Optimization of a System: Deming in Education with David P. Langford (Part 7)

In this episode, David and Andrew discuss going beyond solving problems in schools to preventing them from happening. David also shares a tool for finding the area where optimization of the system would have the greatest impact.

In the episode, David shares his screen with Andrew and fills in a diagram. The beginning version has post-it note images around the sides, and the final version has lines drawn between all the post-it notes. See below:

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: optimization of a system to prevent problems. David, take it away.

Langford: Thank you, Andrew. It's good to be here again. So yes, today I wanted to talk a little bit about just the optimization of the system and what does that mean. So to go back to Deming's System of Profound Knowledge and understanding systems is critical part of the System of Profound Knowledge. And within the System of Profound Knowledge, what is a system? And so there's all that, and we talked a little bit about that in the past, but today I just wanted to talk a little bit about the optimization of the system and what does that actually mean? So it's not a matter of just trying hard. I'm gonna optimize, so I'm just gonna work hard, I'm gonna try hard, I'm gonna get better.

Langford: In fact, Deming was famous for saying that we're being killed by people's best efforts, and in education that runs rampant. He also said that copying can lead to disaster. And just those two phrases probably discounts 80-90% of what goes on in education now, because every time I do a seminar, somebody says, where else is this happening? Or Can I have a copy of that? Or somebody will go and they'll do a presentation somewhere, and everybody will just wanna copy that. So it's a sort of like, no thinking involved, just copy steps one, two, three, and four and things will get better.

Stotz: Cookie-cutter.

Langford: And that... Sometimes that just copying to try to optimize a system is better than doing nothing at all, but it's also a trial and error process. Trial and error is very expensive and very time-consuming, and you have a great chance that you're not going to improve anything, right?

Because systems that were developed at other places, so somebody, some leader comes into a school system somewhere and they do a great job in reading or whatever it might be, because they start studying their system and figuring out a process, and then they decide they're gonna market that to other people. And so you see the results of what they did, but it doesn't take in any understanding of the variation in systems, and you could have variation in schools when they're right across the street from each other. Totally different clientele and makeup of the student body and the staff and background, and all kinds of variation, so it doesn't necessarily work just to copy and apply something that was successful someplace else. Now, it is...

Stotz: And one question about that is that, I guess part of that is because the aim may be different.

If I think about when I was writing research in investment banks, the aim was to write a big, long research report. We had a lot of resources and all that, but when I set up my own firm, my aim was, how do I make this more efficient? And so I created a whole different system with a different aim, and therefore, if somebody wanted to go from my company to work in that company or vice versa, it wasn't like you could just copy what we were doing, there's a whole operating system that we created based upon a different aim.

Langford: Yeah, I remember when I first started things in classrooms with Deming help, and then people would come to visit classrooms and I'd always have the students explain what was going on and what they were doing, and invariably, my kids got really cagey because the visitors would say, "Oh, that's really cool. Can I have a copy of that?" And the kids would say, "Yeah, you can have a copy of it, but it's not gonna do you any good." And they'd say, "What, what, wait, wait, what do you mean?" And they said, "Because you don't understand the theory." So you don't understand what's going on here, and you just think you can just copy yourself to success and it just never works.

Langford: The other problem I see in optimization of systems is that people sort of come in with preconceived ideas about what they think is the problem. In fact, I had a principal at one time in one of the seminars, and he said, "I don't need all those PDSA stuff and tools and process and... I just... What the problem is." And, well, if you have that kind of divine intervention, why would you even come to a seminar on improving schools and learning if you already know, and if you already know it, why haven't you done it? Deming often said, "Well, you've been snoop goofing around for the last 20 years."

Langford: If you're that smart, you should be able... You should have already done it. So I guess seminars I typically try to coach people, I say, "You can come with a list of possible problems and opportunities that you might wanna work on," and therefore, that's why we use the word probletunities, and my students said all of our problems are... All of our problems start looking like an opportunity, and that's a great kinda way to go through life, that, "Okay, we got a big problem and okay it's an opportunity, it's an opportunity, we can make it better. We can do something here".

Stotz: Yeah.

Langford: The problem also shows you the deficit within the system or the problem within the system, and... So I wanted to kinda get into a little bit about, well, how would you go about sort of sorting out what to work on or how to move forward when you're trying to optimize the system. So I'm gonna actually share my screen.

Stotz: Great.

Langford: And I'm gonna take a chance at trying to do a tool here, and we're gonna do... If you're

watching the video, it's pretty simple, but we'll try to explain it with the audio as well as we

go along. But what we're gonna do is what's called an interrelationship digraph, okay? And I've got five common areas here that we often find in schools. Teachers will say things like, "We have a lack of effort around here." Even say, "Students don't understand the concepts." "Oh, the teacher attitudes around here is... They're bad," and, "Oh, we gotta work on the student attitudes. We gotta do something to them until... Make them have a better attitude." And "there's no time to do all these kinds of things."

Langford: So if that sounds like your system and you're starting to think about, "Well, okay, here's all the kinds of problems that we're kinda working on," so what we do here is we pick a color and we start off, we say, "Okay, is there a relationship between lack of effort and don't understand the concept?" And understanding the concepts is really important in neuroscience, that taps into the sense of meaning with people, et cetera. And so you have to say, is there a relationship? And so, usually, we do this in a group, being able to discuss and you say, "Yes, I think there's a relationship." So if you think there's a relationship, you just draw a line between the two.

Langford: There's a second question, which affects which the most. Does our lack of effort affect not understanding concepts, or does not understanding concepts affect lack of effort? And so usually, I get the... People go into higher order thinking, it looks like this, with their mouths open and...

Langford: Because their brain is having to figure out, "Okay, how does that work?" So we have the... Let's say we have a discussion and we decide, "Well, if we understood the concepts, we're probably gonna get more effort out of people, so I'm gonna put an arrow going that way." Then we have a lack of effort and teacher attitudes. Well, is there a relationship? If there is I draw a line. There's not, then I don't draw a line. Secondly...

Stotz: For the viewing... For the listening audience, just to highlight what David's got here, he's got a blank piece of paper with a kind of a circle form. And in the upper right hand corner, it says, "Lack of effort." Just below that, it says, "Don't understand the concept." And at the bottom, it says, "Teacher attitudes," and then on the left side, it says, "Student attitudes," and then in the upper left, it says, "No time," and then you're starting to draw lines connecting these two things to show the relationships. So continue on.

Langford: Okay, so we've decided that lack of effort and teacher attitudes are connected, because if my students had a lot more... Put in a lot more more effort, that would probably affect my attitude as a teacher, I would probably like that. So we're gonna make the arrow going that way. So then we have lack of effort and student attitudes. You have to say, "Are those connected?" What do you think, Andrew?

Stotz: I would say yes, lack of effort and student attitudes? Seems like it would be.

Langford: So if they put in more effort, they probably have a better attitude?

Stotz: It seems to me that, that would be the case, but I don't know. I'm gonna follow your lead. I'm learning, man.

Langford: So we make the arrow go that way. So then we have lack of effort and no time. So I would say yes, those are connected, and so I'd say, "Wow, well, if we were using... If we had more effort going on, we'd probably be making better use of our time." That would be... Or we could say, if we had more time, we could probably have better effort. So sometimes it's a 50/50 k