Guest post by John Hunter, author of Management Matters: Building Enterprise Capability.
Lean Blog Interview with Balaji Reddie, Founder of the Deming Forum of India.
“So when I told him about profound knowledge, and when we started all of that, the next day he was eyes and ears, and it was, it was really mind-bending. I love to see that in the eyes of the people when they start realizing a few things, you know.
I saw this happen so many times during the tryst with the Indian railways when I met some of the top people. And on the first day, they would be very skeptical. Don’t teach us anything that we already know… It would be a three-day program. By the end of the second day, it was all coming together, you know, by the time I had introduced profound knowledge and say, my God, this is something different. We didn’t expect this.”
Understanding the depth of Deming’s management concepts is difficult for many people to grasp. Most people want to take each idea and tool separately and, when doing so, they don’t seem that transformational when taken in isolation. But that doesn’t work. The full potential of Deming’s management system requires understanding the entire system.
That transformation is challenging but powerful. Several post related to this idea: Transforming the Management System of an Organization; How to Start Applying Deming’s Ideas on Management; How to Get a New Management Strategy, Tool or Concept Adopted; Transformation of the Individual and the Organization; Transforming a Management System – A Case Study From the Madison Wisconsin Police Department; Thinking Required – Not Just a Recipe to Follow; Shortage of Implementation Details and Growing Your Circle of Influence.
Related: India Fights COVID-19 with Control Charts – Why Deming? Why Now? Why… India?