Deming in 1980 LO5028

Jan Lelie (100730.1213@compuserve.com)
22 Jan 96 04:04:12 EST

Replying to LO5018 --

Hi John Paul,

You wrote:

> I'm not sure that I can draw a close relationship between his
(Demings) work and the work of the learning organization. Perhaps one of
his characteristics so pleasing to the worker is that he began to
dismantle the veil of fear between management and workers and invited
thoughtful participation of the workforce.

You hit a whole in one: from Deming i learned exactly the relationship you
described. Deming says to me: the essence of quality is cooperation and
nothing else. SPC (statistical process control), as i interpret it, can
start out as a way to fight symptoms, to reduce the errors by correcting
them. When this is done in a situation in which management tries to
control the learning (=improvement) process, nothing is learned, in the
end. Single loop learning, at the most. Workers and managers become
divided by a common tool. Deming, again as i feel it, highlights the
responsibility of management to create an environment in which everybody
can learn. So SPC has to become TQM (total quality management, also a
misnomer, does somebody know a better three letter abbreviation?), a way
to continuously develop skills and organizations. Double loop learning.
The worst blokkade in this venture, this path, is, in my experience, the
sense of loss of control managers feel, notably functional, classical,
middle-managers. This sense is easely translated into fear. Which can
trigger feelings of insecurity and fear with workers, who respond in ways
that re-inforce control driven standard procedures etc etc. You probably
can draw your causal map now. It takes leadership and vision (Seeing
quality before it appears!) to implement teamlearning and mental model
busting. So there you are.

While writing this: the same story has been told in other words on the
1995 Systems Thinking in Action Conference by H.T. Johnson and A. Broms:
Rich ends from simple means, which he repeated in The Systems Thinker
(nov. 1995): now titled: Management Accounting. Because accounting has
become tight up with management and costing, the real purpose of
accounting: enabling people to cooperate better has been lost. I have more
to say on this subject, but will do so at a later time.

See you,

--
Jan Lelie
100730.1213@compuserve.com

The wrong solution to the right problem is usually better then a right solution to the wrong problem.

Adapted from the contribution of H.T. Johnson and Ackoff.