In Their Own Words

Dr. Deming encouraged lifelong learning for everyone, but particularly for managers and leaders. In this episode, David and Andrew talk about Deming's fourth point in his list for The Role of the Manager of People After the Transformation: "He is an unceasing learner. He encourages his people to study. He provides when possible and feasible seminars and courses for advancement of learning. He encourages continued education in college or university for people that are so inclined." TRANSCRIPT 0:00:02.4 Andrew Stotz: My name is Andrew Stotz and I'll be your host as we continue our journey into the teachings of Dr. W. Edwards Deming. Today, I'm continuing my discussion with David P. Langford, who has devoted his life to applying Dr. Deming's philosophy to education, and he offers us his practical advice for implementation. The topic for today is Learning to Learn. And just as a reminder, we're going through the section of The New Economics third edition, it starts on page 86 for those who want to follow on, and for those who have the second edition, it starts on page 125, and the title of the list that we're going through is called Role of a Manager of People. This is the new role of a manager of people after transformation. And we are now talking about the fourth point on this list, which reads as follows: He is an unceasing learner. He encourages his people to study. He provides when possible and feasible seminars and courses for advancement of learning. He encourages continued education in college or university for people that are so inclined. David, take it away. 0:01:16.8 David Langford: Yes, good to be back, Andrew. So I always have to caution people, Dr. Deming wasn't into all the pronouns and everything that we use today, so he just means everyone. So if you're a manager... Yeah. So all of these points I, over the years, have taken to heart, and even as a classroom teacher I started figuring out, "Where do I start? What do I do?" Once I have been to a Deming seminar everybody wants to know, "What do you do Monday morning?" And these are really good places to begin, and you certainly can't do them all at once. It's sort of an inter-related system, and so when you start concentrating, you're always wondering, "Well, what do I do next as a manager?" Go back to one of these points to say, "Okay, have I done anything about that?" And so when you think about your role as a manager and if you think about yourself as a teacher, you're a manager, you're administrator, you're a manager, he's talking about... Anyway, if you're a parent, you're a manager of a family, right. And so you wanna think about it in those terms all the time. 0:02:31.2 DL: I never forgot even the very first seminar or the very first time I ever got to talk to Deming, and he was really interested in talking to me because there weren't very many educators at the time talking with him, and he was an educator. He was taught at New York University for 40 years, so I was really interested in talking to him about education and we were just chatting about the application of his thinking and theories to education. And while we're talking, he says, "Just a moment," and he pulls out this little notebook and he starts writing down what we were talking about. And I was just like, "Dr. Deming's writing down something I said, or we said, or we were talking about or whatever." And then come to find out his whole life he kept these little notebooks and sometimes if you were around them at the end of the day and people would be talking, he'd pull out his notebook and he'd say to people, "Look what I learned today." And that was just - flabbergasted about that, and not only is this guy 90, 91, 92 years old, but he was actually living this point every single day of his life. He was consulting... 0:03:48.8 AS: Yeah. And you can realize that when you read his work too, because he's always highlighting, someone said in a seminar or so and so said this, and that you now picture, he's taking a note and then later he's put in into his book. 0:04:03.2 DL: Yeah. When you're at the seminars, you hear him say, I'm eternally grateful to so and so for this point, or the Taguchi loss function, or all these amazing economical ways of thinking and management and all those kinds of things. He's really great at giving credit like that, but he was also very great at explaining that, hey, he'd learn something new. Even at his age, 90 years old, he was still learning things that were new to him. 0:04:35.3 DL: I was living in Alaska, at the time we were remodeling a house built in 1898. I happened to find a box of photographic plates in the attic, and when I was cleaning out stuff and everything, and these were late 1800s, and they were photographic plates on glass. The wedding that had taken place at the house that we then owned and we were remodeling, so that was pretty cool. As I was looking at the box, it said if you find any defect, anything... I can't remember exactly the w

In this episode (part 4 of the series), John and Andrew continue their discussion from part 3. They talk about how to use data charting in combination with the Plan-Do-Study-Act cycle to gain the knowledge managers need to lead effectively. 0:00:00.1 Andrew Stotz: My name is Andrew Stotz, and I'll be your host as we continue our journey into the teachings of Dr. W. Edwards Deming. Today I am continuing my discussion with John Dues, who is part of the new generation of educators striving to apply Dr. Deming's principles to unleash student joy in learning. The topic for today is Prediction is a Measure of Knowledge. And John, to you and the listeners, I have to apologize. I'm a bit froggy today, but John, take it away. 0:00:30.9 John Dues: Yeah, Andrew, it's great to be back. I thought what we could do is sort of build off, what we were talking about in the last episode. We sort of left off with sort of an introduction to process behavior charts and importance of charting your data over time. And sort of the idea this time is that, like you said at the outset is prediction is a measure of knowledge and prediction is a big part of improvement. So I thought we'd get into that. What role prediction plays in improvement, how it factors in and how we can use our chart in combination with another powerful tool, the Plan-Do-Study-Act cycle to bring about improvement in our organizations. 0:01:15.1 AS: And when you say that prediction is a measure of knowledge, you're saying that prediction is a measure of how much you know about a system, or how would you describe that in more simple terms that for someone who may not understand that, that they could understand? 0:01:31.4 JD: Yeah, it took me a while to understand this. I think, basically the accuracy of your prediction about any system or process is an observable measure of knowledge. So when you can make a prediction about how a system or a process, and I use those words interchangeably, is gonna perform the closer that that sort of initial theory is, that initial prediction is to what actually happens in reality, the more you know about that system or process. So when I say prediction is a measure of knowledge, that's what I'm talking about is, you make a prediction about how something's gonna perform. The closer that prediction is to how it actually performs, the more you know about that system or process. 0:02:19.1 AS: I was just thinking about a parent who understands their kid very well can oftentimes predict their response to a situation. But if you brought a new kid into that house that the parent didn't know anything about their history, their background, the way they react, that the parent doesn't really have anything to go on to predict except maybe general knowledge of kids and specific knowledge of their own kid. How could that relate to what you're saying that prediction is a measure of knowledge? 0:02:52.3 JD: Well, I think that's a great analogy. One of the things that Dr. Deming said that it took me some time to understand was that knowledge has temporal spread - just a few words, but really causes some deep thinking. And I think what he meant was, your understanding, your knowledge of some topic or system or process or your kid has temporal spread. So that understanding sort of increases as you have increased interaction with that system process or in this analogy, your own kid. So when you replace a parent who knows their kid well with some other person that doesn't know that kid as well, they haven't had that sort of, that that same, that shared time together. So there's that, they don't have that same understanding. It's gonna take time for that understanding to build. I think the same thing happens when we're trying to change a system or a process or improve it or implementing a new idea in our system or process. And so the prediction at the outset is probably gonna be off. Right, and then over time, hopefully as we learn about that system or process or kid in this instance, that that prediction is gonna get better and better, as we learn over time, basically. I think. 0:04:15.8 AS: Yeah, it's interesting because saying the words temporal spread kind of gives way to the idea that Dr. Deming was educated in 1910, 1915, in speaking, reading, writing. And then he also, he said things, that his objective wasn't to just completely simplify. And I think that the messages that he was bringing were difficult to simplify, but you could say that, "improves over time" is what temporal spread may mean. Right? Okay. Let's keep going on this. This is interesting. 0:04:55.0 JD: Yeah, I think, maybe it'd be helpful if I share my screen and we can sort of connect the dots from last time to... 0:05:00.8 AS: Yep. And for the listeners out there, we'll walk you through what John's showing on his screen in just a moment. All right. Now we can see a chart on his screen. 0:05:11.7 JD: Yeah, I think, so we see a process behavior chart sort of orient, the watchers and

In this episode, Bill and Andrew discuss variation, the impossibility of true interchangeability and why we need to apply "shades of gray" thinking at work. Bill shares the key question that will take your organization beyond "meets specifications" and help improve your processes, so you can delight your customers. TRANSCRIPT 0:00:02.8 Andrew Stotz: My name is Andrew Stotz. I'll be your host as we continue our journey into the teachings of Dr. W Edwards Deming. Today, I'm continuing my discussion with Bill Bellows, who has spent 30 years helping people apply Dr. Deming's ideas to become aware of how their thinking is holding them back from their biggest opportunities. The topic for today is 20th century quality, Bill take it away. 0:00:28.2 Bill Bellows: Thank you, Andrew. So the running joke on the 20th century quality is we could have said 19th century, and sadly it's still 21st century. And what do I mean by that? In our second episode, we've talked about the two questions of quality management. Question one, does this characteristic, does this product, does this thing meet requirements? There's only two answers. That's 19th century quality, that's 20th century quality, and by and large, that's 21st century quality. And my hope is that our conversation inspires people to move into question two, which opened opportunities for as you're talking about opportunities for investment, opportunities for doing amazing things, when we get out of the black and white of question one into the shades of gray, of question two. That's, that's so... 0:01:26.5 AS: So what century are we in now? 0:01:29.1 BB: I think the 21st. 0:01:30.5 AS: 21st. My goodness. People always get, I always get confused. We're in the two thousands, but that's a 21st century. And 19th century is the 1800s. 0:01:46.7 BB: Well... 0:01:47.5 AS: 20th century would then be from 1900s until 2000 or 1999. 0:01:54.3 BB: The... And just for some more clarity, and I was doing some research earlier today, but there's a great tie between question one and 19th century 20th centuries still: question number one, does this meet requirements? A lot of that ties back to this whole concept of interchangeable parts. Which is not what we do in the garage when we're in the garage building something - that's 21st century quality, because we design it, we buy the stuff again, whether you're building something in the kitchen, in the backyard, and we put it all together with a 21st century, a Deming-Taguchi approach to quality, which means we're not looking at the parts in isolation we're looking at how they come together, the idea of interchangeable parts, and the... A name that I usually find as being the father of this concept of interchangeable parts. People talk about Eli Whitney. 0:03:02.3 BB: But Eli Whitney heard about interchangeable parts from the first American to hear about this concept, who was Thomas Jefferson. And he heard about it when he was US Ambassador to France, in 1802 timeframe, he was Jeff, he was George Washington's ambassador to France. And while there he came across a Frenchman by the name of Andre Blanc, B-L-A-N-C. And Blanc is considered the... Not the father of interchangeable parts. There's a French general in the 1770s had this idea of you're in the battlefield, you've got all these broken weapon systems and I can't cobble together this cannon with these wheels to be able to continue fighting the battle because they're all crafts built with craftsmanship, which means these things don't come together. So this general had the idea, and I like to tell people, Blanc is the one who got the marching orders to go put this concept into practice. And so he's given credit for being the one to work through the details. 0:04:17.1 BB: And what I was reading earlier tonight I've done other reading on this before, but it was, Jefferson went to a presentation by Blanc, heard about the ideas. Jefferson wrote a letter to John Jay and I don't know exactly, I, John Jay's name, I... Name I've heard before. I don't know exactly what his role was in government. But he wrote a letter back that there's this thing, this guy Blanc, this concept of interchangeable parts. And as the story goes, Jefferson offered Blanc the opportunity to come to the States 'cause Jefferson saw this, not just on the battlefield, the ability to repair weapons quickly, quickly, quickly, but what this means to a growing society. And Blanc had no interest. And so Jefferson took the idea, gave it to Whitney. Whitney gets credit for the first contract with Congress ever for a product with interchangeable parts, which turned out to be rifles. And it took on the order of 20 years for him to figure out how to do that. But in the process, he was working on the design protocol, the quality system, which is 18th century quality, which is looking at all these parts, giving them requirements. And that's what we do today. 0:05:39.8 AS: So the US Congress kind of funded that research and development b

In this third discussion in a series on the Role of a Manager, David and Andrew discuss how a manager should view, and treat, people. Deming wrote, "It's just not ranking people, it is instead recognition of differences between people and an intent to put everybody in position for development." David applies this to education: literally looking at how to support everyone with limited resources. 0:00:02.2 Andrew Stotz: My name is Andrew Stotz and I'll be your host as we continue our journey into the teachings of Dr. W. Edwards Deming. Today, I'm continuing my discussion with David P. Langford, who has devoted his life to applying Dr. Deming's philosophy to education, and he offers us his practical advice for implementation, and before we get started, David, I have to apologize my voice, I got a little bit hoarse. The topic for today is Optimizing Diversity. David, take it away. 0:00:28.7 David P. Langford: Well, you've been talking too much, Andrew. So we've been working in this section in Dr. Deming's book, The New Economics, and we've talking about the role of the manager, and the reason we're doing that is because I often get asked all the time, well where do we begin, and what do we do and how do we start stuff? And people get fired up about Deming concepts, and then they wanna know what to do next, and so that's why we've been talking about this about the role of a manager in a system and studying the aim of systems so on and so forth. 0:01:06.5 DL: So this is point number three, and I will just take a stab at just reading it. First off in Deming's words, so he says "A manager of people understands that people are different from each other. He tries to create for everyone interest and challenge and joy in work, tries to optimize the family background, education, skills, hopes and abilities of everyone. It's just not ranking people, it is instead recognition of differences between people and an intent to put everybody in position for development." So in today's lingo lingo, we would call that diversity, and there's lots of different diversity, of course, there's diversity in cultures, there's difference in languages, there's diversity of thought. There's lots of different ways to think about this. 0:02:01.9 DL: And I really like what Deming is talking about here. He said... He's talking about, what's your role as a manager? And so in this podcast, we're always talking about what are these things mean in education, obviously, Deming was talking mostly to corporate managers and people like that in business, but he was also an educator himself, so I always applied all these things to education in the same way. So as a teacher, you are a manager of people in a classroom, and when that group comes into the classroom, your job is to optimize the ability of them to work together, and that's what Deming is talking about here. And so there's lots of ways to do that. One of the ways that I picked up on a concept that was in Lean management called huddles, in which the Lean managers are taught to have a huddle with your employees first thing in the morning, well I transferred that into education and taught teachers all over the world have a huddle first thing in the morning. I just read a local research paper that came in on the web the other day, and a teacher was talking about the value of morning meetings. 0:03:28.5 DL: Well, call it whatever you want, but a huddle is just that basically, you just get everybody together. And it works fantastic, even kindergarten, whatever it might be, and get a chance to optimize their diversity. What happened over the weekend? What was memorable or not memorable. Does anybody have anything they wanna talk about? Something that happened that maybe you need support with or you don't have to say anything, but if you wanna say something, you can. And I've always found those things just to be amazingly helpful to everybody, because once somebody in the group knows that somebody else is hurting in some way throughout the day, they can do little tiny things, and kids have amazing hearts and will help people if they know that they need help. Another way that I've taught people to optimize the diversity through the classroom or problems and issues that people have is an exercise called fear and a hat, and with fear and a hat you get people to write down what are their fears, and works really great, like when you're trying to form a group, like in the beginning of the year, maybe even like day one, what are your fears about this year and what's happening or this class or just anything. You don't have to put your name on it. 0:04:58.8 DL: In fact, we don't want you to put your name on it and then just drop it in this hat, and everybody drops it in a hat and then you rummage them around and you pull one out. I've had kids put in things like, well, I don't know how to swim, and I'm afraid that other people are gonna find that out, and I'll get ridiculed for it. And these are high school kid

Education is often touted as data- or evidence-driven. But in this discussion, John Dues contends that educational data is often fiction, given how easy it is to distort, both via the inputs and outputs and through manipulation. 0:00:02.6 Andrew Stotz: My name is Andrew Stotz and I'll be your host as we continue our journey into the teachings of Dr. W. Edwards Deming. Today, I'm continuing my discussion with John Dues, who is part of the new generation of the educators striving to apply Dr. Deming's principles to unleash student joy in learning. The topic for today is Data is Meaningless Without Context. John, take it away. 0:00:28.3 John Dues: Yeah, thanks for having me back, Andrew. I'm thinking a lot about educational data, and I think about how it's often presented, and I think so often, what we're actually doing with our educational data is what I call writing fiction, which is taking a lot of liberties with the data that comes into our system, whether it's state testing data or some other type of data that gets reported out to the public, and we often sort of manipulate that data or distort that data in a way that paints our organization or our school system or our state in a positive light, and I think we do that sometimes at the detriment of actually working to improve those organizations or those systems because we spend so much time trying to paint this positive picture instead of just putting the data out there. 0:01:26.3 AS: And it's interesting you talked... One of the interesting things about what you're saying is that it could be accurate and good data, but it's just the context or the structure of how it's presented makes it meaningless. 0:01:39.9 JD: Yeah, we try so hard to sort of paint it in this positive light to make it look like we're doing a good job. Everybody wants to do a good job, but I think we often do that at the detriment of our systems. 0:01:54.7 AS: One of the things that made me think about it, in the financial world, we have a code of ethics, and that is basically that... Particularly for CFA charter holders, financial analysts, that you have to present a complete picture of your performance. So if you have 10 customers that you're managing their money and one of them, you really bombed out and you decide you're gonna do the average of the nine that you did well on and then go out to your clients and say, "This is my performance," that's a very... You have an obligation to accurately represent your performance. And when I think about it in all the charts and graphs that people are making in education all around, I would say that most people probably are just, I would call it CYA, cover your ass type of charts [laughter] of, "How do we make this look good?" 0:02:43.9 JD: Yeah, I think... I read somewhere that there's sort of three ways you can respond to your data. You can actually work to improve the system, which would be a positive, and then the other two ways are two forms of a negative, one is you could distort the system itself, or you could actually distort the data. And a lot of times, there's not sort of a nefarious motivation underneath that distortion, but there's sort of, again, this desire to paint your organization or your system in this positive light. So sometimes they're straight up unethical behavior or cheating, but most of the time, that's not what I'm seeing and that's actually not what I'm talking about here today. It's more of this sort of taking liberties, writing fiction. "Okay, we declined from two years ago, but it's up from last year." Those types of sort of distortions of the data that I think are fairly common in education sector, probably all sectors too, so. 0:03:49.9 JD: I think... Maybe I'll share my screen for the folks that have video and I'll talk through it for the listeners that don't have video, but one of the things I often think of and focus on is state testing data, because so many people are looking at that data all the way from State Departments of Education, the school system, the individual schools, the individual teachers and classrooms with their students, and then of course, families get these state testing reports as well. 0:04:23.8 JD: And a handful of years ago, I was looking at one of these reports from the Ohio Department of Education and sort of picture this fancy, glossy, colorful PDF. It's got this big headline on it, it says, "Ohio students continue to show improved achievement in academic content areas." Then it's got a table with all the state tests, all the different grade levels, and three columns for three different years of data. And then in the last column, there's these up green arrows for where there's been improvement from year over year and then these red down arrows for where there's been a decline, and I was thinking to myself, "Well, in some of these areas, one, some of the percentage changes are so small that just on that... In that realm, they're sort of meaningless, like fifth grade science goes fro

What is quality? Does it mean always meeting specifications? What if the calculus for specifications means little and tells managers almost nothing about the process or its potential for improvement? Dr. Bill Bellows discusses the negative consequences of this kind of black-and-white thinking and what to do about it. 0:00:03.0 Andrew Stotz: My name is Andrew Stotz and I'll be your host as we continue our journey into the teachings of Dr. W. Edwards Deming. Today, I am continuing my discussion with Bill Bellows, who has spent 30 years helping people apply Dr. Deming's ideas to become aware of how their thinking is holding them back from their biggest opportunities. The topic for today is: What is quality? Bill, take it away. 0:00:27.5 Bill Bellows: Thank you Andrew. That question brings me back literally 30 plus years. I was at home studying on leave from work. I got a bunch of books on quality. I bought every book on quality I could find at the Yale Bookstore. I started reading them. And I'm reading Phil Crosby, I'm reading Six Sigma Quality, I'm reading Genichi Taguchi, I'm reading Deming. And I, naively, am thinking that quality means the same to all of them. As a heat transfer engineer, in the world of engineering, heat transfer engineers have a common language, they use common terms, so I naively thought everyone in the world of quality has the same explanation of quality. And I'm looking through these books. I had met some seasoned experts in the field. I started calling them and saying... I remember talking one guy and I said, "I don't think these books are the same." And he laughed. He said, "Bill, you're onto something." 0:01:24.0 BB: Well, the traditional way of looking at quality in most organizations gets me to what I now refer to as question number one and that is, Does something meet requirements? Does the task meet requirements? Does the dimensions meet requirements? Does the product meet requirements? And, Andrew, there's only two answers to that question, yes or no. That's how most organizations look at quality. Boeing's advanced quality system... How do I know? I worked for a company that was owned by Boeing for nine years. Boeing's advanced quality system, which is no different than anyone else's quality system, is question one, Does is meet requirements? Yes or no. 0:02:08.5 AS: Is that like go/no-go? 0:02:11.4 BB: That's go/no-go. It's black and white thinking, Andrew. It meets requirements or it doesn't. Question two is, How many ways are there for this thing to meet requirements? And there when I tell people if you take into account decimal places, an infinite number of answers, I have somebody laugh and say, "Infinite?" And I say, "Okay, 463." But the idea is there's variation in how you meet requirements. And so going back to the question "What about quality?" what I began to see is that most quality thinkers are thinking question one. I had been exposed in that same timeframe to Dr. Taguchi and his thinking is more about question two. And what got me really excited by Dr. Deming's work when I saw The New Economics is that I realized that his quality focus was also question two and that's what got me really, really curious. But the big thing was, holy cow, we've got different explanations of quality. 0:03:15.0 AS: And can I ask you a question about this? When you talk about how many ways are there for this to meet the requirements, are you saying how many methods are there to get there or how many outcomes are in the range of what is quality? 0:03:31.6 BB: What I'm saying is question one is, Does your car have gas? Yes or no. 0:03:38.2 AS: Yep. Yes it does. 0:03:39.3 BB: Question two is, How much gas is in the car? Is it a quarter of a tank, an eighth of a tank, a sixteenth of a tank, a full tank? So there's a lot of different answers. And that's what I mean the infinity is, there's a lot of degradations from empty to full and that's a much different question than, "Does the car have gas?" Now, why is that important? What I began to realize when I started my first job as a quality professional after leaving engineering and joining Rocketdyne as a quality professional, people were coming to me because things were broken, which was like out of gas. And the exciting thing was I got to work and help them solve it but the pattern I started to notice is that most often when people came to me, it was because the process, the product was out of gas. 0:04:42.5 BB: And I began to realize that if we operated with a gas gauge mindset and not a black and white mindset, we could have seen these just as you would driving a car. You see you're on E. Yes, I have gas but being on E and being full. But the people in the organization weren't equipped to think that way and that's when I began to get very excited by Dr. Deming's work and after learning about Taguchi's work 'cause they both helped me realize that most organizations view quality from question one. Is this good or bad? And then what we do is

In this episode, Andrew and David discuss how managers can help people to see themselves as components in a system, working with those before and after them in the process of educating children - for the benefit of all. This podcast series is inspired by chapter 6 in The New Economics, Andrew and David apply Dr. Deming's 14 points for "the role of a manager of people after transformation" to the world of education. (Note: this is not about Deming's 14 Points for Management.) TRANSCRIPT 0:00:02.3 Andrew Stotz: My name is Andrew Stotz, and I'll be your host as we continue our journey into the teachings of Dr. W. Edwards Deming. Today I am continuing my discussion with David P. Langford, who has devoted his life to applying Dr. Deming's philosophy to education, and he offers us his practical advice for implementation. Today's topic is cooperation with proceeding stages in education. And ladies and gentlemen, we are going through a checklist or a list that Dr. Deming put in his The New Economics book on page 86 of the third edition, or page 125 of the second edition. And the title of this list is Role of a Manager of People. 0:00:45.4 AS: This is the new role of a manager of people after transformation. The first point on the list, which we previously talked about was, number one, a manager understands and conveys to his people the meaning of a system. He explains the aims of the system, he teaches his people to understand how the work of the group supports these aims. And today we will be talking about number two. He helps his people to see themselves as components in a system to work in cooperation with preceeding stages and with following stages toward optimization of the efforts of all stages toward achievement of the aim. David, take it away. 0:01:26.7 David Langford: There you go. If you understand that, then the podcast is over. [laughter] So yeah, I think the profound nature of Deming's work was his ability to take these simple concepts and just state them. And for me, working in education, people, they start to get the philosophy and they start to understand Deming, et cetera, and they always wanna know where to start or what to do. Well, here you go. These are all steps of what to do, where to start. So the last podcast we were talking about the development of an aim. And so you... The first question you have to decide is, do I have an aim of the system? And is that being communicated? And we talked a lot about that going through that. So the second point actually feeds on that, and remember this whole section is the role of the manager of people, see, what are you doing with the people in the system? 0:02:25.7 DL: And so this whole point is about understanding a systems' perspective in any organization. But in education, it's really clear. And we've said several times that the product of education is the learning itself. It's not students. And I think people really get screwed up on that, when they start to think about that, "We're producing students." No, you're not. Yes, students are going through the process, but they're gaining a level of learning that's gonna, that's getting them closer and closer to the aim of the system, right? And so those things are measurable, and then you can begin to understand those. So what he is talking about here in step number two is... Often when I work with educators, no matter what level, university, K through 12, whatever it might be, I'll throw out the idea that, let's say you're a 10th grade math teacher. 0:03:32.8 DL: What's the one thing you could be doing this year that would significantly increase the performance of your students next year? And a lot of times people say, you know, better technology and they'll go through this whole list of all these kinds of things they could do. But that's what Deming is talking about here. You could keep right on doing the same curriculum, the same thing you've done for 15 years, but if you start working with preceding stages, where did these students learn math before they got to you? Right? And so if you're a 10th grade math teacher, one of the best things you could do is start working with the ninth grade math teachers. Like going over, what are they doing, how are they teaching it? What's happening? How are they going through stuff? 0:04:22.4 DL: And you're actually preventing your own problems. Later in The New Economics, Deming talks about that prevention is the key to quality. And that's what he is talking about here. If I am going upstream in the process, so to speak, and preventing my own problems, right? I could actually just keep doing the exact same thing I've always done. I'm gonna get better results because I'm now preventing problems that I used to have to work with all the time. And some people say, well, you know, our students are coming from outside of our organization and I don't have the chance to do that. Well, you sort of think of a class that you're teaching as a system in and of itself. 0:05:06.7 D

Andrew talks to Justin Marcharia, Round Table Training Africa's Managing Director, about his collaboration with The Deming Institute. His goal is to help new and small businesses in East Africa use the Deming philosophy to grow in sustainable ways. TRANSCRIPT 0:00:02.2 Andrew Stotz: Hello. My name is Andrew Stotz and I'll be your host as we continue our journey into the teachings of Dr. W. Edwards Deming. Today I'm here with featured guest Justin Macharia. Justin, are you ready to share your Deming journey? 0:00:17.2 Justin Macharia: Oh, yeah, I'm ready. 0:00:19.5 AS: I'm excited to learn... I mean there are so many things that I would like to ask you about your Deming journey and where your Deming journey is and all of that. But let me introduce you to the audience. Justin Macharia is the managing director of Round Table Training Africa Limited. Justin has been working with the Deming Institute over the past couple of years to enable DemingNEXT access into a number of East African countries through his organization. It's gonna be beneficial I think for all of our listeners to learn about this partnership and the impact that we think the Deming Institute can have in East Africa. And also, it's a great opportunity for you, Justin, to share why you think that Deming is important part of development in your part of the world and why you see the opportunity as kind of first time opportunity to enable businesses to learn and apply the Deming method. So maybe you can just talk a little bit about what you're doing first, and then we'll get into your Deming journey. 0:01:29.9 JM: Thank you Andrew. Yeah, so Deming Institute in Africa, basically East Africa, that's Nairobi, Kenya started off in the year 2020. And we've walked the journey with Kevin and Tim. And basically what we've... We've found that there was an opportunity to instill best practices in manufacturing, hospitality, and any other organizations that are moving from either raw production or the value chain addition. So what inspired us into getting into and partnering with Deming was basically the... We have a lots of trainings, consultants in our area, but however we found that they were lacking in terms of the depth and the philosophy and the models and tools. So what happens is, basically is we reached out to the Deming Institute and we did a presentation and asked if we could partner with them. And of course we had to give a little bit of background about ourselves. 0:02:34.9 JM: And what is basically happening in East Africa right now is... 'cause East Africa is be in in agribusiness, but agribusiness is on only probably small scale to large scale and mostly of the cash crops for export. But more and more now people are getting into value addition and processing. And that comes with a lot of systems, processes and management skills that are required for that. Apart from that, there's a lot of manufacturing going on and it's probably sometimes ad hoc and learning on the job which can... It can be very expensive and a little mistakes and system and processes or a lack of there of. So that has actually created the need and the appreciation and like probably Andrew had mentioned that, just a little bit earlier, is that everybody knows Deming, anybody who is in a management course, 'cause they always talk about Deming at some point during the introduction as the gurus of quality management. So the take up has been gradual and slow, but we're getting somewhere with it right now. 0:03:42.3 AS: And maybe for the listeners out there I'll explain about, what the Deming Institute is doing with DemingNEXT and trying to get, obviously all the video material that's available about Dr. Deming's teaching, but also providing all the resources necessary for training. So for those that are listening that think, God, I really wanna get more training into my company related to Deming. Well, the Deming Institute has made so much of that available through DemingNEXT. So I think that's an important message to everybody out there, is that it is a resource not only for your own personal development, but how you can bring some of that training into your company or any company that you're interacting with. Maybe you just tell us briefly about what your expectation is or what you expect to be doing with that material and with your own material and how are you doing that training. And maybe just tell us a little bit about that. 0:04:39.9 JM: Well, thanks Andrew. So what the DemingNEXT actually offers a lot of resources like you mentioned. There are PDFs, there are case studies. Because as much as we train a local organization, it's always good to give them a case study of basically where it has worked before, the successes because the industry and the verticals, probably is it the service industry, is it the telecommunication, we find 'cause somebody believes in the credibility of a process by basically seeing it has worked before with somebody else. And this what... The challe

Most people come into education familiar with classroom management and curriculum, but the concept of Profound Knowledge changes the way you view the entire field and your part in it. In the second episode of the Deming in Schools Case Study, Andrew and John talk about applying the System of Profound Knowledge to education. 0:00:02.0 Andrew Stotz: My name is Andrew Stotz, and I'll be your host as we continue our journey into the teachings of Dr. W. Edwards Deming. Today, I'm continuing my discussion with John Dues, who is part of the new generation of educators striving to apply Dr. Deming's principles to unleash student joy in learning. The topic for today is applying Deming's system of profound knowledge in education. John, take it away. 0:00:26.8 John Dues: Andrew, it's great to be back. And excited to talk about this. One of the things I was talking about after... Thinking about after our last conversation was a moment I had where I realized as I worked with some senior leaders here is we have these two buckets of knowledge, one bucket I would call subject matter knowledge, and we talked about this a little bit last time, by subject matter, I don't mean knowing, reading or social studies or writing, but I mean the things that you need to know in your field, so for us it's classroom management, how to deliver a lesson, how to design a curriculum, those types of things, and that's always sort of been a part of my work and gained proficiency in that bucket over time, but what I realized in studying Deming is there's this whole other bucket or type of knowledge, what Deming called Profound Knowledge and that was missing across most of my career, and it was a revelation to understand that, "Hey, we need both of these things together to have any chance at improving our schools." 0:01:35.4 AS: It's interesting because the whole focus in most of education is to become a subject matter expert, and that's what's rewarded, that's what we're doing. And this whole way of, how do we see the world? Is such a unique thing. Maybe you can just go through a little bit on the system of profound knowledge as when you first came to it, and what does it mean to you? 0:02:04.4 JD: Yeah, I've been studying it for a handful of years now. Increasingly, it became this sort of foundational philosophy, and it really changed how I view the world, honestly, it wasn't only sort of in my work, although that's sort of where I started thinking most about Deming's ideas. It changed also sort of how I thought about my personal life, family, my own kids in school and their experience in school, so I had a profound impact on just about everything I was doing in my life, that's pretty foundational to discover a philosophy like this... 0:02:51.3 AS: Yeah, that's... I remember when I first understand... For me, it was variation and randomness that really kind of hit me because I was also working in the stock market, and I could see that there was a lot of randomness in the movement of stock prices, and then it was like all of a sudden, what I learned from the randomness aspect and the variation aspect was just like, it's like there's carpeting that we're walking on that nobody even realizes it's underlying everything, and it is this randomness, and we are trained to reject randomness because we're rugged individualists who are setting our own path and it's up to us to make a difference. And that type of thinking basically has to reject the role of randomness, so I know what you're saying about... That started to change the way I viewed the world. Continue on. 0:03:54.2 JD: I think building off what you're saying, there's a variation component to that, and that was sort of an entry point for me too as I read Donald Wheeler's Understanding Variation, which is sort of completely changed how I looked at numbers and data in our work here in schools, but I also think of what I'm hearing in what you're saying is complex systems, and so I think there was sort of an appreciation for systems thinking prior to Deming, but not in the same way, but I think for a lot of folks it's if we do A to B then C is gonna happen. And that's just not how things sort of unfolded in a complex system, be it schools or a company or a society or whatever you may be looking at, if you do A, then that may impact B, C, D, E, F, G in a certain way, and the outcome is gonna be impacted by all of those things, all of those changes, and I think that's sort of... You can start to see that when you start to understand variation, and then that other component, or first component of Deming's Profound Knowledge is Appreciation for a System. 0:05:07.4 JD: And I think that's sort of what he's getting at, that it's really hard to find causal links between things and if we're gonna search for those, then we need to appreciate our organizations as a system, how all of the departments or all of the grade levels in the case of a school are working together or not, and how something you do in o

In this, the first in a series of episodes on Awakening Your Inner Deming, Andrew talks with Dr. Bill Bellows about his journey. He started with Taguchi, read his way through other quality "gurus", and finally found Deming in unexpected places - solving big problems in space shuttles along the way! 0:00:02.1 Andrew Stotz: My name is Andrew Stotz. I'll be your host as we continue our journey into the teachings of Dr. W. Edwards Deming. Today, I'm here with featured guest Bill Bellows. Bill, are you ready to share your Deming journey? 0:00:15.7 Bill Bellows: I am ready. I've got my seatbelt on, crash protection devices. I'm ready to go, Andrew. [chuckle] 0:00:23.3 AS: And I am ready indeed. So let me introduce you to the audience. Bill's a 35+ year specialist in the field of quality and engineering management. In addition to adjunct professor roles, he is president of InThinking Services, partnering with clients to facilitate the understanding and application of the Deming philosophy. So, Bill, can you tell us a bit about how you first came to even learn about the teachings of Dr. W. Edwards Deming and what hooked you? 0:00:57.8 BB: Well, I was minding my own business. No. Actually, I finished my graduate studies in 1983 and went to work in the aerospace industry with a sense that I wasn't gonna... [chuckle] I wasn't quite sure I was gonna like it. I greatly enjoyed what I was doing in the field in graduate school, and the work I was to be doing in industry was very similar. So I felt okay, but it didn't take long before I just didn't like it. And I found myself teaching some college classes and then wondering what I wanted to do. And it took about... Two years after I was working at this company, I took a class in problem solving and decision making. A one-week class. And I loved it. I started looking at everything through this lens of a model for decision making, a model for problem solving. 0:02:13.4 BB: And shortly thereafter, I was approached by the training director of the company. We were growing leaps and bounds in terms of business and employment. And this guy came in and was really cool in terms of bringing us what he thought was some really professional development training. And he knew I was excited by this one-week course. And he said, "Bill, how'd you like to be the person in engineering trained in that and to teach this course?" And I was like, "Yeah. Yeah. Sign me up." So I went away for a two-week train the trainer, very intensive training. And what was interesting is I was the only one in the room, two dozen people that wasn't an HR and wasn't a trainer. I didn't know how to train... I was gung ho on the material, but I did not know what it was like to get in front of an audience. And in fact, the instructors used to kid me that I was almost afraid to move beyond the podium. I just wanted to hide behind it. 0:03:17.0 BB: And so I came out of that having been... I have to we prepare for the next day, five minutes, 10 minutes, 20 minutes. Next thing you know, we're preparing these one hour long teachers. And I love... I liked it. And then back at work, the plan was that, given this role as the auxiliary instructor for this material, when people in engineering, my organization, have a need for this training to be used, I'd be called upon. And that was really cool. It got me associated with people I wasn't working with, and it was a much more exciting than what I was doing. And Lo and behold, the guy in training, the director says, "Hey, you know this... " He mentioned Deming's name, and I was a sponge. And I really respected what he was doing. And he gave me... He introduced me to Deming's work. And I remember, I think it was Quality, Productivity and Competitive Position. And I looked at that and I thought, "Okay." 0:04:30.4 BB: But then going back to the problem, we'll come back to that. That was my exposure to Dr. Deming's name. But in parallel, I was working on a very big problem on the... On our number one product, which were gas turbine engines, you could think of as jet engines, for applications in the US Army's battle tank. And we were making 120 of these a month. And I mean, it was a big, big... It was the biggest business of the company. And once or so a year, there'd be a major crisis. We can't ship hardware and the Army would come in and say, "Stop production until you solve this." And I had been dragged into some of those before. And that kind of got me in the realm of, "Hey, why don't you go off and take this training?" So now I'm not sitting in the back of the room. Now I'm in the front of the room but leading the facilitation of these techniques for problem... Mostly problem solving. What is a problem? The car won't start. It used to work. 0:05:38.5 BB: And so we're working on one big problem. And it was... It had incredible relevance relative... This is the height of the Cold War, Andrew. This is '87, '88 timeframe. And there was reason to believe by the Army that the majority

With this episode, Andrew and David P. Langford start a new series on the Role of the Manager in Education. Inspired by chapter 6 in The New Economics, Andrew and David apply Dr. Deming's 14 points for "the role of a manager of people after transformation" to the world of education. (Note: this is not about Deming's 14 Points for Management.) 0:00:02.6 Andrew Stotz: My name is Andrew Stotz, and I'll be your host as we continue our journey into the teachings of Dr. W. Edwards Deming. Today, I'm continuing my discussion with David P. Langford, who has devoted his life to applying Dr. Deming's philosophy to education, and he offers us his practical advice for implementation. Today's topic is the beginning of a series, The role of a manager in education. David, take it away. 0:00:29.9 David Langford: Hello, Andrew. So I always wanna say good morning or good evening, but you're in Thailand, and I'm in Montana, so there's a problem there. 0:00:39.8 AS: [laughter] They both work. 0:00:41.8 DL: So yeah. [chuckle] So glad to be back again. 0:00:43.4 AS: Great to be with you. 0:00:44.8 DL: So yes, I wanted to dive into this, because I actually had a number of comments that people have sent me, both email and Twitter and all those kinds of things, yeah, asking questions about it, et cetera. And even at seminars, I get questions about it. So we're working from Dr. Deming's book, The New Economics, in chapter six, and I have the third edition, so in my case, we're on page 86. And Deming... And the whole chapter is about the management of people. So Deming laid out about 14 different points about what managers should do, how should you operate, and what should you do, and et cetera. So I thought it'd be really good for us to kinda work our way through those and discuss what does that mean in education. Because, do we even have managers in education? So probably the first thing I wanna point out is he has a whole chapter on leadership, which is different, I think, than management. And so, I think this is getting more to on the day-to-day operations, what are we supposed to be doing or how do we operate? 0:02:03.5 DL: And he even makes the distinction, the role of the manager of people after the transformation. So that basically means, okay, you've read about Deming, you've... Or you read The New Economics, or you've watched videos, or you learned about it. And you kinda made that transformation that, "Hey, this is where I wanna go, and this is what I wanna do." Well, then comes, "Okay, well, what do I do Monday morning?" is the big... Always the big question I get. And if somebody can't help you figure out what to do Monday morning, then they really... I don't think they really understand themselves about what to do, and you should probably find another coach or another leader to [chuckle] help you sort of figure that out. So let's take the first point, and maybe you wanna read it off for our audience and... 0:03:00.2 AS: Yeah. So the first of these points is, "A manager understands and conveys to his people the meaning of a system. He explains the aim of the system. He teaches his people to understand how the work of the group supports these aims." Simple stuff. 0:03:26.6 DL: Well, it... On the surface, it does sound simple, but doing it is another matter. So I wanna take this right down to the classroom level and say that as a classroom teacher, you are a manager of people. And it doesn't really matter what age they are, if it's talking pre-school all the way to graduate school, you're a manager of people. So the first thing he says, "The manager understands and conveys to his people the meaning of a system." So people always wanna know, "Where do I start? What do I do?" Well, there's a pretty good place to start right there. What is a system? So a system has inputs coming into it, and then it has the system itself, which is made up of processes within that system, and the system then has outputs, right. So in education, I remember back when Deming first started to get well-known, and people from business especially would come into education circles and try to tell educators what to do or how they should be managing to achieve quality, et cetera. And one of the first things they would do is they would talk about students as products, like you would think about in a company. 0:05:00.5 DL: And I kinda went for a couple of years thinking through that, and then all of a sudden it dawned on me, and a lot of it had to do with reading this section here. Students are not products, right? And if you think of them like that, then you're gonna think of them like inanimate objects that you do things to basically. And if I just adjust the process here, then suddenly all the kids will just be better, they'll learn better, et cetera, et cetera. Or I just throw in a new curriculum, and everything is gonna be fine, or you're not actually involving them in the process at all. So when I started giving seminars and working with people, I s

In this new series on applying Deming to education, Andrew talks with John Dues, Chief Learning Officer at United Schools Network and long-time Deming practitioner. This is the first in a series of 12 episodes using John's school system as a case study for applying Deming in education. 0:00:02.3 Andrew Stotz: My name is Andrew Stotz, and I'll be your host as we continue our journey into the teachings of Dr. W. Edwards Deming. Today, I'm here with featured guest, John Dues. John, are you ready to share your Deming journey? 0:00:17.7 John Dues: Yeah, Andrew I'm really glad to be here and looking forward to speaking with you today. 0:00:22.6 AS: Yeah, we've been talking about this for a while, and so it's exciting to kick it off. So let me introduce you to the audience. Ladies and gentlemen, John A. Dues is an accomplished education systems leader and Improvement Science scholar practitioner with more than two decades of experience. He is the Chief Learning Officer of the United Schools Network, where he directs the network's continual improvement fellowship and serves as an Improvement Advisor. He draws heavily on the work of Dr. W. Edwards Deming and his System of Profound Knowledge. He's currently continuing his education through the Improvement Advisor program at the Institute for Healthcare Improvement in Boston, Massachusetts. John, can you take a little bit and tell us about the story about how you first learned about the teachings of Dr. W. Edwards Deming and what hooked you? 0:01:21.8 JD: Yeah, happy to do that. I sort of, I'm about 20 years into my career as an educator, and I sort of think about my career across four stages or so. Stage zero, I was a teacher, I didn't really know anything about classroom management or how to lead a class, it was a lot of trial and error type learning, and then I start to figure stuff out over time and stage one, I transitioned into now working at a series of Public Charter Schools is on the founding team of seven schools or non-profits sort of than this next stage. And I think a lot of my learning was sort of what I would call subject matter learning, so cognitive science, curriculum and lesson planning, how to use data to drive instruction, those types of things, and then about 2016 or so, I started learning about improvement science. I got an e-mail, it mentioned a book called Learning to Improve, and that got me sort of started on this path to learning the tools of improvement science, and I did that for four or five years, and then in about a couple of years ago, I stumbled across the W. Edwards Deming Institute website. 0:02:53.0 JD: And I had previously come to the website a couple of years earlier, and truth be told, I went to the System of Profound Knowledge page, it didn't make a lot of sense to me, and so I sort of let it lay for a year or two, and I came back to it in 2020, and not that all of a sudden it made sense. But there was something there that sparked this interest that's been going on for three years now, where I've devoured books, listened to interviews, and really gone on this journey to learn exactly what Dr. Deming was talking about with the System of Profound Knowledge. 0:03:36.5 AS: And when you think about the improvements that you're trying to do, or the problems that you were trying to solve, and then you started to see, let's say the System of Profound Knowledge, what was it that stood out as, Oh, that explains why this is happening, that explains why... What were some of those revelations and things that you could then bring back to your work... I'm just curious. How did that unfold? 0:04:06.2 JD: Yeah, it took some time. I mentioned sort of discovering the Institute website in about 2018 or so, and it not initially making a lot of sense, there's probably two things. One, candidly, I saw a System of Profound Knowledge, and I was like, Well, who talks like that? What is that... Like who calls their stuff profound knowledge? And then the second thing was when I looked over the four components, systems theory and the theory of variation and the theory of knowledge and psychology, frankly, most of it was incomprehensive to me, and a couple of years later, I come back, I'm a little further in this learning journey, and I go back to it, not that I had any type of instant revelation or anything like that, it has taken a lot of deep study, it did start to slowly make sense and what I realized... In one of the books I was reading is sort of this idea that there's these two complementary types of knowledge, one is subject matter knowledge, so in my case, it's those things I mentioned, knowing how to plan lessons, knowing how to do classroom management, the things that an educator that needs to know how to do. 0:05:28.3 JD: And then there was this whole other bucket of knowledge, which I realized when Deming said System of Profound Knowledge he meant the components interact, that's the system part. And then the profound part is just that you have

Are tests like the SAT - and a potential National Merit Scholarship that goes with a good score - the same as grading or ranking students? David and Andrew discuss the differences. TRANSCRIPT 0:00:02.4 Andrew Stotz: My name is Andrew Stotz, and I'll be your host as we continue our journey into the teachings of Dr. W. Edwards Deming. Today, I'm continuing my discussion with David P. Langford, who has devoted his life to applying Dr. Deming's philosophy to education, and he offers us his practical advice for implementation. Today, his topic is, The Difference Between Testing and Ranking Students. David, take it away. 0:00:29.4 David Langford: Okay, well, if you're an educator, that should be a trigger enough for you to pay attention and listen to this. [chuckle] So I wanna tie this in with Deming thinking and the difference and what people are trying to do with equity and all kinds of things that are going on today. And it's pretty relevant too, because I just watched a newscast that a school district was delaying or even not announcing their National Merit Scholars because of the fear that it would make other children feel bad because they weren't recognized like that. So it's kind of like what Dagwood set in the comics one time sounds like a good idea till you think about it. I wanted to discuss that today because over the last 40 years, I've run seminars and talked about Dr. Deming's focus of rating and ranking and grading, and he's just really against grading, and I pulled up a quote from The New Economics, he says, our educational system would be improved immeasurably by abolishment of grading. Okay. So there's a difference between grading and actually just testing. So let's just talk for a minute about the National Merit Scholarship Program. So I just read some stats on that, about one... Over one million students actually apply for a National Merit Scholarship each year, and only about 50,000 are selected, and how are those kids selected? 0:02:09.4 DL: Well, when you're a junior in high school, you take the SAT test, and if you have one of the 50,000 scores of the highest in the nation, then you could be named as a national merit scholar, and that could mean a lot of things. I mean, it could help you get scholarships to universities, it could really look good on your resume for the rest of your life, it could mean a lot of things. So is that the same thing that Deming talks about by grading and ranking people, and I would say no, because what really should be happening instead of thinking that by honoring or naming people that, or recognizing people that took this test and got one of the top 50,000 scores that that's gonna make other people feel bad, therefore we're not gonna announce that or we're not going to recognize that is not the same thing. When you're grading and ranking people, you actually have to grade them, grade their performance in order to rank them, and talking about Deming's concept of profound knowledge, the variation in that is huge, and the psychology in that is huge. I'm sure that almost every single person can relate to a classroom where they probably told somebody, I just, I don't think this teacher likes me. I don't know why but I just don't think they like me for some reason, and no matter how hard... 0:03:42.4 AS: And it's confirmed at the end of the semester when I get my grade. 0:03:46.9 DL: Yeah, no matter how hard I try or whatever, I just don't think they like me, and I know it's happened to me at times, and I just... Well, I just, I got choices that I could drop the class or I could just put up with it and go through with that. So psychological things like that could enter in and then all the social-economic stuff that we've got going on now could enter in and ethics could enter in, and all kinds of things could enter into someone giving someone a grade, like in a classroom and then ranking them against other students, right? That's a totally different thing. If I could give this, the school district and I'm not gonna name them 'cause I don't wanna get in trouble or anything. But if I could give this school district advice, what you should be trying to do is get as many students as possible into that level of National Merit ranking, because it's not limited, as far as I know, it's not limited that you can only have one per school or something. You could have as many as qualify, and that would show what an elite school you are actually, that you have more people qualifying for a national merit scholarships than any place else. And drive other people to think, Okay, if they can do that, I can do that, right. 0:05:11.1 AS: And can we... Can we go into that more detailed, just so we really break it down. To understand when someone, I guess, voluntarily as a student does with this National Merit Scholarship, goes into some sort of competition or measurement or something like that, that that's different from a school teacher and a school administrator observing the behaviors

How many people need to be "on board" in order to start implementing Deming ideas in an organization? Andrew and David P. Langford discuss Dr. Deming's answer and what that means for folks trying to make changes. TRANSCRIPT 0:00:02.6 Andrew Stotz: My name is Andrew Stotz, and I'll be your host as we continue our journey into the teachings of Dr. W. Edwards Deming. Today I'm continuing my discussion with David P. Langford, who has devoted his life to applying Dr. Deming's philosophy to education, and he offers us his practical advice for implementation. Today's topic is, What is the Critical Mass for Transformation? David, take it away. 0:00:27.6 David Langford: Thank you, Andrew. It's good to be back. So this idea about transformation, what is the transformation? What are we talking about? We hear a lot about the political transformations and things like that. And I stopped shaving, so now I have a beard, and is that a transformation? And what do we do with that? I also get the questions a lot over the last 40 years about, well, how do we get everybody on board? In fact, almost anytime I do a seminar, I almost always get a question from a principal, superintendent, or somebody in education, how do we get everybody on board? Well, and Deming talked a lot about that transformation starts with the individual. So you've got to get yourself on board to begin with. And I remember when I started learning about Deming and started reading the books and kind of going through things, it was a mental transformation for me individually. So that's probably the first step if you're thinking about transforming an organization, whether that be a classroom, a school, a company, a family, whatever you might want to think about, is, getting yourself on board. 0:01:46.8 DL: And then the second thing is, okay, well, now we're going to transform a larger part of the organization. What do we do then? So I actually put that question to Dr. Deming one time, and he said, well, "I like to think about having the square root of the organization to cause a transformation of the organization. And this just blew me away because, let's say you have 100 employees or 100 staff members on a school or whatever it might be. And if you have the thought that you're going to get everybody on board before you do anything, well, if you understand Dr. Deming's concept of Profound Knowledge, you're never going to get there. You're never going to have 100 people on board before you start anything. You're going to have variability. You're going to have variation in people. And even if you had 100 people say, "Oh yeah, we're not bored, let's do this," well, what's the degree of their commitment to doing that? That's a huge amount of variation in the organization. So when I asked Dr. Deming, I said, "Well, how do I begin transforming a whole organization like that?" And he said, "Well, I like to think of the square root of the organization," that you need the square root on board to cause a transformation. 0:03:15.3 AS: So I was thinking about the square root and I was calculating it. So if we have 100 employees in an organization, that's 10 people. If we have 1000, that is 32 people. If we have 100,000, that's 300 people. It's a relatively small number. 0:03:34.2 DL: Yeah, think about that. And that as a leader, sort of liberates you from thinking that, "Okay, I've got to get everybody on board before we can start doing stuff." And that's just really not true at all. Or in a classroom, you've got 25 kids in a classroom. I really only need about five kids in that classroom that are kind of on board with me and the thought processes, and we can begin a transformation in that classroom. I've told that to so many teachers and it's like this huge revelation in their mind is like, "Oh wow, I just never had thought about that." And it enables you to sort of get to work. Almost anybody can like pick off the names of five students that would be supportive of working with you or 10 employees out of 100 that would be really supportive to working with you or 100,000, what'd you say? 320 or? 0:04:32.2 AS: 100,000 would be 316, just 300 people. 0:04:32.7 DL: Yeah. And it actually makes it doable. And so I used that for years... 0:04:39.8 AS: I'd literally go out and ask people to volunteer, to say who would be interested in being involved in a transformation and that type of thing. You're going to get more than 300 people out of 100,000 that are going to volunteer. 0:04:54.2 DL: Yeah. Dr. Myron Tribus was another one of my mentors and he was a colleague of Dr. Deming. And he used to go with me to universities because he'd been the Dean at Dartmouth. He'd been the Dean at MIT and he just had a tremendous university background and stuff. And so we would go together and give presentations and we were at a major university. I won't name it. But the Dean of Education was being pressured by the President to have us talk to faculty members. And so we, first we talked to the D

Your "meaning network" of neurons includes the subjects (like math wizzes) and relationships (like friendships) that are important to you. In this episode, Andrew and David talk about helping folks find the "why?" that intrinsically motivates them to do something. TRANSCRIPT 0:00:02.5 Andrew Stotz: My name is Andrew Stotz and I'll be your host as we continue our journey into the teachings of Dr. W. Edwards Deming. Today I am continuing my discussion with David P. Langford, who has devoted his life to applying Dr. Deming's philosophy to education and he offers us his practical advice for implementation. Today's topic is tapping into meaning to release intrinsic motivation. David, take it away. 0:00:28.7 David Langford: Thank you, Andrew, and good to be back. 0:00:32.3 AS: Good to see you. 0:00:34.1 DL: So we have been on this journey of five elements of intrinsic motivation and these are the ones that, through my research at least, are the most important elements if you want to see intrinsic motivation emerge. Why are we doing that? Because Dr. Deming was the one that really made it clear that you have to have intrinsic motivation and stop extrinsically motivating people. So that's why we're concentrating on, what are these elements? So the first element was the element of control or autonomy in a situation. The second element was cooperation and we talked about the support network that's necessary and the previous podcast was all about the challenge and today we're talking about the meaning. How did... That meaning is the fifth element to tap into. So in every human brain there is a preponderance of cells in your meaning network. Some of it is... Some of it you're born with, some of it you acquire through life, but it's what... It's the cells that are activated when you get a sense of meaning about, why are we doing something or why are we here, what's happening? 0:02:04.0 DL: And the more we can tap into that network with people and tap into their meaning network, we start to see more intrinsic motivation emerge and therefore more joy in learning and work emerge and therefore a higher level of workmanship that often comes out of that same thing. 0:02:23.3 AS: And when you say meaning network, sometimes when I think of network, I think of a network of people, but you're talking about a neurological network. 0:02:30.5 DL: Yeah, we're talking about the actual neurons in your brain that form the network of meaning behind your life. It's... Sometimes we're just born with a preponderance of cells in certain areas, like I have five children and one of them was just born with the gift of mathematics and that's just the way it was. And another one was just born with his gift of music and another one... On and on. And those are just there at birth. And I don't think we had anything to do with it until we started to uncover that, oh, wow, this meaning... This has a lot of meaning for this individual. In other ways, you can also acquire a meaning network over time. That's for myself and probably for you too, Andrew, that the meaning in network now includes Deming, and the work of Deming, but that had to become an acquired kind of thing. So when people go through that process of learning about it, sometimes they say, my brain hurts because you are readjusting the actual neurons and the network of neurons in your brain that taught you to think about something. 0:03:50.9 DL: So if you had a network of neurons for management and maybe even went to college like I did or university, got a master's degree in management, et cetera, it taught you to think in a certain way. And Deming's work actually, sometimes trashes all of that or sometimes just causes you to have to think in a whole different way. And so then you have to start to readjust your meaning network. So it's been a lifelong interest for me to figure out, well, how do we get more of that to happen? So probably the very first element I want to talk about is relevance. So when you're trying to get somebody to do something, whether it's just work or we're talking about learning in schools, et cetera, is there a relevance? Why are we doing this? Kids don't ask, why is the sky blue or things like that just to make you mad and make your life miserable. They're actually trying to seek meaning in their life and try to understand what's going on. So the tool we often use is five whys. When you're starting to work through something, "Why do we have to do this?" 0:05:13.0 DL: And you have to answer that question and then, "Okay, then why is that so?" And then so on and so forth. And each time you ask, "Why did I say what I did in the previous why and think through stuff?" But that actually gets people to tap into the level of meaning. I never forget I saw five whys one time on, I think it was a group of first graders or something and they'd done this five whys and on why do we have to learn to read? And they'd gone through all these kinds of things, but I'll never forget that

Cooperation is built into the human condition - we don't survive without it. In this episode, Andrew and David talk about the connection in our brains between intrinsic motivation and cooperation - and how you can use that to help cultivate intrinsic motivation in an extrinsic world (and even make your organization more competitive!) TRANSCRIPT 0:00:02.9 Andrew Stotz: My name is Andrew Stotz and I'll be your host as we continue our journey into the teachings of Dr. W. Edwards Deming. Today I am continuing my discussion with David P. Langford, who has devoted his life to applying Dr. Deming's philosophy to education, and he offers us his practical advice for implementation. Today's topic is, how to apply the neuroscience of cooperation. David, take it away. 0:00:31.3 David Langford: That sounds ominous to me. So... 0:00:35.1 AS: Impressive. 0:00:35.9 DL: Yeah, we're not gonna do brain surgery, but we'll get pretty close to that today, so... [laughter] 0:00:40.4 AS: This is brain science. 0:00:42.5 DL: Yes. So we're continuing this five-part series on intrinsic motivation. So Dr. Deming was adamant that intrinsic motivation was key, and that we're all just born with intrinsic motivation, and it's our systems and the people that we encounter over time that sort of drum it out of us. So how do you get it back, especially from people that have been beaten down from both the school systems and the businesses that they've been, et cetera? And Dr. Deming said, we have a right to joy in work and learning. And if that's true, we have to try to create these environments to make great joy in the work environment. And why do you do that? Well, when you do that, you're gonna get better productivity. You're gonna get more output. 0:01:38.5 DL: People are gonna be happy, or they're gonna stay longer. They're not gonna be looking for other jobs, et cetera, et cetera. So it all makes perfect sense to me that you wanna concentrate on creating intrinsically motivating systems even though you might be in an extrinsic world all the way around you. So in the first session, we talked about control or autonomy or ownership as being key for intrinsic motivation. And there's five key factors that we're going through. And what I wanna impress upon people is that this is a system of intrinsic motivation. So it's all of these factors together. Yes, you can just do one factor and get a result. For instance, you can just apply more cooperation and you'll see a higher level of intrinsic motivation. But if you really wanna see people rise to the true heights of what they're capable of or what their potential is, you have to think about all five of these factors. 0:02:40.5 DL: So that's why we're taking time to go through all these. Today we're talking about cooperation. And that's much different than setting up a competitive environment where people are competing for isolated resources or they're competing for a medal, a gold star, et cetera, et cetera. But cooperation is built into the human condition, thousands of years ago when we first started creating villages and people working together, and people had to cooperate to make armies, people had to cooperate to build houses. There's a myth about how the west was won in the United States, that it was the rugged individual, but yeah, there was some of that. But largely it was wagon trains of cooperative people coming west. And if they didn't cooperate and worked together, they didn't survive, the people that were the rugged individuals often perished either from native American attacks or just the environment itself. So cooperation, to me, is built into the human condition. 0:03:53.0 AS: And before you continue that, let me just ask you about competition versus cooperation. Is competition also built-in, or is cooperation more built in? I mean, that point you just made about how for survival, humans need to depend on each other to some extent as a society, but do humans need to compete with each other? 0:04:20.1 DL: Well, the great irony is, the better you cooperate, the better you compete. [laughter] 0:04:27.7 DL: So if you're at a corporation, for instance, or even a school, and the higher the level of cooperation that you foster and create, you actually do become competitive because you actually become better than other people in your field, et cetera. 0:04:43.2 AS: And how... I love that statement, the better you cooperate, the better you compete. How is that rooted in facts? Is that rooted in... It intuitively makes sense to me that a team or a group that really cooperates well together can achieve amazing things, but is it scientifically correct to say that? 0:05:13.6 DL: Well, can we point to... We could point to obviously numbers of examples of either schools or businesses, et cetera, that have high degrees of cooperation involved. You can get... You can seize part of the market in a competitive thinking or a competitive environment or pitting people against each other to achieve ins

How do you tap into intrinsic motivation when the assignments (or jobs) are boring or feel irrelevant? Andrew and David talk about the role of challenge in intrinsic motivation, including why being challenged is key to innovation and improvement. TRANSCRIPT 0:00:02.7 Andrew Stotz: My name is Andrew Stotz and I will be your host as we continue our journey into the teachings of Dr. W. Edwards Deming. Today, I'm continuing my discussion with David P. Langford, who has devoted his life to applying Dr. Deming's philosophy to education and he offers us his practical advice for implementation. Today's topic is the role of challenge in intrinsic motivation. David, take it away. 0:00:30.6 David P. Langford: Hello, Andrew. Good to be back. 0:00:33.2 AS: Good to see you. 0:00:33.3 DL: So how challenging is challenge, that's really what we're after about here today. So this is part four in a five-part podcast series we've been doing on intrinsic motivation, and so when I first encountered the concept of intrinsic motivation and it's actually when I was getting my undergraduate degree and I was so intrigued about it, but even like today, there was no training in it, there was no real... There was just, "Here it is, and yeah, intrinsic motivation is really good, so good luck with that." And all the training was around extrinsic motivation, how to motivate people, and it's the same today. I get calls and I get emails and stuff, and people always wanna know, can't we use bonuses and can't we use this and... You can use those kinds of things. I always think of the phrases that Dr. Deming had, he said, "The destruction has to start somewhere." [laughter] 0:01:40.2 DL: And people would ask him about those kinds of things like, yeah, you could do that, but... You're on the road to destruction. So I've been trying to explain the five researched key elements of intrinsic motivation that Deming talked about, and how do you actually change the system, whether that's a business or a school or a classroom, or whatever it might be. So you have people becoming more intrinsically motivated, so we've gone through a couple. So we talked about control or autonomy in the situation, we talked a lot about, in podcast number two, about cooperation, and then podcast number three is support, and now we're gonna talk about the role of challenge in intrinsic motivation. So, it's not so easy as just to like flip a switch and say, "Okay, now we're gonna intrinsically motivate people." It is a complex thinking that has to take place in management to create an environment where people can be intrinsically motivated, right? 0:02:51.2 AS: Yeah. 0:02:51.9 DL: And usually, if you find people looking like they're not motivated, Deming talked about probably 94% to 98% of the reason they're not motivated to come to work, is the work itself, the job. So when we start to talk about challenge, you wanna think about the job itself, is the job that say you're having a student do... If I tell people, "Memorize these 10 spelling words for Friday," well, yeah, for some students, that could be really challenging, for others, it's just sheer boredom of, "Why are we doing this? Where did this come from? There's no real challenge to it." So, you can take just about anything that you have that you want people to do... 0:03:39.6 DL: And in fact, Deming was actually a master of this, he went into some of the most mundane manufacturing places in the world where people are just sitting all day long and doing the same darn thing all over and over, thousands of times, and then leaving and then, how do you motivate those people? Well, let's just pay them more, let's do this or that or the other thing. And it didn't work. And the Hawthorne Studies showed that, oh yeah, you could turn the lights off and productivity goes up, or you could turn the lights on, productivity... Or you have music, or you can do all these kinds of things, but what they discovered was that it was the fact that management actually cared. [chuckle] That made the difference, and they were actually doing and trying to do something to improve the working environment is what was really discovered through that. But, Deming was the master of going in and teaching people to use their brains and to begin to improve their own situation. And that's a challenge. I'm sitting here doing this all day long, the same tedious task all day long, but all of a sudden somebody gives me the keys to improve this situation, make a change here, do something... 0:04:57.2 DL: And that's where PDSA came from, or originally PDCA was Dr. Shewhart. But Plan-Do-Study-Act, make a plan, do it, study it and act on it, did it work? It could be just that simple of a process. Now if we get together with a few other people and we study the process of what's happening, and we're given the authority or the control or autonomy, like we talked about earlier, to actually make a change, ah, well, that's pretty challenging. That's pretty interesting.

In this episode, Andrew and David discuss one aspect of cultivating intrinsic motivation: the role of support. Cooperation and collaboration don't just happen, and leaving a group of people - particularly kids - to just do as they please isn't cultivating motivation. So how do you support intrinsic motivation? 0:00:03.0 Andrew Stotz: My name is Andrew Stotz and I'll be your host as we continue our journey into the teachings of Dr. W. Edwards Deming. Today I'm continuing my discussion with David P. Langford who has devoted his life to applying Dr. Deming's philosophy to education and he offers us his practical advice for implementation. Today's topic is The Role of Support in Intrinsic Motivation. David, take it away. 0:00:29.5 David Langford: Thank you. So we're working through five factors that lead to high levels of intrinsic motivation. And we started off with control, autonomy, ownership, however you want to think about that, but that's number one. And then we had a discussion around that you have to develop levels of cooperation. And today I want to talk about the idea of support. So I'll never forget a kindergarten class, so students was giving a presentation to the State Board of Education and they were telling the state board about all the ownership they had in class and how they cooperated and how they did all these things on their own and they just knew what to do and had high degrees of ownership. And one of the board members said, "Well, if you're doing all these things, what's your teacher doing?" And without hesitating, I'll never forget this little boy grabs a microphone and he says, "The teacher is not in the closet, you know." 0:01:39.7 AS: My gosh, insightful. 0:01:42.1 DL: Oh yeah, the room was, there was probably 300 people in the room, at this state board meeting, and you could, the whispers were just, "What did he say? What is he talking about?" See, he knew intuitively that he was being allowed to do these things and supported to do these things and to work together and have a real community in the classroom. And that just didn't happen by itself. 0:02:12.4 AS: That's interesting because in that case, you sometimes would think, oh, the teacher's just, you know, letting the class go free or something like that. But it takes a lot of work. I mean, just as you talked, I was thinking about how confrontational America is in the world. You know, here I am in Asia and most people outside of the world do not think that America is a cooperative partner. In fact, people around the world oftentimes say, you know, they don't know whether it's better to be an enemy or a friend of America. And there's that just competitive. There's just not that cooperative. How do we work this out? How do we work together to get a better result for all of us? So continue on. Tell us more about support. 0:02:57.6 DL: Yeah. So if you if you want to see more intrinsic motivation emerge, you need to take a look at what you are doing. And you know, when you point a finger there, what is it that saying, there's three fingers pointing back at you? So yeah, what am I doing and how am I managing in such a way to not have a high degree of cooperation or a high degree of performance in a group? And so there are some very key factors that I've learned over the last 40 years that will either hinder or help intrinsic motivation to come out. And the first one I want to talk about, how do you support people is the area of feedback. So feedback versus evaluation. 0:03:53.9 DL: So you know, we always think that our job is to evaluate people, evaluate performance, evaluate a paper that you write and then give it back to you, put a grade on it, etcetera. People don't respect evaluation very well. There are just so many opinions in it, etcetera. Performance evaluations, Deming talked vociferously about getting rid of performance evaluations, but they do respect feedback. So when I'm in a classroom and I have an assignment, let's say it's a paper to write and you hand it in, yeah, I could go through it, put red marks all over it and then hand it back to you with a B minus on it and you'll probably just throw it in the trash can on the way out the door and that's the end of it. 0:04:50.6 DL: But if we've gone over what a quality standard is for that paper and what it should look like to meet that standard and now you hand that in and I start to give you feedback on it. I sit down with you and I say, "You know, this paragraph doesn't quite make sense. I think you really should rework these sentences and go over this and your punctuation is not quite right here and if you make these changes, I think you're going to be very close to being there, to meeting that standard, right?" Well, that's much different because I have a way to get out of my hole, right? But if I just have a B minus on it or C plus or whatever, there's no way for me to get out of that hole or to fix it. So it also brings into the whole grading thing. That's partly why De

In this second episode of the Motivation series, Andrew and David P. Langford discuss how power dynamics impact motivation and why autonomy is a big factor in motivation. TRANSCRIPT 0:00:02.6 Andrew Stotz: My name is Andrew Stotz, and I'll be your host as we continue our journey into the teachings of Dr. W. Edwards Deming. Today, I am continuing my discussion with David P. Langford, who has devoted his life to applying Dr. Deming's philosophy to education, and he offers us his practical advice for implementation. Today's topic is, Who Controls Motivation? David, take it away. 0:00:29.4 David P. Langford: Thanks, Andrew. So we're starting this five podcast series. In the last podcast, we talked a lot about the difference between intrinsic motivation and extrinsic motivation. Here in this five-podcast series, we're gonna discuss how do you actually create intrinsic motivation environments so that people want to do [chuckle] the work or the learning or whatever it is you might be getting them to do [chuckle] or task them to do. Right? So the first element, and I've been researching this for now over 40 years, and I've never found anything that contradicts what I'm gonna share with the listeners over these five podcasts. And these are five elements of intrinsic motivation that I guarantee you, if you start applying these, you will see either your students, your own children, employees, yourself, [chuckle] you will see people more motivated to do the work that they're doing, if you think about these five factors that we're gonna be going over. 0:01:48.8 DL: So the first factor that I wanna talk about today is the element of control or autonomy in situation. So when I have control over a situation, I have autonomy, I'm self-motivating. I'm doing things in that environment by myself. So we have a lot of buzzwords in management words like empowerment. And well, even a word like empowerment means I have all the power, and so I'm gonna give you some of it. [laughter] I'm gonna empower you to... But you can only do this a little bit, I don't want you to do a lot of stuff. I just want you to do... Be empowered to just do this thing, kind of a thing, and that's also an element of control, so. 0:02:38.6 DL: But control is... Our economy is built into the human condition, and when we tap into that in managing people in either in a classroom or a workforce or a whole group of teachers, whoever it might be, yes, the more I set up an environment where I'm allowing people to take control or have autonomy over what they're doing, the more I will see them be motivated. The more I take that away, and I start controlling everything and running stuff, I start to be really motivated, [chuckle] and I see this a lot with teachers. They're really motivated by controlling everything, controlling all those kids, controlling the process, controlling having... And they have total autonomy in the classroom to do whatever they wanna do basically, and so they're really motivated by that. Well, when they start giving up that control or that autonomy to children, a lot of times, they become de-motivated. 0:03:43.5 DL: [chuckle] I'll never forget this story. I was working with a university,in California, and I had one of the teachers, one of the professors, that really wanted to learn about this and how to run a classroom, so we talked a lot about... I've worked with him individually and talked about, "How do you set up your classroom so that when the students come to your classroom, basically they start to have autonomy and control over the process and what's happening?" Well, one day I get a phone call, and I answered the phone, and this guy is whispering to me. He said, "I think I need some quality therapy." And I said, [chuckle] "Why? What, what's going on?" And he said, "Well, I had a flat tire on the way to school. And so the university has a policy if the professor doesn't show up in the first 10 minutes, everybody can leave. So I was 30 minutes late, and I was just sure I was gonna walk into the room and everybody's gonna be gone." But he said, "I walked into the room and nobody even knew that I was missing.They were all working in teams and working on their projects and discussing stuff and doing what is they're doing?" He said, "I need some therapy." [chuckle] Because for him, that was de-motivating that they didn't need him. Right? So it's a very powerful, powerful concept once you start to get it, but you also have to understand that you, as the manager, of that situation are part of the equation, that as well, right? So you almost have to start the... Your motivation by seeing other people taking on the control of the situation and having autonomy to do what it is that they need to do. I was in a kindergarten classroom in North Carolina years ago, and the teacher had been through my training and stuff, and she invited me to come to her classroom. 0:05:34.6 DL: And so I went there early in the morning and just watched, and those lit

In this episode, Andrew and David introduce the broad topic of "motivation." David describes intrinsic vs extrinsic motivation and how motivation practices are usually manipulation tactics that don't work over the long term. So what do we do instead? TRANSCRIPT 0:00:02.2 Andrew Stotz: My name is Andrew Stotz, and I'll be your host as we continue our journey into the teachings of Dr. W. Edwards Deming. Today, I'm continuing my discussion with David P. Langford, who has devoted his life to applying Dr. Deming's philosophy to education, and he offers us his practical advice for implementation. Today's topic is, The Best Way To Motivate. Take it away, David. 0:00:30.2 David Langford: Thank you, Andrew. It's good to be back again. 0:00:34.4 AS: Indeed. 0:00:35.6 DL: So, yeah, I wanted to start actually a whole series on motivation and in this podcast, we're gonna talk a little bit about two different types of motivation and how people go about motivating people and things like that. But then, we're gonna start a five podcast series breaking down the five key elements that I found over the last 40 years that really cause motivation to happen. So in this introduction podcast right now, I wanna talk a little bit about motivation. So the topic of that, what's the best way to motivate? You can't. So let's kind of get that out of the way. 0:01:20.7 AS: Don't bury the lead, David. [laughter] 0:01:21.9 DL: Yeah, you can't really motivate somebody. You can't even motivate your dog to do things. You can manipulate your dog to get a result but in the end, your dog or your child or students in classrooms or your employees or whatever, they all have to come to the conclusion that they're motivated to do this job for their... Whatever that might be and that it's their idea. And so it's all about creating an intrinsic versus extrinsic motivation environment. And I know this is contrary to all the literature that's out there and everything, and every motivational guru on the planet that's trying to get you to buy something that motivates us. And I was recalling that I was on an airplane one time and I was sitting next to this guy and you strike up a conversation sometimes and he said, "Ah, what do you do?" 0:02:30.4 DL: And so I told him a little bit about what I do and how I help school try to transform and get better results and what they do and everything. "Oh, that's really interesting, tell me more about that." And so we did and we got onto the topic of intrinsic motivation versus extrinsic motivation. And I just started talking about you can't really motivate people with trinkets and gimmicks and awards and all kinds of things like that. And we got in a big discussion about trophies and sports and all kinds of things like that. [chuckle] And just as we're starting to land the airplane, I said to him, oh, I said, "Well, you know, I never got around to you." I said, "What do you do?" He says, "Well, I have a company that makes trophies." [laughter] And then it was like dead-silence. Oh, we landed the plane and got off the plane. 0:03:26.5 AS: You went your separate ways. 0:03:28.2 DL: Yeah. He did say, oh, I think I understand, but he's gonna keep making his trophies and making money, so... 0:03:39.4 AS: Yeah. 0:03:39.9 DL: And there's a lot of money to be made in it, especially in education, there's just whole catalogs. I get catalogs in the mail even today, about all the awards and trophies and everything and how you can motivate kids to do this and that and it's... Deming was the first one that kind of took a board and slapped it up inside of my head and just said, "Stop it." In fact I remember one of his conferences, somebody asked a question, "Well, Dr. Deming, I'm in a company that's trying to motivate us with a pay and pay for performance and games and gimmicks and sell so much stuff, and you get a free trip to Aruba and what do I do?" And his response was, "Well, you can always stop doing something that's stupid." And that, it was just... He had this knack of these phrases that would just cut through to people. Yeah, you can stop it. You can say, "Okay, I'm not gonna participate in that." I'm not gonna play it. I'm not gonna play that game. And so what do we do instead? 0:05:01.4 AS: And before we even get into that, what does it mean? What does motivate mean? Because you've used the word, manipulate and you've used the word, motivate. Can you define... 0:05:13.3 DL: That's kind of emerged over the last 100 or 150 years or so, as a way to try to get people to do something that basically that you don't think they wanna do. [chuckle] So whether that's kids learning math or it's an employee not getting the productivity that you think that they should get. But basically, I'm the leader, I'm the manager, and I want you to do something that you're currently not doing. And so, I'm gonna do something to you to make you do it. 0:05:55.1 AS: Which sounds like external pressure or external... 0:05:58.7 DL: External pressure. W

In our latest Deming in Education podcast, Andrew and David talk about a controversial subject: cellphones in classrooms. Should teachers have them? Students? Should they be banned? Or is there another way? TRANSCRIPT 0:00:03.2 Andrew Stotz: My name is Andrew Stotz and I'll be your host, as we continue our journey into the teachings of Dr. W. Edwards Deming. Today, I'm continuing my discussion with David P. Langford, who has devoted his life to applying Dr. Deming's philosophy to education, and he offers offered us his practical advice for implementation. Today's topic is, "What would Deming say about cellphones in classrooms." David, take it away. 0:00:31.9 David Langford: Thank you. I just find this topic so relevant today and just so interesting, I just wanted to have this little discussion about what's going on because I'm reading articles that some high schools in Massachusetts, I think it was, are now banning cellphones completely, and so when kids come to school they have to put their cell phone in a hermetically sealed plastic bag that can only be opened by a teacher or an administrator at the end of the day. So, sort of like what Dagwood said in the comics one time, "It sounds like a good idea till you think about it." So those schools now have become the cell phone police. Alright? 0:01:23.6 AS: Yeah. 0:01:24.0 DL: They have to have people at the door, and if you think you're gonna outsmart a high school kid and get him... "Well, I didn't bring my phone today... " What are you gonna do then? You're gonna search 'em? You're gonna have a Geiger counter kind of the thing that they go through that will go off then, "You got a cell phone and... " 0:01:44.6 AS: You have got a cell phone or a gun, I'm not sure. 0:01:48.7 DL: And then you lied. And so now we have to have punishments for that and one cell phone misdemeanor will get you half an hour after school, and then so we have to have somebody to monitor the after school program and then we go on and on and on and on. And is that really the business you're in? And on the other hand, I can understand a teacher's complaint about, we got these cell phones and they're going off and everything, but I also want to tie it back into what are we supposed to be trying to do in education, what's our purpose? And Deming talked a lot about constancy of purpose, and so when all these students that are going to schools with banned cell phones get out into society and they go to work for companies like yours or other companies, what are companies gonna expect about their cell phones are we still gonna be taking cell phones away from employees when they hit the door? I would say... [cough] Excuse me. Generally, that people just make up, not necessarily even rules or regulations but ethics around cell phones. I remember as an administrator having that problem that we'd have administrative meetings and you might have 20 or 30 people in the room and there's people answering their email and they're looking up stuff on their cell phones and this and that, checking this. 0:03:25.2 DL: And in some cases, it could be an extreme emergency and they need to be paying attention to that, so do you just wanna ban that and say, "Okay, no, no answering email or doing anything like that." Or can we put some guidelines about what we believe? So it ties into Deming thinking, because the first thing that I've encountered this over and over, schools all over the world, and the first thing I would say is, "Okay, what's the statistical variation that you have on cell phones?" And they'll look at you blankly like, "Well, you know, it's just bad." [chuckle] Well, I can understand that, but does every child have a cell phone in the entire school? Are you dealing with that, well or either that system, or is there a system of inequity where only 30% of the kids can actually afford cell phones and what are parents views on cell phones and all the it's other kinds... 0:04:26.2 AS: I was just thinking that, I'm sure whatever challenges you're facing in the classroom that parents are also facing that challenge, so you actually have somewhat of an ally. I was looking at an article by CBS News, that just came out, and a quote from a guy named Tyler Rablin, a high school teacher in Sunnyside, Washington, he said, "It's a losing battle for kids and their brains." 0:04:55.6 DL: [laughter] That sounds like somebody that doesn't really wanna join the 21st century. 0:05:01.3 AS: But also the other thing is in business now, we have apps where you're communicating and you're expected to be online and respond and all that, so it's not like we're gonna get rid of... 0:05:12.0 DL: Yeah you can take that away as well. Well, and then there are developing countries, like I'm pretty sure that it's Nigeria that is actually issuing cell phones to every student because it's a miniature computer and it's affordable, and they can use it in multiple ways, working stuff through. So the idea of just, "Well, we're just gonna

In this episode, Andrew and David talk about chaos, authority, and when calming the chaos can feel like a loss of control. They explore the "psychology" aspect of Dr. Deming's System of Profound Knowledge, and how that applies to classrooms and and school systems. TRANSCRIPT 0:00:02.4 Andrew Stotz: My name is Andrew Stotz, and I'll be your host, as we continue our journey into the teachings of Dr. W Edwards Deming. Today, I'm continuing my discussion with David P. Langford, who has devoted his life to applying Dr. Deming's philosophy to education, and he offers us his practical advice for implementation. Today's topic is Thriving on Chaos. David, take it away. 0:00:28.4 David Langford: Thank you, Andrew. It's good to be back again. 0:00:30.9 AS: Oh, yeah. 0:00:31.0 DL: So, yes, Thriving on Chaos. So I started thinking about this because of my work with executive coaching, both with principals and superintendents and people like that. And it's sort of like a pattern or if I go and visit a campus and actually start to see what's happening at the campus, either a university or a school or whatever, and it applies to Deming's concept of Profound Knowledge and the concept of Psychology and how does psychology fit in with the variation systems thinking and so on and so forth. So this whole idea about thriving on chaos comes from... You have to start to think about the neuroscience behind it as well, about who's in charge or who's in command of something. So if you're talking about a military a military commander, well, that's all based on your rank. Or you might have a formal position in a company, right? You're a vice president or you're president, and along with that there comes a certain level of authority too. 0:01:46.3 DL: Well, in a school, it's the same kind of a thing. In a classroom, a teacher has a built-in level of authority in that classroom and especially like in younger years, elementary schools or primary schools, you're physically bigger than your students or your clients or your workers or however you wanna think about students in a school system. So sometimes people get away from... Get by with a management style that, it's just based on... That is bigger and sort of is threatening, and it's scarier. And imagine if you had a boss that was like 20 feet tall and... Compared to you and stuff. It'd be kind of a scary thing, right? 0:02:38.0 AS: Definitely. 0:02:39.8 DL: Yeah, but I think... 0:02:40.9 AS: He could just squash me by just putting his foot down. 0:02:44.8 DL: Yeah. So just because you're getting stuff done doesn't necessarily mean that you're doing things well or planning things through or something. You're just getting things done because maybe you're the loudest voice in the room or the squeakiest wheel or you're the... All these other kinds of things. But along with that, when you have that formal position, I've sort of found that people have to go through a phase where they're tired of the chaos, they're tired of the craziness, but at the same time, the craziness gives you authority. "I'm the authority figure. And so, I've gotta fix this, and I gotta always be in control." And so, Deming talked about moving from one burning fire to the next to the next to the next and managing the way of thinking like that. 0:03:44.5 DL: So if you really start applying Deming kind of philosophies to your management style, whether that's in a classroom, school, company, whatever it might be, I've always found that over time, things start to calm down. [chuckle] Attitudes calm down, students just know more about what to do, how to do things. Maybe they have flow charts or operational definitions, and so they start to actually take control of the situation, etcetera. And that actually becomes threatening to somebody who has spent a career thriving on the chaos. And you walk into a classroom and none of the kids are doing what it is they're supposed to do. And so, you get really angry, and you get upset, and yell at them and then everybody does what they're supposed to do and that puts you in a position of authority. 0:04:37.9 DL: That's much different than if I walked into a classroom and the students didn't even know I was gone. They all know what they're supposed to do, how they're supposed to do it, they're all working together, they're all communicating with each other back and forth and there is no chaos. I'll never forget the... I worked with a university in Southern California and I was coaching a number of the professors. And this one professor, I get a phone call one day and he's whispering. He said, "I had a flat on the way to school this morning, and I was 20 minutes late. And we have a philosophy at the school that if a professor is more than 10 minutes late, you don't have to stay. You can leave." 0:05:28.1 DL: So he said, "I was totally sure that I was gonna get to my class and everybody's gonna be gone. There wouldn't be anybody there." He said, "I came into my class, and they didn't eve

Now that we understand Operational Definitions (see Part 12), it's time to figure out how to use them to get the improvements and results you want. Andrew and David talk about examples of useful Operational Definitions and how they can impact all aspects of education (and beyond!) TRANSCRIPT 0:00:00.0 Andrew Stotz: My name is Andrew Stotz, and I'll be your host as we continue our journey into the teachings of Dr. W. Edwards Deming. Today, I'm continuing my discussion with David P. Langford, who has devoted his life to applying Dr. Deming's philosophy to education, and he offers us his practical advice for implementation. Today's topic is how to start setting operational definitions. David, take it away. 0:00:27.1 David Langford: So in a previous podcast, we talked a lot about the need for operational definitions, and how that improved systems, and why do you wanna do that. Well, that's part of what Deming talked about with profound knowledge and systems thinking, and it's really important. But the nuts and bolts about how do you begin doing that. Well, the first thing you need to do is to figure out what system am I working on, is the number one thing. What am I trying to improve or design? Am I trying to improve the system of behavior? Am I trying to improve the system of the learning in the classroom? Or whatever it might be. Or maybe you're a principal and all of a sudden you realize, "My teachers, they don't all show up on time to the staff meetings," Right? So staff meeting's supposed to start at 3:40, and we don't ever get a staff meeting going till four o'clock, so... I know when I go places and they're not getting started promptly, etcetera, I'll say things like, "What time do you usually start your eight o'clock meetings?" [laughter] 0:01:42.3 DL: Yeah, it usually gets people to go, Oh, yeah... Sometimes they'll say, "Well, usually about nine o'clock, so." 0:01:47.9 AS: And, David, I have a story I wanna share that I think can kind of lead into this, is that I was involved with a master's in marketing program here, about 75 students every time. And then I'm also involved with a MBA, an executive MBA program with another university. And one of the things that's interesting is the master's in marketing program, 75 students, so these classes are big, pretty big, 75 students, not one of them was late, ever. All 75 were in the classroom, door closed, when it was time to start the class and I started. And the other one I was just meeting out there, and we were at an event where I was teaching, and they said, "Look, really sorry, we try to pull everybody together but they're always late," and all that. 0:02:31.4 AS: And I was just like, this is interesting, the difference here. 'Cause it's the same cohort of people, it's the same group of executives and smart people in Thailand that are pursuing a degree. And the guy asked me, and I told him the story about the other university, and he said, "How do they do it?" And I said, "Well, they set a pretty clear standard of, look, this is important to us that you're on time, and we're gonna lock the door, and if you're not there at the time that it starts, you can't go in until the break. And we're gonna get class leaders to support this, we're gonna get alumni to support this, to say, this is part of what makes us unique." 0:03:06.9 DL: There you go. 0:03:08.1 AS: And I saw a very different outcome. 0:03:10.7 DL: So there you go. That's an operational definition. And whether or not you agree with it or not, you can see by having that operational definition at the one university, you've got a level of function that you don't have at the other university, you got a level of dysfunction, because they haven't taken the time to really do that. Really define what does that mean? And so when that happens, then you're dealing with all this variability, variation from students, variation from professors, variation from everybody in the system, and the overall system is not optimized. So it just keeps coming back to what we talked about before, but in this session we wanted to get into a little bit about, how would you begin setting an operational definition? What does it look like? 0:04:06.1 DL: When I work with, say, elementary teachers, I say, start the very first day, the very first thing, so... And start operationally defining what kinds of standards and what kinds of things you wanna have happen. Something so simple about, "Every time you hand a paper in, we want you to put your name on the paper." Okay, well, let's have a discussion about, let's operationally define, what does it mean to put your name on a paper? And sometimes people look at you and say, "Hey, what are you talking about?" Well, do you want first and last name? You just want a first name? Do you want it in the upper left-hand corner? The upper right-hand corner? Do you want it just anyplace on the paper, you don't really care? Well, if it's just random, if it's just anyplace on the paper, but my nam

Operational definitions are clearly defined words, phrases, and concepts that everyone working together agrees to use in the same way. Making assumptions about words like "tardy" or "good" is a fast track to confusion and disengagement. In part 12 of our Deming in Education series, Andrew and David talk about operational definitions in education - for students, faculty, and administrators. TRANSCRIPT 0:00:02.2 Andrew Stotz: My name is Andrew Stotz, and I'll be your host as we continue our journey into the teachings of Dr. W. Edwards Deming. Today, I'm continuing my discussion with David P. Langford, who has devoted his life to applying Dr. Deming's philosophy to education, and he offers us his practical advice for implementation. Today's topic is operational definitions for life and learning. David, take it away. 0:00:30.5 David Langford: So, hello Andrew. And so today, I was thinking about the concept that Deming offered to the world could be very profound, and that's why he called it profound knowledge about looking through stuff and deep and it can see... Seem kind of overwhelming, but at the same time, some of the best concepts or ways to think about things are really pretty simple, actually, and amazing, if you adopt just a few principles consistently and really get it in your psychic about how to operate, it can make life so much easier either for your own children or if you're a teacher in school or administrator or whatever, you might be in education... So one of those concepts is the idea of operational definitions. So one of the elements of profound knowledge is systems thinking or appreciation for a system, and so you have a system whether that be a classroom or maybe you're taking your own children on a summer vacation or whatever it might be, that in itself is a system as well. And a lot of the dysfunction that we deal with, especially in schools, actually is coming from the system itself. In fact, Deming talked about that 94% to 98% of the problem can be systemic, right? And the other 1% or 2% is probably special cause variation. 0:02:21.0 DL: So how do we go about making the common cause variation the norm? [chuckle] Now, in schools, what I was taught as a teacher was how to manage dysfunction. Nobody ever taught me how to prevent dysfunction, I sort of had to figure that out over time, that's where you get experience, and... But how do you actually prevent dysfunction, behavior dysfunction, learning dysfunction... Whatever it might be that you've got going on? Well, one of the simplest ways is to take a look at what you could do with operational definitions, so what do we mean by that? Operational definitions, basically just defining, how are we going to operate? So I'll never forget when I was... I think it was about fourth grade, I'd come in early from lunch and I remember I was sitting on the heat register on the side and the bell rang, and I jumped up and ran to my seat, and just as the teacher came in, seeing me run to my seat, and she pulled me out and I got into really super big trouble over that, et cetera, that because I was running in the classroom, okay. So there is a place where you could start to think about operationally defining about where do you want people to be when the bell rings? Something so simple as that, or if you have people late to school in the morning, well, what does that mean? What do you want them to do? Where do you want to be? How can you operationally define it? In the operation of what's going on, how are we gonna define that? 0:04:17.9 DL: I remember when I first started down this pathway and started thinking about things, I asked about 20 different teachers, I said, "What does on time mean to you? Just pick a card and write that down." Well, we got 20 definitions, and some of them were really good, really excellent and well thought out, and I want people in the room, in their seat with their writing utensils and whatever it might be, but when you start thinking about it in a school with a staff of 20... And if you're a student in that school and you're encountering these 20 different individuals with 20 different operational definitions of being on time, that's likely to cause variation in the system, right? And even from, say, one classroom, and you move to the classroom across the hall, if you could eliminate some of that variation, you're gonna eliminate some of the dysfunction. You know, what do we really want? But it starts to get into... Deming talked about... One of the elements of profound knowledge was understanding psychology. 0:04:38.4 DL: Well, it's the very same thing in the school, so if I'm gonna work together with all the other teachers in the school to come up with a common definition of what is on-time performance, or what does that look like, I may have to give up on some of my pet peeves about what I want, right? So that we end up with a very common definition of what goes on, and why would I do that? Well, because if I do that, chanc

Dr. Deming listed 7 Deadly Diseases of Management in Out of the Crisis, and one of the more surprising is #3: Evaluation of performance, merit rating, or annual review. In this episode, David and Andrew discuss the harmful practice of awarding "teacher of the year," "student of the month," or other traditional recognition practices. David also offers practical suggestions for alternatives. TRANSCRIPT Stotz: My name is Andrew Stotz, and I'll be your host as we continue our journey into the teachings of Dr. W Edwards Deming. Today, I'm continuing my discussion with David P. Langford, who has devoted his life to applying Dr. Deming's philosophy to education, and he offers us his practical advice for implementation. Today's topic is the deadly disease of having an employee of the month. David, take it away. Langford: Yeah, this is actually one of my favorite topics. So I thought it'd be fun for us to talk about it today. So… Stotz: You just may win employee of the month by, coming up with this. Huh? Langford: There you go. So right away, if you don't understand any teachings about Dr. Deming or background or things like that, you might be saying what do you mean? And maybe, maybe you were employee of the month one month or teacher of the year or student of the month or whatever we wanna think about in terms of singling people out. So what's wrong with that? And how could that be a deadly disease? Well, in one of the previous podcasts, we were talking about special and common cause variation. And we kind of went through that and talked a little bit about what Deming called deadly diseases. And he just said that there's two deadly diseases; treating special cause variation as if it's common, and treating common cause variation as if it's special. Langford: So why is having employee of the month a deadly disease? Because it falls into category number two, you're taking common cause variation in the system and treating it as if it's special. And it happens everywhere. It happens in the military, it happens in schools and we've been sold a bill of goods years ago in management. And it's become pervasive in the way people think about what to do. So a manager doesn't know what to, what to do to motivate their people. And they think their job is to motivate people. So they say, wow, we'll have a teacher of the year or we'll have employee of the month or employee of the week. And that ought, that ought to have fixed things, right? Stotz: Student of the week, student of the month. Langford: Student of the week, make people happier. So I'll never forget, when my, one of my daughters was in third grade and she came home and she had a certificate as a student of the month. And, I looked at it and cuz she brought it up to me and showed it and she was somewhat proud, proud of it. And I looked at it and then I did, I was thinking, how do I handle this? Because I know the problems that psychologically these things can cause and bullying and all kinds of things that can result from it. And so I looked at the certificate and I looked at her and I said, well, honey, tell me this. So what did you do this month? That was especially great, that sort of singled you out overall the rest of the losers in the class. So and she looked at me and she looked at the certificate, she did that a couple times and then she got this big grin on her face. And then she looked up at me and she said, dad, you know it was my turn. Stotz: We have 360 students, 365 students in the class and they give it every day. So we all get it at some point, Dad. Langford: Yeah. So, yeah. So in third grade she saw through this, she knew it's, this is just this silly game, dreamed up by the people who are running the place. and even as a student is, is if you figure out that this is, this is nuts, can you do anything about it? Well, not without becoming insubordinate or sent to the principal's office or… right? There's obviously something wrong with you if you've pointed out a problem with the system about, how they're managing everybody in the system. Instead, we should be saying, 'Hey, well, tell me more about that. Why, you know what, what's the problem with that?' And student a month, can you be student of the month, nine months in a row? Stotz: Yeah, that was what I was gonna say. Cuz you could also have an abuse, one abuse of it is just to kind of randomly go through students. Another abuse is constantly giving it to one person. Langford: Yeah. I always ask people that don't believe that they're doing anything wrong or damaging to children with these kinds of things that they'll say, oh, well, you know I can judge or I can, pick out who's who's best or whatever. Well again, can you be student of the month nine months in a row? And I've done this for 40 years now and I've never had a teacher say, 'well yes,' but statistically the answer is yes if you have a student that actually is exceptional and deserving of being pointed out to other people as, as the top stud

In this episode, David and Andrew talk about Common Cause Variation vs Special Cause Variation, and the problem of confusing the two. Using the example of transgender students, David describes how a system's capability should be expanded rather than using that special cause situation as a weapon to destroy the entire system. TRANSCRIPT Stotz: My name is Andrew Stotz, and I'll be your host as we continue our journey into the teachings of Dr. W Edwards Deming. Today, I am continuing my discussion with David P. Langford, who has devoted his life to applying Dr. Deming's philosophy to education, and he offers us his practical advice for implementation. Today's topic is weaponizing special causes. David take it away. Langford: It sounds very dangerous, and it is. So I wanted to get into a little bit about special and common causes about what Deming talked about. So once again, we'll go back to Deming's system of profound knowledge. And as part of that he talked a lot about understanding variation in systems and without getting too statistical about things, he basically got people to identify two different types of variation. So there's common cause variation, which typically makes up anywhere from oh 94% to 98, 99% of what goes on in any system or any process. And then there's special cause variation, which is generally less than 2% or less than 1% of what goes on. So that sounds pretty innocuous until you actually start thinking about how that works out in society and systems and classrooms, especially in education in schools and Deming said over and over and over that there are basically two problems with special and common cause. So people treat special cause as if it's common, okay. Which is, and he called these deadly diseases, or they treat common cause variation as if it's special. Langford: So sometimes it's difficult to sort of understand what is, what does that mean? So let's take an example like in a, in a school common cause variation would be say the, the performance of a whole school or a state or a nation or whatever it might be. You can chart that out over a long period of time and start to see a certain level of predictability of performance on anything you wanna look at, whether you're talking about behavior or you're talking about test scores or grades or kids showing up for school every day. Doesn't really matter what system you wanna look at. When you start looking at it from a systems perspective, you wanna look at as much data as you can.So at least six or seven data points, but preferably 12 and some, a lot of statisticians will say up to 20 data points. Langford: So if you're just looking at, say test scores over a long period of time, well, you'd wanna actually look at average test scores over a 20 year period. So that, that could take a really long time to see data systems like that emerge, especially in education where we have what I call slow data that emerges. You're familiar with like manufacturing environments and business, where you have a lot of fast data. So you may be making something and you're collecting a hundred thousand data points in a single day or a month or a week where in education, it, it really doesn't really work like that. Stotz: I have an example that may be helpful for those people that aren't familiar with the topic. And that is in my coffee factory, we fill bags of coffee with, let's say a hundred grams of coffee. If we fill it with 101, well, we're giving away. If we fill it with 99, we're not delivering what we say. And what first lesson that we learned is that nobody's perfect. No, there is no way to consistently hit 100 is always gonna be some variation. Now that variation may be 100.0 1, 4 7, but ultimately variation around that is bad. And what you find is that maybe when the system is not that strong, you could be putting in 95 grams on sometimes and you could be putting in 105 on sometimes and something in between those. But those are all kind of common causes. Stotz: There's just there's variation about that average, let's say. And then the only way to improve that would to be say, 'oh, well, we need to have a more precise piece of equipment.' It's not that the workers weren't working hard enough or something, but we just didn't have, so we replace a piece of equipment that's measuring and all of a sudden we weigh more consistently the old clunky one didn't work that well, and now we're getting more and more narrow. And then one day the electricity goes off or we have a, a problem with the electricity and all of a sudden it's throwing the whole system off. Well, that would be some special cause as opposed to this common variation around the 100 that we're aiming for, would I be describing it? Right or how would you add to that? Langford: Yeah, that, that that's exactly right. And so if we charted out filling your coffee bean bags over a long period of time, we'd probably find out that you'r, you probably have a really good system, right? So let's put

What is the Taguchi Loss Function and how does it apply to education? In this episode, Andrew and David talk about statistician Genichi Taguchi's idea that the further you move from a measurable quality target, the more quality is lost, even if the item still "meets specifications." David shows how you can apply this to education. (For more about the Tachugi Loss Function, visit Wikipedia or Christopher Chapman's Digestible Deming blog post.) TRANSCRIPT Stotz: My name is Andrew Stotz, and I'll be your host as we continue our journey into the teachings of Dr. W Edwards Deming. Today, I'm continuing my discussion with David P. Langford, who has devoted his life to applying Dr. Deming's philosophy to education, and he offers us his practical advice for implementation. Today's topic is, Taguchi loss function. David, take it away. Langford: Thank you, Andrew. And I liked how your eyes got really big when you said Taguchi loss function. Oh my gosh, it sounds frightening, doesn't it? Stotz: It does. It's a little bit overwhelming, it's exciting. I'm interested to learn. Langford: And in education, it's probably less known than it is in business. Usually when I'm working with a group of business leaders and I mention that I can get pretty strong - two-thirds of the audience probably knows something about the Taguchi loss function. I was at a conference with a whole roomful of school superintendents and I asked them, Anybody know what the Taguchi loss function was? And not a single hand went up. So less well known, but just as applicable. So in one of the earlier podcasts, we were talking about the concept of optimization of the system. And I just wanna refresh our memories and the memory of our listeners that it's really based on Deming's System of Profound Knowledge as well. So the four parts that Deming had was, Appreciation for a System, Understanding Variation, and especially statistical variation, Psychology and Knowledge of Theory. And I always add neuroscience to that mix as part of profound knowledge, because it's really critical to understand, especially in education, how the brain actually processes information. Langford: So when we're talking about the optimization of a system, we're actually talking about all of those factors being optimized, especially in a classroom or a school. So you can't just sort of optimize one thing, for instance. So over the last 30 years, I've known principals that are just really, really good managers, excellent at running the building. They never do anything out of the ordinary, everything is always perfect. The trash cans are always where they're supposed to be. They're just really good managers. They're the kind of people that if you're gonna take a school trip and they have to organize something complex, that's the kind of people you want. But if you're gonna do something really super innovative, change the system in some way, do something that's never been done before, that's not the kind of person that you want. Stotz: Right, it's interesting that you just mentioned that optimizing so many different factors, that's part of the reason why people don't do it because it is complex. David, I just pulled up Wikipedia and I thought maybe it would be interesting if we see what Wikipedia says about what is the Taguchi loss function. Would you like me to read a little bit of that? Langford: Yeah, so, go ahead. Stotz: According to Wikipedia, the Taguchi loss function is graphical depiction of loss developed by the Japanese business statistician, Genuichi Taguchi to describe a phenomenon affecting the value of products produced by a company. Praised by Dr. W Edwards Deming. It made clear the concept, of the quality does not suddenly plummet when, for instance, a machinist exceeds a rigid blueprint tolerance. Instead, loss in value progressively increases as variation increases from the intended condition. This was considered a breakthrough in describing quality and help fuel the continuous improvement movement. Langford: So now that we've lost about 80% of our audience... Stotz: Oops, sorry about that. Langford: No, that's... It's actually correct, and Taguchi was actually a contemporary of Deming, and Deming always referred to Taguchi as having one of the best, the greatest breakthroughs in systems. I really wanna focus on in education and applying this kind of thinking to education and what would that mean? So I think we looked at a Taguchi loss function diagram and if you could pull that up on the screen? Stotz: Yeah, let me pull that up for the video viewers and I'll walk you through and we'll walk you through for the audio listeners. Langford: And then we'll put a link in the show notes for that. Stotz: Yep. Langford: If you wanna contact it later. So basically you have to start to think about... And then, in the diagram right in the very middle of the diagram, is the target or what Deming would talk about as a system that's perfectly optimized. And in that, there's not loss

In this episode, David and Andrew discuss the dreaded standardized tests, including how they evolved, how they're used (and not used) now, and what Deming said about them. David also offers practical tips for educators who want to move away from standardized tests in their classrooms. TRANSCRIPTION: Stotz: My name is Andrew Stotz, and I'll be your host as we continue our journey into the teachings of Dr. W. Edwards Deming. Today, I'm continuing my discussion with David P. Langford, who has devoted his life to applying Dr. Deming's philosophy to education, and he offers us his practical advice for implementation. Today's topic is, what would Dr. Deming say about today's standardized testing? David, take it away. Langford: So one of the things when I started learning about the Dr. Deming's field is, there's a lot of people that know about manufacturing, a lot of people know about management, etcetera, a lot of people don't, but everybody knows about education, everybody went to school somewhere, someway, homeschooling, charter schools, whatever it might be, so everybody went to school, so everybody's sort of knowledgeable on that. And one of the things that's pretty common through that process is the emphasis over the last 30 years is of standardized test, as the way to sort of measure, not only the performance of a system, or a teacher or a student individual kind of thing, but also the success of how a nation is doing, right? Can we compare the US to Japan and Australia and Thailand? And where do we rank? And who's 14th? And all these kinds of things. So I just wanna go back a little bit about, where did this evolve? Hundreds of years ago, we didn't have standardized tests, and amazingly people survived, people got jobs, became entrepreneurs, they did all kinds of things, and they didn't have a standardized test scores to be able to rank them, to be able to do stuff. Langford: So one of the reasons these things did evolve, was a quick and easy way that we could rank individuals or rank systems, and that was one of the things that Deming was most opposed to, ranking people, either through performance appraisals, grades, standardized tests, whatever it might be. So a lot of the purpose of why we do it, is a simple way to rank schools and try to understand, "Well, who's number one? And who's not?" And that kind of a thing. And then the second one... Stotz: And let me add something there just 'cause I wanna make sure that this comes out clear, is that obviously Dr. Deming was against the idea of ranking, but from a sincere perspective of some leaders out there, they may say, "Well, I'm not using it to rank so much as I'm just using it to figure out where is the trouble spots that I should be focusing on." Langford: Yeah, maybe you're not doing that, but people that are getting your scores are doing that, I can guarantee it. And then now it's gone to parents looking up scores online and comparing schools even across the street to try to see, "Oh wow, that school has higher test scores than this school, so it must be a better school." Deming had a lot of comments about standardized testing, but one of the ones I remember was, he said our education system would be significantly improved if we could get rid of standardized tests and grading as a performance measure. And it goes back to... We keep talking about the purpose of the system and the constancy of purpose of the system, and so is your constancy of purpose to get good test scores? Is that really the only thing you're trying to accomplish in a school? And if that's the case, you're gonna do all kinds of really, very dysfunctional things in that school to get test scores. Like for instance, well, one of the first things we're gonna cut out is music programs and sports programs, right? 'Cause we don't test us for those, and so we don't need those, we can cut that out, and then we spend more time on this. Langford: And I know the schools that are now mandating 90 minutes of math a day, whether you need it or not, you're gonna get 90 minutes of math a day and just waste and all kinds of stuff, and then it causes all kinds of crazy stuff within the system. And the tests themselves have slowly started to change, and one of the things that, especially that people used to say when you'd say, "Well, we should get rid of standardized tests." People say, "Well, how do we get people into colleges then? 'Cause they won't have an SAT score and they won't be able to get into college." And I think interesting thing is that there are numbers of universities, they're now throwing those things out and just saying... I know that in California, there's universities that do not require SAT scores any longer to go to the university as a measure of how well you're gonna do. Stotz: And would just abandoning that and say, "Well, college is open for everyone." Would that be the smart thing to do? Or is it to say, "Well, let's create a system that tries to optimize for something else."

In this episode, David and Andrew discuss going beyond solving problems in schools to preventing them from happening. David also shares a tool for finding the area where optimization of the system would have the greatest impact. In the episode, David shares his screen with Andrew and fills in a diagram. The beginning version has post-it note images around the sides, and the final version has lines drawn between all the post-it notes. See below: TRANSCRIPT Stotz: My name is Andrew Stotz and I'll be your host as we continue our journey into the teachings of Dr. W. Edwards Deming. Today, I'm continuing my discussion with David P. Langford, who has devoted his life to applying Dr. Deming's philosophy to education, and he offers us his practical advice for implementation. Today's topic is: optimization of a system to prevent problems. David, take it away. Langford: Thank you, Andrew. It's good to be here again. So yes, today I wanted to talk a little bit about just the optimization of the system and what does that mean. So to go back to Deming's System of Profound Knowledge and understanding systems is critical part of the System of Profound Knowledge. And within the System of Profound Knowledge, what is a system? And so there's all that, and we talked a little bit about that in the past, but today I just wanted to talk a little bit about the optimization of the system and what does that actually mean? So it's not a matter of just trying hard. I'm gonna optimize, so I'm just gonna work hard, I'm gonna try hard, I'm gonna get better. Langford: In fact, Deming was famous for saying that we're being killed by people's best efforts, and in education that runs rampant. He also said that copying can lead to disaster. And just those two phrases probably discounts 80-90% of what goes on in education now, because every time I do a seminar, somebody says, where else is this happening? Or Can I have a copy of that? Or somebody will go and they'll do a presentation somewhere, and everybody will just wanna copy that. So it's a sort of like, no thinking involved, just copy steps one, two, three, and four and things will get better. Stotz: Cookie-cutter. Langford: And that... Sometimes that just copying to try to optimize a system is better than doing nothing at all, but it's also a trial and error process. Trial and error is very expensive and very time-consuming, and you have a great chance that you're not going to improve anything, right? Because systems that were developed at other places, so somebody, some leader comes into a school system somewhere and they do a great job in reading or whatever it might be, because they start studying their system and figuring out a process, and then they decide they're gonna market that to other people. And so you see the results of what they did, but it doesn't take in any understanding of the variation in systems, and you could have variation in schools when they're right across the street from each other. Totally different clientele and makeup of the student body and the staff and background, and all kinds of variation, so it doesn't necessarily work just to copy and apply something that was successful someplace else. Now, it is... Stotz: And one question about that is that, I guess part of that is because the aim may be different. If I think about when I was writing research in investment banks, the aim was to write a big, long research report. We had a lot of resources and all that, but when I set up my own firm, my aim was, how do I make this more efficient? And so I created a whole different system with a different aim, and therefore, if somebody wanted to go from my company to work in that company or vice versa, it wasn't like you could just copy what we were doing, there's a whole operating system that we created based upon a different aim. Langford: Yeah, I remember when I first started things in classrooms with Deming help, and then people would come to visit classrooms and I'd always have the students explain what was going on and what they were doing, and invariably, my kids got really cagey because the visitors would say, "Oh, that's really cool. Can I have a copy of that?" And the kids would say, "Yeah, you can have a copy of it, but it's not gonna do you any good." And they'd say, "What, what, wait, wait, what do you mean?" And they said, "Because you don't understand the theory." So you don't understand what's going on here, and you just think you can just copy yourself to success and it just never works. Langford: The other problem I see in optimization of systems is that people sort of come in with preconceived ideas about what they think is the problem. In fact, I had a principal at one time in one of the seminars, and he said, "I don't need all those PDSA stuff and tools and process and... I just... What the problem is." And, well, if you have that kind of divine intervention, why would you even come to a seminar on improving schools and learning if you already know

With nearly 2 million students not returning to schools and educational institutions after COVID, David and Andrew explore the question "how do we create quality education systems so students are excited to come to school - and stay there?" TRANSCRIPT 0:00:02.8 Andrew Stotz: My name is Andrew Stotz, and I'll be your host, as we continue our journey into the teachings of Dr. W Edwards Deming today. I'm continuing my discussion with David P. Lanford, who has devoted his life to applying Dr. Deming's philosophy to education. And he offers us his practical advice for implementation. Today's topic is, "Quality is not your problem, it is the answer to your problem." David, take it away. 0:00:30.4 David P. Lanford: [laughter] Thank you, Andrew. It's good to be back again. 0:00:32.6 AS: Great to be with you. 0:00:33.8 DL: So and thinking about this topic, we want to think about what is quality in education and just some of the stats that are coming out in the United States alone, something like 1.3 million students have not returned to the school systems after the pandemic. So. 0:00:56.2 AS: That's unbelievable. 0:00:58.0 DL: The public school systems. 0:01:00.4 AS: Right. 0:01:00.5 DL: And, the stat I heard in the universities is they're down 600,000 students from where they were two years ago before the pandemic. So... 0:01:09.4 AS: So we're talking about almost 2 million students not coming back? 0:01:13.9 DL: That's right. So there's the pandemic caused a lot of systemic shifts. Some of them good, some of them not so good, but it also pointed out a lot of glaring issues that were going on and... In trust in the system, so to speak. And when parents started to find out what was going on with these Zoom meetings online and what a class was like, and the quality of the education and what was going on, many of them just started to make decisions about why should I keep sending my child [laughter] to a school like that if that's what they're gonna do. I was listening to a sports channel just a couple of days ago, and there were just the two guys that were on the channel, discussing sports in the morning. Well, one father was really upset because he said it's the last week or week and a half of school, and all my child is doing is watching movies in almost every class. 0:02:20.4 DL: And granted that it's the end of the school year and they're wrapping up and they're doing things at the end of the school year. But when the kids come home and mom or dad says, "Hey, what did you do at school today?" And they say nothing, which is a very common answer. We tend to think, "Oh, it is just... Oh, they're just kids, they are just kids and just can't remember," etcetera, but that's really not the case. In a lot of cases, there is nothing going on. And so when parents figured out that, okay, I could either do homeschooling. I could send my child to private school. I could go to a charter school, there's a whole lot of the other options there that I can explore and we could actually make this happen. 0:03:15.2 DL: And is that a better experience? Is it a better quality experience? So the topic today about so many schools are not worrying about the quality of what they're doing and they want to start just trying to force parents to get kids back into schools or the same way at the universities, not making a shift in what it is they're doing and just expecting that, oh, well, these students are just gonna come back. But another shift, I think systemically since this is about Deming and education and the system, is that a lot of students during the pandemic didn't go to college and they found out there's some really high paying jobs out there now [chuckle], and you don't need a college degree. And why would I... And since college is attached to debt now, so why would I incur a huge amount of debt and end up with a job that pays less than what I could make if I don't go to college? So that... 0:04:19.5 AS: It's a world turned upside down. It seems like, and one of the questions I had too about this was that, what is the aim of the public education system? Because on the one hand the people who can abandon the public system and do homeschooling or do a charter school or a private school or whatever. Yeah. I mean, they're not gonna worry about those people that can take care of themselves, but majority of people do not have the means to do that. And so it makes me think, what is that aim and how does quality come into play here? 0:04:58.2 DL: Well, another shift that's happening, especially in the United States is that all of a sudden these parents started coming to school board meetings and showing up in droves, and starting to demanding changes. And it's really interesting that the public education system especially is not used to having customers, right. And so they... When I first started doing training in education, especially with talking about Deming principles, etcetera, etcetera, I actually got a lot of pushback, well, we don

In this episode of our special Deming in Education series, David and Andrew talk about the difference between "continuous" and "continual" improvement - and how that applies in classrooms. TRANSCRIPT 0:00:02.5 Andrew Stotz: My name is Andrew Stotz, and I'll be your host as we continue our journey into the teachings of Dr. W. Edwards Deming. Today, I am continuing my discussion with David P. Langford, who has devoted his life to applying Dr. Deming's philosophy education, and he offers us his practical advice for implementation. Today's topic is: Should we be continually improving or continuously improving? David, take it away. 0:00:30.6 David Langford: Thanks Andrew. So some people say it's semantics and it doesn't make that much difference to how you think about it. And I think in the last podcast, we were talking about how people have trouble with the idea about continual improvement anyway. But the first person I ever heard really talking about the difference between continual improvement and continuous was Dr. Deming. And not only did he talk about it in his Deming way, he was pretty emphatic about it. And it took me a long time, I'd say 10 years or more, to start to really get it and understand the difference and what that means. But basically the difference is if you have some function of what it is you're trying to do, some program, some process, a manufacturing thing, a classroom or whatever that might be, and you're doing that process over time, continuous improvement means that you're just continuously changing things over and over and over and adapting and moving forward and changing forward. It sounds like a really good idea until you think about it. 0:02:01.5 DL: I don't think it's actually possible to do it unless you're in some kind of a mechanical machine world or maybe artificial intelligence kind of a world where changes are just constantly being made, adaptations and changes moving through. When you're working in systems like education, which is primarily a human system field, and yes, we have computers and technology and things coming into the education system now, but it's still primarily a human system, and my experience is that humans, whether thats students, teachers, parents, whoever, cannot adapt to continuously changing everything. Such like change upon change, upon change, upon change, upon change or sometimes you hear your teachers say, "What's the flavor of the month?" They don't really understand why they're changing anything, they just know that somebody up above is just changing it, then they're just going on with it. 0:03:08.6 DL: Whereas when you have a continual improvement kind of environment, Deming taught us about, you let the system run basically, because you have to understand the data, what is the system producing, and once you understand that data, understand the variation in the system, then you can do a PDSA process and Plan-Do-Study-Act and come up with a small trial method to figure out what could I change to get a significant difference in the system, and then start applying that in a larger and larger scale level. On human systems, those things take time, because it's the psychology of the people in the system, and you have to persuade people that what to do and etcetera, sometimes it can take... And especially in education, it could take years to make a transformation system like that, so people have to learn to, okay, we've gotten to a certain point. 0:04:17.5 DL: We're getting a certain level of quality. And you can measure that, anything you wanna measure that with. You can measure that in attendance records, you could measure that in test scores, you could measure that in happiness of students, you could measure that in happiness of parents or doesn't matter whatever you want. But once you get that baseline data and you start to understand it, and then you have to say to yourself, "Well, am I happy with what's happening now?" I always joke with the teachers, if you're happy and you know it, then clap your hands. You have to get to a state of equilibrium basically. You've changed, and so now you're not happy with the level of quality and you want to see a higher level of quality. 0:05:14.1 AS: So let me try to clarify for the listeners and for myself, the first thing that you're talking about is if you use the word continuously, it implies that you're continuously or constantly changing things. And that's not the objective. The objective is actually to stabilize things to some extent. 0:05:34.4 DL: Change for the sake of change. We're just changing stuff. 0:05:38.6 AS: I wanna see a continuous... Continuously changing systems here. No, that's not what we're after. And then when you mentioned about continually, then you talked about let the system run, the objective is to understand what's the output of the system by letting it run and letting it define itself as to what it's producing and then making a decision, do we take it to the next level, do we take

David and Andrew's discussion of how using Deming in the classroom not only inspires achievement it also creates collaboration among excited students. TRANSCRIPT 0:00:01.9 Andrew Stotz: My name is Andrew Stotz, and I'll be your host as we continue our journey into the teachings of Dr. W. Edwards Deming. Today, we continue our series of Deming in Education with David P. Langford where we explore Deming's thinking to create joy in learning. David Langford has devoted his life to applying Dr. Deming's philosophy to help everyone get the most out of learning. Today's topic is "By what method?" David, take it away. 0:00:28.9 David Langford: Great. So in previous broadcasts, we've talked a lot about deadlines and processes, and operational definitions and quality standards and all kinds of things like that. So today I wanted to talk about, "By what method?" Dr. Deming tattooed that on my forehead, because so many times people would propose things to him and he would say, "By what method?" in his Deming voice. It's all about the method of what it is you're going to do. So what I learned to do is, instead of trying to calculate, "Is this a 92 or an 88 or 88.1?" and then I got the student upset with me, and then because I gave them an 89, I messed up their GPA, and now, so now they're not gonna get a scholarship, and now Mom and Dad is mad at me and it just goes on and on and on. And so, instead of trying to improve that process, I started working on a method to completely get out of it, and especially today, especially in K-12, lots of schools are trying to go to what they call standards-based grading, where they want all students to achieve, but unless... If you start applying a new theory like that, but you keep it in the old system for the last several hundred years, you're gonna have problems. 0:02:08.0 DL: So I had to figure out how can I do that? What can I do? Well, over time it slowly evolved into a process where if somebody turned in an assignment and it met or exceeded the standard for the assignment, then I started to say, "Well, you got that one", to kids and students. Well, that finally, I started to realize, well, why can't that just be my grade book? Either you got a one, which signifies that on this assignment, you did it to standard and you did everything required and you got a one, or it's just blank. If it's just blank, it means you still have to keep working on it to get a one. 0:02:57.9 AS: Just to clarify that. When you say met or exceeded, that's one statement, that's not saying met is one thing and exceeded is another. Is that correct? 0:03:06.3 DL: That's right. 0:03:07.2 AS: Okay. 0:03:07.3 DL: Because yes, we have a quality standard with this assignment, but I may be really interested in this, and so I did a whole bunch more than was required. Right? And so, I still wanna recognize that with students, "Look at, look at this, look what this. You did this and you went above and beyond the standard." Right? 0:03:27.8 AS: Right. 0:03:28.3 DL: So you still get a one for doing that, and I'm not gonna take away your desire to go above the standard by giving you A+++ or all kinds of games that teachers play. You got that one, which is awesome, and the rest is just joy and learning for you. Or if you went above the standard, okay, I might give you a chance to share what you did with the rest of class. 0:03:58.6 AS: That's what I was just thinking about. Yeah. 0:04:01.8 DL: Yeah, yeah. And I'm gonna ask you, I'm gonna ask you, "Would you be willing to share this?" I'd say, 99% of the time, kids said, "Yeah, yeah, I'd be glad to share this." And I would say the same thing to them. "Okay, but when you share what you did and the level you took this to, I want you to describe by what method did you do that." 0:04:23.2 DL: And it was so fascinating because students would say, "You know, this is what I did, and this is my project, and this how it turned out, and I'm really proud of it and everything... " Okay, by what method did you do that? "Well, I set aside 10 minutes every day just to work on this project." And amazingly, you'd see other students in the class go, "Oh, that's how they did that. They weren't just smart." Right? Because the traditional system pegs people like that. You got smart kids and the not so smart kids, right? And kids start to learn, "Well, she's just a lot smarter. So that's why she could do that." No, she had a method. Right? She may be smart too, she may have a preponderance of neurons in that part of her brain that just helps her be really good in that area. I also bet that person had a method that got him to that level, and if I give them a chance to share that method, other people can learn from that. 0:05:29.5 AS: Can I go back? Just take a step back and talk about when Dr. Deming said, "By what method?" Let's just talk briefly about what he meant by that, because sometimes, you know, we have scrutiny, let's say in management, in companies, by saying, "I don't want you to

In this episode, David and Andrew continue to talk about the thorny problem of tracking student progress - grading - and how to remove it from the classroom. TRANSCRIPT 0:00:02.3 Andrew Stotz: My name is Andrew Stotz, and I'll be your host as we continue our journey into the teachings of Dr. W. Edwards Deming. Today, we continue our series of Deming in Education with David P. Langford, where we explore Deming thinking to create joy in learning. David Langford has devoted his life to applying Dr. Deming's philosophy to help everyone get the most out of learning. Today's topic is a continuation of the discussion on tracking progress in learning. David, take it away. 0:00:34.4 David Langford: Thank you, Andrew, it's great to be back again. In the previous podcast, we were discussing tracking learning and the typical way to track learning is grading people; A, B, C, D, and F, and Deming was very adamant that we could significantly improve the education system if we just stopped grading people. So, in my work with education over the last 30 years, a lot of educators get that, and they don't like grading and they've never liked having to do it and being the final judge. And then there's another whole group that thinks it's their right to judge people and give them a grade about what they could do. So, I mentioned in one of the earlier broadcasts that Deming said, "Why would I wanna judge somebody today when I don't know who's gonna turn out to be great in the future?" So I wouldn't wanna do anything that's gonna limit them. 0:01:33.2 DL: So as a teacher myself, having to think through that and having to actually work inside of a grading system and try to figure out what you could do, I think you first have to go through the thought process; is it possible for everyone in a class, for instance, to achieve. And if you say to yourself, "No, it's not possible." I had some students that said, "It's just not possible," they can't do it, you're probably never gonna get there. But if you start to say, "if it was possible, what would we have to change in the system in order to optimize everybody getting to that point?" Well, it always turns out that through neural science, every educator, even parents, will tell you that everybody learns at a different rate. You give somebody a complex problem or something somebody might be able to answer that in three seconds, and other people it might take them a very long time, but they could eventually get it, it just might take a lot longer for you to get there. And so, we sort of truncate that in education, and we talked about, last time, about deadlines and what deadlines mean, and those are mostly for the person managing the class to keep the class moving, right? 0:02:57.1 DL: Because if I just sort of make it open-ended and say, "Okay, well, everybody has to get to a certain level of performance, and we'll just keep it open until you get there," most teachers will tell you it would just be chaos, so the idea of changing a deadline to a target date, so... Yes, here's what you need to know and learn, or the process of what you need to go through. And our target date for you to finish this is this Friday, so then we run into the problem, well, what happens if somebody doesn't do it, or they don't do it at all, right? Well, in the current systems, if somebody doesn't do it at all, some teachers actually like that, 'cause then you don't have to grade people, you just give them a zero, right? And you go on. But if you think about, "no, my job is to optimize that child's performance." So if you didn't get it done, then we're gonna have a conversation. "How quickly can you get it done? When can I expect to see this?" That you're not getting off the hook, so to speak. I observed this with high school classes I was teaching when I first met Deming, and students would just tell me, "just give me a C," or "just give me a C or a D or something", and sometimes they would be basketball players or something like that, and they'd say, "Well, I just need a D so I can play basketball." 0:04:29.6 DL: "So that's all I really want. What do I have to do to get a D?" [chuckle] So all this thinking theory comes into play when you think about, "Okay, well, how do I have to change the system?" So if I change the system to one in which I say, "Well, there is no such thing as sub-level of poor performance." [chuckle] That make sense? 0:04:54.2 AS: [chuckle] No. What does that mean? 0:04:57.2 DL: I want everybody to do A-level type work, so if I'm gonna try to get everybody as close as I can to that, then we're gonna have to define that, and Deming would call that an operational definition. So it has to be very clear to everyone; what do you have to do to get to this level of performance? And then if people understand clearly what that operational definition is, I called it a quality standard; here's the quality standard for this, and I learned over a period of time to always ask students, "If you were to do

David and Andrew continue their discussion on how to track student progress when you don't use grades or other conventional methods. TRANSCRIPT 0:00:02.3 Andrew Stotz: My name is Andrew Stotz, and I'll be your host as we continue our journey into the teachings of Dr. W. Edwards Deming. Today, we continue our series of Deming in Education with David P. Langford, where we explore Deming thinking to create joy in learning. David Langford has devoted his life to applying Dr. Deming's philosophy to help everyone get the most out of learning. Today's topic is a continuation of the discussion on tracking progress in learning. David, take it away. 0:00:34.4 David Langford: Thank you, Andrew, it's great to be back again. In the previous podcast, we were discussing tracking learning and the typical way to track learning is grading people; A, B, C, D, and F, and Deming was very adamant that we could significantly improve the education system if we just stopped grading people. So, in my work with education over the last 30 years, a lot of educators get that, and they don't like grading and they've never liked having to do it and being the final judge. And then there's another whole group that thinks it's their right to judge people and give them a grade about what they could do. So, I mentioned in one of the earlier broadcasts that Deming said, "Why would I wanna judge somebody today when I don't know who's gonna turn out to be great in the future?" So I wouldn't wanna do anything that's gonna limit them. 0:01:33.2 DL: So as a teacher myself, having to think through that and having to actually work inside of a grading system and try to figure out what you could do, I think you first have to go through the thought process; is it possible for everyone in a class, for instance, to achieve. And if you say to yourself, "No, it's not possible." I had some students that said, "It's just not possible," they can't do it, you're probably never gonna get there. But if you start to say, "if it was possible, what would we have to change in the system in order to optimize everybody getting to that point?" Well, it always turns out that through neural science, every educator, even parents, will tell you that everybody learns at a different rate. You give somebody a complex problem or something somebody might be able to answer that in three seconds, and other people it might take them a very long time, but they could eventually get it, it just might take a lot longer for you to get there. And so, we sort of truncate that in education, and we talked about, last time, about deadlines and what deadlines mean, and those are mostly for the person managing the class to keep the class moving, right? 0:02:57.1 DL: Because if I just sort of make it open-ended and say, "Okay, well, everybody has to get to a certain level of performance, and we'll just keep it open until you get there," most teachers will tell you it would just be chaos, so the idea of changing a deadline to a target date, so... Yes, here's what you need to know and learn, or the process of what you need to go through. And our target date for you to finish this is this Friday, so then we run into the problem, well, what happens if somebody doesn't do it, or they don't do it at all, right? Well, in the current systems, if somebody doesn't do it at all, some teachers actually like that, 'cause then you don't have to grade people, you just give them a zero, right? And you go on. But if you think about, "no, my job is to optimize that child's performance." So if you didn't get it done, then we're gonna have a conversation. "How quickly can you get it done? When can I expect to see this?" That you're not getting off the hook, so to speak. I observed this with high school classes I was teaching when I first met Deming, and students would just tell me, "just give me a C," or "just give me a C or a D or something", and sometimes they would be basketball players or something like that, and they'd say, "Well, I just need a D so I can play basketball." 0:04:29.6 DL: "So that's all I really want. What do I have to do to get a D?" [chuckle] So all this thinking theory comes into play when you think about, "Okay, well, how do I have to change the system?" So if I change the system to one in which I say, "Well, there is no such thing as sub-level of poor performance." [chuckle] That make sense? 0:04:54.2 AS: [chuckle] No. What does that mean? 0:04:57.2 DL: I want everybody to do A-level type work, so if I'm gonna try to get everybody as close as I can to that, then we're gonna have to define that, and Deming would call that an operational definition. So it has to be very clear to everyone; what do you have to do to get to this level of performance? And then if people understand clearly what that operational definition is, I called it a quality standard; here's the quality standard for this, and I learned over a period of time to always ask students, "If you were to do this really well, what wo

Andrew Stotz talks with Dr. Mustafa Shraim of Ohio University about Deming's approach to variation, comparing it to Lean and Six Sigma. "When you do Six Sigma, you're basically outsourcing your quality to an external source, providing the training, the titles, and all of that. You can cut it off any time. But when you do the [Deming] theory of knowledge and the Plan-Do-Study-Act, you have to commit. The commitment is really the big deal here...the component that is missing [from Six Sigma] is a commitment to quality." SHOW NOTES4:30 Variation 12:40 The problem with Six Sigma 20:40 Statical Process Control Charts 25:44 Deming chain reaction 30:03 Suboptimizing departments 43:01 Management by visible figures 40:05 Why Deming, why now? Driving out fear 50:52 Continuous improvement and Plan-Do-Study-Act TRANSCRIPTDownload the complete transcript here. 0:00:04.1 Andrew: My name is Andrew Stotz, and I'll be your host as we continue our journey into the teachings of Dr. W. Edwards Deming. Today I'm here with featured guest, Mustafa Shraim. Mustafa, are you ready to share your Deming journey? 0:00:19.8 Mustafa: Absolutely, let's go for it. Thank you. 0:00:21.5 Andrew: I'm excited. Well, let me introduce you to the audience. Mustafa Shraim is an Assistant Professor at Ohio University teaching quality management and leadership. Professor Shraim has over 20 years of experience as a quality engineer, corporate quality manager, and consultant. His PhD is in Industrial Engineering. He publishes widely, and he has a passion for Dr. Deming's system of profound knowledge. Mustafa, why don't we start off by you telling us the story about how you first came to learn of the teachings of Dr. Deming and what hooked you in? 0:00:57.5 Mustafa: Yeah. Thank you, Andrew. Thank you for inviting me back. So... 0:01:01.9 Andrew: Yeah. [chuckle] 0:01:06.1 Mustafa: The whole thing started when I was doing my master's and that was the late '80s, at Ohio University, and I was concentrating on the area of quality. So, I was doing research, and my research touched up on what Dr. Deming was doing. I was doing it in design of experiments and quality tools and things like that. But of course, you come across Dr. Deming's work when you talk about quality control, in general, and statistical quality. So, that was the first encounter of learning about what Dr. Deming did in Japan and how he used statistical process control and things of that nature to teach how you can improve your processes, your products, and later on, the management. But at the beginning, I did not really get into his management philosophy so I was more on the technical end of Dr. Deming's teaching which was mainly quality control and SPC, and just improving quality in general. 0:02:24.1 Mustafa: So, as I went... So I went, and I started my first job as a quality engineer, and quickly after that, maybe after one year, I moved to another company, and I became a statistical quality engineer, and I was doing... I was a part of a training program there. I was doing training on SPC as a part of a training for employees at that company. It was a union shop, it was automotive, and so we utilized statistical process control and what Dr. Deming was teaching. So, that was the beginning of it, but later on in the '90s, I started learning more about Dr. Deming after I read "Out of the Crisis" and then "The New Economics" about his management method. In fact, his management methods just captured me. I knew I got hooked on the quality part first, but the management method just brought it together for me. And since then, I've been reading and practicing, trying to at least, what Dr. Deming has taught. 0:03:41.9 Andrew: And would you say... One of the things that I started realizing was that the statistical... What I thought was the end was the statistical tools. And what I started to learn is that, actually, the statistical tools start to have limitations if you're not doing the management of the whole operation in a good way. And I think that that's something that really resonated with me when I started putting the pieces together. How do you see the role... And in a little bit I'm gonna ask you about some more specific tools, but just generally, we have statistical tools, but we also have management. Many people may think that you can just apply statistical tools and solve all the problems, but I'm curious how you see that interaction between the tools and the management style. 0:04:30.2 Mustafa: Well, as you know and many, probably, of your listeners already know that Dr. Deming had understanding variation, or some variation, as a part of his system of profound knowledge. So, understanding variation, under it, is really learning how to distinguish between the types of variation that you would have in any situation, managerial or process situation. So, that interaction there is really big. That really captured me because what Dr. Deming says is like, more than 80% of the application for stat

Deming frequently discussed the right to joy in work and in learning. But what does that mean exactly? David P. Langford explains Deming's intent, particularly as it applies to education. TRANSCRIPT Stotz: My name is Andrew Stotz, and I'll be your host as we continue our journey into the teachings of Dr. W. Edwards Deming. Today we're gonna be talking about the Langford application of Deming to bring joy in learning. David Langford has devoted his life to applying Dr. Deming's philosophy to help teachers and students get the most out of learning. David, let's get into it. I think we should start with what is joy in learning as one point. Langford: Yeah, it sounds like sort of a mamby-pamby phrase like, "Oh, let's just all have joy in learning," or something that you might put on a poster and put on a wall, and Deming was probably the first one that got me to understand that those key phrases and stuff like that aren't gonna change the system at all, and that you actually have to change the system. So having joy in learning is different than thinking about joy in the education system as a whole, because I may really enjoy what I'm learning at the university or in an elementary classroom, but the way in which the system is run is not fun, it's not joyful. So the places that can really optimize both are the places that are gonna attract the most students, are gonna have the teachers that are happier, they're gonna have students that are happier, and when students are happier, parents are happier, and everything just starts to function better. So while it is a phrase, joy in learning, it's also a depth of knowledge about thinking about systems and what do you have to do in a system to achieve that? Stotz: And one of the questions is like, what is the aim of the system? And I'm thinking about... There was a point in time where I didn't really like reading or doing homework or whatever, and then there was just a switch that went off where I just started reading books. And now I've read thousands of books in my life, and it's a pleasure to read books. And that switch brought joy to me as a learner. Is the... What is the objective of education in the world? Why are we doing this? Is it just babysitting kids or is it to transform or what? Langford: Well, a lot of systems over the last 20 years or more have gotten misguided because they think the aim of the system is just to get test scores, and so when you set up a system just to get test scores, just to get those numbers, and Deming admonished us about that very thoroughly. That's what you're gonna get. But if you sort of break down learning and start to think about what were the most... Well, I do this all the time with educators and have them recall the most impactful learning experiences that they ever had in their entire education career, and they'll talk about making airplanes in sixth grade, or they'll talk about all kinds of applications and making robots, and they actually will get very excited about that. Oh, it was so exciting 'cause we got to do this. Nobody ever, ever says, "Oh, it's so exciting to get the top score on my SAT test, or... " Mostly, it was just a relief of pressure to get that or that, "Oh, every year, when we take that standardized test, that was so exciting. See what my score was and see how I advanced." Nobody's gonna remember any of those things. Langford: So you're not gonna test in quality into a system, and if you're really optimizing joy in learning in a system, you may not have the very best test scores that you could get through drill and practice and getting people to get those scores. But a lot of systems, what they do is they drive out 1 the joy in learning, and exactly what you're describing, Andrew, is that... I don't think... I met Deming after I already had a Master's degree and I'd been teaching for a number of years, and I realized at that point, I'd never read a book, I couldn't even name a book that I had read simply for the joy of reading it. The only reason I would read a book is because it was assigned in the class, and you had to read this to get a grade or do a book report, or you had to do something, and so you had to discover that joy of reading, even though the system wasn't actually teaching you to do that. But wouldn't it be glorious worldwide if our systems were actually teaching and developing a joy of reading, wanting to read, and that takes a different, much, much different type of approach. Langford: I have five children, and I'll never forget my oldest daughter, by second grade, she already knew she wanted to be a writer, and she was telling people... They say, "What do you wanna be when you grow up?" And she said, "I wanna be a writer." And the people were kinda stunned by that, but one of the reasons she did is because she had a second grade teacher and he knew that she just loved to write, and one day in the library, she was looking for books, and he walked up next to her and he pulled a book off th

In this wide-ranging discussion, Kelly Allan shares his experience with bringing the Deming philosophy into many companies. So much of the leadership principles Dr. Deming taught have seeped into companies in all industries - though most don't know that their methods originated with Deming. Kelly believes we're reaching a tipping point, and shares his ideas on how easily anyone can get started on a path of sustainability. TRANSCRIPTDownload the transcript here. 0:00:02.4 Andrew Stotz: My name is Andrew Stotz and I'll be your host as we continue our journey into the teachings of Dr. W. Edwards Deming. Today, I'm here with featured guest, Kelly Allan, who claims we are nearing the tipping point in which Dr. Deming's management methods will more rapidly replace traditional command and control methods. And he has suggestions for organizations that wanna get ahead of competitors to reap the rewards worth millions and billions of dollars depending on company size. Welcome Kelly, and please explain that bold call. [chuckle] 0:00:40.4 Kelly Allan: Well, it's interesting. When Deming sort of burst on the scenes in the United States in 1980 in a documentary of "Japan Can, Why Can't We?," he was describing, and in his first book, "Out Of The Crisis," he was describing an entirely new way of thinking. A new way of looking into organizations to see how they work, to help them work better, to make them more productive, and so it could be more joy in work. And there was so much, I think, it was such a fresh and new way of thinking that for most folks, it was overwhelming. So, now 40 years have passed, and little by little, so much of what he wrote about in that time and during the next 13 years of his life, have seeped into the way organizations, many organizations, are run, even though the leaders and others in the organizations may not know that those ideas came from Deming, and the combination of ideas came from Deming. And part of the reason that was in my mind is the... In the new... The third edition of... I have a copy here of "The New Economics," the new chapter, chapter 11, there's a dialogue in which Deming makes... This is interesting, kind of a, I thought about this a lot, bold prediction. It's a question to Deming. It says, "Dr. Deming, how many organizations are using your methods 100% today?" And Deming says, "None." "Wow! Dr. Deming, if no organization is using your methods 100% today, how many will be using your methods in 100 years?" And he said, "All that survive." [laughter] 0:02:39.6 KA: Blows your mind, right? What... Is this hubris? And I thought about this for years. I've known this quote for years and years. And how is that going to happen? Is the Deming Institute, the Deming practitioners, they're suddenly going to be all over the media? And I don't know if that's what he had... I don't know what he had in mind. But, here's what we're seeing is that many of the methods that he was proposing, not just the tools, the technical tools to improve quality of the charts and the graphs and the plots and the lines, et cetera, but the strategic part, the leadership part, we're seeing those become now more and more mainstream. And we're only 30, 40 years away from what he said, and the momentum that we're seeing is getting bigger. So, in another 60, 70 years, I won't be around to see it, but I would not be surprised. And I have a lot of data, not only anecdotal but research studies from universities, et cetera that was showing what's going on with this. 0:03:49.2 AS: It's interesting, as you were talking, I was thinking about, well, what else was going on in kind of the '80s and all that? And I was thinking about one of the things that was just starting was the obesity epidemic in America. And it's like in some ways, if somebody could have seen the future, they'd say, "Hey guys, we're gonna be in trouble." 0:04:09.1 KA: Super-Size Me. 0:04:11.0 AS: If this continues on, we're gonna have 30%, 40% of our population in the obese category. But who listened to that? Nobody listened to that, right? [chuckle] And now it's like, okay, so now we're here. 0:04:24.8 KA: Yeah. Well, I think it's... I'm not sure there's a direct analogy, but there is, are some, certainly some similarities that you mentioned. So, for example, with business, if I was one of those earlier adopters of something that Deming was talking about. Just to try something, right? Just not get my arms around everything but just to try something and it worked. And then, I'd try something else and it worked. And I'd try something else and it worked. So, whether we're talking about thinking about control charts instead of spreadsheets. And thinking about having managers be mentors instead of sheriffs. To be thinking about abolishing performance appraisals and focus on processes, and holding processes and systems accountable rather than just focusing on an individual and try to improve only people instead of the system on which they work. At a certain po

Kevin Cahill, President and Executive Director of the Deming Institute, reflects on growing up with Dr. Deming, learning about his grandfather's impact on the world, and his own Deming journey. Kevin also describes The Deming Institute's origins, the DemingNEXT initiative, and using Deming in the real world. SHOW NOTES Books mentionedThe New Economics and Out of the Crisis, both by Dr. Deming (available via www.deming.org) Transform Your Business with Dr.Deming's 14 Points, by Andrew Stotz 0:00:36 Growing up in the Deming family 0:04:29 Watching If Japan Can, Why Can't We? with my grandfather 09:07 Kevin's own Deming journey 14:21 The origins of The Deming Institute 21:35 Why Deming, why now 39:14 Introducing DemingNEXT 46:06 Andrew's Deming journey 53:34 Deming in the real world TRANSCRIPTDownload: Transcript of Kevin Cahill's Podcast 4-22-22 Andrew Stotz: My name is Andrew Stotz, and I'll be your host as we continue our journey into the teachings of Dr. W. Edwards Deming. Today, I'm here with featured guest, Kevin Cahill. Kevin, are you ready to share your Deming journey? Kevin Cahill: Absolutely, Andrew. Excited to be here, looking forward to it. AS: Yeah. Well, I think we gotta kick this off by introducing you. Tell us what is your connection to Dr. W. Edwards Deming. KC: Well, I'm very fortunate to be his grandson, and also very fortunate that as I grew up in the Washington DC area, I got to spend a tremendous amount of time with my grandparents, my grandfather, Dr. Deming, and his wife, Lola Deming, who also assisted him in his work for many, many years, and got to know them growing up. And so, it was absolutely fascinating to see this man that I knew as a kindly, gentle, soft-spoken man who worked out of the small basement of his house in Washington DC, not in a big office, this little, tiny basement that used to flood in the rainy season and was just very, very small. And I always wondered what he did because everything that I saw was just figures and numbers and all this stuff, and he never talked about work. When we were together with him on Thanksgivings and Christmases, he was always talking about family and what it was like with my mother and her sisters growing up. So, a very different perspective of who this man was. That all changed at one point in my life but growing up, it was a very different kind of relationship. AS: You know, my first connection with your grandfather was when I was like 24, and I was just in awe, but I was also in terror because I watched him pretty strict, pretty tough when he was dealing with people that just had nonsense questions in some cases, or had the wrong idea, and he really needed to straighten them out in one way or another. And it's kind of surprising, but now that I think about it, in our families, we don't bring that toughness necessarily into the family. Is that the case? KC: That was the case. We never noticed that. He would sit at the dining room table, and he would just be quiet at the head of the table, and occasionally he'd pull this little notebook out and make some notes. I always wonder what he was writing. I found out later. Something came to mind, and then, occasionally, in the middle of the dinner, he would say... He would have this great story about my mother or something that he had. He would tell us growing up, and he just burst into this fantastic laughter of his, and it was so much fun. And we really didn't know what he did. We knew he traveled, and we knew that... Like I said, growing up, we would get scrap paper from his office, and it always just had sheets of numbers on the one side, and my brother and I would always joke that, man, "I'll tell you the one thing we don't wanna do in life is grow up and do what he's doing." [chuckle] AS: That's tough stuff, whatever it is he's thinking about. And I'm just curious. What was his relationship with his wife, Lola? KC: Oh, she was just this terrific lady. They met, and they actually worked together. I believe was at the Fixed Nitrogen Lab in Washington DC, and they co-wrote some papers together. She had a master's degree in mathematics at a time, early in the last century, when women just didn't have advanced degrees, and she helped him for decades with his work. And I remember seeing a lot of photos of her traveling with him to Japan and around the world. That was absolutely fascinating. She was just a brilliant woman in her own time, and with what she was able to do in terms of helping him. And she doesn't get enough credit for what she did to assist him. AS: And before we get into the Institute, I just wanna understand your own personal journey in life. You developed... You saw that stuff, and you thought, "I'm not gonna study that." But tell us just a little bit about your own personal journey in your education and in your work life. KC: Sure. So like I said, I didn't really know much about what he did. But when I was a freshman in college, my family had moved away from the DC area to Lo

In our 6th Interview episode, Plant Manager Dan Vermeesch and Quality Manager Brain Hoff discuss their Deming Journey. Topics include a discussion on variation and getting the Deming Philosophy into the education. Show Notes [00:00:12] Deming Institute Podcast Interview [00:00:35] Micron Manufacturing [00:00:50] History of Micron Manufacturing [00:01:10] Dan Vermeesch [00:01:51] Brian Hoff [00:04:35] Dr. Deming at Micron [00:05:18] Variation [00:07:07] Eliminating Performance Reviews at Micron [00:11:07] Struggles of Working with the Deming Philosophy [00:14:39] Micron Gives Advice on Adopting the Deming Philosophy [00:23:46] Shingo Silver Medallion [00:24:39] Variation a Key to Micron Improvement [00:31:33] Deming Needed in Education Transcript Tripp: [00:00:12] In this Deming Institute interview, I speak with Dan Vermeesch and Brian Hoff of Μ Manufacturing in Grand Rapids, Michigan. We discuss the history of Μicron, their improvement journey and how the Dunning philosophy is affecting this journey today. Tripp: [00:00:35] Hi, I'm Tripp Babbitt, host of the Deming Institute podcast. Our guests today are a couple of gentlemen from Micron Manufacturing, Dan Veermsch and Bryan Hoff. Welcome, gentlemen. Dan: [00:00:48] Hi, Tripp. Thanks for having us. Tripp: [00:00:50] Very good. So first of all, micro manufacturing I'm not familiar with it. Won't want to share a little bit about what Micron Manufacturing does and a little bit about both your gentlemans role in Micron churn, Micron manufacturing as it was using machine products company in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Dan: [00:01:10] It's been in business since 1952, Ed and Jackie Preston founded it back then and until just a few months ago, Jackie Preston still came in every day, five days a week. She just turned ninety one a couple of weeks ago and she hasn't been in in a few months. But she was here every day until then. And it was great because her son currently is the president at Micron. And we have a niece and nephew that work here. And the nephew has a 5 year old daughter that comes in on Saturday and plays on a computer. So one of the best parts of the story of Micron is we have four generations in this building every week. Dan: [00:01:51] And it really is part of the story that's important because there's a lot of family focus here at Micron that that's important to us. So I am the plant manager, have been the plant managers since 97 and also the lean champion that has tried to be the architect of some of the various improvements systems that we have had since the year 2000 is when we really begin implementing our transformational change. So I'll let Brian introduce you. Tripp: [00:02:26] Okay. Brian: [00:02:27] I'm Brian Hoff. I'm a quality manager at Micron. This would be my twenty second year with Micron. And as Dan said, it's around 2001. We began to be to transform our journey from kind of an old school business model to trying to adapt what is the best way to make change and improvement. And it's been an amazing journey. And lately we seem to have encountered Mr. Deming once again. And I guess I'm mature enough to understand it better than I did 20 years ago. And I'm using him almost daily to try to influence the decisions I make each day. Tripp: [00:03:13] Very good. And where are you guys located? Dan: [00:03:17] Grand Rapids, Michigan. OK. We're on a dead end street in the northwest corner of Grand Rapids, Michigan. So that's that's always part of my favorite part of the story here is we're kind of located on the edge to nothing. And despite all that, our folks here have made so many great changes over the years that we've had thousands of people from, I think, 26 states and eight countries that have come to visit us to see the systems that have been put into place over the years. And we're only a 40 person company. Twenty eight thousand square feet. So we're just a small about on the map that that over the years have made a big ripple in the pond. The precision machining industry. And it is exciting that we've got such a great group of folks that have not only made change, but we've made a lot of improvements over the years. But part of our story that we'll get into and will allow is we're making a lot of change, but we kind of lost sight of whether or not some of that was improvement. So we could see a lot of change around here. But the dials stopped moving after awhile. And so we had to go back to the drawing board. And that drawing board was Dr. Demings work. Dan: [00:04:35] Okay, very good. Well, let's pick it up from there. So how did you guys come across Dr. Demings work? It sounds like maybe you initially knew Dr. Deming then kind of got away from it. So once you share a little bit about your journey there. Brian: [00:04:52] So this, Brian, and back when I was a young 20 some year old, I happened to go to a statistics course, and during that course the instructor had mentioned Juran and Deming. So I began with Juran and in Juran Zone books

In our 5th interview podcast of 2019, Alan Winlow, MBE, former Managing Director of Yorkshire Brick Company, Continuous Improvement Director at Marshalls PLC, and 2019 ASQ Deming Medal Recipient, offers insights on his efforts to lead a Deming transformation. (This is Tripp's first interview with Alan) Highlights include: Opening quote from Myron Tribus, "If you continue to do what you've always done, you will continue to get what you've always got" In the late 1980s, while serving as Managing Director of the Yorkshire Brick Company (YBC), employment in the UK brick industry plunged from 14K to 8K employees and plants were closing Question at hand, "How to survive in a labor-intensive business?" How had the Japanese captured critical UK business segments? Started to read about Dr. Deming and attend British Deming Association conferences Discovered sources of variation and PDSA, plus the importance of data Found the majority of variation came from manufacturing equipment and raw materials for the bricks Discovered how to change the brick manufacturing process to improve brick uniformity Began to meet regularly with YBC's production team to continue to improve brick uniformity, savings in water use, energy use, and discarded bricks Discovered mental models, including the Taguchi Loss Function Explored how to remove barriers within workforce, everyone came on staff Began to understand what his job was, including reading books and seeking new learning Alan led consulting visits to China in 1987 to assist in developing the Land Fill Gas business. The Chinese were extremely interested in the landfill gas abstraction at YBC and sent no less than 8 delegations to visit the Yorkshire site. Alan was invited to visit by the Mayor of the city of Anshan. Teaming with local schools and universities, a local jail, and a county council to share lessons learned within YBC, including environmental projects Yorkshire Brick was honored in 1991 for contributions to environmental causes In 2000, Alan was honored by Queen Elizabeth as a Member of the British Empire for his leadership within YBC Never met Dr. Deming at BDA events; met Myron Tribus on many occasions Comments on challenges in implementing the Deming Philosophy Continued relevance of the Deming Philosophy today

In our 4th interview podcast of 2019, Donald Berwick, co-founder and former President and CEO of IHI, the Institute for Healthcare Improvement, shares his Deming Journey. Dr. Berwick, who presented at The Deming Institute's 2018 Conference, is one of the nation's leading authorities on healthcare quality and improvement. (This is Tripp's first interview with Dr. Berwick) Highlights include: His training as a pediatrician His efforts to apply quality management, before his introduction to the Deming Philosophy Co-Founded IHI in 1989 as a non-profit organization Appointed by President Obama, in July 2010, to the position of Administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), which he held until December, 2011 Ran for governor of Massachusetts in 2014 4 children and 7 grandchildren Attended a Four-day Seminar with Dr. Deming in 1986, leaving early and then returning Prior to meeting Dr. Deming, serving as "VP of Inspection" In the world of inspection, everything stayed the same Waiting times of 2 minutes for x-rays were reported to him (with falsification) by the radiology department "Do something about it" Question: What is the pushback that you see today in healthcare? The Red Bead Experiment was "electrifying," including triggering a vicious cycle of blame by management and withdrawal by willing workers. The workforce (willing workers) wants to do well The influence of Dr. Deming, and others, on IHI Prescriptions for fixing healthcare - "It takes leadership" General tone of healthcare today; "measure enough, yell enough, things get better" Continued focus today (backsliding) on measurement for inspection Question: What are physicians learning today about management? Answer: "Heroism as the route to excellence"

In our 3rd interview podcast of 2019, Wendi Middleton, Director of Continual Quality Improvement, from the Aging Adult Services Agency within the State of Michigan's Department of Health and Human Services, and Dennis Sergent, President, Sergent Results Group, share reflections on the "Challenges and Opportunities in Applying the Deming Philosophy in Government." (This is Tripp's first interview with Wendi and Dennis) Highlights include: A 5-year history of applying the Deming Philosophy within the State of Michigan's Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) The development of Aging and Disability Resource Centers Learning "Who are our partners?" Where to start? / Who does what to whom? Family services and a cat First exposure to the Deming Red Bead Experiment Getting to know each other better within Michigan's HHS Creation of the BOLD ("Building Options for Long Term Decision-Making") Council Acronyms as an art-form Detailing the processes - Where to start and where to integrate? Exposure to control charts within the Bell Telephone System Education and steps to move forward Creation of the BOLD ("Be OLD") Councils Acronyms as an art-form Grant funding provided consulting help Process steps, including road blocks and issues Subject Matter Experts (SME) and Design Teams A focus on quality improvement, not change Policy changes, with improvements Living at home, using improvements in non-emergency transportation services Weekly Stand-and-Deliver meetings to review ongoing PDSA efforts Continual Improvement efforts are not always "linear," with forward improvement (sometimes they go backwards) State government is a culture all by itself People sometimes become their job (position) Getting people on board with improvement; not always happy fits, some move on to other positions Managing "Level-of-Care Determinations" When facing system obstacles, take inspiration from Eleanor Roosevelt, Don't take a "No" (answer) from someone without the authority to say "Yes" Setting new standards for working with state vendors New skills by Design Team members "Everything is designed around getting money from the federal government" Design Team roles are about improving access to state services, not finding sources of funding Effectiveness (doing the right thing), before efficiency (faster, better, cheaper) Cost savings have been measured, yet the bigger impact is serving more people for a given budget allocation Reducing the waiting list for services Instead of asking for more money, ask if the existing process can be improved to provide better service Discovering a mindset that if some don't have a problem with a given process, others won't as well (meaning, the process is deemed to be OK as is, while it may well need improvement) Impact on Design Teams after attending The Deming Institute's "Me vs We workshop" Getting over self-interest issues T-Shirt idea, "The Status Quo is Not an Option" Avoiding doing better what needs not be done Design Teams need ongoing support, including starting with on-boarding and ground rules Emergence of self-respect and respect for others

In our 2nd interview podcast of 2019, Steven Haedrich, President of New York Label & Box Works (NYLBW), shared reflections on his continued admiration and application of the Deming Philosophy. (This is Tripp's second interview with Steven. Link here for the first interview.) Highlights include: Update on NYLBW Immersed in the Deming Philosophy every day Everything is moving much faster; quality has been a selling/differentiator Also, a focus on innovation Deming Chain Reaction, less rework/fewer mistakes/creating good paying jobs; the ONLY way to survive! Continual improvement on a daily basis Impact of a Total Cost focus? NO! Lowest price still gets the bid Interaction with your peers in sharing the Deming Philosophy; sharing it every day with both private and public companies – explaining the old ways of sale commissions, performance appraisals, etc. Other obstacles; clients and vendors adverse to partnering Steven's 2014 podcast – Deming is it! Wonderful opportunity to join the board of directors of The Deming Institute Deming Online – worldwide access to online learning with the potential to reach millions of students of the Deming Philosophy How to get the word out on the Deming Philosophy Steven's speaking engagements – Graduate School USA, Conestoga College, upcoming printing conference People are beginning to realize the limits of the prevailing system of management People are beginning to see the prospects of a changing world and the need to be more effective with management systems Where to start – The New Economics, 3rd edition, with Chapter 11 by Kelly Allen The world is finally realizing that the old ways that we have accepted as the standards of thinking are no longer going to prepare us for the complexities, for the challenges, for the true globalization of the world. The Deming Philosophy captures the essence of collaboration and cooperation and teamwork and systems thinking and continual improvement; including joy in work! The Deming Philosophy allows for a different end of the day experience; allowing us to make the world a better place!

In our January 2019 interview podcast, his 8th session with Tripp, Superintendent David Langford reflects on the state of education, the system, and how its set up, including various ways in how schools are working to move from "theory to practice" in their understanding and application of the Deming philosophy. Highlights include: The short term thinking which Dr. Deming warned us of, whether looking at profit or test scores Longer term strategies are sacrificed for short term results People get creative when driven to "show the numbers" Myths about charter schools being able to select their students Lack of a level playing field The strength and will power required to absorb the impact of a special cause being treated as a common cause Rare to find Profound Knowledge Fear manifests itself in many ways Dr. Deming encouraged David to consult for education systems The right to joy in work and joy in learning Blaming the individuals vs. the system in which they operate How to change the system to all for joy in learning The role of rewards in narrowing one's focus The fears and motivations of a school board Possible agendas of school board members An onboarding process for board members There are pockets of excellence in education systems For more information about David's current work with Ingenium Schools, please visit ingeniumfoundation.org

In our second interview podcast of November 2018, Doug Hall provides an overview of his latest book, "Driving Eureka!: Problem-Solving with Data-Driven Methods & the Innovation Engineering System" (This is Tripp's third interview with Doug. Link here for the first interview and here for the second.) Highlights include: Inventing "big ideas" for clients, as they entered the "Killing Zone" Applied innovation, using the Deming Philosophy How to "Find, Filter, and Fast-Track" big ideas Happy clients, paying big money, but the ideas did not happen Half the potential value of the big ideas is lost in internal development efforts The independent parts of organizations work to promote their own silo The average new product idea has a 95% failure rate in the market place What's wrong with project management? Innovation projects have uncertainty Problem solving with data-driven methods Big ideas are easy – making them real is hard A major obstacle is a reliance on opinions vs data Shifting innovation from an art to a science What to take away from this book? All products follow a life cycle, from birth to death Innovation for extending product life How to create an innovation culture Innovate or die Obstacles to innovation – Lack of Leadership and Lack of a Process Brain Brew Whiskeys for mass customization Don't feel you need to do "all" of the Deming Philosophy Just get started! How to receive a special gift from Doug - go to gift

In our November 2018 interview podcast, his 1st session with Tripp, Mike Tveite reflects on his interactions with Dr. Deming, beginning with attending a Four-Day Seminar in 1986. Mike went on to help Dr. Deming with 25 of his Four-Day Seminars, and to follow him around while he consulted with a division of General Motors. Highlights include: Mike's career, beginning as a Professor of Statistics First "World Shake" upon meeting Dr. Deming Dr. Deming in the MIT lecture series Learning statistics from Dr. Deming "Pond" statistics and "Stream" statistics Enumerative (pond) and Analytic (stream) Studies On what are you taking action? Mike's 2012 Deming Institute Conference presentation 14 Points for Management Management in a "pond" vs a "stream" The System of Profound Knowledge as a lens Production Viewed as a System The interdependent components of a system A single aim for the whole system Forces at work which undermine the aim of an organization Maximizing shareholder value Optimizing the system over the long term Data is like garbage, the need to know how to use it before collecting it

In our latest podcast for October 2018, Tripp interviewed Southern Utah University Professor Ravi Roy and Department of Aviation Director, Michael ("Mike") Mower, following their presentation at The Deming Institute's 2018 Conference. Highlights include: Changing aviation training through the Deming Philosophy Mike meets Kevin Cahill during a visit to SUU to deliver a convocation lecture Not always a fun message of valuing collaboration Shifting away from a conflicting public / private partnership in the Department of Aviation A management style of using carrots and sticks Moving away from management by fear, with zero creativity A feeling of being entrenched in the prevailing system of management Applications beyond Department of Aviation Reaching graduate students from the public sector with the Deming Philosophy The reaction of staff members to the adoption of the Deming Philosophy The world of aviation is dynamic, while university environments are more static The impact of short memories; Deming – Now More Than Ever! The mindset for embracing the Deming Philosophy Support from SUU President Scott Wyatt while facing eminent failure Investing in the future The Deming Institute's incubator at SUU The 3rd annual Bryce Canyon Society Forum, April 4th, 2019 Leading by example, spreading the Deming Philosophy beyond SUU Seeking change with a march on Washington, DC Success in having the Senate and Congress pass a Maintenance Training Modernization Bill inspired by SUU, with details at this link With this new bill, SUU will be the first in the US to change 60-year old aircraft maintenance training and practices Moving from fear of the future to hope in the future

In our second interview podcast of July 2018, Doug Stilwell shares lessons learned on his transition from a public school administrator to a professor of education at Drake University, once bitten by the Deming philosophy. (This is Tripp's second interview with Doug. Link here for the first interview.) Highlights include: Continued impact of new education methods in the Urbandale Community School District How to bring more of Dr. Deming's ideas into higher education? How to impact the next generation of leaders in education? Drake's Continual Improvement Network What happens when students leave Doug's classes? Network improvement communities "The system always wins" Moving away from the A-F grading system Shifting from a "time rigid / learning flexible" system to a "time flexible / learning rigid" system

In our July 2018 interview podcast, his 7th session with Tripp, Superintendent David Langford reflects on the efforts of the entire staff of Ingenium Charter Schools to move from "theory to practice" in their understanding and application of the Deming philosophy. Highlights include: David's (new) role as superintendent Ingenium operates with 6 schools across Los Angeles, CA Restoring joy and meaning to learning as Ingenium's constancy of purpose Meaningful and relevant learning Moving from theory into practice 5 areas of practice (focus): SoPK, intrinsic motivation, continual improvement, neuroscience, and (project-based) quality learning experiences Student involvement Dashboards for monitoring joy in work Students learning about common and special causes of variation Student feedback on their experiences within Ingenium schools Neuroscience research For more information about David's current work with Ingenium Schools, please visit ingeniumfoundation.org

In our June 2018 interview podcast, his 1st session with Tripp, Jean-Marie Gogue reflects on his interactions and memories of working with Dr. Deming, beginning in November 1978 in Tokyo. Highlights include: Inviting Dr. Deming to speak in Paris in 1980 Dr. Deming's commentary on leadership Use of control charts Attending Dr. Deming's Four-Day Seminar in Switzerland in 1993 Attending first Four-Day Seminar in the UK in 1987 Starting the French Deming Association in 1988