W. Edwards Deming's Fourteen Points
and
Seven Deadly Diseases of Management
W. Edward Deming is generally
recognized as being the
philosopher-guru of the Total Quality
Movement. Deming developed a set of
Fourteen Management Principles and
Seven Deadly Diseases in the early
1980s. There are various versions of
the Fourteen Points in circulation. The
version reproduced here is an early one
that Deming handed out at his famous
four-day seminars.
When an organization is early in its
Total Quality efforts, there is need to
discuss the underlying philosophy that
forms the bedrock of strategies that
will be adopted. One of the most
practical ways to do this is to discuss
Deming's Fourteen Points. We
include here a set of questions that
facilitators can use for prompting
group discussions. We have found it
takes about eight hours of discussion to
complete all the questions in this
exercise. Teams can do these as part
of a lunch break or these questions can
be discussed in more formalized two-hour sessions.
For elaboration on the Fourteen Points
and Seven Deadly Diseases, we
recommend reading Deming's Out of
the Crisis or Four Days with Dr.
Deming by Lazko and Saunders.
DEMING'S FOURTEEN PRINCIPLES OF MANAGEMENT
1. Create constancy of purpose towards improvement of product
and service, with the aim to become competitive, stay in business,
and to provide jobs.
The stress here is on "constancy of
purpose." Organizations that are not
constant will flip-flop from
management fad to management fad.
They will wobble between worrying
about quality and shift over to
worrying about costs and then back
again. Without constancy of purpose,
people won't take chances because they
will be afraid the rules will change
again next year.
QUESTIONS:
#1. What is meant by "constancy of
purpose towards improvement?"
#2. What are examples where
constancy of purpose did not exist in
the past?
#3. What are examples where
improvement was not sought, but
rather cost reductions were instead
pushed?
#4. What will be different if
"constancy of purpose toward
improvement" becomes a fact of life?
#5. Can this be done if the number one
goal is to maximize profits for the
year?
#6. How could profits be increased for
this year that would cause service
quality to decline rather than improve?
2. Adopt the new philosophy. We are in a new economic age.
Western management must awaken to the challenge, must learn
their responsibilities, and take on leadership for change.
Adopting a philosophy doesn't mean it
is simply given lip service. It means
incorporating it into an organization's
life. There will be natural resistance to
changes brought on by TQM that
requires management to be more than
"fair weather" believers.
Management itself only constitutes a
small portion of any organization.
Adoption of the philosophy will also
require a wholesale acceptance by
workers as well.
QUESTIONS:
#1. What does it mean to "adopt"
something?
#2. What does it mean to be a "fair
weather believer?"
#3. Can an organization adopt the new
philosophy without everyone in the
organization adopting it?
3. Cease dependence on inspection to achieve quality. Eliminate
the need for inspection on a mass basis by creating quality into
the product in the first place.
For manufacturers, inspection is clear.
It takes place at the end of the process
and is used to insure that a faulty
product isn't shipped to a customer.
The only reason that inspection takes
place is that enough defects have been
discovered in the past so that processes
can't be trusted.
For service workers, inspection is more
subtle. It includes a shipper inspecting
a final order to make sure the order
was filled properly. It includes a
physician inspecting the orders of a
nurse practitioner. It includes a clerk
making sure an applicant has filled out
a form properly.
For educators, inspection is the Final
Exam. At the end of the semester, it is
too late to help the student. The only
purpose for the Final is to decide
which students are to be "rejects."
In all these cases, inspection is used
because experience has indicated a
high error rate for the underlying
processes. If the error rate is reduced
sufficiently, it will no longer be
necessary to inspect every action.
Unfortunately, when error rates or
quality deteriorates, the first impulse of
traditionally trained workers and
management is to spend more time
checking for errors instead of
attempting to improve the underlying
processes: "We need to do a better job
of catching these errors!!" versus, "We
need to figure out a means of reducing
the number of errors in the first place."
Armand Feigenbaum coined the term:
"The hidden plant" to describe that part
of overall work efforts that consist of
hunting for mistakes, audits, rework,
duplication of efforts, and the
performance of unneeded tasks. For
the typical American organization, this
is about 25% to 40% of all efforts.
This is the "buried treasure" that
Deming is addressing in this point.
QUESTIONS:
#1. What are examples of inspection
(checking for mistakes?)
#2. Are there examples where
inspection almost always finds
mistakes?
#3. Are there cases where several
people inspect the same thing? In
other words, do inspectors inspect
other inspectors?
#4. In order to cease dependence on
inspection, what must happen to the
overall level of errors?
#5. What are examples of the "hidden
office" in an organization?
4. End the practice of awarding business on the basis of price tag. Instead minimize total cost. Move towards a single supplier
for any one item, on a long term relationship of loyalty and trust.
The concept of "total costs" is a simple
one to understand, yet for some reason
typically ignored. Time is worth
money. Time spent standing in line,
time spent waiting for a product to
arrive, and time spent shopping for the
best deal are a waste. The costs of this
lost time needs to be added to the price
tag in order to determine the true cost
of a product. On top of this, there are
costs for repairs and for making-do
with inferior products that need to be
added to the price tag before making
purchasing decisions.
Perhaps most importantly, total cost
must take into account the opportunity
to get a product or service improved
over time. Buying cheap from a
supplier who won't work to improve a
product is really more expensive than
paying a little extra but getting a
supplier who commits to continuous
improvement.
When total cost is taken into account,
buyers should start developing long
term supplier relationships and give up
the notion of always looking for the
lowest price.
QUESTIONS:
#1. What costs are included in "total
costs?"
#2. If you are going to a grocery store,
in what circumstances would you be
willing to pay a higher price rather
than shop at a lower priced store?
#3. When looking at new suppliers, do
you have difficulty in assessing their
reliability? How much of a track
record do you need before you have an
accurate notion of what can be
expected from a supplier?
#4. Do you have to inspect (check for
mistakes) all materials and bills
shipped to you by suppliers?
#5. Do your customers trust you as a
supplier? What behaviors have they
learned to trust over time? what
behaviors have they learned to distrust
over time? Do you customers have to
inspect all materials and bills you send
them?
#6. Would your suppliers give you
good service and price if the threat of
competition was not hanging over their
heads? Would you give your
customers good service and price
without the threat of competition
hanging over your head?
5. Improve constantly and forever the system of production and
service, to improve quality and productivity, and thus constantly
decrease costs.
This point rejects the notion that things
are ever "good enough." It is a call for
continuous improvement. By
implication, it is based on the
assumption that since perfection is
impossible, there will always be room
to improve.
Deming would not have approved of
Star Trek's Captain Kirk saying to
Scotty, "We need it now, Scotty. You
don't have an hour." Kirk was a crisis
manager who seemed to believe that if
Scotty just tried hard enough, he could
do anything. Instead Deming would
have wanted Captain Kirk to support
Scotty's efforts in figuring out how to
improve the underlying processes so
that in the next crisis, Scotty doesn't
need an hour in order to get the
dilythium crystals back on line.
(By the way, Scotty admitted in a Star
Trek: The Next Generation episode
that he used to lie to Capt. Kirk about
how long something would take so that
he could give Kirk the miracles that
were demanded of him. Deming would
have approved of the scriptwriter's
admission that focusing on results
leads to distortion of information.)
QUESTIONS:
#1. How is it possible to improve
forever? Hint: Is perfection possible?
#2. How can improvement occur
constantly? What would this mean
specifically for your organization?
#3. Why does this statement focus on
the "system of production and service"
and not on end-products?
#4. What steps do people need to
improve anything, whether it is a
recipe or a work process?
6. Institute training on the job.
This point refers to the training of new
employees and the training of
management, who too often don't
understand the processes they are
supposed to be managing.
Unfortunately some "old" employees
were never sufficiently trained in the
past so that this point will include them
as well at least in the early
implementation stages.
Training is typically abysmal in the
United States. Too frequently, people
are shown how to do something, once,
and then let loose. Training is often
not standardized meaning no two
employees are taught in the same
manner or even in the same details.
This point should lead to develop of
training manuals and standardized
methods for training personnel.
QUESTIONS:
#1. What kinds of training would be
useful?
#2. Has training ever been given in the
past that proved useless? Was the
training itself at fault, or did the boss
refuse to implement the ideas offered
in the training?
#3. Have you had training in the
following ideas: the nature of
variation; the different kinds of
distributions; the use of run charts? Do
you know the difference between a
system in control and one that is out of
control? Do you know the difference
between common causes of variation
and special causes? Do you know
what it means to "over-correct" a
system?
7. Institute leadership (see point 12.) The aim of leadership
should be to help people and machines and gadgets to do a better
job. Leadership of management is in need of overhaul, as well
as leadership of production workers.
Deming called for supervisors to stop
being managers and start being leaders.
This is one of the more difficult
concepts for supervisors to master.
Leaders have fundamentally different
roles than managers. Leaders are
coaches rather than cops. Coaches
develop people. Cops enforce the
rules. Coaches attempt to help people
live up to their full potential. Cops
attempt to catch people doing things
wrong.
Too often, supervisors with a
traditional outlook ask people to "keep
quiet" about problems for the sake of
the team. These managers resolve
conflict either through coercion or
compromise. A leader on the other
hand gets conflict out into the open so
that differences can be addressed and
win-win solutions can be pursued in
place of win-lose hierarchical
decisions.
Leaders understand the difference
between special causes and system
causes. If there is any area of gravest
supervisor weakness, it is this. Too
many supervisors hound people to try
harder when the cause of mistakes is
not worker attitude but rather the
system with which the workers are
stuck. It is a leader's responsibility to
attack system caused problems by
getting people to examine and improve
the underlying system, not by falsely
blaming people for situations that are
out of their control.
QUESTIONS:
#1. What is meant by leadership?
What kinds of things should a leader
do?
#2. For leaders, what is the difference
between being a cop and being a
coach?
#3. Why shouldn't a leader "duck"
conflict? Why instead should a leader
encourage conflict?
#4. How is it possible to lead without
relying on coercion?
#5. Frederick Herzberg has asserted
that the key to motivating people is to
reject the carrot/stick approach. What
is left if you reject using rewards and
punishers?
8. Drive out fear so that everyone may work effectively for the
company.
Deming suggested that this point is
actually the first of his points that
should be implemented. Fear will
cause people to play defense. It will
inhibit them from sharing with
management a real view of the world.
It will make them unwilling to risk new
ideas.
Continuous improvement requires that
good data be collected. Without
accurate data, how can anyone tell if
things are getting better or worse? If
workers are afraid of the consequences
of data, however, they won't allow
accurate data to be reported.
QUESTIONS:
#1. Why is this absolutely critical in
order for quality improvement to
continue?
#2. What actions cause fear? What
keeps people from raising issues,
proposing solutions, and working with
others?
#3. Are you always expected to have
an answer when people ask: "Why did
this happen?" How do you feel when
you don't have an answer?
#4. Why do you think that Deming
recommends that driving out fear
should be the very first of the fourteen
points that an organization should do?
#5. What is different between having
"fear of telling the truth" and "fear of
reality?"
#6. When is "fear of reality"
appropriate and desirable?
9. Break down barriers between departments. People in
research, design, sales, and production must work as a team, to
foresee problems of production and in use that may be
encountered with the product or service.
Processes cut across department lines.
For this reason, no single department
or individual will understand fully any
process. In order to start improving
these processes, teams must be
organized that include members from
across the organization.
Sales people and service people learn
all sorts of things about the
organization's reputation in the
community, yet most organizations
lack any sort of mechanism for this
information to get passed around.
Evaluation systems that treat
department performance separately
will encourage departments to stop
thinking globally in terms of what is
best for the organization as a whole
and instead focus on making their part
operate "best" even though that may
injure some other department.
When there are strong barriers between
departments, there are frequent
unintended consequences for other
departments. These unintended
consequences can be devastating, yet
no one making the changes may even
be aware of them if there is insufficient
communication between departments.
QUESTIONS:
#1. Do you have different
departments?
#2. Is there a tendency to think in
terms of "our group" versus "their
group?"
#3. Are meetings organized around
specialized work functions? If so, in
such meetings, does it often happen
that solutions can't be pursued because
those solutions are dependent upon
people in other groups?
#4. Do people have job titles that set
them apart from others? Are some
people "too good," "too trained", or
simply have "too much prestige" to do
certain kinds of work like pulling files,
emptying waste cans, answering
phones, etc.?
#5. When new employees are hired,
are they generally given all the boring
work that nobody else wants?
#6. When was the last time you helped
a fellow employee during a crisis who
was not part of your functional work
groups? What did you do?
10. Eliminate slogans, exhortations, and targets for the work
force that ask for zero defects and new levels of productivity.
In this point, Deming attacks, without
naming it, Crosby's Zero Defects
Program. Crosby stressed the role of
worker attitude as being critical to a
quality effort. As such, Crosby
suggested workers be given quality
targets of zero defects. Once a year,
Crosby advised there be a "Quality
Day" reminding everyone of the
importance of quality efforts.
Deming believed that poor worker
attitudes are symptoms of supervisor
inability to lead. He stressed again and
again that it is the system which
produces errors, not people. As such,
it isn't the work force that needs
attention, it's the controllers of the
system, management.
Slogans like "Produce zero defects"
and "Do it right the first time" are quite
common. But Deming stressed, they
are also quite meaningless. At best,
they are ignored. At worst, they
infuriate people who understand the
system causes errors not workers.
QUESTIONS:
#1. Do slogans motivate?
#2. If you are told to "do better"
without being given tools in order to
do better, how will you feel?
#3. What would make you a believer
that things had "really" changed?
#4. What is the danger in raising
expectations about changes that can't
happen right away?
11a. Eliminate work standards (quotas) on the factory floor.
Substitute leadership.
11b. Eliminate management by objective. Eliminate
management by numbers, numerical goals. Substitute
leadership.
This is probably the most controversial
of Deming's 14 Points and the point
most often ignored by American
managers. Numerical production
standards are typically set by picking
what an average person can do with a
particular job. The problem with this
is that half of any group will be below
average and therefore will be doomed
from being able to meet the standard.
The above average half of the group
will be pressured by their peers to
produce to the average, and no more.
In the end, production will fall, half the
work force will be panicked, and no
one will be happy.
Quotas and numerical objectives that
must be met will cause people to cut
corners in order to save their jobs.
Instead of having pride in their work,
they will instead resent having to
short-change customers in order to
keep numbers high enough.
Management by objectives (MBO) is
extremely common in the United
States. Objectives are typically set in
negotiations between a supervisor and
employee. Those objectives become
the basis of bonuses, pay raises, and
promotions.
Objectives like work quotas and
numerical goals are very precise. The
underlying theory is that people need a
clear standard by which they are being
measured. The problem with these
objectives is that they push results at
the expense of process. In order to get
the necessary results on paper,
managers will have incentive to distort
information or distort the system. In
the end, MBO leads to deteriorating
long term results rather than improving
ones.
QUESTIONS:
#1. Do people have any incentive to
do better than a work standard? In
helping define those work standards,
would people tend to try defining
"low" standards or "high" ones?
#2. If you are told that your job
performance is to be measured by the
number of mistakes you make and by
your total production (output), will this
make you fearful?
#3: Would you be willing to
experiment with new methods for
trying to improve things?
#4. Would you want to take time out
of your day to help other people
in-house to do a better job?
#5. Would some people have a
motivation to skew results so that their
numbers will look better?
#6. What do you think "management
by the facts of life" means? Is
desirable?
12a. Remove barriers that rob the hourly worker of his right to
pride of workmanship. The responsibility of supervisors must be
changed from sheer numbers to quality.
12b. Remove barriers that rob people in management and in
engineering of their right to pride in workmanship. This means
inter alia, abolishment of the annual or merit rating and of
management by objective, management by the numbers.
Deming called pride in workmanship,
a "birthright" of workers. He rejected
the old Marxist notion that work is
alienating and should be perceived as a
sacrifice. Deming claimed that it is the
sense of having helped other people
that is the single most important
motivator in the workplace. Money,
time off, and all the other traditional
"carrots" that management offers are
pale in comparison to the sense of
pride and accomplishment that comes
from feeling like you made the world a
better place in which to live.
A principle task of leadership is to
remove barriers. Supervisors should be
asking their people, "What keeps you
from doing a better job?" and then
acting on the answers they receive.
The annual merit rating is a cursed
function in most organizations.
Usually it is tied to pay increases.
Unfortunately, most supervisors have
to guess as to who are the "good"
workers and who are the "bad."
Frequently they act on their
impressions from the most recent three
months.
If workers want to know how they are
doing, then they shouldn't have to ask
their bosses. They should be getting
feedback from internal customers on a
timely basis. Instead of feedback once
a year, feedback should be weekly or
at most monthly. There shouldn't be
anyone in the organization who doesn't
know how well they are doing at any
given time.
QUESTIONS:
#1. What makes you feel "pride in
workmanship?"
#2. What makes you feel proud about
your organization?
#3. What barriers keep you from
doing a better job?
#4. Who is more important to please,
the boss or the customer? In order to
feel pride, who do you need to feel like
you helped, the boss or the customer?
13. Institute a vigorous program of education and
self-improvement.
Point #6 referred to training of new
people and managers. Point #13 refers
to educating everyone in the
organization no matter how long they
have been there. Self-improvement
should not be limited to immediate
application. Instead, people should be
encouraged to pick whatever activities
they perceive as helping them grow.
QUESTIONS:
#1. What would you like to take in the
way of courses, seminars, workshops,
or training that would make you feel
like you were growing as an
individual?
#2. Do you want your growth
opportunities to be limited to work?
Would you like training in parenting?
arts and crafts? drama? sports?
#3. When you feel like you are
growing, does that make you feel
better on the job?
14. Put everybody in the company to work to accomplish the
transformation. The transformation is everybody's job.
The emphasis of Total Quality
Management is the word, "Total."
Literally it means that the job of
quality is everyone's job, not just
specialists in a quality department, not
just top management, and certainly not
just the work force.
QUESTIONS:
#1. Why must everyone participate?
#2. Deming recommends that the
organization have people trained in
statistical thinking in order to assist all
key managers. Why do you think he
recommends these statistics experts?
THE SEVEN DEADLY DISEASES OF
MANAGEMENT
The Fourteen Points express Deming's philosophy of management. The Seven
Deadly Diseases describe the most serious barriers that management faces in its
current management actions.
1. Lack of constancy of purpose to plan product and service that
will have a market and keep the company in business, and
provide jobs.
As long as the focus is on short term
thinking, management will fail to plan
adequately. Without good long term
planning, worker efforts will be
irrelevant. More significantly this
disease is warning that TQM cannot be
a fad. If management changes its
philosophy by whatever was the latest
book it read, then there will be no long
term forward progress.
QUESTIONS:
#1. What are examples where
planning was inadequate?
#2. How do you plan for new products
and services?
2. Emphasis on short-term profits: short-term thinking (just the
opposite of constancy of purpose to stay in business), fed by fear
of unfriendly takeover, and by push from bankers and owners
for dividends.
There is nothing easier to do than boost
profits in the short term. All a
manager has to do is cut any expense
related to the long term: training,
maintenance, purchase of new capital,
etc.
For non-profits like schools and
hospitals, substitute "Emphasis on
short term costs" instead of "Emphasis
on short term profits." These
institutions, especially when in budget
crises, focus on cutting short term costs
without regard to long term
consequences.
QUESTIONS:
#1. What are examples of short term
thinking that made things worse in the
long run?
#2. What pressures make it difficult to
do long term thinking?
3. Personal review systems, or evaluation of performance, merit
rating, annual review, or annual appraisal, by whatever name,
for people in management, the effects of which are devastating.
Management by objective, on a go, no-go basis, without a method
for accomplishment of the objective, is the same thing by another
name. Management by fear would still be better.
The essential problem with merit
systems is that they reward results
rather than process improvement.
Results will almost always have a lot
of system luck mixed in.
Some managers want to reward people
who cooperate more or who seem to
have better attitudes. These managers
will insist that they can recognize the
people who are most cooperative and
have the highest work ethic.
When managers reward these attitudes,
however, they are setting up a system
that will have two fundamental flaws:
(a) it encourages "kissing up" to the
boss and (b) psychological research
indicates that the best way to develop
cooperation is not through money
rewards, but rather by focusing on the
nature of work environment itself.
QUESTIONS:
#1. Is merit pay being used?
#2. Is the annual evaluation focused
on the past or the future?
#3. Does management rely on fear? If
so, what are some concrete examples?
4. Mobility of management; job hopping.
This is perhaps the simplest and yet
one of the most deadly of diseases.
When top management changes
organizations every three or four years,
that means continuous improvement
efforts will be broken and disjointed as
the new "leaders" come on board.
Moreover, with changes in leadership,
there is frequently a change in
management philosophy. How can
there be constancy of purpose in such
an environment?
When management has no commitment
to the long term, how will they ever
start thinking long term? Managers
who have an eye on the next promotion
want results, now, to gain the next
rung on the ladder.
QUESTIONS:
#1. How long does the CEO typically
last on the job?
#2. How many changes in
management philosophy have there
been in the last ten years?
5. Use of visible figures only for management, with little or no
consideration of figures that are unknown or unknowable.
Many consultants in the quality field
have been quoted to say, "If you can't
measure it, you can't manage it."
Certainly Deming would have been
one of the first to argue that good data
is essential and should be factored into
all decisions whenever possible.
Deming was in fact very critical of
people who fail to use data when it is
available.
Deming pointed out, however, that
some facts are simply unknowable. In
spite of that, Deming insisted that
leaders must still make decisions and
manage the situation. For instance, if
a quality effort is truly justified, then it
should cause operating costs to decline
and overall sales to rise relative to
what would have happened otherwise.
This leads to a basic dilemma. How do
you know what would have happened
if you had kept on your prior course?
How do you put a dollar value on the
customer loyalty won through quality
improvement efforts? You can't!
These numbers are unknowable. If
you decide that TQM can be justified
only if the benefits are clearly
measurable, then you might leave these
factors out of your analysis and
erroneously conclude that TQM is
causing losses when in reality it is
generating profits.
QUESTIONS:
#1. What are some key unknowable
numbers that have been ignored in the
past?
#2. How do you manage in a
systematic data based way when key
numbers are unknowable?
#3. Do you agree that "If you can't
measure it, you can't manage it."
6. Excessive medical costs.
American auto companies pay more for
medical care than they do for steel.
For the economy as a whole, health
care as a percent of overall
expenditures has steadily risen for
decades gradually pushing numerous
business and government budgets into
a state of crisis. Deming would have
approved of the political system
attempting to reform health care.
QUESTIONS:
#1. What percent of your labor costs is
for medical care?
#2. How much has the percent grown
over the last ten years?
#3. How do medical costs compare to
other fixed costs such as advertising,
investment in new capital, and interest
payments on loans?
7. Excessive costs of liability.
Deming blamed America's lawyers in
part for the problems of American
business. The US has more lawyers
per capita than any other country in the
world. They make their livings to a
considerable extent by finding people
to sue. Like health care costs, Deming
believed the solution to this disease
will probably have to come from the
government.
QUESTION: How much does your
organization pay for liability insurance
every year?
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W. EDWARDS DEMING'S
FOURTEEN PRINCIPLES OF MANAGEMENT
1. Create constancy of purpose towards
improvement of product and service, with the
aim to become competitive, stay in business,
and to provide jobs.
2. Adopt the new philosophy. We are in a
new economic age. Western management
must awaken to the challenge, must learn their
responsibilities, and take on leadership for
change.
3. Cease dependence on inspection to achieve
quality. Eliminate the need for inspection on
a mass basis by creating quality into the
product in the first place.
4. End the practice of awarding business on
the basis of price tag. Instead minimize total
cost. Move towards a single supplier for any
one item, on a long term relationship of loyalty
and trust.
5. Improve constantly and forever the system
of production and service, to improve quality
and productivity, and thus constantly decrease
costs.
6. Institute training on the job.
7. Institute leadership (see point 12.) The aim
of leadership should be to help people and
machines and gadgets to do a better job.
Leadership of management is in need of
overhaul, as well as leadership of production
workers.
8. Drive out fear so that everyone may work
effectively for the company.
9. Break down barriers between departments.
People in research, design, sales, and
production must work as a team, to foresee
problems of production and in use that may be
encountered with the product or service.
10. Eliminate slogans, exhortations, and
targets for the work force that ask for zero
defects and new levels of productivity.
11a. Eliminate work standards (quotas) on the
factory floor. Substitute leadership.
11b. Eliminate management by objective.
Eliminate management by numbers, numerical
goals. Substitute leadership.
12a. Remove barriers that rob the hourly
worker of his right to pride of workmanship.
The responsibility of supervisors must be
changed from sheer numbers to quality.
12b. Remove barriers that rob people in
management and in engineering of their right
to pride in workmanship. This means inter
alia, abolishment of the annual or merit rating
and of management by objective, management
by the numbers
13. Institute a vigorous program of education
and self-improvement.
14. Put everybody in the company to work to
accomplish the transformation. The
transformation is everybody's job. |
|
W. EDWARDS DEMING'S SEVEN DEADLY DISEASES
1. Lack of constancy of purpose to plan product and service that will have a market
and keep the company in business, and provide jobs.
2. Emphasis on short-term profits: short-term thinking (just the opposite of constancy
of purpose to stay in business), fed by fear of unfriendly takeover, and by push from
bankers and owners for dividends.
3. Personal review systems, or evaluation of performance, merit rating, annual review,
or annual appraisal, by whatever name, for people in management, the effects of which
are devastating. Management by objective, on a go, no-go basis, without a method for
accomplishment of the objective, is the same thing by another name. Management by
fear would still be better.
4. Mobility of management; job hopping.
5. Use of visible figures only for management, with little or no consideration of figures
that are unknown or unknowable.
6. Excessive medical costs.
7. Excessive costs of liability. |
©All materials copyrighted 1998 by Ron Turner and Linda Turner. All rights reserved.