INTRODUCTION
~ 3 min reading · ~ 45 min at Neave’s pace
DAY 5: THE JOINER TRIANGLE, THE 14 POINTS (part 2), AND THE DEADLY DISEASES
Day 5 is devoted to continuing the good work which began on Day 4, now focusing on the remaining eight of the 14 Points and the five “Deadly Diseases”. I suggest you begin by looking back at Day 4 pages 14–15 to briefly remind yourself of the guidance I gave you there about tackling this important project, followed by Day 4 pages 16–27 to browse through the work that you carried out on the first six Points.
There is one important change from yesterday. I am still providing brief introductory suggestions on how each of the three Joiner Triangle foundations supports the need to adopt every one of the 14 Points. Similarly, there will be suggestions on how the foundations support the need to cure the Deadly Diseases. However, I have placed all today’s such suggestions in the Appendix rather than here in the main text. The idea is, of course, to encourage you in each case to first spend a little time seeing if you can come up with some suggestions of your own. Then, if you wish, take a look in the Appendix to see what I have written there. Don’t worry if your suggestions are different from mine: as I implied yesterday, there’s nothing sacrosanct about what I’ve written. If yours are indeed different from mine, it probably means you now have two useful starters rather than one—so twice as many ideas on which to expand!
Whereas in DemDim there is plenty to read on the 14 Points (including the whole of Part 5), there is less on the Deadly Diseases. However, that is more than adequately compensated for by the availability on the internet of Dr Deming’s extremely powerful video: Management’s Five Deadly Diseases. You have seen a clearly heartfelt extract from what he said on this video on Day 1 pages 37–38.
At this time of writing, the video, an Encyclopaedia Britannica film, has been accessible for some years at www.youtube.com/watch?v=ehMAwIHGN0Y (note that the penultimate character is a zero and the sixth character from the end is a capital letter I). I strongly recommend that you watch this video before embarking on the Deadly Diseases this afternoon. It seems odd that I did not mention the video in DemDim: presumably, although it was produced in 1984, I had not come across it at the time I wrote the book.
So 13 topics for the whole day: an average of around half an hour for each, even taking the time out to watch the video. That’s not too fast: so give yourself time to think—but also it’s not too slow: you have the rest of your life to continue learning!