Guest post by John Hunter, author of the Curious Cat Management Improvement Blog.
This webcast shows Mike Tveite’s presentation, Deming 101, given at the 2012 Annual W. Edwards Deming Institute® Conference. In a previous post, I wrote about this presentation and included excellent clips discussing the problems caused by focusing on goals and exploring The Development of Deming’s Management System. In another previous post, I explored a very important idea (and still something many people do not understand) from this presentation: the difference between Enumerative and Analytic Studies. Now we have added Mike’s full presentation to our YouTube channel:
Mike shares an interesting story about being invited by Dr. Deming to present his ideas on the idea that “Management is an Analytic Problem” at a New York University Deming Seminar for Statisticians. In the video above, Mike shares some of the ideas he discussed at that seminar, including showing how several of the 14 Points and 7 Deadly Diseases amount to stopping existing “enumerative practices” and beginning other analytic practices.
Mike shares a quote from W. Edwards Deming’s The New Economics (page 94*):
The system of profound knowledge provides a lens. It provides a new map of theory by which to understand and optimize the organizations that we work in, and thus to make a contribution to the whole country.
Mike shares a great story on his experience preparing to run a marathon:
I achieved my goal by not my aim. That happens a lot – we honestly translate aims to goals. And then we do stupid things in the name of the goal that gets in the way of the aim. We forget the aim sometimes, and put the goal in its place.
In my personal opinion, Mike’s Deming 101 presentation is exceptionally valuable and is packed with important ideas. I strongly recommend watching this presentation (and rewatching it if you last watched several years ago).
Related: Deming 101 by Ian Bradbury on Understanding Systems – Curiosity, Learning, Knowledge, and Improvement with Tim Higgins
*I believe this is a quote from the 1st edition (the 2nd edition doesn’t have that quote – though it has something similar in the introduction).