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. 4 GIỜ TRƯỚC

    Making Data Work for You

    What is your data trying to tell you? In this episode, John Dues talks to Andrew Stotz about why most leaders misread data, overreact to single results, and miss the real story. Discover how Deming thinking exposes when change is truly happening and how to use a process behavior chart to listen to the real story. Plus, find out why nine years of ‘stable’ results may still demand transformation. Tune in and rethink data-driven leadership!    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 understanding variation is the key to data analysis. John, take it away.   0:00:27.8 John Dues: Andrew, it's good to be back. Yeah. So, we've just started the school year in Ohio, so I thought doing a session on goal setting would be a good place to kick off the year. And I was thinking a lot of leaders, school leaders and leaders in general, are setting goals around this time period. And I was really thinking about having this Deming lens. I was thinking, how did I set goals before I sort of started understanding this approach? And it's, you know, this is one of those things where if you really stop and think about it, goal setting is a lot harder than it seems at first glance. Things like, how do you set a reasonable goal? And then once you've gotten to that place, how do you know if things are improving? How do you know if things are getting worse? And I was thinking how powerful this understanding variation method is for folks that may be struggling with those questions.   0:01:32.9 Andrew Stotz: Yeah. In fact, that's a great question for the listener and the viewer. Like, how do you set goals? How did you set goals in the past? How have you improved that? And I was thinking when you were speaking, I didn't set goals. I gave proclamations. You know, 20% of I want to see this and that. And they were just stretch targets without any means or methods. So yeah, interesting.   0:01:55.2 John Dues: Yeah. How do you set the target? Was it arbitrary? Is it based on some standard that you heard somewhere? A lot of times you have no idea sort of what's behind that target or you've sort of associated it to something that's familiar. Like in my case, we often sort of set goals that sort of mimic the grade scale. So, you know, 80% is a common goal for something like test scores, you know.   0:02:23.7 Andrew Stotz: But they don't even call them goals anymore. They call them, let me remember, I think it's called KPIs.   0:02:30.0 John Dues: KPIs, targets, you know, lots of different things for sure. And I think what I've seen is that a lot of the reason that goal setting is so hard is because you, well, one, you misinterpret your data in the first place. And a lot of that misinterpretation, at least in the education sector, is because leaders don't have the knowledge. They don't know about natural variation. They're typically making comparisons between some current performance level, some previous value. But those two things, those two data points don't show you, don't convey the behavior of that data across time. So, what we do and what I did before I sort of discovered this method is you overreact to a single data point. Probably less frequently, you underreact to the data because you don't have this understanding of, you know, how much is the data moving up and down sort of naturally almost no matter what you're doing. Now, that's not always the case, but that's the case that I've found in a lot of situations. And so until you start to take that into account, those natural ups and downs, then you just misinterpret the data over and over again, usually by overreacting is what I've seen.   0:03:54.9 Andrew Stotz: Yeah.   0:03:56.0 John Dues: So there's, you know, I think as a starting point, people in the Deming community will be familiar with, a lot of people. But others listening to this probably have never heard of this idea of dividing variation into, I've heard it described as like two flavors. There's the routine variation, what I call natural variation, things vary naturally no matter what you're doing. And then there's exceptional variation where things are so different that there is reason to pay attention to this. And what I found through studying this is, the key is knowing how to tell the difference between those two types of variation. And don't do that, lots of confusion, lots of wasted effort. And so that's really where the power of this methodology comes into play. And for anybody that's studied this, you sort of realize that you have to have a tool to make that differentiation. It's not arbitrary. And so that's where what I call the process behavior chart, some people call the control chart, where that comes into play because that tool allows us to tell what type of variation is present. And it also allows us to tell if the system is predictable or unpredictable. And once we have that understanding, then we can chart an improvement sort of roadmap that makes sense.   0:05:21.8 Andrew Stotz: Yeah. In fact, I've applied two of the things, you know, one of the things to my pass rates and admission rates, I applied the process chart, the control chart, based upon your recommendation a long time ago. And it did help me to kind of think if, you know, in my case, I wanted to break out of that standard outcome that I was getting. And so I realized, something has to change substantially in the system in order to get a different result than this variation that I was getting. That was the first thing. And then the second one, a couple of nights ago, I was giving a lecture and I was using your work that you and I have talked about, as well as Mike Rother's stuff on goal setting and having the target. And then there's that obstacle. And what I realized when I gave a little talk on it and I used the diagram and I showed the obstacle, it became kind of apparent to everybody like, oh, yeah, there's an obstacle there that we don't know how to solve.   0:06:27.6 John Dues: Yeah.   0:06:28.3 Andrew Stotz: And that's where PDSA came in. And we started talking about that, as you have taught previously. So, yeah, I'm excited to hear what you have to say today.   0:06:38.2 John Dues: Yeah. And the Mike Rother model, I mean, he does have this target that's this long term target that's pretty hard to hit. And you don't really know what you're going to do. But the difference there then in the situation I'm describing is that that in Mike's model, that target is knowingly outside of the current sort of capability of the system. And they're coming together as a team and saying, how do we get to that target six months from now or a year from now? And we're working towards that rather than someone has just arbitrarily set some target, without a realization that the system isn't capable of hitting that currently. Those are two completely different scenarios. Yeah. So, I think I'll share my screen. Well, actually, before I do that, I would just say, too, because I know sometimes when I introduce these things, a lot of times people get scared away because they think the math is hard. And what I would say there is that there's the creation of a process behavior chart probably takes about fourth grade level math skills. You really only need to do addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division.   0:07:49.3 John Dues: That's it. But the thinking, I think, actually can be taught all the way down to the kindergarten level. And I've actually seen kindergartners explain the data on a process behavior chart. So, if anybody gets scared away at this part, the math is simple and the thinking is also pretty simple and powerful once you sort of have the basics. So, I'll go ahead and share my screen so the folks that are watching have a visual to follow along on. And for those that don't, I'll do my best to describe it. When we're talking about a process behavior chart, and this one's sort of an annotated version so that things are clear. But basically a process behavior chart is just a time sequence chart. It has upper and lower natural process limits, and we plot data for some measure that we're interested in. And the chart typically has a central line so that we can detect a trend of those plotted values toward perhaps either limit. So, this particular chart, the data is the percent of students who scored proficient or higher on the Ohio third grade reading state tests from spring 2004 through 2015.    0:09:06.8 John Dues: So, I've labeled sort of some of those key parts of the chart. So, just kind of call those out. Again, the red lines are the lower and upper natural process limits, sort of bound where you'd expect the data to be in a stable system.   0:09:21.1 Andrew Stotz: And those are 1, 2, 3 standard deviations or what?   0:09:28.1 John Dues: Well, this particular chart, it's what I call a process behavior chart. So it's actually, it's not standard deviation. It's based on a measure of dispersion called the moving range. And then there's a formula that smarter people than me figured out sort of how to use that moving range to set the red lines. But the important thing to know about the limits is that they're set empirically. And that just means that they're based on the data. And so they are where they are, not where I want them to be necessarily. I don't get to choose where they are, how wide they are, where they're placed numerically is based on the data itself. And then that green center line for this particular chart is the average of all the blue dots. And then the blue dots is each year of, again, testing data.   0:10:19.4 Andrew Stotz: 2004 to 2015 as the x-axis, yep.   0:10:27.0 John Dues: Yeah. So,

    38 phút
  2. A Deming Approach to Real Estate

    19 THG 8

    A Deming Approach to Real Estate

    Discover how Andy Novins turns business challenges into big wins! Andy shares with host Andrew Stotz how he uses Deming strategies to outsmart competitors, watch for market shifts, and win loyal clients in one of the toughest industries around. TRANSCRIPT 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 Andy Novins. Andy, are you ready to join and share your Deming journey?   Andy Novins: I sure am. Yep.   Andrew Stotz: We've done a lot of prep for this, had some good conversations, and I'm looking forward to it. Let me introduce you to the audience. Andy first got introduced to the teachings of Dr. Deming more than 30 years ago and has been hooked ever since. He attended Dr. Deming's four-day seminar in August of 1993, only four months before the passing of Dr. Deming on December 20th of 1993 at the age of 93. Andy was a co-owner of a women's athletic apparel company, which was eventually purchased by Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway. For the past 23 years, he's been applying Dr. Deming's philosophy to his work in real estate, which traditionally has operated in what could be described as in opposition to the teachings of Dr. Deming. Andy, why don't you tell us a little bit about what you're doing right now and maybe a little bit about how you got into what you're doing now, and then later we're going to talk a little bit about your experience with Dr. Deming and all that. But just let us know, where are you at? What are you doing?   Andy Novins: Okay. Well, I am in Northern Virginia, just outside Washington, D.C., and after my partners and I sold the company that Andrew just referred to, I had to decide what I was going to do. And I had about six months to do that because part of the contract required me to help the purchaser, which originally was Russell Corporation, a big athletic, they made all the Major League Baseball uniforms and everything. We had to transfer my company's systems to their systems, and that was one of the worst six months of my career, watching everything we had done, which was really all Deming-based, being sort of dismantled and worked into another Fortune 500 company at the time. It was, somewhat, actually it was a few years later that Berkshire Hathaway bought it, and it was because Russell was not doing very well. It was a rescue-type purchase by Berkshire Hathaway, which sort of had some satisfaction in mind that their systems weren't all that good. So that's where I got into Deming, and I've taken a lot of what I learned from the apparel company into real estate, which, as Andrew just mentioned, is very volume-centric, volume-focused, and focusing on processes as opposed to systems.   Andrew Stotz: And in the real estate world, for those people that don't know, let's say real estate, what position are you in? For instance, my sister is a mortgage broker in Maine, and that's a different place within the whole sphere of it, but maybe you can explain exactly where you are in the value chain.   Andy Novins: Okay. We focus on residential real estate. What we call in real estate farm, okay? I send out 5,000 newsletters a month that show to eight different areas, really, but they're all within, believe it or not, two miles of my house. And those news, I've been doing that for over 20 years. I've never made a cold call. I will never call anybody and say, are you thinking of selling or anything like that. Yet, using this process, which is all really Deming-based, I've done about 10 times the volume of any other realtor in the 5,000 homes that I service. It's the process... I don't want to use process. The system we used is based on Michael Porter, his concept of competitive advantage. And it's a system that's focused on a value chain, things that we do that other people can't do. For example, there are close to 300 sales a year in my 5,000 home market. I see every one of them. And when you see a house that's on the market, you know a lot more than anybody else does by looking at pictures. If you've ever been to an open house and after seeing it on the internet, it's a lot different than what you saw in the pictures. No other agent can do that because most agents in my area focus on Northern Virginia, which would be about 20,000 transactions a year, not 300. So they can't even try to compete with me in my area. So that's the whole concept of it is doing things. As Michael Porter would say, you have a value proposition. That's my expertise in my local area.   Andrew Stotz: Porter talks about different strategies. One, he says, is the low-cost leader. Another is the differentiation. And the third one he talks about is focus and where you're focused on a niche in the market. And then I guess I always kind of think that really he's talking about two, because with focus, you're picking a niche, but then you're going to either be a low-cost leader or probably a differentiator in that focused area. But when you talk about Porter and what he's teaching, can you explain a little bit more for those people that don't know what he talked about?   Andy Novins: Sure. Yes. Basically, yes. I mean, I'll never forget. My partner and I were at a breakfast, realtor breakfast at one point, and there was an agent sitting across the table from us and he said, I just got this listing. And he said, but I had to go down to 1%. And he's, you know, for commission. And at that time, commissions were pretty much 3%. And he kind of looked at us and said, that's better than nothing, right? And that's the low-cost. Low-cost producers will never win. It'll always be somebody else. And Porter says, you can't be the best either. Okay. There's no such thing as the best realtor. There's always going to be somebody else. So the concept for real estate is picking a niche, that for me, it was farming. I'm a pretty good writer. So I write a newsletter, and people call me when they're ready to sell their house. And it's worked beautifully for... I started that in 2003. Okay. But there's people that focus on luxury, the luxury market or people that focus on first time buyers, or people that focus on... There's all kinds of different niches downsizing or upsizing. And so you can become an expert in anything. And that's how you differentiate yourself in real estate.   Andrew Stotz: And that concept of not competing to be best that Porter talks about is great because it also forces you to think. You're focused on the wrong thing if you're focusing on how to beat the competitor. And I always enjoyed the fact that Deming was so focused on the customer.   Andy Novins: Yes.   Andrew Stotz: And that, I think with Porter, I like that. But with Deming, I just really love the idea that he saw quality in the eyes of the customer. He saw innovation and continuous improvement in relation to the customer as primary over trying to benchmark off of some competitor.   Andy Novins: Exactly. And if I go back to my apparel business, the name of our company was Moving Comfort, and we just made women's apparel. Nobody else ever stuck to just that. We were the only company. Just, everybody broadened out to try to get more. So again, it's the same concept of a niche. Okay. But one of the policies, I guess, we've developed, it was a Deming related policy, which was fun, okay, was when we made a mistake, which we often did, whether we shipped somebody the wrong thing or we did other things, our objective was to make the, delight the customer, as he would say, make them happy we made the mistake. And that didn't matter what that cost to do that, sending them free stuff, doing whatever. And I think that's a Deming concept that we used in the apparel business aside from many, many others. Back to real estate, that's, I don't know anybody else in the Washington area that does what we do, because nobody's willing, that's the so-called trade-offs. Nobody's willing to say, I'm just going to focus on 5,000 houses.   Andrew Stotz: Yeah. It's scary.   Andy Novins: They can pick whatever they get.   Andrew Stotz: Yep. Yep. And maybe why don't we now go back to August of 1993. How did you find yourself in a four-day seminar? And I'm kind of jealous because what... My seminars I went to in '90 and '92 were two-day seminars.   Andy Novins: Really? Okay.   Andrew Stotz: And I had thought that he... I had thought by that time, maybe he was only doing two days, but then I learned that he was still doing four days. But what got you to that seminar? Where was it, and what got you there?   Andy Novins: Okay, I was going on vacation. Okay, this was in 1990. We were going to go to Cancun. And there's this, I guess they're still around, but there was a bookstore in DC on K Street called Reiter's. And it was all business and science. And I used to go there because pre-Amazon or anything like that. I think it was even pre-Borders. But I used to go there and spend an afternoon looking at books. And I found Out of the Crisis. And I brought it home and I said to my wife, by perusing through it, I didn't know anything about Deming at that point. But perusing through it, it just struck me as something I really wanted to read. And I went home and I said, I'm taking this book to Cancun, and I'm going to sit on the beach and read it. Well, I actually didn't read it till got home. But I got completely enthralled with it.   Andy Novins: And being in suburban DC, we're like eight miles from the White House. The Deming Study Group was very active in DC. Dr. Deming lived in DC. And there were just a lot of very well-known, famous speakers that would be part of our group, including Deming at one point, but I wasn't. But I think it was before I joined the group. So I read the book, joined the group, and after about three years, I had heard enough about the seminar that I wanted to go. And I went to that in Chicago. It

    1 giờ 14 phút

  3. 4 THG 8

    Rare Photos and Fresh Stories: An Insider's View of Deming's World (Part 2)

    Step into a treasure trove of rare stories, photos, and audio clips as Bill Scherkenbach shares his decades with Dr. Deming. From boardrooms to sleigh rides, discover the moments, minds, and memories that shaped modern quality thinking, told by someone who lived it. A powerful blend of insight, humor, and history you won’t want to miss. (You can see the slides from the podcast here.) 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 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 Deming's recommendation. He authored 'The Deming Route to Quality and Productivity' at Deming's behest and at 79 is still championing his mentor's message. Learn, have fun, and make a difference. Bill, take it away.   0:00:41.2 Bill Scherkenbach: Well, thank you. Thank you, Andrew. It's an honor to be asked back. Many places don't.   0:00:48.7 Andrew Stotz: I really enjoyed our first discussion, and particularly towards the end of it, it got a little personal and emotional, and I appreciate that you shared your journey. That was amazing.   0:01:00.9 Bill Scherkenbach: Thank you. Thank you. It is personal.   0:01:05.2 Andrew Stotz: Yeah.   0:01:05.4 Bill Scherkenbach: But today, along that wavelength, I brought some pictures or photos and letters and audios of my association with Dr. Deming. So, if you might bring them up, we can start the commenting.   0:01:27.9 Andrew Stotz: Wonderful. Well, hopefully you see a screen now up.   0:01:34.8 Bill Scherkenbach: Yes. Yep.   0:01:35.8 Andrew Stotz: Okay. And for the audience, just to let you know, for the listeners, we're going to show these and I'll try to explain a little bit about what we're talking about because you're not going to be able to see the pictures. But the first thing is the title is An Insider's View of Deming. Learn, have fun, make a difference. And we see a great picture on the left-hand side, and then I threw in a picture of a Lincoln Continental, which we're going to talk about later, which is kind of fun. But maybe you can take it from there, Bill.   0:02:07.2 Bill Scherkenbach: Yeah. Well, we can talk a little bit later on on that, but this is a picture of me and my wife, Mary Ellen, with Dr. Deming having fun. We were at a restaurant in Northville called Elizabeth's, and it's something that he enjoyed to do just about every evening.   0:02:31.3 Andrew Stotz: Great. Well, what a kickoff. So let's go to the next one. And you guys all look great in that photo.   0:02:38.2 Bill Scherkenbach: Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Yeah. This is a letter that I received from Dr. Deming back in May of '85, auspicious because the letter dated 13 May, that's my birthday. But for those who cannot read it, should I read the letter for you?   0:03:05.2 Andrew Stotz: Either you or I can read it for you. You tell me.   0:03:08.3 Bill Scherkenbach: Okay. Well, yeah. Why don't you read it?   0:03:10.9 Andrew Stotz: Okay. So, the letter is addressed to a particular person. It says, this is written by Dr. Deming, this acknowledges your kind letter of the 29th April. He that depends solely on statistical process control will be out of a job in three years. The record is clear, the record is clean, no exceptions. A whole program of improvement of quality and productivity is necessary, and it requires that top management learn what their job is. No part of the program will by itself suffice. Your letter does not describe your program, hence comment is difficult. I am happy to learn that Bill Scherkenbach will work with you. His achievements are renowned. He is excelled by nobody. I am sure that you will follow his guidance, not only while he is there with you, but from that then on out. I send best wishes and remain yours sincerely, W. Edwards Deming.   0:04:19.2 Bill Scherkenbach: Yes. I did spend a week with this organization, and as Deming said, and in many, many cases, the local management or local part of the organization get very enthusiastic, but the top management did not buy in. And so very little happened there, unfortunately.   0:04:53.9 Andrew Stotz: Yeah. And I missed that the top right-hand corner in handwritten, it says Portland, 20 May 1985. Dear Bill, I neglected to hand this to you in San Francisco, W. E. D.   0:05:08.1 Bill Scherkenbach: Yeah. We went to, we. Dr. Deming and I were in San Francisco to meet with Shoichiro Toyoda and his wife. It was a social call. Shoichiro was in town. I don't know where his brother Tatsuro was. Tatsuro headed up NUMI, but Shoichiro was head of it all and was in the US. And wanted to just have a dinner with Dr. Deming. I'm embarrassingly cloudy. We met in a hotel and I can't tell you which one, but it was a nice, relaxing dinner. The English was a bit stilted, but Soichiro wanted to have a dinner with Dr. Deming and to express his appreciation.    0:06:31.3 Andrew Stotz: And he was a titan of industry at the time and in 1985 was really making a beachhead and a real expansion into the US market. Why did he want to meet with Dr. Deming? What was the connection there? Maybe for those that don't know.   0:06:55.2 Bill Scherkenbach: He was in town and Deming was nearby in town and just wanted to express his appreciation. I guess, Tatsuro, his brother wasn't there, and Tatsuro headed up NUMI, the partnership between GM and Toyota. But Shoichiro was there and just wanted to express appreciation.   0:07:35.1 Andrew Stotz: Great. Okay. So shall we continue on?   0:07:40.0 Bill Scherkenbach: Yeah. We have a Where is Quality Made? Famous talking from Dr. Deming, and hopefully the audio translates well.   0:07:55.3 Andrew Stotz: Yes, we'll see. Let's go.   0:07:59.5 Dr. Deming: Where's quality made? Answer is in the top management. The quality of the output of a company cannot be better than the quality directed at the top. The people in the plants and in service organizations can only produce, at best the design of product and service prescribed and designed by the management. Job security and jobs are dependent on management's foresight to design product and service [that] will entice customers and build the market.   0:08:31.6 Andrew Stotz: So where did that come from? And tell us more about that.   0:08:36.2 Bill Scherkenbach: Well, I'm not exactly sure which particular seminar or meeting that was, but over the years I have, have, we've made a number of audio recordings and videos of Dr. Deming in his meetings. And so we're looking to get them to the Deming Institute so they can process them and distribute.    0:09:11.8 Andrew Stotz: And why is this so important? He's talking about quality is made at the top where we can see many people think that quality is made by the worker. Do your best. Quality is your responsibility. Tell us more about why you wanted to talk about this.   0:09:32.9 Bill Scherkenbach: Well, it's a common, it's a common, very common mistake. He learned back in 1950, and I think I mentioned it in our first talk, that he gave a number of courses at Stanford during the war and people learned SPC. But when the war was over, over here, because management didn't buy in, nothing really happened. And he learned in his visit in 1950 when he was able, as we said, Mr. Koyanagi was able to get a meeting, a number of seminars done with top management in Japan after the war. And he thought that that, he saw that that actually did make a difference, that management was absolutely key. And in every one of his seminars, he would make, he would make  this point, that quality is made at the top.   0:10:54.0 Andrew Stotz: And what was interesting is that, of course, the Japanese senior management, were very receptive. It's many times the case that Deming may have interacted with some senior management at the top of a company, but they weren't receptive or willing to implement what he's talking about.   0:11:12.6 Bill Scherkenbach: Yeah. I think I mentioned last time that you need maybe a significant physical or logical or emotional event. And Ford lost a few billion dollars and was then looking, is there a better way? Japan lost a war, and the tradition over there is to perhaps listen to the conqueror. But MacArthur was very astute, my understanding, that you're not going to go in and replace the emperor and really mix the place up from what their culture is, which is very, very, very astute, in my opinion.   0:12:11.4 Andrew Stotz: Okay. So let's continue. And we see a document now up on the screen and a diagram. And maybe you can explain this one.   0:12:24.8 Bill Scherkenbach: Yeah. This is one of the foils, as he called them, that he wrote on his lantern, which is the overhead projector for all the young people. And making another very, very important point. And that is, he's quoting John Tukey, "the more you know what's wrong with a figure, the more useful it becomes." And he also, at various times, would, would, would talk about George Gallup. And Gallup was his friend. And George Gallup would say that unless you've gone through the slogging of collecting data, you shouldn't be too quickly using data or analyzing data. Because if you go to collect it, you know that some people just aren't there. And this is primarily survey stuff that Gallup was talking about. But Tukey was talking about anything. And Deming, along the way, with his learnings from Shewhart, what I've developed is based on Deming's questions come from theory, created a theory, question, data, action cycle, similar to a PDSA. And so that you need to know what the question was before you can use the data. And Dr. Deming's example was you can't use manganese dioxide for just anything. If it's really,

    1 giờ 10 phút

  4. 21 THG 7

    From Student to Colleague: An Insider's View of Deming's World (Part 1)

    What was it like to learn from Dr. Deming himself -- a decade before his name became legend in U.S. business circles? In this deeply personal episode, William Scherkenbach shares with host Andrew Stotz what it was like to sit in Deming’s classroom in 1972, join him for late-night chats at the Cosmos Club, and help ignite transformational change at Ford and GM. Learn how Deming’s teachings shaped a lifetime of purpose, and why Scherkenbach, now in his 80th year, is stepping back into the arena with lessons still burning bright. TRANSCRIPT 0:00:02.3 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 William Scherkenbach, and he is known as one of the men who has spent a huge amount of time with Dr. Deming, as he mentioned to me previously, starting from 1972, over a thousand meetings and many other activities that he's been involved in. So, Bill, welcome to the show. Why don't you give us a little background about you?   0:00:39.5 William Scherkenbach: Oh, okay. Good to be here, Andrew. Well, I'm going to start with, since it's about Deming, in '72, I was newly married in April, but had been accepted to NYU Graduate School of Business, and I don't know, I never found out who wrote the course syllabus, but whoever did wrote something that it sounded like a darn interesting course, sampling, manufacturing. I was a protocol officer at the United Nations at the time and was going to night school at the New York University Graduate School of Business. So, I said, this sounds like a good course, interesting course. Had no idea who Dr. Deming was, and I walked into the first class, and there was an old, I'm 26, so he was 72 in 1972, and he was one of the first, one of the only old person who didn't say, I used to be, and I don't want to stereotype all of my peers now that I'm 79, but hopefully I don't fall into the, well, I used to be and what happened. But he did tell, I mean, statistics can be a very technical subject, and the way he taught it, I had courses in some theory of sampling, which was one of his books.   0:02:52.2 William Scherkenbach: He had three, I said three courses. The other course that I took was based on his lectures in Japan in 1950, and in fact, two of them. The third course was an extension of that. So, he was, he would teach the statistics, but he was able to tell the history of the people behind all of the thoughts and the formulas and approaches, and I found that extremely, extremely interesting. And he handed out tons of papers and material, and it was just a very, very good experience. I know he had, and he had, in my opinion, a great sense of humor, but then statisticians, what's our status? Yeah, we're like accountants, in any event. .   0:04:12.2 Andrew Stotz: Why was he teaching? I mean, at 72, most men, you know, maybe women also, but most of us are like, it's the twilight of our years, and we now know he had 30 more years to go, but why was he teaching? And also, what's interesting is when I think about Deming, I think about his overall system of what he's teaching, whereas it's interesting to think about how he taught one relatively narrow subject.   0:04:43.7 William Scherkenbach: I'll get to that as to why I think he was teaching. But yeah, back then there were no 14 Points, no glimmer of Profound Knowledge. It was, not theoretical statistics, but applied statistics with a theory behind it. And he still was really expanding on Shewhart 's work with the difference between enumerative and analytic. He used his own. Now, why he was teaching, years later, probably 1987, so yeah, a bunch of years later, when I was at Ford and I had attended at the time, I attended a senior executive week-long get-together in order to get constancy of purpose or more continuity in the senior executive group. One of the people we brought in was Dr. Peter Kastenbaum. And I found as I attended his lecture in that week-long meeting, he was a student of CI Lewis. And CI Lewis, Deming learned about from Walter Shewhart and his work in the epistemology theory of knowledge. And in any event, Deming, when he was asked, and at the time it was still in the '30s, I think, when he was at the School of Agriculture, or the agriculture department, and bringing in Shewhart, he had tried to get CI Lewis to come talk. And CI said, I would love to, but I have a commitment to my students. And so I can't adjust my schedule.   0:07:33.9 William Scherkenbach: And the students, the people who wanted to learn were sacred. And I think that had a huge impact on Dr. Deming. I mean, he spoke about it a lot. And the way, you know, in a lot of the videos that Clare Crawford-Mason did, lovingly called the old curmudgeon. But for students, he had the greatest empathy and charity for, he just didn't suffer fools gladly. If you showed him that you weren't willing to learn, he took great joy in letting them know where they, where they stood.   0:08:43.1 Andrew Stotz: And one of the things when I went into my first Deming seminar in 1990, so now we're fast forwarding 30 years from when you first met him. It was almost like there was a safe harbor for workers, for young people, for people with open minds. I mean, I didn't, I watched as he didn't suffer fools, but I'm just curious, when you go back to 1972 in those classes, I'm assuming that he was pretty gentle with the students, encouraging them and all that was...   0:09:19.0 William Scherkenbach: Oh, absolutely. In my experience, I mean, if you were by, you know, in a student in graduate school, even though the graduate school of business in New York, down on 90 Church Street, Wall Street area, there were very few people going directly from your bachelor's to the master's program. And so these were people that had probably 10 years experience in business doing stuff. And yet by going to the class, absolutely were willing to learn, listen to different points of view, which is absolutely crucial. As you progress with theory of knowledge to be able to get different perspectives on whatever it is you're trying to look at.   0:10:23.2 Andrew Stotz: I would like to continue on this period of time just because it's a snapshot we don't get that often or that easily. You mentioned CI Lewis, a man who lived from about 1880 to about the year I was born, around 1964-65, and he was known for his understanding and discussion about logic and things like that. But why was CI Lewis someone that was interesting to Dr. Deming? What was the connection from your perspective?   0:10:59.6 William Scherkenbach: Well, my understanding is Shewhart referred to him, and Lewis was a professor at Harvard, and he was in the Peirce, I believe it's called. It looks like Peirce, but it's Peirce School of, or Chair of Philosophy, and Charles Sanders Peirce was a huge, huge influence in epistemology. And so that whole chain of thought or train of thought interested Deming, but it really was, he was introduced to it by Walter Shewhart.    0:11:48.3 Andrew Stotz: There's a famous quote, I believe, by Deming about CI Lewis and his book Mind and the World Order.   0:11:56.0 William Scherkenbach: Mind and the World Order, yeah.   0:11:59.9 Andrew Stotz: Deming said he had to read it six times before he fully understood and could apply its insights. And sometimes I think maybe Dr. Deming was truly inspired by that because when I think about his work, I'm still reading it and rereading it. And just listening to the video that you did many years ago with Tim talking about reduced variation, reduced variation, what he was talking about. Sometimes when we see the big picture, there's many different components of Deming's teachings. But if you had to bring it down to kind of its core, you know, he mentioned on that video that I just watched this morning, he mentioned reduced variation, and that will get you lower costs, happier customers, more jobs. How would you say, after you've looked at it from so many different angles over so many different years, how would you say you would sum up Dr. Deming's message to the world?   0:13:01.5 William Scherkenbach: Well, that's a difficult thing to sum up. Back then, when we did the video, which was in the early '80s, maybe '84, again, he had his 14 Points by then, but he hadn't, it hadn't really, the Profound Knowledge part of that wasn't there. Now, he had used what Shewhart said, and he had read, tried to read CI Lewis, and when he spoke about the connection between theory and questions, that's what he got from Shewhart and, well, and from Lewis, and a bunch of other pragmatist philosophers. So, he, you know, he was influenced by it, and, well, that's all I can say.   0:14:27.5 Andrew Stotz: So, let's go back in time. So, you're sitting in this classroom, you're intrigued, inspired. How did the relationship go at, towards the end of the class, and then as you finished that class, how did you guys keep in touch, and how did the relationship develop?   0:14:51.0 William Scherkenbach: Well, that is an interesting story. I usually am, well, I am introverted. So I had, after I moved from New York, I got a job at Booz Allen and Hamilton in Washington, DC. So in '74, when I got the degree from NYU, we moved to Silver Spring. And obviously, he's lived on Butterworth Place since there was a Butterworth Place. So we were able to, one of the things, and this is, well, I will say it, one of his advice to me, although he gave everyone an A, I later kidded him, he didn't remember that he gave me a B. No, he gave me an A. In any event, but one of his piece of advice was, you really don't need to join ASQC. You know more about quality than any of those inspectors. And so he had learned from the '50s in the past 20 years from the 50s that inspection wasn't going to do it. Well, I didn't take his advice, and I joined ASQC, and I was r

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  5. 7 THG 7

    Mapping More of the Process: Path for Improvement (Part 10)

    What if you could tackle a persistent problem without guesswork? In Part 10 of the Path to Improvement series, John Dues and Andrew Stotz discuss how John's team uses Plan-Do-Study-Act (PDSA) cycles to calm a chaotic process with precision. Discover how to shift from blame to solutions by leveraging data and Deming thinking. You'll also find out where the team stands on their path to reducing chronic absenteeism in their schools. Listen now! #EducationLeadership #ContinuousImprovement #SystemsThinking #DemingInEducation   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 mapping the process, part two. John, take it away.   0:00:23.5 John Dues: Hey, Andrew. It's good to be back. Yeah, we've now been talking about our efforts to improve chronic absenteeism for several episodes. And we've talked about two Plan-Do-Study-Act or PDSA cycles focused on where we were working with specific students and their families regarding obstacles to getting to school. And then we shifted gears, and we started running this PDSA cycle three that we talked about last time. And just as a refresher for listeners, the objective of PDSA three is to create a process map, basically. And the goal for the process map is to standardize our attendance intervention system. And I think one of the things that comes to mind when you sort of work on process maps or on important processes is this quote from Dr. Deming. He said, If you can't describe what you're doing as a process, you don't know what you're doing, which is pretty convicting when you really think about it. I think a lot of people initially will say, No, no, no, I know exactly what our process is. And then you say, Well, write it down, map it. And then it becomes much more apparent that most people most of the time have a very rough version in their head that they can't translate into an actual written process.   0:01:44.8 Andrew Stotz: And I'm curious why that is, because on the one hand, when I've done mapping a process, you end up with, Okay, but then there's this exception, and then there's this. And oh, yeah, but don't forget that. So there's like all these intricacies. That's one reason. And then there's another reason is why is that someone's tunnel vision on I know the process because I know the three parts of the process that I'm working with. Why do you think it's hard for people to understand the whole process?   0:02:11.9 John Dues: Well, I think that first reason is probably the biggest reason where there's when they actually start mapping it, there's all these things that they initially left out. And I think as soon as an organization gets to a certain number of employees and has a certain amount of complexity, or you have to add a person that's now going to do part of what you previously did because your role changed or something shifted, needs change, or whatever in the environment. And you have to bring them in. You realize pretty quickly that you can't rely on that stuff that lived in your head anymore. So I think it's a combination of all those things for why this becomes so important. And the other reason I mean, the reason you want to do this is so that there's a starting place, a standard place where people are working from so that whatever it is that the focus is that it can be improved. It's hard to do that when there's no set process to start with.   0:03:08.5 John Dues: Let me. I'll share my screen and just kind of as a refresher, take a look at some of that data that we've talked about so far on this chronic absenteeism front. So, you'll remember that we have this long range goal to improve chronic absenteeism. We've kind of talked about where we are now, where we want to be. So where we are now is in that sort of 40 to 50 % range in terms of chronic absenteeism. We want to be down in under 5%. We have eight years of data going back to the 16-17 school year. And the other thing we've talked about on the data front is that really we have this pre-pandemic world and this post-pandemic world when it comes to chronic absenteeism. For anybody that's watching, you can clearly see this on the process behavior chart or control chart that's on the screen where prior to COVID, we're sort of humming along around 25% chronic absenteeism, which is still high. But now, since COVID, we've since the pandemic, we've skyrocketed. So there's this clear, sort of, new reality, new system for schools like ours that...   0:04:23.7 Andrew Stotz: And can you, just for someone that may be just popping in and hearing this, can you just describe what is chronic absenteeism rate?   0:04:31.9 John Dues: Yes, chronic absenteeism is a standard federally defined level of absenteeism where kids are called chronically absent once they've missed 10% or more of the school year. So the percent of kids that are chronically absent is what's being displayed.   0:04:50.5 Andrew Stotz: So if a school has 100 kids, this chart is saying that 50% of them are chronically absent?   0:04:58.9 John Dues: Yes. Yep.   0:05:00.5 Andrew Stotz: Okay. Yep.   0:05:01.1 John Dues: And that's not since the pandemic happened. That's not atypical, especially for schools that serve a high population of students that are economically disadvantaged, basically, unfortunately. So that's the goal, sort of cut it by a significant amount, 40 to 50% down to less than 5%. So that's the goal. And we've looked at the... Last time we looked at sort of the processes that are currently in place. So just as a quick refresher, United Schools, where I work, is a small urban public charter school system. We have four campuses, and there's people from each of the campuses on this attendance improvement team. And what we've been doing lately is sort of mapping out the process that each campus is using. Each campus has their own little process for intervening with kids that are chronically absent. They have different people that are doing different parts of that process. And so we started with just saying, what is it that your process looks like?   0:06:09.3 John Dues: And we looked at a couple of those maps. So this first map is from one of the campuses. It's pretty simple. There's just one or two people involved. The way they represented it initially is just maybe 10 or 15 steps that they're going through to sort of identify who's having attendance issues, sending letters to families, contacting families, that type of thing. But you can see, initially, at least as they mapped it, it's a pretty simple process. And then when we looked at one of our other campuses and they mapped theirs out, it was a slightly more in-depth process. There's sort of more detail. There are more people involved in the process. I'd say there's probably a little more sophistication to sort of when and how they were intervening with parents. And a lot of the intervening is just sort of the compliance requirements. When a kid reaches a certain number of missed hours, we're required to send them a letter to their parents, for example. So a lot of the process currently focuses on sort of the legal requirements when it comes to absenteeism in Ohio's law. But these are two campuses that are about three miles apart, and you can see, even though they're following the same legal sort of requirements from the state, they have very different processes for how that work is being done.   0:07:38.9 Andrew Stotz: Or could you also say that this particular campus, the people involved may have a much deeper understanding of it or a desire to map it out with more detail? Or do you think it's significantly different?   0:07:52.3 John Dues: I think that this second one that looks like it has more steps, I think they have a person that's more of their sort of 1.0 FTEs, like more of their 1.0 FTE is focused on just attendance, whereas it's sort of like a divided responsibility.   0:08:09.7 Andrew Stotz: Wait, what's a 1.0 FTE?   0:08:12.1 John Dues: Like one full-time equivalent person. So a big part of the person's job is this attendance process. So they know this process pretty deeply. So they were able to map it in more detail, basically. So that was interesting. So part of this PDSA cycle three was, so the plan was really had sort of two steps. One, create a standardized process map for the system as a whole that everybody's going to work from. And then, once that's drafted, gather some feedback, both quantitative and qualitative feedback from our network leadership team. So that was the Plan. The Do was just make the map and then gather the input. So that's what's been happening of late with this team. But we can see pretty quickly what they did. And it certainly does help to have an improvement advisor, someone with a deep knowledge of the Deming philosophy and mapping processes, because he's the one at the meetings. He's the one sort of taking everything that the team is telling him, the process maps that the campus teams have done. And then he's putting it all together based at their input. And their input is certainly super important, but he's also very talented at building processes that are coherent and can be understood by many across our system.   0:09:40.3 John Dues: And so what he ended up doing using their input is he's now got a process map that includes not just the nuts and bolts like, okay, the kid has an attendance problem, and we have to send letters and do things like that. He's going back and created a process map that includes four different stages. So this first stage that if you're viewing this part of the process map is just for onboarding, which was completely missing from all of the campus maps. It wasn't o

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  6. 14 THG 4

    Mapping the Process: Path to Improvement (Part 9)

    How can we improve attendance when every school has a different process? In this episode, John Dues continues his exploration of Deming’s philosophy in action, focusing on chronic absenteeism. As part of their third PDSA cycle, John’s team shifts from individual interventions to process standardization—mapping how each of their four campuses handles attendance interventions. The surprising discovery? Each school follows a different process, revealing hidden variation and inefficiencies. By visualizing these systems, the team is not only grasping the current condition but also setting the stage for a reliable, scalable, and effective process. This methodical approach highlights how understanding systems and reducing variation are key to meaningful improvement. TRANSCRIPT 0:00:02.1 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 Mapping the Process. John, take it away.   0:00:26.7 John Dues: Hey Andrew. It's good to be back. Yeah. For the folks that have been following along for the past several episodes we've been working towards defining this problem more narrowly in terms of this chronic absenteeism issue we've been talking about. And for the last few episodes we've been talking about how the team didn't have enough information to write that precise problem statement. And we took a look at gathering additional information by running a couple PDSA cycles in those first two cycles that we've discussed so far. We know we had zeroed in on a handful of students and ran PDSAs with them and their families about their obstacles getting to school. And then we left off talking about how we were going to shift gears in PDSA cycle three. And instead we were going to focus on standardizing our process. So creating a process map for how we intervene with kids with our attendance teams across the network. So that's what the team is currently working on. But just as a sort of quick reminder to folks, and especially if you're watching, we have this model that we've been working through, this four step improvement model where you set the challenge or direction, grasp the current condition, establish your next target condition, and experiment to overcome obstacles.   0:01:48.1 John Dues: And then like we've talked about several times, we're doing this with the team and that includes people working in the system, people with the authority to change or work on the system, and then at least one person with significant knowledge of the System of Profound Knowledge, like an SOPK coach. And we've been using this model that's on the screen to sort of symbolize or I guess visualize what those four steps look like. You're sort of marching up this mountain towards this challenge or direction. And we've also talked about this long range goal that we've had and we've taken a look at some data where we have our chronic absenteeism rate mapped out over the last eight years or so. We have this long range goal. So this is the direction of the challenge where we're trying to take our chronic absenteeism from above 50% down to 5%. We have the data going back to the 2016/17 school year. Then we also talked about how there's this, not surprisingly, there's this sort of pre-pandemic level of chronic absenteeism, which was again too high. It's not where we wanted it, but we have this major shift up where we've seen this significant jump in chronic absenteeism since the pandemic hit.   0:03:15.0 John Dues: So in those four years, 2020/21, 21/22, 22/23 and 23/24 we were up in the 51, 52, even up into the close to the 60% range in chronic absenteeism at the height of the pandemic. So for PDSA cycle three, really doing two things. So, and we're going to talk about this in the episode today. If you remember back way at the start of this series, we looked at something I called a system flowchart. So we'll kind of revisit that and then we're going to take a look at two process maps that were created by two of our school teams to sort of map their current process. And then we'll walk through, sort of we'll take that, we'll walk through what the plan is for this PDSA cycle three. So let's start by looking back at this system flowchart. I'll sort of reorient you to this. So we have up on the, and this is the current state. So up on the top we have the target system which is attendance. And then we have this aim that is sort of a three part aim.   0:04:42.7 John Dues: We want to define strong attendance for students and staff, make sure everybody's on the same page. We want to ensure that students, families and staff have a shared understanding of what it means to have strong attendance. And then we are working on improving and creating systems that identify and remove barriers to strong attendance for students and staff. And then over on the left hand side we have sort of inputs. So these are things that contribute or their conditions that impact our system. And then in the middle we have our core activities. So the things that are happening that impact attendance and then there's outputs, both negative and positive outputs that come out of this system. And then we get feedback from our customers, we do research on this feedback and then we make design if it's a new system or redesign if it's a current system. And some of these things, some of those contributing conditions are, Ohio has a set of transportation laws. You know, there's our school model and our the way we operate our school hours, our expectations regarding student attendance, our various intervention systems, neighborhood dynamics, how far our families live from school.   0:06:03.4 John Dues: These are all things that contribute to our sort of inputs into our system. And then we have these core activities. And remember, we could just zero in on attendance systems. But there are many other parts of our system that impact whether or not kids come to school. So for one, many of our families are always going to be new to our system. So for example, in our middle schools, where they start with sixth grade some number of those kids are going to be from our elementary schools. Some number of those kids are going to come from other neighborhood schools, but they're all going to be new to that middle school. So whether they're coming from our elementary school or not, you have to think about how is the student and family being onboarded to our system. Another thing we're looking at is school culture and trust. You know, how much trust is in there, in the school. Do they have a strong culture between teachers and families or teachers and students, or the principal and teachers? Then there's academic systems how engaging are classes, those types of things.   0:07:05.7 John Dues: Then we have the attendance intervention systems, which is obviously a core focus. We have health and wellness and changes around mindset since we went through the pandemic. And then finally the third sort of, or sorry, the third, not the third, but the sixth core activity that we talked about was transportation. So we've talked about lots of problems with our busing system this year. So that's another thing that has a big impact on attendance. And so what this group, again is working on the core activity is the attendance intervention systems. What's the process for that? But I had mentioned in an earlier episode that we have another group that's working on transportation and busing and how we can improve that. So the whole point of the system flowchart is there's many, many things that go into something like an attendance rate. And many of these things are very challenging. Some are largely out of our control, but much of it is largely in our control. And we're trying to pull the levers that we think are most important when it comes to student attendance.   0:08:09.2 Andrew Stotz: And just one thing on that, one of the things I just find so frustrating and it's part of this class I'm teaching tonight is how do we scale a business. And one of the ways that's critical to scaling is simplifying. And sometimes, like, when I look at all of this complexity, on the one hand, you're like, okay, well, that's our job, right? Our job is to manage complexity. And that's the reason why we don't have a thousand competitors coming in, because it's complex and it's difficult. And on the other hand, it's like the simplifier in me is like, how do we simplify this? You know, like, I'm just curious about how you see complexity versus simplification. And in particular, it may just be in this stage, you're just putting everything up there, and it's just overwhelming. Like, oh, my God, there's so much involved in just fixing one thing, you know? What are your thoughts on that?   0:09:11.5 John Dues: Yeah, that's, I mean, that's a really good question. It's, I mean, I think it is a complex system because there's so many moving parts. And I think part of the nature of a complex system versus something like a complicated system is that when you try to impact some part of the system that has these ripple effects into other parts of the system, many of which are unattended or unintended consequences. So, yeah, I mean, I think one thing we have working in our favor is very stable senior leadership. So we're pretty good at understanding how we all work. We have a pretty good historical knowledge of how our school system has worked over time. And we have a pretty good holistic view of all of this complexity. Not that we're all able to improve it all at once, but I think we have a pretty good grasp of what's going on. And even a team like this there we could move faster perhaps, but I think we're trying to be pretty deliberate about the changes that we'

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  7. Getting Started with Quality as an Organizational Strategy: A Conversation with Cliff Norman and David Williams

    7 THG 4

    Getting Started with Quality as an Organizational Strategy: A Conversation with Cliff Norman and David Williams

    Why would any leader choose to take on a transformation that requires rethinking how they lead, how their organization functions, and how they learn? In this episode, we dive deeper with Cliff Norman and David Williams, co-authors of Quality as an Organizational Strategy, exploring Chapter 11: “Getting Started.” They share powerful stories, practical steps, and the deep-rooted challenges leaders face when shifting from conventional methods to building true learning organizations grounded in Dr. Deming’s philosophy. This conversation highlights why improvement cannot be delegated, why leadership transformation is essential, and how to begin the journey—with clarity, commitment, and courage. TRANSCRIPT 0:00:02.1 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 we are going to continue our conversation with Dave Williams and Cliff Norman about their book Quality as an Organizational Strategy. I found this book fascinating because I think it's addressing something where there's been a bit of a hole and that is how do we think about the strategy of our business? And so we already had our conversation in a prior episode about the overview of the book, but today we're going to be talking about specifically, now this is kind of funny because we're going to be talking about the back of the book and that is chapter 11, getting started. Dave, why don't you take it away?   0:00:53.3 Dave Williams: Well, thanks, Andrew. Thanks for having us back on the Deming podcast. So, as you mentioned, part of the way that the book is laid out is that it describes kind of the foundations that are behind quality as an organizational strategy and begins sort of with an introduction that explains a good bit about how Dr. Deming had this provocation of a need for leaders to transform the way that they approach leading organizations. And part of that was to move not just from process based improvement projects, but to start to think about major systems in the organization and to pursue quality as the overall strategy and create a continuous improvement organization or learning organization. And so the book lays some of the foundation behind the science of improvement or behind profound knowledge that underpin the thinking, walks through quality as an organizational strategy, as a method of five interdependent activities. Then at the end it comes back full circle to say, well, this is great, now you've learned about these theories and methods. But a natural question for any leader would be, how do I get started? And one of the first things that we talk about in that section actually is about why leaders would want to do this transformation.   0:02:30.9 Dave Williams: And this actually came from a conversation that Lloyd and Cliff and I had in 2020 where we were talking about getting on this journey of building the book. And we all kind of recognized that this was really, really hard work. And we were curious or we, we didn't have a good answer of what was our theory about why somebody would deviate from the way in which they work today and embark on a transformational change of the way that they approach leadership, the way that they approach organizations. And actually I ended up going on a journey of interviewing a whole host of leaders who had been influenced by Deming, who had been involved in improvement in healthcare, folks like Dr. Berwick and Paul Batalden and Brent James. I interviewed some folks in the UK and other places, like John Seddon, and asked them, oh and I should Blaine Godfrey, who had been the lead of the Durand Institute, and I posed the question, what causes somebody to want to embark on this change? And many people actually had a hard time articulating it. But the answer that emerged, or actually Blaine Godfrey was the one that kind of framed it the best, I think, for us, was a number of things.   0:03:57.7 Dave Williams: Sometimes it's something like a book like this comes out and people read it and it's interesting and new. Sometimes it's an event happens, a patient safety event or a major accident or something of which causes people to have to change or do something different. Sometimes it's a discouragement with a desire that you know you could do better, but you don't have methods or know how to. So there were a host of things that we listed, and those are some of a sample of them that might invite somebody to say, the way that we're working today is not getting us to the level that we want to. And now we want to embark on something different. And we might look to something like quality as an organizational strategy as a method for us to transform the way that we're working and build on the shoulders of Deming's philosophy and the science of improvement and do it differently.   0:04:56.0 Andrew Stotz: And when I look at the book, you guys are bringing together a lot of different stuff. It's not just a Deming book. It's Deming is a part of this, and that's fascinating. One of the questions I have is when we look at, let's say, a business owner, a business leader is looking for answers, as you said, maybe it's an event, maybe it's a discouragement, maybe it's a feeling like we can do better. Maybe it's just being beaten by competitors. They come to a point where they start looking for answers and they find some fantastic books, authors, ideas, consultants, all this and I think about whether that's Peter Drucker or whether that's the Lean movement or whether that's, let's say Taguchi or something like that is the teachings that you guys are talking about - and I'm going to specifically ask about the teachings of Dr. Deming. Is it more or is it more difficult or less difficult to implement than other books or styles or methods that someone's going to come across?   0:06:08.7 Cliff Norman: I have to quote one of my colleagues here who probably knew about more about Deming than anybody in API or all of us combined, that's Ron Moen, who did, I think it was 88 seminars, four-day seminars with Dr. Deming. Dr. Deming once told him, he said, Ron, I believe you've been to more of these and I've been to. And it's kind of a joke. He had a great sense of humor. But you know, Ron told me the problem with Deming is he's asking us to change. And there's all sorts of things out there that require the management and the leadership, they really don't have to do anything different. And there are several things out there. In fact, Philip Crosby, one of the three gurus during when they launched, he was more the evangelical and had a way of talking to management so that they understood it, which that was his contribution to all that. But when Six Sigma came up and black belts and all that, and Crosby looked at him and says, that's not going to change the system. He said, all you're doing is killing a bear for management, killing a bear for management, and then you'll get a black belt.   0:07:19.9 Cliff Norman: You know, And I thought, wow that's pretty profound. Because the management at that point doesn't have to do anything, just have the black belt ceremony. There's absolutely no change on their part. Where Deming, as Ron says, he's kind of a pain. You've got to learn about variation, you got to learn about Shewhart charts. You've got to be able to put together a family of measures for your organization. You've got to understand your organization's system. You need to understand psychology, you need to understand theory of knowledge and how people learn how they change. And nothing else out there puts that on leaders. And so that was a question that Dave was lending back to. Why would somebody do this to themselves? You know, why would they take on this whole extra thing to learn and all the rest of it. And for the people that I know that have made that, that bridge, the pure joy that they get and the rewards they get from people who are learning and that they're leading and that they're changing and they're able to go to other organizations and repeat this and call them up and say, thank you so much for helping me learn how to be a real leader.   0:08:35.8 Cliff Norman: I mean, that's the reward in it. But it requires a real change on the part of the leader. And I don't know of anything else, Andrew, that actually requires that kind of in depth change. And there was one of our leaders, Joe Balthazar, he had Jane and I do four years in a row with his leadership team, teach them the science of improvement. The same curriculum, same leaders, four years in a row. And the second year I was doing it, I said, don't we need... No, no, Cliff, I want you to do exactly what you did last year. He said, it takes years for people to understand this. And I thought, wow, this is unbelievable. But on the fourth year, the VP of sales walked up to me and he says, I think I figured it out. And I thought, wow. And it does it literally... Because you've got to depart from where you've been and start thinking about how you're going to change and let go of what's made you successful up to this point. And that's hard, that's hard for anybody to do.   0:09:47.2 Cliff Norman: And anybody's been through that four day seminar knows when they crossed that path that all of a sudden they had to say, you know what I've been doing, I can see where I've been, the problem and not the solution. And that's tough for us. That really is tough. And Deming says you have to give up that guilt trip. And once you understand the theory of variation, once you understand systems, once you understand psychology and theory of knowledge, it's time then for you to move on and let go of the guilt. I hope that makes sense. But that's the difficulty in this.   0:10:17.6 Andrew Stotz: It reminds me of two, it made me think about two things. I mean, I was just a 24 year old guy when I attended the seminars that I did, and they weren't even four day. I think they

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  8. 24 THG 3

    Powerful Learning with PDSA: Path for Improvement Part 8

    It's time for PDSA (Plan-Do-Study-Act) Cycle 2 in John Dues' journey to reduce chronic absenteeism in his schools. His team is using PDSA to quickly test ideas and learn on a small scale. Find out what happened and how PDSA can be a powerful tool for learning. 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 a new generation of educators striving to apply Dr. Deming's principles to unleash student joy in learning. The topic for today is Powerful Learning with the PDSA Cycle, Part 2. John, take it away.   0:00:26.7 John Dues: It's good to be back, Andrew. Yeah, like you said, we, I think for the past three episodes or so, we've been working towards getting a better definition of our problem specific to this chronic absenteeism issue that we're working on this year. I don't know if you remember from last episode, but we have this team working and they've basically said we don't have enough information quite yet to write this precise problem statement. So we decided to gather information running the Plan-Do-Study-Act cycle. And last time we focused on the first cycle. This episode, we're gonna focus on a subsequent PDSA cycle, sort of along those same lines. For folks that are watching and perhaps just joining for the first time, I'll kind of share my screen and do a little bit of a review so that everybody can see or know what we're talking about, even if they're just listening for the first time. So we've talked about this improvement model. We're working through this four step improvement model. So set the direction or challenge is the first step. Grasp the current condition is the second step. Third step is establish your next target condition and then fourth, experiment to overcome obstacles.   0:01:44.3 John Dues: And we're doing all this with a team, people working in the system. People have the authority to work on the system and someone with the System of Profound Knowledge knowledge. right. And so, you know, we've talked about setting that challenge or direction. And as we're grasping the current condition, we've actually decided to skip to step four and experiment a little bit so we can get a deeper understanding of this problem that we've been working on. And you'll remember probably as well, did the screen change for you so you can see the chart now?   0:02:21.8 Andrew Stotz: Yeah.   0:02:22.9 John Dues: Yeah. Great. So I thought it'd be helpful to show this again too. So this is our process behavior chart of the chronic absenteeism rates dating back to the 2016/'17 school year. So we have eight years of data in regards to this problem. And you'll remember when we talked about set the direction or the challenge, we wanna basically cut this chronic absenteeism rate we're seeing coming out of the pandemic by a lot. So we're hovering around this 50% chronic absenteeism rate. We wanna cut it to 5%. So that means, you know, 50% or more of our kids, or right around 50% of our kids are missing 10% or more of the school year.   0:03:06.2 John Dues: And this is a trend that we're seeing all over the United States right now. And the other thing that we talked about is when we looked at this process behavior chart, that it's basically like there's a pre-pandemic system of chronic absenteeism, and then there's a post-pandemic system of chronic absenteeism. So, you know, before the pandemic, the rates were too high, but nowhere near to where they are now. So, you know, prior to the pandemic, we were sort of hovering around the, you know, 20 to 30% of kids chronically absent. And then, you know, coming out of the pandemic, it's been more like that, that 50% number that we've, that we've talked about.   0:03:49.4 Andrew Stotz: And so to reiterate for the listeners or the viewers, this is the chronic absentee rate at your school, as opposed to nationwide, which I remember last time you talked about, it's about 30% nationwide, and pre-pandemic, it was about 16%.   0:04:06.5 John Dues: Yeah. Right around there. So, yeah, so I'm talking about the four schools that make up our school system in Columbus, Ohio.   0:04:15.8 Andrew Stotz: Yep.   0:04:16.6 John Dues: And, you know, we have a pretty high percent of our kids are economically disadvantaged. And so the rates in schools that have that demographic tend to be more like ours, in that 40, 50% range. And then, but all schools coming out of the pandemic had much higher rates than what they had pre pandemic. No matter your affluence levels. It's just, just like a lot of things the schools with the most kids living in poverty get hit the hardest when you have these problems, basically. So, yeah, yeah. So what we were, we were studying this problem, and, you know, we have some idea of what's causing our challenges, but we've started running these PDSA cycles to dig into that a little bit more, and I'll, I'll, I'll stop sharing. So that's not distracting. And so we ran this first PDSA cycle we talked about last time, and now we're running, or we've just gotten finished running a second PDSA cycle. So for folks that are new to that, what that means is that we are basically running an experiment to test an idea, an idea about how to improve chronic absenteeism.   0:05:26.6 John Dues: And to do that we plan the intervention, then we do or run the experiment, we study it and then we act on that information. 'Cause that's where the PDSA comes from. So basically the objective specific to PDSA 2 is were or we designed a individualized intervention based on responses we get from interviews with kids using this five whys sort of empathy interview template. Right? And then after we do that, what's happening is that students are actually. So after the five whys is completed with the student, we move right into creating the plan of the PDSA still with that student. So they're part of the process. So that's also sort of a key, I think innovation of this particular round of PDSAs is the student is sitting there as we design the intervention. A student that has some issues with chronic absenteeism. And then basically in this particular plan, we decided we're gonna collect detailed attendance data for two weeks to evaluate the effectiveness of that.   0:06:39.7 Andrew Stotz: When you said this one, are you talking about the PDSA one or two?   0:06:43.5 John Dues: Two. The one. The one you just got done running. The one we're talking about. So the PDSA 2 ran for two weeks. So when I say experiment, I'm not talking about, you know, like a randomized controlled trial that can last a year or two years or five years before you get the results. I'm talking about something you can do in a day, a week, two weeks. My general rule is not to go over a month with these PDSA cycles. It starts to feel like it's too long. I wanna get data back quicker than that on an intervention. And so that's what we did with this PDSA cycle 2. And it was really, the plan was built around this key question. The key question was, will involving students in the design of an individualized intervention to address their chronic absenteeism lead to an increase in their average daily attendance rate during that period of intervention. So we're not taking that for granted just because we're sitting with the kids creating a plan with them. We don't know, we don't know what's gonna happen exactly. And basically step one of that plan was this five wise interviews that I talked about.   0:07:50.2 John Dues: So basically we had four staff members. So each one was assigned a student at their campus that they chose to work with on this initial intervention. And they took a piece of sticky paper and up top they basically wrote, here's our problem, the student's name. So let's say James is not coming to school consistently. And when students miss a lot of school, they're at risk of falling behind academically. And right below that problem statement, then they wrote, why are you not coming to school consistently? 'Cause that's the first why question. So that's sort of the first part of this five whys interview. So it's very simple. You need chart, paper and marker in about 20 minutes to do this. Step two is, then they used the information that they gathered from that five whys interview to design the intervention with the student. And basically what they did was they designed the intervention around the root cause that they got to at the bottom of that five whys sequence. So basically, you know, when they said that, when they asked that first question, you know, why are you not coming to school consistently? The student is then going to say something, right? I miss the bus almost every day.   0:09:10.7 John Dues: And so the next question, the next why question is built on the previous answer from the student. So why do you miss the bus every day? And you kind of keep going. And it doesn't always happen perfectly. Sometimes it takes three questions, sometimes it takes a little more than five. But generally speaking, once you drill down with those five whys, you'll get to sort of a root cause from the interviewee, right? And so then they're basically saying like, you know, based on that root cause we identified, what do you think we can do to improve your daily attendance? And then now they're sort of transitioning from the five whys into the planning of the intervention. And sort of that was step two of the plan. And step three is then actually starting to track the student's daily attendance as they do whatever that plan is across the 10 school days that are in that particular cycle. So that's the plan phase. You know, we had a key question that we designed around, and then the team also makes predictions about what they think is gonna happen during that cycle. That's the plan.   0:10:23.5 John Dues: And then, so then they m

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Giới Thiệu

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.

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    The Deming Institute
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    2014 - 2025
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    In Their Own Words

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