I like the cut and dried way he’s laid out the issues and how to manage people and projects around them.

I, for one, find “founding father” tales fascinating.

Management by opinions and system tampering continues all around us. It is the system that must be managed and not the people, but many who think they appreciate Deming’s work will attack when one attempts to explain.

Again your right, Dr Deming has never been irrelevant as a management philosopher, teacher and advisor. Will they ever learn?

Thanks,

Keith

Absolutely not!

How could someone who strongly advocated the need to “Drive out Fear” be accused of supporting compliance and control??? They depend on fear. Deming was vehemently opposed to attempts to control by so-called extrinsic “motivators” (which are actually extrinsic controls) such as performance appraisals and awards, as well as management by objectives, quotas, numerical goals without a method, mass inspection, just meeting specifications, etc., all artifacts of a compliance and control methodology. It’s even wrong to describe what he preached as a management “approach.” Deming had a theory of management that was simultaneously a system of management. What he called Profound Knowledge was a system whose interacting components included appreciation of a system, understanding variation, psychology (not Skinnerian!), and a theory of knowledge. Deming’s epistemology was heavily influenced by the school of American Pragmatism (his favorite philosopher was C. I. Lewis, and his favorite philosophy book was the abstruse “Mind and the World Order”). He would say over and over: “There is no substitute for knowledge!” and “Experience without theory teaches nothing.” He was a huge advocate of the need for innovation. He provoked thinking, not compliance and control. He disliked the term Total Quality Management (TQM). Whenever it was mentioned at one of his seminars, he would feign ignorance of it. Mr. Meyer, who may be a good and smart fellow, has in this case totally not managed a quality understanding of what one can learn from Dr. Deming.

We’ll have to disagree on at least the degree to which there have been significant advances in management theory & practice. I’m squarely in Hamel’s camp on this one. Also, my own interpretation of Deming’s philosophy doesn’t place him in my mind squarely in the compliance and control camp. His 14 points and his many, many complaints about management fly in the face of that point. The fact that I engage thousands of people per year in my own practices/workshops/practices provides a fair amount of anecdotal evidence that things are not moving quickly. Not sure how far your practice brings you, but I find too many firms hopelessly mired somewhere in a world of Taylor et. al. My interpretation of course. On the other hand, I share the optimism for the future and love some of the experiments in process.

I agree with you that statistical analysis and tracking have taken a back seat to the employee empowerment school of thought in general management. I believe this is because there are new realities which are not being well handled. Additionally, many people with the necessary analytical bent to use statistical controls were drawn to either Wall St or else to Silicon Valley. While it might not be popular in todays world to give these groups much credit, they funded and innovated capabilities which have changed the world.

One of the reasons I’m optimistic about the future of American business is that many of those people are coming back into the general business population and bring with them skills, analytics and attitudes that are creating a set of small businesses that will do great things.

In the next ten years, you’ll see a set of business with greater employee ownership and engagement. These businesses will forecast and track progress using financial and statistical analysis. Their direction and innovations will be determined by workplace democracy. This is the world a certain set of students need to be prepared to participate in.

I think there have been advances in management theory. Deming’s management approach had to do with compliance and control, which made perfect sense in the factories he set out to improve. However, in a world of knowledge work and innovation; engagement, direction and communication have to flow in ways Deming could not have foreseen. Interestingly, one of the ways he was a leader, was that as an individual or working with a small group of individuals, he made massive changes. I would have loved to have heard him discuss how he ran his own consulting business.

As with all things, the management approaches will not be the same for everyone. There will be people working at Jiffy Lube and Applebees who work under a management theory driven by the time clock. There will be people working construction and in factories for whom compliance and hopefully TQM will drive their management theories. There will also be people doing knowledge work where their ability to think and act independently will require an entirely different management theory.

Its a very exciting time for those involved in management. There’s a new set of requirements and parameters emerging which require different approaches. There are people experimenting with different ways to do this. As it has always been, the future is already here, its just not spread evenly.

Bob, I agree that the short term issue is one of the root causes. Pat, there are definitely many dysfunctional leaders and cultures that hide behind the veil of poorly implemented programs like quality. It starts with the leadership and flows from there.

Thanks to all for commenting! -Art

It seems that US business has no time for Deming’s management model. They are too concerned with short term gain over long term investment. I do think that this model will make a come back here at home, if US business want to make a comeback over China.