By John Hunter, author of Management Matters: Building Enterprise Capability.
The Essential Deming: Leadership Principles from the Father of Quality is filled with articles, papers, lectures, and notes touching on a wide range of topics, but which focus on Deming’s overriding message: quality and operations are all about systems, not individual performance; the system has to be designed so that the worker can perform well.
Published in cooperation with The W. Edwards Deming Institute, The Essential Deming captures Dr. Deming’s thinking and writing on managing organizations effectively. Dr. Orsini provides expert commentary throughout, delivering a powerful, practical guide to superior management. With The Essential Deming, you have the rationale, insight, and best practices you need to transform your organization.
Dr. Joyce Nilsson Orsini is the director of Fordham’s Deming Scholars MBA program, and president of The W. Edwards Deming Institute.
The Essential Deming reveals Deming’s unique insight about:
- How poor management infects an entire organization
- The critical importance of management on producing quality products and services
- Improving management in any company
- The effective management of people–the manager’s single most important task
- How to educate workers into critical thinkers
- Ways to preserve statistical integrity while dealing with real-world problems
“Few rival W. Edwards Deming for impact on management in the twentieth century. Indeed, Deming and Drucker, to my mind, stand apart for the breadth and depth of their vision for management as a profession that truly might help realize the possibility of people working together at their best. . . . The publication of this expansive edition of Deming in Deming’s own words is a seminal event.” – Peter Senge, MIT and the Society for Organizational Learning
“It can be said of very few that they changed the way the world thinks, but Dr. Deming is among them… The legacy of Dr. Deming’s genius, already immense, grows even larger with this new collection of his thoughts.” – Donald Berwick, Senior Fellow, Center for American Progress
“I engaged Dr. Deming to assist Ford in planning, developing, and implementing the plans to accomplish major improvement in the way people worked together and in the quality of our products… Ford achieved major success in this effort, and I consider Ed Deming to have been a key element in our progress.” – Donald Petersen, former Chairman of the Board and Chief Executive Officer, Ford Motor Company
“Toyota Motor Corporation was awarded a Deming Prize in 1965. This laid the foundations for the present growth of our company. I do believe the ideas and theories of Dr. Deming emphasizing the importance of quality control are very useful for people of all ages.” — Tatsuro Toyoda, Senior Advisor, Toyota Motor Corporation
The 8 chapters of the book are:
- The World Is Being Ruined by Best Efforts
- Quality Is Made in the Boardroom
- By What Method?
- There Is No Such Thing as Instant Pudding
- A System Must Be Managed
- There Is No Substitute for Knowledge
- Management Is Prediction
- What Happened in Japan?
Related: Deming Scholars MBA Program at Fordham University in New York City – Speech by Dr. Deming to Japanese Business Leaders in 1950 – Theory of Knowledge In Deming Context