I’m not feeling optimistic about the U.S. If there was ever a time for a U.S. turnaround, it’s 2025.
The bed rock of Deming’s method is respect for all the participants; the hot-shot CEO and the assistant janitor both contribute equally to the success of the enterprise. If everyone today took Deming to heart, the decade would turnaround in an instant.
Boeing, a company I respected, even idolized, forty years ago is in shambles. 3M, another company I once admired, is accused of foisting forever-chemicals on us, and now we’re supposed to get rid of our black plastic kitchen utensils because they are poisoning us.
We’re about to inaugurate a president who claims to be a business genius but went bankrupt running New Jersey casinos. He’s such a blunderer at moral corruption, the usual play ground of political types, he’s a convicted felon. Not my idea of success.
This week, I decided it was time to go to the all-time turnaround king, W. Edwards Deming, for advice.
About fifteen years ago, I wrote a book on computing standards called Cloud Standards. I covered ISO/IEC 270001, which is a basis for most IT security plans. Cloud computing services, such as Amazon Web Services, request public audits of their compliance to ISO 270001 aiming to increase their customers’ confidence in their IT security practices. 270001, as do many IT governance schemes, relies heavily on W. Edwards Deming’s Plan-Do-Check-Act (PDCA) cycle.
Consequently, I became interested in W. Edwards Deming; I read a number of his books and studied his work. In the 1950s, Deming went to Japan to advise industrialists on running their companies while they struggled to recover from WWII. Within fifteen years, Japan went from a bombed out and defeated ruin to the thriving second largest economy on the planet. They attributed their success largely to Deming’s tutelage.
In the 1980s, Ford Motor Corporation had trailed behind General Motors in automobile sales and profitability since the halcyon days of Henry Ford and the Model T. Seeing the success of Honda, Toyota, and Nissan, they brought in Deming. Following his advice, FMC soon took the lead among U.S. automakers in competing against the onslaught of well-designed and precision-built Japanese automobiles.
Maybe it’s time to listen to Deming’s advice. He died in 1996, so we can’t talk to him, but he left behind several books and many papers.
Deming applied statistical analysis to manufacturing and management. You might expect his method to measure productivity precisely and design processes around time and motion studies of worker efficiency.
Deming rejected all of that. Instead, he recommended abolishing performance reviews. The originator of Total Quality Management looked on product inspections with disfavor.
His most popular work, Out Of the Crisis, was published in 1982. He wrote to address the crisis of American industry in the 1980s when Japan produced better cars at lower prices than Detroit and companies like Sony and Hitachi were innovating circles around the nascent Silicon Valley.
Out Of Crisis contains the kernels of his ideas. He demands that both workers and management have a through understanding of all aspects of their business and customers. He uses statistical analysis to distinguish errant processes from accidents. The job of both management and workers is to improve the process by iterating on the Plan-Do-Check-Act cycle for continuous improvement.
The bed rock of Deming’s method is respect for all the participants; the hot-shot CEO and the assistant janitor both contribute equally to the success of the enterprise. If everyone today took Deming to heart, the decade would turnaround in an instant.
I wish I could recommend Out Of the Crisis as a book, and I do, but with cautions. Deming’s style is his own. He’s preachy. He works from examples more often than explicit statement of principles and reasoned exposition. Keep in mind that Deming was not a crackpot. He sounds like one, but when businesses followed his advice, they consistently thrived. He was the most effective business consultant of the twentieth century.
He could turn around the twenty-first century. Read him and follow his advice.