Guest post by John Hunter, author of Management Matters: Building Enterprise Capability.
The new edition of The New Economics includes an introduction by Kevin Cahill (the Executive Director of The W. Edwards Deming Institute® and W. Edwards Deming’s grandson). This new 3rd Edition (published 25 years after the 1st edition) also includes a new chapter by Kelly Allan: “Why Deming? … Why Now More than Ever?”. A new edition of Out of the Crisis by W. Edwards Deming has also been published.
The chapters written by W. Edwards Deming remain as he wrote them so I won’t review any of that material in this post. You can use our Deming quotes website to view quotes from The New Economics.
Kelly Allan’s chapter shares experiences from organizations that have adopted Deming’s management ideas and offers guidance on how organizations can effectively use Deming’s ideas to improve.
The System of Profound Knowledge is a holistic system. Sure, you can improve aspects of your organization by picking the elements of the System of Profound Knowledge that appeal to you most. And doing so can be a good place to start. Yes, we encourage you – as soon as you can – to embark on the entire Deming Journey and avoid half-hearted efforts because they lead to less robust implementation – and thus less robust results.
This is a critical point that Kelly explores well in the new chapter and we have discussed in previous blog posts, including: How to Start Applying Deming’s Ideas on Management, Don’t Limit Improvements to Low Level Process Improvement, Transforming the Management System of an Organization and Thinking Required – Not Just a Recipe to Follow.
it is true that Deming said that you can just abolish the annual performance appraisal and things will improve. And he was correct. But he also recommended replacing those appraisals with mentoring, with making processes and systems visible, with learning and continual improvement.
As Kelly noted Deming provides a holistic management system. Dr. Deming understood the importance of focusing on the interactions between components of those system when managing organizations. Each action we chose to take or not take has direct affects and often many indirect affects (and those indirect affects can be very powerful over the long term).
Only by viewing the organization as a system and considering how decisions impact the entire system over the long term can we gain the most powerful advantages possible with Deming’s ideas. That is not a simple task but Deming’s System of Profound Knowledge includes practices that allow doing so effectively, such as using the PDSA cycle to experiment and learn as you seek to continually improve.
Tim Higgins and The W. Edwards Deming Institute® are offering The New Economics Study Sessions this Spring. This will consist of 9 One-Hour online sessions with facilitated discussion of the book led by Tim Higgins.
Related: Test your Knowledge of Out of the Crisis and The New Economics –
The Development of Deming’s Management System – The Essential Deming, a New Book on Dr. Deming’s Work – Deming’s Management Ideas Evolved Into the System of Profound Knowledge –
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