It is not necessary to change. Survival is not mandatory.
"If you take myth and folklore, and these things that speak in symbols, they can be interpreted in so many ways that although the actual image is clear enough, the interpretation is infinitely blurred, a sort of enormous rainbow of every possible color you could imagine."
― Diana Wynne Jones
We sometimes joke that every DevOps presentation must include Deming's "Survival is not mandatory" quote. He did not make that exact quote; there is no evidence. When writing my book about Dr. Deming, I wanted to find the specific citation for the famous quote. He does not mention it in any of his books or writings. Although the Deming Institute cites a source, no specific paper or publication is cited. Deming is well known for using the notion of survival in his lectures, papers, and books. Deming references Darwin's survival of the fittest in Out of the Crisis, published in 1982.
"Survival of the fittest. Who will survive? Companies that adopt constancy of purpose for quality, productivity, and service, and go about it with intelligence and perseverance, have a chance to survive. They must, of course, offer products and services that have a market. Charles Darwin's law of survival of the fittest, and that the unfit do not survive, holds in free enterprise as well as in natural selection. It is a cruel law, unrelenting. Actually, the problem will solve itself. The only survivors will be companies with constancy of purpose for quality, productivity, and service."
― Out of the Crisis
In the 1986 book, The Reckoning, David Halberstam describes what he calls "Detroit's Bleak Winter of 1982" of how Toyota, Nissan, and Honda were at war with Detroit automakers. In another chapter called, "The Reckoning," Halberstam describes how Donald Petersen, the Ford president and chief operating officer, invited Dr. Deming into Ford to begin a transformational quality initiative. Deming, in New Economics, notes that Petersen's efforts might be why Ford and possibly all of Detroit survived Japan's assault.
The fact that Deming may or may not have made the survival quote doesn't matter in the grand scheme. The critical point is Deming's consistent philosophy about leadership and transformation directly related to an organization's survival. Therefore, expect to see his quote used in my future DevOps presentations.
