Hi, this is Mike Raven. Welcome to lean blog audio episode 47. This post was from April 23rd, 2015, and it's titled throwback, Thursday. Dr. Demings last interview and Jack Welch's thoughts on him. So one of the many things I admire about W Edwards Deming is how hard he worked into his 90s. He must have had pride and joy in his own work as he would have wanted others to have and I learned from an industry week. Peace.
I've linked to in the post at lean blog dot org, slash audio 47 I learned that dr. Deming was teaching seminars up until two weeks before his death at age, 93 now, industry week was kind enough to share doctor demings last interview that was originally published in 1994 on their website in three parts. And again, I've linked to those in the post. Here's a few highlights from the interview on Innovation industry
week. Ask. Dr. Deming what then is the source of innovation Ation, and dr. Deming said, the source of innovation is freedom. We all have new knowledge invention. It comes from Freedom. Somebody responsible only to himself has the heaviest responsibility. You cannot plan to make a discovery Irving langmuir said, discoveries and new knowledge come from Freedom. When somebody is responsible, only to himself, has only himself to satisfy.
Then you'll have invention new thought, new product, new design, new ideas. So industry week, ask, how does a company, a research manager, a manager of people create an environment where there's freedom in. Dr. Deming said give people a chance to make use of their diverse abilities capabilities, Family Life Education, hopes help them to accomplish their aim and on performance, reviews, enjoy and work industry week asked, what is the alternative to Performance appraisals? And dr.
Deming said the alternative is Joy on the job to have it people. Understand what their jobs are. How their work fits in. How they could contribute. Why am I doing this? Whom do? I depend on? Who depends on me? Very few people have the privilege to understand those things management. Does not tell them. The boss does not. Tell them, he does not know what his job is. How could he know when people understand what their jobs are, then? They made take joy in their work.
Otherwise, I think they cannot so today. Dr. Sam kolbert from UCLA continues. This fight. And if you'd like to Listen to my podcast with him on, get rid of the performance review a book. He wrote you can go to lean blog dot org slash 117. So back to Industry week on baldrige. They asked what about the Malcolm baldrige? National Quality award and companies striving for the award. Does that equate to being on a mission to improve quality? Dr. Deming said no. Nothing could be worse.
The evil effect of the baldrige. Guidelines on American Business can never be managed if you had the baldrige guidelines in front of you, you would I'd see it asks for data figures on, what cannot be measured the effect of training. For example, you may spend twenty thousand dollars to train six people in a skill that benefit will come in. The future will never be able to measure that benefit. Never. So, why do we spend that money for training answers are Guided by Theory?
We believe that the training will have its effect on future output. And then we cannot measure that effect. We believe that it's positive. In other words. We govern our actions, our life by Theory. That's good. About Theory we learn nothing theory. Has temporal spread that is the theory that we can hold onto must fit without failure events of the past and predict events of the future. And on Business Schools. They asked where our American Business Schools, falling short
in design of their curriculum. The things that they are teaching, dr. Deming said, I'm afraid that what they teach is continuance of a present methods of management which are failures. They teach how to fail how to continue to fail. Fail, so industry weak-ass. What? Should they be teaching? And dr. Deming said, I think the teaching ought to be on how to improve Improvement understanding of people understanding of product.
In other words. It would require what I call profound knowledge of which I mean a view from the outside. So moving away from dr. Demings comments here. I'll I talked last week was John Dyer. He's an industry week columnist to got to work with. Dr. Deming a bit through GE and their picture together in his Twitter profile, which again, of linked to. In the post, John told stories about how some parts are GE were trying to learn from. Dr. Deming, during the Jack
Welch era. And, you know, coincidentally recently, when I was researching, some origins of Six Sigma. I accidentally discovered that Jack Welch wrote about Dr. Deming in his book, straight from the gut, and in Jack, or his ghost writer wrote. The Following quote. In the early 1990s. We flirted with a Deming program. In our aircraft engine business. I didn't buy it as a company-wide initiative because I thought it was too theoretical end of quote. So he said.he said, demings
ideas were too theoretical. Hmm. It's probably more like, Jack disagreed with most of demings 14 points, Jack Welch, loved performance of appraisal among other things. And I'm not sure what a Deming program quote-unquote is, any more than I know what a lean program is sometimes either adopt a new philosophy and the new approach or not GE for the most part didn't most organizations haven't as well. So if you like this post, you
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