In a recent article in Auto News about the demise of Toyota president, Tatsuro Toyoda, they state that Toyoda “earned an MBA from New York University, where he studied under the famed quality-control guru W. Edwards Deming.”
Deming is perhaps one of the most quoted and yet misunderstood leaders in management thinking and practice, and referencing him as “quality-control guru” proves the point. The monumental contribution of Deming to management is a body of knowledge that we must disassociate in the strongest terms from the way “Quality” is handled in many organizations. A recent encounter with the representative of a Certification body brought this home more strongly than ever.
When properly interpreted, Quality can be the inspiring driving force behind our efforts to always go beyond what we are achieving, knowing that continual improvement is a journey. Reducing Quality to the mechanics of compliance is never what Deming intended. On the contrary, organizations can access his work to transform systemically and create highly productive and innovative work environments where joy and satisfaction are an essential part of the picture. Quality is a mindset and a philosophy and starts with leadership.
So I take this opportunity to revisit what our Founder, Dr. Domenico Lepore, wrote in the book ‘Sechel: logic, language and tools to manage any organization as a network’ about his journey with Deming’s philosophy that remains the bedrock and inspiration for our work at Intelligent Management.
Discovering Deming
In 1993 I joined a network of academics and professionals based in the UK called the British Deming Association (BDA). It had been created a few years earlier, with Dr. Deming himself as its honorary Chair, and its goal was to promote and disseminate the teachings of Deming through seminars, real life testimonials, conferences, and publications.
Dr. Deming was a physicist and statistician whose work founded the Quality movement. He is perhaps best known for his work in Japan. His advice on improving design, production, quality and sales, founded on a thorough understanding and application of Statistical Process Control, helped Japan rise from the ashes after World War II to become a world leader in manufacturing. A basic tenet of his philosophy was to see and manage an organization as a system, in other words a network of interdependent processes that work together to achieve a goal.
I had been studying Deming extensively over the previous three years as part of my job at the Milan management school of the Camera di Commercio, part of the Department of Trade and Industry. My brief was to initiate small businesses in the basic principles of Quality Management. As a physicist now working with organizations, I found Deming’s philosophy exhilarating. By 1993 I had transformed my far too quiet activity of government agency employee into a vibrant crusade to promote Deming’s philosophy and I was gaining some traction. It was as if I had known Deming forever; his words full of power, wisdom and unrivalled scientific rigor resonated with me more and better than any other form of organizational study.
Meeting the British Deming Association further boosted my enthusiasm and enriched manifold my learning through continuous contact with illustrious Deming scholars. Dr. Deming’s zest for knowledge has been one of the strongest and most profound sources of inspiration in my whole life and the Theory of Profound Knowledge the blueprint for my professional development.
By 1995, may I say with some pride, I was successfully advising dozens of companies in northern Italy and training hundreds of managers in Deming’s philosophy. Dr. Deming never slowed down his efforts to promote better management through better understanding of variation and how this variation permeates every aspect of our lives. This is what I was passing on to businesses and the message was loud and clear: reduce variation, promote statistical predictability and improve Quality.
By Dr. Domenic Lepore, from ‘Sechel: logic, language and tools to manage any organization as a network’
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About the Blog Author and Editor
Angela Montgomery Ph.D. is Partner and Co-founder of Intelligent Management and author of the business novel+ website The Human Constraint that has sold in over 20 countries. She is co-author with Dr. Domenico Lepore, founder, and Dr. Giovanni Siepe of ‘Quality, Involvement, Flow: The Systemic Organization’ from CRC Press, New York.
I first heard about Dr Deming back in the early 1990’s when I was a young manager in a multi-national plc. The business was hierarchical and had a silo mentality – it just seemed to have evolved as such over the decades. Then came the British Deming Association (BDA) 2/3 lectures to be exact – it took 5 years to get the business operating at an appropriate level by following the teachings of Dr Deming (probably the most satisfying period of my business life).
The memory I hold most dear is that of the analysis of common cause problems and those of random occurrences. The fact that, if you solve the common cause problems you solve 90% (my estimate) of the problem issues through process improvement of the system(s). Freeing up time for further betterment is essential – as nothing stands still. The key for me, as a young manager, was speaking with everyone in the different processes and understanding how those processes worked or didn’t and there interaction with each other. It’s essential to ask those involved in the process: how can we make this better, both for you and the company / organisation? People don’t get out of bed to do a bad job, it’s the processes that are at fault. The results were outstanding – processes improved / people happier at their work / engendering a sense of common purpose and achievement and considerable savings in productivity. In terms of the random occurrences they are solved as and when they arise with no great distress.
People sometimes feel safe within their work environment in terms of being reactionary and firefighting and it’s up to managers / directors to lead and get them to think strategically such that the common cause problems are ironed out in the PDSA and better use of their valuable time can be utilised.
In all businesses that I’ve subsequently had the pleasure of being a part of I always adopted the 14 management principles, to great success of each business. However words are simple, it is actions that make businesses great.
Thanks for your comment, Paul. It’s good to know how important Deming’s teachings have been in your working life. If only more people understood how much better their quality of life would be by adopting certain principles. That’s why we do our best to spread the word!