In Their Own Words

Can a 4th grade class decide on an operational definition of "joy in learning"? In part 4 of this series, educator John Dues and host Andrew Stotz discuss a real-world example of applying Deming in a classroom. This episode covers the first part of the story, with more to come in future episodes! 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 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. This is episode four about goal setting through a Deming lens. John, take it away. 0:00:22.6 John Dues: Good to be back, Andrew. Yeah, we've been talking about organizational goal setting last few episodes. A couple episodes ago, we talked about those four conditions that organizations should understand prior to setting a goal. Then we sort of introduced this idea of trying to stay away from arbitrary and capricious education goals. And then we got into these 10 lessons for data analysis. And so what I thought we could do now is we've got that foundation in place is that we could take a look at an applied example in real classrooms of those 10 key lessons in action to kind of bring those alive. And I ran this project a few years ago with a teacher named Jessica Cutler. She's a fourth grade science teacher in our network. And she was going through something we call a Continual Improvement Fellowship. So we do this sort of internal fellowship where people can learn that sort of way of thinking, the tools, techniques, the theories related to the science of improvement. And then they actually take that right away and apply it to a problem in their classroom or their department or their school, depending on who it is. 0:01:55.0 JD: And so what Jessica was doing, what her project ended up being was she was trying to improve the joy in learning in her fourth grade science class. So it's interesting to see how that sort of project evolved. So I thought we could revisit each of the 10 lessons and how that lesson was applied in Jessica's improvement project. And we'll maybe get through three or four of the lessons today. And then over the course of the next few episodes, kind of get to all 10 lessons and think through how they were... How that went in her improvement project. 0:02:08.1 AS: Sounds like a good plan, practical application. 0:02:12.0 JD: Yeah. I mean, it was interesting too, because she didn't initially sort of consider joy as a possibility. She was thinking like, I'm gonna work on improving test scores or something like that was sort of her initial brainstorm. And then sort of pivoted to this when we kind of talked through what was possible from the Deming philosophy type of standpoint. So it's interesting to see how things evolve. But just to kind of revisit, so we talked through these 10 lessons. Lesson one was "data has no meaning apart from their context." So we talked about these questions that are important, like who collected the data? How was it collected? When was it collected? Where was the data collected? What are the values themselves represent? What's that operational definition for the concept under measurement? Have there been any changes to that operational definition as the project unfolds? And so even with a project with a teacher and her students, all of those questions are relevant. They're still important just because you're dealing with students that doesn't mean anything changes on that front. So it was important for her to sort of think through all of those things as she thought through the start of her project. 0:03:28.9 JD: And what her and her students came up with after they sort of decided that they were gonna focus on joy, they focused on this problem statement. And they were like, well, what do we want science class to look like? 'Cause that was sort of their starting...

Dr. Deming developed his philosophy over time and in conversations with others, not in isolation. As learners, we tend to forget that context, but it's important to remember because no one implements Deming in isolation, either. In this conversation, Bill Bellows and host Andrew Stotz discuss how there's no such thing as a purely Deming organization and why that's good. 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 discussions 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. Today is episode 20, entitled, System of Profound Wisdom. Bill, take it Away. 0:00:31.6 Bill Bellows: But not just for 30 years. I forgot to say I started when I was 12. 0:00:36.6 AS: Yes. [laughter] Yes. And you've got the hair to prove it. [laughter] 0:00:43.7 BB: All right. Now, actually, I was thinking the proposal and the title, I thought... I mean, System of Profound Wisdom is cool, System of Profound Questions. Either one of those is good. Let's see which title comes out. 0:00:57.6 AS: Yeah. And I think we'll have to also understand that may some listeners that may not even know what System of Profound Knowledge means, they've been listening. They do. But if today's their first episode, we also gotta break that down, just briefly. 0:01:10.9 BB: Yeah. Okay, let's do that. All right. Well, let me give an opening a quote from Dr. Deming from chapter three, and then we can explain this SoPK, System of Profound Knowledge, thing. But in chapter three of Dr. Deming's last book, The New Economics, the last edition, edition three, came out in 2018. And chapter three, Dr. Deming says, "We saw in the last chapter, we are living under the tyranny of the prevailing style of management. Most people imagine that this style has always existed. It is a fixture. Actually, it is a modern invention a trap that has led us into decline. Transformation is required. Education and government, along with industry, are also in need of transformation. The System of Profound Knowledge to be introduced in the next chapter is a theory for transformation." So you wanna... 0:02:15.4 AS: That's good. 0:02:16.7 BB: So let's say something. Let's just say something about SoPK. How would you explain that? 0:02:23.1 AS: Yeah. Well, actually, I wanna talk very briefly about what you just said, because it's just... 0:02:27.1 BB: Oh, sure. 0:02:29.6 AS: At one point, I thought, "It's a system of knowledge." But he just said it was a system of transformation. 0:02:38.7 BB: It's a theory for transformation. 0:02:40.1 AS: A theory for transformation. Okay, got it. I see. And one of the things that I... I look at Toyota so much just 'cause it's so fascinating and how they've survived all these years, the continuity in the business, the continuity and the profitability of the business, the continued march to become the number one auto producer in the world, and having faced all the ups and downs and survived. And I just think that what they have is a learning organization. No matter what the challenge is, they're trying to apply learning tools, like System of Profound Knowledge, like PDSA, to try to figure out how to solve this problem. And I think that many companies, including at times my companies, [chuckle] we sometimes will scramble and we'll lose knowledge and we won't gain knowledge. And so the System of Profound Knowledge, to me, is all about the idea of how do we build a base of knowledge in our business and then build upon that base of knowledge rather than destroy it when the new management comes in or when a new management idea comes in. 0:04:00.7 AS: And that's something I've just been thinking about a lot. Because I do know a company that I've been doing some work with, and they...

What happens if you transform HOW you think? In this episode, Bill Bellows and host Andrew Stotz discuss the problem of thinking in one dimension at a time (as we were taught in school) and its impact on our ability to solve problems. BONUS: Book recommendations to broaden your understanding of Deming and more. TRANSCRIPT 0:00:02.1 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'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, well, episode 19, Transforming How we Think. Bill, take it away. 0:00:29.9 Bill Bellows: And good evening, Andrew. 0:00:35.8 AS: Good evening. 0:00:36.2 BB: And, but just as a point of clarity, I view it as transforming how we think about our thinking. And that's what I've been focusing on for the, since the mid, the early '90s is not how we think, but what is our awareness of our thinking, and I think that ties in well with SoPK. So first in late breaking news, I am seeing with new eyes, Andrew. Literally, I've got new monofocal lenses in both eyes. The left eye three weeks ago, the right eye, a week ago. I was told about five years ago, eventually I'll have to have cataract surgery. And I spoke with a few friends who had it done, and they said, oh, it's easy. And what was so amazing was it was easier than they said. It was. 0:01:41.0 BB: But one neighbor who's had it done, and kind of a sad note is he claims, and I've not double checked this, he's a sharp guy. He claims 80% of the world's population would benefit from cataract surgery that they don't have access to and eventually go blind. And I don't know, I can believe, and he is in fact he's quoted me twice on that. But I am literally seeing with new eyes. The grays are now, shades of gray, are now shades of blue. When I look at the sky. My depth perception's a whole lot better. And so it ties in well with all this vision therapy stuff. So. 0:02:36.8 AS: Aren't you glad that those machines are high quality and the operations that they do are high quality? 0:02:41.6 BB: Oh, yeah. 0:02:42.4 AS: Just one little mistake on that one. And, that's... 0:02:46.2 BB: Well, and I'm signing the documents and there's a little bit of a flutter when I'm signing, in terms of the liability. And one friend's mom had a bad cataract procedure, so it doesn't always go. And I shared this with Kevin. Kevin's had the same, as likewise had the procedure done. And we shared the anxieties and then it worked out well. But yeah when I signed that form that there was in the event, and I thought, whoa, that'd be, anyway, it worked. All right, so where I want to pick up in episode 19 is where we left off with episode 18. And there near the end, I referenced from Dr. Deming. He says Dr. Deming says in chapter three of The New Economics, and he says, "we saw in the last chapter that we're living under the tyranny of the prevailing style of management. Most people imagine this style has always existed. It is a fixture. Actually," he said, "it's a modern invention, a trap that has led us into decline. Transformation..." 0:04:03.0 BB: You remember that word from last time? Okay. "Transformation is required. Education and government, along with industry are also in need of transformation. The System of Profound Knowledge will be introduced in the next chapter. To be introduced in the next chapter is a theory for transformation." So I've got some bullet points and I want to get into the additional chapters and references from The New Economics on Dr. Deming's use of the term transformation. 'Cause I think what he's talking about... SoPK is a theory for transformation. So I think it's just not enough to talk about SoPK without understanding how does that fit in with what Dr. Deming's talking...

In part 3 of this series, John Dues and host Andrew Stotz talk about the final 5 lessons for data analysis in education. Dive into this discussion to learn more about why data analysis is essential and how to do it right. 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 John Dues who is part of the new generation of educators striving to apply Dr. Deming's principles to unleash student joy in learning. This is episode 23 and we're talking about goal setting through a Deming lens. John, take it away. 0:00:30.8 John Dues: It's good to be back, Andrew. Yeah, in this first episode of this four-part series, we talked about why goal setting is often an act of desperation. And if you remember early on, I sort of proposed those four conditions that organizations should understand about their systems prior to ever setting a goal. Those four were capability, variation, stability, and then by what method are you going to improve your system? And then in the last episode, I introduced the first five lessons of the 10 key lessons for data analysis. And remember, these lessons were set up to avoid what I call these arbitrary and capricious education goals, which are basically unreasonable goals without consideration of those four things, the system capability, variation, and stability, and then not having a method. So, it might be helpful just to recap those first five lessons. I'll just list them out and folks that want to hear the details can listen to the last episode. 0:01:31.8 JD: But lesson one was data have no meaning apart from their context. So, we've got to contextualize the data. Lesson two was we don't manage or control the data. The data is the voice of the process. So, it's sort of, you know, the data over time shows us what's happening and we don't really have control over that data. We do have control under that underlying process. Lesson three was plot the dots for any data that occurs in time order. So, take it out of a two-point comparison or take it out of a spreadsheet and put it on a line chart that shows the data over time. Lesson four was two or three data points are not a trend. So again, get beyond the typical two-point limited comparison this month and last month, this year and last year, this same month, last year, those types of things, this week, last week. 0:02:25.6 JD: And then lesson five was, show enough data in your baseline to illustrate the previous level of variation. So, we want to get a sense of how the data is changing over time and we need a baseline amount of data, whether that's 12 points, 15 points, 20 points, there's sort of different takes on that. But somewhere in that 12-to-20-point range is really the amount of data we want to have in our baseline. So, we understand how it's moving up and down over time sort of naturally. Sort of at the outset of those two episodes, we also talked about centering the process behavior charts, like the ones we viewed in many of our episodes. And we put those in the center because it's a great tool for looking at data over time, just like we've been talking about. 0:03:11.4 JD: And I think when we use this methodology, and when you start to fully grasp the methodology, you start to be able to understand messages that are actually contained in the data. You can differentiate between those actual special events, those special causes, and just those everyday up and downs, what we've called common causes. And in so doing, we can understand the difference between reacting to noise and understanding actual signals of significance in that data. And so, I think that's a sort of a good primer to then get into lessons six through 10. 0:03:51.2 AS: Can't wait. 0:03:53.3 JD: Cool. We'll jump in then. 0:03:56.1 AS: Yeah. I'm just thinking about my goal setting and how much this helps me think about how to...

In this episode, Bill Bellows and host Andrew Stotz discuss seeing organizations as holograms—3D images. Holograms show all parts from different views at once. Learn how using the lens of the System of Profound Knowledge lets you see the problems and opportunities for transformation. 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'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, which we call Episode 18, is, Wouldn't It Be Nice? Bill take it away. 0:00:28.9 Bill Bellows: Wouldn't it be nice if [chuckle] we were older and we wouldn't have to wait so long? Okay. So Episode 18, greetings, Andrew. So as I mentioned in the past, I like to go back and listen to the past previous podcasts and as well as hear from people and their feedback on them. And I have a few points of clarity on the last one, and then we'll get into today's feature. So the last one which we refer to as Diffusion From a Point Source. And I talked about being in a bathtub, you start off at room temperature water and, or you fill the bath and you went and got distracted and came back, and now it's not warm enough, so you crank up, let's add some more water, and you feel that heat coming towards you from the... And then the diffusion equation is about how that, all the water ends up about the same temperature, and then you turn off the water and you drop back to room temperature. 0:01:41.1 BB: But another aspect of the point source that I wanted to clarify is, is if you have in the bathtub some, a source of energy, a heat source, which is not, you know, is different than the source of the water coming out of the faucet. But imagine you've got a little generator in there pumping out heat, then the bathtub, depending on the temperature of that, the amount of energy being released, then the bathtub is going to get warmer, warmer and warmer and warmer and warmer and warmer, and what keeps it going back to room temperature is how much energy is coming out of that. And that's what I was referring to as what it takes to maintain a transformation either individually within an organization, is something which continues to churn. Else you end up by the world we're in, you're watching the news, you're hearing about some accident and people are looking for the singular source, or they're looking at two points in a row, a downturn or upturn and looking at two data points to draw a conclusion. So there's all these everyday reminders of how, of the prevailing system of management at work in terms of how people are treated, how we manage systems. And our challenge is, how do you fight that? 0:03:14.7 BB: And so even within your organization, if you're trying to get people excited by Deming's works, what you have to appreciate is when they go home, the rest of their lives, they're being immersed in a culture of blame of individuals, not the system, and that's part of what we have to deal with. So I just want to mention that what I meant by that source term is, what does it take individually that we can do within our organizations to try to keep things going and not get sucked back down, knowing you've got all this normality around us that we're trying to move beyond. So the next thing I want to talk about is transformation. [chuckle] And then as that leads into, Wouldn't It Be Nice. And I was looking at The New Economics, my Kindle version, and found out that there were 73 references to transform in The New Economics, 73. And the first one is in the forward written by our good friend Kevin Cahill, and in there Kevin references, this is in the 3rd edition of The New Economics, which is the white cover if you have it in print. And it came out 2018. In there, Kevin references Out of the...

Do you struggle to meet your goals or targets? Find out how you can change your thinking about goals and your process for setting them so you can keep moving forward. In this episode, John Dues and host Andrew Stotz discuss the first five of John's 10 Key Lessons for Data Analysis. TRANSCRIPT 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 John Dues, who is part of the new generation of educators striving to apply Dr. Deming's principles to unleash student joy in learning. This is episode two of four in a mini-series on why goal setting is often an act of desperation. John, take it away. 0:00:32.3 John Dues: Hey, Andrew, it's good to be back. Yeah, in that last episode, that first episode in this mini-series, we talked about why goal setting is often an act of desperation and I basically proposed these four conditions that organizations should understand prior to setting a goal. So it's not the goals in and of themselves that are bad, but it's with this important understanding that's often lacking. So those four things that organizations should understand, one, what's the capability of a system under study? So that's the first thing, how capable is the system or the process? The second thing is what's the variation within that system or process under study? So that's the second thing we talked about last time. The third thing is understanding if that system or process is stable. And then the fourth thing was, if we know all of those things, by what method are we going to approach improvement after we set the goal, basically? So you gotta have those four things, understanding the capability of the system, the variation of the system, the stability of the system, and then by what method, prior to setting a goal. And so I think I've mentioned this before, but absent of an understanding of those conditions, what I see is goals that are, what I call it, arbitrary and capricious. 0:01:48.8 JD: That's a legal characterization. You look that up in the law dictionary. And it basically says that an "arbitrary and capricious law is willful and unreasonable action without consideration or in disregard of facts or law." So I'm just now taking that same characterization from a legal world and applying it to educational organizations and accountability systems, and I just switched it to "a willful and unreasonable goal without consideration or in disregard of system capability, variability, and/or stability." And we see these all over the place for education organizations, for schools, school districts, teachers, that type of thing. 0:02:31.6 JD: And so what I tried to do in the book and tried to do here in my work in Columbus is develop some sort of countermeasures to that type of goal setting and develop the 10 key lessons for data analysis. An antidote to the arbitrary and capricious goals seen throughout our sector. And this process behavior chart tool, looking at data in that format is central to these lessons. So what I thought we would do in this episode and the next is outline those 10 key lessons. So five today and then do another five in the next episode. And in the fourth episode of the series, what we would do is then apply those examples to a real life improvement project from one of our schools. It's helpful, I think too, to sort of, to understand the origin of the key lessons. So there's the lessons that I'll outline are really derived from three primary sources. 0:03:36.0 JD: So the first two come from Dr. Donald Wheeler, who I've mentioned on here before, a lot of Deming folks will, of course, have heard of Dr. Wheeler, who's a statistician in Tennessee, a colleague of Dr. Deming when Dr. Deming was alive and then has carried on that work to this day. The two books, two really great books that he wrote, one is called Understanding Variation, a thin little book, a good primer, a...

In The New Economics, Deming said “The individual, transformed, will perceive new meaning to his life…” (3rd edition, page 63) But are we ever completely transformed? Discover why Bill Bellows believes that transformation is an ongoing process and how you can keep your learning journey going. 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 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. And the topic for today is, in this episode 17, Diffusion from a Point Source. Bill, take it away. 0:00:29.6 Bill Bellows: And the title coincidentally, was the focus of my Master's thesis. We'll look at that later. 0:00:37.1 AS: It wasn't a rock and roll song. Yes, correct. 0:00:39.9 BB: No, not a rock and roll. [chuckle] Actually, Diffusion from a Point Source. Was that Mick Jagger or Keith Richards? Maybe it was Taylor. Maybe it was Taylor Swift. Okay. So some opening remarks, and then we'll get to today's feature. And I mentioned in the past, I go back and listen to the podcast, read through the transcripts, and it's very much like “Production Viewed as a System” - is to talk with people that have listened to it, listened to it myself and ask, have I... Are there holes in the explanation? Can I add some more clarity to it? The process I use for these podcasts is, some title comes to mind. I've got a long list that we started with at the very beginning, and then some other topics come up for any of a variety of reasons. 0:01:35.3 BB: And we'll have a title, have an outline, but then as we get involved in the conversation, something I say leads to something that you say leads to something that's not on the list. And sometimes some of those ad-libs, I go back and listen to and say, "Well, I don't know that sounded right. I just wanna add a little bit more clarity". Another thing I wanna say at the outset for those listening, is [chuckle] there is... Somebody posted somewhere on social media that one of the sessions was a total waste of time to listen to which I think is unfortunate. But what I like to say is, where I'm coming from to support The Deming Institute, as your ambition is as well, is to help individuals in respective organizations learn about Dr. Deming's ideas, try to apply them, deepen their understanding, explain them to others, and that's the target audience. 0:02:48.0 BB: So, for those who find that boring, well maybe this is not the podcast for you. And so, and the other thing I wanna say along those lines is, for the majority of my time at Rocketdyne, I had the responsibility of being a transformation agent or transformation person was part of my job. Now, I was brought in, I didn't have that job to begin with. The job I had to begin with was to lead the effort to provide training, facilitation of applications of Dr. Taguchi's ideas. And what I've shared in these podcasts is a lot of what I was doing early on was helping people put out fires. 0:03:38.2 BB: And that's not what Dr. Taguchi's ideas are about. His ideas are about improving the robustness of the performance of a product or service. Whereby what robustness Dr. Taguchi means is "it performs as an athlete incredibly well in spite of differing weather conditions." So the ability of a marathoner to run very consistent fast times in spite of the weather, in spite of the altitude. And so you're getting consistently high, or consistently faster and faster times. That's what Dr. Taguchi meant by, means by, his work means by "robustness." 0:04:16.2 BB: And what I was doing was using tools and techniques associated with his ideas to fight fires. And then, I got frustrated by that. And that led me to Dr. Deming's work, led me to revisit Dr. Deming's work. I had met him in 1990 and The New...

Did Dr. Deming forbid setting goals? Dive into this discussion about healthy goal setting, learn why your process matters, and the four things you need to understand before you start on goals. This episode is the first in a 4-part series about goal setting. 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 John Dues, who is part of the new generation of educators striving to apply Dr. Deming's principles to unleash student joy in learning. This is episode 21 and we're talking about goal setting through a Deming lens. John, take it away. 0:00:26.9 John Dues: Yeah, it's good to be back, Andrew. Yeah, 'tis the season for resolutions, I suppose, so I thought we could talk about organizational goal setting and sort of doing that through a Deming lens. And I was thinking about, at a recent district leadership team meeting, I put the following quote up on a slide. I said, "Goal setting is often an act of desperation." You got to watch people's faces when they see that. And to give some context, we're sort of updating our strategic plan at United Schools Network and my point in putting that on the slide as a part of strategic planning was to start a discussion on sort of what I think is healthy goal setting and how that's not typical to what I've seen across my career in schools, education organizations. 0:01:22.4 JD: And I wanted to provide a framework for the team so that anyone that's setting a goal as a part of the strategic planning process sort of had this sort of mindset as we're going through the goal setting process. I think that the typical reaction to that quote, at least in my experience, has been something like, "But I thought that goal setting was something that highly effective people or highly effective organizations do." And my basic argument is that I think that that's the intention, but it's rarely the case, whether that's individuals or organizations. And there's these, what I've come to sort of frame as four conditions that have to be met during the goal setting process. And without those, you kind of get fluff for a goal setting, probably more likely just completely disconnected from reality. I think... Yeah, go ahead. 0:02:22.5 AS: I just wanted to talk to everybody out there that's listening and viewing. I mean, I'm sure you're going through goal setting all the time and as we talk about, it's the beginning of the year right now, this is actually, we're recording this in mid-January of 2024. So it's like I've been working on what's our vision? What's our mission? What's our values? Where are we going? What is our goal? What is our long term goal? What is our short term goal? And I don't know about you guys, but for me, it gets a little confusing and round in circles sometimes and overwhelming, and then this whole idea about, that goal setting is often an act of desperation. It's like I've been working on this stuff for recently over the last week or so and then I just heard you say that and I was like, "Oh, I'm really interested to learn more." So let's go through those four conditions. 0:03:18.5 JD: Yeah, I'll get to those in a second. But I... So I'm not saying don't set goals necessarily. And people have that same reaction typically to that statement, but it's goal setting is often an act of desperation. So it's not the goal in and of themselves, but generally it's the process that you go about and the lack of sort of logic behind the goals that I'm talking about. And I know on these podcasts, many of my examples have sort of I've been banging on like State Department accountability systems and stuff like that. I'm going to continue to do that today but I think the same sort of errors happen at the school system level, at the individual school building level, at the individual teacher or principal level, it's just the stakes are higher when you're...

"The Cloud" is a metaphor for the top level of corporate authority - the CEO, CFO, CTO and maybe some Vice President positions. And if you're trying to transform an organization, your ideas need to penetrate the Cloud - but how? In this episode, Bill Bellows and host Andrew Stotz talk about influencing others with the aim of transformation. 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 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. Today is episode 16, and the title is, Get Off of My Cloud. Bill, take it away. 0:00:29.5 Bill Bellows: Hey. Hey, hey. [laughter] Mick Jagger, Keith Richards, get Off of My Cloud. Yeah. Alright, so here we are, 2024. So before we get to the Cloud, some opening remarks. And in particular looking at session 15, which is soon to be released. And one thing I... What I tell people is, what's exciting about understanding Deming's work is how revealing, how you see the world differently, and Dr. Deming used the metaphor of a lens. But it's not only what you see, but what you hear. 0:01:19.5 AS: Right. 0:01:22.3 BB: And, and I tell people I can go into an organization and within a few minutes between what I see and what I hear, I can get a pretty good sense, is it a ME or WE organization. And we think back to the comment I shared in episode 15 where the Boeing executive said, "Let's be honest," to the room full of 300 plus internal audit people who just do great, great work. 0:01:54.4 BB: I mean, if they didn't do great work, why would they be there? Everyone in our organization does great work, otherwise, why would they be around? But when they said to them, "Let's be honest, we don't make the airplanes." And I thought, that's right up there with my wife saying to me, "Look at what your son did." 0:02:22.4 BB: My son? Or is it, look at what our son did. Another giveaway expression is, we're gonna do a root cause analysis or RRCA, which is Relentless Root Cause Analysis. Well, every, and from a Deming perspective, instead of talking about a root cause, we can say there's root causes, and there's... They're dozens, hundreds of root causes, or sorry, common causes, common causes. And then every now and then there's a special cause. 0:03:01.0 BB: But even when a special cause appears so does a bunch of common causes. So from a Deming perspective there's never a root cause. So I... One poke I have for people that like to think in terms of root cause, 'cause they have this sense of, you can explain everything by a series of connected root causes. This cause leads... It's like the five whys. That this leads to this leads to this. But it's always, this leads to that, this leads to, and it's singular strands. And I think of it like a strand of spaghetti and everything is along some pathway. And I thought, no, that's not the model Deming had in mind. Deming had in mind a multitude of strands that are all woven together that you can't... What comes out is a bunch of contributions, not just one thing. So my poke at people like to believe in root cause phenomenon is, "If life can be explained by a series of root causes, then why do you need two parents? Why isn't it a single parent?" Sorry. 0:04:18.9 BB: I just finished the fifth cohort at Cal State Northridge in a eight-week class as part of an 18-month program where the students, we start with about 30, by the time it gets to me there may be 24 or so. And one course after another, after another, it's a very rigorous program. And I do a class called Seminar in Quality Management. And I love at the beginning of the course when I ask them about, if all the beads are red, if all the red beads are eliminated, can improvement, can still go on to, all those things we've talked about...

What does it mean to "commit" to transformation? What does "transformation" mean? In this episode, John Dues and host Andrew Stotz discuss Point 14 of Dr. Deming's 14 Points for Management - with John's interpretations for educators. 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 John Dues, who is part of the new generation of educators striving to apply Dr. Deming's principles to unleash student joy in learning. This is episode 20, and we are continuing our discussion about the shift from management myths to principles for transformation of school systems. John, take it away. 0:00:31.1 John Dues: Hey, Andrew. It's good to be back. Yeah, we're on principle 14 today, which is Commit to Transformation. So I'll just start by outlining the principle itself. So Commit to Transformation - "clearly define top management's commitment to continual improvement of quality and its obligation to implement the 14 principles, plan and take action to put everyone in the organization to work to accomplish the transformation. Transformation is everyone's job. Start with education for all and positions of leadership." So, basically, we've been through these 14 principles, and the final one is, put it into action, basically. So I think a good place to start is just remembering or recalling what does Deming mean by transformation? And he's saying transformation is a change in state from one thing to another. So we're going from one thing to something completely new, and there's these 14 principles that help us get us there. 0:01:34.9 JD: And of course, when Deming was talking, he was talking about the prevailing system of management and changing into this new system of management and about this sort of, older version, this prevailing style from 30 years ago, which still is the prevailing style today. He said something that was really interesting. He said, it's a modern invention that cedes competition between people, teams, departments, students, schools, universities. And so when... What he is really saying is that when you transform your organization, you work together as a system. And he is advocating for cooperation and transformation. And I think of course, people are gonna say, yes, absolutely, we need to cooperate. And that's, that's the way that everybody wins. But in reality, I think that's not always what's happening in organizations because I think what you need in order to go about this switch is what Deming called Profound Knowledge. 0:02:41.5 JD: And most people don't have an understanding of, of what that is. So what happens I think is that the prevailing style of management, it's rooted in those management myths we've talked about before we started the principles. And it's sort of this false foundation for your organization. But that's where I think most people, people are. And so part of this commitment is then if we're gonna commit to transformation, there's some things that leaders have to realize, and then there's some steps you have to take if you're gonna sort of go down this path. I think the things that you have to realize as a leader, and these are things that are true for me as I continue this process and my organization is number one, there's gonna be a struggle. There's gonna be this struggle over every one of the 14 principles because it's so different from what we're doing today. 0:03:39.1 JD: I think another thing we're gonna have to realize is that this can't be one or two people at your organization. The entire leadership structure at your organization, it's gonna have to be educated in this new way of thinking, and then you're gonna have to bring along the entire organization. And this can be a challenge because if you are the person doing this at your organization, you very well may be fairly new to this new way of thinking, this new philosophy yourself,...

In this episode, Bill Bellows and host Andrew Stotz talk about where and how to start using your new knowledge when you're learning Deming. TRANSCRIPT 0:00:02.1 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'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 in episode 15 is Start Where You Are. Bill, take it away. 0:00:25.0 Bill Bellows: Thank you, Andrew. And for our audience, you may notice there's a different background. This is not a green screen. This is actually a bedroom at my in-laws in upstate New York. Hey, Andrew, I've been listening to some of the podcasts, and I've collected some data on each of them. Would you like to see it? 0:00:53.0 AS: Yeah, definitely. 0:00:54.2 BB: I've got a control chart, I've got a control chart for each of the 14 sessions for how many times I say, holy cow. 0:01:02.9 AS: Holy moly. 0:01:04.4 BB: In each episode. Yeah, and the process is stable. [laughter] So I say holy cow, I think the average is 2.2, and the upper control limit is... I'm just kidding. 0:01:25.4 AS: You're a sick man. 0:01:27.7 BB: But I think outside of this podcast, I don't know if I use that expression. And I don't know where it comes from, I just, it must be... 0:01:37.7 AS: Did you grow up around cows? You said you're near where you grew up. 0:01:44.4 BB: Yeah, I am staying at my wife's sister's place. And my wife's father, when I met her, had cows in his backyard. And we used to chase the cows. When they got out, we would chase them. And let me tell you, they move fast. [laughter] And I came down several times, severe cases of poison ivy, trying to herd this one cow that was always escaping. And I thought, oh, I'll tell my father, let me go out and I can scare this cow back. Now, no the cow got the best of me. I got covered with mud and went home with poison ivy. Those things, they move fast. So that's my only personal experience with cows. [laughter] 0:02:33.5 AS: Did the cows ever go to a nearby church? 0:02:38.9 BB: No. 0:02:39.2 AS: To become holy. 0:02:40.1 BB: That's a good point? I don't... Yeah, how do those words tie together? I don't know. 0:02:43.4 AS: I don't know. 0:02:45.4 BB: I have to go find out who I got that from. So what I thought we'd talk about today is this, Start Where You Are, Start Where You Are. And first share where I... One context for that expression was the first time I saw Russ Ackoff speak, well, first where I met Russ. I had seen him speak before at a Deming conference, but I didn't get a chance to talk with him. But I saw him a few years later, and he was doing a one-day program in Los Angeles as part of a management series that he would do around the country. And there are about, I don't know, 150 people in the room, 25-30 from across Boeing sites in Southern California that I had invited. And at the end of the day, with about an hour to go, Russ says, okay, I'm going to give you a break. I'm going to give you time to formulate some questions and we'll spend the last hour discussing wherever you want to go. Well, I took the time to go up to Russ and ask him a couple of questions. I had met him earlier in the day. He knew that most people in the audience were there from across Boeing and that I had arranged them. 0:04:06.3 BB: And so I had a chance to talk with him. So I went up and said, I said I've got two questions for you that are not relevant to the audience, but I'd like to ask you one-on-one. He said, sure, go ahead. Well, no, I said knowing that you've known Dr. Deming for, since the early '50s, I said, over that period of time, what do you think he would say he learned from you that would stand out? And vice versa, what did you learn from him over those years...

What's the difference between education and training? Why is the distinction important? How does the Deming lens offer a new perspective on teacher effectiveness? In this episode, John Dues and host Andrew Stotz talk about why it's important to go beyond skills training and encourage education for personal growth. TRANSCRIPT 0:00:00.0 Andrew Stotz: Here we go. 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. This is episode 19 and we're continuing our discussion about the shift from management myths to principles for the transformation of school systems. John, take it away. 0:00:31.2 John Dues: Andrew, good to be back. Yeah, principle 13 today, Institute a Vigorous Program of Education. I'll just start by reading the Principle, "Institute a vigorous program of education and encourage self-improvement for everyone. The school system needs not just good people, but people that are improving with education. Advances in teaching and learning processes will have their roots in knowledge." It's interesting, when I was reading about sort of this particular principle, Dr. Deming took this actually pretty far when he was asked where would you draw the line? And he basically said, I would allow any educational pursuits that people are interested in. So that was his sort of take on this particular principle. But I think it's maybe the first thing is to differentiate between training and education. When he was talking about those things, we talked about instituting training on the job back when we talked about principle six, and he basically said the training is for a skill and a skill is something that's finite because it ends when performance has reached a stable state for a person when thinking about that particular skill. 0:01:51.3 JD: The differentiator with Principle 13 is that it's focused on education and it's meant for growth. And in the Deming philosophy, this is sort of a never ending process of education. So skills, so training is focused on skills, whereas education is focused on knowledge and theory. And this is really an important distinction in my mind, and you need both, training and education are complimentary components I think of an effective school system or really an effective organization in general. So I think, I mean, obviously training is important. It's something that's necessary, especially when you come into a new job. We have lots of new teachers that come to us 'cause we're a relatively young organization. And it's pretty typical for these new teachers to come even if they majored in education many times, they don't have sort of the basic classroom management skills, the basic lesson planning skills, the basic lesson delivery skills that they need to be successful in the classroom. 0:03:00.9 JD: So we have a training program, and in the absence of that training program the teachers would probably flounder or it would take a lot longer time to get their legs under them. So training is important, but we have to sort of shorten that runway. So we have to be good at training 'cause we're like a relatively young organization and we have students that come to us on average that are below grade level. And so they can't wait a long time for these sort of teachers to get up to speed. And I think we've talked about the fact that we have this sort of three week training program before the school year starts for new teachers for that reason. And so training is obviously important, very important. But I think what I've sort of come to appreciate is this idea of... And Deming stressed this, that leaders, systems leaders understand this idea of a stable system. 0:04:00.7 JD: One of the things that he said was that "The performance of anyone that can learn a skill...

How do grading systems, teacher ratings, school rankings, and other programs like those create barriers to learning? Should we eliminate them entirely, or do they have their place? John Dues and host Andrew Stotz talk about how to preserve joy in learning. TRANSCRIPT 0:00:02.4 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 John Dues, who is part of the new generation of educators striving to apply Dr. Deming's principles to unleash student joy in learning. This is episode 18, and we're continuing our discussion about the shift from management myths to principles for the transformation of school systems. John, take it away. 0:00:31.3 John Dues: Good to be back, Andrew. In this episode, we're doing the 12th principle. So we're on 12 of 14, remove barriers to joy in work and learning. So that's a certainly a concept that we've talked about, but I'll start by just reading the principle. "Principle 12, remove barriers that rob educators and students of their right to joy in work and learning. This means working to abolish the system of grading student performance, the annual rating of staff and accountability rating systems for schools and school systems. The responsibility of all educational leaders must change from sheer numbers to quality." There's two really great quotes I like from Deming. One on joy in learning where he says, "Our schools must preserve and nurture the yearning for learning that everyone is born with. Joy in learning comes not so much from what is learned, but from learning." 0:01:24.4 JD: And then for joy in work, he says, "Joy in the job comes not so much from the result, the product, but from contribution to optimization of the system in which everybody wins." So he is saying basically the same thing in those two quotes, but he is talking about the contributions to the process is where the joy comes from, not necessarily the outcome. And so much of the time, we're focused on the outcome, be it the work product in a work setting or the test scores perhaps in a, in a school setting. But he's really talking about what is that process that you're contributing to? And, and you know, how do you feel because of that, those contributions you're making? I think whether you're talking about joy in work or joy in learning, sort of unifying theme in principle 12 as it's, this concern with the pride of workmanship, whether that's the workmanship of making a product or in the learning that you're doing or something you're doing as a result of that learning, like a report or a poem that you've written or whatever. 0:02:31.6 JD: And so I think as a result, it's barriers that get in the way of joy in work and learning. And you know, maybe one of the most important obstacles to improvement of the quality of our education systems in the United States. And you know, just like, sort of, it says in the outline of the principle, there's really sort of three levels that these barriers exist at. You got the students and the grading of students. And then you have oftentimes some type of rating system, evaluation system for teachers, for principals, perhaps sometimes those rating systems use test scores or other similar metrics. And then that third level is, you have the actual schools or school districts themselves that are being rated within these state accountability systems. So you sort of have, you know, these three levels. And then there's this common problem at all three levels, regardless of which one. And that's basically this thing that we've talked about repeatedly, where you under-appreciate the contribution of the system to the performance of the people, whether you're talking about students, teachers or, or you know, school systems. So I thought that's where we could focus today. 0:03:49.8 AS: Yeah, you know it strikes right at the heart of everything that we believe, as particularly...

Many businesses equate "manager" with "leader," excluding potential leaders from across the organization. In this episode, Bill Bellows and host Andrew Stotz talk about leadership in Deming organizations - with a great story about senior "leaders" making a huge error in judgment at a conference of auditors. TRANSCRIPT 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 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, episode number 14, is Beyond Management by Extremes. Bill, take it away. 0:00:29.7 Bill: Number 14 already, Andrew. 0:00:32.0 AS: Incredible. 0:00:32.6 Bill: It's a good thing we skipped number 13. That's an unlucky number. [laughter] 0:00:37.0 AS: Not in Thailand. It's a lucky number. [laughter] 0:00:40.6 Bill: No, we didn't skip number 13. This is 14. 0:00:42.1 AS: Yes, we didn't. 0:00:43.5 Bill: Alright, so I just enjoy going back and listening to all of our podcasts, once, twice, three times. And then I talk with friends who are listening to them. And so I'd like to start off with some opening comments and then we'll get into tonight's feature, today's feature. 0:01:00.9 AS: So let's just, to refresh people's memory, episode 13, which we just previously did, was Integration Excellence, part two. 0:01:09.2 Bill: Yes. And that's what we called it. [laughter] So... [laughter] So last week I... When we thought about getting together, but I had the wrong time, and it worked out well in my schedule. Last week, Andrew, I did three presentations. A two-hour lecture for Cal State Northridge, which is part of a master's degree program, where I do a class in quality management. That was Tuesday night. Wednesday morning I did a one-hour presentation with one hour of conversation afterwards with the Chartered Quality Institute, which is kind of like the American Society for Quality in the UK, and this... So this was several hundred people from the UK and also the Caribbean chapter from Trinidad Tobago, Jamaica. And so there's a bunch there. And then on Thursday morning I did a three hour session for a group in Rotterdam, which was really early for me and late afternoon for them. 0:02:25.4 Bill: And in all three, I covered similar material for all three groups, which included the trip report that we've done on the ME Versus WE, how did you do on the exam? How did we do? And so it was really neat to present that to the three. And in each case, when I threw out the question, "how did you do on the exam?" And then explained as I did one of our earlier podcasts that if you've got a long list of inputs, which includes - the woman I was talking to and, 'cause I said to her, the question is how did you draw on the exam? What are the inputs? And she said, the inputs are, my energy, my enthusiasm, my commitment that she got stuck. And I said, have other students helped you? And she said, yes, other students have helped you. I said, that's another input. 0:03:17.3 Bill: I said, given that input, how many can you see? And she said, oh my gosh. She said, my professor, my parents, my brother. And then all of a sudden there was this long list of inputs that she couldn't see. And so I explained that to the people and then say, "if you've got that long list of inputs and the original question is, how did you do on the exam? Does that long list of inputs change the question or are you okay with that question?" And what I look for is, and what we've talked about is, does the whole idea, how did we do on the exam jump out at you? No, it doesn't jump out. So, in each case, I said, here's the situation, might you reframe the question? And in all three situations, most of them that I asked said, there's essentially nothing wrong with the...

Who wins when teams and team members compete with each other? In this final episode in the Role of a Manager in Education series, David Langford and Andrew Stotz discuss why cooperation beats competition, particularly in schools. 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'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 we continue our discussion of Dr. Deming's 14 items that he discusses in The New Economics about the role of a manager of people after transformation. And we're talking about the 14th of these different 14 items. And this one I want to read out, it is, "He understands the benefits of cooperation and the losses from competition between people and between groups." We decided to title this one: "Do you think you're winning from competition?" David, take it away. 0:00:53.7 David Langford: That sounds great. Great. It's good to be back again, Andrew. 0:01:00.4 AS: Yeah. 0:01:00.6 DL: Yeah. This is a great point, and it really is the basis for Deming's philosophy about everything that he brought to management and it got people to think differently. When I would give seminars with educators around the world and stuff, and we'd start talking about the differences between competition and cooperation, I'd often get people speaking very strongly that, "Competition is the way the world works and you have to have competition to get people to do stuff. And sports teams are always competing." And when you start to think about it, sports teams that, that usually have a sole focus of just beating the, the other team, generally don't have multi-year winning streaks, [chuckle] because you're not building a program, you're not building a whole philosophy, a whole basis to how you do things. 0:02:06.0 DL: And I've made it a point to really listen to all kinds of interviews with coaches over time. And one common theme I usually hear over and over and over from really good teams is they'll talk about the next game that they're playing. They don't talk so much about, "We're gonna beat these people." They talk about, "This will be a really good test for us." Or they'll say something about, "We're probably gonna really learn a lot this weekend [chuckle] at this game." Well, to me, those are really good coaches because they're lowering the fear level, they're lowering the anxiety. And the better we... The irony of this statement, this point number 14, is the better you cooperate, the better you compete. [chuckle] 0:03:04.0 DL: And when you're not doing that, you potentially could just go down in flames. And the same thing happens in a classroom. If you set up a classroom so everybody's competing against each other, or what Deming called the artificial scarcity of top marks, you'll end up with a whole bunch of people that are just basically at each other's throats, not cooperating, not getting along. You'll have all kinds of discipline problems and behavior problems and things that are going on in classrooms like that because it's all just set up on a competition level. So grading on a curve is a scarcity, artificial scarcity of top marks. So if there can only be three top marks or three A's or whatever it might be in this class, and people that are actually struggling in the class and actually trying to learn, they're gonna quickly learn, "There's no point in me actually trying because there's no way I'm ever going to get to that point. There's only gonna be three people that are gonna get the A." 0:04:14.2 DL: And that's the biggest thing about this, is getting to the point where you're understanding the losses of setting up artificial competition for, whether it be grades or points on a soccer field, or whatever it might be. Deming often used the analogy of the...

What are unhurried conversations, and why should managers prioritize them? In this episode, David Langford and host Andrew Stotz talk about the kinds of conversations managers should be having with their team members. 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'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, we continue our discussion of Dr. Deming's 14 items that he discusses in The New Economics about the role of a manager of people after transformation. In the third edition, that's page 86. And in the second edition, that's page 125. So we are talking about item number 13, and in that point, I wanna read it to you. It says, "Number 13, he will hold an informal unhurried conversation with every one of his people at least once a year, not for judgment, merely to listen. The purpose would be development of understanding of his people, their aims, hopes and fears. The meeting will be spontaneous, not planned ahead." We're calling today's conversation the unhurried conversation. David, take it away. 0:01:17.5 David Langford: Thank you, Andrew. It's good to be back again. So always fun to discuss these points and talk about the depth of what it means and how to work through that. So once again, this all sounds really simple. You know, hey, just have this unhurried conversation with people at least once a year. When I talked to Dr. Deming about this years ago, he was recommending more like once a quarter, if you can do that, to work that through. But what are we really talking about? So in this world of managing with data and KPIs, key performance indicators and, you know, holding people's feet to the fire and really making them toe the line and all that kinda stuff, Deming is sort of just pretty much kind of the opposite. Those things all have their place and time, but that's not the kind of conversation that he's hinting at here or he's talking about here. 0:02:24.4 DL: I find it really interesting that he says, you know, it shouldn't be... The meeting will be spontaneous and not planned ahead. And so what he's getting at is that you're not, you're now coming in with an agenda for what you wanna hear from somebody. And on the opposite side, as an employee or somebody that you're working with, they're not prepared with some kind of an agenda where they're telling you what they think they... Where they're telling you what they think you want to hear, kind of thing. And I think that's what he is talking about why it needs to be spontaneous. He also goes deeper and he talks about, you know, find out people's aims and hopes and their fears and what's happening. And I was just thinking about that movie The Intern where the guy is hired in the company and he is 80 years old, and so they're doing the interview with him. And this young kid asked him the question, where do you see yourself in five years? I think, he looks at it and says, "You mean when I'm 85?" So, different... 0:03:47.4 AS: Dead. 0:03:48.1 DL: Yeah. Different points of life, different ways to think about it. So yeah. But he's just talking about, hey, just set up a time, be spontaneous, come in, sit down with somebody, and just not necessarily talking about business. Right? What are your hopes and fears and where do you see us going? And do you think we're on the right track? And... 0:04:13.2 AS: I'm curious, why do you think that... I mean, in some ways it seems like such an obvious thing. Why do you think he even needed to say this? 0:04:18.7 DL: Because it's not happening and it's even even worse today, I think, than in Deming's time in the 1990s when all this, all the computer technology, KPIs, all that stuff was just coming into being. Well, nowadays, it's sort of just a way of life to have...

Quotas, arbitrary targets, work standards with numerical goals - these don't seem to apply to schools. But, as John Dues and host Andrew Stotz discuss, quotas show up a lot in classrooms, causing harm and preventing improvement. 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 John Dues, who is part of the new generation of educators striving to apply Dr. Deming's principles to unleash student joy in learning. This is episode 17, and we are continuing our discussion about the shift from management myths to principles for the transformation of school systems. John, take it away. 0:00:34.3 John Dues: It's good to be back, Andrew. Yeah we've been working our way through these 14 Principles for Systems Transformation. Last week or last episode we did eliminate slogans and exhortations. And so we're on to principle 11, which is Eliminate Arbitrary Numerical Targets. So I'll start with the overview. So principle 11, eliminate arbitrary numerical targets in the form of work standards that prescribe quotas for teachers and numerical roles for people in management, substitute leadership in order to achieve continual improvement of quality and productivity. And the first thing I wanted to start with was just this really powerful Deming quote on quotas. In Out of the Crisis, he said, "A quota is a fortress against improvement of quality and productivity totally incompatible with never-ending improvement." I just love that quote because it's just such a forceful pushback in the other direction. It's a fortress against improvement. There's really no gray area there in that quote. 0:01:43.0 AS: It's not a fort, it's not a barrier, it is a fortress. 0:01:48.2 JD: Fortress. It kind of brings together a mental image in your mind when you hear fortress, a fortress against quality, a fortress against improvement. So why did he say that? One of the things that's interesting is, especially thinking about work standards that prescribe some type of quota for teachers, it's like, well, when you think of a quota, you typically think of a worker and some type of production facility. And that, of course, is largely what Deming was talking about with his Point 11 'cause he was doing a lot of work in manufacturing and that type of setting. However it does, like all of this stuff, it translates into education. And, you know, so that's why I decided to keep Principle 11 'cause it does show up in different ways in the classroom setting. And I think examples are really good because when I initially read this quote and I was thinking, well, how do quotas show up in a classroom setting? 0:02:40.5 JD: And I thought of one that really stood out from when I was a principal here at one of our middle schools here in Columbus, at United Schools Network. We, we had this quota of sorts for homework. So in the middle school where I was, teachers had to assign homework nightly in their classes to students. And they had to grade two to three of those assignments a week and then return the graded assignments to students within 24 hours. And as I stopped and read this particular principle, and I thought about how it applied to my time as a principal, I really learned that that was the wrong approach. And as you start to think about that and reflect on it, you start to think about why Deming said quotas are a fortress against improvement. And there's this... 0:03:31.5 AS: And before you go... Before you go on, I just wanna highlight how normal that sounds. 0:03:38.4 JD: Very normal. Yeah. Very normal. 0:03:39.8 AS: And anybody here, like the first thing I'm gonna do or the first thing I do when I take over as principal is I'm gonna require that there's a minimum amount of this, and it has to be da, da, da, da, da. And it just seems like it is the responsible thing to do as a manager. 0:03:56.4 JD: Yeah....

Should we strive to better understand what happens "downstream" to our defect-free work? No matter the setting, if our work meets requirements and we pass it on, are we responsible for how well it integrates into a bigger system? In this episode, Bill Bellows and Andrew Stotz expand on the interaction between variation and systems and why Dr. Deming regarded Genichi Taguchi’s Quality Loss Function as “a better description of the world.” 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 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, in episode 13, Integration Excellence, part two. Bill, take it away. 0:00:31.4 Bill Bellows: Thank you, Andrew. Always a pleasure to connect with you. Alright. 0:00:40.1 AS: Mine too. 0:00:40.1 BB: [laughter] In episode 12, I thought it was great. We shared perspectives on the human side of integration, what it means to be connected, to be synchronous, to feel included, to feel connected, to feel included or connected when something good happens where you're like, well, I was part of that, or to feel separated is when something bad happens. And, we somehow have the ability to not feel associated with that. I pass the puck to you and you hit the slapshot, it goes into the stands, off the goalkeeper. Y'know, girl gets hit in the head and you feel bad, but I go home and I can sleep. And so why is that? And so anyway, but I thought, and listening to it, and I thought it was a lot of fun to look at the human side of feeling connected or feeling separated. And what I wanted to get into tonight, and perhaps in another episode as well, is the physical side of connections. 0:01:46.5 BB: One thing I wanted, and I got a couple anecdotes. I had a woman in class at Rocketdyne years ago, and she said, "Bill, in our organization, we have compassion for one another." And I said, "Compassion is not enough." And, and so you, Andrew, could be in final assembly at this Ford plant, where you're banging things together with a rubber mallet 'cause they're not quite snap fit, and you're banging them together. I mean they all meet print perhaps, but where they are within the requirements is all over the place, and you're having to bring them together. That's called integration. And so when this woman said, in our organization we have compassion for one another, I said, well, that's like me saying, "Andrew, I feel really bad that you're, I can't believe, Andrew go home. You can bang that together tomorrow. You've been banging it together all day." And what I said to her is that "compassion is not enough." 0:02:54.7 BB: When I feel connected to what you're doing, when I begin to understand that the parts you're banging together meet requirements, but how they meet requirements is causing you the issue. Now, the compassion plus my sense of connection, now we're talking. But short of that, what I think is we have organizations where as she would say, we might feel bad for others. And it means I hear about your injuries and your ergonomic training because of all this, but I don't, until I feel associated with that, I just feel bad. But feeling bad is not enough. But I like that, that sentiment. But what I wanna look at tonight is a greater sense of Dr. Taguchi's so called Loss Function and look at more why we should feel more connected to what's happening downstream. So I wanted to throw that out. [chuckle] On the topic of variation, I just started a new cohort with Cal State Northridge University. And this is my, fifth year in the program doing an eight week class in, seminar in quality management. And the cohort model is, anywhere between two dozen and 30 some students that start, the ones I'm getting started a year...

Slogans and exhortations don't work to motivate people. Targets usually encourage manipulation or cheating. John Dues and Andrew Stotz discuss how these three strategies can hinder improvement, frustrate teachers and students, and even cause nationwide scandals. TRANSCRIPT 0:00:02.4 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 John Dues, who is part of the new generation of educators striving to apply Dr. Deming's principles to unleash student joy in learning. This is episode 16, and we're continuing our discussion about the shift from management myths to principles for the transformation of school systems. And today we're gonna be talking about principle 10 "eliminates slogans, exhortations, and targets." John, take it away. 0:00:37.1 John Dues: Good to be back, Andrew. Yeah, we've been talking about these 14 principles for educational systems transformation for a number of episodes now. I think one, one important thing to point out, and I think we've mentioned this multiple times now, but really the aim in terms of what we're hoping the listeners get out of hearing about all these principles is really about how they all work together, as a system themselves. So, we started with create constancy of purpose. We've talked about a number of other things, like work continually on the system, adopt and institute leadership, drive out fear. Last time we talked about break down barriers. We're gonna talk about eliminating slogans and targets this time, which is principle 10. But really, as you start to listen to 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, and now 10, what should start to become clear is how all of these things work together. 0:01:34.5 JD: If you are operating as a leader, for example, within sort of the Deming philosophy, one of the things you are gonna do is eliminate these slogans. So all these principles shouldn't be studied in isolation. We study them together, see how they all work together. But let me just start by just reading principle 10 so you have the full picture. So principle 10 is "eliminate slogans, exhortations and targets for educators and students that ask for perfect performance and new levels of productivity. Such exhortations only create adversarial relationships as the bulk of the causes of low quality and low productivity belong to the system, and thus lie beyond the power of teachers and students." So really what we're talking about is, what's wrong with slogans, exhortations and targets for educators and students, because these things are, pervasive, I think. 0:02:29.5 JD: We've seen them, we've seen the posters on the walls with the various slogans. And, of course targets are everywhere in our educational systems. In my mind the main problem is that they're directed at the wrong people. The basic premise is that teachers and students could sort of simply put in more effort, and in doing so, they could improve quality productivity, anything else that's desirable in our education systems. But the main thing is that, that doesn't take into account that most of the trouble we see within our schools are actually coming from the system. And I think we've talked about this quote is probably one of Deming's most well-known quotes, but he said, "Most troubles and most possibilities for improvement add up to proportion, something like this, 94% belong to the system, which is the responsibility of management, 6% is special." And that's more like, can be sort of tagged or pinned to individual students or individual educators working within the system. So I think that's a really important thing to revisit 'cause it sort of is at the heart of all of these, all of these principles. 0:03:47.7 AS: It's interesting, like, maybe you could give some examples of what type of, slogans or targets or exhortations that you've seen, in your career and what's going on in education these...

What does it mean that people feel connected and included when something good happens yet dissociate when something bad happens? In this episode, Bill Bellows and Andrew Stotz discuss the human side of integration. 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'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, in today's episode, number 12, is Integration Excellence. Bill, take it away. 0:00:32.2 Bill Bellows: Thank you, Andrew. So before we talk about integration excellence, I wanted to throw out a couple thoughts. And listening to the podcast, I was reminded that when I share examples, there are times when I mention companies by name, and there's times I don't. And my hope is that people in those organizations don't feel offended. So what I found with students is, if I use the name, there's the risk of someone in the class having worked for that company who feels offended. If I don't use the name, then there's a sense that I'm making the stories up. [chuckle] So I just want to say I um... But there are... What I find is that most organizations are run with what Dr. Deming would refer to as a prevailing style of management, in which case examples such as replacing the cardstock paper with regular paper, and all organizations have those types of stuff. So I just want anyone to feel offended by that. 0:01:40.1 AS: Well, we can make an announcement. 0:01:43.3 BB: Go ahead. 0:01:45.3 AS: Remember those shows that we used to watch that says the names have been changed to protect... but here we're going to say the names have been changed to protect the guilty, [chuckle] not the innocent. 0:01:57.3 BB: Well, there are some stories, I can't share the names for a number of reasons, but they're all the same. Anyway, next thing I wanted to share is, again, on a recurring theme, we talked in the past about red pen companies and blue pen companies, or me and we, or last straw and all straw. And I was recently in... I was in the Netherlands last week doing a class live session for a group that I'm just starting to work with, and we did a physical simulation, a live experiential thing that built upon all the ideas we're talking about here. And I had the group do the trip report, looking at blue pen companies and red pen companies, or however you want to look at the contrast. 0:03:00.1 BB: And we talked about what are the hallway conversations in both organizations? And another was, what are the survival skills in both organizations? And the fairly straightforward survival skills in a last straw organizations are, be really good at shifting blame, be really good at hiding errors, hoarding information is power. And I look at, what are survival skills in a blue pen company or an all straw organization? That's sharing knowledge as power as opposed to hoarding it, it's sharing it. And so we got into those, all those, the usuals. And then I said to them, "Okay, so imagine we are, here we are in a last straw organization, I'm the president of the company and we're in a Friday afternoon staff meeting. 0:03:56.7 BB: And because it's a last straw organization, that means you work for me." I said, "If it was an all straw organization, you would work, and people always say with,": I said, exactly, it's with versus for, but it's a last straw organization. So you work for me. I walk in to the end of the week staff meeting. I apologize for running late. And then I turned to you and say, "I just got off the phone with a customer. I need to know who's responsible for last week's shipment." And then I turned to you, Andrew, and I say, "Andrew, was it you?" And you say, "No, it was Joe." [chuckle] And then I go to Joe and I say, "Joe, according to...