INTRODUCTION TO THE MAJOR ACTIVITY

~ 3 min reading

Let’s return to that “theory of a system” which Dr Deming was teaching the Japanese in 1950.

It’s not surprising that there should have been such a change or development of emphasis in Dr Deming’s teaching in the late 1980s. An inevitable consequence of Shewhart’s understanding of the two types of variation is that the vast majority of problems (or, if we think positively, of opportunities for improvement) lie in the common causes—the system, as Deming called it. When things go wrong, the fault rarely lies in individuals. The fault lies wholly or primarily in the system: the environment, the circumstances, the working conditions, the “company culture” within which individuals live, work, try to succeed, try to survive—yet so often a culture which repeatedly and consistently sabotages those aims and desires. There is a pertinent change of detail in Out of the Crisis from Deming’s earlier teaching. In If Japan Can, Why Can’t We?, the narrator Lloyd Dobyns states: “But one part of Deming’s programme is not likely to please them [management]. He insists that management causes 85% of all the problems.” This relates to an observation from Dr Joseph Juran many years earlier concerning the relative prevalence of the two types of variation. But by 1986, on Out of the Crisis page 270[315], Deming was instead saying:

“I should estimate that in my experience most troubles and most possibilities for improvement add up to proportions something like this:

94% belong to the system (responsibility of management)

6% special.”

And toward the end of his life he was ruminating on the figures 98% and 2% respectively.

Whichever figures we quote, the fact is that Deming’s thinking, as a natural consequence of Shewhart’s thinking on the two types of variation, leads to a vast change of emphasis from what is still commonplace in so much of modern management and government. It is still commonplace, maybe increasingly so, to be focused on blame or praise, punishment or reward, judgment—of the individual. Deming had come to realise that this focus is entirely misplaced. He had concluded that the vast majority of performance, behaviour, results, whatever, come from the system within which people live and work rather than from the people themselves. And, if that’s true, of course it follows that what can be achieved by such focus on judgment of the individual is trivial, let alone negative, compared with what can be achieved by focusing instead on improvement of the system within which the individual works and lives. This explains in large part why Deming was so critical of managing and judging—especially with reward and punishment involved —related to the achievement or otherwise of numerical targets, quotas, numerical objectives, numerical goals. And performance-related pay, ranking, rating, league-tabling, … . It’s a long list.

But could it be true that the majority of behaviour and performance comes from the system, not the individual? For a long while, I could not get my head around that. And then eventually I started to ponder on such matters as those which follow. I invite you to try this too in the Major Activity which now completes this opening day of our 12 Days to Deming.