What happened to the Deming philosophy?

W. Edwards Deming

Photo: The W. Edwards Deming Institute

On a Sunday night In June, 1980, NBC ran a White Paper broadcast entitled If Japan Can...Why Can't We? This 90-minute documentary, produced by Clare Crawford-Mason and narrated by Lloyd Dobbins, attempted to explain why American productivity had fallen and the Japanese were beginning to dominate economically. In one story, Dobbins introduced a 79-year-old American scientist and statistician, W. Edwards Deming. Deming, as it turned out, had helped teach the Japanese many of the secrets to great quality and productivity that they had used to out-compete us in electronics, automobiles and other manufacturing.

This broadcast launched Deming, and his philosophy, into the U.S. business spotlight. On the Monday morning following the program, his telephone began ringing and didn't stop. Ford hired him straightaway; General Motors followed. In ensuing years, thousands would attend seminars to learn. The U.S. Navy, Xerox, AT&T, Allied Signal and Control Data were among Deming's larger clients. From 1980 to his death in December of 1993, Dr. Deming kept up a schedule that would have made Ryan Bingham (George Clooney's road warrior in Up in the Air) envious. He was tireless...on the weekend prior to his last seminar for the Navy in 1993, he underwent a complete blood replacement, but was on stage Monday morning, leading the seminar from his wheelchair.

What he taught transformed American management, at least for a while. Although it's difficult to sum his philosophy up in one phrase, one of his favorite axims, "There's no substitute for knowledge," probably comes fairly close. The knowledge to which Deming referred was "The System of Profound Knowledge," that is, knowledge of variation, systems theory, psychology and the theory of knowledge. The understanding and use of this system would enhance decision making, reduce wasted effort and make businesses more productive, more profitable and more responsive to their customers. His seminars taught these principles, as well as the "Fourteen Points" and the "Seven Deadly Diseases."

With Deming's passing in 1993, his philosophy quickly faded from the business consciousness. Although working with Deming and learning his principles had saved many of the companies with which he had worked, the Quality revolution he had kicked into high gear stalled. Today, it's difficult to find many people who are well-schooled in his ideas. MBO is still widely taught, practiced and written about. Articles on "performance management" fill the pages of business literature. General Systems Theory and Statistics are not stressed in undergraduate or graduate business curricula, and Statistical Process Control (SPC)--advocated by Deming and the most powerful method for tracking performance and trends--is very rare, even in business statistics. This was a movement that drew thousands of people and hundreds of companies, dominating business literature for 13 years. It saved numerous companies, restoring them to productivity and profitability. What happened?

For one thing, the philosophy was not without controversy; Deming had little regard for some of the practices taught in Western business schools, such as Management by Objectives (MBO). He admonished educational institutions to abolish grading systems. He abhorred performance evaluation schemes and reward systems based on them. He was very hard on managers who tried to manage by results, rather than understanding the processes that produce those results. His seminars, though, were very effective in demonstrating why these "common sense" practices actually did not work in the real world, and offering better alternatives for leadership and management. The philosophy, with its emphasis on statistical theory and General Systems Theory, was also seen as too complex by many executives. Many didn't like the fact that he wouldn't prescribe any particular roadmap to improvement. His feeling was that as your knowledge grew, you would adapt methodologies that fit your enterprise.

Deming's approach was also perceived as an insult to their personal leadership by many, who had worked hard to get into those leadership positions, and didn't think they needed to learn anything different. One Navy Commanding Officer ordered that the Total Quality "Command Training Kit" with its assortment of books, videos and other training aids, be thrown overboard. His justification? "All I need to lead is a carrot and a stick!" These are the people who had to make the change happen...if it's rejected at the top, any approach is unlikely to be adopted by an organization.

Other approaches arose to try to fill the gap. Business Process Reengineering supplanted it for a while. Six Sigma, a problem-solving method grounded in statistical theory, started at Motorola in 1987, was popularized by Jack Welch's adaptation at GE in the mid-1990s, is one of the more popular Quality approaches still around. Lean Manufacturing (an Americanization of the Toyota Production System) is the other primary dominant topic in the Quality literature. Six Sigma and Lean each have great value for enterprise improvement, but neither comprise the comprehensive transformation called for by Deming. Tthe better consultants include both of these approaches, and the best also inject a healthy dose of Deming's ideas, along with an emphasis on ongoing Statistical Process Control, but it's difficult to find anyone teaching anything comprehensive about the Deming philosophy.

In this precarious economy, a healthy dose of Deming's ideas would do many organizations (certainly, including most of our governmental entities) extraordinary good. What he was about, after all, was profit. All he required was that you accumulate some knowledge, then optimize your business system for greater profit, for greater customer satisfaction, for the "joy in work" among your employees. Educators, managers and executives would do well to study these ideas. All of these would certainly be welcome these days. A good place to start? Visit the Deming Institute site; they are a non-profit organization that "provides educational services related to the teachings of Dr. Deming."