pointed out a lot of glaring issues that were going on and... In trust in the system, so to speak. And when parents started to find out what was going on with these Zoom meetings online and what a class was like, and the quality of the education and what was going on, many of them just started to make decisions about why should I keep sending my child [laughter] to a school like that if that's what they're gonna do. I was listening to a sports channel just a couple of days ago, and there were just the two guys that were on the channel, discussing sports in the morning. Well, one father was really upset because he said it's the last week or week and a half of school, and all my child is doing is watching movies in almost every class.   0:02:20.4 DL: And granted that it's the end of the school year and they're wrapping up and they're doing things at the end of the school year. But when the kids come home and mom or dad says, "Hey, what did you do at school today?" And they say nothing, which is a very common answer. We tend to think, "Oh, it is just... Oh, they're just kids, they are just kids and just can't remember," etcetera, but that's really not the case. In a lot of cases, there is nothing going on. And so when parents figured out that, okay, I could either do homeschooling. I could send my child to private school. I could go to a charter school, there's a whole lot of the other options there that I can explore and we could actually make this happen.   0:03:15.2 DL: And is that a better experience? Is it a better quality experience? So the topic today about so many schools are not worrying about the quality of what they're doing and they want to start just trying to force parents to get kids back into schools or the same way at the universities, not making a shift in what it is they're doing and just expecting that, oh, well, these students are just gonna come back. But another shift, I think systemically since this is about Deming and education and the system, is that a lot of students during the pandemic didn't go to college and they found out there's some really high paying jobs out there now [chuckle], and you don't need a college degree. And why would I... And since college is attached to debt now, so why would I incur a huge amount of debt and end up with a job that pays less than what I could make if I don't go to college? So that...   0:04:19.5 AS: It's a world turned upside down. It seems like, and one of the questions I had too about this was that, what is the aim of the public education system? Because on the one hand the people who can abandon the public system and do homeschooling or do a charter school or a private school or whatever. Yeah. I mean, they're not gonna worry about those people that can take care of themselves, but majority of people do not have the means to do that. And so it makes me think, what is that aim and how does quality come into play here?   0:04:58.2 DL: Well, another shift that's happening, especially in the United States is that all of a sudden these parents started coming to school board meetings and showing up in droves, and starting to demanding changes. And it's really interesting that the public education system especially is not used to having customers, right. And so they... When I first started doing training in education, especially with talking about Deming principles, etcetera, etcetera, I actually got a lot of pushback, well, we don't have customers and we don't have this. And even just using that word in education kind of still drive some educators crazy. Like I even had people come up to me and say, I got into education, so I wouldn't have to have customers.   [laughter]   0:05:53.9 DL: So that whole thinking, and if you think about a systems diagram from a Deming perspective about inputs into the system, the system itself, and then what the system produces and how that affects, and then the innovation that you get on the upside and that cycle of continually going through that, so much of the education system, especially public education right now is just lagging behind and the longer they wait to get on board and really to understand Deming principles on how to actually transform a system, the longer it's gonna take them to actually sort of catch up with what's happening.   0:06:40.4 AS: And when you talk about that systems diagram, Dr. Deming outlined that in, Out of the Crisis as is one of the places, I remember that, seeing that diagram when I first started studying Deming and it was interesting, but what was very interesting about it was that there was a feedback loop through the customer and the sales and marketing that then came back into the system, and I wonder if that feedback loop has been broken in public education, and as you said, with the parents coming in to the... Give the feedback.   0:07:12.5 DL: Well, I've spent 30 years teaching school districts how to proactively go out and find out what do parents want, and especially what do students want instead of just thinking that, "Oh, I'm just gonna decide and I'm gonna tell you what you want." And you have no other options. So this is... You're just gonna have to put up with it, and that's the way it is. But when you actually go out and it's the same thing that happened with corporations when they started understanding Deming and starting out to actually ask customers what they want. "What do you want in your automobile, or what do you want in your copy machine or... " I remember an executive for Xerox Corporation said that when they met Deming, they thought they had a shelf life of about two years left, or they were gonna go out of business because the Japanese were making and selling copy machines at a profit cheaper than what Xerox could make them. So you don't have to have much math, maybe about a third grade math degree to figure out that if we keep doing what we're doing, we're not gonna be here someday, and I think that the education system is in the same place as well.   0:08:41.7 AS: And when you talk about this idea that quality is the answer, tell us more about what is that answer. How would you describe that answer?   0:08:51.7 DL: Well, we talked a lot about the other in the previous podcast about joy in learning, and when you start concentrating on the quality of what you do and how that affects people, then you get a much different feeling, or end user experience for people. You really think about what's going on with that and following that all the way through. So what are you gonna do in the school system when that child comes home at dinner and mom and dad says, "What did you do at school today?" Are they gonna have an answer for that and are they gonna be excited about it? And if they're all of a sudden really excited about it and say, "Oh, today, we got hit by lightning at science class. It was so awesome studying static electricity and this is what we did and... " Or you don't even have time to ask that question because they're just kinda bubbling over about their experiences and what they did in school that day.   0:09:56.2 AS: Right.   0:09:58.4 DL: That's a different level of quality learning experience. So you think about the purpose again. We have talked about the purpose of education is to create learning experiences for youth in its day or its future in order to add value to society. So is what's happening at school really translating into students being more productive and more capable and being able to go on and to do things at a much higher level? Well, any system that's concentrating on that level of quality, you're not... You're gonna be able to attract students because the word of mouth would just be unbelievable.   0:10:45.2 AS: Right. One of the things that I... One of the fun things about Deming is that you can read the same material and go deeper every time, and one of the things that I started to really go deeper on a while ago was just this idea that in some ways I felt... I didn't really feel or understand it completely, but it was just this obsession that if you could consistently improve quality, it's like you would solve almost every other problem. Now, he's not talking about quality by some objective standard. He's talking about quality in relation to the customer's desires and needs and demands, but if you could continue to improve quality with the customer as the focus, it would solve pretty much everything else and that, I just kind of didn't get. I got the idea when I was younger. Like, change the way you think and systems thinking is up, but this obsession we're just continually improving was something that I just didn't catch. How does that apply to education... And am I right in what I'm saying, first of all? And number two is how do you see that for education as we wrap up on this idea about talking about quality as the answer to the problem?   0:11:56.8 DL: Well, I'll never forget one of the first times I went to Argentina and I was doing a breakout session at some conference that they had there, and they had a lot of educators, both from the university level and from the public schools and staff were in the audience and everything. And so I was just talking out to them about just what you're saying, this idea about continual improvement, and I'll never forget this guy that spoke English pretty well. He said... He just stood up all of a sudden and said, "All you Americans, you're always trying to improve things. Why don't you just leave things alone?"   0:12:35.5 DL: And I was just, I just was just stunned by that. I always thought you came to a conference on improving the quality of education, but you wanna argue for doing nothing. In a system that's clearly failing your country and it, so this deep seated attitude and, and it is a hard thing, continual improvement to think about, oh, I have to continually keep thinking about this. [laughter] Kind of a weird concept when you think about it, right. That you sort of think about. So when you apply it to the education, I remember when I first became a teacher, some, one of the veteran teacher said, "Oh, you're gonna have kind of the... Pretty rough couple of years, maybe three years, the first three years till you get all your lesson plans figured out and all of your tests and everything else. And then after that, it's pretty easy."   [laughter]   0:13:34.9 AS: After that you can coast.   0:13:36.4 DL: Right. And that's a pretty common thing that went on in schools and stuff that... I remember a story, one time, of a university that the students in a sorority or a fraternity, I think it was, had been swiping all of the tests from professors at this university for a period of something like 12 to 15 years. And they finally found this one professor that after like 12 years started reusing some of the tests from 12 years ago. And they, they were so smug that they now had the answers to this guy's test. They'd never been able to... They knew he was gonna repeat at some point, but [laughter] and I think that's a really interesting example of people that are not in a continual improvement, adaptive mode.   0:14:33.0 AS: And I think that, one in, in my kind of wrap up of this to think about the answer to your problem, that quality is the answer to your problem, I think about the inspiration that continual improvement brings. To see yourself bringing more value to your customer, or to your student and developing that and improving that, and testing that, to me is joy in work. So maybe you can wrap this up by summarizing what you feel like the audience should get away from this concept of quality is not your problem, it is the answer to your problem.   0:15:12.4 DL: Well, when you concentrate on that than the quality of... If learning is the aim in a school system, and you're concentrating on how do we create the highest quality learning possible? So then you start to think about, well, how do I become a better teacher? Well, if my mode of operation is, you know, lecture kind of thing, and kids taking notes, and so what am I gonna do? Am I gonna go learn to talk faster so I can cram more stuff in quicker? And that's where neuroscience comes in and tells us no, that you're just gonna put more people to sleep. And, but you might come out of that experience feeling really good, like you actually did something, but did they actually learn something? Was there... Was the quality of their learning better just because you became more efficient at what you did? I mean, you were able to flip through your slides faster in that process... So thinking about the quality of education, you have to think about, well, what does that mean? And what am I gonna do? I wanted students to have maximum ownership in everything that they did. From the time they came in the door till the time they left, we were maximizing their ownership, because what... When you have that control, you also have that learning that goes deep within your brain. And it's not just here today and gone tomorrow.   0:16:50.0 AS: Fantastic. Well, on behalf of everybody at the Deming Institute, I want to thank you again for this discussion, and that concludes another great discussion. I want to remind everybody to go to deming.org to continue your journey. 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."

In this episode of our special Deming in Education series, David and Andrew talk about the difference between "continuous" and "continual" improvement - and how that applies in classrooms. TRANSCRIPT 0:00:02.5 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 am continuing my discussion with David P. Langford, who has devoted his life to applying Dr. Deming's philosophy education, and he offers us his practical advice for implementation. Today's topic is: Should we be continually improving or continuously improving? David, take it away.   0:00:30.6 David Langford: Thanks Andrew. So some people say it's semantics and it doesn't make that much difference to how you think about it. And I think in the last podcast, we were talking about how people have trouble with the idea about continual improvement anyway. But the first person I ever heard really talking about the difference between continual improvement and continuous was Dr. Deming. And not only did he talk about it in his Deming way, he was pretty emphatic about it. And it took me a long time, I'd say 10 years or more, to start to really get it and understand the difference and what that means. But basically the difference is if you have some function of what it is you're trying to do, some program, some process, a manufacturing thing, a classroom or whatever that might be, and you're doing that process over time, continuous improvement means that you're just continuously changing things over and over and over and adapting and moving forward and changing forward. It sounds like a really good idea until you think about it.   0:02:01.5 DL: I don't think it's actually possible to do it unless you're in some kind of a mechanical machine world or maybe artificial intelligence kind of a world where changes are just constantly being made, adaptations and changes moving through. When you're working in systems like education, which is primarily a human system field, and yes, we have computers and technology and things coming into the education system now, but it's still primarily a human system, and my experience is that humans, whether thats students, teachers, parents, whoever, cannot adapt to continuously changing everything. Such like change upon change, upon change, upon change, upon change or sometimes you hear your teachers say, "What's the flavor of the month?" They don't really understand why they're changing anything, they just know that somebody up above is just changing it, then they're just going on with it.   0:03:08.6 DL: Whereas when you have a continual improvement kind of environment, Deming taught us about, you let the system run basically, because you have to understand the data, what is the system producing, and once you understand that data, understand the variation in the system, then you can do a PDSA process and Plan-Do-Study-Act and come up with a small trial method to figure out what could I change to get a significant difference in the system, and then start applying that in a larger and larger scale level. On human systems, those things take time, because it's the psychology of the people in the system, and you have to persuade people that what to do and etcetera, sometimes it can take... And especially in education, it could take years to make a transformation system like that, so people have to learn to, okay, we've gotten to a certain point.   0:04:17.5 DL: We're getting a certain level of quality. And you can measure that, anything you wanna measure that with. You can measure that in attendance records, you could measure that in test scores, you could measure that in happiness of students, you could measure that in happiness of parents or doesn't matter whatever you want. But once you get that baseline data and you start to understand it, and then you have to say to yourself, "Well, am I happy with what's happening now?" I always joke with the teachers, if you're happy and you know it, then clap your hands. You have to get to a state of equilibrium basically. You've changed, and so now you're not happy with the level of quality and you want to see a higher level of quality.   0:05:14.1 AS: So let me try to clarify for the listeners and for myself, the first thing that you're talking about is if you use the word continuously, it implies that you're continuously or constantly changing things. And that's not the objective. The objective is actually to stabilize things to some extent.   0:05:34.4 DL: Change for the sake of change. We're just changing stuff.   0:05:38.6 AS: I wanna see a continuous... Continuously changing systems here. No, that's not what we're after. And then when you mentioned about continually, then you talked about let the system run, the objective is to understand what's the output of the system by letting it run and letting it define itself as to what it's producing and then making a decision, do we take it to the next level, do we take it to or do we leave it at this point and say, "Okay, that's good enough for what we need for the ultimate aim of the system."   0:06:14.3 DL: I find it really interesting in some cases sad and disheartening that you have state systems, especially like in education and state legislators, and they just come up with new rules and regulations, and they have no idea about what the current capacity of the current system is or what the problem is. I'll give you an example. I was working in a district one time and they had an average of 94% attendance rate, I think at the high school, and all of a sudden, the superintendent came out with an edict said that they should be no less than 96%.   0:07:00.0 DL: Well, if you understand systems from a Deming perspective, you actually do want students to stay home at certain times, right? You don't want them coming to school when they're sick, and if you make the parameters so difficult that your life is gonna be terrible if you stay home, now you're gonna have kids come and they're sick, and now you're infecting hundreds and hundreds of kids, and now you got hundreds of kids not coming to school 'cause they're sick, because you are over-emphasizing this. On the other hand, in a continual improvement kind of environment, if you decide that, okay, we can do better, we wanna improve our attendance rate, well, then you have to start studying the quality of what you do, what's causing people not to show up or not to come when they can.   0:08:00.8 DL: Or if sickness is the number one problem, what can we do about it? I once worked with a school in Brazil, and they went to work on their attendance rate, found out that a lot of it had to do a sickness and everything else, so they changed their whole system, they put in more wash stations throughout the entire school. They set up all kinds of times for kids to come in and they wash their hands, and every time they came in from recess or interacting, they had a process where they went through the wash hands, they had signs up with flow charts that said, "This is how you wash your hands." There's actually a process to that or through that. Well, their sickness rate just went down to practically nothing because they put in processes and methods and stabilize the system at a much higher level, and so then most of the kids being absent due to sickness, were the new students that were coming in, and so it would take them some time to get figured out, "Oh, this is what we do around here, and this is why we do it, and everything." Change the system, you get a different result. Instead of what we've been taught to do is leave the system alone and then manage the dysfunction that it produces.   0:09:24.2 AS: And I think that Dr. Deming realized that you have limited resources.   0:09:30.3 DL: Yes.   0:09:30.9 AS: And so you've got to prioritize, and once you've gotten something to a point... And he also realized there's no perfection and there's no reason to go towards perfection, if that's not serving the ultimate customer. I was also thinking about... I was thinking about a way for me to think about this, so I wanna propose this and see what you think, David. So if it's continuously improving, when you say continuously, it means you're kind of demanding constant change, so you could think of the person that the boss saying, "Don't just stand there, do something." And when it comes to continually improving, you're trying to let the system run, make the decision if you're gonna go to the next level of quality, and therefore the person at the top is saying, "Don't just do something stand there."   0:10:21.4 DL: Yeah.   0:10:23.5 AS: Perfect.   0:10:24.3 DL: Think, study the system, start to understand what's going on, what are you actually trying to do, and do you really understand. We're talking about attendance, but do you really understand why students don't wanna come to school, and then are you actually working on those things or you just, "We are gonna punish them if they don't come to school. That's what we'll do." And so two tardies equals an absence and four absences equals this and 12 absences, you lose credit, and so schools put in the layers upon layers upon layers of these punishments and the crazy thing is, it doesn't work, never has worked. If it worked, we wouldn't have any students missing school, because we have these wonderful systems that prevent kids from missing school at all. What do you do as different? We were talking about quality as the answer to your problem, well, when you have a much higher level of quality experience going on in the classroom, and that's happening in every single classroom with every single teacher, and the joy level is really high, you actually have the opposite problem with attendance, you're actually encouraging people to stay home when they are sick, not to come. You actually tell parents, "Look, I know they're really excited," but that's a whole different problem to have, than to think all we gotta coerce these kids into coming and punish them into compliance and reward them into things.   0:12:04.6 DL: There is a school district that set up... I think they're still doing it today. Even set up a reward, the local car dealer said that for any child that is not... Doesn't miss a day of school for 12 years they get a new car. Again, it sounds like a great idea till you think about it, and I think the first year that I saw they filmed it and it was on the local news, and everybody's all excited, and local businesses are supporting education and isn't this great? And isn't this wonderful? Only problem was there were about 10 kids that had perfect attendance for 12 years.   [laughter]   0:12:46.4 DL: And the guy at the car dealership says, "Woah, woah, wait a minute, I'm not donating 10 cars." So now they've got a whole different promise so what they do, well, they gave all 10 of these students a car key and then you went out and you got in a new car, and if yours started, then you were the one that got the car. So, the TV station films the one kid that and their parents and oh, the excitement isn't as great and that. When in the background, you see nine other students...   0:13:20.6 AS: Nine disappointed.   0:13:21.9 DL: Mad, disappointed, kicking themselves, "Stupid, stupid, stupid. I did all that effort and everything else came to school when I was sick and everything else for this vague promise." But none of that's gonna change the system because when you stop doing all that stuff, the system goes right back to what it was designed to do.   0:13:45.7 AS: Yeah.   0:13:47.0 DL: What it was created to do. And that's what Deming's talking about. Once you understand that, okay, now let's go about figuring out what are we gonna do about this, what do we wanna change? And is and what you're saying, too, is attendance your number one problem? And sometimes I'll say that it's administrators in schools and say, "Well, it's a big problem around here. We know it's a big problem." Well, okay, what are all your other big problems?   [laughter]   0:14:16.8 DL: And is this the number one thing? And is this interrelated with everything else you're doing, right?   0:14:23.7 AS: Yeah.   0:14:24.2 DL: And maybe the number one problem is the actual learning experiences in classrooms not engaging, and not fun, not interesting, not relevant, not timely, right?   0:14:37.7 AS: Yep.   0:14:38.5 DL: And sometimes I'll have administrators say, "Well, yeah, but we don't wanna work on that. That's hard."   0:14:44.9 AS: Yeah.   0:14:46.3 DL: It is a lot easier just to have a new car for showing up to school on time.   0:14:51.0 AS: Yeah, we'll figure that out when we get to the end of the year. David, you've reminded me of a story that I tell about when I was the head of research at a research operation here in Bangkok. And we got a new boss that came in and he came in from outside of Thailand, and he basically went to one of our first meetings in the morning. We met every morning at 7:00 AM to present to our sales force. And one of the analysts on my team came in a little bit late, maybe 15 minutes late, and my new boss pulled me aside and he says, "I do not accept people coming in late for meetings, and I want action." And I said to him, "That guy was up until 1:00 AM last night working on what he had to present to the clients today." And so it was my decision as a manager to not go off on the fact that he was 15 minutes late.   0:15:47.7 AS: Now, if you tell me that we have to do that, I'm just telling you, you're gonna lose all that extra joy that he had. And he was determined to work until 1:00 AM to get it done. But you'll find him saying, "Okay, I'll leave at 5:10 also." And so, I couldn't really get my boss to understand that, but I saw that part of my objective was to get the maximum out of what was potential that was there. So, you know, that was just a story that happened in my life.   0:16:19.3 DL: Yeah, you reminded me the first time I got the chance to work at a whole school level. The superintendent said, "Well, we have a tardy problem, you know kids being late to classes." And so we went to work on the tardy problem. And it's really funny because when I did some work in Australia and I mentioned to them that tardy problem, they didn't even know what a tardy was. You mean I said, "Well, it's students being late to classes. It's a big problem in the US and we work on it and we do all those kind of stuff." And I said, "Don't you have that problem here?" And they said, "You mean the teachers being late?"   [laughter]   0:16:58.8 DL: That whole different worlds and whole different systems going on. But I played all kinds of games trying to figure out this whole tardy system. And I thought, "Oh, I'm gonna go back and ask the students, what do you think is the number one... What's the number one reason that people are tardy that are late to class?"   0:17:18.0 AS: And they said it's boring as hell.   0:17:20.6 DL: Well, the number one thing came back, almost 80% of students said classes don't start on time. And I thought, "That's fascinating." Because you could put a whole group of teachers in a room for a month and just say, "What are all the reasons that students are late?" And they're not gonna come up with, "Classes don't start on time."   0:17:42.7 AS: Definitely not. Definitely not.   0:17:43.8 DL: The second highest thing was even if it does start on time, it's boring. It's not relevant, it's not boring or it's not... So if you think of it from their perspective, am I gonna put in effort, get to school on time for something that is not gonna start on time anyway? And I'll always ask teachers, I say, "What do you do in the first 10 minutes of class?" Well, I'm passing out papers and taking roll, I'm doing this, I'm doing that. That's what students are talking about. Nothing towards learning is actually taking place, right? Then that system. So if you really wanna make an impact on the tardy system, all right, teach everybody how to start classes immediately, and then make sure that it's immediately relevant, interesting...   0:18:30.8 AS: With value.   0:18:31.5 DL: And engaging. And guess what? You're not gonna have a tardy problem, and you're not gonna have to have a tardy czar in the front office counting tardies. And you're not gonna have to have penalties and rewards and all the other systems that go with that. That kind of bring us back to our topic today is about continuous improvement or continual improvement. You have to get to a point where you start to say, "Okay, our tardies system is not working. Therefore we need a continual improvement. We need a PDSA cycle, study this system to figure out what we can learn. Then we'll make a change, then we'll let it run and maybe we'll let it run forever. Maybe we'll reach a point where we say we think good is good enough." With a system like that, I can put up with somebody. I remember I told the teachers at one time that, "Okay, at this school there's no such thing as a tardy anymore."   0:19:33.7 DL: And somebody said, "Well, what do we do if somebody's late?" And another teacher said, "Maybe we should just get them caught up." Hey, oh, I see your late and oh, let's get you caught up. Instead of spending time berating them and putting tardy marks and all these kinds of stuff in books and sending it to the front office and all the data and everything else. Hey, you must have missed something really great, right? So let's spend some time get you caught up with this. And so you change this system, change your attitude, change your system, and you're gonna get a different result. Rather than what we taught to do is we try to manipulate the system.   0:20:17.3 AS: Yeah. And unlike in the world of business, you can't force compliance, you can't force people to buy your products, it's voluntary exchange. So I wanna just wrap up and review what you've talked about. So first thing is you talked about the fact that education is, it's a human system. And human systems can't adapt to continuous change. And that's where you're highlighting to us the idea of it's not about continuous change because continuously changing implies that you're changing almost for the sake of change, and that's where I said, don't just stand there, do something. Instead, what you're telling us is focus on continual improvement. And let the system run, understand that there's times that you're gonna wanna just leave it where is and focus in another area. Is there anything that you would add as we wrap up?   0:21:21.3 DL: No, it's absolutely true. You know, we talk a lot about systems and everything else, but I think one of the breakthroughs that I had was when I started this process with students is to get students to think about, you are your own system, you are the top of your system, right? And so if you wanna see a different result in what you're doing, you have to think of yourself in the very same way. I can do a PDSA cycle on why am I habitually late in morning? Okay.   0:21:50.7 AS: That would be a learning process.   0:21:51.8 DL: To use Deming to go through that process and change myself within that and get a different result. And what would that be like?   0:22:01.4 AS: Yeah. And I think for young people, as I always say, they say to me, I have a problem waking up early. I said, you probably have a problem of going to sleep early. [laughter] Alright, well, David, on behalf of everyone at the Deming Institute, I wanna thank you again for our discussion. And for listeners, remember to go to deming.org to continue your journey. This is your host Andrew Stotz. And I will leave you with one of my favorite quotes from Dr. Deming, that is, people are entitled to joy in work.

David and Andrew's discussion of how using Deming in the classroom not only inspires achievement it also creates collaboration among excited students. TRANSCRIPT 0:00:01.9 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, we continue our series of Deming in Education with David P. Langford where we explore Deming's thinking to create joy in learning. David Langford has devoted his life to applying Dr. Deming's philosophy to help everyone get the most out of learning. Today's topic is "By what method?" David, take it away.   0:00:28.9 David Langford: Great. So in previous broadcasts, we've talked a lot about deadlines and processes, and operational definitions and quality standards and all kinds of things like that. So today I wanted to talk about, "By what method?" Dr. Deming tattooed that on my forehead, because so many times people would propose things to him and he would say, "By what method?" in his Deming voice. It's all about the method of what it is you're going to do. So what I learned to do is, instead of trying to calculate, "Is this a 92 or an 88 or 88.1?" and then I got the student upset with me, and then because I gave them an 89, I messed up their GPA, and now, so now they're not gonna get a scholarship, and now Mom and Dad is mad at me and it just goes on and on and on. And so, instead of trying to improve that process, I started working on a method to completely get out of it, and especially today, especially in K-12, lots of schools are trying to go to what they call standards-based grading, where they want all students to achieve, but unless... If you start applying a new theory like that, but you keep it in the old system for the last several hundred years, you're gonna have problems.   0:02:08.0 DL: So I had to figure out how can I do that? What can I do? Well, over time it slowly evolved into a process where if somebody turned in an assignment and it met or exceeded the standard for the assignment, then I started to say, "Well, you got that one", to kids and students. Well, that finally, I started to realize, well, why can't that just be my grade book? Either you got a one, which signifies that on this assignment, you did it to standard and you did everything required and you got a one, or it's just blank. If it's just blank, it means you still have to keep working on it to get a one.   0:02:57.9 AS: Just to clarify that. When you say met or exceeded, that's one statement, that's not saying met is one thing and exceeded is another. Is that correct?   0:03:06.3 DL: That's right.   0:03:07.2 AS: Okay.   0:03:07.3 DL: Because yes, we have a quality standard with this assignment, but I may be really interested in this, and so I did a whole bunch more than was required. Right? And so, I still wanna recognize that with students, "Look at, look at this, look what this. You did this and you went above and beyond the standard." Right?   0:03:27.8 AS: Right.   0:03:28.3 DL: So you still get a one for doing that, and I'm not gonna take away your desire to go above the standard by giving you A+++ or all kinds of games that teachers play. You got that one, which is awesome, and the rest is just joy and learning for you. Or if you went above the standard, okay, I might give you a chance to share what you did with the rest of class.   0:03:58.6 AS: That's what I was just thinking about. Yeah.   0:04:01.8 DL: Yeah, yeah. And I'm gonna ask you, I'm gonna ask you, "Would you be willing to share this?" I'd say, 99% of the time, kids said, "Yeah, yeah, I'd be glad to share this." And I would say the same thing to them. "Okay, but when you share what you did and the level you took this to, I want you to describe by what method did you do that."   0:04:23.2 DL: And it was so fascinating because students would say, "You know, this is what I did, and this is my project, and this how it turned out, and I'm really proud of it and everything... " Okay, by what method did you do that? "Well, I set aside 10 minutes every day just to work on this project." And amazingly, you'd see other students in the class go, "Oh, that's how they did that. They weren't just smart." Right? Because the traditional system pegs people like that. You got smart kids and the not so smart kids, right? And kids start to learn, "Well, she's just a lot smarter. So that's why she could do that." No, she had a method. Right? She may be smart too, she may have a preponderance of neurons in that part of her brain that just helps her be really good in that area. I also bet that person had a method that got him to that level, and if I give them a chance to share that method, other people can learn from that.   0:05:29.5 AS: Can I go back? Just take a step back and talk about when Dr. Deming said, "By what method?" Let's just talk briefly about what he meant by that, because sometimes, you know, we have scrutiny, let's say in management, in companies, by saying, "I don't want you to hit your goal by doing something unethical. You've gotta live up to our values. So if that's your method, don't do it. But any other method, I don't care." Right? So we oftentimes think "by what method" only applied maybe to the ethical behavior of an employee, but why is Deming saying, "By what method?"   0:06:05.6 DL: Well, you have the same thing in education. Why do we have cheating in education? And then, teachers start spending all their time trying to catch the cheaters, right? So they come up with all tricks and even when taking SAT tests and national tests, right, "We have to space them four feet apart and we have to do this, and we have to have it timed, and you have to have to work this, because we have to catch the cheaters, and that's our job because we think are our job's inspectors", right? Well, when you start to take all of that out and saying, "Well, no, that's not my job. My job is to set up the environment and the system in such a way that you can achieve, and if you don't get it to the level I want you to get to, what's gonna happen, well you're gonna get help". Novel idea. And in some cases, you're gonna get a lot of help and it's gonna be pretty intense feedback that it turns out, in neuroscience, that in order for you to switch on basic, your learning genes, you need intense and immediate feedback on stuff. So the quicker I can get you feedback on stuff, the more likely are, you're gonna change it and you're gonna make it.   0:07:25.3 DL: I never forget, my son was in high school in an honors English class, and he worked at the beginning of the school year to write this really difficult 15, 20 page paper that they were required to do and everything else. Well, he didn't get it back 'til the following February, after he'd written it in September. And to the teacher's credit, she had 130, 15, 20 page papers to get through, but by the time he got his paper back, I remember him bringing it home and he said, "Yeah, I don't even know what we were doing or why we even wrote this thing." So the feedback really wasn't useful because it wasn't immediate and it wasn't intense, and getting into that point. So, I wanna get back to "by what method are you gonna track this performance" because as you work through, and that's where the idea about the ones emerged, and it emerged with students where they said, "Oh, that's an easy one," they had lots of good metaphors like, "Did you get that one?" And, "Oh, that's an easy one." And "What happens if you didn't get that one?" Well, you can go to somebody who did get their one. Maybe somebody turned theirs in early, and they got a one that met or exceeded the standard... This would be an awesome person for you to go to and get feedback from them.   0:08:52.0 DL: So all of a sudden I was doubling and tripling and quadrupling the number of teachers in the classrooms, because all of these students could help other students if they want to. You don't have to, but if you want to share, share your information. Now why can't can you share your information about how you mastered something or achieved at a high level? Because it's not working to your detriment. See? And the fact that I got my one, and then you work to get your one, is not hurting me at all. I am still, I still aced this, I still got it all correct, whereas...   0:09:34.2 AS: So you're taking a competition that people are, and the ranking and the striving, and the idea that there's only gonna be five As in this class type of thing, and trying to make it more cooperative. Let me ask you a question about the zeroes and one. For the typical teacher or professor out there, are they able to use zeroes and one? Or are they forced to do A, B, C, D, F?   0:10:02.7 DL: Well, some of that goes into what kind of learning management systems do they have in place and does that fit? Does a round peg fit in a square hole? And how could you do that? And lots of methods to make it happen, if you wanna do that.   0:10:21.8 AS: You get a lot of objections, I'm sure, from people saying, "No, you have to have that competition or else people are just gonna, the students are just gonna be lazy and they're not gonna be excited, and you gotta motivate them through this competition and internal competition in the classroom" and all that, whereas when you...   0:10:38.1 DL: Creating that artificial competition just causes more students to quit, give up, do poor quality work because they already know they can't compete with these top level kids that are in the class, so why would I even try?   0:10:53.2 AS: I'm just thinking, I'm just writing down the idea of we want to inspire them to learn, not pound them or rank them into learning.   0:11:05.0 DL: Or do things to try to motivate them to get it to that level. All true motivation is internal, and unless you're creating systems that enable the individuals to tap into that, you're not gonna motivate people. And students are gonna get away... You could punish them. You could do all kinds of things. I read an article just recently, teacher was pontificating, "Should I finally get rid of depriving students of recess to get them to do work?"   0:11:42.8 DL: I think Dagwood in the cartoons one time said, "That's a great idea 'til you think about it." That, here you have, especially at an elementary level, kids that desperately need to get out and run around and get the cerebral fluids going up and down their spinal column, and come back with a renewed sense of energy. Right? And to attack stuff.   0:12:10.1 AS: It's exactly what they need.   0:12:13.2 DL: Right. Exactly what we need, but no, I'm gonna deprive you of that and force you to stay in during recess and now you're gonna be tired and upset, etcetera. And now I got that to deal with on the other side. You just compound your problems over and over, and probably 94% of the reason that they didn't get the work done is the fault of the teacher and the system to begin with.   0:12:37.4 AS: And coming back to the idea of the teacher that goes, "Oh, David, so what now, I have to inspire my students?"   0:12:46.2 DL: Well, that's what... Books have been written on that, and that's been going on for years and years and years. But the thing is, students are already inspired. So, the only thing you can do by trying inspirational methods is de-motivate them to give up. Right? And even... I remember having students come into my class on the first day of school, and just three or four of them just put their heads in their desk and not even look up, and it was hard for me to start to believe, "Oh yeah, these guys are inspired." But if you go back in their history, and these were high school kids, well, for the last 10 years, what, they've been beaten down by grading systems and told they can't do stuff and punished into compliance and rewarded and punished and over and over and over... "It's just a whole lot better just to put my head down and pretend to go to sleep and endure this rather than actually try to participate." So when you get to that kind of a situation, you have to think about, "Alright, I have to change this situation," and watch how behavior changes, rather than what most educators even today are taught. They basically leave the situation alone and try to punish people into compliance with that.   0:14:10.1 AS: Yeah, so for the listeners out there, think about it. Where in your life are you trying to punish or browbeat compliance, versus inspiring excellence? And I'm thinking myself, David, about my challenge I faced with my mother and trying to figure out how to keep her healthy at 84. And, yeah, recently it's been a bit of browbeating, and you've made me think. And I think that this discussion helps all the listeners think about that. I want to just go back to the topic and I wanna try to summarize and see if you can bring what you want the takeaways to be. The topic of today's discussion is, "By What Method?" What are the key takeaways that you want the audience to get as we wrap up?   0:14:56.5 DL: Well, if I think about Deming talking about the evils of grading systems, so if I'm not gonna do that by what method am I gonna do? As a teacher I do have to track progress and I do have to know that people are achieving, etcetera. So by what method am I gonna do that? And what I'm describing is not necessarily the only method, it's the method that I came up with the help of my students over many, many years. And that enabled for almost every student to get an A. And as a high school teacher I saw about 135 kids a day in about six different class periods. And before I met Deming, when I looked back at the grades that I had, the highest number of As I ever got was about 10-15% of students in that process. And when I went to this method I was getting, out of 135 kids, one year I got 133 kids that all had As. And I didn't, it wasn't like we got smarter kids. [chuckle] I got a new method by which students could get there. And change the method, you get a different behavior, and you get a different result.   0:16:14.6 AS: Great. So David, thanks for your contributions and on behalf of everyone at the Deming Institute, I wanna thank you and our listeners for striving to bring joy in learning.

In this episode, David and Andrew continue to talk about the thorny problem of tracking student progress - grading - and how to remove it from the classroom.  TRANSCRIPT 0:00:02.3 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, we continue our series of Deming in Education with David P. Langford, where we explore Deming thinking to create joy in learning. David Langford has devoted his life to applying Dr. Deming's philosophy to help everyone get the most out of learning. Today's topic is a continuation of the discussion on tracking progress in learning. David, take it away.   0:00:34.4 David Langford: Thank you, Andrew, it's great to be back again. In the previous podcast, we were discussing tracking learning and the typical way to track learning is grading people; A, B, C, D, and F, and Deming was very adamant that we could significantly improve the education system if we just stopped grading people. So, in my work with education over the last 30 years, a lot of educators get that, and they don't like grading and they've never liked having to do it and being the final judge. And then there's another whole group that thinks it's their right to judge people and give them a grade about what they could do. So, I mentioned in one of the earlier broadcasts that Deming said, "Why would I wanna judge somebody today when I don't know who's gonna turn out to be great in the future?" So I wouldn't wanna do anything that's gonna limit them.   0:01:33.2 DL: So as a teacher myself, having to think through that and having to actually work inside of a grading system and try to figure out what you could do, I think you first have to go through the thought process; is it possible for everyone in a class, for instance, to achieve. And if you say to yourself, "No, it's not possible." I had some students that said, "It's just not possible," they can't do it, you're probably never gonna get there. But if you start to say, "if it was possible, what would we have to change in the system in order to optimize everybody getting to that point?" Well, it always turns out that through neural science, every educator, even parents, will tell you that everybody learns at a different rate. You give somebody a complex problem or something somebody might be able to answer that in three seconds, and other people it might take them a very long time, but they could eventually get it, it just might take a lot longer for you to get there. And so, we sort of truncate that in education, and we talked about, last time, about deadlines and what deadlines mean, and those are mostly for the person managing the class to keep the class moving, right?   0:02:57.1 DL: Because if I just sort of make it open-ended and say, "Okay, well, everybody has to get to a certain level of performance, and we'll just keep it open until you get there," most teachers will tell you it would just be chaos, so the idea of changing a deadline to a target date, so... Yes, here's what you need to know and learn, or the process of what you need to go through. And our target date for you to finish this is this Friday, so then we run into the problem, well, what happens if somebody doesn't do it, or they don't do it at all, right? Well, in the current systems, if somebody doesn't do it at all, some teachers actually like that, 'cause then you don't have to grade people, you just give them a zero, right? And you go on. But if you think about, "no, my job is to optimize that child's performance." So if you didn't get it done, then we're gonna have a conversation. "How quickly can you get it done? When can I expect to see this?" That you're not getting off the hook, so to speak. I observed this with high school classes I was teaching when I first met Deming, and students would just tell me, "just give me a C," or "just give me a C or a D or something", and sometimes they would be basketball players or something like that, and they'd say, "Well, I just need a D so I can play basketball."   0:04:29.6 DL: "So that's all I really want. What do I have to do to get a D?" [chuckle] So all this thinking theory comes into play when you think about, "Okay, well, how do I have to change the system?" So if I change the system to one in which I say, "Well, there is no such thing as sub-level of poor performance." [chuckle] That make sense?   0:04:54.2 AS: [chuckle] No. What does that mean?   0:04:57.2 DL: I want everybody to do A-level type work, so if I'm gonna try to get everybody as close as I can to that, then we're gonna have to define that, and Deming would call that an operational definition. So it has to be very clear to everyone; what do you have to do to get to this level of performance? And then if people understand clearly what that operational definition is, I called it a quality standard; here's the quality standard for this, and I learned over a period of time to always ask students, "If you were to do this really well, what would it be like? Or what would it look like?" And boy, they're really strict on it, and they were often more strict than I. But first getting their input also, I got their buy-in on it, they said, "Well, it should be this and it should be... The writing should be clear." "Well, what does that mean? Writing should be clear?" So we're gonna have to operationally define that and that process could take a while. But Deming talked a lot about that prevention is the key to quality, so I'm probably gonna spend more time up front when we have an assignment, or task to be done, or a project, or whatever you wanna call it, and defining the standard for quality, because as we go through the process, I basically want people to self-evaluate themselves, right? And whenever they...   0:06:35.6 DL: Yes, we have a target date that we're gonna need to get this in by Friday to stay on our overall plan for the whole quarter semester, whatever it might be, so I'm gonna have to share that with them also. Right? 'Cause there's ramifications if we don't get this done by Friday, that's gonna cause us to fall behind as a whole class. If we keep on that track, we're gonna get further and further behind. So this thinking all comes into play because you also have to understand special and common cause variation that Deming talked about, and in other broadcasts we'll get much deeper into what that means statistically in education. But briefly, so here I have my target date on Friday, and then the projects come in, then I have to take a look as a teacher, do I have common cause variation with that, meaning that probably 90... Deming talked about 90%, 94% of the students all attempted to do something. And then I have special cause variation, so I have some kids that didn't do it at all, or they did it so poorly that they're gonna need special help.   0:07:50.2 DL: That's what Deming talked about. They don't need more rating and ranking, it's not gonna do any good. They need special help, which means I'm gonna have to spend time with them one-on-one and go through, well, What didn't you understand? And what can we do and how can I help you? And so and so forth. That's gonna take my time. Then I have the common cause variation, which is that 94% of students who didn't make an attempt. I wanna take a look at all of that work and start to say, Okay, are there common cause problems within that? So probably most of the reasons that you're getting common cause variation or problems from a whole classroom of students has to do with your process as a teacher. [chuckle]   0:08:35.7 AS: Interesting, it makes me think about delivery of products in a company.   0:08:42.8 DL: Yeah, it's the same principle. Same principle.   0:08:42.9 AS: Yeah, you've got an objective that you wanna deliver this exactly two hours after you've packaged it in the warehouse or whatever, you want it to arrive, but there's a lot of different factors. But let's say you set a target time based upon the location that you're delivering to, and in the queue of where that is, but you've set an approximate time and your objective is to try to hit as closely to that time. Now, many people may say, Oh no, actually your objective is to hit earlier. But not really, I think to make it a really robust system, you need to be really accurate. And so when I think about it with education, I would say that from a... You want everybody to submit at a certain time, but you're gonna have a small number of people that are just super stars, they're gonna submit early, and majority of people that there's gonna be this long tail of submitting late.   0:09:32.2 DL: So you can have special cause variation on the high achieving end in education, and you can have special cause variation on the lower end, not cheating. And both of those you wanna handle it as special causes. You remind me of... I had a college professor one time that very clearly told us all, "Do not hand anything in before it's due, even if you're finished." And I went up to talk to him afterwards. I said, "Why do you tell people to do that?" And he said, "Well, you just give me more time to grade your work."   0:10:08.7 AS: [laughter]   0:10:09.4 DL: "And I will find something wrong with it." So it's like inspectors in a house, if your job is to be an inspector, that's what you're gonna do. You're gonna find something wrong. Otherwise, why do we have you.   0:10:22.7 AS: Yeah. "I didn't find anything there. I didn't find anything there." What are you doing?   0:10:26.2 DL: Yeah. Why do we need you then? Right. So, I want to get back to this process of, Yes, you have a target date, etcetera. So if I have common cause variation and a large percentage of the students are not meeting the target date and hitting the target standard for that, that's probably a systems problem, a common cause problem. And when you go back and you ask students why, Why is your work not meeting the standard? It could be internal forces, outside forces, there could be all kinds of things like that, that... Maybe the common thing is, Well, I didn't have enough time. Alright, then, where's your time going? What are you doing with your time? We can track that. We can figure that out, etcetera. And you may be right, the task that I'm giving this group actually requires much more time, so in my process upfront, if I'm going to the students and saying, Okay, here's the quality standard for this assignment, how much time do you think you're gonna need to get your work to this standard and turn that in? And so I created a tool for doing that, called the Loss function to figure out, and I got that from the Taguchi loss function and Deming.   0:11:55.0 DL: And I'd just ask students, How many days is it gonna take you to get it to this level? And that was also fascinating too, because many, many times they would take a look at everything that needs to be done, look at all of the other things that they need to do, and they would set a timeline shorter than what I would have done. So I'm actually improving the quality of all the work and shortening the timeline at the same time, which is gonna enable me to move kids to a higher and higher level than ever thought possible before in the same process, simply by asking them. And some things, yes, it might be shorter and some things it might be a bit longer. But I'd rather err on the side of a bit longer and have more students get to an A-level or a quality standard for this than do the opposite process, just arbitrarily set a due date and then grade all of the people performances that comes in. So if we get to the target date, and I look at a child's work. I'm looking at it, I'm not grading it, I'm looking at it to see, does it meet or exceed the standard for this assignment? If it meets or exceeds. Great, [chuckle] right.   0:13:16.2 AS: Yep.   0:13:16.7 DL: And then we can talk about you know how do we put that in a marking book or whatever it might be. What if it doesn't meet or exceed I asked Deming this question, because he taught at New York University, I said, What do you do when you get papers in, and clearly it's not to the standard that you think it should be. He said, Well, I have a conversation with them. I teach, a very, very strange practice, right?   0:13:42.6 AS: Yeah.   0:13:43.7 DL: I'd go back to them, I start to say, Well, I need more explanation about this, or I don't think this is quite right, and I think if you corrected this, you might be right or this, and then they get time to correct that and make it right. It turns out psychologically, which is part of Deming's profound knowledge right... Psychologically, this has huge impact, the power that if I didn't quite get there in the time that I was supposed to get there, I can go back and fix it. I can do it, yeah because...   0:14:14.6 AS: Welcome to the real world.   0:14:16.6 DL: Yes, because my job is to make sure you learn this. Right. Not to play some grading game or... Time game, right? My job is, you see that you learn this material and basically remember it for the rest of your life.   0:14:30.9 AS: Yep. So in the last couple of minutes, let's try to wrap up what we've learned, what we've discussed, I just think about some of the things that I wrote down while you were talking... Right? You made me think like, Okay, the goal of the system of education is to help each kid optimize their learning rather than just a classroom or a teacher optimizing their job. The second thing is, we talked about that you can let go of deadlines, and once you do that, you need to set better maybe operating, operational definitions or what you call quality standards, to more clearly design what it is or define what it is, is a good outcome this is the book, it's called Tom Sawyer. And these are the things that I want you to get out of it, or you internally, or as you said, you can go to the students and talk about what you want out of it, and then special help. The other thing you said is there's special help or special causes where we have someone, for instance, that's struggling, needs special focus, not rating and degrading them with that. What else would you add to the summary of the learnings from that.   0:15:58.0 DL: When you hold everyone to a high standard, you're actually improving performance for the whole system and for the whole standard for everybody and then what people quickly learn is that... Well, if I turn something in on the due date, just because I wanna turn it in on that date, what's gonna happen to me? One, I'm just gonna get a whole bunch of feedback and I'm gonna have to fix it, and now I have twice as much work to do, because now we're going on to the next thing that I need to be working on, and I have to get this fixed up. So what you're teaching people is try to do it right the first time, build quality into your processes, and that was partly my job as a teacher too, is to teach them how to do that, so they get closer and closer and closer to that target date and so they always feel gratified. And in doing that, basically, you can get to a point where almost everyone in your class is getting an A or what we would call A-quality work, right? And when that happens, you have joy in learning, and you have it on a massive scale because everybody's very happy and so...   0:17:13.6 AS: That's great, I love that. And the other thing I was just thinking about is you said something really kind of mind-blowing right at the end, and that was the idea of once you start working with someone and you start... You know you forget about the deadline, like what if we let go of the deadline I can imagine parents thinking that, but what you just said is, you open up a whole new world to this kid who may have been just always struggling with this deadline, and instead you're saying, I want your contribution, no matter what the deadline says, and that... Then as you said, opens up a whole new world for that student to think, Wow, okay, this is different, now I really wanna contribute and so.   0:17:58.1 DL: Well, it's that you... Some people think that maybe this is semantics, etcetera, but by not using the word deadline and I change that to a target date... Makes much more sense. This is the target date. Did I hit the target date? Yes, great. I have nothing to worry about and my work meets or exceeds the standard. Awesome, great. You have nothing to worry about, right? I didn't meet the target date, okay, I got some worries, I gotta get this fixed up, or it didn't meet the standard, Oh, I gotta get this fixed up. So anyway, my goal is to get them to have that joy in learning, because if you think about a student that sort of slopped through it and didn't do a good job and is continually getting Cs, Ds and Fs on things, there's not much joy in that right, right?   0:18:52.7 AS: Definitely. Definitely.   0:18:52.8 DL: You want people to feel really proud of the work Deming talked about that too. Pride of workmanship.   0:18:58.1 AS: And ranking doubles down on that unhappiness feeling that they're feeling right then.   0:19:02.7 DL: Absolutely.   0:19:04.9 AS: So, David, thanks for your contribution, and on behalf of everyone at the Deming Institute, I wanna thank you and our listeners for striving to bring joy in learning.

David and Andrew continue their discussion on how to track student progress when you don't use grades or other conventional methods. TRANSCRIPT 0:00:02.3 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, we continue our series of Deming in Education with David P. Langford, where we explore Deming thinking to create joy in learning. David Langford has devoted his life to applying Dr. Deming's philosophy to help everyone get the most out of learning. Today's topic is a continuation of the discussion on tracking progress in learning. David, take it away.   0:00:34.4 David Langford: Thank you, Andrew, it's great to be back again. In the previous podcast, we were discussing tracking learning and the typical way to track learning is grading people; A, B, C, D, and F, and Deming was very adamant that we could significantly improve the education system if we just stopped grading people. So, in my work with education over the last 30 years, a lot of educators get that, and they don't like grading and they've never liked having to do it and being the final judge. And then there's another whole group that thinks it's their right to judge people and give them a grade about what they could do. So, I mentioned in one of the earlier broadcasts that Deming said, "Why would I wanna judge somebody today when I don't know who's gonna turn out to be great in the future?" So I wouldn't wanna do anything that's gonna limit them.   0:01:33.2 DL: So as a teacher myself, having to think through that and having to actually work inside of a grading system and try to figure out what you could do, I think you first have to go through the thought process; is it possible for everyone in a class, for instance, to achieve. And if you say to yourself, "No, it's not possible." I had some students that said, "It's just not possible," they can't do it, you're probably never gonna get there. But if you start to say, "if it was possible, what would we have to change in the system in order to optimize everybody getting to that point?" Well, it always turns out that through neural science, every educator, even parents, will tell you that everybody learns at a different rate. You give somebody a complex problem or something somebody might be able to answer that in three seconds, and other people it might take them a very long time, but they could eventually get it, it just might take a lot longer for you to get there. And so, we sort of truncate that in education, and we talked about, last time, about deadlines and what deadlines mean, and those are mostly for the person managing the class to keep the class moving, right?   0:02:57.1 DL: Because if I just sort of make it open-ended and say, "Okay, well, everybody has to get to a certain level of performance, and we'll just keep it open until you get there," most teachers will tell you it would just be chaos, so the idea of changing a deadline to a target date, so... Yes, here's what you need to know and learn, or the process of what you need to go through. And our target date for you to finish this is this Friday, so then we run into the problem, well, what happens if somebody doesn't do it, or they don't do it at all, right? Well, in the current systems, if somebody doesn't do it at all, some teachers actually like that, 'cause then you don't have to grade people, you just give them a zero, right? And you go on. But if you think about, "no, my job is to optimize that child's performance." So if you didn't get it done, then we're gonna have a conversation. "How quickly can you get it done? When can I expect to see this?" That you're not getting off the hook, so to speak. I observed this with high school classes I was teaching when I first met Deming, and students would just tell me, "just give me a C," or "just give me a C or a D or something", and sometimes they would be basketball players or something like that, and they'd say, "Well, I just need a D so I can play basketball."   0:04:29.6 DL: "So that's all I really want. What do I have to do to get a D?" [chuckle] So all this thinking theory comes into play when you think about, "Okay, well, how do I have to change the system?" So if I change the system to one in which I say, "Well, there is no such thing as sub-level of poor performance." [chuckle] That make sense?   0:04:54.2 AS: [chuckle] No. What does that mean?   0:04:57.2 DL: I want everybody to do A-level type work, so if I'm gonna try to get everybody as close as I can to that, then we're gonna have to define that, and Deming would call that an operational definition. So it has to be very clear to everyone; what do you have to do to get to this level of performance? And then if people understand clearly what that operational definition is, I called it a quality standard; here's the quality standard for this, and I learned over a period of time to always ask students, "If you were to do this really well, what would it be like? Or what would it look like?" And boy, they're really strict on it, and they were often more strict than I. But first getting their input also, I got their buy-in on it, they said, "Well, it should be this and it should be... The writing should be clear." "Well, what does that mean? Writing should be clear?" So we're gonna have to operationally define that and that process could take a while. But Deming talked a lot about that prevention is the key to quality, so I'm probably gonna spend more time up front when we have an assignment, or task to be done, or a project, or whatever you wanna call it, and defining the standard for quality, because as we go through the process, I basically want people to self-evaluate themselves, right? And whenever they...   0:06:35.6 DL: Yes, we have a target date that we're gonna need to get this in by Friday to stay on our overall plan for the whole quarter semester, whatever it might be, so I'm gonna have to share that with them also. Right? 'Cause there's ramifications if we don't get this done by Friday, that's gonna cause us to fall behind as a whole class. If we keep on that track, we're gonna get further and further behind. So this thinking all comes into play because you also have to understand special and common cause variation that Deming talked about, and in other broadcasts we'll get much deeper into what that means statistically in education. But briefly, so here I have my target date on Friday, and then the projects come in, then I have to take a look as a teacher, do I have common cause variation with that, meaning that probably 90... Deming talked about 90%, 94% of the students all attempted to do something. And then I have special cause variation, so I have some kids that didn't do it at all, or they did it so poorly that they're gonna need special help.   0:07:50.2 DL: That's what Deming talked about. They don't need more rating and ranking, it's not gonna do any good. They need special help, which means I'm gonna have to spend time with them one-on-one and go through, well, What didn't you understand? And what can we do and how can I help you? And so and so forth. That's gonna take my time. Then I have the common cause variation, which is that 94% of students who didn't make an attempt. I wanna take a look at all of that work and start to say, Okay, are there common cause problems within that? So probably most of the reasons that you're getting common cause variation or problems from a whole classroom of students has to do with your process as a teacher. [chuckle]   0:08:35.7 AS: Interesting, it makes me think about delivery of products in a company.   0:08:42.8 DL: Yeah, it's the same principle. Same principle.   0:08:42.9 AS: Yeah, you've got an objective that you wanna deliver this exactly two hours after you've packaged it in the warehouse or whatever, you want it to arrive, but there's a lot of different factors. But let's say you set a target time based upon the location that you're delivering to, and in the queue of where that is, but you've set an approximate time and your objective is to try to hit as closely to that time. Now, many people may say, Oh no, actually your objective is to hit earlier. But not really, I think to make it a really robust system, you need to be really accurate. And so when I think about it with education, I would say that from a... You want everybody to submit at a certain time, but you're gonna have a small number of people that are just super stars, they're gonna submit early, and majority of people that there's gonna be this long tail of submitting late.   0:09:32.2 DL: So you can have special cause variation on the high achieving end in education, and you can have special cause variation on the lower end, not cheating. And both of those you wanna handle it as special causes. You remind me of... I had a college professor one time that very clearly told us all, "Do not hand anything in before it's due, even if you're finished." And I went up to talk to him afterwards. I said, "Why do you tell people to do that?" And he said, "Well, you just give me more time to grade your work."   0:10:08.7 AS: [laughter]   0:10:09.4 DL: "And I will find something wrong with it." So it's like inspectors in a house, if your job is to be an inspector, that's what you're gonna do. You're gonna find something wrong. Otherwise, why do we have you.   0:10:22.7 AS: Yeah. "I didn't find anything there. I didn't find anything there." What are you doing?   0:10:26.2 DL: Yeah. Why do we need you then? Right. So, I want to get back to this process of, Yes, you have a target date, etcetera. So if I have common cause variation and a large percentage of the students are not meeting the target date and hitting the target standard for that, that's probably a systems problem, a common cause problem. And when you go back and you ask students why, Why is your work not meeting the standard? It could be internal forces, outside forces, there could be all kinds of things like that, that... Maybe the common thing is, Well, I didn't have enough time. Alright, then, where's your time going? What are you doing with your time? We can track that. We can figure that out, etcetera. And you may be right, the task that I'm giving this group actually requires much more time, so in my process upfront, if I'm going to the students and saying, Okay, here's the quality standard for this assignment, how much time do you think you're gonna need to get your work to this standard and turn that in? And so I created a tool for doing that, called the Loss function to figure out, and I got that from the Taguchi loss function and Deming.   0:11:55.0 DL: And I'd just ask students, How many days is it gonna take you to get it to this level? And that was also fascinating too, because many, many times they would take a look at everything that needs to be done, look at all of the other things that they need to do, and they would set a timeline shorter than what I would have done. So I'm actually improving the quality of all the work and shortening the timeline at the same time, which is gonna enable me to move kids to a higher and higher level than ever thought possible before in the same process, simply by asking them. And some things, yes, it might be shorter and some things it might be a bit longer. But I'd rather err on the side of a bit longer and have more students get to an A-level or a quality standard for this than do the opposite process, just arbitrarily set a due date and then grade all of the people performances that comes in. So if we get to the target date, and I look at a child's work. I'm looking at it, I'm not grading it, I'm looking at it to see, does it meet or exceed the standard for this assignment? If it meets or exceeds. Great, [chuckle] right.   0:13:16.2 AS: Yep.   0:13:16.7 DL: And then we can talk about you know how do we put that in a marking book or whatever it might be. What if it doesn't meet or exceed I asked Deming this question, because he taught at New York University, I said, What do you do when you get papers in, and clearly it's not to the standard that you think it should be. He said, Well, I have a conversation with them. I teach, a very, very strange practice, right?   0:13:42.6 AS: Yeah.   0:13:43.7 DL: I'd go back to them, I start to say, Well, I need more explanation about this, or I don't think this is quite right, and I think if you corrected this, you might be right or this, and then they get time to correct that and make it right. It turns out psychologically, which is part of Deming's profound knowledge right... Psychologically, this has huge impact, the power that if I didn't quite get there in the time that I was supposed to get there, I can go back and fix it. I can do it, yeah because...   0:14:14.6 AS: Welcome to the real world.   0:14:16.6 DL: Yes, because my job is to make sure you learn this. Right. Not to play some grading game or... Time game, right? My job is, you see that you learn this material and basically remember it for the rest of your life.   0:14:30.9 AS: Yep. So in the last couple of minutes, let's try to wrap up what we've learned, what we've discussed, I just think about some of the things that I wrote down while you were talking... Right? You made me think like, Okay, the goal of the system of education is to help each kid optimize their learning rather than just a classroom or a teacher optimizing their job. The second thing is, we talked about that you can let go of deadlines, and once you do that, you need to set better maybe operating, operational definitions or what you call quality standards, to more clearly design what it is or define what it is, is a good outcome this is the book, it's called Tom Sawyer. And these are the things that I want you to get out of it, or you internally, or as you said, you can go to the students and talk about what you want out of it, and then special help. The other thing you said is there's special help or special causes where we have someone, for instance, that's struggling, needs special focus, not rating and degrading them with that. What else would you add to the summary of the learnings from that.   0:15:58.0 DL: When you hold everyone to a high standard, you're actually improving performance for the whole system and for the whole standard for everybody and then what people quickly learn is that... Well, if I turn something in on the due date, just because I wanna turn it in on that date, what's gonna happen to me? One, I'm just gonna get a whole bunch of feedback and I'm gonna have to fix it, and now I have twice as much work to do, because now we're going on to the next thing that I need to be working on, and I have to get this fixed up. So what you're teaching people is try to do it right the first time, build quality into your processes, and that was partly my job as a teacher too, is to teach them how to do that, so they get closer and closer and closer to that target date and so they always feel gratified. And in doing that, basically, you can get to a point where almost everyone in your class is getting an A or what we would call A-quality work, right? And when that happens, you have joy in learning, and you have it on a massive scale because everybody's very happy and so...   0:17:13.6 AS: That's great, I love that. And the other thing I was just thinking about is you said something really kind of mind-blowing right at the end, and that was the idea of once you start working with someone and you start... You know you forget about the deadline, like what if we let go of the deadline I can imagine parents thinking that, but what you just said is, you open up a whole new world to this kid who may have been just always struggling with this deadline, and instead you're saying, I want your contribution, no matter what the deadline says, and that... Then as you said, opens up a whole new world for that student to think, Wow, okay, this is different, now I really wanna contribute and so.   0:17:58.1 DL: Well, it's that you... Some people think that maybe this is semantics, etcetera, but by not using the word deadline and I change that to a target date... Makes much more sense. This is the target date. Did I hit the target date? Yes, great. I have nothing to worry about and my work meets or exceeds the standard. Awesome, great. You have nothing to worry about, right? I didn't meet the target date, okay, I got some worries, I gotta get this fixed up, or it didn't meet the standard, Oh, I gotta get this fixed up. So anyway, my goal is to get them to have that joy in learning, because if you think about a student that sort of slopped through it and didn't do a good job and is continually getting Cs, Ds and Fs on things, there's not much joy in that right, right?   0:18:52.7 AS: Definitely. Definitely.   0:18:52.8 DL: You want people to feel really proud of the work Deming talked about that too. Pride of workmanship.   0:18:58.1 AS: And ranking doubles down on that unhappiness feeling that they're feeling right then.   0:19:02.7 DL: Absolutely.   0:19:04.9 AS: So, David, thanks for your contribution, and on behalf of everyone at the Deming Institute, I wanna thank you and our listeners for striving to bring joy in learning.     0:18:52.8 DL: You want people to feel really proud of the work Deming talked about that too. Pride of workmanship.   0:18:58.1 AS: And ranking doubles down on that unhappiness feeling that they're feeling right then. 0:19:02.7 DL: Absolutely. 0:19:04.9 AS: So, David, thanks for your contribution, and on behalf of everyone at the Deming Institute, I wanna thank you and our listeners for striving to bring joy in learning.    

Andrew Stotz talks with Dr. Mustafa Shraim of Ohio University about Deming's approach to variation, comparing it to Lean and Six Sigma. "When you do Six Sigma, you're basically outsourcing your quality to an external source, providing the training, the titles, and all of that. You can cut it off any time. But when you do the [Deming] theory of knowledge and the Plan-Do-Study-Act, you have to commit. The commitment is really the big deal here...the component that is missing [from Six Sigma] is a commitment to quality." SHOW NOTES4:30 Variation 12:40 The problem with Six Sigma 20:40 Statical Process Control Charts 25:44 Deming chain reaction 30:03 Suboptimizing departments 43:01 Management by visible figures 40:05 Why Deming, why now? Driving out fear 50:52 Continuous improvement and Plan-Do-Study-Act TRANSCRIPTDownload the complete transcript here. 0:00:04.1 Andrew: 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 here with featured guest, Mustafa Shraim. Mustafa, are you ready to share your Deming journey?   0:00:19.8 Mustafa: Absolutely, let's go for it. Thank you.   0:00:21.5 Andrew: I'm excited. Well, let me introduce you to the audience. Mustafa Shraim is an Assistant Professor at Ohio University teaching quality management and leadership. Professor Shraim has over 20 years of experience as a quality engineer, corporate quality manager, and consultant. His PhD is in Industrial Engineering. He publishes widely, and he has a passion for Dr. Deming's system of profound knowledge. Mustafa, why don't we start off by you telling us the story about how you first came to learn of the teachings of Dr. Deming and what hooked you in?   0:00:57.5 Mustafa: Yeah. Thank you, Andrew. Thank you for inviting me back. So...   0:01:01.9 Andrew: Yeah.   [chuckle]   0:01:06.1 Mustafa: The whole thing started when I was doing my master's and that was the late '80s, at Ohio University, and I was concentrating on the area of quality. So, I was doing research, and my research touched up on what Dr. Deming was doing. I was doing it in design of experiments and quality tools and things like that. But of course, you come across Dr. Deming's work when you talk about quality control, in general, and statistical quality. So, that was the first encounter of learning about what Dr. Deming did in Japan and how he used statistical process control and things of that nature to teach how you can improve your processes, your products, and later on, the management. But at the beginning, I did not really get into his management philosophy so I was more on the technical end of Dr. Deming's teaching which was mainly quality control and SPC, and just improving quality in general.   0:02:24.1 Mustafa: So, as I went... So I went, and I started my first job as a quality engineer, and quickly after that, maybe after one year, I moved to another company, and I became a statistical quality engineer, and I was doing... I was a part of a training program there. I was doing training on SPC as a part of a training for employees at that company. It was a union shop, it was automotive, and so we utilized statistical process control and what Dr. Deming was teaching. So, that was the beginning of it, but later on in the '90s, I started learning more about Dr. Deming after I read "Out of the Crisis" and then "The New Economics" about his management method. In fact, his management methods just captured me. I knew I got hooked on the quality part first, but the management method just brought it together for me. And since then, I've been reading and practicing, trying to at least, what Dr. Deming has taught.   0:03:41.9 Andrew: And would you say... One of the things that I started realizing was that the statistical... What I thought was the end was the statistical tools. And what I started to learn is that, actually, the statistical tools start to have limitations if you're not doing the management of the whole operation in a good way. And I think that that's something that really resonated with me when I started putting the pieces together. How do you see the role... And in a little bit I'm gonna ask you about some more specific tools, but just generally, we have statistical tools, but we also have management. Many people may think that you can just apply statistical tools and solve all the problems, but I'm curious how you see that interaction between the tools and the management style.   0:04:30.2 Mustafa: Well, as you know and many, probably, of your listeners already know that Dr. Deming had understanding variation, or some variation, as a part of his system of profound knowledge. So, understanding variation, under it, is really learning how to distinguish between the types of variation that you would have in any situation, managerial or process situation. So, that interaction there is really big. That really captured me because what Dr. Deming says is like, more than 80% of the application for statistical process control is actually, should be in management, and not necessarily just on the line, controlling quality of the product. So that was... It captured me, and because of explaining how many managers, many supervisors, don't understand the difference between common cause and special cause variations, and they start managing people with common cause variation going up and down, and they reprimand if it goes down, and they praise if it goes up, and that actually just makes things even worse in the future. As you probably know, it's tampering with the process.   0:06:08.8 Andrew: The best way that I've ever come up to try to explain this is to say to people, "Imagine there's 10,000 people in a stadium. They all flip a coin, and you say, 'Hey, if you flip heads, go to one side of the stadium. You flip tails, you go to the other. Everybody sit down. Okay, now... '" Or basically say, "Flip the coin again, and if you flip heads again, so two times, stay standing. And if you flip tails two times, then stay standing, but if you hit the heads and tails, then sit down." And now, your audience is getting smaller and smaller. If you do this 10 times, you will have 10 people, generally, you're gonna have 10 people that have flipped heads consecutively 10 times, and people that flip tails consecutively 10 times.   0:06:54.1 Andrew: And if we said, if we started off the whole game by saying, "Tails is bad." Now you've got some people that have done bad 10 times in a row, and some people that have done good 10 times in a row. But we know, because of the design of that example, that it's purely random. So, the question... So, we can understand that, but when we think about random variation, what Dr. Deming started to do is show us how that fits into management and psychology and how we're missing that. I'm just curious if you can help us to understand how that variation fits into that management 'cause you started talking about rewarding and all that. So, just curious about how those things fit together.   0:07:38.7 Mustafa: Right. For example, within the control limits, and those are the limits that are on a control chart, and they are spaced three standard deviations up and three standard deviations down. All the variation within is mostly a common cause variation, and it's due to the system. It's a system variation. It's not attributed to any special cause whether it's operator or something else that changed. So, distinguishing between the two becomes very important because if you don't look at variation from the perspective of a control chart, what happens is that you are in the weeds, and you look at every point as either really high up or high down cause you don't have any perspective as to how to evaluate or filter this type of variation. On the other side, also you don't want to not react to something that is special. For example, if you don't have the control limits, and if you don't have a proper way of looking at the variation, then you might end up also passing a special cause as a common cause, or not reacting to it enough to fix it and to make it a part of your controllable system before moving on.   0:09:16.7 Mustafa: From both perspective, I think it's very important for managers, for leadership, to understand why we do this. It's not just something that you have to do on the production line. It is something that you have to do in management based on performance. Look at your data and see if it's a stable process in control or if it's not, then you need to start eliminating those special causes. Like Dr. Deming said that, "Nothing really is born perfect as far as the processes." I'm paraphrasing here. But when you start a new manufacturing process, it doesn't mean that it's going to be in control; you have to work at it. You have to eliminate one by one all these special causes that come up before you start seeing a stability. And then after stability, then you will be able to work on the system part of the process, which is a long-term continuous improvement projects.   0:10:29.9 Andrew: Yeah, it's interesting. I remember a story. When I was working at Pepsi, we had a bottling plant in Los Angeles that I worked at. And the management were putting pressure on the people that were running the bottling machine because the variation of the level of the liquid in the bottle was getting wider and wider. And so, as a supervisor on the factory floor, my job was to go and kick ass, basically, and tell the guy, "Hey, come on, what are you doing here? You're messing around." And he just said, "Look, Andrew," and I was a young guy who listened to what these guys said, and he said, "Look, look at that machine over there. They spent the money to buy that filling machine over there, and you see there's no variation. Look at the old machine that they've got, and they haven't bought the parts to repair it. I keep telling them, if they don't buy these parts, I can't get to that point." And he was like... And I realized at that point that it was a management decision that needed to be made to reduce that variation at that point. It wasn't an operator that we should be punishing for that. And I think I wasn't that popular bringing that information back to management 'cause they wanted to say, "Well, no. It's the worker," and that's where I started to think about that common cause variation, and how do you improve and reduce variation?   0:11:48.3 Mustafa: Right, right. And if you leave it also to the worker, sometimes if they don't know what to do, they start tampering with the, actually, production process, and it makes it worse. So, a training for them on variation is also important. It's not only for management but also for workers as well.   0:12:08.2 Andrew: Yeah, good point. I know your expertise in this area is so valuable, and I think that it's great to have you maybe break down the following four terms that we hear, and maybe just generally discuss the differences, and then we'll talk about them in more detail. But the first term is Lean or continuous flow, the second is Six Sigma, the third is 14 points, and the fourth is system of profound knowledge. So, maybe just give an overview. What are these things? What do they mean?   0:12:40.0 Mustafa: Okay. Well, the Six Sigma part came about in the mid '80s and started in Motorola, and a lot of people already know that. And the reason it came out is because Dr. Deming's contribution in the '80s just brought a lot of attention to variation. In addition, you have also some big issues like the Ford transmission issue that came up. And there was a study about variation, and so there was a lot of attention being focused on variation. So Motorola... Somebody at Motorola, Bill Smith, an engineer over there, actually, came up with this idea of Six Sigma. And what that means, in general, is that if you have a spec that is a certain width, like upper and lower spec limits, then you want your process to operate in about half that space. Basically, that gives you good capability of the process, and then you don't have to worry about it. The first problem that came about from Six Sigma was the controversy about the shift. The people who invented Six Sigma, or packaged it together, said, "Okay. Well, we know you wanna operate exactly in the middle, but, normally, processes shift like one-and-a-half standard deviation here, or one-and-a-half standard deviation there so we want to allow that."   0:14:18.7 Mustafa: So, that is one of the biggest controversy because when you shift something like that, the process may be out of control without knowing. So, they did not really take that into consideration, although they are teaching control charts within the Six Sigma body of knowledge, so that was not really taken care of there. But that was one of the flaws that is out there in Six Sigma. Now, there are topics in Six Sigma that are... They're okay. We can teach certain topics on continuous improvement, root cause analysis, things of that nature. But the statistical thing here was wrong. And again, the reason Six Sigma was popular is because it is packaged the way it was packaged. You have companies buying this, and you have all the titles that came with it, and you know how companies love titles, especially here in the United States. So, you got all the belts; everybody must have a belt. You gotta go through training, you gotta... And then after you get your belt, what happens? You're gonna save us money. You're gonna have to do projects, and your job is to save me 20, 30, 40, 50,000 or 100,000 sometimes. So, that was the Six Sigma part of the whole thing.   0:15:51.6 Mustafa: And so, the Lean later became Lean Six Sigma. But Lean, by itself, came from Japan, originally. It's eliminating waste. Think about things like over-production, waiting, inventory, extra motion, all of these little things that you think they're little, but when you put them together, that's a lot of waste. So, to make the process flow better, you need to eliminate all of this waste. It's more about productivity and moving things faster within the organization. Then, when we contrast that with the 14 points, the 14 points are the system for management. It's all about... It's about management. It's also about quality, like improving forever the processes and systems for example, and have a constancy of purpose like the first point says. This was the application of what then became the system of profound knowledge as we know it. I don't know... I don't wanna go too far with definitions and things like that, but the Lean Six Sigma, they had the problem of the statistical flow from the Six Sigma part, and then you have all the management by numbers, management by objectives from both the Lean and Six Sigma.   0:17:30.3 Andrew: And I'm gonna try to summarize what you just explained by talking about the Six Sigma. Is what you're saying the flaw or the issue was is that, in order to try to get good quality, why don't we just set our expectations of what we're gonna get out of the system so tight that when we actually produce, we're in a narrow range, but we're never... Let's say we don't allow... We built the system with so much margin of error that even if we move around in our output, that that still is within a very tight range. Is that the concept?   0:18:10.5 Mustafa: Yeah. That is the concept. But the problem with that concept is, if you move around, if you let the process move around one-and-a-half standard deviation, for example, which, what it says, this indicates that you could have special causes that you don't react to. You don't know at that point because you have moved the process. You end up having special cause variation based on that shift because that shift could be real, a special cause and not just allowing natural... Naturally, the process does not move one-and-a-half standard deviation   0:18:53.0 Mustafa: all of a sudden because there are tests on control charts that if the process... For shift. So, if the process, for example, gives you nine points in a row on one side of the center line, that's a flag because that's a shift. That's a shift in the process. Now the process shifted on you, and you're not reacting. You're not doing anything about it, so you have to stop and take a look at it. So, what Six Sigma is saying is, "Yeah, the process could shift one-and-a-half standard deviation." But in statistical process control terms, it can't without reacting to it.   0:19:37.5 Andrew: And a simple control chart, or run chart, will probably reveal this better than looking at a histogram type of chart, like a Six Sigma type of chart where you're observing the output of the system moment by moment. Would that be correct to say?   0:19:56.5 Mustafa: Right, right. So, the control chart... And I did a paper... And there are people that are out there and doing the same thing. I did a paper and showed that if you move the system one-and-a-half standard deviation, you will see all these points beyond the control limits by simulation, simulation of the process. You move it, and you'll start observing so many points being out of the control. And so, if you allow it, then all of a sudden you start seeing all these points beyond the control. And what do you do? So, there is nothing to cover that within the Six Sigma body of knowledge.   0:20:40.7 Andrew: And maybe it's a good point just to talk briefly about the control charts and what Dr. Deming taught about that. I think when I started seeing the control charts as he was describing them, I started to see a real intense focus on looking at... at trying to understand what's really happening with this system and trying to observe it in real-time. And the more that you did that, the more you really start to understand what's driving the performance of that system. So, maybe could you just take a moment, think about the listener or the viewer that doesn't understand the control charts yet, maybe just give a big picture about what those are, and what's the value of them?   0:21:27.7 Mustafa: So, the control chart is basically... If you think about plotting points over time, that would be a run chart. So, just looking at your performance over time and just plotting points, that's a run chart. A control chart is basically taking the run chart and creating control limits on it. And the control limits came from Dr. Shewhart who invented the control charts. And he put those control limits to minimize a couple of mistakes: not reacting enough when you have to, and not over-reacting when you see something. They were more economics. They were not statistical in nature. They don't really depend on statistical distribution or anything like that. They are very robust. They can be used in a variety of applications without having to look at the distribution of the data. And they tell you when to react to a special cause and when to leave the process alone.   0:22:41.3 Mustafa: So, when you leave the process alone, it means that you have common cause variation, just the systemic type of variation that occurs over time. But that doesn't mean that you don't work on it as management. This is a management part of the work. So, when you have a stable process, it means that this is a time for management to initiate, maybe, continuous improvement project or initiative to reduce that variation, and not... Because you can be stable and in control, but you still have a lot of variation in the process. So, the spread is very wide in the process or, in the control chart, it will be going all over with a lot of variation, but it's still within the control limits. It could have this kind of scenario. And that's when management has to step in and say, "Okay, we need to look at this from a big picture and try to look at all the causes and do some kind of continual improvement."   0:23:53.3 Andrew: Mustafa, I would think that when you look at it, it turns out that it's like a continuous experiment. And you're looking at the outcome in a control chart, and you're trying to think, "Okay, if we... " Let's just say that we add a new piece of machinery. We upgrade a particular part. Then we look and say, "Okay, how did that impact the output of the process?" And then you start to see that what you're talking about, and I think what Dr. Deming is talking about was the idea that, start to get this intense focus on how do we improve this process? And how do we reduce that variation to a point? There's no point in reducing it beyond a certain point. But just that focus. Whereas with Six Sigma, it's kind of a theoretical thing, and there's other aspects that you've talked about. But just that, a control chart really allows you just to focus on testing and understanding that the whole... The output is a function, not only of the people on the production line. Let's say if it's in a factory, and it's the machinery, it's the way you organize, it's the shifts that you work. It's all of these things. So, I can't help but think that it's kind of like the fun of testing and seeing the result coming out of it.   0:25:09.1 Mustafa: Right. When you say a special cause, it doesn't mean always that it's bad. It could be good. But you have to study it, and you have to see what happened. So, was it intentional? Was it unintentional? But at least you would stop and look and study. And that's the idea. It's not just to let it go without studying it. On the other hand, the common cause, you're just looking at the width of the variation in general. And you try to reduce that, like you just mentioned, over the long run.   0:25:42.0 Andrew: So... Go ahead.   0:25:44.8 Mustafa: No, I was just gonna go back to Dr. Deming before I move to Dr. Deming's chain reaction model. I use that all the time. I use it when I was doing workshops in industry, and I use it now in my classes. And I put that... The chain reaction model. And what the chain reaction model for those of the listeners who are not familiar with it, Dr. Deming says that, "You have to start with improving quality, and the rest is just a chain reaction." So what happens is, when you improve quality, and that is, and what he's talking about here, is a commitment by management to quality. It's not just a one-time improvement of quality, it's a commitment on improving quality. Then you start seeing defect decreasing. You start utilizing equipment better. Errors decrease and all of this becomes much less. Your productivity, as a result, goes up because the cost is down, or your input cost is down so now your output is better, and you have a good productivity which keeps you in business, and you provide better jobs to your community. I think...   0:27:18.8 Andrew: That topic is so interesting because I think most people, at the time of Dr. Deming and even now, think quality is a department; quality is something we apply in a certain area. And when you think about setting the purpose of a company to improve quality, it's a very risky thing. Most people think, "No way. Our company is about sales. Our company is about profit. Our company is about customer satisfaction," or whatever that is. Those things all are the intuitive things that we come up with to say, "That's what drives our business." And Dr. Deming, what you're saying is that... Dr. Deming says, actually, the chain reaction that starts from quality leads to all of those things. Can you elaborate a little bit more on that?   0:28:07.5 Mustafa: Right. So, we know that we have to start on quality. But take, for example, companies that are engaged in Lean projects. So, what they do in Lean projects, you try to eliminate waste. And eliminating waste could also be a risky business if you just arbitrarily start cutting costs of material, of employee hours, or eliminating jobs, for example. If you take it from the productivity block of the chain reaction model, you go nowhere. You gotta go back from the quality, improving quality, and that's where the chain reaction starts. But for many Lean projects, they actually start from the productivity block. So, improve productivity from the productivity block, that doesn't really work because you are not committed to quality at that point. So, what happens is, you start maybe buying cheaper material or eliminating jobs. That might help you in the short run. The short run may be the next quarter. It's going to help you out. You're gonna improve the bottomline. Later on, all of this is going to come back as customer complaints, returns, issues with employees, lack of motivation because now they have to do more with less hours, and so on and so forth. But it creates a whole set of problems that are addressed in the system of profound knowledge from the psychology part to the learning part, and knowledge and the PDSA.   0:30:00.4 Andrew: So, let's go back to then now. I wanna talk about the system of profound knowledge so that the listeners out there, some of them understand it very well, but some of them may not understand what that means at all. So, now we've kind of been through a little bit about Lean. We've been through Six Sigma. We talked a little bit about the 14 points, and I think the point that you're just making is that when you look at Dr. Deming's 14 point, first one is create constancy of purpose. The second one is to adopt a new philosophy, and the third one is to end dependence on quality inspections. It's like those top three are telling the senior management, "Your job is to improve quality." That is what's going to lead this chain reaction. And I think you've illustrated that in your discussion really well. So, take a moment and tell us about system of profound knowledge as you see it.   0:30:49.8 Mustafa: Okay. So, the system of profound knowledge is... There are four pillars or four components to it. And the first one is appreciation for a system, meaning that you have to see systems in place. You have to do a connection of different parts together, that you cannot do things in silos. You cannot suboptimize. You have to look at the aim of the system, and you try to work for the aim of the system, not the aim of each department. But with that comes the idea of creating the variation part, and what is systemic variation and what is a special cause variation? Systemic variation is a part of management's decisions. They have to make improvement on that in the long term. And how you react to variation. So, if the system has a certain capability, and then you ask somebody, "Okay, I want you to get me that which is up here, way up. That's your objective." If the system is not capable, what is the employee going to do? They're going to try to create that number to please the boss. As Dr. Deming was referring to, they tried to please their manager or the boss. So, you might take risky steps to do that, including maybe fudging numbers or coming up with ideas to create that number.   0:32:37.1 Mustafa: And that goes to psychology, so now you are... You don't feel good about it. You have to keep your job. You have to do all kinds of stuff to make sure that you don't lose your job because you could not achieve that. Now you become less motivated. You're not really engaged. And what happens? They provide you with incentives, outside incentives. Bonus is based on work that you have to do, but the system is incapable. You cannot perform beyond what the system is capable of. So, that creates all kinds of problems. And the last part is the learning part or theory of knowledge, and that you have to have a method. You have to have clear definitions and, basically, you have to know what you need to accomplish, and by what method and how you know when you get there. That's a theory of knowledge. There is no knowledge without a theory, and it has to be... It has a temporal element in it, meaning that you revise the theory, and you create more knowledge. So, that's in a nutshell how you... How all of these components are related to each other. But to me, the systems and variation, they're just out there, and I see it everywhere as a problem.   0:34:14.3 Andrew: Yeah. So, to summarize, the system of profound knowledge, as you've explained, is appreciation for a system. Number two is knowledge of variation, number three is a theory of knowledge, and number four is psychology. And one of the things that I came to learn about Dr. Deming is, I always say he's a humanist. He's a person that really sees that people should have joy in work, and he wants to see people reach their full potential, and he understood the powers of incentives like you just explained. So, now that we understand a little bit of the theory of the system of profound knowledge, what is going wrong out there in this world? Let's talk just briefly about, why is this so significant? Come on, I just go get my black belt in Lean Six Sigma and the problems will be solved, but what is it about the theory of profound knowledge that... Or the system of profound knowledge that people should pay attention to now?   0:35:21.5 Mustafa: Well, with... For example, let me just take it from a different perspective. If you look at Lean projects, and you eliminate. for example, waste. if you don't have a system of profound knowledge to check all of the things that needs to be checked, like variation and psychology and making sure that people are not fearful to do their job, then you're creating other problems, not only just... You're not just reducing waste, you are actually, maybe having... overburdening the employees with removing waste because when you remove waste, you may be removing jobs, you may be removing hours, you may be removing employees. That would create a overburden. You could also create problems for the customers and fluctuation and defects and variation.   0:36:21.8 Mustafa: That's why the system of profound knowledge is an integrated system. It's not a just one piece. Once you start going from one door, you gotta address all the other components that are tied together to it. So to me, from whatever door you go in in the system of profound knowledge, let's say you go from the psychology which is you drive out fear. You create a good climate. You do all of these things, then you start seeing people coming up with innovations, reducing variation, and working together collaboratively which creates a good system. So, whatever door you go in, you're going to get to it because they are connected. There is no way that you're not going to address the other points if you have knowledge about the other points.   0:37:15.0 Andrew: It's an interesting thing that I would say in modern management, in modern life, people are trying to compartmentalize things and thinking that being a specialist in a particular area, whether that's medicine or whatever in business, that by compartmentalizing, it gives us comfort that we can become an expert in this area and all that. But what you can see... And I'll tell you, Mustafa, about my mother who I take care of. She's 83. And if we have a problem with her foot, the doctor may say, "Okay, don't walk for a little while." Well, that causes another problem. You start to risk bedsores. You start to have problems with GI system. And what you find nowadays in medicine is it's getting more and more narrow where doctors are not seeing the holistic pieces, and I see myself always constantly thinking about the whole picture to that. And I think what I'm hearing from you is that, that we should be looking at things more holistically, and that's what the system of profound knowledge is teaching, is that... Would you say that?   0:38:24.1 Mustafa: That's exactly right. That's exactly right. So, you have to... The main thing there is, companies, traditionally, they try to just suboptimize through their management by objective, "We want each department to save so much money," and then, once they start doing that, everybody affects the other negatively, but they don't know until later on that they have done that. You might gain the objectives in the short run, but in the long run, it's going to be disastrous for the aim of the organization.   0:39:03.9 Andrew: So, you just raised another point that Dr. Deming teaches about is suboptimization. And what he tried to teach was that the objective of the senior management of the company is to optimize the system, not its component parts. Have you seen...   0:39:19.9 Mustafa: Right.   0:39:20.9 Andrew: In theory, people should know that, but how is that going wrong in this world these days? And why is it important to be thinking in this holistic way that Dr. Deming was teaching?   0:39:32.5 Mustafa: Because companies, if they don't do things systematically, and they don't apply the whole system of profound knowledge, altogether, they're going to rush into money-saving exercises, and those money-saving exercises could be replacing material with lower-grade material. It could be, maybe, not hiring experts and hiring somebody who doesn't know what they're doing, and not providing training, or cutting training, or foregoing maintenance. There are so many things that you can start focusing on because you have issues. So, you have issues with a customer, and you start focusing on cutting costs, arbitrarily, not with a method, arbitrarily starting cutting costs in different departments. When you put it all together, just things don't merge well together because you're trying to suboptimize. You're trying to lower the cost in each department and not really improve the aim, or attain the aim of the organization as a whole.   0:40:48.3 Andrew: We've covered so many different topics. It's pretty exciting, like this sub-optimization. I think is a really interesting one. And I wanna raise a new topic that is the opposite of one of the topics that you raised. You talked about the chain reaction. Let's talk about the opposite chain reaction. I'll tell you a story in my own coffee business. We had put some pressure on some of the people in the procurement part of the business to reduce cost. That's reasonable. Management wants to reduce cost so there we go. We put pressure on them, and we told them... We incentivized them. And what we saw was that they ended up proposing a lower quality coffee bean, green coffee bean. The production people didn't like it because all of a sudden they had to recalibrate the machines. So, there was already a cost right there because the... It was harder to hit the client's demand of what taste that they want, consistently hit it.   0:41:47.9 Andrew: Then the people that were delivering, when we delivered the product to the customer, we had some returns where the customer is like, "No, I don't like this taste," or that we would have much more variability. And all of a sudden, we had customer complaints. And then we started to realize that, "Okay, now we gotta go and replace that with the proper stuff," and then all of a sudden there was all kinds of cost. So, the chain reaction you talked about was, start with quality and you start to reduce costs throughout the chain. And a reverse chain reaction is when you start by trying to optimize one point and not realize that it's a whole system, and therefore what you've caused is a negative chain reaction of cost just when you thought you were cutting costs, you're actually raising costs.   0:42:33.7 Mustafa: Right. That is a great example of that because what you've done is maybe just looking at the productivity part, you wanted to make sure that the costs were down so trying to turn the knobs on certain things, and then it just backfired on the quality part, increasing errors, increasing customer dissatisfaction and all of that, and that happens all the time.   0:43:01.4 Andrew: And that's what Dr. Deming says, "How can you measure the cost of a lost customer? How can you measure the dissatisfaction and the frustration?" Some things are just unmeasurable. So, I wanna...   0:43:15.2 Mustafa: Right. So, that brings about the issue of visible figures. You're managed by visible figures only, and not really the stuff that are behind the total cost, which some of it is unknowable or unknown.   0:43:34.2 Andrew: Now, Professor, this is really strange. Here we are, talking about quality. You're such an expert in all of these statistical methods, and now you're saying, "Wait a minute, you can't just measure by visible figures." So, this is again a paradox of Dr. Deming where you come into his teaching, seeing all of these numbers and all that, and now what you're telling me is it's not just visible figures. Could you just elaborate on that?   0:44:02.7 Mustafa: Yeah, absolutely. Visible figures are figures that are available right there for you, and you just react to it. If things go up, you wanna reduce costs. You just take action. But visible figures are really a limited part of the whole story because the total cost of not doing things right or not following the Deming management method. They're not going to be... You're not gonna see them until later on. You may be able save for a quarter or two but, beyond that, things are going to start accumulating in terms of defects, returns, and things of that nature. So, from the Deming point of view, the visible figures are only a smaller portion of the total figures which cannot be measured at the time you're looking at the numbers and taking action.   0:45:04.3 Andrew: It's interesting because we hear sayings like, "What gets measured gets managed," and those types of sayings. And one of the things that I... When I teach young people about this, I oftentimes say, "Well, let's just look at a simple thing. What is the value of a hug? Measure it." It's immeasurable. Particularly, in a particular situation when someone is traumatized, or in a really painful situation, and that hug made a huge difference in their life that could actually have kept them alive and led them to another so that... I think that's the visible figures that you're raising. It's such a small part of this world. The bigger part is how it all fits together. And so, I think you really inspire me to rethink about this concept; that it's way beyond just visible figures.   0:46:03.5 Mustafa: Absolutely, absolutely. This thing is just... One of the things that really captured me with the Deming philosophy is visible versus invisible figures, and the sub-optimization part versus the aim of the system. And those things are just so powerful when you think about them, when you think about why we're promoting, or why we're talking about Deming, and why now and all of that. It's these things that are very common these days. And they have... To have a good system, to have good management, you have to eliminate management by visible figures on... You still have to have visible figures, but visible figures-only is what Deming is... What it was Deming opposing. What he was against, I guess.   0:46:57.8 Andrew: Yup. And you said, "Why Deming? Why now?" And I'm thinking about it myself. And my answer to that is that we have a whole generation of young people who think that successful management is, maybe, sitting at their desk behind a computer looking at KPIs. And then, when someone is down on their KPI, send them an email, kick their butt. And when someone is up on a KPI, give them a bonus, and that's it. And then you go home at the end of the day. And they're so lacking in the psychology aspect of the system of profound knowledge, but just in what management truly is. So, from my perspective, "Why Deming? Why now?" is because we have the risk of it turning into some kind of automation system of management that will always end up underperforming. Why would you say, "Why Deming? Why now?"   0:48:00.5 Mustafa: So, as you can see that, for me, "Why Deming? Why now?" is I don't see management using variation as a way to distinguish between the common cause and special cause, and also their reaction to it, or the mistakes that they make as a part of it. So, that's a big thing. The other thing is the fear that people are experiencing at the workplace. Recently, we've heard about the great resignation. People just don't wanna go back to work anymore. And a lot of people expressed that they just don't like the environment that they work in. And we know that most people, about 70% of people who quit, they don't quit because of a pay or anything like that. It's because of relationship with their bosses and the company, and they just don't feel that. So that the environment has a fear in it. So, when you create fear, you're not going to have people that contribute and collaborate, and I think that's big. If we learn anything from this whole pandemic, it is that you have to create an environment of trust because if people are away working virtually or work in the office, you shouldn't have to worry about them if you have created that environment or the trust.   0:49:34.6 Andrew: Yup. And you mentioned about the pandemic. If there's one thing we've learned, fear is a massive motivator. The level of things that people have gone through in a state of fear, things that people would have never imagined that they would have done. And so, I think what you're talking about is just one more of the many Deming principles, which is to drive out fear. And I just wanna summarize some of what we've gone through, and then we'll wrap up. So, we've talked about the differences between Lean and Six Sigma and Lean Six Sigma. We've talked about Deming's 14 points. We've talked about the system of profound knowledge. We've talked about optimizing versus sub-optimizing. We've talked about the chain reaction, and I gave the example of a reverse chain reaction. And then, we talked about visible figures and understanding that there's much more than that, which is such a paradox for me when I first started learning Deming's teaching because I thought I was gonna take comfort in those numbers and the visible figures, but he told me, "No, no, no. There's much more." And finally, we talk about fear. Is there anything else that you would add to this final wrap-up of the conversation?   0:50:52.3 Mustafa: So, we started talking about Lean and Six Sigma and... Six Sigma is a continuous improvement process, but you don't really need to use it to... You can use the Plan-Do-Study-Act to it. There is no problem if you use it, and you recognize what's wrong with it, and you try to fix it. There's no problem with that. But, I think the Plan-Do-Study-Act and the theory of knowledge is sufficient for you to start working on things. But, like I mentioned, some companies, they like the titles and the tags and the big investment because then they use that as a motivator to get people to start working on projects to bring money back, to save the company the money that was spent on them. So, that's the only thing I wanted to add is just like you can't just rely on something that is big. The Plan-Do-Study-Act was good enough, and I think it's good for any organization. The problem with applying the Plan-Do-Study Act is that you have to have management's commitment because remember, when you do Six Sigma, you're basically outsourcing your quality to an external source, providing the training, the titles and all of that. You can cut it off any time. But when you do the theory of knowledge and the Plan-Do-Study-Act, you have to commit. The commitment is really the big deal here, or the component that is missing is a commitment to quality.   0:52:44.9 Andrew: Well, in wrapping this up, I wanna come back to where we started. Where we started was you were a young master's student and coming out of studying about these tools of statistical methods and all of that stuff, and you entered into our conversation, and you entered into the introduction to Dr. Deming through these tools. But here we are at the end of this interview, and now you're talking about such much bigger issues, and I think, for me, that inspires me about what Dr. Deming has taught because it is expansive. And the more you study it, the more you see it's way beyond just tools. So, Mustafa, on behalf of everyone at The Deming Institute, I wanna thank you again for coming on the show and sharing your experience with Dr. Deming's teachings. Do you have any parting words for the audience?   0:53:41.5 Mustafa: All I have to say, you gotta get started somewhere, and the system of profound knowledge is it. So, I would definitely recommend... I have been through many of the seminars that the Institute offers, and I would highly recommend that and also getting Dr. Deming's book "The New Economics." That's a good start. Of course, the follow-up is also just as important and continuing with the journey.   0:54:15.7 Andrew: Well, great advice. Get "The New Economics;" read it. It really sums up a lot of Dr. Deming's teachings. He put it together right at the end of his life. And that concludes another great discussion within our worldwide Deming community. Remember to go to deming.org to continue your journey. This is your host, Andrew Stotz, and I will leave you with one of my favorite quotes from Dr. Deming, "People are entitled to joy in work."

Deming frequently discussed the right to joy in work and in learning. But what does that mean exactly? David P. Langford explains Deming's intent, particularly as it applies to education. TRANSCRIPT 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 we're gonna be talking about the Langford application of Deming to bring joy in learning. David Langford has devoted his life to applying Dr. Deming's philosophy to help teachers and students get the most out of learning. David, let's get into it. I think we should start with what is joy in learning as one point.   Langford: Yeah, it sounds like sort of a mamby-pamby phrase like, "Oh, let's just all have joy in learning," or something that you might put on a poster and put on a wall, and Deming was probably the first one that got me to understand that those key phrases and stuff like that aren't gonna change the system at all, and that you actually have to change the system. So having joy in learning is different than thinking about joy in the education system as a whole, because I may really enjoy what I'm learning at the university or in an elementary classroom, but the way in which the system is run is not fun, it's not joyful. So the places that can really optimize both are the places that are gonna attract the most students, are gonna have the teachers that are happier, they're gonna have students that are happier, and when students are happier, parents are happier, and everything just starts to function better. So while it is a phrase, joy in learning, it's also a depth of knowledge about thinking about systems and what do you have to do in a system to achieve that?   Stotz: And one of the questions is like, what is the aim of the system? And I'm thinking about... There was a point in time where I didn't really like reading or doing homework or whatever, and then there was just a switch that went off where I just started reading books. And now I've read thousands of books in my life, and it's a pleasure to read books. And that switch brought joy to me as a learner. Is the... What is the objective of education in the world? Why are we doing this? Is it just babysitting kids or is it to transform or what?   Langford: Well, a lot of systems over the last 20 years or more have gotten misguided because they think the aim of the system is just to get test scores, and so when you set up a system just to get test scores, just to get those numbers, and Deming admonished us about that very thoroughly. That's what you're gonna get. But if you sort of break down learning and start to think about what were the most... Well, I do this all the time with educators and have them recall the most impactful learning experiences that they ever had in their entire education career, and they'll talk about making airplanes in sixth grade, or they'll talk about all kinds of applications and making robots, and they actually will get very excited about that. Oh, it was so exciting 'cause we got to do this. Nobody ever, ever says, "Oh, it's so exciting to get the top score on my SAT test, or... " Mostly, it was just a relief of pressure to get that or that, "Oh, every year, when we take that standardized test, that was so exciting. See what my score was and see how I advanced." Nobody's gonna remember any of those things.   Langford: So you're not gonna test in quality into a system, and if you're really optimizing joy in learning in a system, you may not have the very best test scores that you could get through drill and practice and getting people to get those scores. But a lot of systems, what they do is they drive out 1 the joy in learning, and exactly what you're describing, Andrew, is that... I don't think... I met Deming after I already had a Master's degree and I'd been teaching for a number of years, and I realized at that point, I'd never read a book, I couldn't even name a book that I had read simply for the joy of reading it. The only reason I would read a book is because it was assigned in the class, and you had to read this to get a grade or do a book report, or you had to do something, and so you had to discover that joy of reading, even though the system wasn't actually teaching you to do that. But wouldn't it be glorious worldwide if our systems were actually teaching and developing a joy of reading, wanting to read, and that takes a different, much, much different type of approach.   Langford: I have five children, and I'll never forget my oldest daughter, by second grade, she already knew she wanted to be a writer, and she was telling people... They say, "What do you wanna be when you grow up?" And she said, "I wanna be a writer." And the people were kinda stunned by that, but one of the reasons she did is because she had a second grade teacher and he knew that she just loved to write, and one day in the library, she was looking for books, and he walked up next to her and he pulled a book off the shelf and he said, "You know, one day I'm gonna pull this book off and it's gonna say, 'By Kendra Langford on it.'"   Stotz: Wow.   Langford: She never, ever forgot that, and now has a Master's degree in Creative Writing. But it can be so simple, and that's what Deming was talking about with the profound knowledge psychology of what you're doing and how you're managing the system, and the impact that it could have years and years later, and people ask Deming, why should we stop grading people and doing all this testing and all this kind of stuff, and he would say something like, "Well, since I don't know who among them is going to be great 15 or 20 years from now, why would I wanna limit their performance now with a grade?" See, that's a much deeper long-term purpose of what it is you're trying to do and what it is you're trying to develop.   Langford: The great irony is, the more you work on developing a system like that, your test scores go up because there's a joy in learning, and people are making neural connections that are lasting, and recall is happier. There's a lot of research on it, when you learn something and then later you recall it, whether that's a year later or years later, the first thing you recall is the emotion attached to that. So a lot of times in my seminars, I'll just say to people, "Tell me some emotions when I say the word math," oh my gosh. People are like, "Fear, tense, hatred."   Stotz: No joy?   Langford: No joy, no. There'll be some people like that, that'll be, "I love it," and usually, most of the audience were groan, but there are people that despite whatever the system does to you, I'm still gonna have joy in math because I just have a preponderance of cells in that part of my brain I was born with and I get a lot of pleasure and a good feeling when I'm actually doing that.   Stotz: It brings up a point too, that sometimes when we look at education, we think, "Okay, we have superstars that are really good at it, maybe those are the only ones that are really gonna be able 2 to get true joy out of it," whereas it sounds like what you're saying is, it's about one of the objectives of the system of education is it should be to bring joy in learning to everybody.   Langford: Yes, and I've known hundreds of valedictorians, the people that we would point to and say, "Okay, well, these were the people that really aced the system," and wouldn't those be the people that have the most joy in the learning system and it is not that way. So I know for my own children as they were going through the system, and my two oldest daughters are valedictorians, and I tried constantly to help them see that that's great, that you wanna do that and you understand the value of that long-term, but there's also a great joy in helping others in your classroom. I've heard this a lot about MBA classes, that they're so competitive that a professor will give an assignment and then students will run over to the library and check out all the books in the library so other teams, other students can't get them. Well, that's a strategy to get the highest grade. Get the highest grade you can, and if that's your aim, you're gonna employ a lot of strategies to do that.   Stotz: Right.   Langford: So even valedictorians have to at some point find joy in learning again. And...   Stotz: So if we wrap up this topic, I wanna think about a person listening to this, who is a teacher who's challenged, they're struggling, it's not easy, and they're listening to this, they're thinking about joy in learning, how would you close out this discussion to help them think about it, to inspire them, that we can have joy in learning.   Langford: Well, you brought up the topic about what is the aim of education, so if you get nothing else, but you say, "Okay, I'm gonna start to make my aim joy in learning. Now, what would I have to do?" That's why I came up with a tool or a statistical method that I call it Consensogram, just for that purpose. And I asked students on a scale of zero to 100 in 10% increments, to what degree do you feel joy in learning in my classroom? And just take those, put them on sticky notes, and then we build a histogram out of it, and to begin with, it was not a pretty picture. And I've taught this to other teachers, and I've had teachers say, "Oh, I'd never do that." I'd say, "Well, why not?" And they'd say, "Because the highest kid in the room would put down 30%." Wouldn't you wanna know that? Wouldn't you know the depths of despair that people have in what's going on, and if you did that once a week, takes 30 seconds, you get a bit of data, you start to get a run chart, you start to understand, and by continually, is my average creating joy in learning in this classroom going up?   Langford: And if you say, "Well, no, it's not." Then the people to start asking are the students, what's preventing you from having joy in this math class, or this English class, or German, or whatever it might be, what's preventing that from happening? And then prioritize it and go to work on it, but it can happen anywhere.   Stotz: It's so many great nuggets for that person, that teacher listening in, the last thing you just said means you're not alone, you don't have to go back to your desk and figure this out, just talk to the students and say, "How do we bring more joy in learning?" And I think also, you've talked about the idea of a clear aim, and I know that's a huge part of what Dr. Deming taught about systems and the 3 system needs to have a clear aim, and boy, the world... How much damage would it do to the world if, for one year, we switched the aim of education, the aim of our education system to bring joy in learning to every student in that classroom?   Langford: Yeah. I don't know if I got this from Deming or not, but it's just the phrase I use all the time is, we don't really know what could be accomplished in our education systems and classrooms, etcetera, because we've never really tried. And some people get offended by that. But if you go back and you actually start trying, you will find ways to change the system to see a larger amount of joy happening in the classrooms. Even when I asked Dr. Deming about his classes. I said, "How did you do that?" And he began to describe teaching graduate level statistics classes, which doesn't sound like much fun to me, but virtually everybody in there got an A or accomplished everything that he wanted them to accomplish.   Stotz: Well, on behalf of everybody at The Deming Institute, I want to end this session of the Langford application of Deming to bring joy in learning, and I wanna challenge everybody out there to do your best today to bring joy in learning Langford: Thank you, Andrew.   Stotz: Thank you.

In this wide-ranging discussion, Kelly Allan shares his experience with bringing the Deming philosophy into many companies. So much of the leadership principles Dr. Deming taught have seeped into companies in all industries - though most don't know that their methods originated with Deming. Kelly believes we're reaching a tipping point, and shares his ideas on how easily anyone can get started on a path of sustainability. TRANSCRIPTDownload the transcript here. 0:00:02.4 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 here with featured guest, Kelly Allan, who claims we are nearing the tipping point in which Dr. Deming's management methods will more rapidly replace traditional command and control methods. And he has suggestions for organizations that wanna get ahead of competitors to reap the rewards worth millions and billions of dollars depending on company size. Welcome Kelly, and please explain that bold call.   [chuckle]   0:00:40.4 Kelly Allan: Well, it's interesting. When Deming sort of burst on the scenes in the United States in 1980 in a documentary of "Japan Can, Why Can't We?," he was describing, and in his first book, "Out Of The Crisis," he was describing an entirely new way of thinking. A new way of looking into organizations to see how they work, to help them work better, to make them more productive, and so it could be more joy in work. And there was so much, I think, it was such a fresh and new way of thinking that for most folks, it was overwhelming. So, now 40 years have passed, and little by little, so much of what he wrote about in that time and during the next 13 years of his life, have seeped into the way organizations, many organizations, are run, even though the leaders and others in the organizations may not know that those ideas came from Deming, and the combination of ideas came from Deming. And part of the reason that was in my mind is the... In the new... The third edition of... I have a copy here of "The New Economics," the new chapter, chapter 11, there's a dialogue in which Deming makes... This is interesting, kind of a, I thought about this a lot, bold prediction. It's a question to Deming. It says, "Dr. Deming, how many organizations are using your methods 100% today?" And Deming says, "None." "Wow! Dr. Deming, if no organization is using your methods 100% today, how many will be using your methods in 100 years?" And he said, "All that survive."   [laughter]   0:02:39.6 KA: Blows your mind, right? What... Is this hubris? And I thought about this for years. I've known this quote for years and years. And how is that going to happen? Is the Deming Institute, the Deming practitioners, they're suddenly going to be all over the media? And I don't know if that's what he had... I don't know what he had in mind. But, here's what we're seeing is that many of the methods that he was proposing, not just the tools, the technical tools to improve quality of the charts and the graphs and the plots and the lines, et cetera, but the strategic part, the leadership part, we're seeing those become now more and more mainstream. And we're only 30, 40 years away from what he said, and the momentum that we're seeing is getting bigger. So, in another 60, 70 years, I won't be around to see it, but I would not be surprised. And I have a lot of data, not only anecdotal but research studies from universities, et cetera that was showing what's going on with this.   0:03:49.2 AS: It's interesting, as you were talking, I was thinking about, well, what else was going on in kind of the '80s and all that? And I was thinking about one of the things that was just starting was the obesity epidemic in America. And it's like in some ways, if somebody could have seen the future, they'd say, "Hey guys, we're gonna be in trouble."   0:04:09.1 KA: Super-Size Me.   0:04:11.0 AS: If this continues on, we're gonna have 30%, 40% of our population in the obese category. But who listened to that? Nobody listened to that, right? [chuckle] And now it's like, okay, so now we're here.   0:04:24.8 KA: Yeah. Well, I think it's... I'm not sure there's a direct analogy, but there is, are some, certainly some similarities that you mentioned. So, for example, with business, if I was one of those earlier adopters of something that Deming was talking about. Just to try something, right? Just not get my arms around everything but just to try something and it worked. And then, I'd try something else and it worked. And I'd try something else and it worked. So, whether we're talking about thinking about control charts instead of spreadsheets. And thinking about having managers be mentors instead of sheriffs. To be thinking about abolishing performance appraisals and focus on processes, and holding processes and systems accountable rather than just focusing on an individual and try to improve only people instead of the system on which they work. At a certain point, those organizations leapt ahead of their competitors.   0:05:26.4 KA: So it becomes... I mean part of human nature is to just, "Hey, it's familiar, it works, let's just keep doing more of that." And many of them never went back to the Deming well to get more tools. To learn more things because what they had, the few things that they tried were so powerful. Well, fast-forward. A lot of those things that were radical, revolutionary at the time Deming was first talking about them have now become more and more common practice, and they are what you need to get a seat at the table. They don't put you ahead anymore. You have to have them because your competitors are doing them. That's more with the sort of technical quality of service, improved service quality, improved product quality. But we're also seeing the things like having managers be mentors and coaches rather than sheriffs and disciplinarians, and holding people accountable for the output of the system.   0:06:31.5 KA: Younger folks, especially, will not migrate to the organizations that are still using those old tactics. Especially, we see it in technology firms, but we're seeing it everywhere. We're seeing it everywhere. So, a number of Deming-based companies during this time when it's impossible, seemingly impossible to hire people, have people waiting in line to go to work for them. And that's part of the Deming magic is you get both. As you focus on his methods, productivity increases as costs go down. Quality increases as costs go down. Joy in work increases as costs go down. Competitiveness increases as costs go down. That is powerful. Imagine having the lowest-cost service, lowest-cost product, and the highest quality with workers who want to stay and work with you and want to continue to learn. How can you not grow your market? How can you not grow your share of the pie, or grow the pie itself?   0:07:48.2 AS: Just thinking about... You were talking about going back to the well and getting other tools to apply. 'Cause I was just thinking, what you were saying, and one of the ideas I was thinking was that, if a typical person went to a typical Deming seminar and they just walked out of it and said, "Why don't I stop being confrontational with my management team and my workers? Why don't I just stop setting them against each other? And why don't I view things as a system where we're all gonna work together?" And that's the only thing they took back. They could get a huge benefit.   0:08:24.4 KA: Absolutely.   0:08:25.4 AS: There's also a lot of other aspects that can continue and build on that. So, when you're talking about... What you're saying, is that what you mean? Like there's some core principles that you could just pick up and start applying right away without having to understand everything about the technical aspects of Deming?   0:08:43.5 KA: Oh, absolutely. And in fact, a number of firms don't do much with the technical "quality tools." So, some maybe build a control chart or two a year, at the most. Some may have fishbone charts, but not all of them. Because they have focused more on the leadership methods, which are really in "The New Economics," rather than the technical quality. So when you add Professor Shraim, you're talking also about different methodologies, different disciplines to improve quality. Deming didn't make, to my mind, in my reading, it didn't make that distinction between producing a great service experience for a customer or producing a great product, with producing a great strategy in the boardroom or the C-suite, because the thinking is the same. The tools that you would use to improve product or service quality can be applied in the financial CFO's office. Right?   0:09:53.5 KA: You start looking at the numbers differently. You start understanding what the numbers are telling you or not. 'Cause spreadsheets are not really an analytical tool. They're simply a numerical record. Deming's tools provide true analysis. So, in the early days, it was easier for most organizations to grab, not all of them, Gallery Furniture for example, down in Houston, grabbed a lot of the leadership principles. Taking sales people off from commission, sales go up, turnover of employees goes down. Right? So, they did a lot of those things. Most other organizations though grabbed on to the "quality tools," right? They're very concerned about the metrics related to processes, and that's important.   0:10:46.7 KA: The thing is, we're at a point in most organizations now that if you just rely on the "Quality department" to try to improve the service that you're delivering, whether it's a customer service experience, call center experience, or whether it's a product or installing a satellite dish or whatever it is, you're not getting the full benefit of Deming because the improvements and the changes that you want to make to increase productivity and reduce costs run up against that old commanding control, traditional way of management. You mentioned, for example, causing people to compete against one another for rewards and recognition. It's interesting. Stanford did a study several years ago in which they asked, I think 435 CEOs of companies of size, I don't know if they were all public companies, I don't recall. But what was their number one issue that they're worried about? It wasn't competitor's products. It wasn't innovation. It wasn't worldwide issues. It wasn't any of these things. The number one issue was, "My direct reports don't get along, They won't play well together."   0:12:01.7 KA: Well, let's see, you make them compete against one another for your attention, for budgets, for rewards, for recognition, for all those things. Why would they get along? They're not on the same team and it's your management approach that has caused that to happen because you believe, you've been taught to believe, that competition is how you get the most out of people. Deming, of course, saw that people are maybe 3%, 4%, 5% of the results that you get. It's the process, it's the system, it's the culture in which they work that yields those results, and it's much better to have. And it's easy to do, right? That's what's amazing. It's not hard to do to improve. To make your processes and systems, whether they're HR systems, hiring systems, production systems, delivery systems, whatever it is, to make those above average, so that you can get more people who can get above-average results. It's magical. It's so simple, but it's not familiar. It's not familiar. They're in that Deming well. They're in buckets there, but most people have not been exposed to it.   0:13:19.0 AS: So, the next question I'm gonna ask you is gonna go back to what you were talking about. How some people just take some of the starting points in Deming's teaching and apply that and get a lot of benefits. And my question to you is, and you're gonna have a chance to think about this question because I'm gonna introduce you to the audience after I ask it.   0:13:37.9 KA: Okay. [chuckle]   0:13:38.6 AS: So you got a chance to think about it. But what I wanna think about is let's take a listener out there who's just very new. They're like, "Oh Deming, interesting. I've downloaded the book, I've read some of it. Some of it's confusing. It's a bit overwhelming." I want you to think about what you can tell people as far as kind of concrete things that they could do to start to bring the Deming philosophy into their work. And while you're thinking about your answer on that, let me introduce you to the audience. Kelly Allan is Chair of the Advisory Council of the W. Edwards Deming Institute, and he wrote the new chapter for the third edition of "The New Economics," Dr. Deming's seminal book on leadership. Kelly has also published in a variety of journals including "Forbes" and "The New York Times." As you might imagine, he also gives a lot of presentations and seminars on the topic. So now, Kelly, for the beginner out there who doesn't know much about Deming, they're learning. What would be the first kind of concrete things that they could implement in their business?   0:14:37.6 KA: Well, I'll give you several, because different people have different interests and different ways they like to learn and consume. So, starting with that new chapter in the third edition of "The New Economics," that's 45 pages. It's not a huge commitment, and it gives you lots of examples of what organizations have been doing, and why the thinking makes sense. And part of the beauty of what Deming gives is it's very natural, humane, authentic, genuine, intuitive. So,1 that's one thing. There's a lot of free materials at Deming.org. Just a vast amount of things. There's a new piece that's a new offering that's coming up here. It's called DemingNEXT, which is online learning, so, the self-paced learning or facilitated learning with a facilitator. That's useful.   0:15:34.1 KA: There are also seminars. So, there are one-day seminars. There's a two-and-a-half-day seminar, if you wanna go more deeply. But in one day, it's really more like six hours with breaks and lunch, et cetera, we call it one day, but you can get exposed to some of the key thinking. And it's not really lectures. It's hands-on, fun things that get past the gatekeeper in the brain said, "Well, this will never work." And people have aha moments from that. So, there's experiential, there's reading, there's... And the other nice things about the Deming Institute is a non-profit. So, our aim is about spreading the word, right? Getting people more exposed to this, so we try to make everything as affordable as possible just to cover costs.   0:16:26.0 AS: So, great actionable things. First is download "The New Economics" and read that new chapter as well as what's in the book. I think it's...   0:16:34.1 KA: Well yeah, we say the new chapter first because it's very approachable. And then you can go back and start to read Deming's own words, and it really sort of brings things together, is the theory in any case. That's what we've heard.   0:16:50.2 AS: Well, you can also see in "New Economics," you can just see that Dr. Deming's thinking and philosophy developed over time. He was continually improving. And I think that there was sometimes in early on stages where it wasn't as clear as his writing later like in "New Economics" where it really started to come together a lot more for me. So, we've got "New Economics." The other thing is to visit DemingNEXT, and I think that that's another great opportunity to do. And as far as... I wanna just talk about the first two points of Dr. Deming's 14 points because I think... I've read these over and over again, I've thought about these over over again, and sometimes I just like, "Wait a minute. I'm not exactly sure what he means." And then sometimes I feel like, I know exactly what he means. So, let's talk about create constancy of purpose towards improvement of product and service. And the final part is with the aim to become competitive and stay in business and provide jobs. So, he illustrates an aim of the business, but it's this constancy of purpose towards improvement of product and service. Can you talk a little bit about that 'cause that's one of the first things that people are gonna hit when they come into Deming's teaching?   0:18:07.3 KA: Yes, and I think at Deming.org, there may even be a video of him talking about that. And that's all free. So yeah, to bring into that, one of the deadly diseases is the job-hopping by managers, right? Because you don't really get to know a job. So, with constancy of purpose, it does two things I think that are key. One is it gives you a long-term view, but it also helps you make short-term... You get short-term results as well. And that's also part of the beauty of Deming is that you can start doing stuff after you learn. You can start making better decisions the very next day. It's very immediate. And you'll still have things that you can learn in 20 years. So, that constancy of purpose helps with employees for example, with associates, team members, who want to come and stay, and who are attracted to the organization because what is true and genuine today will be true and genuine six months from now. Twelve months from now. Years from now, because that purpose, that constancy of purpose is to work to optimize the organization, so everybody wins.   0:19:28.0 KA: That's pretty powerful. So, whether it's customers, suppliers, people who work in the organization, the community, the environment. Deming was really pushing for big picture view with that reliable trust that people can have in the organization. Trust is so important. There's so much garbage written about trust.   0:20:02.0 KA: If you'll pardon me saying so, and it's really quite easy. And that is to do the right things and keep doing the right things. And Deming provides a framework for that versus trying to manipulate people. Versus trying to rate and rank people, in a system that is more in control of their outcomes than any individual. And that's some of the things we do in the seminars is to show the famous Red Bead Experiment and the white bead factory, and it's in DemingNEXT as well. So, that people can actually experience for themselves what they experienced when they were willing workers and forgot about when they became managers. It takes them back, that anxiety of not being able to trust the manager. So, I'll bring up another piece here, which might be useful, and it's also on Deming.org. And you can search my name to find it, if you just go to the home page, and then the search box put in Kelly Allan. There's an article that Professor Schramm and I wrote, based on a bunch of research he'd done through the years with his students engaged in the engineering school at Ohio University. And what it's about, it's called using a Deming lens to investigate and solve managerial challenges.   0:21:35.4 KA: The top things that the managers list that are causing them incredible burnout, frustration, job hopping, are all solved by understanding the Deming leadership method. It's just that constancy of purpose of trying to ensure a win-win, not manipulating people, being authentic, working on collaboration rather than internal competition, helping people be successful rather than rating and ranking them. All of these schemes and organizations have, because they think that people have to be manipulated or they won't do their work, in case, and when it just actually just the opposite case.   0:22:22.4 AS: A great way of illustrating that is to think about children. Children, obviously. There are children that are subjected to just brute force by adults, and they don't have that much joy left in them. But the fact is, is that it's like they're born with this abundant energy, a positive and energetic spirit. And when you think about what you see, it's one of the reasons why we love going to kindergarten classes.   [chuckle]   0:22:53.4 AS: And to visit the kids, it's like, "Wow, this is amazing!," 'cause here I am in the corporate world. I gotta fit in this box. I gotta punish all these people, and I gotta reward these. I gotta make the tough decisions and all of that. And it's like the distance between what is natural of just that fun and joy that you have when you went to school when you were a kid, and what you're doing as an adult. Sometimes it just gets painful. Work is painful for many people.   0:23:20.7 KA: Well, and so I think this was Dr. Deming who said this that we were all born with the desire to learn, and then we go to school, and it's beaten out of us. [chuckle] Yeah, yeah, and it's interesting, the number one issue that these managers that were interviewed said was... And it's top three things, it's a Pareto chart distribution. Listen, number one by far, which is, I have to spend so much time trying to motivate people. Why are they so demotivated, right? Most people don't get up in the morning wanting to go to work to do a bad job. We all wanna go to work to make a difference, to improve something, to do something that's a quality. Deming said pride and joy in work. So, we get to the organization, and it's a prison. Deming used that word actually, people in jail because they cannot be all that they can be, that they want to be at work. So, Deming talks about removing the demotivators. Let's get rid of the demotivators of treating people as if they're responsible for the system in which they work. They're not. Treating people for the results they get that are results of a bad process. He said a bad process will beat a good person every time.   0:24:51.7 KA: So, senior leadership is focused, and so many organizations in the past have been focused on making people accountable. The reason I think we're getting to that tipping point is there are more organizations that are realizing it's our role as leaders to provide the system, so that more and more people can be more and more successful. Because that's win-win, optimizing the system for everybody. They treat customers better, they treat each other better. They have a framework of a process they get from analytical thinking, critical thinking skills. Man, it's just fun. It's just fun.   0:25:27.9 AS: Yeah. I wanna go back to this point number one about create constancy of purpose towards improvement of product and service. In some ways what Dr. Deming is saying is ... Wait a minute, as a new listener or new reader of Deming, is that it? Just all we're gonna do is improve and improve and improve? Isn't there... We've gotta focus on quarterly results or we've gotta focus on mergers and acquisitions, or we've gotta produce for the shareholders, or whatever that is. But there's kind of a leap of faith there, and I just wanna talk a little about that. And I also wanna talk about one of the tools like PDSA, and this concept of what do you get if you relentlessly pursue improvement of product and service?   0:26:18.7 KA: Well, you end up owning the market in most cases. If you're doing it in the right way. If you're doing it in a command and control away by setting quotas and targets and goals that have no foundation in reality whatsoever in terms of what is the capability of a process or a system. No, you won't ... That's improvement the old way. The improvement with Deming's approach is to a handful of thinking tools, if you will, that you can apply and start to see what's going on with why are we having so much variation?   0:27:02.8 KA: Why aren't we have really a learning organization? Why don't departments get along? Why do we have so many silos? Why isn't it working the way I thought it would work? So, that constancy of purpose provides the framework for an approach, right? And we don't want people to take more than one leap of faith, and it's not an expensive leap of faith at all. It's read a chapter, reach out to us at the Institute, and we'll start to get you connected with resources, et cetera. But you just have to try one experiment. When you referred earlier to PDSA, a Plan-Do-Study-Act. And we always help people design those so they're low cost, low risk and fast. So it's not a big commitment, some of them can be done in an afternoon, to show the power of thinking differently. So, we want people to start small and then they'll take the next step. One of the things I want to really emphasize though, because I think it's so important, is that if you have not started on Deming journey, and you're the business owner or the leader of the organization, and even if you don't own the business, if you've not started on this Deming journey, you'd better hope none of your competitors have.   0:28:35.8 KA: Because if they have, they will gain momentum. First, they'll eat their breakfast then they'll eat your lunch, and then you're done. [laughter] And my organization, the Kelly Allan Associates, has worked on a number of turnarounds through the years. Companies that were going out of business. And it would be... For me, that's the proof of the Deming approach, right? No resources, in fact, negative resources. The company is going to fail. They're not going to make payroll, right? Fairly soon. We've ever walked into organizations where the lights were out. We met in a conference room that had windows. $250 million top line organization turned the lights out because they didn't know if they're gonna make the electric bill. Money was just bleeding like crazy. That is a crucible. That is a test of the Deming method.   0:29:23.7 KA: To be able to turn that around. Right? So, that if you're not getting started on your Deming journey, you're leaving yourself really vulnerable to a competitor who discovers it. Now, you can catch up if your competitor is not really going quickly, because you can't do three years of work in three months. That's not what I'm suggesting. But you can go fast, and if your competitor's doing a nice steady pace, and that's a good pace to have. But if you need to catch up, then Deming approach allows you to ramp that up pretty quickly, because it's not hard to do. The main barrier to constancy of purpose is our belief system about how things either should be or must be. And that's why when Deming burst on the scenes in 1980 in this country, it was like, people thought he was talking a different language. He was talking a different language. He was thinking differently.   0:30:33.9 AS: Yeah.   0:30:34.3 KA: And that's the leap, and that's what we try to do in the seminars and the book, is to help people make that... See that there's a different universe there that is better, faster, cheaper, smarter and more fun.   0:30:47.0 AS: Yeah, there's two things that I was thinking about too as you were talking and that is Dr. Deming, he constantly refined his thinking in his work. And I just... I'm going back to the constancy of purpose 'cause I think that I've had my own challenges thinking about it, and I think you're clarifying a lot of it. One of the things that I wanna highlight is that he talked about create constancy of purpose for improvement of products and services.   0:31:16.9 AS: Now, it's interesting. Here is a guy that was so committed to quality and all of that, wouldn't you think that he would have said to improvement of quality of products and services? [laughter] But in fact, he was saying you've gotta improve your products and services, and then how do you know if you're improving your products and services? Well, if your customers are buying more, they're feeling satisfied. It's just interesting, as I think about what you're talking about and I'm looking at it, I'm realizing it's interesting that he said improvement of product and services, not the quality of products and services. Why do you think he didn't say the quality of products and services? Instead he said improve them.   0:31:56.6 KA: Well, of course, I don't know, and I don't want to try to channel him. But my sense from exposure to him and to his readings and seminars, et cetera, is that it's the Deming chain reaction that is what gets you to do to a better space. And if you're working on improvement in the ways he suggested, ways that make sense that are not commanding control, but collaborative and insightful, et cetera, there's a methodology there that's again, easy to learn.   0:32:36.7 KA: It doesn't matter whether you are the CFO, the COO, the chief legal officer or anyone else in the organization. Because what your focus is on is trying to figure stuff out. That's the fun of it. That's when you talk about children earlier, they're trying to figure stuff out. And when they get a methodology to figure stuff out, they grab it. And that's what happened in the '80s and '90s with Deming. I think what we were all exposed to was Deming was dubbed the quality guru because so much of the name of the NBC documentary was, "If Japan Can, Why Can't We?" Because the Japanese were producing high quality products, right? From they used to produce junk. Radios, right, that didn't work very well. And then once they got into Deming, quality went way up and cost went way down. So, he was dubbed the quality guru, and that's fine. But it puts him in a box, so people miss the strategic part. The original title of his first book, "Out of the Crisis," had to do with competitive advantage. He saw that. He understood that.   0:33:57.8 KA: So, that competitive advantage comes from thinking about figuring stuff out in ways that are not command control. That are not toxic.   0:34:10.4 AS: I want to talk about what you could argue is the end of an era. And I wanna go back in time to the post-World War II period when Dr. Deming was working with the Japanese and coming back to America and trying to get people's attention. And then we had about a decade of prosperity in America. Why pay attention to quality? It's just all about quantity. Last night, I was giving a lecture in economics and finance, and I was talking about this flow after World War II, and what happened. And I'm gonna share my screen for the people that are watching; and for the people that are listening, I'll read it out as we go through. So, I'm just gonna share one slide, and then let's think about this and discuss it a bit. So, let me do that right now. And this is the slide, and basically, it's a picture of Dr. Deming and a quote with his, what he said. But at the top of it, I wrote down that America was great because every other country was destroyed. And the quote goes like this. "In the decade after the war," meaning World War I or II, sorry, "the rest of the world was devastated. North America was the only source of manufactured products that the rest of the world needed. Almost any system of management will do well in a seller's market." What does that mean to you, Kelly? At that time as he was saying it, probably at that point in the '70s or the '80s, and then where we are right now.   0:35:57.6 KA: Yeah, it is now a worldwide economy, and many different countries are able to produce in volume products that people want to buy. So, that kinda takes me back to what I mentioned earlier is that that is a baseline now, right? Deming was pointing out that there was a period of time where the quality didn't really matter as much as quantity. But, as you say it, that era I think is long gone, and we expect now quality at a lower cost. And indeed, if you start to think about it, so many things that we have are remarkably inexpensive for what they do. And not just technology, but certainly technology is an example of that. So, it ratchets up my point about that is now just a seat at the table. Not only is quality able to produce quantity just a given. You have to be able to produce quantity in a way that produces quality without raising your cost inordinately, or in fact, if you can reduce your costs. And that's probably gonna be the way it is going forward. I talk in some presentations, I talk about the arc of quality being a long one but bending towards Deming. Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King Junior talked about the arc bending towards justice. Well, in terms of production, productivity, service delivery, excellence, if you will, it bends towards Deming. And I see that arc coming much faster now, both anecdotally and in the research studies that I see.   0:38:07.3 AS: It's interesting also because what we saw was a transformation that happened in Japan. And if people my age, your age and others, we knew that when we were young, if it said Made in Japan it was low quality. It was just a low quality item, and Japan really went up this quality scale into a complete transformation. And now something made in Japan is known as a very high quality product in most cases. Now, what's also interesting is China. For many people, younger generation, Made In China may have meant low quality items and possibly low price and low quality. But the quality of the cars that they're making, the manufacturing that they're doing, that the parts and the supplies that they're doing into iPhone as an example, these are very high levels of quality. And what I can imagine is that the Deming philosophy of continually improving could really be applied well in any country, whether that's Africa, countries in Africa, or whether that's in China. To say how do we keep moving up that quality scale. And as you say, if your competitor gets a hold of this, and before you, they're gonna move much faster than you. What are your thoughts about that globalization of it all?   0:39:30.0 KA: Yes, absolutely, so it's not just a competitor in any given country. It's the international. And so as you talk about they're improving quality of the products that they're manufacturing, if they don't adopt to the next one, if they don't adopt the new philosophy of management, Deming's philosophy of management, they will hit a wall. Because the commanding control approach of management by spreadsheets, management by quotas, management by the numbers, management by objectives as it's typically practiced hits a wall in a variety of ways. People don't wanna work for you. They start to sabotage you. You start to break things in the rest of the organization because you're managing through fear, right? That's why with the system of profound knowledge that Deming outlines, and the four elements of that in "The New Economics," that is the future. That is, to my mind from what I've seen in terms of impact, leverage, power, if people think the quality tools, right? And they're important and we have to have them. The charts, the graphs, the plots, et cetera. But if people thought they were powerful... And they were because if you're not doing that in your organization of any size at all, you can't... You're done. It's just... You won't be able to continue.   0:41:16.0 KA: So, almost any organization of any size that's left is doing that and they got great results from that. The system of profound knowledge, I would say, is at least four times more powerful than just using quality tools.   0:41:30.8 AS: You've touched on two things. You've started to talk about point number two: adopting a new philosophy. But you've also talked about the system of profound knowledge. So maybe you could just expound on that for a beginner who may not know anything about that and even for experts who wanna keep thinking and refining their thinking on it. Can you explain what that means to you?   0:41:53.0 KA: Well, it's such a rich area, and I like to think of it in this way. I don't wanna have to learn 400 things. I don't wanna have to learn 40 things. As a business owner, I want to do the least that I need to do to get the best results. The greater results. The system of profound knowledge is four things. I can do four things. I can figure out four things. Deming helps me figure out four things. Now, obviously, I'm over simplifying a bit because when he talks about knowledge of variation, there are some important things in there that we have to understand. What type of variation do we have? That's easy to figure out. You don't even have to do the statistics in most cases to figure out whether you have common cause type variation or special cause type variation. Because reducing variation increases productivity, joy in work, profits, customer satisfaction, et cetera.   0:42:55.9 KA: So, reducing variation is important. I'm not talking about innovation, more innovation. Deming is all about innovation. What we're talking about, variation in terms of how we can rely on output whether it's a service output or a product output. So, understanding what type of variation we have tells us what to do if we get a bad result. It tells us how to fix that, how to investigate that, or to improve the system. So, the next one has to do with appreciation for the organization as a system. People have been taught to optimize every department, which is a natural outcome of that sub-optimizes the organization. So, let me say it this way. Every organization is perfectly designed intentionally or unintentionally to get the results that it does. To produce the results that it does.   0:43:55.4 KA: I don't care if you're a financial institution, a technology organization, or a manufacturer, or a seller, or a distributor, or service organization, or whatever it is you happen to do. Whatever symptoms you're seeing that you don't like and that frustrate you are built-in, designed into your organization, and they sub-optimize it. So, we have to purposely look at the various departments and workflows to say what needs to be optimized to optimize the overall organization? What needs to be sub-optimized? We don't want everybody... And I think Deming gave the example of the symphony orchestra. You don't want everybody coming in playing loudly all the time. That's trying to optimize every person. It sub-optimizes the orchestra, right? So, that's the... So, there are some guidelines on how you optimize and have appreciation for a system, which goes beyond just systems thinking, by the way.   0:45:00.9 AS: So, we have a system, the system of profound knowledge now as you've gone through for the listeners out there that aren't familiar with it. What you've talked about is the knowledge about variation. Now, you've talked about the appreciation for a system, and then we have two other elements.   0:45:17.1 KA: Two. We have two more. Right. One has to do with theory of knowledge, which is, how do we know what we think we know is really so? [chuckle] Right? Deming's first questions was always, how are we doing and how do we know? So, how do we know what we think we know is really so? The numbers on the spreadsheet are not a proxy for reality. We have to have numbers, but let's make sure we don't imbue them with more importance than they should have. And then, how do we take that, and what we learn from that and spread it through the organization? And that's where the Plan Do Study Act experimentation comes in. That's where things like operational definitions come in. What does good mean? What does on time mean? Right? What does clean mean?   0:46:02.1 KA: And then the fourth one, the fourth element of the system of profound knowledge, has to do with psychology. How do we react and interact with one another? What causes us to collaborate? What causes us to compete against one another in our organizations? And let's leave the competition to the sports arena or against perhaps other companies. Deming also gave a lot of examples of how competitors can cooperate and get to win-win as well. Now, I should probably point out that there's one other thing that's really important to me and that is Deming called it the system of profound knowledge not because he thought he had come up with something profound. What he said is if you'll use these four elements: Understanding variation, appreciation for a system, human psychology and how we think we know what we know is really so, use them as a lens. A diagnostic lens to see what's really going on. You will... If you do that by asking just four questions: What's going on with variation? What's going on with psychology? What's going on with the system?, et cetera. You will get profound insight. You will have profound knowledge, and that's what you need to be able to reduce costs as you increase joy in work. To reduce costs that in the causes of costs as you produce things, whether it's a service or a product or whatever. So, productivity goes up, everything good that you want goes up, but the frustrations go down and the causes of cost goes away. Start to go away, get reduced.   0:47:43.0 AS: So for those that are listening or viewing this and you wanna really capture what Kelly is saying, I would challenge you to just write down four words: system, variation, knowledge and psychology. System, variation, knowledge and psychology. And what Kelly is telling us is that if we walk into a situation, and we're able to see things as a system. It's like we can back up and look at all the inputs and outputs and everything that's happening with different departments here rather than focusing in very narrowly. Number two, if we can understand variation and not freak out because something has variation in it knowing that, hey, we have to understand a little bit more about this variation before we react. And then if you think of... If your third part is the knowledge where you think, what do we know and how do we know that, and how are we building knowledge in this? Or are we are just coming at this cold every time? And then finally, what are people's psychology? What do people want? What do people feel? And if you think about system, variation, knowledge and psychology, what Kelly is telling us is that what Dr. Deming is saying is that you will have profound knowledge. Would that summarize it?   0:48:58.4 KA: Yeah, I think that's correct. Now, I think another place where the managers in the research study that I talked about, they've been taught at some seminar or something, that they're supposed... Not in Deming one, that they're supposed to manage every person as in a very special way. How can you scale doing that? I mean there are some Deming-based organizations, and there are no perfect ones, but there are some Deming-based organizations that have hundreds of thousands of employees coming through their doors every day. It makes no sense to try to have 300,000 different approaches to leadership. But because the Deming approach is so humane, it makes so much sense and it engages people. It just is so much easier than the typical things that managers have been taught about how to motivate people and how to give people bad news. And you know with Deming it's working on the work together to figure stuff out. Wow! That's a job I'd work, right?   0:50:09.7 AS: Yeah. You know, Kelly, I had an experience where I was consulting with two different companies, and I was teaching and advising them. And what I was so fascinated about was that both of the CEOs were kind of charismatic, smart, energetic, good guys. And then they had these management teams that if you talk to each of the individual managers--impressive. Cause I was reviewing LinkedIn profiles of the different managers as I was going in to get to know them and all that. Individually they were all impressive. And so, we had a great time. We did two days together, going through a bunch of stuff. And then at the end of it, I left those two different consulting jobs that I did in one week, and at the end of the week, I thought to myself, interesting. They're almost identical in so many ways, but one of them is losing money and crashing their business. And the other one is going from win to win. What's the difference?   0:51:08.9 AS: And what I came up with my conclusion was, there's really... It's intangible, which is very different from what I learned as a financial guy is that look at the numbers and that sort of things, but I learned that numbers are just tools. But it's intangibles. So, I've come to the conclusion that first, you need a good CEO that sets the right direction, that she or he knows where they're going, and they're taking in good input, and they're setting the right direction. If they're setting the wrong direction, you're in trouble. The second thing is it's not about the quality of each individual manager on a team, it's about how the CEO helps coordination of those managers, so that you do optimize that system. And I felt like it's CEO leadership, and it's the CEO's helping the management team to coordinate their activities. How does that fit in with what you've observed as a consultant over the years?   0:52:08.0 KA: Yes. So, one of the things is the gift of a CEO, and Deming writes about this in "The New Economics," and where the power of the CEO comes from the three places... I wish I was going through it right now. But it's basically if that CEO is able to adopt the new philosophy and understand it, you build a culture from that. The way we do things around here, the way we treat one another, the way we work on problems, the way we address issues is who we are. It's a part of the design of the system, and the design of the system produces the results, right? So, it's all linked together. So, charismatic CEOs can get a lot done, but a lot of not charismatic CEOs also can get a lot done with Deming. So, whether you're charismatic or not doesn't really matter. And, the thing is you can get insight about that in a day, and I'm not talking about spend a year to really dig into Deming. No, no. Give us a day at a seminar to get your feet wet, so you can go back and do some things in your organization. As an executive, you get to make some of those choices. A day is gonna pass whether you learn about Deming or not. A week's gonna pass. A year's gonna pass whether you learn anything about Deming or not. And as we interview CEOs say, "I wish I had done this years ago. I wish I had done this years ago."   0:53:48.9 AS: There's also documentation of what you were saying, Andrew. A university study that a couple of universities collaborated on over the course of 30 years, several studies that show that the results of adopting a new philosophy, the Deming approach, has incredible results. So, these are organizations that are long-lived, first of all, makes them very special, because organizations don't last that long these days. So, this is looking at organizations over 30 years who grew prosperous. They had a whole host of criteria that were needed, that they looked at, whether it's turnover rates, and pay rates, and all kinds of things. And in business, if something... If a way of leading or managing gets a 55% correlation to good results, that's pretty darn good, right? That's really very good. That's worth spending some money on, because most don't get anywhere near that. Right? Their research, if people wanna reach out it's a work that Cassandra Elrod and some of her colleagues did at the university, shows in some cases almost a 90% correlation. Unheard of. So, if you're doing things that work about 55% of the time but you're up against the Deming company that's doing things that are getting results 90% of the time. Do the math. Do the math. It's pretty easy.   0:55:35.3 AS: Right. Interesting. Well, let's get that... We'll get that link to that and put it into the show notes. So people can go in and...   0:55:40.4 KA: Yeah, I'll give it to you.   0:55:42.4 AS: I think that's a good one. In the spirit of wrapping up now, what I wanna do is ask you this question. Why Deming? Why now?   0:55:56.5 KA: Well, I think for all the things that I said, but if it's not fun, it's not done. I want to have fun. I mean, most of us want to. Not that we aren't serious about work. That's not what I'm saying, but Deming talked about it as joy in work. It is to create meaning, right? Viktor Frankl's book, "Man's Search For Meaning." It is very meaningful. At the end of the day, you don't leave work feeling like you have to go home and take a shower to wash off the toxicity. You walk out of your job knowing that your best efforts made a difference because you were working with profound knowledge. You are working with people who want to collaborate, want to figure stuff out. So, at a more... The name of Deming's second big book on leadership is "The New Economics." So, it's also about the money and the money being used to create more jobs because... And a friend of his, Peter Drucker, also an economist, recognized as many other have, of course, recognize that democracy rests in part on good jobs. Social unrest and a lot of bad things come from not having good jobs. So, at the end of the Deming chain reaction, it's being able to grow and create job, as he said create jobs, jobs and more good jobs.   0:57:35.1 AS: Beautiful. Now...   0:57:36.4 KA: It makes a...   0:57:38.3 AS: Yeah, it's a great one. And for the listeners out there and the viewers, are you bringing joy to work? Are you helping that process? Or are you causing competition at work? Think about it honestly, and start to work on bringing more joy to work. Kelly, as we wrap up, I wanna ask you a final question about your involvement with the Deming Institute. I think it's important for people to understand what's going on at the Deming Institute? And how people can understand what's going on the Deming institute, what's the direction? And also how can they support the Deming Institute in any way possible?   0:58:21.6 KA: Well, there's a lot more going on at Deming Institute than I can certainly elaborate on because it's a very robust organization these days. And the Institute attracts people who also wanna make a difference, because of the nature of their aim and Deming's principles. So, and the fact that I think it happens to be a non-profit is also a useful thing. So, it's a goodwill, right? It's about really affecting change for the better. And that's... I volunteer as do many, many people volunteer, including the executive director volunteer, Dr. Deming's grandson, volunteer time. He volunteers full-time. I would say the way to get involved is to start on a Deming journey. Deming talked about the transformation in two ways. One was it starts with the individual. Know thyself. Read Deming and think about yourself. Feel about yourself, and what is authentic about you, and how that matches Deming. But he also says that the change of recognizing improvement in quality starts in the boardroom. So, it's a combination, but you don't have to be the leader to affect change, right? And certainly for yourself as well. It applies to families, certainly also. And then once you start on that Deming journey, reach out because we'd love to hear from you and try to engage. We try to engage people, and the Institute offers some scholarships to some of the seminars for folks. It's pretty cool.   1:00:20.7 AS: Yeah, so just go to the... Just type in Deming Institute right now on your browser and you'll go straight there.   1:00:28.5 KA: Or even deming.org. It's easy for me to read. D-E-M-I... Yeah.   1:00:35.0 AS: Thinking about reaching out, I originally met you in 2014 when I saw that Deming Institute was offering a seminar in Hong Kong. And not only did I reach out and go to the event, but I also kept in touch. And you're a testament to the willingness of people within the community to help each other. And so, I really encourage everybody to reach out to Deming Institute and also Kelly and others there. So, Kelly, on behalf of everyone at the Deming Institute and in the Deming community, I want to thank you again for coming on this show. Do you have any parting words for the audience?   1:01:15.5 KA: My pleasure. Start now. Start now. It's so much fun. It's so interesting.   1:01:23.5 AS: It's an endless journey. And that concludes another great story from the worldwide Deming community. Remember to go to deming.org to continue your journey. This is your host, Andrew Stotz, and I will leave you with one of my favorite Dr. Deming quotes. "Innovation comes from people who take joy in their work."

Kevin Cahill, President and Executive Director of the Deming Institute, reflects on growing up with Dr. Deming, learning about his grandfather's impact on the world, and his own Deming journey. Kevin also describes The Deming Institute's origins, the DemingNEXT initiative, and using Deming in the real world. SHOW NOTES Books mentionedThe New Economics and Out of the Crisis, both by Dr. Deming (available via www.deming.org) Transform Your Business with Dr.Deming's 14 Points, by Andrew Stotz 0:00:36 Growing up in the Deming family 0:04:29 Watching If Japan Can, Why Can't We? with my grandfather 09:07 Kevin's own Deming journey 14:21 The origins of The Deming Institute 21:35 Why Deming, why now   39:14 Introducing DemingNEXT 46:06 Andrew's Deming journey 53:34 Deming in the real world TRANSCRIPTDownload: Transcript of Kevin Cahill's Podcast 4-22-22 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 here with featured guest, Kevin Cahill. Kevin, are you ready to share your Deming journey? Kevin Cahill: Absolutely, Andrew. Excited to be here, looking forward to it. AS: Yeah. Well, I think we gotta kick this off by introducing you. Tell us what is your connection to Dr. W. Edwards Deming. KC: Well, I'm very fortunate to be his grandson, and also very fortunate that as I grew up in the Washington DC area, I got to spend a tremendous amount of time with my grandparents, my grandfather, Dr. Deming, and his wife, Lola Deming, who also assisted him in his work for many, many years, and got to know them growing up. And so, it was absolutely fascinating to see this man that I knew as a kindly, gentle, soft-spoken man who worked out of the small basement of his house in Washington DC, not in a big office, this little, tiny basement that used to flood in the rainy season and was just very, very small. And I always wondered what he did because everything that I saw was just figures and numbers and all this stuff, and he never talked about work. When we were together with him on Thanksgivings and Christmases, he was always talking about family and what it was like with my mother and her sisters growing up. So, a very different perspective of who this man was. That all changed at one point in my life but growing up, it was a very different kind of relationship. AS: You know, my first connection with your grandfather was when I was like 24, and I was just in awe, but I was also in terror because I watched him pretty strict, pretty tough when he was dealing with people that just had nonsense questions in some cases, or had the wrong idea, and he really needed to straighten them out in one way or another. And it's kind of surprising, but now that I think about it, in our families, we don't bring that toughness necessarily into the family. Is that the case? KC: That was the case. We never noticed that. He would sit at the dining room table, and he would just be quiet at the head of the table, and occasionally he'd pull this little notebook out and make some notes. I always wonder what he was writing. I found out later. Something came to mind, and then, occasionally, in the middle of the dinner, he would say... He would have this great story about my mother or something that he had. He would tell us growing up, and he just burst into this fantastic laughter of his, and it was so much fun. And we really didn't know what he did. We knew he traveled, and we knew that... Like I said, growing up, we would get scrap paper from his office, and it always just had sheets of numbers on the one side, and my brother and I would always joke that, man, "I'll tell you the one thing we don't wanna do in life is grow up and do what he's doing." [chuckle] AS: That's tough stuff, whatever it is he's thinking about. And I'm just curious. What was his relationship with his wife, Lola? KC: Oh, she was just this terrific lady. They met, and they actually worked together. I believe was at the Fixed Nitrogen Lab in Washington DC, and they co-wrote some papers together. She had a master's degree in mathematics at a time, early in the last century, when women just didn't have advanced degrees, and she helped him for decades with his work. And I remember seeing a lot of photos of her traveling with him to Japan and around the world. That was absolutely fascinating. She was just a brilliant woman in her own time, and with what she was able to do in terms of helping him. And she doesn't get enough credit for what she did to assist him. AS: And before we get into the Institute, I just wanna understand your own personal journey in life. You developed... You saw that stuff, and you thought, "I'm not gonna study that." But tell us just a little bit about your own personal journey in your education and in your work life. KC: Sure. So like I said, I didn't really know much about what he did. But when I was a freshman in college, my family had moved away from the DC area to Los Angeles, and I came back for the summer for a job that I had. I called my grandfather, grandmother, and said, "Hey, you have an extra little, tiny room in your house. Is there any chance I could stay there for the summer?" And they, of course, said, "Yes." So, I stayed there for the summer. And in June of 1980, my mother called me and said, "Your grandfather travels around and has been to Japan. They're doing a show on NBC on June 24th, 1980 called, 'If Japan Can, Why Can't We?' And your grandfather is gonna be mentioned in that show for some of the work he's done in Japan." You can imagine how excited. This was at a time when there were three networks, ABC, NBC, CBS. There was no cable. There was nothing. KC: And this was gonna be on prime time. And so she said, "Just make sure your grandfather watches it." And so, that night of 1980, I had to go downstairs and get him in the office and say, "We've gotta go upstairs and watch this show." And so, we all traipsed up to the third floor and sat down on his couch, and my grandfather, my grandmother, and then my grandmother's sister, who was also living at the house, we all sat down to watch the show. And a few minutes into it, you saw my grandfather who was, at the time, almost 80 years old, and he had about a 15-second part in the show, and I just remember being so excited, "Oh my god. That's you. It's so cool." KC: And then there was nothing. That was it. And for the longest time... And you could tell my grandfather was getting very fidgety. He was ready... He mentioned something... He was unhappy with a few things they were saying in the show that he thought were off-base, and he was kind of mumbling a little bit about that. And he was getting ready to leave and go back down and do some work. And then they started talking about a man who was considered the... Helped transform Japan and was considered the key person in that Japanese transformation. And at that point, I looked over to my grandfather, 'cause I hadn't said anything in about 20 minutes, and I said, "Do you know who that is?" KC: And the announcer, he said, "It's Dr. W. Edwards Deming." And it was just this disconnect. This is the man I know, who I grew up with, and the Emperor of Japan has given you credit for the Japanese economic miracle. I still get goosebumps when I think about that moment. I just could not believe it. And then we watched the rest of the show in just stunned silence. And of course, he had some comments, and at the end, they talked about the National Paper Corporation and how he had helped them, and I just remember thinking, "This is gonna change everything." KC: And you know what, Andrew? I was actually a little bit sad because I thought, "He's 80 years old, almost 80. He's probably..." People are gonna call him, but he may not work for more than another year or two. And then I can tell you, it was astounding because, like I said, his office was in the basement, and my grandmother and my great-aunt and I would stand at the top of the stairs, 'cause my grandfather used a speaker phone, and his assistant would say, "Dr. Deming, you've got Don Peterson, the chairman of Ford Motor Company, on the phone. You've got the head of Xerox on the phone." You've got the head of all these different companies, and we're hearing him talk on the speaker phone, and it was just astounding. It was an amazing, amazing period. KC: So at that point, I knew things were gonna change in my life. I just didn't know what or how or anything like that. And as I moved through college and then graduated, I was just amazed that my grandfather was continuing to work and just being quoted on news articles and everything like that, and on TV shows, just continuously. And as I got into the business world in a media business, I knew a little bit about my grandfather's philosophy, some things like how important systems are and understanding that and operational definitions. KC: And there were some of the elements of the 14 points that I understood, breaking down barriers within the organization. And so even as an assistant, what it did, my grandfather's philosophy, even though I couldn't impact anything at the top, what I was able to do within my own sphere of influence was extraordinary in terms of how it helped me move up through the organization at a much, much, much more rapid rate than I would ever have been able to do. And so... AS: And what would you say were the core... What was the core things if you say, you didn't know all of the different things that he said, but there was those core things that really stuck with you. What would you say was the one or two core things, particularly thinking about the listener or the viewer out there who's thinking, "Wow, I would like to be able to make that impact, and I'm not sure how quickly or how much time I have to learn everything." KC: That's a really interesting question. I would say one of the key things that I did was making the system visible that we were actually working in. So, we were a media company that was selling advertising time on TV stations around the country. And we had all this workflow that we had to do, and nobody was making it visible what that flow was. And I remember when I was trained, and I was started off as an assistant to an assistant, and they were training me, all the training was done by memory that somebody else did it. So, a lot of times they were teaching me things that were erroneous that I was trying to do and so, as I got into that position, I made sure that I put that process down so that when I moved up, and I could hand it off to somebody else, they could see what that process was. And some of it was visual, and some of it was work instructions. Other things were like operational definitions of... Somebody was saying, "Hey, can you get this done for me?" "Well, by when?" "By the end of the day?" "By the end of the week?" "By the end of the month? KC: So, there were a lot of little things like that that made a difference in terms of the way, I thought, that helped the other people within the organization, that really made a difference, and helped me move up very quickly within that organization. AS: And then, how did you go from your career to now, The Deming Institute? Maybe you can talk to us about that and tell us about The Deming Institute and the aims of The Deming Institute. KC: As I continued to move up and took on greater roles and responsibilities within this media organization, again, my grandfather and... I would call him and ask him questions about things that I needed help on. I remember one time, in particular, I had an assistant who could not get a particular job done, and we worked on it and worked on it, and I tried to make it visible. I tried to do different things, and I called my grandfather one day. I asked him a question, and I said... And he gave me some page numbers in one of his books to read. He didn't give me the answer; he gave me some page numbers. And it was fantastic because the way I was explaining it to her what needed to be done was the way I understood how it needed to be done and the way I learned. It was not the way she learned. And so, once we had her learn and express this in a different manner, we never had another issue with the job going forward. All this gave me the understanding after I went to one of my grandfather's seminars and continued to read the books. It gave me a sense that I could go out and start my own business. KC: And so, I did with a colleague of mine, and he and I co-founded a software company that provided the sales systems to these companies like I worked for. And without having my grandfather's knowledge, I would never even begun to start a company like that. So, a startup is at such an incredible advantage if you understand the Deming philosophy. Because at the time we started it up, there were two companies that had about 90 share of the market on two different ends of the market. But when we were doing this in 1999, the internet was just starting to hit. And there were, I remember, about 15, 20 different companies that all were trying to get into the same space. Within two years, they were all gone except for two of us. They didn't have the value of understanding what my grandfather had taught, that I had learned from him. And then my partner had in the terms of the way we ran and operated the organization. So, to fast forward, we kept the company for a while, merged it with another company, and then ended up selling it to a big publicly traded company. And in retrospect, I almost wish we hadn't. KC: But by doing that, I ended up at The Deming Institute. And then what was fascinating was I spent two years of what I call penance, staying at that company because of the contract. And Andrew, that was when I saw in just... What I experienced and what we had to put people through, because of the way they looked at things and the way they operated, was just extraordinary in terms of how much it hurt me, how much I knew it was hurting the people that worked for me in the business units that I was running. And I couldn't wait to get out of there. And when I did, I spoke to my mother, Dr. Deming's daughter, Diana Deming Cahill, who founded the Institute with her father and her sister. And I said, "This is an opportunity for me to give back what I have learned from my grandfather," to take an organization that's an all-volunteer organization, that was really focused on maintaining and gaining as many of my grandfather's assets as possible without really saying, "Well, what are we gonna do with all these things now that we have all the videos?" And they did a phenomenal job of getting the videos and articles, and all these different things in getting the organization started. And so, that was kind of the continuation of my journey, was to move into this role and to be one of the leaders in the organization in terms of helping move it forward. AS: So, let's talk about... What you've described in some ways is something that I think anybody that gets deeper into Deming realizes, is that it's really a management philosophy rather than... Like a lot of times for people that don't know much about Deming, but they've heard his name, they go, "Oh yeah, quality, statistical quality control" or something like that. And they miss the whole aspect that it is a way of thinking, it's a way of managing, it's a way of interacting with other people. Like you said, the idea of trying to put yourself in the other person's shoes to make sure... The job of the senior management is to make sure people are trained to the level that they need to be. Maybe you can just talk about the Institute, generally, and that concept of what it is. What is Dr. Deming's teachings? And what is the Institute about? KC: So the Institute, the aim of the Institute, excellent question, is "Enriching society through the understanding of the Deming philosophy." And that can take all sorts of different directions that you might be able to go in. And so what we try to do is, we look at, "Okay. Here's what the aim is; by what method can we achieve that aim? which is what my grandfather always talked about. And we also understand that people out there, like I just mentioned earlier, learn differently. Some people are auditory learners, some people are visual learners, and there's different ways of creating learning environments for people. That's one of the things that I think is great about this podcast, and I'm so thrilled that we're getting back into it and doing that 'cause many people learn by listening to podcasts like this and gain something out of it. Other people need to be in an environment where they're physically there to actually gain something. Others can do it online. Others can do it through webinars, so there's so many different things. So, I believe our responsibility is to utilize what he has given us in a manner that can reach the broadest number of people and have the greatest impact so that they have that yearning for new knowledge. And then when they have that yearning, we have a means by which that they can continue to learn, understand, and apply it. AS: Maybe you can just talk about what's going on with the Institute, but also before you do that, I think for... Not everybody can understand. What is an institute? Is it for-profit? Is it not-for-profit? Are there 100 employees? Is it a few people? Is there a board? Are they volunteers? What is the Institute? KC: Well, I can tell you. I'll talk a little bit about it, but one of the best things I would say, Andrew, is go to www.deming.org, and they can learn a little bit more. But when my grandfather and my mother formed the Institute, they decided to have it be a nonprofit. And I know there was a lot of questions about that because a for-profit organization, there's a lot of things a for-profit organization can do, but there's a lot a nonprofit can do, and I think it was important for my grandfather and my mother that this be something that is a nonprofit, a 501 [c], not-for-profit organization because it also opens a lot of doors. KC: When my colleagues and I and other board members call people, and we're calling from The Deming Institute, a lot of times they'll take that call 'cause they know we're not calling to sell them something and try to sell them a whole bunch of expensive services and things like that. We're calling to help and make a difference. And so, while sometimes there are constraints with the nonprofit that we can and can't do, as you start to look at them, you realize it also opens up a tremendous number of opportunities that we might not also have as a nonprofit. KC: So, we're a nonprofit organization. We have a board that has a number of family members on it besides my mother. My brother is on it. He's vice chairman, my mother is the chairman, and then I'm on it. And then we have several other board members who have been terrific in terms of supporting us. Paula Marshall is on there, Steven Haedrich is on there, Keith Sparkjoy is on there, Kelly Allan. So, we have this fantastic group that provides guidance for us and support for the organization and helps me... I'm also on the board and serve as the president of the board. And we just have this fantastic group. We also have just a outstanding staff right now that has helped propel this forward, whether it's the online learning that we're launching, whether it's our communication, whether it's our administration or fund development, all these different things that we have responsibilities for as a nonprofit. We've just got an unbelievable team, and they all operate virtually. We don't have a single office. We also have this advisory council. We have a Deming fellow and Dr. Ravi Roy who's out there. We have an emeritus trustee board. So, we have a lot of people that worked with my grandfather, and then a lot of others who have this just belief in this philosophy, in these principles, and they know they need to get out there, and they're helping us get it out there. AS: So, before we go on, I think it's kind of important to talk about, "Why Deming? Why Now?" And I'm curious to hear your idea about that. There's all kinds of new books out there. There's all kinds of gurus. There's all kinds of people talking about all kinds of things, "Come on, Kevin, this is old stuff. The world has moved on." Tell us, "Why Deming. Why now?" KC: Andrew, I get that all the time that... Hey, I remember hearing about this guy that helped Japan after World War II, "We're closing on past 75 years on that. Why do we need this guy now? Why do we need this philosophy now?" And what I can tell you is it has worked. Every time it is used in an organization, as they begin that journey and continue down, I never hear that it doesn't work. Now, there are some companies who've tried it, and they're already too far gone to be able to even come back from the abyss that they've already gotten in. As my grandfather put it, "the pit they've already dug themself in," and sometimes you just can't do that. KC: But when these organizations do use this, and we have so many of them that do, it is astounding how it works. And so, the books that you're talking about and all these, what we call, oftentimes, "flavors of the month" that you hear about, just wait five years and see, does anybody really using them anymore, or have they moved on to the next flavor of the month and the next flavor of the month? You go back 20 years and look, a lot of those things are gone, or they've morphed into something completely different where they may have kept the name, and now they've kind of combined a few things to try to keep it going. But the one constant is Deming works and works, and the research shows that it makes a difference. And to me, in this world right now, where we are seeing all these issues with supply, with polarization, with the need to break down barriers, whether it's between countries or within different organizations, there is an answer. Deming, my grandfather, provided that answer, and he showed that pathway. How do you do it, and then how do you get to that next step that, all of a sudden, leads to resolution of these issues that we're facing right now? AS: Yeah, it's a great point, and there's so much there... KC: What do you think? AS: Yeah, it's interesting 'cause I was thinking... The question that we often get, I often get too, I'm sure you get it, it's like, "Well, why isn't this everywhere? Why isn't his teachings everywhere?" And I was thinking about it, and my answer to that is, one of the most powerful things in this world is probably meditation. If you could meditate properly for 30 minutes a day, it would probably calm your mind, and it would make the world a better place and all that. But how many people actually do it? Very few. And I would say that my answer to that is that what Dr. Deming talked about was a transformation. And how many people are ready to make a transformation in their life? It's easier to pick up the flavor of the month and say, "Oh, let's do that, and let's do that," But what he's talking about is moving to a whole other level of starting to think of things as a system. And you and I have talked about caring for the elderly folks in our lives. And nowadays, doctors get more and more specialized, and they can't see the bigger picture. And everything operates in a system, and it's difficult to think in that way. AS: And so, part of what I feel like is that what he's challenging, the challenge that he has put before us, is to start to transform our thinking, to understand statistics, to understand systems, to understand how to acquire knowledge, and to bring this together into something that can really make a difference. And that's not easy. That's a journey. KC: No, it's not easy, and I think you hit it right on the head, Andrew. And I think part of the challenge is, if you're leading an organization, and you came out of, whether it's business school or you moved up through a certain way, well you are leading that organization because you learned how to do it a certain way. Well now, all of a sudden, your organization is having trouble. Because I can tell you right now, and I think it was a Rob Rodin, who worked with my grandfather, said this, "Somebody right now around the corner, around the world, believes they can do what you're doing better, cheaper, and faster than you." KC: And they're just looking at you as an opportunity because you can't innovate as fast anymore. You can't do this as much. I can build a better this, better mouse trap, and all that type of stuff. But the challenge is, is that you've now... If you're leading that organization, you've gotten there. You have gotten to this point by doing it a certain way. Well now, all of a sudden, you're being asked to learn to do something differently, and I think that was... One of the big challenges my grandfather had was that in... When that program aired on June 24th, 1980, there were companies who were in crisis. Don Peterson, who was the Chairman and CEO of Ford when I met with him, when he spoke at one of our conferences at University of Michigan, and he said... KC: One of the things he said to me was, he said, "We were two billion dollars in debt, and we were close to going under, and two years before," I believe it was two years before, "I was named 'CEO of the Year' in the U.S." And he said, "But even for me," he said, "It was so hard for us to change because we'd always done it this way. We always had these already systems in place, and now you're asking us to do these different things." And so, I think sometimes it gets rejected. The other thing that I would say, Andrew, is in 1980, while these companies did Deming at that point, they were in a crisis. And oftentimes, it's not until you're in the crisis that you end up saying, "Hey, I need to do something." And you can listen to podcasts by Paula Marshall and Steven Haedrich, who are on our board, where they were in deep crisis when they came to Deming and now, all of a sudden, they're huge advocates 'cause it not only pulled them out, but it made their organization successful. So oftentimes, it takes a crisis to have people say, "Hey, it's worth looking at something else." AS: It reminds me of one of his quotes, "Learning is not compulsory, neither is survival." And I was thinking, when you were talking about, "Hey, your competitors are learning this," think about the transformation. When we were young, if you saw "Made in Japan" on a product, it meant low quality. And there was a transformation that happened and, all of a sudden, Japan became high quality. Now, think about China. Everything that most people have seen in the, let's say, past 20, 30 years, China, "made in China," was low quality. But they are moving up the quality ladder so fast. And I would argue that, in fact, they haven't really even gotten to some of the Deming teachings of taking that to a real transformation where you start to really bring the quality into the brands and all of that. And there is a possibility that China could go through that transformation, or at least some Chinese companies, just like the Japanese companies did. And then, "ho-hum," I'm sitting in middle America, and I'm realizing, "Whoa, wait a minute. They're transforming. What about me?" And I think that that's a lesson that you're talking about, too, is this idea that, "If you don't wanna learn, other people are learning around you, and by implementing this, you can protect yourself." KC: You make a really good point. That's a very salient point. That's really key that if things are going well for you... And a lot of companies we're looking at before, for example, COVID hit, everything was going well. They weren't planning on a COVID hitting. They weren't... Supply chain was not an issue, and now, all of a sudden, people are having to rethink how they run and operate their business. And I'll tell you, it's fascinating, my colleague, Kelly Allan, and I have... A matter of fact, you went through one of the seminars that he put on, I believe, in Hong Kong if I remember correctly. And when he and I were traveling through the Asia-Pacific region, Singapore area, and we were going to a lot of different companies, one of the questions we would ask... And it happened to me when I started my business, my start-up, and we were struggling for a while, and we sat down at the table one day, there were only about 12 employees in the company, and we were really having a hard time. And we sat down and we talked about, "Does everybody understand what the aim of the business is?" And of course, they knew that... We had put some Deming ideas, and we were using Deming in there, they were like, "Oh yeah, yeah, we know that, Kevin. That's really important that we all know the aim of the business." KC: So, we all wrote down the aim of the business. Well, guess what? All 12 people, including myself, wrote down different aims. So, we were working hard and giving our best efforts towards different aims. Can you imagine how much money, time, energy, and effort were being wasted because, Andrew, you were working for... You thought the aim was this, Kevin thought it was this, somebody else thought it was this. We saw the same thing in these companies as we traveled all around the country and around the world, and we would ask them, "What is the aim?" And these people, it wasn't from lack of... They were all working hard and giving their best efforts, but they all had a different understanding of the aim. Can you imagine how much more efficient and effective you'd be if everybody understood what the aim was? Just that alone... We have never once... Kelly and I together, going into different organizations and talking, never once have we seen one, unless they were a Deming organization, where everybody in that room understood what the aim was, had the same understanding of what the aim was, put it that way. AS: They all had an aim. KC: They all had an aim. Somebody thought it was making money, somebody thought it was selling more products, somebody thought it was... So... AS: It reminds me of this... After many years of myself in the financial world, and I'm advising companies, and I'm... And I had these two clients and... Individually, the CEOs were fascinating and smart and all that. And individually, each member of the team, from both of these companies of the management team, were highly qualified, very experienced in their areas. And one of those companies was doing really well, and the other was doing really poorly. And I just remember thinking about that, and I thought to myself, "Number one, success is, you gotta have the right CEO." And the right CEO or the right leader, let's say, has gotta set the right direction. But more importantly, that's not enough. You can have a great guy, a man or a woman that's great, and they've set the direction. But if you let people fight against each other, you're never gonna get there, so it's that coordination amongst the management teams that's like, that's the magic. And you can't get coordination if everybody doesn't know what's the aim that we're working towards, so that coordination is kind of the systems-thinking aspect of Dr. Deming that I learned. Let's talk about the aim of the podcast. Here we are, and I'm just curious, what are your thoughts on where this podcast goes and what's the purpose? KC: So what I see, the aim of the podcast is also tied into what listeners can expect, and that aim... What I see as the aim of the podcast is raising awareness and understanding of the Deming philosophies and teachings by presenting stories, sharing knowledge of the Deming philosophy, in a variety of different voices and from a variety of different types of organizations. And I think we look to do this by providing real-world examples of what makes Deming such a ground-breaking, unique, and unrivaled successful approach, which we just talked about a little while ago. I think we... We're also going to... And you and I've talked about this, is explore why is Deming different and so much more valuable than the wide variety of improvements and improvement programs and flavor-of-the-months out there? And I think with this podcast, it's really valuable for us to explore the Deming advantage in all of those type of organizations, how it's been implemented in different types of industries and businesses. Because one of the things, Andrew, and you and I have spoken about this before, is a lot of people think, "Well, I'm not gonna do Deming. That's manufacturing. When your grandfather was alive, he focused on manufacturing. It was Ford, it was General Motors, it was Xerox, it was... And all manufacturing companies, and if he wanted it for more than manufacturing, why didn't he spend time?" KC: Well, the thing I would say on that is, that's where the greatest need was at that time, was in the manufacturing. But he spent time; he knew it was important to have this in education, in nonprofit, in government. He started to work, towards the latter part of his life, with Congress several times, trying to get them, as you can imagine how polarized they are, they all wanna help the country, but they all see, "We gotta do it this way or this way. And it's my way or the highway." How do you get to work together, think together, learn together, act together? And so, for us, if we wanna explore that, how it's been implemented in different types of organizations and businesses and industries, and what that transformation is like for these individuals, what challenge... Because it's not all a piece of cake, as you know. What "aha moments" did they have? What challenges were along the ways? Impacts and benefits? And then, talk to people at different stages of their Deming journey. KC: We've got a couple of people that you and I've talked about that are on... That have been doing this... Like Paula Marshall who is the CEO of Bama Companies. She worked with my grandfather. I think she is the only one who not only worked with my grandfather, but has been the CEO all the way through to this day and is still implementing it within her organization. And so, I think the last thing I'd say is we believe that by providing people information and inspiration, they're gonna yearn to learn more, and they're gonna wanna delve deeper into Deming and hopefully apply it in their lives and organizations. And what could be better? AS: Yeah, yeah. And I just wanna highlight that one word. One of the first words that you said is "stories," and this is a great podcast or a great platform for telling stories. We're not gonna go into super technical details about things. We've got great resources, we've got great books, we've got all that stuff. But the stories, and importantly, as you just said, to chronicle the stories of the people who knew Dr. Deming at the time while we have that opportunity, but also all the other people that are going through... And I think the other word that I like is the "journey" and the "transformation," and highlighting that journey and transformation. That's very exciting. So, how do people get the podcast? KC: So, there's a couple of different ways that you can get the podcast going forward. For those of you.. There's many of you that have listened to the podcast in the past. We've had almost 1.6 million podcast... What would you call it downloads or listens? AS: Yeah, downloads. KC: And so, what we're gonna do is we're still gonna make that available just like we always have. But in one of our newer programs, which is called DemingNEXT that we're just launching right now, that program is a subscription program, DemingNEXT. We're gonna put the podcast in there with the video that you and I are talking right now, through Zoom that we're using, so that it will be in there with the video, audio, and then the transcript. And then our producer on the programs, in DemingNEXT, is also putting it in a different format so that you're not just watching a video with the words right next to it, it's in a very, very nice format. I think you saw a sample of that that I sent you the other day, and it's gonna be really cool how it's gonna be accessible through that mechanism so that within that subscription service, you'll be able to see it. But for those who aren't in the subscription, they'll still be able to hear it, just like they always have. AS: So, if somebody is listening to it, let's say they've never really heard that much about Dr. Deming, they're listening and thinking, "This is good stuff. I like what I'm hearing on the podcast." Where do you want them to go so that they get that? Is it... Tell us the website and tell us where they should start. KC: So, what I would suggest is you go to www.deming.org. And then from there, depending upon what you're looking to do, as an individual or with your organization, you're going to see that we have this online program, DemingNEXT, that we're just launching. We have workshops, in-person that we're gonna hopefully going back to soon, seminars in-person. We also have virtual workshops, webinars, some conferences coming up. So, there's a whole different, wide variety of ways that you can learn. But I think one of... The big thing that I would say is the launch of our DemingNEXT program which is an online learning program. It's a blended learning program where we're building in all sorts of webinars into it as a part of it. So, it's not just online. KC: That opens us up to a whole different world that, as you know. You attended a seminar in person in Hong Kong, and I wanted to talk about that in a few minutes, but I don't know how many people were there, maybe 40, 50, 60, whatever that is. It's not 400, 800, 600, that we need to get that pivotal number of people that are learning this stuff, understanding, and applying it. So, the DemingNEXT online is a mechanism for us to be able to do that around the clock, around the world, at any time, with organizations of different sizes where they can use these in their own learning management systems. They can use it in our learning management system. They can use it in working with their consultants who they're... Who are advising. There's all sorts of different ways to do that. AS: So, if someone is listening and think, "My goodness, I need my management team to get, to understand, some of these things," they can use the resources that DemingNEXT, just directly and say, "Hey, you guys, I want you to... Everybody to listen to this particular module," or that type of thing. Or if there's a consultant out there that's helping people implement, they could say, "Wow, why don't I use that as a tool within my toolbox?" So, it sounds like... It's really gonna be something that can be implemented across a company without having to go to a seminar if they can't or whatever. KC: You hit it right on the head because what we have is that... We'll oftentimes have CEOs and executives come with their management teams to a workshop or seminar like the one you went to. Well, then they come to us afterwards and say, "This is fantastic. We're gonna start to implement it, but I've got another 200 people in my company. I don't have the ability to send them to the seminar, or have you bring the seminar to us." Some companies are doing that, but others are saying, "We don't have the ability to do that, yet I want everybody within the organization to have an understanding of the common language, what we're talking about when we talk about a special cause, a common cause, an operational definition, system, system of profound knowledge, understanding variation theory of... Just a basic understanding." KC: And so, that was one of the things that pushed us to develop this DemingNEXT is, to not only have it available for leadership and management, but for all levels of the organization to be able to understand, learn, and apply it, and not to push back. Because that was one of the things, again, going back to Don Peterson and Ford was, even though they sent hundreds of people every month, sometimes thousands, he had 150,000 people around the world, they couldn't send everybody through. And the people that didn't go through were the ones that were a challenge. Not because they wanted to be a problem, but because they didn't understand what was being talked about when management was saying, "Hey, we need to look at our suppliers differently." KC: Well, no, that's not how we do it. And so, it's hard. You know what it's like. When you push against somebody, they push back. They always do. So, what you need to do is provide them a level of understanding, and then it's accepted, and then they're not pushing back and fighting you. They're actually embracing it. And so, that's one of the advantages of using this approach, is that it can be blended learning. It can be done at your own and, like you said, with consultants. We already have a number of consultants that have their own specific external portal tied into our DemingNEXT where they're working with clients in a completely different environment to help support what they're already teaching them. AS: It's exciting. That's a whole other level. When you think about my own Deming journey, I think about, there was limited resources. There are some books, and I found what I could find and that type of thing, but you kinda had to piece it together. And so, I think I'm really excited, and I feel like the journey going forward, it's so important to get this message out. But the ability to get it out now is really there, and so I would say that's really accomplishing the main aim of the Institute. KC: You're right, and for those who are listening who know about it, a lot of my grandfather's videos, writings, case studies, articles, things like that that he did, they're also in there. But we've spent a lot of time using subject matter experts, some of whom worked directly with my grandfather, to help us develop specific courses that are tied into the way adults learn. Adults, a lot of times, don't wanna sit and watch my grandfather go through the red bead experiment for an hour and the lessons of the red beads on a video recording that is 40 years old. The audio is not that great, the video is not that great, but you know what's interesting, Andrew, what we have found is once they go through some of the developed courses that we've worked on, then all of a sudden they wanna learn more. They then go and watch it. They'll spend the hour watching my grandfather do the red beads and lessons of the red beads or talk about the 14 points in these long-form video formats that were acceptable back in the '80s and early '90s. But we need to get them there to be able to say, "I wanna learn and go ahead and do this." AS: Yeah, it's... The method of learning has changed so much. But it's so fun to watch those old videos 'cause you see his reactions, and you see the way he's berating people and making... He was also a very funny guy at times. He would really have some great cracks. [chuckle] KC: Yeah. He really did. Let me ask you a question if you don't mind. How did you come to know about my grandfather, and what was kind of your Deming journey? You and I came across each other years and years ago, but I'd love for the audience to also hear that. AS: So, I was a young guy, studying finance at Cal State Long Beach in Los Angeles, and I got a job at Pepsi in operations in Los Angeles. And Pepsi was also kind enough to pay for my MBA if I got good grades, and I did. And basically, I worked in operations, and I just saw all of these troubles. Now, I happened to be... It was 1989 when I went to work for Pepsi. And I had learned how to use a computer so I could make charts and graphs, and I started charting stuff and putting stuff up on the walls. And I had this habit I've had all my life, is I just chart performance of different people and put it up there, and then I don't say anything about it. And then, I just let people go and look at it, and then they start asking questions. And then you start getting information from that, and so that was kind of where I... And then there was a manager at Pepsi, he's like, "Oh, you're really into statistics." I wasn't necessarily into statistics, but he thought I was, and he said, "You ought to go to listen to this guy." AS: And so, Pepsi flew me in 1990, in October of 1990, to George Washington University and to take the instituting Dr. Deming's methods for management of productivity and quality. And I got 1.44 continuing education credits for it. But I remember... KC: Wow, you got some CEUs. AS: Yeah, I remember going to this event. It was a huge room. I was 23, maybe 24. I was a young guy, all the older people in there. And I just thought, the only thing I'm gonna do is, I'm just gonna go to the front row. And I just sat in the front row listening, and it just... Everything was blowing my mind. I had been working for a year or so in Pepsi, and I'd seen all of the problems we had in the factory, and then here was the solution. And so, I really caught on to that, and I went back and I started to try to implement that. And then, I started to realize what he was talking about. Change has to happen from the top because a young guy trying to make an impact, you can do something, but you can't make a huge impact. And that was kind of my first beginning. And then I got Dr. Deming's book, "Out of the Crisis." I still have the one he signed at that time, and I got a great picture of me with him at that time. AS: And then I went back, and my roommate, Dale, and I used to read chapters and discuss them in my apartment, in our apartment where we lived in L.A. And then another time in 1992, he had a seminar done by quality... What was it called? A quality enhancement seminar. Yes, that was 1992. And so, I got a double dose, and I listened to him and was blown away. I just kept learning. And then I eventually moved to Thailand, and I was a young guy teaching finance, and I went to work in finance. But the point was, my best friend, that he and I were reading those chapters of Dr. Deming's teaching. Dale came, and we set up a company called CoffeeWORKS here in Thailand, and we just really wanted to implement Dr. Deming's teaching. We weren't fanatical about control charts or anything like that. We were operating in pretty much chaos here on the outskirts of Bangkok, but we definitely tried to implement ideas like systems thinking and treating people with respect and dignity and trying to get out fear in the workforce. That's a little bit of my journey. KC: So, how is the company doing? AS: Well, we've survived, and we've survived COVID, that's for sure. And basically, we've been in operation about 28 years. And so, we have about roughly 100 employees, and we're growing, and we're profitable, and we've learned a lot. I would say that also operating in a foreign country has always been a challenge. But I would say we're doing okay, and our objective is to try to make sure that we are making an environment where employees really enjoy their work and feel trust and feel cooperation in particular. KC: And with you saying that, we're hearing in the States, and you're experiencing it, how many... So many companies seem to take it for granted that, hey, the employees are gonna stay because this is really their only job opportunity here, and that has been just spun completely out of control with the advent of COVID. And now, all of a sudden, people are saying, "Wait a second. I wanna be at a company where I feel I can make a difference, and I enjoy being there because I've now realized that life can be pretty darn short, and I need to have, as my grandfather always talked about, joy in work." And we would talk to executives in organizations in years past, a lot of times, we would never bring up joy in work because they didn't see it that way. It was just "grind it out," have these people just work. And now, all of a sudden, there's this realization how important that is, and I think that's another... Once you implement that Deming philosophy, it has an enormous impact on employee retention, on joy in work which is keeping people there, that they wanna stay. They wanna be a part of something where they enjoy being there, and I think that's just one more reason why the Deming philosophy, we talked about it earlier, is still even relevant today, and more so than ever. AS: And that's part of driving out fear, is making a trusting place and Dale's... Now, it's interesting situation in my case. I never worked as an employee in my own company. Dale is the managing director, and we own it equally. But we decided in Thailand, it would be better if I focus my efforts on building my career in the world of finance. AS: Now, this is where I think my experience with Dr. Deming becomes interesting. The first part is that I felt like I really wanted my employees in the coffee business to understand it, and that's the reason why I started taking notes about the 14 points and thinking about how would I explain this. The way he talked, I don't think it's gonna translate very well into Thai language and for Thai people. How do I simplify that? And that's when I started writing the book, "Transform Your Business with Doctor Deming's 14 Points," and ultimately translated it into a Thai language so that the employees would be able to get some access to this and understand it, and that was my only real goal. I did put it up on Amazon. But the main thing was how do I bring this teaching to these people who really didn't know anything about it? KC: Oh, that's interesting, I didn't know that was really the basis for the book. I know there's some companies that we've mentioned already today who actually have purchased your book and use it as kind of a book club type thing that they do with their team members as they go through the one that you wrote. So, that's pretty interesting. I didn't realize that about... With you about the 14 points. AS: Now, the other angle that I think it's been interesting because one of the things that Dr. Deming talked about was the idea of "don't be focused on quarterly results," but isn't that the whole financial world? KC: Well, it's funny 'cause I was just about to ask you. With all your focus on finance and understanding it, you've gotta run up that... Even if you're not a publicly traded company, we talk to organizations that are always focused on that. One of the suppliers that we work with at the Deming Institute, we literally left them about six months ago because you could always tell it was it... I'd always look, and I'd go, I'd start getting the phone call going, and if I hadn't thought about it, it's gotta be the end of the quarter 'cause, man, they're just trying to sell me something now. And they were always trying to gain their numbers, do something by the end of the quarter. And I said, "You know what, I'll let you watch it, as my guest, go through some of the DemingNEXT stuff because as long as your management will do it because you have no idea the impact you're having," and we left them because... KC: And we ended up going with a different vendor because we could see this happening, and it was getting worse and worse. And we were told there was a new CFO that had come in. There was a real focus on, "we've got to get the numbers up." And so, what they ended up doing was cutting customer support because that was an easy one. People like us already had a contract with them for a certain amount of time, and they figured they might be able to get us to renew it. But the impact... Stop. I can keep going on and on. AS: Well, maybe I'll just explain it. I grew up as an analyst in the stock market in Thailand, and I was eventually voted the number one analyst in Thailand. And I was the head of the CFA Society for Chartered Financial Analysts which was an honor of a lifetime. And I had seen, maybe... I've met with maybe a thousand fund managers, and I've taken them to meet with a thousand CEOs. And a CEO asked me, "What would be your advice from everything you learned?" And I just said, "Never listen to analysts. They don't know about your business. They don't know how to run your business, and you have to be very careful. All they wanna do is set a fire of quarterly earnings." Which brings me to, having taught finance all my career, when I walk into a finance class nowadays, I tell the students, the first thing I tell them is, "Finance adds no value." And that puts their head in a spin, particularly, 'cause they're studying that topic, and I said, "What adds value?" AS: And we have a long discussion about what adds value in a business, and I say, "Ultimately it's the products and the service, and finance is a support function just as human resources. And the purpose of finance is to operate as a mirror to reflect management's decisions to help us see the consequences, short term and long-term, of management decisions. And it's when finance starts being the head of the business that you get into trouble." Never make, as I say, "Never make the right finance decision over the right business decision." AS: Always make the right business decision over the right finance decision. So, I've come at finance from a very, very different perspective, and that's allowed me also to help my clients improve their profitability and help them really think about profit very differently than a lot. And that's where I think the combination of my experience with Dr. Deming, as well as my finances, bring me to a place that I really enjoy talking about the finances of a business. KC: Yeah, and I think what you said is really important because if the focus of the company is on... is solely on making a profit, they may make a profit to the detriment of the organization that eventually puts it out of business. I always loved what, I think it was Isaacson's book on Steve Jobs, where he was talking to Jobs about what was really the... I don't think they use the word aim, but what was the aim of the organization? And it wasn't to make money. Apple wasn't there to make money. It was to make insanely great products that help people. And then, the money was a byproduct of it. They sure did well taking that approach. Now, you look at somebody like Enron, for those of you that remember Enron. Well, their goal was to make money. Well, that didn't work out so well. And you can see that the finance, like you said, if that's where it becomes the focus on is how do we just make money, and every decision is based on making money, eventually that is going to bite you big time. And the companies that focus on that are usually gone at some point within a certain amount of time. AS: Yeah, and that's one of the reasons why I feel like Deming is such a critical tool, or critical knowledge, that people need to have now because we're slipping into an era of data. And we are very fast, quickly slipping into this era where a young person graduating from university today may think that their job is setting key performance indicators and tracking them, and you can almost imagine the ideal job... I have a cartoonish picture in my head of a young manager these days with a bunch of screens in front of them and KPIs going. And then they've got this button that sends an electrical shock to the employee who's not hitting their KPIs, and then that's it. There's business and there's management, and I fear that a lot people are feeling like being tough on KPIs is what good management is, and they're lost on that. KC: Well, and I can say if they come in and start to learn Deming, whether it's using DemingNEXT, whether it's using other resources or videos or books or things like that that we have, if their focus is on solely on KPIs, I encourage you. Come in and read and go through and learn some of this, whatever the best way for you to learn is, because it will open up a completely new world in terms of understanding what the impact of those on the organization. KC: And it's usually a detrimental impact. And what the potential is by looking at things a little bit differently, or a lot differently, depending upon where you are, but you're right. There's so much stuff, and you hear about big data all the time, and we've all seen so much. So many journalists, and I always feel bad for them because they're looking at these data figures, whether it was COVID or other different things, and they make interpretations that are oftentimes erroneous. And we see it all the time. Andrew, it must drive you crazy when you see, "Well, the stock market was down yesterday, it must mean this is happening." Two days later, "Well, the stock market is up because this is happening." Talk about not understanding variation and special and common cause and reacting to a common cause as a special cause. It's unbelievable. But once you understand it, you start to see things, and it opens up a completely different world for you. AS: And one part of my business is managing people's money. And for that part of my business and investing, it's so critical what I learned from Dr. Deming about that they're ultimately... What I say is that we can understand the variation and the randomness of a flip of a coin or at the roulette wheel. We understand these core principles of randomness and variation, but we then kind of abandon all that when we go into life, and we don't... We miss that there's this subtle thing happening below the scenes and the outcomes of things that we're seeing. There is a portion of those outcomes being driven by randomness and variation. And if we don't have awareness of that, we will get misled, and it will happen all the time to amateurs in the stock market that will assign special causes to different things. And they get all excited about things, and they miss the whole randomness and variation. And that is a carryover from the world of what Dr. Deming taught in statistics into the world of the markets and investing. KC: Yeah, it's a big problem. I talk to people all the time. And that treating a special cause as a common, you know, common variation as special variation, and vice versa, ends up being huge. And the thing is, we already know it in our lives. We know to get to the grocery store is gonna take us between 9 1/2 minutes and 11 minutes, and the average is, whatever, 10 minutes. But we know we're never gonna arrive there exactly at 10 minutes. We know. And when you ask people, "Why is it?" Well, because there's variation in there. It's 9 1/2 to 11 minutes to get there. Yet they go in their companies and they teach. They, all of a sudden say, "Well, I got there in 9 1/2. Oh my gosh. I got there really quickly." That's great. Okay. Well then, the next time when you get there at 10 1/2, "What did I do wrong?" And they try to fix that instead of understanding that, "Well, wait a second. I know how this works when I go to the store. Why do I not apply the same concepts when I'm in the business?" AS: And every now and then, they come home, and they say, "It took me two hours to go to the store." Oh, what happened?" "Well, I had a flat tire, or there was a fire, and there was a..." And all of a sudden, you start to understand special causes. Now, I think I would like to wrap it up at this point and ask you, do you have any parting words for the audience? What would you like the audience to understand about what's going on at the Institute? What's going on with the podcast? Let's leave them with something exciting. KC: Well, I don't know how exciting this is, but one of the questions that I get right now, Andrew, is what would your grandfather say about DemingNEXT? Because it's completely different. It's not always using just him because there's people out there that tell me, "Unless you're using Deming's exact words, then it's wrong." And I'm like, "No, no." My grandfather, when I look through his books, quoted people all over the place, whether it was Don Wheeler, whether it was Ed Baker, Joyce Orsini, he was always learning. Bill Scherkenbach. He was learning from everybody. KC: And I would say the one question I get a lot now is, what would your grandfather think about DemingNEXT? And I gotta tell you, I believe he would be absolutely thrilled because he would see that as another means, another way that we have done a PDSA Plan-Do-Study-Act where we have tried to improve the means for us to get his message out to a broader audience. And I think he would be absolutely thrilled with what we've done, how we're doing it, why we're doing it. And I believe he would be very excited about what that impact is to get that message out. Because I know when he departed from this earth, I think the thing that probably bothered him the most was he didn't have more time to get his message out. He knew that he was running out of time as he got older, and he formed this organization to get that message out. And I think that, to me, is an important thing, is by what method are we getting this message out that will accommodate the needs of how people learn, understand, interact within their own organizations? AS: Well, ladies and gentlemen, you've heard it from the man who probably is the closest to understanding the ultimate aims of Dr. Deming. Kevin, I wanna thank you for this great time together and sharing your personal experiences, as well as divisions, and the opportunities that I see at the Institute and what you're doing. That concludes another great story from the worldwide Deming community. Remember to go to deming.org, as Kevin has told us, to continue your journey. This is your host, Andrew Stotz, and I will leave you with one of my favorite quotes from Dr. Deming, "People are entitled to joy in work."

In our 6th Interview episode, Plant Manager Dan Vermeesch and Quality Manager Brain Hoff discuss their Deming Journey. Topics include a discussion on variation and getting the Deming Philosophy into the education. Show Notes [00:00:12] Deming Institute Podcast Interview [00:00:35] Micron Manufacturing [00:00:50] History of Micron Manufacturing [00:01:10] Dan Vermeesch [00:01:51] Brian Hoff [00:04:35] Dr. Deming at Micron [00:05:18] Variation [00:07:07] Eliminating Performance Reviews at Micron [00:11:07] Struggles of Working with the Deming Philosophy [00:14:39] Micron Gives Advice on Adopting the Deming Philosophy [00:23:46] Shingo Silver Medallion [00:24:39] Variation a Key to Micron Improvement [00:31:33] Deming Needed in Education     Transcript Tripp: [00:00:12] In this Deming Institute interview, I speak with Dan Vermeesch and Brian Hoff of Μ Manufacturing in Grand Rapids, Michigan. We discuss the history of Μicron, their improvement journey and how the Dunning philosophy is affecting this journey today.   Tripp: [00:00:35] Hi, I'm Tripp Babbitt, host of the Deming Institute podcast. Our guests today are a couple of gentlemen from Micron Manufacturing, Dan Veermsch and Bryan Hoff. Welcome, gentlemen.   Dan: [00:00:48] Hi, Tripp. Thanks for having us.   Tripp: [00:00:50] Very good. So first of all, micro manufacturing I'm not familiar with it. Won't want to share a little bit about what Micron Manufacturing does and a little bit about both your gentlemans role in Micron churn, Micron manufacturing as it was using machine products company in Grand Rapids, Michigan.   Dan: [00:01:10] It's been in business since 1952, Ed and Jackie Preston founded it back then and until just a few months ago, Jackie Preston still came in every day, five days a week. She just turned ninety one a couple of weeks ago and she hasn't been in in a few months. But she was here every day until then. And it was great because her son currently is the president at Micron. And we have a niece and nephew that work here. And the nephew has a 5 year old daughter that comes in on Saturday and plays on a computer. So one of the best parts of the story of Micron is we have four generations in this building every week.   Dan: [00:01:51] And it really is part of the story that's important because there's a lot of family focus here at Micron that that's important to us. So I am the plant manager, have been the plant managers since 97 and also the lean champion that has tried to be the architect of some of the various improvements systems that we have had since the year 2000 is when we really begin implementing our transformational change. So I'll let Brian introduce you.   Tripp: [00:02:26] Okay.   Brian: [00:02:27] I'm Brian Hoff. I'm a quality manager at Micron. This would be my twenty second year with Micron. And as Dan said, it's around 2001. We began to be to transform our journey from kind of an old school business model to trying to adapt what is the best way to make change and improvement. And it's been an amazing journey. And lately we seem to have encountered Mr. Deming once again. And I guess I'm mature enough to understand it better than I did 20 years ago. And I'm using him almost daily to try to influence the decisions I make each day.   Tripp: [00:03:13] Very good. And where are you guys located?   Dan: [00:03:17] Grand Rapids, Michigan. OK. We're on a dead end street in the northwest corner of Grand Rapids, Michigan. So that's that's always part of my favorite part of the story here is we're kind of located on the edge to nothing. And despite all that, our folks here have made so many great changes over the years that we've had thousands of people from, I think, 26 states and eight countries that have come to visit us to see the systems that have been put into place over the years. And we're only a 40 person company. Twenty eight thousand square feet. So we're just a small about on the map that that over the years have made a big ripple in the pond. The precision machining industry. And it is exciting that we've got such a great group of folks that have not only made change, but we've made a lot of improvements over the years. But part of our story that we'll get into and will allow is we're making a lot of change, but we kind of lost sight of whether or not some of that was improvement. So we could see a lot of change around here. But the dials stopped moving after awhile. And so we had to go back to the drawing board. And that drawing board was Dr. Demings work.   Dan: [00:04:35] Okay, very good. Well, let's pick it up from there. So how did you guys come across Dr. Demings work? It sounds like maybe you initially knew Dr. Deming then kind of got away from it. So once you share a little bit about your journey there.   Brian: [00:04:52] So this, Brian, and back when I was a young 20 some year old, I happened to go to a statistics course, and during that course the instructor had mentioned Juran and Deming. So I began with Juran and in Juran Zone books, he mentioned Dr. Deming, so once I completed listening to the doctor, Mr. Grant, I read out of the crisis and.   Brian: [00:05:18] I don't know that it made complete sense to me at the time, but it did. The thing that got me was the study of variation. But so I spent five or six years diving kind of deep into statistics and I made some headway that wasn't I wasn't at Micron at that time. I was I was in the plastics industry. So when I joined my Mike Brown back in ninety one and.   Brian: [00:05:46] We were able to use some of the statistical tools so that in a way I was holding on to some old blood. Dr. Deming talked about variation. But I wasn't I wasn't truly knowledgeable about profound knowledge and the way to think of all of that. And then I admit to somehow I lost track of Dr. Deming for a decade or more. And then later, when Μicron started doing its deep transformation, Dr. Deming started coming to my mind more often. So I re-read the books again. And since then, it seems as though. There was a trajectory of adopting a little more of Dr. Deming, and then recently we seem to have found a new gear in regards to appreciating what he said.   Dan: [00:06:41] So a number of years ago, maybe the early 2000s. Brian and I have had a lot of conversations over our years of transformation. We always called it our lean journey. And that's that's how we knew it. But he would bring up regularly his views on variation. And then I asked, would you come up with all this? And we mentioned Dr. Deming and I need to learn more about this.   Dan: [00:07:07] Never, never really put forth the effort to do so. Until I was at a conference in Columbus, Ohio, I think about eight or nine years ago, and the speaker talked about the 14 points. It seems like I've heard of those in the past. Any you talk further about the doing performance evaluations and the disrespect that came from it. It just so happened to be the high end and pushing performance reviews here created a very in depth system. We're doing them quarterly. We're doing all this stuff and I hated every minute of it. And I couldn't put my finger on what was it that I felt that was wrong with it until I heard the speaker say just how disrespectful Dr. Deming felt that they were and why that day.   Dan: [00:07:58] I decided before I left that meeting, we were never doing another one. And I came back and I told our management team it's called team strategy. I apologize for pushing it so hard for so many years and shoved it down everybody's throat. And today we stop. I. I wish I would have gotten a picture of the room on that day, because I think the shock phase, after pushing it so hard that doing a complete 180, but it truly was like like seeing the sun come up because it put words to the feeling that was growing in me, that this is just wrong because half the people were walking out of the room feeling they were below average. Right. Who do you want to feel that way? And that was the day that I thought, I need to learn more about this guy.   Tripp: [00:08:46] Very interesting. So. So, yeah, go ahead.   Dan: [00:08:50] Oh, I'm sorry. So I was a few years after that that I don't and I can't recall right now how I caught wind of the Deming research conference in Fordham University in New York. And we've done a lot of presentations, like I mentioned earlier, sharing our lead story. And so I thought I'll submit and see us there is interested in her interest in hearing our story at the research conference. And then I was honored to be selected to do that. And.   Dan: [00:09:23] It was then that I met Dr. Demings, daughter and grandson, great grandson, and and heard everybody else that was speaking there, it truly became inspired by what I heard. And and Brian joined me on that trip and I brought my 15 year old daughter at the time and I thought because the story was about this whole story of Μicron. And I just wanted. I thought she needs to hear what grandpa and grandma created because I didn't mention earlier, I'm the son in law of the founders, but so I brought her with me.   Dan: [00:09:58] And it turns out she was the youngest attendee at a DME conference, I think, in the history of the den. And so Kevin and his wife is her name's Judy, I think, right? Yep. Yep. So they embraced her so much. I was really touched by that. So when the conference came to Michigan State University, where my daughter attends now at the conference, we walked in and she was just going to visit and say hi and whatever. And they made her so welcome. And got her a badge and invited her to attend a conference and everything. And it was really touching that they had a remembered her and they have really embraced a young person. And she's brought it up so many times. And and it's just that to me, that whole story just adds flavor to what I believe is the Deming community that I'm beginning to learn more about. So it's not just about the things he taught, but it's I'm beginning to see that the people that truly understand them are beginning to it. It's a group that we need to hang out with more. Right.   Tripp: [00:11:06] Very good..   Tripp: [00:11:07] So so let me ask you guys, when you started in to the Deming philosophy or as you've worked with with it, what things have you either personally struggle with or maybe even the organization has struggled with?   Dan: [00:11:23] So for me, I mentioned it again today in our strategy meeting to Brian and others that my 2019 transformation that came earlier this year when Dennis Sergent was the instructor of our Deming CQ Academy is what he calls it. And there was so much reference to improve it. So I love the statement. All premier requires change. Not all change results in improvement. So that was great to hear her have heard that before. But. I am a numbers guy. True and true on the facts and figures and dates and deadlines, you gotta go. You know, maybe that's part of being a plant manager. I don't know, but I begin to understand that.   Dan: [00:12:18] And then we've done a great job recently with our team strategy meetings. We are going to take a step in the right direction every day. And we we don't hold our feet to the fire like we used to about by this date. This thing has, you know, those kinds of things that the made up numbers of.   Dan: [00:12:35] You got to hit this goal by this day. We still have some of that. But there's far less focus on that than there was coming into 2019. And I struggle with it every day, every day that I bite my tongue and say, don't kick a no, don't create a no, don't push a number. Push the improvement and true change towards what we are looking to accomplish.   Dan: [00:13:01] And it's it's liberating, to say the very least. And again, it's humbling. It's almost like that day came back and say and said, when I do another performance evaluations offered me by longshot that because it's such a one idea who I am.   Tripp: [00:13:18] Interesting. Brian. Brian, how about you?   Brian: [00:13:22] Well, first, I want to attest to watching Dan's struggle with Martin.   Tripp: [00:13:28] Okay, so you've witnessed it. Okay, I got it. I think me.   Brian: [00:13:36] Oh, recently I encountered a. A customer had a problem, and normally if if we have material here that we asked to re-inspect, we learn how to do it. And we show another person how. And we call that a training system.   Brian: [00:13:53] And for some reason, and this particular incident, I decided instead of training the way I always have, I'm going to do it different. Because Mr. Deming said you should look harder at your training systems. There are likely problems there. And so I decided what would be a better way. And when I was done, it literally opened my mind to the amount of variation in a training system.   Brian: [00:14:22] Either doesn't pay attention to or creates all by itself, and so that would be a thing that recently happened to me in regards to understanding better, something that Mr. Deming talked about.   Tripp: [00:14:39] Very good. So here's a question for both of you. And it does matter what order that you respond. But if you were if you're a manufacturer, it's, say, listening to this podcast episode and you were thinking about this. What are some of the maybe, I don't know, pointers that you might give them about going to this philosophy, Will? What are the steps that you think they might go through or what advice might you have?   Dan: [00:15:10] That's a very good question. I think that as in most things, learning has to take place. And for me and for Brian, that fact he's got out of the crisis in his hands now, I've got some sticky notes in it.   Dan: [00:15:25] I get it. I always give Ryan a little ribbing because I call his Brian Dowling Bible here because he carries with him everywhere. I don't think I'd recognize him if he came to work about the thing in his hands. I think you have to start there. And I didn't start there. I just read the New Economics. In fact, I just got done with it in recent ago. First book I ever read.   Dan: [00:15:52] And then I have a long time ago, before I went to the Research Council that I read online, I learned more. I loved the history. I loved the fact that he grew up in a farming area and studied. How should it be? Because I grew up on of farm in Michigan here. So that really all resonated with me. And as I began to learn his story and his half life begins to patch together a lot of thoughts about how this may have all developed for him. And I want the history part of it. That's great. So I would suggest people be read about him and listen to these podcasts for sure.   Dan: [00:16:33] Look online if the educational beginning. But it was instrumental earlier this year. After all this time, haven't taken the Dennis Surgeons CGI Academy that really gave us this. It's what we did, guys. And I have to believe these types of sessions are all over the United States for people to be able to learn more and participate in groups. Exactly. And implement exactly what he's what he's trying to implement. And so through that, one of the things that's occurred to me this year is I began to have a greater recognition and appreciation for. Let's go back to our founders, Ed and Jackie Preston. You know, back in 1952, they they started this business.   Dan: [00:17:18] And so when I came on board in '96. There was a a few things that stood out to me. A phone never rang more than three times because it was disrespectful to the customer to make them have to listen to the ring on the phone more than three times. It was just a thing. Everybody here still knows by the time that there is a fourth ring, everybody in the plant is running for a form because it shouldn't ring more than three times. That system still by Mr President from the beginning.   Dan: [00:17:46] The other thing is when we have meetings here and we have a lot of meals at this company, the first an Ed or Jackie Ed's passed away now. And anytime we had a meal, they always eat last. They always insisted everybody else. You go first. We go laugh. Simon Sinek wrote a book. Leaders eat last. And when I read that, I saw Jackie. But I still believe it's all part of what Deming. His respect that he had for people. And and I saw so much of that and have seen so much in adding Jackie over the years that respect for people to make sure that the people in this company are taken care of first.   Dan: [00:18:30] And how so? So I would read, learn and then recognize and appreciate what already exists around you. And then I would start, I think, trying to implement the things that you were there.   Tripp: [00:18:43] Brian -do you have something to add.   Brian: [00:18:46] Not really know that.   Tripp: [00:18:50] No, that's fine. So let me ask you. Just kind of a broader question. I guess it looked like you guys sell globally, correct?   Dan: [00:19:00] Mostly in the United States. OK. If something goes outside of the United States and through our customers, not not directly from us to a customer outside the United States.   Tripp: [00:19:12] Ok. So has the environment changed much? I mean, there's a lot going on economically for your company. Is it gotten a lot better or is it kind of been stable all along or what's it like out there as far as manufacturing goes?   Dan: [00:19:28] So this year there's been a softening in general across pretty much all of the industries that we serve.   Dan: [00:19:37] And we we serve a number of them. Most of our business is relatively local. About 70 to 73 percent is in Michigan and the rest is either in southern Indiana or Texas. Shooting down that quarter in general have softened. And I just saw the numbers today that manufacturing in the third quarter actually went up a touch, which surprised me because we haven't seen it and I haven't heard that from our suppliers, to be quite honest with you. But one of the things that we've tried to do over the years, as we called our lean journey or on our shifting gears and to we actually trademarked a year or two ago the term system, Micron, because the reason people come here, the reason three thousand people visited are to see our systems. We had fire departments, health care, the company that created the resistor. And A we've had people from all over the world come to see how we schedule production.   Dan: [00:20:39] We have no mid-level management, how we have total flex time. People can decide which days they work, what hours they work. The whole nine yards. And and so people have come from all over to see how well how can we manage a company to where there are no bosses. There's a movie that tells people what to do. Brian, are the managers of quality in manufacturing and there's there's an engineering manager. We're responsible for the systems and making sure the people, the resources are there, of course. But it's it's really there's so much autonomy that people have. And and this year, really, over the last three or four years that we've been using the Toyota car, it really began to teach us a better understanding of the kind of calls PDCA.   Dan: [00:21:31] And that PDSA. So we use that language mostly because of that. But because of that, we began to emphasize every conversation. What did we learn? What did we learn? I think if I were to look back in the three last three years, the number one question that we ask yourself is what did we learn? Fill in the blank on whatever the heck it is that we're talking about. So I would I would dare say that the Deming philosophy is all about what have you learned? And we've embraced that.   Tripp: [00:22:04] And you guys have mentioned the lean journey that you kind of started on before you kind of got into Deming. What do you see as kind of the differences between them or or how did they maybe synergistically and engage with each other as you work through this or or what's happened with this this lean journey still continuing that as the Deming philosophy, enhance it. What's your view?   Dan: [00:22:34] So. I think that. Like most things in life, it's the perspective you choose. And I think that you can and perhaps many companies have chosen the perspective of Lean as the elimination of waste. And of course, that's an element of it.   Dan: [00:23:00] But I believe and we've used that language here a lot, but I believe truly that what we've tried to do with our lean journey is to best use our resources. So Dr. Deming talks about optimization of processes, right? We haven't used that language exactly a lot, but that's what our journey has been about. How do we optimize what we do? How do we create standards, stick to improve the standard and make things the lives of our people better?   Dan: [00:23:28] And that from day one, when we are first meeting about why are we going to take this lean journey? Way back in August of 2000, our management team said it is for one reason and that it is to make the lives of our people better and.   Dan: [00:23:46] From that day on, I felt as long as we have that focus. We're on the right path. And and so as we went through our lean journey, we were. Awarded the Shingo Silver Medallion for operational excellence back in 2008 93. And it's referred to as the Nobel Prize of Business or Manufacturing by Business Week. And that was nice to get. It was kind of a confirmation that we're on a good path, but the best thing about us told us all things we could do better. And so we tried to embrace them. And so on. As we learned more about the teachings of Dr. Deming, here's a thing that we weren't using properly our entire lean during that we're only now starting to learn and use much better.   Dan: [00:24:39] And that is the understanding of variation that Brian mentioned earlier or in control charts and we hadn't used. I don't know if we used a control Chart. Fifteen years probably that are 20 0 0 0. And now we really are. We're embracing the heck out of that. And we're beginning to understand where we have to measure data and where you continue on.   Dan: [00:25:02] Probably the greatest weakness, though, for us, the difference between how we treated women and what we're learning from Dr. Deming, though, is we are making a lot of change and we're necessarily tracking whether or not that change was an improvement towards the saying we needed improvement on. Right. Yeah. In that corner of the planet might look better now, but is it truly improving anything that's going to help the customer? And we lost sight of that for a while, I believe. And I think we're getting on back, Brian, to everything else then was pretty good a.   Brian: [00:25:37] The appreciation of a system as as we did the room. I think we learned more about systems because you have to diagram them out and understand the interactions between them. And so that kind of opened our eyes and just happened to fit in with a kind of reconfirms that Dr. Deming needs says. You should understand your system as good as you can. I think it also psychology. You know, in the beginning there are resistors because change is scary. And I'm sure some people wonder if you truly mean it. Or is that just the passing thing this month? And so you understand as you push that journey through and you get the buy in from people that that were once resistors. OK, that's cool. You get to watch and growth in your own people. You learn how to achieve that growth faster. Either by learning from your mistakes or the occasional times we we somehow did it right. So I thought all of that. There is a consistency between Lean and Dr. Deming. I think I can see that.   Tripp: [00:26:50] Okay. And Brian, you have to ask, because you mentioned that you kind of got into variation, you know, years ago or maybe even a couple of decades ago. And we're using it, you know, in what's different today, what it what it sounds like. You started into it kind of got away from it and then went back to it. What would take me a little bit on that journey?   Brian: [00:27:13] Long ago when I was when I first was introduced to it, we were trying to everything classic's and we wanted to learn how to build Dai's better. So is there a way to design a dye with more success by the time you're done, by the time you're finished? And I couldn't believe how much statistics help you in design. So that was kind of low hanging fruit and. So it's fun to play with.   Brian: [00:27:43] But we didn't necessarily use it in day to day production at that facility I worked with.   Tripp: [00:27:49] OK,.   Brian: [00:27:50] So then I. I moved on to Micron and that was my first attempt. OK. We don't use it to design our process, but we do use it to monitor our process. And back then, it was sort of driven by customers. They were requiring statistical data. And that's fine. But what's more, fighing are more fun to actually learn that you can predict your process. But I find that fascinating every day.   Brian: [00:28:19] So we're into that pretty deep for about four or five years. And for some reason, the customers decided to let those requirements go. And somehow that that seemed to be it took the wind out of the sails of that process.   Brian: [00:28:37] And so for some time, we didn't use statistics for quite some time. And then I would say in the last five or six years. We are doing more and more statistical studies and realizing once again the benefits of doing so. And now we're actually applying it to management processes rather than just parts or machines. And we're finding that. That is even more fascinating than than going out new in capability studies out next to a fancy.   Dan: [00:29:10] I think though, one of the stark differences between then and now is we did it because the customer demanded it and the sooner they stop demanding it, we stop doing it tells you how mature where I am right now.   Dan: [00:29:27] Now we go this beginning. We realize, as Brian said, it's helping us understand our management systems in ways we never would have dreamt before. And we're doing it because it's the right thing to do and you're learning from it. And we're the kind of company that there's no doubt in my mind that sometime very nearly down the road, we're going to be pushing this to our customers to try to do the same thing as we did that with our lean systems. When when we first started Dileep Journey by time 2003 rolled around, we had made a lot of changes and we realized that one of our customers had any idea what lean was. And we we began to bump up into. We can only improve our systems so well if we can't tie it to where our customers are demanding or needing from us. So we went on this magical mystery tour out to our customers for three years to try to see how can we link what we're doing to what you might need. And pretty soon, all of our customers want to delinked their systems to ours. And we went from like 16 percent of what we built was on some kind of pulse system to 68 percent within those three years. And it was an amazing thing because when they began to recognize what it could do for them and it helped us help them, it was great. So we were still and we began then to take what we've learned and what we knew and share it with the customer. So here's just another thing that as we learn more, I can see that we're going to share it with the customers because it will help them help us.   Tripp: [00:31:07] Very cool. So my last question for you guys is, is my typical one, which is. Is there anything that we've talked about or that you've responded to that you'd like to make a clarification of? Or is there any question I didn't ask that you wish I would have?   Dan: [00:31:28] That's really that's a great question.   Dan: [00:31:33] I know that they're the Deming Institute is reaching out to educational organizations across the country. I'm not aware of any of that in Michigan. There are individuals, like I mentioned Dennis a few times now that is trying to help industry. But it's important that we believe that the school systems are help. Few years ago, Mike Rather, the author of The Toyota Kata, was gracious enough to stop that. Mike Brown wandered through the plant. And then I was so bold as to invite him to teach the school that my kids went to grade school or how to do the participate in the Kata, which of course, as I mentioned, includes the whole PDCA cycle of improvements. And he did so and I thought it was a fantastic session. And it began the thinking, how can we get more AUTHERS? How can we get more people helping teach the schools that teach students how to be more critical thinkers? So I think that that would be something of. All certain interests of manufacturers all over the country. Here, as we try to help, you know, he knows the skills gap all the time, right?   Dan: [00:32:53] Mostly is a critical thinking gap in our opinion. We can teach the skill. So anything like that. We would love to see and hear more about it as time goes by.   Tripp: [00:33:03] Very cool, Brian. Thoughts? Last thoughts.   Brian: [00:33:07] Yeah, I don't remember who you were talking to and one of your podcasts, but your guest. You ask the question of them and I'm going to paraphrase. Do you think the Deming Philosophy is growing or shrinking or remaining the same. And he said he did not believe it to be growing.   Brian: [00:33:29] My guess, I was disappointed. Whoever your guest was, it seemed like a person that would probably know that answer better than I did. And that made me sad to think. And so I am curious, as Dan just said, you know, not only getting to the local school systems, but also the business schools. What is what is coming out of the business schools now? The people that we're going to hire soon?   Brian: [00:33:56] And then how do we get even further ahead, as Dan said? And get this all the way down to how do you teach young people to think in a better way? And.   Dan: [00:34:08] It's important for us. So earlier this year, Ryan and I both referred to CQI Academy that we had taken to learn more about Dr. Demings work, and I had coordinated through an organization called Discover Manufacturing here in West Michigan.   Dan: [00:34:26] They coordinated and I see it an industry led collaborative where four of our companies, 19 different people or 20, went to this class and one was in carbon composites, another one furniture, and there another machining company like ours.   Dan: [00:34:45] And it didn't matter that we were basically different industries and different walks of life. It was somebody from shipping to, you know, my position, brines as managers and everything in between. And it was a fantastic way to learn these collaboratives of different companies. So we're intending to do it again this next spring. I'm signed up as the co-lead for Discovery Manufacturing and make sure you do. And that's that's our contribution to try to make sure that we're spreading the teachings of Dr. Demings in West Michigan here, because regardless, I'm not sure what else we can do other than it here. We have tours every two or three weeks and people who come see it and we're trying to help this. I'll see more companies learn about it. So I hope that your listeners and companies that are getting involved open the doors and bring people in and show what they're learning. It doesn't matter how minor it is. Teach what you're learning and then try to get other companies together to do the same.   Tripp: [00:35:53] And that's sage advice. We appreciate it. Well, Dan and Bryan, we certainly appreciate you being part of the Deming Institute podcast.   Dan: [00:36:04] Well, thank you, Tripp. Greatly appreciate it.   Tripp: [00:36:08] Thank you for listening to the Deming Institute podcast. Stay updated on the latest blogs, podcasts, programs and other activities at Deming dot org.  

In our 5th interview podcast of 2019, Alan Winlow, MBE, former Managing Director of Yorkshire Brick Company, Continuous Improvement Director at Marshalls PLC, and 2019 ASQ Deming Medal Recipient, offers insights on his efforts to lead a Deming transformation. (This is Tripp's first interview with Alan) Highlights include: Opening quote from Myron Tribus, “If you continue to do what you’ve always done, you will continue to get what you’ve always got” In the late 1980s, while serving as Managing Director of the Yorkshire Brick Company (YBC), employment in the UK brick industry plunged from 14K to 8K employees and plants were closing Question at hand, "How to survive in a labor-intensive business?" How had the Japanese captured critical UK business segments? Started to read about Dr. Deming and attend British Deming Association conferences Discovered sources of variation and PDSA, plus the importance of data Found the majority of variation came from manufacturing equipment and raw materials for the bricks Discovered how to change the brick manufacturing process to improve brick uniformity Began to meet regularly with YBC's production team to continue to improve brick uniformity, savings in water use, energy use, and discarded bricks Discovered mental models, including the Taguchi Loss Function Explored how to remove barriers within workforce, everyone came on staff Began to understand what his job was, including reading books and seeking new learning Alan led consulting visits to China in 1987 to assist in developing the Land Fill Gas business.  The Chinese were extremely interested in the landfill gas abstraction at YBC and sent no less than 8 delegations to visit the Yorkshire site. Alan was invited to visit by the Mayor of the city of Anshan. Teaming with local schools and universities, a local jail, and a county council to share lessons learned within YBC, including environmental projects Yorkshire Brick was honored in 1991 for contributions to environmental causes In 2000, Alan was honored by Queen Elizabeth as a Member of the British Empire for his leadership within YBC Never met Dr. Deming at BDA events; met Myron Tribus on many occasions Comments on challenges in implementing the Deming Philosophy Continued relevance of the Deming Philosophy today  

In our 4th interview podcast of 2019, Donald Berwick, co-founder and former President and CEO of IHI, the Institute for Healthcare Improvement, shares his Deming Journey.  Dr. Berwick, who presented at The Deming Institute's 2018 Conference, is one of the nation's leading authorities on healthcare quality and improvement.  (This is Tripp's first interview with Dr. Berwick) Highlights include: His training as a pediatrician His efforts to apply quality management, before his introduction to the Deming Philosophy Co-Founded IHI in 1989 as a non-profit organization Appointed by President Obama, in July 2010, to the position of Administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), which he held until December, 2011 Ran for governor of Massachusetts in 2014 4 children and 7 grandchildren Attended a Four-day Seminar with Dr. Deming in 1986, leaving early and then returning Prior to meeting Dr. Deming, serving as "VP of Inspection" In the world of inspection, everything stayed the same Waiting times of 2 minutes for x-rays were reported to him (with falsification) by the radiology department  "Do something about it" Question: What is the pushback that you see today in healthcare? The Red Bead Experiment was "electrifying," including triggering a vicious cycle of blame by management and withdrawal by willing workers. The workforce (willing workers) wants to do well The influence of Dr. Deming, and others, on IHI Prescriptions for fixing healthcare - "It takes leadership" General tone of healthcare today; "measure enough, yell enough, things get better" Continued focus today (backsliding) on measurement for inspection Question: What are physicians learning today about management? Answer: "Heroism as the route to excellence"

In our 3rd interview podcast of 2019, Wendi Middleton, Director of Continual Quality Improvement, from the Aging Adult Services Agency within the State of Michigan’s Department of Health and Human Services, and Dennis Sergent, President, Sergent Results Group, share reflections on the "Challenges and Opportunities in Applying the Deming Philosophy in Government." (This is Tripp's first interview with Wendi and Dennis) Highlights include: A 5-year history of applying the Deming Philosophy within the State of Michigan's Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) The development of Aging and Disability Resource Centers Learning "Who are our partners?" Where to start? / Who does what to whom? Family services and a cat First exposure to the Deming Red Bead Experiment Getting to know each other better within Michigan's HHS Creation of the BOLD ("Building Options for Long Term Decision-Making") Council Acronyms as an art-form Detailing the processes - Where to start and where to integrate? Exposure to control charts within the Bell Telephone System Education and steps to move forward Creation of the BOLD ("Be OLD") Councils Acronyms as an art-form Grant funding provided consulting help Process steps, including road blocks and issues Subject Matter Experts (SME) and Design Teams A focus on quality improvement, not change Policy changes, with improvements Living at home, using improvements in non-emergency transportation services Weekly Stand-and-Deliver meetings to review ongoing PDSA efforts Continual Improvement efforts are not always “linear,” with forward improvement (sometimes they go backwards) State government is a culture all by itself People sometimes become their job (position) Getting people on board with improvement; not always happy fits, some move on to other positions Managing “Level-of-Care Determinations” When facing system obstacles, take inspiration from Eleanor Roosevelt, Don’t take a “No” (answer) from someone without the authority to say “Yes” Setting new standards for working with state vendors New skills by Design Team members “Everything is designed around getting money from the federal government” Design Team roles are about improving access to state services, not finding sources of funding Effectiveness (doing the right thing), before efficiency (faster, better, cheaper) Cost savings have been measured, yet the bigger impact is serving more people for a given budget allocation Reducing the waiting list for services Instead of asking for more money, ask if the existing process can be improved to provide better service Discovering a mindset that if some don’t have a problem with a given process, others won't as well (meaning, the process is deemed to be OK as is, while it may well need improvement)  Impact on Design Teams after attending The Deming Institute’s “Me vs We workshop”  Getting over self-interest issues T-Shirt idea, “The Status Quo is Not an Option” Avoiding doing better what needs not be done Design Teams need ongoing support, including starting with on-boarding and ground rules Emergence of self-respect and respect for others    

In our 2nd interview podcast of 2019, Steven Haedrich, President of New York Label & Box Works (NYLBW), shared reflections on his continued admiration and application of the Deming Philosophy. (This is Tripp's second interview with Steven.  Link here for the first interview.) Highlights include: Update on NYLBW Immersed in the Deming Philosophy every day Everything is moving much faster; quality has been a selling/differentiator Also, a focus on innovation Deming Chain Reaction, less rework/fewer mistakes/creating good paying jobs; the ONLY way to survive! Continual improvement on a daily basis Impact of a Total Cost focus?  NO!   Lowest price still gets the bid Interaction with your peers in sharing the Deming Philosophy; sharing it every day with both private and public companies – explaining the old ways of sale commissions, performance appraisals, etc. Other obstacles; clients and vendors adverse to partnering Steven’s 2014 podcast – Deming is it! Wonderful opportunity to join the board of directors of The Deming Institute Deming Online – worldwide access to online learning with the potential to reach millions of students of the Deming Philosophy How to get the word out on the Deming Philosophy Steven’s speaking engagements – Graduate School USA, Conestoga College, upcoming printing conference People are beginning to realize the limits of the prevailing system of management People are beginning to see the prospects of a changing world and the need to be more effective with management systems Where to start – The New Economics, 3rd edition, with Chapter 11 by Kelly Allen The world is finally realizing that the old ways that we have accepted as the standards of thinking are no longer going to prepare us for the complexities, for the challenges, for the true globalization of the world.   The Deming Philosophy captures the essence of collaboration and cooperation and teamwork and systems thinking and continual improvement; including joy in work! The Deming Philosophy allows for a different end of the day experience; allowing us to make the world a better place!

In our January 2019 interview podcast, his 8th session with Tripp, Superintendent David Langford reflects on the state of education, the system, and how its set up, including various ways in how schools are working to move from “theory to practice” in their understanding and application of the Deming philosophy. Highlights include: The short term thinking which Dr. Deming warned us of, whether looking at profit or test scores Longer term strategies are sacrificed for short term results People get creative when driven to “show the numbers” Myths about charter schools being able to select their students Lack of a level playing field The strength and will power required to absorb the impact of a special cause being treated as a  common cause Rare to find Profound Knowledge Fear manifests itself in many ways Dr. Deming encouraged David to consult for education systems The right to joy in work and joy in learning Blaming the individuals vs. the system in which they operate How to change the system to all for joy in learning The role of rewards in narrowing one’s focus The fears and motivations of a school board Possible agendas of school board members An onboarding process for board members There are pockets of excellence in education systems   For more information about David's current work with Ingenium Schools, please visit ingeniumfoundation.org

In our second interview podcast of November 2018, Doug Hall provides an overview of his latest book, “Driving Eureka!: Problem-Solving with Data-Driven Methods & the Innovation Engineering System” (This is Tripp's third interview with Doug.  Link here for the first interview and here for the second.) Highlights include: Inventing “big ideas” for clients, as they entered the “Killing Zone” Applied innovation, using the Deming Philosophy How to “Find, Filter, and Fast-Track” big ideas Happy clients, paying big money, but the ideas did not happen Half the potential value of the big ideas is lost in internal development efforts The independent parts of organizations work to promote their own silo The average new product idea has a 95% failure rate in the market place What’s wrong with project management? Innovation projects have uncertainty Problem solving with data-driven methods Big ideas are easy – making them real is hard A major obstacle is a reliance on opinions vs data Shifting innovation from an art to a science What to take away from this book? All products follow a life cycle, from birth to death Innovation for extending product life How to create an innovation culture Innovate or die Obstacles to innovation – Lack of Leadership and Lack of a Process Brain Brew Whiskeys for mass customization Don't feel you need to do "all" of the Deming Philosophy Just get started! How to receive a special gift from Doug - go to gift

In our November 2018 interview podcast, his 1st session with Tripp, Mike Tveite reflects on his interactions with Dr. Deming, beginning with attending a Four-Day Seminar in 1986.  Mike went on to help Dr. Deming with 25 of his Four-Day Seminars, and to follow him around while he consulted with a division of General Motors.   Highlights include: Mike's career, beginning as a Professor of Statistics First "World Shake" upon meeting Dr. Deming Dr. Deming in the MIT lecture series Learning statistics from Dr. Deming "Pond" statistics and "Stream" statistics Enumerative (pond) and Analytic (stream) Studies On what are you taking action? Mike's 2012 Deming Institute Conference presentation 14 Points for Management Management in a "pond" vs a "stream" The System of Profound Knowledge as a lens Production Viewed as a System The interdependent components of a system A single aim for the whole system Forces at work which undermine the aim of an organization Maximizing shareholder value Optimizing the system over the long term Data is like garbage, the need to know how to use it before collecting it          

In our latest podcast for October 2018, Tripp interviewed Southern Utah University Professor Ravi Roy and Department of Aviation Director, Michael ("Mike") Mower, following their presentation at The Deming Institute's 2018 Conference. Highlights include: Changing aviation training through the Deming Philosophy Mike meets Kevin Cahill during a visit to SUU to deliver a convocation lecture Not always a fun message of valuing collaboration Shifting away from a conflicting public / private partnership in the Department of Aviation A management style of using carrots and sticks Moving away from management by fear, with zero creativity A feeling of being entrenched in the prevailing system of management Applications beyond Department of Aviation Reaching graduate students from the public sector with the Deming Philosophy The reaction of staff members to the adoption of the Deming Philosophy The world of aviation is dynamic, while university environments are more static The impact of short memories; Deming – Now More Than Ever! The mindset for embracing the Deming Philosophy Support from SUU President Scott Wyatt while facing eminent failure Investing in the future The Deming Institute’s incubator at SUU The 3rd annual Bryce Canyon Society Forum, April 4th, 2019 Leading by example, spreading the Deming Philosophy beyond SUU Seeking change with a march on Washington, DC Success in having the Senate and Congress pass a Maintenance Training Modernization Bill inspired by SUU, with details at this link With this new bill, SUU will be the first in the US to change 60-year old aircraft maintenance training and practices Moving from fear of the future to hope in the future

In our second interview podcast of July 2018, Doug Stilwell shares lessons learned on his transition from a public school administrator to a professor of education at Drake University, once bitten by the Deming philosophy.  (This is Tripp's second interview with Doug.  Link here for the first interview.) Highlights include: Continued impact of new education methods in the Urbandale Community School District How to bring more of Dr. Deming’s ideas into higher education? How to impact the next generation of leaders in education? Drake’s Continual Improvement Network What happens when students leave Doug’s classes? Network improvement communities “The system always wins” Moving away from the A-F grading system Shifting from a “time rigid / learning flexible” system to a “time flexible / learning rigid” system

In our July 2018 interview podcast, his 7th session with Tripp, Superintendent David Langford reflects on the efforts of the entire staff of Ingenium Charter Schools to move from “theory to practice” in their understanding and application of the Deming philosophy. Highlights include: David’s (new) role as superintendent Ingenium operates with 6 schools across Los Angeles, CA Restoring joy and meaning to learning as Ingenium’s constancy of purpose Meaningful and relevant learning Moving from theory into practice 5 areas of practice (focus): SoPK, intrinsic motivation, continual improvement, neuroscience, and (project-based) quality learning experiences Student involvement Dashboards for monitoring joy in work Students learning about common and special causes of variation Student feedback on their experiences within Ingenium schools Neuroscience research For more information about David's current work with Ingenium Schools, please visit ingeniumfoundation.org

In our June 2018 interview podcast, his 1st session with Tripp, Jean-Marie Gogue reflects on his interactions and memories of working with Dr. Deming, beginning in November 1978 in Tokyo. Highlights include: Inviting Dr. Deming to speak in Paris in 1980 Dr. Deming's commentary on leadership Use of control charts Attending Dr. Deming's Four-Day Seminar in Switzerland in 1993 Attending first Four-Day Seminar in the UK in 1987 Starting the French Deming Association in 1988

In our May 2018 interview podcast, his 4th session with Tripp, Kevin Cahill, Executive Director, reflects on the 25th anniversary of The Deming Institute.. Highlights include: Latest news from The Deming Institute Creating the future of the Institute Use of ED software, from Acquate 2018 Deming Institute Conference at Bryce Canyon National Park Southern Utah University's W. Edwards Deming Incubator for Public Affairs (WEDIPA), under the direction of Professor Ravi Roy, has become the Quality, Innovation & Leadership Incubator Recent visit to Ingenium Schools The Deming Institute's 25th Anniversary Conference, October 5-6, 2018, Manhattan Beach, California (4 miles south of LAX) 3rd Edition of The New Economics, including a new chapter (#11), set for release in the fall of 2018 Ongoing partnership with Aileron A new initiative to create greater access to the Deming philosophy

In our November 2017 podcast, his 3rd session with Tripp, Kevin Cahill, Executive Director, reflects on the first 24 years of operation of The Deming Institute, founded by Dr. Deming before his passing in 1993. Highlights include: A brief history of The Deming Institute The restated aim, "Enriching society through the Deming philosophy" 46 interview podcasts and an ever-growing reach Plans ahead for The Deming Institute Resource development Moving from an internal focus to better serving constituents Partnerships and engagements Presentation at TEDxSUN New workshop - Shifting from "Me" to "We" Thinking and Action Jim "Mattress Mack" McIngvale and Hurricane Harvey Moving from crisis to cooperation Future of The Deming Institute Biggest challenges Expanding reach 25th Anniversary - 2018 Operating as a 501(c)(3) non-profit, not a foundation Amazon Smiles New website - expanded capability How to donate Legacy  

In our October 2017 podcast, his first session with Tripp, Joshua Macht, Executive Vice President, Product Innovation, and Group Publisher of the Harvard Business Review (HBR) Group, shares his goal of how to recast management ideas to those new to management, with a focus on innovation, strategy, and core principles of leadership.    Long before he traveled to Gothenberg, Sweden in 2016 to attend an international healthcare conference, Josh was aware of Dr. Deming as an "old friend" of management, much the same as he assessed Peter Drucker.   Yet, upon witnessing Dr. Don Berwick conduct the classic "red bead experiment," he quickly joined the ranks of those deeply struck by the revelation that the performance of willing workers in any organization is largely governed by the system itself, far more than the performance of the workers taken separately.   So began his desire to review a series of videos and books about Dr. Deming, leading to his HBR article in 2016, a 6-page tribute to Dr. Deming, "The management thinker we should never have forgotten." In parallel, he also wrote about Dr. Deming in a 2016 article for the Boston Globe. Interview highlights include:  What’s happening at the HBR – expansion, podcasts, innovation, new and expanded audience Thinking systemically Needs of young professionals New HBR product launched in India, ASCEND Lasting impressions of the red bead experiment, including whimsical measures of quality Now, more than ever, the need for a refresher on Dr. Deming Layoffs and the erosion of trust How good people fall prey to a bad system Dr. Deming’s world of human nature Efforts that obliterate trust Barriers to success How workers treat each other in ways that are counter-productive Taylorism vs. Deming management HBR and the Watertown (Massachusetts) Arsenal, an early site of Taylorism Organizational undercurrents of “Us” vs “Them” Passion for innovation and a role as a digital renegade The need to be useful and feel valued The joy of learning

In our September 2017 podcast, her first session with Tripp, Lori Fry, a business management consultant from Columbus, Ohio, shares her inspiration for launching her "Dignity (at work) Project."   Through a partnership with The Deming Institute, every month, beginning in June, Lori will share posts from her website, www.dignityatworkproject.com. From her website, Lori is "on a mission to bring dignity back to work in the American workforce.  To transform our economy, we first must transform ourselves and our companies.  Our aim is to bring dignity and joy back to work. The work of Dr. Deming and others who have contributed to expanding his body of work over the years provide the basis for what’s to come." Lori adds "Our dysfunction with skilled labor is the tip of the iceberg. Below the surface are the symptoms of a workforce that’s been robbed of dignity in the name of greater productivity and short-term profits. More than 30 years ago, W. Edwards Deming foresaw our current condition, and in 1982 he published Out of the Crisis, a theory of management declaring American companies require nothing less than a transformation of management. American management failed to listen. The economy was expanding; business was booming – until it wasn’t – and we know what has happened since." As a 20+ year student of Dr. Deming's theory of management, Lori brings a passionate voice for the possibilities of teamwork and collaboration available to all organizations.   Interview highlights include:  her experience in "human capital management" her corporate training background and the lingering questions, notably "What if we train our people and they leave the company?" and "What if we don't (train them) and they stay?"  taking a break from business management consulting to support her family's farming business her introduction to Deming management as she learned more and more about Deming management, what stood out to her where change begins feedback on her first post, Don't Gamble with Your Company's Future reflections on her post about her son's education system, Tree climbing or life-long learning – what’s the real AIM of our education system? her blog audience general blog feedback 

In our August 2017 podcast, Francis Petit, Associate Dean for Global Initiatives and Partnerships for Fordham University’s Gabelli School of Business in New York City, shares highlights of a recent visit to Japan with Executive MBA students.    Of particular interest is his feedback on the students’ exposure to the influence of Deming management during their travels.   Having presented lectures in Fordham’s Deming Scholar’s MBA program, Francis thought to include a visit to the offices of Japan’s Union of Scientists and Engineers, also known as JUSE, and use this opportunity for the MBA students to learn about Dr. Deming’s influence on Japan through the eyes of JUSE members.    He was delighted to be hosted by JUSE’s Secretary General, Ichiro Kotsuka, who provided an explanation of the origins of the Deming Prize, his experience in collaborating with Dr. Deming, as well as insights on the selection process for the Deming Prize. Interview highlights include: an explanation of the role of this trip to Japan in a “capstone” course for the MBA students demographics of the students first impressions on arriving in Japan and the systems awareness experienced within Narita Airport how the students prepared for visiting JUSE the impact of Dr. Deming’s theory of management on Secretary General Kotsuka’s personal and professional life  the contrast the students found between a longer term approach for business growth in Japan, with the shorter term focus in their respective organizations, including pressure for quantum growth  the students’ experience with variable compensation systems, including bonuses and commissions training received by the students to maximize their personal performance during performance appraisals why sales managers are less likely to be amongst the students in Fordham’s MBA programs impressions of the commitment of Japanese companies towards their employees

In our July 2017 podcast, his first session with Tripp, Bill Cooper shares stories on his 11-year relationship with Dr. Deming, starting with being one of 22 attendees in a 1982 Four Day seminar with Dr. Deming. At the time, Bill was serving as the Senior Executive at the North Island Naval Air Station, with Phil Monroe serving as the senior naval officer.   A few years later, Phil, as Commanding Officer of North Island, approved funding for Bill to attend an intensive, year-long, “quality management for executives" seminar, led by Myron Tribus and held at MIT.  Guest lectures were provided by Kosaku Yoshida, a doctoral student of Dr. Deming, and Yoshikazu Tsuda, former counsellor at the Union of Japanese Scientists & Engineers (JUSE). As a student of management and leadership theories, ranging from Ken Blanchard to Peter Drucker, Bill met Dr. Deming at a time when he (Bill) was providing in-house leadership classes at North Island, as well as for the National Graduate School, a local private university.  Inspired by Dr. Deming, all the while trying to get his mind around his theory of management, Bill partnered with Laurie Broedling to launch the first “Deming User Group” in the US, based in San Diego.   Bill’s motor home served as a convenient dinner venue when Dr. Deming was in southern California and Bill would drive to the latest site of Dr. Deming’s ever popular Four Day seminar.   He has warm memories of Dr. Deming’s fondness for clam chowder, martini’s, and ice cream. Interview highlights include:  Leading a staff of 4400+ employees, who worked “with” Bill, not “for” him The difference between parenting with 1 kid and 2 or more kids Can you teach an old dog new tricks? His role with the launch of the TQM movement, including Dr. Deming’s views on TQM Why Bill was intrigued by Dr. Deming’s focus on continuous improvement Dr. Deming’s response to an invitation from Lee Iacocca to consult for Chrysler Hosting “Round Table” interviews with Dr. Deming and his role as “the perfect foil,” as well as “straight man,” for Dr. Deming Dr. Deming’s Socratic style in his 1-on-1 meetings with Bill, including his introduction to the Law of Extreme Values Myron Tribus’ 85/15 rule and the difference between “working in” and “working on” a system Improving organizations by improving systems Struggling with the question of “Who owns the system?” The vital need to share a vision Fear vs. anxiety Answers to his favorite question, “What is the improvement strategy that your management team is articulating?” Bill’s thoughts on the difference between management and leadership Retiring from North Island in 1988 to form a “Deming” consultancy, with Phil Monroe as his partner

In our June 2017 podcast, his first session with Tripp, Phil Monroe shares stories on his introduction to Dr. Deming, leading to his personal transformation as a naval officer and later a post-Navy career as a quality management consultant, city council member, and, currently, board member of a hospital in Coronado, California. Beginning with meeting Dr. Deming in 1983, while serving as the Commanding Officer of the Naval Air Rework Facility at North Island Naval Air Station, Coronado, Phil reminisces about his first exposure to Deming management.  The meeting was arranged by Bill Cooper, Tripp’s next podcast guest (our July 2017 edition), and the senior civilian at this 6,000+ person Navy operation.  Highlights include:  What caused Dr. Deming to "look down his nose" at Phil, in front of 350 supervisors Phil’s transformation moment, captured on film, including which of the 14 Points Phil was in violation of, according to Dr. Deming Being challenged by Dr. Deming on his MBO style of management Applying Deming management to an incident involving a Metropolitan Transit Service (MTS) bus carrying school children.  Phil was serving as an MTS Board member and thought the wrong people received disciplinary punishment; i.e. time off without pay. What is top management’s responsibility? The influence of Phil’s academic background at Cornell University Shifting his thinking on problems from “Who did it?” to “What in the process caused this to happen?” World-wide Quality Management consulting with Bill Cooper Numerical illiteracy Impressions of the status of the practice of SPC today What is a statistician’s job? The theory of variation of as the cornerstone of Dr. Deming’s System of Profound Knowledge The "Phil Monroe" change

In our May 2017 podcast, his sixth session with Tripp (1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th, 5th), David Langford, author, consultant, President, Ingenium Schools, and, 2017 ASQ Deming Medal Recipient, offers insights on his efforts to lead a Deming transformation within Ingenium Schools. In his latest podcast, David reflects on 31 years of learning and applying the Deming philosophy to enrich society, with a focus on advancing education systems.   Beginning with his first conversation with Dr. Deming in 1986, when he personally answered David’s phone call from Sitka, Alaska, he has been on a personal learning journey, including mentored from Dr. Deming.   With encouragement from Dr. Deming, David reached out to Myron Tribus, who traveled to Sitka to learn more about David’s efforts to bring Dr. Deming’s theory of management to his high school education system.   Soon thereafter, David and Myron were speaking together at conferences about their efforts to improve education systems, using a Deming lens. Fast forward to 2016, when David was selected to serve as president of Ingenium Schools and shift from “living vicariously as a consultant” (with Langford Learning) to “get back to the laboratory” of an education system in a full-time capacity.  In this month’s podcast, David goes down memory lane with Tripp to explore topics such as:  His first phone call with Dr. Deming Collaborating with his mentor, Myron Tribus A 25+ year career as a consultant with Langford Learning An offer from founder and previous president, Glenn Noreen, to join Ingenium Schools Daily Innovation at Ingenium Schools, with 160+ employees Have the fundamentals in education changed? Finding meaning in the Pythagorean Theorem Profound Learning Experiences Looking for the smallest things which can have the biggest impact Making decisions in a school system, both with and without the System of Profound Knowledge Running meetings with "our" agenda vs. "the boss's" agenda What teachers can do in a class room, in the absence of pre-determined answers to their questions When teachers shift roles from managing behaviors to mentoring Shifting from 1-way to 2-way conversations “Ingenium Huddles” Receiving the 2017 Deming Medal from the American Society for Quality For more information about David's current work with Ingenium Schools, please visit ingeniumfoundation.org

In our second podcast in April 2017, Ed Baker, author, consultant, and former corporate director, Quality Strategy and Operations Support for the Ford Motor Company, offers insights on his latest book, The Symphony of Profound Knowledge (W. Edwards Deming’s Score for Leading, Performing, and Living in Concert). Nearing 20 years with Ford, including the last 10+ years guiding the tactical and strategic influence of Dr. Deming’s theory of management across Ford, Ed was asked by Dr. Deming to write a book to offer his own understanding of his System of Profound Knowledge.   For those who have heard Dr. Deming say "You can learn a lot about ice and know nothing about water," he credited Ed with this point of enlightenment.  Ed met recently with Tripp Babbitt to share highlights from his book (in one of Tripp’s longest interviews to date), as well as inspirations from Dr. Deming, covering topics including:  Ed’s first contact with Dr. Deming Dr. Deming’s first visits to Ford Ed’s role in choreographing Dr. Deming’s visits across Ford Dr. Deming’s early impact on Ford The pace of change within Ford under Dr. Deming’s influence Ed’s book, Scoring a Whole in One Deming management, TQM, Six Sigma, and Lean Tom Johnson’s influence on his thinking Mechanistic and random sampling Is the map the territory? Joy in work Strong support for The Symphony of Profound Knowledge from Clay Mathile and the entire staff of Aileron In addition to this podcast, link here to watch a recent interview with Ed (and here for a full-length interview), also with a focus on his book, The Symphony of Profound Knowledge.   Link here to listen to a radio interview.

In our first podcast in April 2017, Doug Hall, Eureka! Ranch CEO and Founder, shares ruminations on leadership from his wide-ranging conversations with business leaders, as he stretches his imagination to ask "What is the new talk track to engage a leadership person who is feeling chaotic?" With a 30+ year background in Deming management, Doug well appreciates the potential for "joy in work," yet asks "Where's the joy (to be found today)?.   In his meetings with senior executives, he finds tell-tale signs of broken interactions, systems likely to fail slow and expensively rather than "fast and cheap."   Upon probing them, he learned "they have no idea" what to do when the existing platforms (systems) are not working.   Worse yet, he finds executives overwhelmed by the speed of change in the world today, often consumed by chaos. On the bright side, he hears of a need for systems that enable workers, not control them, as executives ponder "What the new type of leadership needs to be?" and the need, now more than ever, for openness to change, with women leading the way, per Doug's experience.    For those having similar thoughts on helping leadership and change in a rapidly changing world, with ample opportunities for infusing Deming management, Tripp's latest podcast offers serious food for thought from a master innovator.

In our January 2017 podcast, Tim Higgins, President of the In2:InThinking Network, www.in2in.org, and Quality Engineer for NASA, based in Los Angeles, California, shares insights from his 30+ years of studying, applying, and illuminating The Deming System of Profound Knowledge®. Following a brief career as an educator in a public school system, Tim shifted careers and joined the rocket engine industry, employed by “Rocketdyne” (a division of Rockwell, then Boeing, followed by Pratt & Whitney, and now integrated with Aerojet). Along the way, Tim was introduced to Dr. Deming’s theory of management and, upon reflection, realized his inclinations against grades in school, while serving as a teacher, could be explained through his appreciation of Profound Knowledge.   For a short time, Tim was a member of Rocketdyne’s TQM Office, where he was introduced to the thinking of Genichi Taguchi and partnered with peers to create Rocketdyne’s pioneering “InThinking Roadmap” curriculum.   The subsequent focus on thinking modes led to his contributions as a co-founder of the In2:InThinking Network, a non-profit for which he now serves as president.   In 2009, Tim crossed the employment bridge from the contractor side (“Rocketdyne”) to the customer side (NASA), inspired the proposition of assuming a role that would help Rocketdyne become a better contractor. Guided by his extraordinary experiences as a quality advisor, Tim has led study sessions for Dr. Deming’s The New Economics for the past 12+ years, under the sponsorship of “Rocketdyne”.    Beginning in 2017, these sessions, comprised of six 90-minute conference calls, are being sponsored by The Deming Institute.   Led by Tim, participants share their interpretations and questions of The New Economics, chapter-by-chapter, covering 2 chapters in each 2-hour session.    A few highlights from Tim’s musings with Tripp on the study sessions follow below: Why he believes Deming (management) is about learning The popularity of the question "Why doesn’t everyone get “Deming management”?" Why being conscious of context is essential Why, when dealing with a difficulty in perception, using logic is no help is helping others see things differently Issues associated with extrinsic motivation – punishment and rewards Some challenges of letting go of “patting others” on the head The widespread similarity of organizations What would happen if “rating and ranking” systems were used at home? Lessons from transforming his manager Feedback from his VP’s administrative assistant on rewards systems His realization that the system we have is perfectly designed to obtain the results we’re getting Why asking for different results requires a different system Some implications of empowerment

In our December 2016 podcast, Skip Steward, Chief Improvement Office (CIO) for Baptist Memorial Health Care Corporation in Memphis, Tennessee shares lessons from the “Baptist Management System,” including reflections from his 25+ year continuous improvement journey.    Guided by his introduction to Dr. Deming’s vision of continuous improvement, Skip “migrated” from an early career in manufacturing to his current career in healthcare.   One year ago, he was promoted from System Director for Continuous Improvement to serve as Baptist Health Care’s first-ever “CIO”, with an “I” for Improvement. In addition to his explanation of the Baptist Management System, (“a holistic approach to managing that puts a focus on purpose, people and process. We care about the purpose, how to improve the process, and how we develop the people to improve the process.), Skip emphasizes his “infant stages” role in leading the shift in thinking within Baptist Health Care.   In doing so, Skip explains the holistic nature he captured and distilled from Dr. Deming’s management method and what he is doing with this wisdom to challenge and limit the otherwise “business as usual” tendency towards event-driven and episodic improvements.   While crediting the tools of Hoshin Planning, Design of Experiments, Statistical Process Control, Value Stream Mapping, and Pareto charts in both clinical and non-clinical settings, Skip is quick to acknowledge the role of placing a priority on being guided by a Deming lens before proceeding to the “faster-better-cheaper” efficiency of tools.  

In our November 2017 podcast, Ravi Roy, Professor of Public Administration for Southern Utah University (SUU) in Cedar City, Utah, reveals the status of evolving efforts to share his appreciation of Dr. Deming’s System of Profound Knowledge® with his Public Administration students, strongly aligned with his role as the inaugural Research Fellow of The Deming Institute. Beginning in the 1920s, with his employment by the U.S. Department of Agriculture, Dr. Deming worked closely with students to share his research into statistical theory.  Along the way, he was introduced to Professor Harold Hotelling, who Deming would later reference with the following comment, “As Harold Hotelling once said, “He who does no research has nothing to teach.””  Inspired by Dr. Deming’s passion for research, The Deming Institute recently unveiled a fellowship program to engage researchers who share a desire to both expand and deepen the understanding and application of Dr. Deming’s management philosophy among a new generation of students and scholars.  Link here to learn more about this Research Fellow program. In this month's episode, Ravi shares reflections from his Deming research journey and his passion for guiding his student’s understanding and application of Dr. Deming’s management method. As the former director of SUU’s Masters in Public Administration program, Ravi is progressing to a role as director of the Deming Incubator for Public Affairs for Southern Utah University, a new partnership with The Deming Institute.    Under Ravi’s leadership, SUU students will soon have the opportunity to engage him in applying Dr. Deming’s “new economics for industry, government, education,” with an emphasis on government.

Beginning in 2014, The Deming Institute has recorded podcasts on a monthly basis, featuring 20 to 30-minute interviews by Tripp Babbitt with members of the Deming Community who are advancing the use and explanations of Dr. Deming's ideas.   In our October podcast, TJ Gokcen, CEO of Acquate, a software company in Sydney, Australia, shares his learning journey, from collegiate swimmer to software developer, ever in alignment with the Deming philosophy. For many, Dr. Deming was discovered in 1980 through the NBC television whitepaper, If Japan Can, Why Can’t We.  Throughout this documentary are tell-tale signs of a failing US economy, one heavily dependent on manufacturing, from the production of machine tools to the fabrication of automobiles.   To no surprise, many of the earliest examples of the application of Dr. Deming’s management philosophy were in manufacturing.   Meanwhile, attendees at his seminars who came from outside of manufacturing environments might have struggled to see the significance to their professions.   Credit Dr. Deming with continuously striving to demonstrate the unlimited applicability of his management theory, ever mindful of the trap of having attendees see the statistical tools he presented as his core message.   Credit TJ Gokcen with a simple, yet insightful explanation of how he has been applying Dr. Deming’s philosophy to both the design of the software developed by Acquate and the internal operation of Acquate. In this 30-minute episode, TJ skillfully guides listeners through the technical jargon of software development, from agile to scrum to waterfall to kanban techniques, and then proceeds to the heart of how he believes Acquate differentiates itself from other software companies.   Using one of Dr. Deming’s favorite questions about “how to wash a table?,” TJ provides parallels for how his developers probe their clients, question after question, wanting to know more and more about “how will the software be used.”   For those who wonder how Dr. Deming’s System of Profound Knowledge applies to software, this podcast will open minds and doors to amazing possibilities.   For those who appreciate the wide applicability of Dr. Deming’s philosophy, this podcast will provide a brilliant reminder.  

In this week’s podcast, David P. Langford, CEO of Langford Learning, Inc., focuses on “Joy in Learning” and how to bring joy back into the education system. In answering why students aren’t experiencing “Joy in Learning” David starts by quoting Dr. Deming, “are we trying to create a system that teaches students to answer tests or are we trying to create a system that teaches them to think?” The current education system continues to focus on test scores, to the detriment of learning and the loss of elements in the system (like fine arts programs) that brought enjoyment. Dr. Deming was the first person David encountered who believed students have a right to joy in learning.  What can you do to change the system?  David tells us that restoring joy begins with your “circle of influence” and connecting with those who want a better way to do things. Teachers can start by simply asking students, “what drives you to have joy in learning and what prevents it?” David shares that there is no recipe for using the Deming philosophy, unlike other education movements. Often these methods don’t work because there is no understanding of variability between communities, states, cultures and the background of students. Once it’s decided to change the system, real learning happens, performance goes up and joy returns! For more information about David's current work, with Ingenium Schools, please visit ingeniumfoundation.org  

Travis Timmons, owner of Fitness Matters and Kelly Allan, Senior Associate of Kelly Allan Associates and Chair of The Deming Institute's  Advisory Council. Travis and Kelly share the Deming journey “From Chaos to Process” of Fitness Matters, starting with Travis’s introduction to The System of Profound Knowledge® (SoPK), and systems thinking. The focus then shifts to psychology and caring for people, and how they have driven our fear and removed barriers all while creating “joy in work”.  He ends with how using the Plan Do Study Act (PDSA) Cycle has helped them grow and thrive. Travis discusses how he was introduced to the Deming philosophy and areas that first resonated with him - including using a systems approach, and how to think differently and put processes in place to make better decisions. One of the most powerful aspects for him was how SoPK makes you look at how you care for people inside and outside the organization. Travis and Kelly then talk about how the psychology element and the team mindset has been game changing.  These have led to less fear, less stress and more joy within the organization, leading to positive outcomes and win-wins for everyone (including the competition). Lastly, Travis shares a few examples of PDSA’s and the aha moments they discovered along the way. From getting new referrals to finding tampering in the scheduling system, PDSA’s have been a very effective tool in moving them light years ahead in working together as one system and having fun while they do it.

Read more about Dr. Deming's work in his books, Out of the Crisis and The New Economics.   Cliff Norman and Ron Moen, of Associates in Process Improvement (API) discuss the history of the Plan Do Study Act (PDSA Cycle) and their research on the subject.  Cliff and Ron start with how the underpinning of Deming's philosophy was the idea of "continuous improvement", with the PDSA Cycle underlying that philosophy. They discuss the PDSA Cycle of never-ending improvement and learning, and how the iterative nature of the cycle fits with The Deming System of Profound Knowledge®. As Ron shares, Dr. Deming believed that "business is more exacting than science" as businesses must continually learn and improve to survive. Next Cliff and Ron delve into why they wrote a paper on the PDSA Cycle. Ron explains that the quality movement in America began after the NBC White Paper, If Japan Can..Why Can't We? aired in 1980. This raised interest in the Japan and the Plan Do Check Act (PDCA) cycle, which originated there.  Although Dr. Deming never spoke of PDCA, it was connected to him in the early 80's. That incorrect attribution was the inspiration behind the paper.  Cliff and Ron discuss the evolution of the PDSA Cycle, starting hundreds of years ago with the theories of Galileo and Aristotle. Listen as they take you through the progression, from the Shewhart Cycle, through the Deming Wheel and ultimately the PDSA Cycle as we know it today. Tripp Babbitt: [00:00:14] In this episode of The Deming Institute Podcast. Ron Moen and Cliff Norman of API are our guests. Ron and Cliff will discuss the history of PDSA and some of the research they've done on the subject.   Tripp Babbitt: [00:00:35] Hi, my name is Tripp Babbitt, I am host of the Deming Insitute podcast. My guests today are Cliff Norman and Ron Moen.   Tripp Babbitt: [00:00:44] Welcome, gentlemen.   Ron Moen: [00:00:46] Thanks, Tripp. Glad to be with you.   Cliff Norman: [00:00:47] Thank you. Thanks.   Tripp Babbitt: [00:00:49] I wanted to start out with our subject today is going to be kind of the history of plan, do study act. But for those in the audience that maybe are quite familiar with the Shujaat cycle and the history of Plan D0 Study Act, can you tell us a little bit about how it fits into the broader Deming philosophy?   Cliff Norman: [00:01:09] This is called the underpinning of Deming's philosophy was the idea of continuous improvement. And the PDSA cycle is kind of underlies that idea. Once we start improving has to be never ending.And the idea that learning and improvement are never ending underlying that under theory of knowledge.   Cliff Norman: [00:01:29] And as we'll discuss, having was heavily influenced by pragmatists out of Harvard University and the idea of inductive, deductive and inductive learning and the innovative nature of those two ideas are built in to the PDSA cycle. So it really fits up under the theory of knowledge in terms of a system of profound knowledge. What to add to that?   Ron Moen: [00:01:57] Sure. I think the context here for Deming, at least, is that we're talking about improvement of products and services, processes and systems. So it has a business context, but it goes broader than business. But I do have a quote used to say in a seminar. He said, business is more exacting than science. And what he meant by that is that a scientist really doesn't plan to study. You set up your experiments and you share what you've learned. You do your publication. Whereas in business you actually say in business you have to continually learn continuous improvement, Kyra. But also you need to act. So it's more exacting than science business. You have to act in what you're doing. So not only have you learned, but then you have to take action as a basis for that. So you can think of that as really the plan to study act. So in that sense, I think the PDA was adaptive. The scientific method was more adapted to business and industry and a very broad context for any improvement activity.   Cliff Norman: [00:03:04] Instead of Plan Do study publish its Plan Do Study Act.   Tripp Babbitt: [00:03:10] Yes, well said. OK, very good.So when you wrote this paper on plan Do Study Act and gave a history. What was why did you choose this particular subject to write on? What was what was your what was the impetus behind it? What was the purpose behind that?   Ron Moen: [00:03:30] I think what we were seeing in the early 80s, first of all, the quality movement in the United States really was from Deming's presentation.   Ron Moen: [00:03:39] And the NBC white paper, Japan can. Why can't we? Well, that made Japan very popular, too. And so what we were seeing coming out of Japan was the Plan Do check Act and having helped Deming with multiple seminars in the 80s, he never used the term. He never lectured it, and it wasn't part of it. He talked about the theory of knowledge, how we generate knowledge and so on. But the PDCA became connected to Deming back in the early 80s. I knew that was incorrect. And so what I was really trying to do is understand how it came about. And so that's how we end up with this paper. I might add it took me over 10 years to work on.   Ron Moen: [00:04:24] Ok, because the bottleneck I had was nobody in Japan claimed authorship. They kept pointing to Deming. And then when I'd work on Deming and the four day seminar, she had nothing to do with it. So there was a disconnect there that took me quite a while maybe.   Tripp Babbitt: [00:04:42] So what's let's start down this path of the PDSA. So. So how did it evolve over time?   Ron Moen: [00:04:49] Cliff, why don't you back us up to the history of a few hundred years? I think we need to back up the scientific method.   Cliff Norman: [00:04:56] The in the article circling back, Ron and I went back quite a ways, a lot of the information that we had, the first reference in this is from a book called The Metaphysical Club. But then it goes shorefront ways back. But in Western culture, we often credit Galileo with being the father of modern science. And of course, before that used to go to Aristotle on the idea of deductive reasoning. And unfortunately, you know, Aristotle would come up with things like males and male animals and nature have more kids than females or the version of that in nature. And the poor man was married twice.   Cliff Norman: [00:05:47] And if Sir Francis Bacon had been around and he didn't get there till 15, 64 with the idea of inductive reasoning, he said, you know, we can't just have theories, we have to go test them. And Aristotle, who is married twice, he had two opportunities to test that theory. I don't know that it would have changed his mind. But in science, it only takes one observation, as Einstein said, to cause us to either revise or throw out our theory. So he would have had that opportunity. And so those those two are really when we look at deductive reasoning and the follow on by Galileo and and so Francis Bacon really coming up with inductive learning.   Cliff Norman: [00:06:29] And then it goes in in the article, we talk about the influence of pragmatism, which was an American born philosophy of learning and the rest of it, and went Deming was working with Shewhart. He was really impressed with Shewhart intellect. And he asked Suhag. And while they were having lemonade, I think I'm sure it's frankly hard, you know, what causes you to think the way that you think? And Trueheart told him that he had recently read a book by CI Lewis entitled Mind and the World Order and WCI. Lewis had done had taken what the pragmatist school from Charles Purse William James had brought forward, you know, just right after the Civil War. And from that, you know, things have to be practical. We can't just have some theories that are not tested. And so the whole pragmatist's school had a huge influence on Shewhart and Deming, and it was from that. And the short cycle was taught to the Japanese in the 1950s. And so while it's picked up there.   Ron Moen: [00:07:36] So Shewhart really, I think we should be credited with bringing the scientific method to industry and his 1939 book, which was they helped an editor that talked about the scientific method, is connected to three step. Cycle through short cycle with was basically specification production and inspection specification production and inspection. And she says that those three as a circle and they're continuously going to go round it over and over again for industry, that these are really the same thing as in the scientific method.   Ron Moen: [00:08:21] Hypothesizing, carrying out the experiment and testing the hypothesis. So she said these three steps constitute a dynamic scientific process for acquiring knowledge. So I would connect in history, sure. To bring the scientific method, which had been around for 500 years, as Cliff just said, to industry for the first time.   Ron Moen: [00:08:43] So that was the Shewhart cycle that really influenced Deming from thereon. So Deming took that Shewhart cycle, and when he lectured in 1950 to the Japanese, he made it quite different. I think he said it's a four step process. First of all, I said the old way of thinking is design something, build it, sell it. So the context here is designing new products, services. So design the product, sell it, make it and sell it, he said. Instead, you've got to add a fourth step and that's test the product and service and through marketing research and then go around the cycle again. So he made this a cycle as well. Circle it was four steps. So this was his lecture in 1950 in Japan and the Japanese called this the the the Deming wheel, not the Deming cycle they call the Deming wheel. So it was a four step wheel.   Ron Moen: [00:09:43] That was 1950. Shortly thereafter, those that attended his seminar and the next year he was there three or four times and that's two, three years.   Ron Moen: [00:09:53] They sort of evolved what was called the PDCA. And the PDCA was connected back to Deming's lecture very indirectly. The design was really the planned production was to do sales was a check and research into act. So Deming's four steps became the plan do check act kind of a leap of faith.   Ron Moen: [00:10:17] And that's where I spent most of my research time trying to figure out how those two were connected and who connected them. There's a book by Imai and I hope I pronounce that my am I on Kaizen?   Ron Moen: [00:10:35] And he says that basically that's that was the connection between the two. And but there was no name given. He just says that Japanese executives recast the Deming will wheel presented in nineteen fifty seminar into the PDCA. But who did it? How they did it wasn't clear. That's why I spent my research. This includes something in the 80s where I actually interviewed one of the participants in the 1960 lecture that was in nineteen eighty six when I met with him. And of course he was very old and I showed him the PDK in Japanese and I said, who did you, how did you learn this? And he said, We learned it from Deming. And so what I, what I, that didn't help me at all. What I've concluded is that the barrier was Japanese culture. No one wanted recognition for changing it. And so to this day, there's no name associated with the PDK. So it did evolve through the Deming wheel, which came from the Shihad cycle, which came from the scientific method. That's the connection we have. And from that then Dr. Deming's, since he had seen so many articles of PDK in nineteen eighty five, he introduced the Plan to Study Act and his seminar before the eighty six publication Under Wikinomics. I'm sorry to out of the crisis. And so that version in the paper is much like what we see today, and that is the Deming cycle.   Ron Moen: [00:12:19] He called it the Shewhart cycle for learning and improvement. So again, it was four steps. What what's most team's most important accomplishment and then plan a test or change, carry out the test or change, prefectly be on small scale, observe the effects of the change, study results, what we learn, what can we predict? That was the eighty six version. And then over all of his seminars, which he had about 10 or 12 a year between eighty six and ninety three. And the ninety three publication was the new economics there. It was much simpler. The step first step plan, a change test aimed at improvement, the second step to carry out the change, preferably on a small scale, third step to examine the results. What did we learn? What went wrong? And fourth was adopted change of management or run through the cycle again. So this was his final version, the published in The New Economics of nineteen ninety three. And of course, he died in December of nineteen ninety three. So that was his last version. However, in doing my research, I also found several other articles, Fleming responded to things. And so if we still had a little time trip, I'm going to share three of those there in the paper. One was a comment. It was a jail transcript, a roundtable discussion with Dr. Deming in 1980. By now. By now, they have the PDCA.   Ron Moen: [00:13:49] And so.He was asked at this round table. To respond to it, is this really the Deming cycle and he says he says they bear no relation to each other. They bear no relation to each other, meaning the PDCA and what he Deming called the Deming was a Deming circle, but they call it the Shewhart cycle for learning improvement.So there is no resemblance there.   Ron Moen: [00:14:17] The second one was in 1990, published a book with No End and Provo's on an experimental design.And Deming was reviewing the chapters and the very first chapter we had to plan to study at, and Deming's comment in a letter to me on November 17th, 1990. Sure. And call it the PDSA, not the corruption PDCA, the corruption PDCA. I was shocked. He was so angry about how I was seeing the PDCA being used and connecting that to his name.   Ron Moen: [00:14:59] And then finally, my third day of research was at the Library of Congress and the Archives, it was a response. Somebody sent a letter to him. And it was actually a paper and he asked Deming to comment on it, and it had the PDCA cycle in there, and he and here was Deming's response in this.   Ron Moen: [00:15:22] He said, what you propose is not the Deming cycle. I do not know the source of the cycle that you propose, how the PDCA ever came into existence. I know not. So I think the message in this that we're trying to get across is Deming's did not create the PDCA except very indirectly through his lectures in Japan, very indirectly. And so the connection probably is only back to the scientific method and connecting Shewhart work. So any other comments, Cliff?   Cliff Norman: [00:15:58] That's also I think I think it's also goes back to your first question as to what causes us to write this. This article. Ron and I took a first shot at this article in nineteen eighty nine in the fiftieth anniversary of the Shujaat cycle that was published in this book, Statistical Method from the Viewpoint of Quality Control in nineteen thirty nine. And we put it in a newsletter for the Southwest Quality Network which has been running since nineteen eighty nine. And in writing that Ron and I realized right away there's a cap and we did not understand as Ron was just articulating what actually happened in Japan relative to PDK and what the relationship was and all the rest of it.   Cliff Norman: [00:16:46] And that's what started the additional research it was just been talking about. And it's interesting to me, you know, we always used to say that history and analytic study, as opposed to numerous study because it keeps evolving. And every time we write an article just like this one, we find additional gaps, new questions, you know, and Richard Feynman, he says that science begins and ends in questions and that's alive and well here. So as long as it's discussing, we're really not sure about the authorship. And when Ron and I presented this to the Japanese junior scientists and engineers in 2009 in Tokyo, Dr. Choteau, he started to try to fill in some gaps that again, that's one man's view. And he credited Dr. Mizuno as being the creator of this. But again, we don't know that for sure. That's a new question for us, that we need to do additional research on to shore that up. So it's one man's opinion at this point, and we can't find any documentation to support that. And so in the article where we said authorship at this point is unknown, but I would hope to close that gap if we could.   Tripp Babbitt: [00:17:52] Ok, let me let me ask a couple of questions. As I was reading the article, you start with the Shujaat cycle from 1939. And I noticed that there was this Straight-line process that that Ron has already talked about, specification, production, inspection, and then it went to evolved apparently or through Shewhart reading went into more of a circular motion as opposed to a linear piece. Is that is that what mined in the world order brought to Shujaat is the the circle type of specification production inspection from a linear look? How does this relate?   Cliff Norman: [00:18:32] I think what Shewhart recognized and particularly from the pragmatist's, that is what what what you learn in the real world, you know, you need to act on that. And the learning is going to be continuous and updating your theories is really important. So from a theory of knowledge standpoint, I think that's what Shujaat took from a practical school Ron. What would you add to that?   Ron Moen: [00:18:58] Yeah, what he said in his thirty nine book was that the circle is three sets of dynamic scientific process for acquiring knowledge. So it's multiple iterations of it and that's how we acquire knowledge. Once again, the basis for that is Theory of knowledge, which Deming lectures on in all of its four day seminars. Really important aspect, which I assume that everybody had taken a course in college and a theory of knowledge or epistemology. But there weren't many hands that went up when they would ask that, but it was really critical in his thinking. And so the TSA is involved with Deming. Here is truly a methodology that comes directly from theory of knowledge. The acquiring of knowledge, building of knowledge is very dynamic, and that's why there should been multiple PDSA. Saifullah, now, in all fairness.   Cliff Norman: [00:19:55] They also say that his productions use a system that he shows half an inch, you know, that you once you produce a product or service, you have that structure in place in which to learn and get feedback from customers. And so all that that whole idea was built even into that diagram in 1951.   Ron Moen: [00:20:15] One and the other is the context or the overall philosophy is always making improvements. Of course, the Japanese kaizen was critical for this, but the thinking of Deming and others that we have to continually improve our products and services. So that requires an iterative nature of learning.   Ron Moen: [00:20:34] And the PDSA cycle is the best tool to do that.Ok, Tripp,   Tripp Babbitt: [00:20:40] Yeah, no, I was just as I'm listening to this, I'm going through I was looking at some of the drawings in the article, you know, with the Shujaat cycle and then the Deming wheel, which is apparently the part that seems to be the mystery, because your belief is that he showed them the Schuett cycle. It sounds like in 1950 when he met with the folks and the Deming wheel somehow emerged from that conversation. And what and who is it seems to be the question that that's unanswered. Do I have that right?   Ron Moen: [00:21:14] Yes, it is a cycle we don't know. OK, yeah, OK. And again, I could never get to it. And my my explanation is that the Japanese culture, no one wanted the recognition. They wanted to continually give Deming the credit because it came from his lectures in nineteen fifty nineteen fifty one has already published and working as a PDK with the QC circles and so on in the late 50s and early 60s I think it was so it was already around and then they would see that because he continually went back to Japan and the lecture there, he attended many of the Deming prize ceremonies, but he never mentioned the PDK. I've never seen anything other than the three references that I gave you. He was criticizing people that used him so. So I think in the United States, PDCA was in a lot of the literature and, you know, there's nothing wrong with it. But Cliff and I try to answer, what is the PDCA? It's really mostly for implementation and problem solving is to implement something. Now, Deming, when he did talk about the PDCA, he said c means check and he says in the English language check means to hold back. That's really almost the antithesis of theory of knowledge to hold back. There's no learning and holding back. So he thought this was very misleading and really didn't help build knowledge. But for implementation, I think this is fine to ask somebody to do something. They go ahead and do it. You check to see if it's been done.   Ron Moen: [00:22:53] So, you know, it's served that very useful purpose. But what Deming try to do is make it more general and not only for implementation, but for testing and early testing, prototype testing and so on for products. But it's more general than just testing products and services to.   Cliff Norman: [00:23:12] We've got we've got a lot of pushback when we presented at JUSE that they're very clear to us and they kind of own the PDCA cycle, that it was all about the implementation of a standard. In fact, I went back and looked at Dr. Ishikawa's book on total quality control, and they're very clear about it. You know, management determines goals and targets and determine the method. And then the workers say they do the plan, that the management came up with inspection checks to make sure it's OK, that we've implemented the correct standard and it's working. And if it's not working, then we take action to correct it. And Jayyousi was very clear. That's very different than PDSA, which is about the whole idea of the depth of impact of learning and people changing what they find out and developing a new path and all of that.   Cliff Norman: [00:24:04] That's that's what we found in the PDCA as practiced by JUSE.   Ron Moen: [00:24:10] So the PDSA, the PDSA, again, that plan to do is really the deductive part.That's where you set up your hypothesis and make your predictions or state your questions. The study of activity, inductive parts. So it's deductive inductive iteration which goes back to the Francis Bacon contribution and 16 hundreds. So that was really critical in Deming when he taught the PDSA. It was really kind of deductive inductive. So there is where the learning takes place so that can be used in testing anything, prototypes that can be testing a management theories. It really has very broad application.   Ron Moen: [00:24:53] So something that a broader approach, PDSA, much broader now, it can also be used with often implementation can be used for implementation.   Cliff Norman: [00:25:07] Deming would often say tourism seminars that there's no experience without a theory in which to observe it. And I walked up to him. He was having a gathering of statisticians at New York University. And and I said, you know, Ulysses S. Grant said a man has had a bull by the tail. And those a couple more things about it. The man who has it. And then he laughed. And then he said to me, Mr. Norman, don't you think you had to have some theory in order to understand which end to grab, you know? And so when we're in the PDSA cycle, we have an initial theory that we're going to go out and we're going to learn from and then from that, as Ron was just talking about, we're going to have the inductive point that kicks in and study and that we do see people running around and trying to reverse at all. They'll say, no, you start with induction first and all that.   Cliff Norman: [00:25:57] I think then we would argue with that, that when you're out trying to learn, you've already got some initial theory that's a good currency that you're going to start with.   Tripp Babbitt: [00:26:09] I guess the question we see this kind of evolution go on all the way back from nineteen thirty nine as we read the paper. And then there was the Shujaat cycle eighty six, the PDSA cycle in nineteen ninety three. Assuming that probably came out of the new economics with you guys using this all the time. Is this the end or I mean and I say that kind of tongue in cheek but has it evolved with application as you guys have continued to use PDSA. Where does it go from here, maybe is my my broader question is, is it perfect as it is or myself and our other colleagues?   Ron Moen: [00:26:54] We published a version of our version of it in 1991. We took Deming actually Deming reviewed this and liked it, but he didn't put it in his 93 book. And so the planning is really we we asked people to state the objective. What are your questions that you want to answer and what are your predictions to those questions? Then you have a plan to carry out that cycle, carrying it out. Then when you go through the to the study part, you compare your results or complete your data analysis, compare your data to your predictions, summarize what was learned. So we made this deductive inductive, which I think is more closely tied to to the scientific method and Deming dead. So I think that's a change that we made and we've been using that since 1991. So it's really the planning is you might think of PDSA as pinnings prediction and then the study part is comparing your prediction to what happened and then what did we learn from that? So it's a little bit different. Deming liked it, but he didn't put it in his book. So a lot of times with Deming, he would assume that most things are known. You don't need to be that specific, whereas I think both Cliffe and my experience is that you need to be much more prescriptive.   Ron Moen: [00:28:19] He kept it very high level plan to study at well, so we added that to it. And I think we've been using that since 1991.So it's has a lot of leverage, right, Cliff?   Cliff Norman: [00:28:33] Yeah, I think so. I could just add another angle to your question and I think really cover it quite well to me. The future is to use the method with some rigor and what we don't see with PDSA inspectors. There's article written on it in the British Medical Journal with PDSA and the authors of this deceptively simple. And so there's a lot of misuse and abuse of the idea and the name of PDSA. But when somebody wrote this down and they have to pose a good inquiry question rather than a yes and no answer and really make a prediction about what they're going to do there and then develop a data collection plan around that and be prepared to be surprised and do that. Or our pet theory isn't working out and be prepared, you know, to update our thinking and how we're going to approach the world after we've been surprised.   Cliff Norman: [00:29:31] And unfortunately, what a lot of people do is they go out, they fall into the confirmation trap, they try something one time and then a very small range of conditions and then they get the answer they want and they're done. And PDSA, if they're using the rigor that you're asking yourself the question, the what conditions, could this be different? And have I tested over a wide range of conditions here? There's a bunch of things that go along with that.   Cliff Norman: [00:29:55] And I think those authors from the British Medical Journal went on target. It's deceptively simple. And unfortunately, what we had up to now are some fairly simple and as H.L. Mencken said, usually wrong applications of PDSA as opposed to following the rigor that Ron was just talking about.   Ron Moen: [00:30:14] The British publication was only last year, wasn't it? Yeah. That January this year problem tenure is so.   Cliff Norman: [00:30:22] Yeah. Wonderful. Wonderful article.   Cliff Norman: [00:30:25] Ok, and what was the name of the article again. Problems with PDSA,   Tripp Babbitt: [00:30:30] Problems with PDSA.   Tripp Babbitt: [00:30:32] Ok, well, and I think this might yeah, I think this may fit into kind of my my last question.   Tripp Babbitt: [00:30:37] And, you know, we know, you know, organizations out there. You know, we're talking about scientific method and things of that sort. But we know organizations out there are pretty good at copying each other. It's a cultural thing. You know, they have the certain assumptions and beliefs. And and so when you guys are out there using PDSA, how does that how does that work in or filter into, you know, the existing kind of style of managing organizations where you just you're basing everything off of assumptions and beliefs, you know, how do you get get the scientific method to take hold when people are so used to just, you know, you make a decision? Oh, the corporation I worked for before, you know, did it this way. And so it'll work for us type of thing. How are you guys breaking those habits using PDSA so?   Ron Moen: [00:31:32] Well, they come in and at first we have what's called a model for improvement. And so on top of the findings, study act for any organization. They have three questions called the model for improvement. What are we trying to accomplish? Second question, how would we know a change is an improvement? And the third question is, what changes can we make that will result in improvement?   Ron Moen: [00:31:56] So those three questions sort of frame the starting point for turning the PDSA cycle. So having an idea that you want to test comes out of that question number three. But the really the first one to start, what are we trying to accomplish? What is our aim? How will we know what changes, improvements? Articulate what what what would it look like if the changes were made? And then the third one, what are the ideas that we think are we predict will actually result in improvement? And that's when the PDA starts going around. So we think this model for improvement, which we published in Will, there was a clip, I think that was a little bit later the. I know it's 1996 that the improvement died right after that, but that really has helped, I think, organizations tie the PDSA cycle into what are we trying to accomplish? The first edition of the Improvement Day, 1996. Yeah. Yeah.   Tripp Babbitt: [00:32:58] Well, I think we've covered off pretty well some history and actually got a little bit into how this might be applicable to organizations. So, gentlemen, I appreciate you sharing your time with the Deming Institute podcast. And we look forward to future episodes and research that you're doing.   Cliff Norman: [00:33:17] Thanks, Tripp.   Ron Moen: [00:33:18] Thanks, Tripp.

In this week’s podcast, Kevin Cahill, Executive Director of The W. Edwards Deming Institute® and David Langford, CEO of Langford Learning, Inc., introduce The Deming in Education Initiative.  Kevin and David share how The Deming in Education Initiative was conceived, the impact of the Deming Philosophy on education, and where the Initiative is going in the future. The initiative first began many years ago when David joined the Deming Institute Advisory Council to help with their efforts to apply the Deming philosophy in education. But the roots of Deming in Education go even further back.  As David explains, improving education was “a great love” of Dr. Deming, as an educator who taught at NY University for 40 years.  Many of Dr. Deming’s theories and teachings are directly focused on the education system.  After working with Dr. Deming from 1986 to 1993, David began implementing the concepts in his own education system, finding that students easily took to the new approach. Over the last 25 years, David has seen the Deming teachings make a profound and lasting impact on improving school culture and the learning process in the US and around the world.  It is the only philosophy that improves all aspects of the education system.  That impact has inspired Kevin, David and The Deming Institute to commit a deeper focus on developing a long term, sustainable, systems approach to improving education for all students, through The Deming in Education Initiative. For more information about David's current work, with Ingenium Schools, please visit ingeniumfoundation.org  

This week's Podcast, continues our "Knowledge in Variation Series" with Dr. Frony Ward, Managing and Founding Partner of Pinnacle Partners, Inc. In this podcast, Frony discusses online surveys and polls. She starts by sharing the fundamental piece of every single survey. From there she delves into elections polls, and why so many election polls show different results. Lastly, she discusses two or three good things you can do to help yourself understand a poll.

Scott's story starts in 1986, as a graduate walking in the doors of P&G to be a new engineer and shift manager. He was soon perplexed by how he could contribute to solving issues associated with production and quality. During this time, P&G introduced the Deming Philosophy to the organization; a decision that would have a profound impact on Scott's professional and personal life. Scott eagerly applied what he learned, despite facing resistance to change and improvements. After three years, he decided to move to a smaller company where the Deming principles were readily embraced. Listen as Scott discusses how he leads a highly inventive engineering organization whose focus is on innovation and the advantage gained through the embrace of Deming's continual improvement philosophy. Hear his fascinating approach to hiring employees without factoring in schooling and GPA, and a discussion between Tripp and Scott on the challenge presented by ISO 9000.

This week's podcast, continues our "Knowledge in Variation Series" with Dr. Frony Ward, Managing and Founding Partner of Pinnacle Partners, Inc. Frony discusses the importance of Statistical Process Control (SPC) in all parts of an organization and why it's a barrier to many.  Frony was first introduced to SPC (Statistical Process Control) when she was teaching at the University of Tennessee. An opportunity arose to be a part of an institute surrounding statistical process control and she jumped in with both feet, deepening her knowledge of Deming. The institute became a place for people to continue learning after Dr. Deming's Four-Day Seminar. Frony spent the remainder of her time at U of T working with automotive facilities that wanted to study variation and use SPC.  Frony had an opportunity to meet Dr. Deming in 1982 and he completely turned her thinking upside down, especially around Acceptance Sampling Plans. Deming's theory was that the percentage of defective units in the rest of the lot is independent of the percentage of defective units in your sample. Her mind was blown when she went back and proved this herself.  When Frony first learned SPC, it was totally new to her. At first she didn't realize the impact of knowing common cause and special cause variation. After a number of engagements it became obvious that SPC was "the name of the game". At all levels of the organization, from the inspection level to the management level, she could see instantly what was going on by using SPC. It was a powerful tool to "highlight" what people needed to know to make decision and help improve.  Frony finds it fascinating and frustrating that many organizations are aware of SPC but don't use it. She feels that for some reason, finance systems can compromise improvement. Organizations just don't understand that the process behavior chart is the "secret sauce" to seeing their organization. 

This week's podcast features the first episode of our "Knowledge In Variation Series" with Lynda Finn, President of Statistical Insight, LLC and facilitator of The Deming Institute's 2.5 Day Seminar.  Lynda discusses the importance of moving from spreadsheets to plotting data, and the common mistakes that organizations make if they aren't charting their data. Lynda's Deming journey began when, shortly out of graduate school, she met Dr. Deming at one of his public seminars.  From that point she has been helping spread his ideas through her own consulting company and her work with The Deming Institute. She starts by sharing some of the hardest things for people to grasp about the Deming philosophy.  Though it varies, Lynda finds it's most difficult when Deming's ideas don't align with the practices people feel have contributed their success. The episode centers on why organizations should be plotting their data on charts rather than just using spreadsheets.  She feels that if the number is important enough to have on a table, then it should be important enough to see it in its proper context.  Lynda outlines the mistakes people make if they aren't charting their data, starting with not caring enough to see what the data is telling them. The most important reason for charting data is so that everyone sees the same thing and can come to a common conclusion about what's happening and how to improve.  How can you "see" what the data's telling you if you don't make a picture of it?

This week's Podcast features Dr. Lisa Snyder, Superintendent of the Lakeville Public Schools. Lisa shares how the work of Dr. Deming is influencing her as a superintendent and the rewards and challenges of adopting his philosophies.  Lisa's Deming journey began 23 years ago, when in a new job, she was sent to listen to Dr. Deming via satellite. The experience had a huge impact on Lisa as she connected Deming's philosophy to her own belief systems. She thought - this is the framework that public schools are desperately lacking. It was then that she became a Deming follower.  What resonated for Lisa, was the idea of systems thinking rather than evaluating and blaming people. When she started to think about abandoning the "blame game" and looking instead at flaws in the system, it was very powerful. Listen as Lisa talks about shifting the "mindset" in public schools from working in silos to working in collaboration through systems thinking. And how, as a district seeking to create meaningful change in the public school system, they adopted a policy to lead their organization through a continuous improvement philosophy.   Lisa explains that it was both exciting and challenging to find where schools should have high levels of autonomy and where there should be more systems alignment for efficiency and effectiveness. But the process brought more people to the leadership table and broader sense of empowerment to those who would help change the philosophy of the district.

Ron Moen and Cliff Norman, of Associates in Process Improvement (API), discuss their similar experiences where first introduced to Dr. Deming, their paper "Evolution of Deming's System of Profound Knowledge" and finally the "journey of learning" through the lens of SoPK, that Dr. Deming left the world. Ron and Cliff start with an introduction on their first meeting with Dr. Deming; how he challenged what they knew and had learned and dramatically changed their thinking and lives going forward. The main focus of the podcast summarizes the paper Cliff and Ron will publish next year about the evolution of The Deming System of Profound Knowledge, from it's beginnings when Dr. Deming was introduced to Shewhart in 1927 until his death in 1993. Listen as they walk us through Deming's own learning, starting with SQC (Statistical Quality Control) to SQC for Management (which he taught to the Japanese) through the tremendous growth in the 1980's after the NBC White Paper "If Japan Can...Why Can't We?" Deming's learning continued through multiple versions of the 14 points, Seven Deadly Diseases and the four elements of Profound Knowledge. Deming's work culminated with his greatest contribution, the theory and interaction between the four elements, which became The Deming System of Profound Knowledge. The last portion of the Podcast focuses on the journey of learning. Dr Deming, said, "I make no apologies for learning" as his message changed and evolved throughout his life. The teachings continue to impact Ron and Cliff in their lives and work and this research provides fascinating insight into Dr. Deming's personal journey of learning.  Transcript [00:00:15] This episode, Ron Moen and Cliff Norman discuss the evolution of Dr. Deming's 14 points system of profound knowledge and his learning.   [00:00:28] Hi, I'm Tripp Babbitt, host of the Deming Institute podcast. Our guests today are Ron Moen and Cliff Norman of Associates and Process Improvement. Welcome, gentlemen.   [00:00:40] Hello.   [00:00:42] Can you share a little bit about API and what you do?   [00:00:47] Ok, I'll start. This is Ron, I started in nineteen eighty five, three of us, Tom Nolan and like all those myself, we worked together and Department of Agriculture. So we left USDA and started our organization. We were doing a lot of work with academic seminars. So we started and then we we had three more members join in 1987 and 88.   [00:01:12] That would be with Norman, who on the call with us today, and Kevin Nolan and Jerry Langley. And we've basically been together now for nearly 30 years. So we just had a little celebration for 30 years.   [00:01:30] So congratulations, really.   [00:01:33] Any comments about the.   [00:01:35] I just think the is sort of interesting. We don't really exist as a business trip. We exist literally as a learning organization. My wife, Jane, when we're asked by clients, can give an example of a learning organization. She always gives API because we exist to do research and writing together and as improvement advisors and consultants if we run out of knowledge without out of work. And so it's been an organization that exists to cooperate in learning. A great example of a learning organization.   [00:02:08] Ok, great, great. I appreciate it. So how did you both come across the Deming philosophy, Ron? I'm as I mentioned earlier in a conversation, I'm familiar with you from The Reckoning and a number of the books even Out of the Crisis. You're mentioning there are a couple of times. So starting with you, how did this all develop with you and Dr. Deming?   [00:02:33] For me, it was in graduate school at the University of Missouri, I went to a American Statistical Association meeting in Montreal in 1971.   [00:02:44] Deming was there and I was in the audience and he was probably one hundred statisticians and he made every one of them mad because his topic was on athletic studies. And this is really a very important message that is carried throughout his lifetime. This negative versus athletic and statisticians never really got it. They thought that he was doing away with their profession and their theory is correct for a number of problems. That's not correct for Analytica. So I just spent four years in graduate school learning the theory behind a number of studies.   [00:03:20] My advisor was in Montreal and he said, well, how do you like working in the real world? I said, where is the population?   [00:03:28] There's no population. The world's very dynamic and enumerated problems are not appropriate. Just six words for negative. But the problem is that we work on our analytic. And so that was kind of the whole starting point. I also worked with him in ASTM 11 committee. It was called in Philadelphia. He was a member of that. I was a member of that nineteen seventy three. I took his classes at George Washington University in 79 and 80, and from eighty forward it was the NBC White Paper, the four day seminars and so on and so forth. So that was that was my start.   [00:04:03] So that's interesting. And Cliff, how did you come across the Deming philosophy?   [00:04:07] I was working at Otis Engineering and we had started to try to worry a little bit about improvement over the engineering support of Halliburton and my CEO, Mr. Pervis Strache. He asked me to go to the Deming seminar and take along our R&D manager. This is in 1981, and I was in an elevator. Academi got on. Two ladies were guiding me, man, and he looked at me and saw my George Washington University badge. And he came over and he read it and he backed away from me and he said, Mr. Norman, I'm getting ready to tell you today will haunt you for the rest of your life. And it's actually come true. And then the second thing he said to me, as young as you are at the time I was 29, is as young as you are. If if you're working for somebody and you're not learning from them, you ought to thinking about getting a new boss.   [00:05:05] And I thought, well, that's that's extremely profound. And throughout the seminar, I always had a lot of dissonance because a lot of the things I was taught, he was challenging. So, for example, sampling plants, which is a quality engineer, I'd set up lots of snaffling plans for ten years prior to that. And he got me up in front of 500 people at Crystal City and he's worked to learn. As I said, I thought God created this. He said, no, I know the people. They did put people like you out of business types learn something to sit down, you know. And so the whole week was tough.   [00:05:46] And I had a strong appreciation for the next few seminars I went to why people would get up. Some of them would get up and leave. And, you know, for example, that was Dr. Donald Berwick, who  Ron and I both have the privilege to work with. And he said after the first few hours, he got up and left and flew back to Boston and he said he was laying there in his bed that night. And he's thinking, you know, I need to go back. And something was really bothered. And he said he was glad he did. But, you know, we put him off so badly that he just got up and left. And, you know, early on we saw we saw that as we watched people, you know, say I can't stand any more of this and get up and leave. But the people who say truly it changed their thinking and it certainly did it for me.   [00:06:30] So what are the things we dove into in the conversation with you guys? Is this system of profound knowledge and even starting back after or even during World War two? And Dr. Deming's already been and met with Walter Shewhart and worked with him at the Western Electric Plant. And in nineteen forty two, I believe he he stepped up with Stanford University and started doing a number of seminars and things of that sort. Can you kind of take me from there about how this evolution has started? Because everybody talks about the 14 points in the system, profound knowledge, and maybe even during that conversation we can talk about, you know, what is the difference between those two or is there a difference?   [00:07:16] So when I tackle this problem back in January of this year, and because we felt there was such a misunderstanding and that whatever Deming said was permanent and in fact, this paper really shows the evolution of Deming's learning it really, you know, it I think it does a good job of that. So we just submitted this paper to Quality Progress for American Society of Quality and will be published next spring. We think they don't have a date yet.   [00:07:47] So that's what I would like to talk about. And I think the overall message is that, yes, it he started with Shewhart's ideas. And what year was that?   [00:07:58] When I first met Charlotte, the 1927 fall of 1927. So the name of Huntsman introduced them to Shewhart.   [00:08:08] So then what we're going to what we did in this paper was we sort of took it into three parts before 1980, 1988 and 1988 and then 1989 and 1993. And again, Deming's learning this tremendous through that span of time. And but it was suhas ideas applied to the to a Stanford University eight day course on efficacy or statistical quality control for the free world or to Stanford University. Put together this course Hemington at 22 times. So Heming started by teaching S.A.C., which basically is the understanding variation part and the understanding of separation of common and special causes that they learned from Shujaat. So that was the course in 1942. And then we moved forward to 1950 after World War Two, we took that same course and taught it to the Japanese. He was invited to teach the Japanese. So it was another eight day course. What was different and we've been out in the paper was that were managers there, it wasn't just us all quality control people, it was manager. So his message sort of changed to how do managers deal with understanding variation. And so there was an emphasis on management and several of the courses where a lot of managers in the sessions in nineteen fifty. So that kind of was the beginning of a message for management. In the paper we talk about moving up through the 70s to 1980 and of course a big milestone. There was the NBC White Paper. If Japan can, why can't we, which I think did change Deming's life.   [00:09:51] He didn't admit that. But from there on then it was a message for management. And so it was his four day seminars. We're starting then in 1980 and 1981, 82, he started saying these are things you should do and should not do.Those evolved into the 14 points, which several of those points came from a seminar.   [00:10:14] 1980 was a cliff, I believe. I think, yeah.   [00:10:19] They took notes on his seminar with HP. He he saw the notes and he said, I like these ideas. There are ten ideas. And he took those ten and added four more. That was the beginning of the fourteen points.   [00:10:33] Things to do and not do, stop doing. They start doing this shortly thereafter. There were four more. It was fourteen points that became the basis of the fourteen points. They changed almost monthly in nineteen eighty, eighty one eighty two, putting less and less emphasis on statistics and more and more emphasis on what manager should be doing and not doing.   [00:10:55] Let me ask you a question around just a couple of points of clarification. So in 1950 when they had SQC for management, that was Japanese management, correct? We're more focused. OK, OK. And then and then in 1980 with the white paper in the 14 points where the 14 points then more aimed at U.S. management, would that be fair to say, or Western management?   [00:11:23] I would say yes, because the Origin was his seminar with HP, and that very much was a Western or American audience. OK.   [00:11:33] I think he actually said that a Tripp in his book Out of the crisis. And I remember in the seminars that I went to, he would always have an asterisk next to the 14 points and then he would say for the transformation of the Western style of management. And I think that message was entirely aimed at Western management. He never taught for fourteen points to the Japanese. In fact, Iran, as part of our collusion with the Japanese Union of Scientists and Engineers, we've been working with them for a number of years through API. And Dr. Connell looked at those 14 points and he said, it seems that Dr. Deming is proposing a humanistic philosophy for the 21st century, that they really didn't recognize the 14 points even now.   [00:12:23] Ok, sorry about that, Ron. I just wanted to kind of get some clarification on things for the for the audience. So pick it up from the the development of the 14 points then.   [00:12:33] So along with the 14 points and started developing the deadly diseases, which is sort of summaries from the 14 points. But he had seven deadly diseases for the Western management, five of which were for Western management. The last two, he said, are peculiar to the industry in the U.S. and that number six was excessive medical cost. And number seven is excessive cost of liability swelled by lawyers that work on contingency fees. So those were for us specific, but the rest were all for Western management. So he stayed with that for a while. But then I think the questions kept coming. Where do these come from? How do you how do we know these are correct? You know, we should start doing these things. What's the theory behind that? And that sort of evolved in our paper to talk about this. Osaka paper, which was really what's behind the 14 points, and that was 1989, where he talked about profound knowledge that he said these really you need to know these things.   [00:13:33] And he ended up with a list of about 15 different elements. What is profound knowledge? So he had a list of 15 and that was in nineteen eighty nine, 1990. And these were presented in his in his four day seminar as a handout. And then it was in nineteen eighty nine, 1990, University of Minnesota had a two day workshop and one of the talks was by three professors and they took those 15 and they grouped him into I think it was six categories. Deming did not attend that session, but he did say the paper and the next month there was down to four and that was the four parts of profound knowledge that was then became 1990 91. And any change them slightly.   [00:14:27] And then along in the seminars, they continue to talk about a system of profound knowledge and almost exclusively avoided talking about the 14 points. So it was all about the system of profound knowledge, which became, you know, his 1993 book. So that's kind of the evolution of it.   [00:14:49] So from the research that you guys have done, have you come to the opinion then that the 14 points aren't valid anymore? Are they something that's been supplanted by a system of profound knowledge?   [00:15:02] I'll give you my opinion. Clifton can give us yours, but I think the 14 points are dos and don'ts. People understand them. And there are things that you can stop doing, not only some things you have to do. So I think they were popular. I think in hindsight, the system of profound knowledge became too abstract because it's the theory. It's a theory behind the 14 points. But for most people, it was too abstract for them to take the system of profound knowledge and to change their behavior, change their actions. So I think it was harder sell when they switched to a system of profound knowledge.   [00:15:42] Yeah, Ron pulled out of his notes, as he usually does. He has a wealth of information with personal correspondence with Dr. Deming. And one of the handouts that Ron produced that we put into the paper trip was the first version of the 14 points in early 1982. And we contrast that in our article with the version that came out in 1986 and out of the crisis. And I guess what disturbed me is I went back and I look at the list from 1982. It was far more descriptive and more useful. And I actually was working with a client who was learning about 14 points at the time. And they looked at these and I said, Cliff, this this is far better. What we've done in 86 looks like we've watered these things down. And so I think people will see that in the paper just very profoundly struck with how the 82 version in my mind was more useful than what ultimately was was published. The other thing here, and I think I think Deming sort to appreciate is when he started out with the 14 points he was playing to the social character of the American culture, which just tell us what to go do, give us a silver bullet, what we'll take care of that. And as opposed to really understanding the underlying theory. I think if you have been teaching in England, they would have demanded the theory right off the bat. And unfortunately, we've we have a tendency to feed people with things to go do. That's why when you read blogs, the most important blogs on websites are seven things for this and 10 things to take care of that.   [00:17:26] And they actually tell people if you label your blog as such, people will read it, you know, because they expect things to go do.   [00:17:34] So I think Deming listen to his own message about the importance of theory and moved into the system of profound knowledge from. What's your thought on that?   [00:17:43] Yeah, I think that's correct. And of course, in the new economics that's introduced in chapters three and four, but it did he really didn't talk about the talking points other than they follow naturally from my system of profound knowledge. What he did do in Chapter two was these are the heavy losses. So he talks in the new economics chapter to some faulty practices of management with suggestions for better practice. So here's a two columns present practice and then better practice. And then the reasons why really dig deeper into this is a system of profound knowledge. So he kind of is backed off on the 14 points. But I think is subject to to get ordinary people to understand it is here are present practices, here are better practices. And these are my reasons why in Chapter two, when introducing the system of profound knowledge in chapters three and four. So whether or not it's the right thing, I don't know. But I think most people have trouble with this applying the profound knowledge.   [00:18:43] Yes. And one thing I want to ask Cliff about that you brought up there, you said the 1982 version of the 14 points, greater clarity. I'm going to use my words, not yours. Sorry, to the ones that came out later. Can you give me an example or a couple of examples?   [00:19:00] Yeah, just consider point number five, which is improved slightly forever, the system of production and service. That's what was published. In 86, if you look at the 82 version, it says used statistical techniques to identify the two sources of waste systems, 85 percent, local faults, 15 percent, you know, strive constantly, reduce this waste. That's that's pretty specific. What to go do. We have a whole industry cottage industry of consultants that now call that lean, Tripp.   [00:19:31] Yes. OK, very good.   [00:19:35] And, you know, of course, this all goes back to Demings idea of the theory of variation. And that's how he entered the system of profound knowledge was through that window of understanding variation from Shewhart ideas. And from that he found out that if I have common cause variation, I need to understand the system and order to understand the system. I need to engage these people. Therefore, I need to understand the underlying driving needs of these folks in the psychology behind that in order to actually do this in a way that makes sense. I need to use the scientific method with the addition of act which became PDSA, so I need to understand how I'm going to develop tests and implement changes. And so through the window of variation that Demming discovers the other three parts, a profound knowledge. And so it's interesting to me that when I hang around people who have expertize in the systems area, for example, they don't get back to variation people in psychology who have been lucky to work with, they don't get back to variation. And the people who understand epistemology and theory knowledge, they don't get back to understand Gerstmann comedy special cause variation. So the variation window is huge leverage.   [00:20:45] I going to say the greatest contribution is putting those four parts together. Again, there's great thinkers in each of those four. But what Deming there to put them together as a system? And it's the interaction of the four parts that provide the profound knowledge he did that no one else said that. You know, I think that's his greatest contribution, which again, makes it more abstract because how do you look at all four of those parts at the same time? That's been the difficulty.   [00:21:15] Sure. You know, they're all four of them are deep enough. Yeah.   [00:21:21] For to give you another example, point number nine came out, break down barriers between staff areas and as API worked with our clients coming out of the Demming four day seminars, we didn't quite know how to go do that. So we went back to Dr. Deming's production, viewed as a system. And we said, well, if we switch from the organizational chart to actually understand the organization viewed as a system, we can start to break down those barriers so that what we call the linkage are processes, which has been a very valuable method for us. But Demming actually an 82 version, he wrote this. He said, reduce waste by putting together as a team the people that work on design, research, sales and production. If people had heard that message, they wouldn't be out walking around saying, how do we break down barriers between departments, he told them in 1980 to exactly what to go do. And it's interesting that Chrysler, I think, will correct me on this, but they actually put together a research center and a design center that actually did what Dr. Dean is talking about.Point number nine,   [00:22:24] And the overall method is Deming's methods change yearly, monthly. And, you know, some people come to a seminar and say, well, you said this last month, I have it. I have it on tape. And his answer was, I make no apologies for learning. Now you have this on tape.   [00:22:46] So what we're trying to do in this paper, this paper, it really just shows how his journey of learning and an impact.   [00:22:53] I think his gift to us is that the system of profound knowledge is our own journey to learning, and nothing else is really how to learn by using that lens.   [00:23:05] So so let's let's talk about that a little bit from your application of espec. And you've just kind of laid the table for Dr. Deming, you know, advanced his learning. And so Piqué is out there to advance. Everyone's learning. What have you learned?   [00:23:22] The system of profound knowledge causes us within API to operate better as a consulting group for the simple reason that we all use the same Decha theory when we look at things.   [00:23:35] We were I was once confronted by a client in the construction industry and they told me that Lloyd was in a week before and they told me what Lloyd had said. And I said, there's no way Lloyd said that. And they said, What are you talking about? I said, there's no way he could possibly make that statement. And the guy sitting across from the CEO, he said, How long? That time he about 15 seconds. And they started laughing and they said, how did you know? We didn't say that. I said, because Lloyd couldn't possibly think that way. It doesn't match his theory uses. And I know he uses and they start laughing again. And they said, well, you know, we had a big consulting firm in here last week and we test done on their consultant. They immediately switched.   [00:24:20] And I said, that's because I have a theory. They're just they're trying to be in the moment and they're trying to satisfy you.   [00:24:27] And I'm excited that we're actually interested in helping you learn. And so that's been a profound impact on API as we work together. I can follow Ron easily because I know what was going on. If he talks about something, he makes a statement. He's coming off that those four streams of theory. And if I hear something that doesn't match that, I know that he didn't say that, then he's very much like that, too. When I hear people quote Demming and I hear something that's counter to the theory of variation, for example, or what he would say about psychology, I know that that didn't happen because they just don't wander around too much from that theory.   [00:25:04] So, again, I think the word theory is scary to most people. But I think what Deming did for me personally is that theory was not scary, but it's really how we learn.   [00:25:15] And so maybe I needed a better understanding, a theory of knowledge, but this idea of making predictions and testing those predictions. And so it was really it was it created a real powerful message for learning about the world I live in. So in general, his models were just he learns every day. And I think just that in the seminars helped everybody walk away saying that. I think he called it a yearning for learning. And so for most people, they didn't learn that in school. They learned it in Demming seminars. Create a lifelong learning for a yearning for learning is a really powerful message.   [00:25:58] The other part, I think this is really important. I once had a manager on a seminar and asked me to clip this all seems like common sense. Why isn't everybody doing this? And as we went through the the workshop together about every 20 minutes, this guy would say, you know, this is hard, you know, really learning about this idea of variations hard. And by the end of the two days together, he said, I think I answered my own question. You know, this requires some study. This requires some thought. This is not something you just go to a two day seminar and then you're all finished. This is a life long learning idea and this is difficult. And I think that's part of the reason that people don't embrace Demming right away, because it does require some study and some work.   [00:26:44] Ok, and let's let's follow that line of thinking just from a guys who've worked in a variety of industries, you know, applying system of profound knowledge. And and so so from that, what are the hardest things for people to grasp? Does it vary by industry or is it kind of there's just certain things that that are very difficult for your clients to take hold of.   [00:27:10] Well, what's common to all industries is there's usually a management structure, and again, this is a theory for management.   [00:27:18] So it's easy to see the style of management in these organizations with the lens of profound knowledge. And because that's designed to bring out some of these practices of managers that are faulty. So it doesn't make any difference what industry is. As I look at education or government or industry style and management in the West and a lot of other Eastern countries and a lot of these a lot of traveling in the east and Western practices are becoming more popular, for example, in India and other countries in Asia as well. Because they're popular, they're easy. They think it's what they should do. So it doesn't make any difference what industry. So whatever industry you're in, you need to say, well, how are we managing our people? Looking at it through the lens, for example, they ranking people and why are they ranking people? What are they doing? What's the reward system there? So it doesn't make any difference what industry. And I say just as much in government and education, the ranking of teachers, the ranking, the students ranking of schools, all of its ranking is a deadly disease, one of the deadly diseases from nineteen eighty six. That's even more common today. So these faulty practices are very common across all industries.   [00:28:44] So so we haven't heeded Dr. Deming's warning about exporting our dysfunctional management philosophy to Eastern nations then, huh?   [00:28:55] No.   [00:28:56] Okay. All right, Cliff, you have something to add to that?   [00:28:59] Yeah, absolutely. The just walk around the system of profound knowledge with examples of variation rather than really understand that just one common and special cause variation. As we're looking at measures, I'm looking at measures over time, you know, as one charge or control. First, we now have a whole industry of consultants around teaching dashboards that compare this month's measure with some goal, and then they paint it red, green or yellow with absolutely no understanding of whether this measure is suffering from special or common cause variation. We have lots of examples where fundamentally the technique puts management to sleep and are missing opportunities to actually learn from the data because of these so-called dashboards, switching the organization from focusing on the organizational chart to really understand the organization of the system. That's a huge leap and understanding, unfortunately, without the methods of understanding. The organization is a system that Deming gave us the concept. Poor people don't get there, so the system is never under suspicion, which leads right to psychology. So when things go wrong, people start to work on each other instead of the system. It's just the other day being talked about and every theory of knowledge, rather than being able to pose a good inquiry question that leads us to where our ignorance is. We now have lists of tools for people to use under some alphabet soup, you know, use this tool than that tool, use another tool and really being able to pose a good question that leads us on a task where we can get the data that's going to answer that question and only use the proper tools that help us answer that question. That should be considered the first learning principle, only use the tools that are necessary to answer a good inquiry based question which underlies the theory of knowledge.   [00:30:50] Let me let me ask you guys a question that you just brought up.   [00:30:54] Are you shocked by the number of organizations that you walk into that do not use statistical process control in any form?   [00:31:04] Well, to win a Deming prize, which I think there's been 18 companies in India, the one the prize part of the Deming prize is the use of use of sugar control charge. So if you win the prize, you have to practice. Where do I say it? Outside of that is not a common kind of common.   [00:31:25] I think a lot of people are getting away from that. Using the Shewhart charts. And again, the importance of separating the common cause and special cause, I think that's I don't know. I think it is going away, but it shouldn't.   [00:31:43] It's one of the parts of profound knowledge and it's critical is what is my basis for action? Do I work on the system? I work on special causes, one of which might be on individuals or people. But to blame I always blame people for faults in the system is totally wrong. This will help you separate that. And so I think Demming said in quite a few of his seminars that it'll take one hundred years for people to appreciate the contributions of Walter Schuckert. And I think that's true. And I think we had an API meeting two weeks ago and we're still I think we're still starting to appreciate the power of that statement being made. We're still learning to understand variation. Interesting. I think that's something that we really need to bring, really emphasized to bring back, but it's one of four parts.   [00:32:33] Ok, Cliff, you have something to add to that?   [00:32:36] Yeah, I just I think one of the most frustrating things to me, Tripp, is to watch people who are out teaching and they really haven't grasped that idea that I mean, one that's about the difference between a number of analytic studies. And so we have a whole bunch of folks out right now that heard, oh, we need to teach statistical techniques. So they went back and they got the book on statistical techniques. And so now we're teaching hypothesis testing and all the rest of it. And the underlying assumptions of all those tests is that the data is going to be independent and identically distributed, so called ID. And so if those assumptions are there, then we can go use that test. He tests and all the rest of it, unfortunately, is shoehorned us that processes in nature are inherently stable and manmade processes are inherently unstable. So we have special clauses present. It destroys all those assumptions. So you would think that by now if I went to a computer program like many tab, rather than get a histogram and distribution of data, the first thing would ask me to do is to plot my data on a run charter control chart to see if I have special clauses present, because from a manmade process, the chances of that are pretty good and then learn from the special causes. And if people understood that, one basic idea would be a lot further down the road than we are right now. And unfortunately, when people hear statistical process control, they actually think that you only use the control chart once something is implemented. They don't understand that. We have to make sure that the data going into the models that we're using is in a state of statistical control before we can start using more sophisticated, so-called sophisticated techniques. Although I would offer somebody has done the work of putting their work on a control chart there along and probably most of what they need to learn about the process.   [00:34:25] My last question for you guys is, is there anything that you wish I would have asked that you'd like to expound upon or is there any clarification of anything you have said Deming were alive today?   [00:34:36] Would this be the same message? And I would say no. His system of profound knowledge is probably very different. You have different emphasis on it. And the last thing he'd want us to do is to lock into his system of profound knowledge that using those four parts, I think those need to evolve. They can be individual people can see them differently. And I think that's OK as long as we I do think the four parts together. And it's just kind of like a liberal arts degree. You have to have some knowledge and all these things. I think that's important. But the specifics which were locked in when he died and when he published in nineteen ninety three, I think those would be very different if he continued to live. So I think that's the legacy he would like to leave us, is that we need to keep adding to that better understanding and and continue to develop a system to our knowledge and the application of it.   [00:35:31] Cliff?   [00:35:32] Yeah, I think Ron's hit it right on the head. I don't think Demming would want us to be his store and worship what he did. He would want us to start building on that. And one of the things that I particularly enjoy being associated with API is a contingent learning and continue to build on what helped us try to learn. And I think the work of the institute should be in that vein, as is what can we actually do to keep moving forward and adding to the body of knowledge? Those are the kind of things that we should be talking about more. And I love history, but history only gives me a foundation to move forward.   [00:36:16] Very good. Well, Ron Moen and Cliff Norman, thank you for being guests on the Deming InSitu podcast.   [00:36:23] Thanks, Tripp. Thanks, Tripp.   [00:36:28] This is Tripp Babbitt informing you about the upcoming Demming and Education Conference on November six to be a few thousand fifty at Cedar Brook Lodge in Seattle, Washington, the Deming Institute will feature administrators, teachers and thought leaders that are challenging the status quo in education. For more information, go to the Deming Web site and select events. We hope to see you there.

This week's Podcast feature Alfie Kohn, national speaker and author of 14 books, and scores of articles, on human behavior, management, and education.  Alfie discusses the inspiration for his books including, No Contest and Punished by Rewards, the divergent thoughts surrounding the history of education in the 20th century, and his views on standardized testing and homework.  Alfie explains how, as a contrarian with a practice of finding issues where logic and research points in one direction and practices move in a different direction, he started thinking and writing about competition. He began debunking the common notion that "competition is inevitable because it's just part of human nature". Next Alfie discusses the different philosophies on education in the early 20th century. As one side supported the experience of the student as the "center of gravity", the other focused on rules, curriculum, numbers and behaviors - things outside the classroom that can be measured.  Alfie tells us how standardized testing has undermined education, even when test scores go up, and how much time has been taken away from real learning to teach kids how to be good at taking tests. Lastly, Alfie shares what he will be talking about on November 8th, at The First Annual Deming in Education Conference in Seattle.  

This week's Podcast features Jim Benson, founding partner of the Modus Institute.  Jim discusses how he was introduced to the Deming Philosophy, how his team applies it to Knowledge Work (work that can't be seen), and what he feels is the biggest fear in an organization. Though he was initially introduced accidently on an airplane, Jim shared how he was actively looking for a set of guiding principles around what would create a human oriented, self-aware way of managing work. As he hopes everyone finds out, the four points of the System of Profound Knowledge do that in a very elegant, concise and friendly way. At Modus Cooperendi, they apply the Deming Philosophy with three guiding principles: Respect for people, SOPK, and the One Point (summation of the 14 points). They take those principles and help companies build new Life Systems, so they can visualize their work for the first time leading to better communication, collaboration and transparency. Listen as Jim tells us why they feel "the unknown" is the biggest fear in an organization. And how building trust within teams can remove one of the largest barriers to your company. Hear how some companies they're working with are doing just that.

Read more about Dr. Deming's work in his books, Out of the Crisis and The New Economics. This week's Podcast features Louis Altazan, President of AGCO Automotive Corporation in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. Louis discusses his introduction to Dr. Deming and his philosophies, his "aha" moment, and the long-term thinking and trust that must be established to succeed.  Louis starts with a brief introduction of AGCO, and his feeling that the automotive industry could be doing better. After toiling for 10 years with various philosophies, it was the 1980 NBC documentary "If Japan Can, Why Can't We" that hit home with him. He picked up the phone and called Dr. Deming. And as they say "the rest is history." Louis began implementing Deming's 14 points right away. His biggest "aha" moment was that "I was the problem." Once he realized this, he called a meeting to apologize and things started to get better right away. Louis removed everyone from the "flat rate" pay system and put them on salary. This helped his staff change their focus from short-term thinking and profits to long-term thinking and trust.  Louis warns that you can't apply some part of Dr. Deming's philosophy and not others - that "it's a cohesive system that all works together." Done this way you will start seeing improvement almost immediately, but the real benefits will be felt about 20 years down the road. 

This week's Podcast features Dr. Bret Champion, Superintendent of the Leander Independent School District in Leander, Texas. Bret discusses Leander ISD's journey and how they faced the challenges of a growing school district, external federal and state standards and limited resources to create a quality education system focused on the most critical component, the student.  Bret shares his early adoption of the "Leander Way" and how he discovered it was based on the Deming teachings. At Leander, he found a collaborative environment, free from the palpable fear felt at other schools by students and teachers alike. Liberated from fear through partnership, interaction, cooperation and training, it was about a system, "not just by the book".  Bret explains how he is drawn to messy and noisy classrooms, because "that's where learning happens". At Leander, they realized they did not know what defined a quality classroom or how to measure it. From this experience they developed their "Seven Student Learning Behaviors". As a district of 36,000 students and 400 employees spread over 200 square miles, Bret describes the constant "battle for balance" and the road to quality as a "marathon". But they continue to work towards incremental changes on their journey of improvement, never letting go of their culture, shared vision and belief that students are "more than test scores".

This week's Podcast features Gordon McGilton, Director of a Private Equity Fund with investment in multiple industries. Gordon shares the humorous and unique way he was introduced to Dr. Deming's philosophies. He provides an example of a company that is using The Deming System of Profound Knowledge with great success, as well as how one can begin their own journey. Gordon starts with, "every business is just a system and that system delivers some change of state that customers are willing to pay for. Everything else in between is just by what method to do it." Listen as Gordon shares the Jet-Hot, Inc. story, a real example of how he applied the Deming System of Profound Knowledge and systems thinking to a coatings company on the verge of insolvency. After three years, with the same people, the company is prospering and the employees are proud of what they do, the company they work for and the solutions they provide the customers. We step back and hear how Gordon was introduced to Dr. Deming's philosophies while working in the auto industry in 1980, when the documentary "If Japan Can, Why Can't We" aired on NBC-TV. This is a must listen podcast, as Gordon shares the tale of his initial resistance to attending Dr. Deming's 4-Day Seminar; and his subsequent understanding that everything he had learned in management, up to that point, was wrong. Gordon explores his Aha! Moments, the first of which was, "you can't increase someone's capability by offering them money or by threatening them." This was a huge breakthrough, as he was raised on an intimidation model believing that's how you got things done. The breakthrough came once he saw that providing employees with the instructions, tools, information and support they needed, is what actually improved their performance.  

This week's podcast features Dr. Doug Stilwell, Superintendent of the Urbandale Community School District. Doug shares his application of the Deming Philosophy in education - looking at education from a systems point a view and driving out fear with trust. Listen as Doug talks about how, after 35 years in education, he always felt that "something was not right." It wasn't until 2009 when he attended a David Langford Seminar, which applied the Deming philosophy in education, that he said "this is it, this is the stuff I have been looking for." Doug endured 35 years of new initiatives from the legislature and Department of Education, with no changes in student achievement. It caused him to think back to Deming and that "people are not the problem, it's the system." If they did not take a systems approach they would be doomed to fail. He realized that whether you're looking at the district as a whole, or a building or even a classroom, it's a system, and the way you approach that system will have the greatest impact on student learning. Doug shares his lifelong interest in trust, the role it plays in driving out fear, and his conclusion that, "if there is fear in an organization, that means that there is not trust." By engendering trust, Doug realized that people can be freed from fear and feel freer to innovate. Lastly, Doug shares his recommendations for others are they begin their journey. It starts with defining an aim for thieir system and clearly communicating that with the students. A few years ago, Doug was disheartened after reading a study show that the decrease in joy for learning begins in Kindergarten. But this reinforced for him the value of systems thinking, and that teacher understanding of a systems approach in the classroom is a great place to start.

This week's podcast features David Langford, CEO and Founder of Langford International, Inc. and Deming Institute Advisory Council member. In David's third podcast he explores ways to get started in employing the Deming philosophy in education. In many instances this requires an "out of body experience"; stop playing the blame game, stop being a victim. He tells us to stop worrying about the bigger system and start optimizing the performance of the group, which you have influence over.  David shares an example of a student whose "new" knowledge and appreciation for a system led to a study of the most common systemic questions asked by students. Listen as he reviews what they learned - to stop wasting time on things that are not meaningful, to start concentrating on things that are and get those to a higher degree of performance and to concentrate on deep learning experiences with lasting impact. David explores how a small group of committed people working in a consistent fashion can transform an organization. You don't have to be "all in" to create transformation. It can start with you. For more information about David's current work, with Ingenium Schools, please visit ingeniumfoundation.org  

This week's podcast features Doug Hall, CEO and Founder of Innovation Engineering and Eureka! Ranch as he shares his approach for taking the systems thinking of Dr. Deming and applying it to the world of strategy, innovation, and growth. Doug shares the story of how his father introduced him to Dr. Deming and systems thinking in the late 70's. Doug's father worked at Nashua Corporation, which was one of the early corporate adopters of Dr. Deming's philosophies. Later Doug took that systems mindset to the Proctor and Gamble brand management department taking nine innovations to market in 12 months, which is still a record today. After 10 years he retired from corporate life and established Eureka! Ranch. He soon found that corporate executives were not interested in a systemic approach to innovation. Doug pivoted and repackaged himself as a innovation Guru who in truth was powered by systems thinking. He was soon named one of America's top idea gurus by A&E To 10, Inc. Magazine and the Wall Street Journal. Doug went on to do dozens of projects for such top innovators as Nike, Walt Disney, and AT&T. His fame lead to network radio and television roles, writing of books and to the role of "Truth Teller" judge on the first season of ABC TV's American Inventor.  As he was getting ready to retire from consulting he returned to his roots and founded the new field of academic study known as Innovation Engineering at the University of Maine. Their mission is to change the world by enabling innovation by everyone, everywhere, everyday resulting in increased speed to market and decreased risk. Their method for accomplishing this is to apply the systems thinking of Dr. Deming.  The rise of the internet and the 2008 recession created the opportunity to transfer the system approach to innovation from universities to the commercial world. It worked-companies found that when they enabled their employees they could increase speed to market by up to 6x and decrease innovation risk by 30 to 80%.  Listen as Doug explains why he feels today's younger generation are the greatest generation for workers. And why starting with the "what, why and how" is such an important first step in innovation.  

This week's podcast features Dick Steele, Founder and Chairman of Peaker Services, Inc. and member of The Deming Institute Board of Trustees. Dick discusses his company's transformation and how he has kept his employees engaged throughout their Deming Journey. Dick shares his memory of how a book recommendation by his mother led to his introduction to Dr. Deming's philosophies. And how attending Dr. Deming's 4-day seminar led to the company dropping performance appraisals "cold turkey" the following week. Listen as Dick discusses some of the changes that make the biggest difference (but are immeasurable) and how these changes have led to greater collaboration, employee engagement and innovation at Peaker Services.

This week's podcast features David Langford, CEO and founder of Langford International, Inc. and Deming Institute Advisory Council member. David discusses "Education as a System" and using the four parts of Deming's "System of Profound Knowledge" to make a systemic change to the current education system. He talks about the "aim" and "product" of the education system. "What are we trying to accomplish?" "Are we just trying to improve test scores or are we trying to teach kids to think?" David talks about the difference between studying and learning and the diminishing returns you receive when you have a whole system based on memorization. And why attempts to improve the system through programs such as "No Child Left Behind" and "Race to the Top" do not work. Listen as David explores "what is good learning" and how changing the education system through "continual improvement thinking" (rather than just adding programs) will lead to better results for students and teachers; a win-win for all.  For more information about David's current work, with Ingenium Schools, please visit ingeniumfoundation.org

This week's Deming Podcast features Keith Sparkjoy, Cofounder and Culture Coach of Pluralsight, a leader in professional training for developers through an online learning experience. Keith discusses his "awakening" on their journey to keep Pluralsight's healthy culture as they rapidly expanded. The Deming philosophies provided hope and as he came to understand variation and a new way to look at leadership, the transition moved very quickly. From creating a system that focused on customer - eliminating incentive pay for managers, commissions for salespeople, and paid time off policies - to establishing only two rules to guide the company. Listen as Keith explains their journey to "seek the truth", how they have been able to burst the bubble of management, build trust, drive out fear and get people to work together as Pluralsight "grows up."

This week's podcast features Monta Akin, Assistant Superintendent for Leander Independent School District in Leander, Texas. Monta shares her Deming journey and the compelling story of Leander Independent School District's transformation.  It begins when Monta was first introduced to Deming when she came across the PBS series "Quality or Else" featuring David Langford. What caught her attention was his Deming-based systematic approach to education, creating passion in students by engaging them in the practice of improvement.  Serendipitously, the next day Monta picked up an educational magazine with information on a David Langford seminar. She rallied a few Leander colleagues to attend. It totally changed how they looked at instruction and the partnership with students. They realized that to be a great school district they would have to do something different.  As they began adopting the Deming philosophies, Monta and her colleagues discovered how transparency built teamwork and realized the detrimental effect of fear, especially of teacher ratings. This led to a major change in how they conducted evaluations; a pivotal moment in their transformation.  Monta shares the positive results at Leander independent School District, and why after more than 20 years, she is still passionately committed to the Deming philosophy.

This week's podcast features Fred Warmbier, CEO of Finishing Technology and Kelly Allan, Senior Associate of Kelly Allan Associates and Chair of the Deming Institute Advisory Council. Fred and Kelly discuss their New York Times blog that documents the Deming journey of Finishing Technology, a metal finishing company in Ohio.  Fred first discovered the Deming message in September 2013 when he attended a Deming Institute 2.5 day seminar presented in partnership with Aileron, a non-profit near Dayton (Tipp City), Ohio dedicated to,  “Raising the Quality of Life in America”. Fred attended with staff from his company and came away excited to explore how to change from the old way of running things.  He was driven by self-insight, a passion to study and a desire to help others, while understanding his business system and how to operate it more effectively and efficiently.   After additional reading and further study, Fred was motivated to look at all elements of his business differently and through a new lens.  He began working with Kelly and as these new insights gained momentum, Fred felt it important to document his experiences, which were often humbling and comical.   Around this time, The NY Times ran a story on companies unhooked from commission-based sales, which led to a multi-part NY Times blog, that documents Fred’s journey. The goal of the blog is to educate, inform, entertain, make a difference and be a call to action.  0 0 1 270 1541 The W. Edwards Deming Institute 12 3 1808 14.0 Normal 0 false false false EN-US JA X-NONE /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:12.0pt; font-family:Cambria; mso-ascii-font-family:Cambria; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-hansi-font-family:Cambria; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin;} This fascinating journey will energize executives, entrepreneurs and others who are always (as Fred and Kelly discuss) probing, looking, thinking and determined to figure things out.

  In this podcast Clare and Bob take us through their respective journeys that led to their groundbreaking work with Dr. Deming in the famous 1980 NBC documentary/white paper, “If Japan Can Why Can’t We?”  and the subsequent powerful 32 volume “Deming Library” which is still in widespread use.  From their early memories of meeting Dr. Deming to the impact it had on their lives, we experience their frustration with American management 34 years later, as well as their hope for the future.  They discuss the need for us to no longer be, “unconscious prisoners of our culture” and the importance of valuing individual differences, how people learn and how we can improve the processes we use in our work. Clare discusses the critical important concept she learned from Dr. Deming of “managing instead of controlling”.  Their passion for continual learning continues to this day as they write, speak and contribute to the Deming message.  Their journey is a fascinating one of great significance and it looks to continue in 2015 with a new book from Clare titled, “The New Wisdom”.

Paula Marshall is the CEO of the Bama Companies, Inc., a company that may be best known for being the single supplier of the famous Apple dessert pies to McDonalds. They are also "...an innovator and manufacturer of bakery products to some of the most well-known restaurant chains on the planet." In this episode Paula discusses with Tripp her amazing journey as a CEO that took her company from being on the verge of going out of business to the thriving powerhouse it is today. The transformation of Paula and her company started when she attended her first Deming seminar. That seminar and the subsequent meetings and friendship with Dr. Deming, shaped the future of the company in a way she never imagined. Paula shares her journey with Dr. Deming and how personally difficult it was to go against the very status quo management ideas she had learned and was using; in particular, learning the hard way how detrimental performance appraisals and the incentive based system are to an organization. See http://www.bama.com for more information on Paula and the company.  Paula is also an author of several books, including her personal story in Sweet as Pie, Tough as Nails.

Bill Bellows serves as president of the In2:InThinking Network, and as a Board Trustee of the W. Edwards Deming Institute®. In his podcast, Bill discusses his introduction to the Deming philosophy as a young engineer, and his "aha" moment after hearing Dr. Deming speak about the destructive nature of competition. He also shares his thoughts on the challenges of conveying the Deming message in the future and the importance of collaboration in the Deming community.

Bob Browne is the former CEO of the Great Plains Coca Cola Bottling Company and soon to be author of a new book, The Sys-Tao Way, that outlines his application of the Deming Philosophy. Bob gives a brief history of the Great Plains Coca Cola Bottling Company, his introduction to the Deming Philosophy and experiences incorporating many of the teachings into his organization. Bob states how the Four Pillars are the key to understanding Deming with a special focus on the theory of knowledge and working relationships. He describes the difficulty of letting go of his own established paradigms while incorporating the the teachings of W. Edwards Deming - it required constancy of purpose and faith that this was a better way. Bob also shares thoughts on where a CEO or change agent starts and he discusses organizational change and adoption of these ideas The Twitter account specifically for the Deming Institute podcasts is @DemingPodcast.

In this episode of the Deming Podcast, Tripp Babbitt interviews Steven Haedrich, President of New York Label & Box Works. In his podcast, Steven talks about the rich 130-year history of New York Label & Box Works and their Deming journey which began more than 20 years ago. Steven discusses his "aha" moments around management and leadership, and quality improvements. Steven also talks about the relevance of the Deming teachings today and the keys to long-term success using the Deming method. Steven will be sharing his experiences at the upcoming Deming Institute Fall Conference, in a presentation titled "Deming is it!" The 2014 Deming Institute Fall Conference to be held this October 17-19 in Los Angeles. Subscribe to the Deming podcasts via rss or iTunes.

In this episode of the Deming Podcast, Tripp Babbitt interviews Andrea Gabor. Andrea Gabor begins by discussing her book The Man Who Discovered Quality: How W. Edwards Deming Brought the Quality Revolution to America – The Stories of Ford, Xerox, and GM.  She discusses what  Ford and GM have done since her book was published. And then she discusses how to improve the education system and the problems with the primary efforts on "education reform" in the USA today. Andrea will be presenting, What Education Reformers Can Learn from the Deming Philosophy, at The 2014 Deming Institute Fall Conference, to be held October 17-19 in Los Angeles. The Twitter account specifically for the podcasts is @DemingPodcast.

In this episode of the Deming Podcast, Tripp Babbitt interviews Dan Robertson, Deming Institute Advisory Council member and Co-author of Deming's Profound Changes. Dan discusses his Deming journey at Hewlett Packard and his experience writing Deming's Profound Changes with co-author Kenneth Delavigne, as a tribute to Dr. Perry Gluckman. Dan is the Co-chair of The 2014 Deming Institute Fall Conference and shares details of the event to be held October 17-19 in Los Angeles.

In this third episode of The Deming Podcast, moderator Tripp Babbitt interviews David Langford. David serves on The Deming Institute's Advisory Council and is the CEO and founder of Langford International.  David shares the challenges he faced as an educator in Sitka Alaska, his introduction to the teachings Dr. W. Edwards Deming, and his work with the Leander Independent School District where they have been applying Dr. Deming’s principles since 1992. Go to Deming Today™  for more information on the Leander story. David will be speaker in the Education track at the 2014 Deming Institute Fall Conference Oct 18-19 in Los Angeles, CA as well as leading and facilitating a special 2-Day Pre-Conference session on Education Oct 16-17. 

In the second episode of The W. Edwards Deming Institute Podcast moderator Tripp Babbitt interviews Kelly Allan.  Kelly serves on The Deming Institute's Advisory Council and is the senior associate of Kelly Allan Associates. Kelly discusses the creation of the 2.5-day seminar and the current activities of the Institute while also touching on various aspects of the Deming management method.

The W. Edwards Deming Institute® is pleased to announce the Deming Podcast.  We have created a new Twitter account specifically for the podcasts @DemingPodcast, maintaining @DemingInstitute as our primary Twitter account). Deming podcast episode number one starts off our series with moderator Tripp Babbitt interviewing Kevin Cahill, the President of The W. Edwards Deming Institute® and the grandson of Dr. Deming. Kevin talks about growing up with Dr. Deming and Kevin's current work with The W. Edwards Deming Institute®.