23 min
Deadly Disease of Employee of the Month: Deming in Education with David P. Langford (Part 11) In Their Own Words
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- Management
Dr. Deming listed 7 Deadly Diseases of Management in Out of the Crisis, and one of the more surprising is #3: Evaluation of performance, merit rating, or annual review. In this episode, David and Andrew discuss the harmful practice of awarding "teacher of the year," "student of the month," or other traditional recognition practices. David also offers practical suggestions for alternatives.
TRANSCRIPT
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's topic is the deadly disease of having an employee of the month. David, take it away.
Langford: Yeah, this is actually one of my favorite topics. So I thought it'd be fun for us to talk about it today. So…
Stotz: You just may win employee of the month by, coming up with this. Huh?
Langford: There you go. So right away, if you don't understand any teachings about Dr. Deming or background or things like that, you might be saying what do you mean? And maybe, maybe you were employee of the month one month or teacher of the year or student of the month or whatever we wanna think about in terms of singling people out. So what's wrong with that? And how could that be a deadly disease? Well, in one of the previous podcasts, we were talking about special and common cause variation. And we kind of went through that and talked a little bit about what Deming called deadly diseases. And he just said that there's two deadly diseases; treating special cause variation as if it's common, and treating common cause variation as if it's special.
Langford: So why is having employee of the month a deadly disease? Because it falls into category number two, you're taking common cause variation in the system and treating it as if it's special. And it happens everywhere. It happens in the military, it happens in schools and we've been sold a bill of goods years ago in management. And it's become pervasive in the way people think about what to do. So a manager doesn't know what to, what to do to motivate their people. And they think their job is to motivate people. So they say, wow, we'll have a teacher of the year or we'll have employee of the month or employee of the week. And that ought, that ought to have fixed things, right? Stotz: Student of the week, student of the month.
Langford: Student of the week, make people happier. So I'll never forget, when my, one of my daughters was in third grade and she came home and she had a certificate as a student of the month. And, I looked at it and cuz she brought it up to me and showed it and she was somewhat proud, proud of it. And I looked at it and then I did, I was thinking, how do I handle this? Because I know the problems that psychologically these things can cause and bullying and all kinds of things that can result from it. And so I looked at the certificate and I looked at her and I said, well, honey, tell me this. So what did you do this month? That was especially great, that sort of singled you out overall the rest of the losers in the class. So and she looked at me and she looked at the certificate, she did that a couple times and then she got this big grin on her face. And then she looked up at me and she said, dad, you know it was my turn.
Stotz: We have 360 students, 365 students in the class and they give it every day. So we all get it at some point, Dad.
Langford: Yeah. So, yeah. So in third grade she saw through this, she knew it's, this is just this silly game, dreamed up by the people who are running the place. and even as a student is, is if you figure out that this is, this is nuts, can you do anything about it? Well, not without becoming insubordinate or sent to the principal's office or… right?
There's obviously something wrong with you if you've pointed
Dr. Deming listed 7 Deadly Diseases of Management in Out of the Crisis, and one of the more surprising is #3: Evaluation of performance, merit rating, or annual review. In this episode, David and Andrew discuss the harmful practice of awarding "teacher of the year," "student of the month," or other traditional recognition practices. David also offers practical suggestions for alternatives.
TRANSCRIPT
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's topic is the deadly disease of having an employee of the month. David, take it away.
Langford: Yeah, this is actually one of my favorite topics. So I thought it'd be fun for us to talk about it today. So…
Stotz: You just may win employee of the month by, coming up with this. Huh?
Langford: There you go. So right away, if you don't understand any teachings about Dr. Deming or background or things like that, you might be saying what do you mean? And maybe, maybe you were employee of the month one month or teacher of the year or student of the month or whatever we wanna think about in terms of singling people out. So what's wrong with that? And how could that be a deadly disease? Well, in one of the previous podcasts, we were talking about special and common cause variation. And we kind of went through that and talked a little bit about what Deming called deadly diseases. And he just said that there's two deadly diseases; treating special cause variation as if it's common, and treating common cause variation as if it's special.
Langford: So why is having employee of the month a deadly disease? Because it falls into category number two, you're taking common cause variation in the system and treating it as if it's special. And it happens everywhere. It happens in the military, it happens in schools and we've been sold a bill of goods years ago in management. And it's become pervasive in the way people think about what to do. So a manager doesn't know what to, what to do to motivate their people. And they think their job is to motivate people. So they say, wow, we'll have a teacher of the year or we'll have employee of the month or employee of the week. And that ought, that ought to have fixed things, right? Stotz: Student of the week, student of the month.
Langford: Student of the week, make people happier. So I'll never forget, when my, one of my daughters was in third grade and she came home and she had a certificate as a student of the month. And, I looked at it and cuz she brought it up to me and showed it and she was somewhat proud, proud of it. And I looked at it and then I did, I was thinking, how do I handle this? Because I know the problems that psychologically these things can cause and bullying and all kinds of things that can result from it. And so I looked at the certificate and I looked at her and I said, well, honey, tell me this. So what did you do this month? That was especially great, that sort of singled you out overall the rest of the losers in the class. So and she looked at me and she looked at the certificate, she did that a couple times and then she got this big grin on her face. And then she looked up at me and she said, dad, you know it was my turn.
Stotz: We have 360 students, 365 students in the class and they give it every day. So we all get it at some point, Dad.
Langford: Yeah. So, yeah. So in third grade she saw through this, she knew it's, this is just this silly game, dreamed up by the people who are running the place. and even as a student is, is if you figure out that this is, this is nuts, can you do anything about it? Well, not without becoming insubordinate or sent to the principal's office or… right?
There's obviously something wrong with you if you've pointed
23 min