By John Hunter, founder of CuriousCat.com.
Clare Crawford Mason spoke at the The W. Edwards Deming Institute conference in l997 in Alexandria, Virginia. Here is an excerpt from that talk: Profound Knowledge: A New Synthesis from a Transcending Perspective to Personal Improvement
We are all familiar with the systems diagram Dr. Deming put on the blackboard in l950 to show the Japanese industrial leaders that manufacturing was a system and should include the customer and supplier and be continually improved.
I think of this drawing as a revolutionary artifact like Newton’s falling apple and James Watt’s mother’s tea kettle. All involve ideas that changed the world. Today I want to bring you up to date on a sequel to that original story about Dr. Deming and his philosophy.
…
This new logic requires that we modify our thinking and expand our language. You will remember that Dr. Deming said it took at least three exposures for anyone to begin to understand his ideas. Some student’s left the four-day seminars transformed and some left angry.Physicist David Bohm describes this new world in his book “Wholeness and The Implicate Order.” The Implicate Order (from the Latin “to be enfolded”) is “a level of reality beyond our normal everyday thoughts and perceptions, as well as beyond any picture of reality offered by a given scientific theory.”
…
Practically, what we are talking about is a directed approach to radically increasing the problem-solving and teamwork skills of people working in Deming organizations. Or using this problem solving and teamwork building to introduce Deming to organizations. These are skills that have surfaced in the past, but randomly. We are working on devising a directed approach.
Read the entire talk and relive an interesting discussion of the possibilities to expand Deming’s ideas in combination with the ideas of Teilhard de Chardin, Georg Gurdjieff and P.D. Ouspensky.
Related: Made in Japan Is No Joke Now, Thanks to Edwards Deming (article by Clare Crawford Mason): – Deming Podcast with Bob Mason and Clare Crawford-Mason – Deming Library Video with Dr. Deming Discussing the 14 Points – If Japan Can… Why Cant We? – 1980 NBC Special Report