Deming was the Brooks of Business

W. Edwards Deming was an incredibly lucid business visionary that understood what really makes business tick. Deming had a holistic understanding of producing a product  from employee, to management, to customer. Through his publications and work with post WWII Japanese industry, he proved that his observations and hypothesis are not only valid but powerful tools for success (e.g., 1977 Ford Pinto vs. 1977 Toyota Corolla). Here is a block quote from wikipedia that explains his philosophy (in a nutshell).

Deming's 14 points

Deming offered fourteen key principles for management for transforming business effectiveness. In summary:

1. Create constancy of purpose toward improvement of a product and service with a plan to become competitive and stay in business. Decide to whom top management is responsible.
2. Adopt the new philosophy. We are in a new economic age. We can no longer live with commonly accepted levels of delays, mistakes, defective materials, and defective workmanship.
3. Cease dependence on mass inspection. Require, instead, statistical evidence that quality is built in. (prevent defects instead of detect defects.)
4. End of the practice of awarding business on the basis of price tag. Instead, depend on meaningful measures of quality along with price. Eliminate suppliers that cannot qualify with statistical evidence of quality.
5. Find Problems. It is a management’s job to work continually on the system (design, incoming materials, composition of material, maintenance, improvement of machine, training, supervision, retraining)
6. Institute modern methods of training on the job
7. The responsibility of the foreman must be to change from sheer numbers to quality… [which] will automatically improve productivity. Management must prepare to take immediate action on reports from the foremen concerning barriers such as inherent defects, machines not maintained, poor tools, and fuzzy operational definitions.
8. Drive out fear, so that everyone may work effectively for the company.
9. Break down barriers between departments. People in research, design, sales and production must work as a team to foresee problems of production that may be encountered with various materials and specifications.
10. Eliminate numerical goals, posters, slogans for the workforce, asking for new levels of productivity without providing methods.
11. Eliminate work standards that prescribe numerical quotas.
12. Remove barriers that stand between the hourly worker and his right of pride of workmanship.
13. Institute a vigorous program of education and retraining.
14. Create a structure in top management that will push every day on the above 13pts.

Seven Deadly Diseases

The Seven Deadly Diseases:

1. Lack of constancy of purpose.
2. Emphasis on short-term profits.
3. Evaluation by performance, merit rating, or annual review of performance.
4. Mobility of management.
5. Running a company on visible figures alone.
6. Excessive medical costs.
7. Excessive costs of warranty, fueled by lawyers who work for contingency fees.

What is surprising is how relevant this work still is. What is equally surprising is how many companies simply don't learn from history and the collective experience. What do they teach in business school anyway? I can recall a point in time where a certain company stopped doing most of the 14 points and caught in earnest most of the seven deadly diseases. That point in time was the beginning of an all too certain end.

I'll admit that I have no right to cast stones. The software industry has long had our own version of Deming in Brooks. I can't tell you how many times management has attempted a full-on interview-hire cycle to try and pull in features and schedules. What do they teach in Computer Science anyway? I've always wanted to structure a software team around Brooks concept of the "surgical team". I've never seen it done, but it sounds like it would work.

Why did I write this post? I've recently been asked my opinion, "What would you do if you were CEO/CIO/CxO?". I think it surprises the people asking that I have a long list of answers. I'm also trying to satisfy a condition of my employment in the form a lengthy essay that flies square in the face of Disease #3 -- and it just seems that something isn't quite right.

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