The Perfect Picture
Iconic V-J Day Kiss Photo
Twenty-one-year-old Greta Zimmer was working in a dental office on Lexington Avenue when rumors about the war's end circulated. Greta Zimmer decided to go to Times Square and check it out for herself. Since her office was not far from Times Square, she asked if she could step out of the office. As she arrived in Times Square in her dental hygienist's uniform, she saw the iconic lighted billboard proclaiming V-J Day, V-J Day. Out of nowhere, she was grabbed and kissed by a sailor. Later, she would say that it wasn't much of a kiss, and she didn't consent. She never even knew his name, she said. However, in a later interview, she said she wasn't that upset when she realized it was a celebratory act. He was glad that he didn't have to return to the Pacific, where he was already engaged in a war. He saw someone dressed in a nurse's outfit, and emotions got the better of him. He was very grateful to the nurses who looked after the wounded during the war. When she arrived back at the office, her boss told her they would cancel all the appointments and close the office for the day. They left, canceled all the arrangements, and went home.
She would not learn for another 15 years that someone had taken a picture of that kiss. Photographer Alfred Eisenstaedt had taken a photo of the kissing couple that became one of the most famous WWII photographs two weeks after Life magazine published it. It served as a treasured reminder of what it was like when the war ended. The picture intrigued those who saw it. They wanted to know more about the nurse and sailor. Eisenstaedt had no information available, so the search for the couple's identity took on a life of its own.
Greta Zimmer was born to a Jewish family in Wiener Neustadt, Austria, on June 5, 1924. With her younger sisters Josefin (Fini) and Bella, Zimmer emigrated to America from Nazi-controlled Austria at the age of 15. In the Holocaust, their parents, Max and Ida, died in concentration camps because they could not escape Europe. Greta supported herself as a dental assistant; she took classes at the Fashion Institute of Technology (FIT). She studied costuming, worked in toy design and doll clothing, in early television with the Bil Baird puppets.
By 1960 Greta Zimmer had married and was now Greta Zimmer Friedman. She saw the kiss picture for the first time in 1960 when she noticed a book called The Eye of Eisenstaedt. Alfred Eisenstaedt was a German-born American photographer and photojournalist who worked for Life Magazine. Friedman recognized the photograph right away when she first saw it in the 1960s. "It's exactly my figure, and what I wore, and my hairdo especially," in an interview for the Library of Congress in 2005. She wrote to Life Magazine, and they told her that they had already identified someone as the person in the picture. Very much like Naomi Parker, the original Rosie the Riveter, others had been identified as the iconic kissing nurse. In 1980, Life Magazine contacted Friedman, and Eisenstaedt signed a copy of the photograph and apologized.
Two authors explained how a forensic analysis was used to determine the mysterious kissers in a 2012 book by Naval Institute Press, The Kissing Sailor: The Mystery Behind the Photo That Ended World War II. They finally identified Friedman and George Mendonsa as the famous couple.
What makes this picture interesting is the story it tells. Creating a picture that tells a story isn't so different from solving complex manufacturing, patient care, or even IT problems. Eisenstaedt captured iconic images of newsmakers throughout his career. His pictures tell stories using what a professional photographer calls the exposure triangle. A perfect picture has the right combination of ISO (Sensitivity to light), Aperture (Depth), and Shutter Speed (Motion) so that the colors, focus, and motion are all in sync. The balance of all three components is essential. The iconic V-J Day kiss photo seemed to capture the perfect story. With what he called the System of Profound Knowledge, Dr. Deming presents a set of similar lenses to uncouple complexity.
Imagine the story of the six blind men and an elephant to explain the System of Profound Knowledge. A king asked six blind men to describe what elephants looked like by feeling them. One blind man said it looked like a pillar by touching an elephant's leg. According to the person who felt the tail, it felt like a rope. The third blind man who ran his hand along the trunk looked like a tree branch. The fourth blind man who touched the ear described it as a large fan. A fifth blind man, who felt the belly, described it as feeling like a wall. A blind man who touched the tusks said they were like steel pipes. The king explained that they were all right. Everyone in this world perceives things differently based on their beliefs and experiences. It's neither right nor wrong.
Dr. Deming's System of Profound Knowledge describes four interrelated components, lenses, for telling a story effectively. The four lenses are:
Appreciation for a System
Knowledge about Variation
Theory of Knowledge
Psychology
Appreciation of a system is systems thinking. An organization consists of its employees, suppliers, customers, and many other subsystems. Actions taken in one part of the system will affect the other parts. By better managing your system, you can mitigate these unintended consequences and optimize it as a whole. The focus of a system is on the process, not the outcome. A better understanding of the process will lead to better results. How the parts work together is most important. Consider making a car with a Lamborghini engine, a Mercedes transmission, a GM chassis, etc. It probably wouldn't work well. The parts are not designed to work together. In sports, all-star teams rarely succeed. However good the players are, if they can't work together as a team, they very rarely succeed
Knowledge of Variation helps reduce variation. "The greatest obstacle to discovery is not ignorance, but the illusion of knowledge." - Daniel J. Boorstin. What do we know that isn't true? How can we avoid making the mistakes we are in danger of making in our thinking? How can we improve the learning process? In the absence of variation knowledge, managers tend to increase variation. Understanding the two types of variation is crucial - Common Cause, a variation from within the system, and Special Cause, which is a variation from outside the system. Underestimating variation leads people to believe that normal variation is not normal, leading them to search for special causes. The result is a strategy that yields slight improvement. This is what Deming called tampering.
Theory of Knowledge is epistemology. How do we know what we know? Without theory, there is no knowledge. Understanding that theory differs from experience prevents insubstantial change. Theories require prediction instead of an explanation. You can never prove that a theory is true, but you can test it's wrong. Evidence-based experiments are the best way to support theories. System of Profound Knowledge uses the Plan-Do-Study-Act (PDSA) cycle to gain evidence and insight. PDSA is an improvement process based on understanding the theory of knowledge.
Psychology is the study of how systems, people, and leaders interact. Leaders need to answer questions like: How do people learn? What is their relationship to change? How do they motivate themselves? Leaders won't lead a successful organization without understanding people, especially what motivates them to do a good job. Deming knew that not all people could be managed in the same way. Rather than monetary rewards, he realized that people are motivated by intrinsic needs, such as pride in their work and working together to achieve a common goal.
This is the first of many articles I will be writing about the System of Profound Knowledge.
