In Their Own Words

The Deming Institute
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Interviews with members of The Deming Institute community, including industry leaders, practitioners, educators, Deming family members and others who share their stories of transformation and success through the innovative management and quality theories of Dr. W. Edwards Deming.

  1. 2 FEB

    Fitness Matters: A Deming Success Story (Part 3)

    How do you design a team off-site that actually improves your organization? In this episode, Travis Timmons breaks down the mechanics of a Deming-styled off-site team meeting—from starting months early and setting a clear aim to using pre-work, fishbone diagrams, and PDSAs to drive real change. If you want a real-world example of how Deming leaders create focus, collaboration, and joy in work, this conversation is a practical place to start. TRANSCRIPT 0:00:02.3 Andrew Stotz: My name is Andrew Stotz and I'll be your host as we dive deeper into the teachings of Dr. W. Edwards Deming. Today I'm continuing my discussions with Travis Timmons, who is the founder and owner of Fitness Matters, an Ohio-based practice specializing in the integration of physical therapy and personalized wellness. For 13 years, he's built his business on Dr. Deming's teachings. His hope is simple; the more companies that bring joy to work through Deming's principles, the more likely his kids will one day work at one of those darn companies. Travis, how are you doing?   0:00:35.2 Travis Timmons: Hey, Andrew. Doing well, how are you?   0:00:37.1 Andrew Stotz: I'm really excited. We were just talking about the structure of today's discussion, and the topic for today is the mechanics of a Deming-styled offsite, which I... In today's session, we're going to be talking about the importance of starting early, setting an aim, figuring out and developing an agenda. Also homework, huh?   0:01:05.1 Travis Timmons: Right.   0:01:05.4 Andrew Stotz: Pre-work for attendees. I thought that's interesting as we were going through it. And then you talk about your activities, your outcomes and all of that. So why don't you get into it and walk us through the mechanics of a Deming-styled offsite. And by the way, one last thing. When we say Deming-styled, well, you're certainly getting a lot of support from a true Deming advocate, Kelly Allen, and your understanding of the teachings of Dr. Deming. And so you're doing your best to apply those things in this. Is it a perfect Deming offsite? Well, that's why we say Deming-styled offsite. Maybe the listener or the viewer would add in or subtract some things, but at least we've got the general structures. So why don't you take it away, Travis?   0:01:47.3 Travis Timmons: Yeah, no, happy to, Andrew. So yeah, we have our team offsite. It'll actually be 10 days from now. So from a big picture standpoint, one of the things I've learned is systems, process, organization, and none of that happens quickly. So every time we do an annual team offsite, it's about a three-month work-ahead process for myself and the leadership team. So we start a good three months before the meeting date just to start percolating on what do we need to talk about at this meeting? What's the aim? What do we want the outcome to be? And that doesn't happen with a week of preparation. So we've had to spend some time looking at our KPIs, where do we have an opportunity to have a positive impact on our system? So we have to study our current system, see where there might be opportunities for improvement, understand how do we want the team to engage with that. And for this year's offsite, our big aim... We have two aims for the offsite. One is to make the system visible. Everybody on the team. I've had some learnings through some newer leaders on our team that have been through the DemingNEXT and they've been on our team for a few years.   0:03:04.1 Travis Timmons: But they until going through the DemingNEXT, they didn't fully understand what system view meant. And that kind of hit me over the head like a ton of bricks. It's like, well, maybe that would be a good thing to spend part of our offsite making sure the entire team can visualize and see our organization as a system. And then the second aim from a mechanics, from a KPI standpoint, if you will, is we want to improve arrival rate for our visits. So basically, how many scheduled appointments show up is what we call arrival rate. To have a better impact on patient outcomes, joy in work for our team members, joy in the referral sources that send to us. So yeah, it was about a three-month process.   0:03:49.3 Andrew Stotz: And if I... Just curious, sometimes when I've done offsites or I've attended offsites, it's more general. Here you have a very specific thing, improve arrival rates. Why is it so specific and how do you come to that decision that this isn't going to be just an open discussion about things in our company?   0:04:14.4 Travis Timmons: Yeah. That's a great question. Some years they are a little more general. Like last year we spent quite a bit of time setting a new round of BHAGs, Big Hairy Audacious Goals. This year, looking at KPIs, looking at where the opportunities were to improve, where there were the most breakdowns and frustrations happening in our system that we were hearing consistently across our team. It's like, what's the one thing we can have an impact on that will, if we improve that, everything else will get better. And that was arrival rate. So then we started looking at, all right, how do we dissect that? How do we make it visible to the team so the entire team can work on it together? So that's how we came to that. And it's like, all right, this is a consistent issue. So if you do the control chart, it's like I can almost set my watch to what's arrival rate going to be every week. And until we change something in our system, that's going to be what's going to continue to happen and we need to have an impact on that this year. So that's how we came down to it. It's the one thing we can do that'll have the most impact positively across the entire organization.   0:05:23.1 Andrew Stotz: I often talk about a big company in Thailand that was a Deming-focused company for many, many years, and then a new CEO came in and he made it a different focus company. And the company struggled for years. Whether it's from that or not is a secondary item. But two weeks ago I was giving a lecture and a guy from that company, who is an older guy, was at the lecture. And afterwards we were talking and I said, "What's the difference between the prior guy and the new guy?" He said, "The prior guy set the direction and we all knew it. The new guy kind of has us set it or we go in a lot of different directions. It's not as clear." And so what I was thinking when you were talking about improve arrival rates, I was thinking, yeah, that's leadership. You've identified what you believe is the most critical element at this stage of the business right now, and there's a lot of knock-on effects of fixing that. Whereas if you went into that room and you say, "What's the biggest problem we have right now?"   0:06:35.6 Travis Timmons: Right.   0:06:36.3 Andrew Stotz: Yeah, you're going to get a long list, but as a leader you have to set the direction.   0:06:41.1 Travis Timmons: Yeah. Yeah, and with the leadership team as well. And yeah, where do we... The KPIs and the system, if you study it and look at the outputs through the Deming lenses, it becomes... It's not easy. You got to spend the work and have the tools in place and the discipline to track it all consistently so that you know what your true arrival rate is. I can get in... It's a whole probably different conversation, but tampering and all that kind of stuff. So we know what our data is because of how we've made very clear definitions on our arrival rate and how we don't tamper to get better numbers. But yeah, it's exciting. The team, as crazy as this might sound, we've done these for many years now, over a decade, and the team looks forward to them. And part of that is because we spend the time. I take this very seriously. If I'm going to ask people to come to a meeting for five hours, it better be good. And we better bring... We better have something we can work on as a team to come out of it. And if we don't, that's nobody's fault but mine. So that ownership of the system I take very seriously.   0:07:58.1 Andrew Stotz: A great song, by the way, by Led Zeppelin, Nobody's Fault But Mine. But I would also say that's why I think it's fascinating to continue to go through the structure that you've got, because I think it can guide all of us. So we've learned about starting three months early. I was also thinking about my Crock-Pot. I like to cook slow-cooking food and I put all these different tastes of an onion and a piece of meat, which doesn't really have taste in some ways. And I put them all in a pot and it's eight hours. And if I interrupt it at one hour, there's just, there's not much value there. It needs time to extract the tastes and also bring those tastes into each other until you end up at the end of eight hours. Like, whoa, that's amazing. So...   0:08:51.4 Travis Timmons: Right. Right. Yeah, as you're pointing to, that's kind of how the agenda evolves. So we have an aim of system visibility and arrival rate. Well, how do we put an agenda around that together? So myself, the leadership team, Kelly, we've been working back and forth quite a bit, several iterations of that. So that's part of why you need that three months. You work on it. That sounds great in your head. You put it on some PowerPoint slides and then you share it with folks and they're like, "I don't know really what you're trying to say there, Travis." So there's...   0:09:25.0 Andrew Stotz: It seems like an onion and a carrot.   0:09:27.0 Travis Timmons: Right. Right.   0:09:27.3 Andrew Stotz: But I don't get the taste of it.   0:09:29.6 Travis Timmons: Yeah, so it's just working through those iterations. So miniature, little PDSAs, if you will, of the agenda. But yeah, once we get it to a point where we feel like, okay, we know what we want to work on, then the next big thing becomes how do we get the team involved ahead of the meeting? Because if you... I found very clearly over the years, if the t

    33 min

  2. 26 JAN

    Where is Quality Really Made? An Insider's View of Deming's World

    In this episode, Bill Scherkenbach, one of W. Edwards Deming's closest protégés, and host Andrew Stotz discuss why leadership decisions shape outcomes far more than frontline effort. Bill draws on decades of firsthand experience with Deming and with businesses across industries. Through vivid stories and practical insights, the conversation challenges leaders and learners alike to rethink responsibility, decision-making, and what it truly takes to build lasting quality. Bill's powerpoint is available here. TRANSCRIPT 0:00:02.2 Andrew Stotz: My name is Andrew Stotz, and I'll be your host as we dive deeper into the teachings of Dr. W. Edwards Deming. Today, I'm continuing my discussions with Bill Scherkenbach, a dedicated protégé of Dr. Deming since 1972. Bill met with Dr. Deming more than a thousand times and later led statistical methods and process improvement at Ford and GM at Dr. Deming's recommendation. He authored the Deming Route to Quality and Productivity at Deming's behest and at 79, still champions his mentor's message: Learn, have fun, and make a difference. The discussion for today is, I think we're going to get an answer to this question. And the question is: Where is quality made? Bill, take it away.   0:00:44.9 Bill Scherkenbach: Where is quality made? I can hear the mellifluous doctor saying that. And the answer is: In the boardroom, not on the factory floor. And over and over again, he would say that it's the quality of the decisions that the management make that can far outweigh anything that happens on the shop floor. And when he would speak about that, he would first of all, because he was talking to the auto industry, he would talk about who's making carburetors anymore. "Nobody's making carburetors because it's all fuel injectors," he would say. And anyone who has been following this, another classic one is: Do you ever hear of a bank that failed? Do you think that failed because of mistakes in tellers' windows or calculations of interest? Heck no. But there are a whole bunch of other examples that are even more current, if you will. I mean, although this isn't that current, but Blockbuster had fantastic movies, a whole array of them, the highest quality resolutions, and they completely missed the transition to streaming. And Netflix and others took it completely away from them because of mistakes made in the boardroom. You got more recently Bed Bath & Beyond having a great product, a great inventory.   0:02:51.4 Bill Scherkenbach: But management took their eyes off of it and looked at, they were concerned about stock buybacks and completely lost the picture of what was happening. It was perfect. It was a great product, but it was a management decision. WeWork, another company supplying office places. It was great in COVID and in other areas, but through financial mismanagement, they also ended up going bust. And so there are, I mean, these are examples of failures, but as Dr. Deming also said, don't confuse success with success. If you think you're making good decisions, you got to ask yourself how much better could it have been if you tried something else. So, quality is made in the boardroom, not on the factory floor.   0:04:07.9 Andrew Stotz: I had an interesting encounter this week and I was teaching a class, and there was a guy that came up and talked to me about his company. His company was a Deming Prize from Japan winner. And that was maybe 20, 25 years ago. They won their first Deming Prize, and then subsidiaries within the company won it. So the actual overall company had won something like nine or 10 Deming Prizes over a couple decades. And the president became...   0:04:43.5 Bill Scherkenbach: What business are they in?   0:04:45.5 Andrew Stotz: Well, they're in...   0:04:47.0 Bill Scherkenbach: Of winning prizes?   0:04:48.7 Andrew Stotz: Yeah, I mean, they definitely, the CEO got the distinguished individual prize because he was so dedicated to the teachings of Dr. Deming. And he really, really expanded the business well, the business did well. A new CEO took over 15 years ago, 10 years ago, and took it in another direction. And right now the company is suffering losses and many other problems that they're facing. And I asked the guy without talking about Deming, I just asked him what was the difference between the prior CEO and the current one or the current regimes that have come in. And he said that the prior CEO, it was so clear what the direction was. Like, he set the direction and we all knew what we were doing. And I just thought now as you talk about, the quality is made at the boardroom, it just made me really think back to that conversation and that was what he noticed more than anything. Yeah well, we were really serious about keeping the factory clean or we used statistics or run charts, that was just what he said, I thought that was pretty interesting.   0:06:06.7 Bill Scherkenbach: Absolutely. And that reminds me of another comment that Dr. Deming was vehement about, and that was was the management turnover. Turnovers in boardrooms every 18 months or so, except maybe in family businesses. But that's based on the quality of decisions made in the boardroom. How fast do you want to turn over the CEOs and that C-suite? So it's going to go back to the quality is made in the boardroom.   0:06:50.0 Andrew Stotz: Yeah, and I think maybe it's a good chance for me to share the slide that you have. And let's maybe look at that graphic. Does that makes sense now?   0:07:00.9 Bill Scherkenbach: Sure, for sure.   0:07:02.2 Andrew Stotz: Let's do that. Let's do that. Hold on. All right.   0:07:15.8 Bill Scherkenbach: Okay, okay, okay. You can see on the top left, we'll start the story. I've got to give you a background. This was generated based on my series of inputs and prompts, but this was generated by Notebook LM and based on the information I put in, this is what they came up with.   0:07:48.6 Andrew Stotz: Interesting.   0:07:50.1 Bill Scherkenbach: Based on various information, which I think did a fairly decent job. In any event, we're going to talk about all of these areas, except maybe the one where it says principles for active leadership, because that was the subject of a couple of our vlogs a while ago, and that is the three foundational obligations. And so the thing is that quality, even though Dr. Deming said it was made in the boardroom, one of the problems is that management did not know what questions to ask, and they would go, and Dr. Deming railed against MBWA, management by walking around, primarily because management hadn't made the transition to really take on board what Dr. Deming was talking about in profound knowledge. And that is, as you've mentioned, setting that vision, continually improving around it, and pretty much absolutely essential was to reduce fear within the organization.   0:09:25.9 Bill Scherkenbach: And so management by walking around without profound knowledge, which we've covered in previous talks, only gets you dog and pony shows. And with the fear in the organization, you're going to be carefully guided throughout a wonderful story. I mentioned I was in Disney with some of my granddaughters over the holidays, and they tell a wonderful story, but you don't ever see what's behind the scenery. And management never gets the chance because they really haven't had the opportunity to attain profound knowledge. So that's one of the things. I want to back up a little bit because Dr. Deming would... When Dr. Deming said quality is made at the top, he only agreed to help companies where the top management invited him, he wasn't out there marketing. If they invited him to come in, he would first meet with them and they had to convince him they were serious about participating, if not leading their improvement. And given that, that litmus test, he then agreed to work with them. Very few companies did he agree to on that. And again as we said, the quality of the decisions and questions and passion that determine the successfulness of the company. And so.   0:11:40.0 Andrew Stotz: It made me think about that letter you shared that he was saying about that there was, I think it was within the government and government department that just wasn't ready for change and so he wasn't going to work with it. I'm just curious, like what do you think was his... How did he make that judgment?   0:12:00.0 Bill Scherkenbach: Well, it wasn't high enough. And again, I don't know how high you'd have to go in there. But quite honestly, what we spoke about privately was in politics and in the federal government, at least in the US, things change every four years. And so you have management turnover. And so what one manager, as you described, one CEO is in there and another one comes in and wants to do it their way, they're singing Frank Sinatra's My Way. But that's life….   0:12:49.3 Andrew Stotz: Another great song.   0:12:50.7 Bill Scherkenbach: Another, yes.   0:12:52.1 Andrew Stotz: And it's not like he was an amateur with the government.   0:12:57.5 Bill Scherkenbach: No.   0:13:00.3 Andrew Stotz: He had a lot of experience from a young age, really working closely with the government. Do you think that he saw there was some areas that were worth working or did he just kind of say it's just not worth the effort there or what was his conclusions as he got older?   0:13:16.9 Bill Scherkenbach: Well, as he got older, it might, it was the turnover in management. When he worked for Agriculture, although agriculture is political, and he worked for Census Bureau back when he worked there, it wasn't that political, it's very political now. But there was more a chance for constancy and more of a, their aim was to do the best survey or census that they could do. And so the focus was on setting up systems that would deliver that. But that's what his work with the government was prior to wh

    55 min

  3. 19 JAN

    Fitness Matters: A Deming Success Story (Part 2)

    What happens when an entire company learns to see its work as a system? In this episode, Travis Timmons reveals how his team uses Deming-inspired pre-work, collaboration, and the Red Bead Experiment to make their offsite energizing and impactful. It's a practical, engaging look at how clarity and shared purpose can transform improvement efforts and build a happy workplace. TRANSCRIPT 0:00:02.2 Andrew Stotz: My name is Andrew Stotz and I'll be your host as we dive deeper into the teachings of Dr. W. Edwards Deming. Today I'm continuing my discussion with Travis Timmons, who is the founder and owner of Fitness Matters, an Ohio-based practice specializing in the integration of physical therapy and personalized wellness. For 13 years he's built his business on Dr. Deming's teachings. His hope is simple. The more companies that bring joy to work through Deming's principles, the more likely his kids will one day work at one. The topic for today is bringing systems thinking to your next team off-site. Travis, take it away.   0:00:41.5 Travis Timmons: Hey Andrew, great to be with you again. And, yeah, looking forward to sharing a little bit about how we're preparing for our next annual team meeting. And focus for this meeting is going to be, well, a little back story, we had three of our newer leadership members attend some Deming learning, some Deming education. And the biggest comeback, the biggest aha moment they had was they now better understood what I meant by the system view and systems thinking, which got me thinking, boy, it would be great if more of our team fully understood what the system meant, how to visualize it, and then how that further dives into the Deming System of Profound Knowledge. So that's what we've been working on. Our offsite is January 30th, so about a month away. We're about six weeks into preparation for that, kind of going back and forth on what needs to be in there. And the biggest thing, the first exercise, they're going to have homework to do coming into the meeting. We're going to have them kind of diagram what they think the system is. What is the Fitness Matters system? And we're going to prime them a little bit.   0:01:51.7 Travis Timmons: We're going to be doing it via a fishbone chart is the method we've decided to do that with. So, yeah, very excited about that. And it's a great way to get the team working on the work together and making sure they have an appreciation, as Dr. Deming would say, an appreciation for the system. And if you don't know what the system means, it's hard to appreciate it. So, trying to make more team members understand that.   0:02:14.7 Andrew Stotz: And what you're describing, I think is like pre-work that you're asking them to do?   0:02:21.1 Travis Timmons: Yes, yeah. So we'll have we've been spending the last few weeks on making sure we get the right questions in there because we want them to come in prepared but not feel like it's overwhelming or not feel like it's too heavy, if you will. But we want them to do the work so that they can come in and we can dive deeper once we get into some of the teachings and making the visible system of what everything looks like for them. So, that's kind of what we're working on.   0:02:49.1 Andrew Stotz: Did you guide them on, "Here's a fishbone chart, here's how to use it," and then, "Here's the system"? Or do you want them to just understand the fishbone chart and how to use it, and then, "Okay, don't talk to anybody else, you come up with what your vision of the system is"?   0:03:05.0 Travis Timmons: Yeah, so we have a total of seven locations. So what we are going to put in the homework is a one-page definition on what a fishbone is, how to use it and maybe pre-fill in a few of the primary bones, if you will.   0:03:20.3 Andrew Stotz: Yep.   0:03:20.8 Travis Timmons: Just to give them a primer. But we do hope they work together around the lunch tables and the break rooms, and the local leadership will be there to kind of guide them. Because that's where a lot of the collaboration and culture starts to happen and continues to build. So yeah, there'll be some learning about what is a fishbone, how to use it, because several have probably not used one before. And then we'll prime it a little bit, but then we want them to work on it, kind of kind of work, struggle a little bit to see, like, "All right, what's been invisible to me that happens behind the scenes, and it just happens." And make sure that then we can kind of dive deeper into when we say somebody has a good visit at Fitness Matters, how does that happen? And it's everything from first contact to insurance, to in the clinics, to how they pay their bill. So, just making sure that somebody understands what piece of the puzzle they play and then how it all works together. So we don't have silos, is one of the things we try to avoid, having silos within the organization.   0:04:25.8 Andrew Stotz: So, just so that the listener and viewer can implement what they're learning from you just to be clear. So, you're giving them the fishbone chart, teaching them about it, maybe filling in some of the main bones, as you said. And then just to be clear, you talked about them discussing things. Are you saying when you're working on your fishbone, talk to others about it and try to figure that out together?   0:04:51.7 Travis Timmons: Yeah.   0:04:52.5 Andrew Stotz: Okay.   0:04:52.6 Travis Timmons: Yeah, we want them collaborating and there's going to be people who wear different hats in our company. Some are physical therapists, some are Pilates instructors, some are client care coordinators, some are billing managers. So it'll be interesting to see what they bring to the table. And part of it is we don't want them to struggle. We want to kind of prime the pump, but we also want them to see the big picture. So that's why we're doing the fishbone methodology is so we can see it when we get to the actual team meeting. And then we're going to work with them on, then you can do fishbones of individual processes or individual pieces of the system.   0:05:33.1 Andrew Stotz: And, I mean, the reason why I'm asking this is because something like a system, for some people, they understand it, but for other people, they'll just get lost. And then what they bring to the meeting is not really some deep thinking on the topic, but, "Here's my best idea of what you meant."   0:05:50.1 Travis Timmons: Right. Right. Yeah, and we assume like some people may not have the opportunity based on how their schedule works to do much interaction and collaboration, others will have more. It'll be interesting to see what each location comes up with. Our hope is it's similar because we do spend time with the onboarding process talking about Dr. Deming, but we don't currently have a full fishbone diagram in our onboarding manual, for example. And that might change after this offsite. We might add that. You might find that that's a very good idea.   0:06:23.8 Andrew Stotz: Okay, so you got them working on their pre-work, which is the systems thinking, lay out your system in a fishbone chart. What's next?   0:06:35.0 Travis Timmons: So they'll have about two and a half weeks to work on that, heading up to the team offsite. And then we have a four and a half hour agenda for the team offsite. And first part of the phase is we're going to have them break out into groups, six groups. We have a total of 50 people there. So, six tables, and we're going to have each of them with posty notes. We're going to have the fishbone, like the bones there, and they're going to use posty notes to kind of fill in the system. That'll kind of be activity one. We're going to talk about what their learnings were from the homework, what were their aha moments or things they hadn't considered or complexities they didn't realize existed. Talk about that for about a half hour, 45 minutes. And then we're going to take a little break and come back and Kelly Allen's going to be there. He's going to walk our entire team through the red bead experiment, which is one of my favorite in-person Deming exercises. So we're going to go through the Red Bead experiment. And if people don't, that's probably too long of a conversation to explain what that is on this conversation, but opportunity there then to show where there are kind of defects in the system, if you will. So the big thing we're working on for this team offsite beyond system view is how do we improve arrival rate? So what arrival rate is in our industry is how many of our scheduled visits, whether it be for personal training, Pilates, physical therapy, how many of the scheduled visits show up? So a lot that goes into why do they show up? Are they scheduled appropriately? Do they understand their billing? Do they have a good experience? Is it easy to do the scheduling? So that's what's going to be our example of a red bead in the Red Bead experiment. So yeah, going to spend about an hour on the Red Bead experiment. And then myself and our director of operations are then going to, at the end of the red bead, when Kelly debriefs what we just saw happen and people feel the angst of people that, you know, put the paddle in and keep pulling out red beads, even though they were offered bonuses and they just can't quite do it. Talk about how that correlates to our system.   0:08:55.9 Travis Timmons: What are our red beads and what can we impact within the system to have a positive impact on less red beads in the system?   0:09:05.5 Andrew Stotz: And just to go back to one thing, you mentioned a total of 50 people. Is this a total, this is a total company offsite or a leadership team offsite?   0:09:13.5 Travis Timmons: It's going to be the entire company. So what we've found is, I think there's just so much value in everybody on the team understanding what's happening. They don't have to be an expert in all of it, bu

    30 min

  4. 12 JAN

    Fitness Matters: A Deming Success Story (Part 1)

    Travis Timmons shares with host Andrew Stotz how a decade of frustration running his physical therapy practice turned into joy once he discovered Deming's philosophy and embraced systems thinking. Through PDSA cycles, clearer processes, and genuine team involvement, he transformed Fitness Matters from chaotic growth to a scalable organization getting stellar outcomes. His story shows how small businesses can create stability, joy in work, and remarkable results by improving the system rather than pushing harder.   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 here with featured guest Travis Timmons. Travis, are you ready to tell us about your Deming journey?   0:00:19.7 Travis Timmons: Hey Andrew, thanks for having me. And yeah, very excited to share our journey and how impactful it's been on both our company, but also me personally and my family. So, super excited to kind of share where we started before Deming and where we're at today. So I'll just dive right in if that sounds like a good...   0:00:39.9 Andrew Stotz: Yeah. And I think just for the audience here, I'll just mention that Travis is physical therapist, founder and president of Fitness Matters in Columbus, Ohio, going on his 27th year of business. And you know, you and I have had some discussions. You've had a lot of great things that you've written and we've gone through and I think it's really an exciting story, particularly for a small mid sized business owner who's just frustrated as hell that things aren't going the way that they want. And I think your frustration a long time ago was a driving force. So I'm excited for you to share your story. So yeah, take it away.   0:01:22.6 Travis Timmons: Yeah, very excited. Yeah, 2000 is when we started, January 2000. So coming up on 27 years, as you mentioned, do physical therapy and wellness. And the first 10 years I was in business, pretty good at being a physical therapist. Started my own business and had no idea how to run a business. I knew a lot about physical therapy, but just kind of shooting from the hip in regard to business. Spent about a decade struggling, frustrated. We were growing, but growing slowly, growing chaotically. No process, it was just a, it was a heavy burden, to be honest with you. We were growing, but it was kind of Herculean effort on my part.   0:02:10.1 Andrew Stotz: I'm just curious how you were feeling at that time. Like there's gotta be a better way or this is the way business is and I just gotta muscle through this or how were you feeling at the time?   0:02:21.0 Travis Timmons: I was feeling frustrated and isolated. Didn't quite know where to turn. Yeah, I guess that's how, and just a burden. Didn't want to let the team down, I did not want the business to fail. I knew we had something different to offer. Just really had no idea how to scale that in a professional way. And along the journey was very fortunate to have a client who had a very successful business, took me under his wing. Ray Crook is his name. Started mentoring me and as luck would have it, he was familiar with Dr. Deming and a very long story short, after several meetings with him over time, some mentoring, I'd read the book along the way, the E-Myth Revisited and had some learnings from that book that really jumped out at me and came to the conclusion, both with reading that book and some feedback from Ray of basically, hey, it's time to grow up and turn this into a real business. If you're going to do this, let's do it right. And at that, around that time he introduced me to Kelly Allen with the Deming Institute. And you know, so we were 10 years into some chaos, had really no process, just would try stuff, see if it stuck or didn't.   0:03:43.5 Travis Timmons: If that didn't work, didn't really have any way to measure if stuff was working well. So really just a lot of chaos. And became introduced to Deming through Kelly Allen about 10 to 11 years into our journey and man, was that a breath of fresh air in terms of like having a direction to go in. After a few meetings with Kelly, him getting a better understanding of what was important to me, I think him just really understanding that I was serious about wanting to turn our organization into a large, professionally run and well run organization that would have a positive impact on people's lives, both team members and clients. I think he kind of, I think that we were so bad off he took pity on me to begin with, just to be honest with you, and he was like, man, this guy needs a lot of help. He could do some good in the world with what the services they have to offer. But if he doesn't figure out how to run a business professionally, they're never going to scale.   0:04:44.0 Andrew Stotz: And it's interesting that you reached out. I mean, there's a lot of people that are stuck in that situation and they really don't, either they don't reach out or they're afraid to reach out or you know, maybe they think there's no solution or nobody's going to help me. And you know, certainly when you're small, you also don't have huge budgets to hire people to come in and fix your business. You know, I'm just curious, like what drove you to even reach out?   0:05:09.8 Travis Timmons: I think I was fortunate enough to, A, have the mentor with Ray. And then secondly, have always been a believer in you got to check your ego at the door and know that you don't know everything. I think I've seen Business owners that are afraid to admit they don't know everything and so they keep things insulated and that just doesn't get you anywhere.   0:05:35.7 Andrew Stotz: Yeah.   0:05:36.3 Travis Timmons: So I just was fortunate kind of how I was raised as arrogance isn't a good thing, so check your ego at the door and learn from, learn from people smarter than you. And so I kind of took that fully at heart and like, all right, I have no idea how to run a business. I need to learn how to do that from really smart people. Read a lot of business books over the years, but the Deming philosophy, when I was introduced to that at the two and a half day seminar, went to that. I got to the Deming two and a half day in, I think that was 2013. So I was 13 years into the entire journey by the time I had met with Kelly, done some learning. And then at a time where the Deming two and a half day was offered in Ohio to where I could get to it, to your point earlier, budget plays into things for small businesses. So I was able to drive to that one and that two and a half day seminar just opened my eyes up to things that I knew in my heart but had no idea how to make that happen.   0:06:46.2 Travis Timmons: And what I mean by that, Andrew, is one of the key things I took away from that first two and a half day is Deming's belief that roughly 96% of issues within an organization are not people issues, but they're process and system issues. And that aligned with my worldview of if you hire good people, which we did, they show up every day wanting to do a good job as long as they have a good system and process to work within something that's professionally put together. So that was takeaway number one that really resonated with me. And the person responsible for said system is me. There's no passing the buck as the owner. And that resonated with me. It's a big responsibility to own a business in terms of the people and clients you're responsible for. And there's no passing the buck. You're responsible for the system at the end of the day.   0:07:42.3 Andrew Stotz: Yeah. I remember when I was 24 attending Deming seminar, when I was working for Pepsi, and it was a little bit different situation than yours. I could see, though, the same thing resonated with me. I could see that people were hemmed in by the system. And even though many people in the factory had really good intentions and they wanted to do a better job, they literally couldn't because they didn't have the tools or the budget or the this or the that. And a lot of times it's easy for senior management, particularly in a big company, to say figure it out, your job is to figure it out. But that only goes so far and there's eventually a point of exasperation for people working in a company that, like, I just, there's a limit here and I'm not going to kill myself trying to do something that I can't change. And so it just, I was coming from a very different perspective as an employee in a huge company versus you at a perspective of, this is my company, I set the rules.   0:08:46.5 Travis Timmons: Yeah, can do whatever we want. And you mentioned something there. It reminds me of a quote from that first two and a half day, and it still sticks with me a decade and a half later. Almost a lot of businesses complain about the term. We have a lot of dead wood in terms of employees. And the quote, I remember Kelly sharing this, it's like, well, did you hire dead wood? Because if you did, that's on you. Or did you hire live wood and kill it and that's on you from your standpoint of, from a system. And I'm like, man, 100% true. And I hired, I had good people on our team, but we didn't have good processes to keep from killing that live wood I would say. So, yeah. And to your point on budget, yeah, I had and still do have quite a bit different budget than Pepsi. Right. So one of the other things that jumped out at me early on that made Deming very approachable and something I could engage with very easily as a small business owner was the concept of PDSAs, the Plan-Do-Study-Act.   0:09:58.5 Travis Timmons: That was a game changer for us because I was like, all right, I don't have to hire a big business consultant. We don't have to hire or pay for a bunch of software. There's very simple things we can do via the Plan, Do Study Act PDSA method that we can create systems or improve upon syste

    54 min

  5. 29/12/2025

    When is Change an Improvement?

    How do we really know when improvement has happened inside a school or organization? In this episode, John Dues and Andrew Stotz unpack a clear, three-part definition of improvement and show why evidence, method, and sustained results matter far more than year-to-year comparisons. Their discussion offers a practical lens for leaders who want to distinguish true progress from noise and build changes that last. TRANSCRIPT 0:00:02.4 Andrew Stotz: My name is Andrew Stotz and I'll be your host as we dive deeper 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. The topic for today is, How To Define Improvement. John, take it away.   0:00:23.3 John Dues: Hey, Andrew. It's good to be back. Yeah, I think this is really interesting. Apologies on the front end. I'm a little bit under the weather, so I may sound a little raspy today. But you know, one of the things that's really interesting is there's lots of claims of improvement. In my world, there's lots of claims of school im- improvement. I would even go as far as to say that those claims are like a dime a dozen, something like that. And the reason I say that is not to be mean or anything, but you know, I think that a lot of these claims, they're not grounded any kind of reasonable evidence. And I think sort of even beyond that, that claims are often made without a logical definition of improvement. So I thought in this episode we could talk about a three-part definition that makes it really easy to tell when improvement has occurred and just as importantly, when it hasn't.   0:01:21.9 Andrew Stotz: Exciting.   0:01:23.2 John Dues: Yeah. When I talk about this, I always like to start with a challenge. So, you know, if I'm in a workshop, I'll say, you know, get out a piece of paper and a pen so the listeners could do this as well and think about, you know, the successful improvement efforts that you've led throughout your career. So in my world, maybe it's increase in state test scores or maybe you improved student enrollment in your school. Maybe you did a better job at retaining the teachers in your school. It could be any number of things. Maybe it's decreasing student office referrals or decreasing chronic absenteeism rates in your school or your school system, which are two things on everybody's mind coming out of the pandemic especially. And I tell people, just create a list of those instances. And I give them a few minutes usually. And typically, people come up with eight, nine, 10 or so instances of improvement, whether that's teacher in their own classroom or principal in their school, or a superintendent thinking about the whole system. Then I say to them, now what I want you to do is pause and think, what does it mean to improve?   0:02:46.7 John Dues: What do you mean by that? And that really brings us to this important question. What is improvement? You know, and this was... Full disclosure, when I started thinking about this, I stumbled across the definition in a book I'll show you here in a second. But when I stumbled across this, you know, there was some conviction. And I think that probably a lot of educational leaders or just, you know, leaders in general would say, actually, I never really thought about that. I don't have an answer for this seemingly simple question. And like I said, I didn't have an answer to that question when I really thought about it, when I stumbled across the definition, probably for the majority of my career, maybe the first 20 years or so, if I'm at year 25. So, yeah, the first two decades, I would not have had a clear answer for that simple question. Now, I turn to this seminal work in the field of improvement science called The Improvement Guide. I'm sure a lot of people are familiar with this. And I'll share my screen so people can see the book and kind of share an interesting story about the book. And, you know, when you're... Can you see my screen all right now?   0:04:06.9 Andrew Stotz: Yep.   0:04:08.1 John Dues: So you can see, if you're just listening, you can see the covers of two books. So on the left, a lot of people will recognize The Improvement Guide. But there's an arrow up there. It says, second edition. And a lot of people will recognize that book. Probably less people. Maybe some people that have been doing improvement work for maybe three decades will know this other book, the first edition of The Improvement Guide. It's this purple book on the right, if you're watching. But there's this interesting anecdote that I actually think I might have heard maybe on your podcast when some of the authors were on. And almost as soon as they wrote this first edition, this purple edition, they got this note from this professor in Brazil, and it said, I know you guys are really big into improvement, and you're really big on operational definitions, but you've written this whole book on improvement, and nowhere in the book have you defined what you mean by improvement. So, you know, talk about a swing and a miss.   0:05:15.0 Andrew Stotz: Yeah. And just for listeners out there, you can go to the podcast.deming.org and you can search for quality as an organizational strategy with Cliff Norman and Dave Williams. We didn't talk about The Improvement Guide specifically, but definitely it's worth listening to those two.   0:05:33.3 John Dues: Yeah, and I think... So any of us that feel bad when we come to realize, like, how obvious that question is when we've made claims of improvement and don't have a definition. So even these guys that were writing a whole guide about how to do improvement missed as well. You know, and it's pretty obvious when you think about it that The Improvement Guide, that a book like that should have a clear definition for the central concept. That's right in the title. But it should be just as obvious to leaders that they also need a definition of improvement. And that definition should really precede any improvement claims then. So I thought it'd be interesting to take a look at the definition that the authors came up with in their improved second edition.   0:06:20.9 Andrew Stotz: Improvement in their improvement.   0:06:24.4 John Dues: Improvement in their improvement guide. Right. And the definition is really easy to follow. It's got three parts, and now I've adopted it into my own improvement work. But what they've said is improvement is "a change that alters how work is done or the makeup of a tool that produces visible positive differences relative to historical norms and relevant measures and it's sustained into the future." So we can kind of break that three parts of the definition down now. So in part one of the definition, what you have to be able to do is point to a change that was made that led to better results. You know, that could be a new tool you're using, a new approach, a new framework, maybe it's a new staff role, but something has to change, a new method, something has to change in what you're doing. So that's sort of part one of the definition. Part two is performance improved after the change compared to past results. So that also should be fairly obvious. So you did something different. You noted when you started this new thing, and at some point in relative proximity to when you tried that new thing, the data improved.   0:07:54.2 John Dues: You know, it went up. If that's the direction of good or, you know, if it's like chronic absenteeism or office referrals, you want it to go down. But you see that in the data after you've made this change, that's part two. And then part three is that improvement after the change was sustained into the future. So it wasn't just a temporary thing because you were paying a lot of attention to it, but you made the change. The data improved over time after you did this new thing, and then it kept going into the future.   0:08:27.9 Andrew Stotz: Which is the hardest part, by the way.   0:08:30.1 John Dues: The hardest part, I'd say too. Assuming you could bring about improvement, then sustaining it into the future, especially as you maybe take your eye off it a little bit, and then work on something else, that's very, very difficult.   0:08:43.1 Andrew Stotz: Yeah, the initial seizure that you get into of making change can be really powerful compared to the energy, you know, devoted to sustaining it.   0:08:55.9 John Dues: Yeah.   0:08:56.3 Andrew Stotz: And you could also argue, if something's not easily sustained, was it really an improvement?   0:09:02.8 John Dues: Right. I think that's just right. And, you know, what I do in the workshop then is then after I go over the definition, I ask people, now, think back to your list of successful improvement projects. You know, and for the listeners, if you pause, then you created your own list and then you heard that definition. Then I just asked the participants, would you revise your answer after reading this definition of improvement? And ask people, okay, now how many things, how many items are on that list? And a lot of people, if they're being honest, are left with none, actually. You know, because this definition sets a really high bar. But I think it is the right bar if you're actually interested in improving outcomes in your school, in my case, or in your organization. And I think what you often run up against is, this is kind of a simplified version of most improvement claims. But in my world, you hear claims, something like, you know, our state test scores improved. Right. The translation is, this school's or this year scores are higher than last year's scores.   0:10:25.8 John Dues: But that claim falls really short of that definition. Well, okay, the scores are better than last year. Well, what did you do to make them better? Also, a single data point is pr

    28 min

  6. 08/12/2025

    Optimizing Student Learning: Crazy Simple Education (Part 2)

    What if more quizzes created more joy—not stress? Lee Jenkins shows host Andrew Stotz how Deming-inspired practices like random-concept quizzes, student-led charts, and "all-time best" celebrations turn classrooms into true learning systems that build confidence, motivation, and real understanding. A simple shift in method—massive shift in joy. (View the powerpoint referenced in the podcast.) TRANSCRIPT 0:00:02.2 Andrew Stotz: My name is Andrew Stotz and I'll be your host as we dive deeper into the teachings of Dr. W. Edwards Deming. Today, I'm talking with Lee Jenkins, who is a career educator in public schools, completing his full-time work as a school district superintendent. During that work, he was introduced to the teachings of Dr. Deming and has been applying those teachings to his life and work since. In his business, Crazy Simple Education, he helps people apply Dr. Deming's principles in their schools to bring joy back to learning, to help kids learn more. The topic for today is how educators have applied Dr. Deming's ideas to learning. Lee, take it away.   0:00:42.8 Lee Jenkins: Thank you so much, Andrew. It's amazing what Dr. Deming taught in five minutes. I've been able to teach that for over 20 years. It's just amazing. And then you see in the next slide, it was Lou Rhodes. And this is just a short little review of what we did on the first podcast. But he's the one that said, I think you're going to enjoy this. Little did he know how much I was going to enjoy that in 1990 when he said that. And then in 1992, heard Dr. Deming in person as the statistician. And he described in five minutes just a little touch of what was different about a classroom as opposed to all the other systems that he was teaching. And so over time, you're going to see how it's been implemented with great joy with so many people. He taught that education should have a learning system instead of an inspection system. And that's what we have, is an inspection system. The state departments of education inspect the schools and the teachers inspect the kids. We don't have a learning system. So if you think about that distinction, it's truly a learning system. And you're going to see that as we go through this today.   0:01:51.2 Andrew Stotz: Lee, I was just... After listening to you in the last episode and listening to some of our other great guests on the show, I talked to my students about this. And one of my students, after I went through it and talked about the random sampling as an example of questions to understand the level of knowledge that students as a group are getting, one of my students at this prestigious university I teach at in Thailand said, "So why are you grading us? "   0:02:26.1 Lee Jenkins: Yes. Yes. That's it.   0:02:27.4 Andrew Stotz: And I said... Lee, I need help. I gave my best answer and that is, "I decided that right now, the fight with the university to change the way it's done is not a fight I'm prepared to take. But what I'm going to do is try to deliver the best experience I can in the room." Now, that was a bit of a cop out, but that's part of... People who are listening and viewing this are also caught in a system, in a trap, an inspection system. So it's just great to hear you talk about this and it can help us think about how we can handle it.   0:03:09.9 Lee Jenkins: People say that education hasn't been improved for 50 years. Then think about it. We've had an inspection system for 50 years. Maybe that's the problem, right? So here's what Dr. Deming taught. Tell them what you want them to know first week of school. Here it is. You're going to give them a weekly quiz. The quiz is going to be the square root of the total number of concepts you want them to learn. So a teacher teaching a second language, 400 vocabulary words, they had 20 words a week at random out of the 400. It's simple, but it's crazy that you don't... People say, "How can you assess them on something you haven't taught yet? " You can, if you have a learning system. And then he said to build a scatter diagram and a class run chart. And let's look at those two just to review. The scatter diagram, and if you can't see this, it's just across the x-axis on the bottom. It says 1 to 14, which is for half a year. The y-axis goes from 0 to 10 because there are 10 questions every week in this classroom. And we have a dot by how many kids got 0 right, how many kids got 1 right, how many kids got 2 right. And if you look at over a semester, you can see all the dots moving from the lower left corner up to the upper right corner. So that's the scatter diagram.   0:04:29.7 Andrew Stotz: That's all the students in the class. That's not one individual student.   0:04:33.0 Lee Jenkins: That's not one student. It's the whole class because you're the manager of the learning of a classroom. He taught that. And then he said graph the total correct for the whole classroom.   0:04:46.6 Andrew Stotz: So you just did what he said.   0:04:49.8 Lee Jenkins: Yeah, add it up. It is simple and it is crazy. I mean, all the coaches who are listening to this know when you go to a game, you add up the total for every athlete. You add it up to get a total for the team. Then that same coach is in the classroom on Monday and they never think about that this is a team of learners. It's the same thing. Add it up. And they love it. And they help each other and they contribute and they celebrate when a struggling student helps the class out as much as a student that's advanced.   0:05:24.2 Andrew Stotz: Yeah. I mean we're social creatures, right? We want to be part of a group. We want to contribute. It's just such a clear principle.   0:05:35.0 Lee Jenkins: Yeah, it's simple. So then here's the expansion. Here's different things that happened over time with the process, and we'll share those with you. One was people said, well, ya know, my problem is not... It's partly they don't remember what I'm teaching well enough, but they clearly don't remember the prior courses. So this is a high school math teacher teaching geometry, and so she has half of her questions are coming from geometry because they're teaching geometry. But the other half of the questions come from the four courses they had in math prior because she knows they don't remember it. And then there's a secondary science department. The same thing. They said half of our questions for every quiz have to be from the prior courses, not just the current one. Because students think...   0:06:29.6 Andrew Stotz: Wow! That's fascinating. And before you go for that, so let's look at geometry. You've got these buckets. Before geometry is algebra two, and before that is algebra one, and before that's pre-algebra, and before that is math seven. I remember my pre-algebra class at school with Dr...Mr. Tyler. He was the football coach, and that guy was a slave driver. Even if you got the question wrong, if you structured your answering process right, you would get half points.   0:06:58.9 Lee Jenkins: Oh, okay. Yes.   0:06:59.6 Andrew Stotz: He helped me learn the structure and the order of solving algebra problems, but if I didn't do that well or I didn't have him as a teacher, I could end up in geometry not actually knowing that. But what the heck is this geometry teacher supposed to do if they find out that the class doesn't really understand some of the prior core principles?   0:07:21.7 Lee Jenkins: Well, they, obviously, they need to teach it, and so part of it they do. The other part of it is the kids don't want to forget the prior courses. If you just throw all these into a bucket and they don't say where it's from, they don't... Well, okay, I missed a question. But when you say, you're in 11th grade in geometry, and you missed the 7th grade question, they don't like that. So it builds, it's a visual. It's right in front of the room every day. They can see, I need to know all of this. And the science teacher is the same thing. The kids say, I'm in chemistry now. I don't need biology. Why do I need that? Until you see it right there in front of you every day, and you think, oh, I'm supposed to learn this.   0:08:12.9 Andrew Stotz: Gosh, it just brings me back to when I was in high school, and I really got frustrated because the pace was really fast, and I felt like I didn't fully understand the prior material, and now I'm on to the next. And that was, and I felt like I was building on a shaky foundation, and this is a part of addressing that.   0:08:33.7 Lee Jenkins: It is, absolutely. So that's one of the changes that was made. Teachers took and expanded that to the whole curriculum as opposed to only the course they're teaching.   0:08:43.0 Andrew Stotz: And just to think about that, is that in order to truly do that, you really want to have the math, the pre-algebra, the algebra, the algebra 2, and the geometry teachers all working on the same playbook.   0:08:56.2 Lee Jenkins: Yes, yes. And when we do make those lists for each class, there's no duplicates.   0:09:02.7 Andrew Stotz: Right.   0:09:04.3 Lee Jenkins: I mean, like with the science, I remember the biology teacher saying to the chemistry teacher, "You teach that? I teach that also." And they'd been teaching next door to each other for 10 years and didn't know it. So they have to say, who owns that one? So it's all a system that's tightly designed.   0:09:25.1 Andrew Stotz: And in the academic world of universities where I've taught, there's this thing that they want to give you independence to teach what you want in the way you want. I don't know about what's happening in schools these days, but is the curriculum pretty much set and therefore the teacher can't veer from that and therefore this would not be a problem? Or is it that, hey, every teacher's doing something different and it doesn't all work together?   0:09:53.6 Lee Jenkins: Right. What's the "what." The essen

    37 min

  7. 17/11/2025

    What is "Profound Knowledge"? An Insider's View of Deming's World (Part 4)

    Ever wondered what Dr. Deming really meant by "profound knowledge" — and how it can still transform your work today? In this conversation, Bill Scherkenbach shares with host Andrew Stotz lessons from Dr. W. Edwards Deming on profound knowledge, systems thinking, and why "knowledge without action is useless, and action without knowledge is dangerous." Tune in for wisdom, humor, and practical insights on learning, leadership, and finding joy in work. TRANSCRIPT 0:00:02.2 Andrew Stotz: My name is Andrew Stotz, and I'll be your host as we dive deeper into the teachings of Dr. W. Edwards Deming. Today, I'm continuing my discussion with Bill Scherkenbach, a dedicated protege of Dr. Deming since 1972. Bill met with Dr. Deming more than a thousand times and later led statistical methods and process improvement at Ford and GM at Deming's recommendation. He authored the Deming Route to Quality and Productivity at Deming's behest, and at 79, still champions his mentor's message, learn, have fun, and make a difference. Bill, how are you doing?   0:00:36.3 Bill Scherkenbach: Doing great, Andrew. How about you?   0:00:38.6 Andrew Stotz: I'm good. It's been a while since we talked. I took a little holiday to Italy, which was. I was out for a bit, but I'm happy to be back in the saddle.   0:00:48.9 Bill Scherkenbach: Dove in Italia?   0:00:51.3 Andrew Stotz: Yes.   0:00:52.5 Bill Scherkenbach: Where in Italy?   0:00:53.6 Andrew Stotz: Well, I went to Milan for a trade show in the coffee industry, and then I went to Lake Como and relaxed and oh, what a paradise.   0:01:03.2 Bill Scherkenbach: Beautiful. Beautiful. Yep.   0:01:05.0 Andrew Stotz: And, of course, always great food.   0:01:09.4 Bill Scherkenbach: Yep, yep, yep. Well, you have a chance to use the PDSA on improving your mood there.   0:01:16.6 Andrew Stotz: Yeah, it was just... The resort I stayed at was a tiny little place on the side of a hill, and the food at this tiny little place was fantastic. We just didn't want to leave. Every single meal was great. So I love that. Who doesn't love that?   0:01:34.4 Bill Scherkenbach: They didn't have a food cart in the background.   0:01:38.0 Andrew Stotz: Yeah. In fact, they didn't really open for lunch.   0:01:39.8 Bill Scherkenbach: Like what they do over here.   0:01:41.3 Andrew Stotz: Yeah, they didn't open for lunch. They only served sandwiches at 2pm so we had to hold out. But we still, the sandwich was so good. We just thought yeah, just wait.   0:01:51.3 Bill Scherkenbach: Early lunch. Yep.   0:01:53.3 Andrew Stotz: Well, you've got some interesting stuff to talk about today, and I'm gonna share the screen, and then I think we can kick it off from there. So let me see if I can get that up straight here. One second in. All right, so hopefully, you see a white screen that says profound knowledge. You see that, Bill?   0:02:16.0 Bill Scherkenbach: Yes, I do.   0:02:17.2 Andrew Stotz: All right, well, let's... Yeah, let's. Let's get into it.   0:02:23.2 Bill Scherkenbach: Oh, okay. I'll go from the bullets that I've got, and we'll hear from Dr. Deming and how he couched it in a little bit, in a few minutes, but he recognized that leaders would say they had the knowledge. Oh, yeah, we do SPC. We follow Deming's philosophy, we do that. But they really only knew the buzzwords. And to an extent, and I don't know how he came up with the word profound, but I do know in speaking with him that he intended it to be a degree of expertise that was beyond the buzzwords. Now, he said you didn't have to be an expert in it, but you had to know enough to be able to understand it and in fact, use it, as we'll talk about in a little bit. And knowledge obviously includes, as he said, an appreciation for a system and variation and knowledge and psychology. And as we'll hear in the audio, he also didn't really limited to that when he said there was there... His point, main point was that there are a whole bunch of interrelated subject matters that are very, very useful in managing your business or managing any organization.   0:04:17.1 Andrew Stotz: You know, I was thinking about that word profound. It's oftentimes wondering exactly what is meant by that. This is helpful to help us understand. It's, number one, about expertise. And I think the thing that I've always also felt is like, when you understand appreciation for a system, knowledge about variation, theory of knowledge and psychology, it, like things click, like it comes together, it's a whole. And that's the way I've thought about it. But that's interesting about the expertise aspect.   0:04:51.8 Bill Scherkenbach: Yeah. And that's something Don Peterson at Ford spoke about. He gave a very good talk to our leaders with Dr. Deming in attendance. And he said that a lot of you have said, "Oh, yeah, we already do this at Ford, " but you have to come to grips with a lot of you have been promoted for perhaps the wrong reason throughout your career, and you're gonna have to change. The change starts with us. So that was very impactful for Dr. Deming to listen to that.   0:05:32.7 Andrew Stotz: Yeah. And I just thought about the idea of profound action. Like, once you get this knowledge, does that mean that you're going to also, you know, the way that you do things is going to change substantially.   0:05:47.3 Bill Scherkenbach: Yeah. I mean, that's been a philosophical question. In one of the slides, I quote Confucius. About 2500 years ago, essentially saying knowledge without action is useless and the action without knowledge is pretty dangerous. But that's been consistent with Eastern and Western. Aristotle did the same thing, and Mid Eastern folks did it as well. Philosophers dealing with, yeah, we've got knowledge, but everyone agrees, at least in the good thinker role, that, that you've got to take action, otherwise it's useless. Okay, so we've got, and the subject matters, as I said, are not new. And he coalesced on four, but the general thought was that. And you've got to remember Dr. Deming was a classically trained physicist in the 1920s. And because of that a lot of, although it had been a few years, but they were very aware that everything started in the both, the eastern philosophies and western philosophies. Everything started with philosophy. Science wasn't a separate subject matter. And so everything was connected on how people should live, on how the stars move, a whole bunch of stuff. It all was philosophy. And these various subject matters evolved over the years.   0:07:50.6 Bill Scherkenbach: So even though he stopped it for his general intent was that a whole bunch of things are interconnected. If you go study these various subject matters.   0:08:05.1 Andrew Stotz: It's interesting because I attended the seminars in 1990, 1992 and then I went to Thailand and then I did other things and I didn't really keep up with it because I was in the financial world and doing my thing. And then I got The New Economics years later and there was this discussion about System of Profound Knowledge. And then I think about also going back to your previous discussions of what it was like being in a classroom with Dr. Deming when you first met him and studied with him. You know, that these things were going on. Obviously he had a deep understanding of variation. He definitely understood about the theory of knowledge from his scientific background. But I'm just curious, as you... It's interesting what you said, these things are not new. It's the way he brought them together. I just find that, that fascinating. How do you see that journey for him going from when you first met him to a very full formed concept or theory of profound knowledge at his later years?   0:09:15.3 Bill Scherkenbach: Yeah, I think things just solidified or codified. I mean, when I first met him in '72 at New York University Graduate School of Business, he didn't have 14 Points. He didn't have the Deadly Diseases. So none of the stuff that were codified as he progressed. I mean the one thing that I've mentioned it a number of times, the most important thing I learned from him is that you never stop learning. And he epitomized that sense of continual learning in improving oneself. So he tried to learn from everyone. But, but yes, for instance, as I mentioned, he was a degreed physicist and ended up doing a whole bunch of. And that transitioned into statistics which was a relatively. Well, I'm going to say everything is relative. But new in operationalizing the use of statistics besides counting people and the experiments at Rothamstead for agriculture. I mean, that really was some of the... But the earlier stuff, yeah. Was helping their patrons gamble better.   0:11:02.0 Andrew Stotz: And so I often take comfort in your descriptions in the first episodes about how he hadn't put all of these things in place at the age of 72. And I think there's still hope for me, Bill, to figure it out and put together my grand thinking.   0:11:22.7 Bill Scherkenbach: Yeah. Oh, no, I understand. I mean, I'll be 80 in less than six months. But he really, he started out getting his foot in the water here anyway when he was 79 also. So there's a chance. There's a chance.   0:11:46.4 Andrew Stotz: There's a chance. All right, well, the next slide, you're talking about the connections.   0:11:51.6 Bill Scherkenbach: Yeah. Again, all the subject matters are, again, evolve from philosophy and they all are interconnected in many, many ways. So, yeah, if you could play what Dr. Deming's introducing, that might set the stage.   0:12:14.0 Andrew Stotz: Okay, let me play this audio. Hopefully it comes across. Okay.   [video playback] Dr. Deming: Let us begin our study of Profound Knowledge. Profound Knowledge. Provides a roadmap to transformation, not just change, but a roadmap to transformation. Nothing else will satisfy our needs. Not just cha

    59 min

  8. 10/11/2025

    A Smarter Way to Set Goals

    Are you looking for smarter, more sustainable improvements? In this episode, John Dues joins Andrew Stotz to challenge the way schools - and businesses - set goals. Instead of chasing stretch targets that often frustrate teachers and students alike, John shows how to use data and systems thinking to create real improvement. TRANSCRIPT 0:00:02.2 Andrew Stotz: My name is Andrew Stotz, and I'll be your host as we dive deeper 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. The topic for today is how to set educational goals. Take it away, John.   0:00:25.6 John Dues: Hey, Andrew. It's good to be back. Yeah. So the thing that I see just over and over again is that goal setting in schools is just really ineffective. And not only that, but it's often counterproductive. So I thought it'd be good to talk about a different approach to how to set educational goals. I think most typically what I see, and this is probably not just true in schools, but in other places too, you get some result, and then you set a goal to increase by 10 or 15 or 20%. But I think that what often is missed is that without certain conditions in place, these stretch goals end up disconnected from reality. And so what I wanted to do in this session is to teach three conditions that I believe will lead to much more effective goal setting.   0:01:20.8 Andrew Stotz: It's interesting because goal setting seems really simple, like, just set a goal and go get it.   0:01:29.1 John Dues: Yeah.   0:01:29.5 Andrew Stotz: And yet when you're... You say that it's simple as an individual that I'm going to go walking every morning. That's my goal. It seems simple as an individual, but when it gets to a company level, it can get really complex, or a school level. And also there's this... What did you call it? Like aspirational... Or what was the word? Stretch, stretch goal. It's so common, particularly when business is not going great. Like, I want this from this team, and it's just so common to say, to lay down demands. I want 20% revenue growth. I want students passing this by 70% or whatever. And yet it just doesn't work that way. And so I'm looking forward to hearing from you about your three conditions. So let's go.   0:02:23.1 John Dues: Yeah, sounds good. So let's start by looking at why I don't think stretch goals are helpful. And since I'm working in schools, I like using data that people are familiar with. So I'll use this third grade reading state test score data. It's very common. It's really important. There's often some guarantee around third grade reading scores or there's often high stakes attached to third grade reading. So I'll use that. And so let's say in year one, and this is actually real data, 54.9% of third graders scored proficient or higher on that test. And then in the next year, they score 63.8% of the third graders scored proficient or higher. So in most places, leaders and teachers would celebrate because that represents an 8.9% increase in proficiency rates. And so then they do something like set a stretch goal of, well, next year we're going to grow by 20%. So you think, well, we grew by nearly 9%, so we can surely hit 20%. But then what often happens in a situation like this is that the next year's data comes out and actually goes down.   0:03:41.4 John Dues: And that's exactly what happened in year three of this data. Now, in this third year, only 61.2% of the students scored proficient or higher. And so then you think to yourself, well, what stretch goal would I set next? Would you change that 20% goal because of the decreased rates in the most recent year? So it actually is an interesting exercise. If you're listening to this, actually get a number in your head. You're the school leader, you're the superintendent, you're the principal or whatever, think about what goal then would you set for this group. So they grew by almost 9% and they went down by a couple percent. Between year one and two, they set the goal of 20%. Now what are you going to do? What's the goal? What are you going to say?   0:04:36.2 Andrew Stotz: And I'm thinking about the tampering concept that Dr. Deming talks about, constantly adjusting based upon where you're at. And it's interesting because in that case, you may say, you know, a disappointing year, but we've got to stick to our 20%. We got to stick to our strong, we can't give up. Remember that celebration we had?   0:05:01.0 John Dues: Yeah, this is a one year blip. We had increased by nearly 10. I know we can do it if we just double down. Let's keep that 20% goal in place. Yeah, that's definitely what a lot of people would do. So let me show you the results for those three years and then what happened for the next several years after that. So I'll share my screen for those that are watching so they can see this actual data in chart form.   0:05:27.7 Andrew Stotz: Great. Yep, we can see that.   0:05:29.8 John Dues: You can see it. All right. So now we have nine years of test data, and we can see that setting that early stretch goal had no effect whatsoever on outcomes. And so in year one, we had that 54.9% of those third graders were proficient. Then we went up to 63.8 like we said. Then we dipped back down in year three to 61.2, and then in the subsequent years that we're looking at now, it jumped up to 60.7, and then it fell to 51.9, and then it jumped up to 59.8, and then it rose again to 62.3, and then it rose again to 64.5, and then it fell again to 61.3. So again, between year one and two is when we set that stretch goal of 20%, and we can see again that it had no effect on outcome. So really, in all likelihood, the goal was not only ineffective back there between year one and two, but it was likely counterproductive. Because if you're thinking about, if you're a teacher in this school, you're teaching third grade or you're the principal of the school, year after year, this team didn't come close to approaching that 20% stretch goal that had been set.   0:06:52.8 John Dues: Year one, year two, year three, all the way through year nine. Some years the scores go up, some years the scores go down. It's pretty demoralizing if you think about it. I think the good news is, and the reason we're having this conversation is I think there's a better method for understanding your data and then using that data to set school goals in a smarter way. So I'll introduce these three conditions. I think about them as three conditions of healthy goal setting. So the first thing that you want to do is gather baseline data in the area that you're interested in improving. So this could be historical results if you have data, or it might be new data that you need to collect if this is a new focus area. But either way, you need some type of baseline as a starting point, and then you can work to understand these three conditions.   0:07:55.9 John Dues: So the first condition, condition one is what I call the capability of the system under study. And by system under study, in this case, I just mean the third grade reading test data. So how capable is it? Condition two is the variation of that system under study. And then condition three is the stability of that system under study. So those are the three conditions that I'm interested in taking a look at. And this focus could be on any data that occurs across time. It could be like state test scores, like we're looking at here. Could be attendance rates, could be oral reading fluency rates for those elementary teachers. It could be the number of office referrals that are coming into the principal's office or assistant principal's office on a daily or weekly basis. For this example, I'll just keep using the third grade state testing data.   0:08:52.8 Andrew Stotz: And let's just go through that just to review. So you talked about gathering baseline data. So you got to figure out what's happening here. The second thing, the first thing then you talked about, step one is capability of the system under study. And what does the word capability mean?   0:09:10.5 John Dues: Yeah, we'll get into each of them and then define each one.   0:09:12.0 Andrew Stotz: And then the second one is the variation of that system. Okay. Now what I noticed in all of these as you're talking about system, third one is stability of the system. So I guess a big part of this is basically saying if you're not looking at it as a system, you're not going to have the success that you want to have. So that's certainly a reinforced point there. Okay, keep going.   0:09:38.1 John Dues: Yeah. And by system, I just mean there's all these inputs into the third grade reading test, and then there's things that we do in schools, and then there's an outcome, there's an output that happens. So that's why I'm calling this third grade reading state testing data system, basically. So the first thing that I've done is taken that data that we've been looking at in a table and I put it into what I call a process behavior chart. Other people call a control chart or Shewhart chart. We've talked about those charts here, and I've done that so that we can better analyze those three conditions. So this charting method allows us to do that. So can you see the chart now?   0:10:22.6 Andrew Stotz: Yep. And for the audience, we have a chart up on the screen, third grade English language arts test, state testing proficiency rates. And maybe you want to describe what you got in the chart.   0:10:36.1 John Dues: Yeah, so it's the same data that was in the table, but now I've just taken it and plotted it. And that's what the blue dots are. So for each year, which is running along the bottom of the chart of the x-axis, there's a year, year one through nine. Those all represent school years. And on the y-axi

    30 min
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About

Interviews with members of The Deming Institute community, including industry leaders, practitioners, educators, Deming family members and others who share their stories of transformation and success through the innovative management and quality theories of Dr. W. Edwards Deming.

Information

  • Creator
    The Deming Institute
  • Years Active
    2014 - 2026
  • Episodes
    192
  • Rating
    Clean
  • Copyright
    © The W. Edwards Deming Institute
  • Show Website
    In Their Own Words

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