Guest post by John Hunter, founder of curiouscat.com (in 1996).
This short interview with Jim McIngvale (Mattress Mack), owner of Gallery Furniture, explores Deming’s continued influence on the management practices of Gallery Furniture.
Over the years we really learned to check your understanding with the customers. Dr. Deming taught us those type of things.
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I think the biggest thing we did is enable the people to make more decisions, empower the employees, and treat the employees with an aura of let’s fix the problem, not fix the employee. People want to do a good job. We just have to give them the tools to do a good job.
The passion Mattress Mack has for customers and Dr. Deming comes through in this interview. Gallery Furniture‘s commitment to all the stakeholders (customers, employees, and community) has been strong for decades. That commitment to community often is newsworthy (see Mattress Mack vs. Tropical Storm Imelda from last month).
He ends the Tropical Storm Imelda video with a great message encouraging politicians to focus efforts on fixing the systemic problems that led to such flooding in Houston. Don’t just do a good job of dealing with the bad results of the current system; do that and then figure out how to improve the system so you avoid those bad results in the future. That is exactly the type of thinking that Dr. Deming encouraged.
Related: Transformation Paradox – Another Quota Failure Example – Kevin Murphy’s Presentation: Application and Lessons of Deming’s Perspective on Leadership – Bad Weather is Part of the Transportation System – Deming Lens Episode #2
Great job on empowering your employees, that’s the right way of growing your business with trustworthy people.