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I followed Dr. Deming since the 1960's when I was a boy. Spent a lifetime since then building on his ideas and how to apply them to scientific laboratory work

I followed Dr. Deming since the 1960's when I was a boy. Spent a lifetime since then building on his ideas and how to apply them to scientific laboratory work of various kinds, not just quality control, and it has been quite helpful. Especially when it comes to the elements of experimentation and discovery. Not everybody is aware of the way in his later years Dr. Deming was involved with Jim McIngvale "Matress Mac" of Gallery Furniture in Houston, and made a major difference in their operation. As a very promotional local personality it was easy to witness the transformation as it occurred over the years. I would say this influence was what allowed their ultimate growth beyond what would have been possible before. https://deming.org/customer-satisfaction-and-the-deming-way/ https://deming.org/customer-satisfaction-and-the-deming-way/ For some quick reading I'll quote a few quotes from the 11-page quote page: "A bad system will beat a good person every time." "All that we have has come from people that are responsible only to themselves, only themselves to satisfy." "Defects are not free. Somebody makes them, and gets paid for making them." "In my mind, if you run your company on visible figures alone, you will have neither company nor figures, given a little time. The most important figures are unknown and unknowable. That opinion comes from my good friend, Dr. Lloyd Nelson." "Information, no matter how complete and speedy, is not knowledge." "It is wrong to suppose that if you can’t measure it, you can’t manage it – a costly myth." "Joy in work comes from understanding why your work is important. Not from the work, but from knowledge of who’s going to use it." "The supposition is prevalent the world over that there would be no problems in production or service if only our production workers would do their jobs in the way that they were taught. Pleasant dreams. The workers are handicapped by the system, and the system belongs to the management." "To manage one must lead. To lead, one must understand the work that he and his people are responsible for." https://deming.org/quotes https://deming.org/quotes

kqr 3y ago
Ah I don't remember the exact words but one of my favourite images he painted was something along the lines of "Managing an organisation by quarterly reports is like driving a car by looking at the centre line in the rear view mirror."
bookaway 3y ago
>"It is wrong to suppose that if you can’t measure it, you can’t manage it – a costly myth." Ironically, this may have been a reaction to an early software management book in the 80s by Tom DeMarco of Peopleware fame and similar books that were popular at the time. It's kinda annoying that the people that are maintaining a website in Deming's name don't reference the first edition book dates for the quote attributions. The original book seems to have been published in 1993 (when Deming was 93...), whereas the quote is attributed to a 2018 third edition on the website. The reason I find it ironic is that Deming seems to have been critiquing the young (relatively) influential upstarts at the time like DeMarco for over-emphasizing the importance of management metrics, And as it turns out, the nuances in his approach turned out to be more compatible with the approach that came to dominate the post-millennial software landscape (led by Google/Facebook at the time)--ie rigid process-averse lower case agile. It turns out the out of touch senile old guy was more prescient than the new suits. Although DeMarco started deviating from his early utopian management approach when he published Peopleware, it wasn't until the late 2000s when he did a a complete 180 and wrote a mea culpa, disavowing his earlier management books and the "You can't control what you can't measure" quote attributed to him [0]. [0] https://www.cs.uni.edu/~wallingf/teaching/172/resources/demarco-on-se.pdf https://www.cs.uni.edu/~wallingf/teaching/172/resources/dema...
- marcosdumay 3y ago
  > It turns out the out of touch senile old guy was more prescient than the new suits. Well, it was Deming. He is still more prescient than the state of the art in management. Managers read his books, make an effort to internalize them, and immediately go and do the complete opposite thing.
  - fuzzfactor 3y ago
    I think it's correct about the backlash from Deming against the early DeMarco philosophy. As a young business builder back then when the overuse of metrics began to get popular, I always could see the benefit of basic metrics to get an idea about things that actually could be measured meaningfully, but already was aware that things which made the most difference were not the measurable ones. Since then I doubled down on the unmeasurable (so I could make the most difference), even though I'm a measurement person in a measurement business. In the commercial analytical chemistry lab, with Deming's influence I was way ahead of the alternative labs who were not yet using control charts, nor were they attempting to produce NBS-traceable (now NIST-traceable) results which I considered essential since my results were utilized for some of the most high-stakes commodities. Most of the people in the established labs at the time had never even heard of an NBS-traceable approach. Continuous improvement is essential and over a period of 40 additional years you can make the kind of progress that can not be accomplished in a mere 30 years or so. Eventually you've got alternative labs so deep into the metrics that you can run circles around them without even using control charts yourself, just the internalized learnings over the years applied to the most meaningful elements which are largely unmeasurable if not completely misleading when you try. A reductionist view might be to consider statistical process control to be helpful but statistical people control to be harmful. >Managers read his books, make an effort to internalize them, and immediately go and do the complete opposite In my case I made an effort to internalize then gradually was able to successfully guide the continuous improvement actions over a period of 10 years of less-bold moves as I was racheting up based on accumulating that most-valuable experience. Precisely to avoid immediately going and doing anything really dramatic in what would naturally be so less-informed a time as to end up having something like the opposite of the desired outcome.

kqr 3y ago

Ah I don't remember the exact words but one of my favourite images he painted was something along the lines of "Managing an organisation by quarterly reports is like driving a car by looking at the centre line in the rear view mirror."

bookaway 3y ago

>"It is wrong to suppose that if you can’t measure it, you can’t manage it – a costly myth." Ironically, this may have been a reaction to an early software management book in the 80s by Tom DeMarco of Peopleware fame and similar books that were popular at the time. It's kinda annoying that the people that are maintaining a website in Deming's name don't reference the first edition book dates for the quote attributions. The original book seems to have been published in 1993 (when Deming was 93...), whereas the quote is attributed to a 2018 third edition on the website. The reason I find it ironic is that Deming seems to have been critiquing the young (relatively) influential upstarts at the time like DeMarco for over-emphasizing the importance of management metrics, And as it turns out, the nuances in his approach turned out to be more compatible with the approach that came to dominate the post-millennial software landscape (led by Google/Facebook at the time)--ie rigid process-averse lower case agile. It turns out the out of touch senile old guy was more prescient than the new suits. Although DeMarco started deviating from his early utopian management approach when he published Peopleware, it wasn't until the late 2000s when he did a a complete 180 and wrote a mea culpa, disavowing his earlier management books and the "You can't control what you can't measure" quote attributed to him [0]. [0] https://www.cs.uni.edu/~wallingf/teaching/172/resources/demarco-on-se.pdf https://www.cs.uni.edu/~wallingf/teaching/172/resources/dema...

marcosdumay 3y ago
> It turns out the out of touch senile old guy was more prescient than the new suits. Well, it was Deming. He is still more prescient than the state of the art in management. Managers read his books, make an effort to internalize them, and immediately go and do the complete opposite thing.
- fuzzfactor 3y ago
  I think it's correct about the backlash from Deming against the early DeMarco philosophy. As a young business builder back then when the overuse of metrics began to get popular, I always could see the benefit of basic metrics to get an idea about things that actually could be measured meaningfully, but already was aware that things which made the most difference were not the measurable ones. Since then I doubled down on the unmeasurable (so I could make the most difference), even though I'm a measurement person in a measurement business. In the commercial analytical chemistry lab, with Deming's influence I was way ahead of the alternative labs who were not yet using control charts, nor were they attempting to produce NBS-traceable (now NIST-traceable) results which I considered essential since my results were utilized for some of the most high-stakes commodities. Most of the people in the established labs at the time had never even heard of an NBS-traceable approach. Continuous improvement is essential and over a period of 40 additional years you can make the kind of progress that can not be accomplished in a mere 30 years or so. Eventually you've got alternative labs so deep into the metrics that you can run circles around them without even using control charts yourself, just the internalized learnings over the years applied to the most meaningful elements which are largely unmeasurable if not completely misleading when you try. A reductionist view might be to consider statistical process control to be helpful but statistical people control to be harmful. >Managers read his books, make an effort to internalize them, and immediately go and do the complete opposite In my case I made an effort to internalize then gradually was able to successfully guide the continuous improvement actions over a period of 10 years of less-bold moves as I was racheting up based on accumulating that most-valuable experience. Precisely to avoid immediately going and doing anything really dramatic in what would naturally be so less-informed a time as to end up having something like the opposite of the desired outcome.