S3 E2 - Dennis Sergent - From Bell Labs to DevOps
Dennis is the founder of Sergent Results Group. Sergent Results Group was founded in 2000 and offers professional coaching, consulting, leadership learning, quality and productivity training, and expert facilitation. The company created the Continual Quality Improvement (CQI) Academy™ for leaders and managers seeking to understand the scientific improvement methods of W. Edwards Deming and others.
Dennis describes his experiences with Dr. Deming's teaching. I am a huge fan of another Deming student, Ron Moen, Dennis has worked with Ron on a couple of occasions. If you are a Dr. Deming fan, this is another great podcast where you get here more untold stories. I hope you enjoy.
https://www.linkedin.com/in/sergentresultsgroup/
Resources:
NBC special "If Japan Can... Why Can't We?" (1980) - This documentary featured Dr. Deming and sparked interest in his work in the U.S.
Books by W. Edwards Deming:
"Out of the Crisis"
"The New Economics"
Walter Shewhart's work - Mentioned as influential to both Deming and the Bell System
Ron Moen - A collaborator of Deming who worked on the Model for Improvement
The Deming Institute - Mentioned as an organization where Dennis Sergent is involved
Books related to the Hawthorne experiments:
Fritz Roethlisberger's book on the Hawthorne experiments
A critical book about the Hawthorne experiments and Elton Mayo (title not specified)
Sergent Results Group website: sergentresults.com - Dennis Sergent's company website
The Deming Institute Research Seminars - Where Dennis Sergent has presented research papers
Transcript:
John Willis: 0:00
Yeah. Hey, this is John Willis again, and I got a really awesome guest this morning for the profound podcast. Dennis, you want to introduce yourself?
Dennis Sergent: 0:11
Sure. I'm Dennis Sergent. I'm the President and Principal Consultant of Sergent results group. And the group is myself and some contractors that I know very well. And I've been working in independently as a consultant for management for several years now. Prior to that, I worked in the telecom industry. And I have a long history there, as well as that was a management consultant.
John Willis: 0:46
Yeah, no. And we sort of met on LinkedIn, which was kind of fun. You reached out to me, but so you're at Deming fan we'd talked prior about, you know, sort of this short time it gets sort of in your head, I guess, at some point. And so I would like to ask people like, what, like, what was your sort of experience of becoming aware of damning or in a lot of people's case, they, they have this aha moment, or maybe many aha moments with Dr. Deming?
Dennis Sergent: 1:16
Well, it is much like Deming describe for me, it was discontinuous. The first time I heard of him was in 1980. I happened to be watching that NBC special with Japan, Ken bike, and we. And when he spoke, it clicked to me that here's somebody who knows
Dennis Sergent: 1:38
a lot of the truths that I've seen, at the time, I was working in the telecom industry. And I was unknowingly a student of Walter Shewhart, somewhat like Dr. Deming had been. And so fast forward from 1980 to somewhere in the early 90s, I had read Demings first book, or I should say his next of the last book, it was a first for me, I really crisis. And then mid 90s, I discovered that he had died, and that there was another book, The New Economics. And that's when I was at that vulnerable stage where I had a lot to accomplish as our company was restructuring. There was somebody or two in the company that were very tuned in to what Deming had been saying is we were restructuring. We also had a lot of people who were from the prevailing system of management. So there was this battle going on all the time. And so the fun part was that that really kick started my learning about Deming and Demings methods, as I had already had some exposure to shoe hearts work through the Bell System.
John Willis: 2:58
So I've interviewed some other people who work it sort of Bell and, and they said that sort of shoots work was just sorry, John, I know, I was saying there was I've interviewed some other people. Oh, no, no, okay. I'll clean it up. But um, I've interviewed some other people who worked at Bell Labs, and they said that it was really sort of like you said, I because you were familiar with Stuart's work sort of indirectly or directly, I guess it was just part of the DNA of Bell, right? The his work?
Dennis Sergent: 3:30
Yeah. Though, the engineers and people who worked more closely with Bell Laboratories had different influences from different scientists there. The connection to shoe hearts work was through a brown book that we referred to as the Bible. I supervisors all had this brown book on their desk. And every once in a while, we'd get into a difficult problem. And they would consult with this Bible to figure out how to gather the data and how to display it properly. And so at a certain stage, I discovered that this book was dedicated to Dr. Shu heart. They credited him this committee that wrote the Bible, as it was called. Credited shoe hearts work for inspiring their various methods on how to manage different types of statistical problems and the Bell System. So it was kind of I think you said DNA, it was kind of baked into the DNA. For some managers, not everybody used that book. Some of them clearly didn't follow the directions in the book. And I had a small start to my career by just I was so young, so new as a management person So when I got promoted to management, and I said, Well, here's a book that says how to do it, let's do it that way. And it worked. Repeatedly, I got to go do things, using some of those lessons from Shewhart and others that were focused on quality. Deming wasn't credited at any point in that book, or in that chain. It wasn't until well, after I had gotten into management that I discovered Deming and his work resonated, because the truth was, in my experience, what I could, what I could see as evidence.
John Willis: 5:44
Yeah, yeah, I think, you know, like, I mean, I'm sure, you know, I'm, I'm more of a sort of a study of Deming than an implementer of Deming, although, trying to change that a little bit, you know, but, you know, from the way I've sort of read the history is that, you know, but like, should primarily focus and correct me, you know, I'd like to hear your opinion, he primarily focused on the manufacturing problem, which was basically the, you know, the sort of Bell Labs, a telco problem. And what Deming did was basically able to translate that into sort of just everything.
Dennis Sergent: 6:23
Yes, yeah. That's, that's an accurate way, I think, to describe it. Although Schubert's job, from the research books that I've read, for published by Bell Laboratories, was focused on solving the problem of quality of the the various instruments of telephony, that were deployed around the country, they wanted everything to be uniform and of uniform quality, so that they could avoid the the expense of going out to repair things if they didn't have to, you know, for a defective part. And it was all electromechanical, very highly manual at the stage that Walter Shewhart was doing his research. But it was not just theoretical from my understanding of his work and his credited work in the engineering history, if you will, of Bell Laboratories.
John Willis: 7:28
Yeah, that's brilliant. Well, one of the ways that, you know, I really appreciate that, you know, I, I post some things on LinkedIn and I think I post something about you know, Ron Mo, and because I've learned so much from him, and I just wish that I could have met him but and then you reached out to me and said, Hey, by the way, John, I knew him and then tell the DevOps you know, so the crowd that mostly listens to my podcast about Ron Mo and and why he was sort of so interesting. And I go, father say fascinating to me, but hopefully to people listen to podcasts in the future.
Dennis Sergent: 8:05
Well, some really interesting things about Ron Melinda. First of all, he had delivery. That was, I would say, somewhat unemotional. In terms of stating the facts, putting the ideas in front of people about how to solve one problem or another. He had a great sense of humor. In a way, his sense of humor was also a little bit dry, like Dr. Demings, which I've been able to see through video. Because I never met Dr. Deming, but I met Ron had lunch with him a couple of times. As I was learning from him, and sharing some of my work with him, I wanted to make sure and get his perspective. But I also got an invitation to his home. And Ron was generous in sharing what he knew, as well as some artifacts that he was cleaning out of his office. And I happen to have one of Demmings business cards printed on bamboo. gifted to me from Ron also got a copy of Demings funeral program that Dr. Deming himself put together. Wow. And Dr. Deming, yeah, including the music choices. So of course, of course, of course. And, and Ron advised me on some occasions when we ran into each other at Deming conferences. Most notably, he advised me about something that he and his associates of process improvement, and put together called the model for improvement. And somehow, in the manuscript that I shared with him of a book that I was writing for sharing with some of my customers, I had used the phrase model of improvement. And so he gently reminded me that I was getting it wrong. And that he thought it would be wonderful if I would correct that error. Just but he just was brilliant. He worked with Dr. Deming for several years, he helped facilitate several of his four day seminars around the world. And he just got to be a real hero. And I'm honored to be in a very brief video or two, with with him, where the Deming Institute has put together these videos for their online learning program. And, you know, to me, it's like a super honor to be featured on the same video clip with Ron, you know, saying what he has to say. And other Deming scholars like him, sadly, he's gone.
John Willis: 11:15
Yeah, no, I think it's, like I said, by the time I saw there was a there's just these giants that by the time I started becoming aware of Deming, they were all sort of gone. But you know, that the thing you just said about, you know, changing Model for Improvement to model of improvement. That to me is so like, I spent so much time you know, sort of learning so much and read every book that's been written about Deming, read pay, I mean, just like my life has been, particularly during the pandemic, when I finished, I literally finished my book. Now, I have the five revisions. But one of the things was interesting about Deming, and it sounds like, it was clear that Ron had the same trait, like Deming was very precise about his words. Yes, simple word. To him had to be sort of like not being hard to like, he's he used it in a way where people thought like, Oh, my God, that guy must be conceded to say that, but but it wasn't. Or he was very sort of, you know, would want to correct you pretty strongly about the use of that word. And, and so can you explain, like, what because I, because I think one of the things that like, how I learned about Ron mowing was his sort of history of PDSA, but I think that example of him asking you to change for to have, could you sort of explain that to people? Or why that would be so important to him in the way he thought? Well,
Dennis Sergent: 12:41
Ron, might have been naturally this way before he started interacting with Dr. Deming, but he was a statistician, and my experience with statisticians is they respect precision. In the numbers, they love mathematics, because it's certain there's not a lot of misinterpretation, if you understand the mathematics. And I've attributed the precision of words, that Deming was very careful in his choosing, of the word continual with respect to continual improvement. If you look through his books, and you find a single place, where he uses the word continuous, I would love to know where it is. Because I've logged in, I haven't found it. Ryan, also was precise about doing the research, as he wrote papers as part of API Associates in Process Improvement. He was also an author of other books or co authored other books. And so I just attribute it to his wanting to be correct, and not having to go back and correct himself. Even though somewhere recently, I found a video clip of Dr. Deming admitting that he had made a mistake for the last time he wouldn't make that mistake again.
John Willis: 14:21
Yeah.
Dennis Sergent: 14:24
But Ron also was a very person centered guy. The first time I met him was at a dummy conference several years ago, and the conversation was around my car. And my Cadillac STS for the very first time on a trip out to Iowa State where the Deming conference was held that year had failed me. It wouldn't start and it was a Saturday. It And I described to Ron just casually that I was getting my car repaired a great Cadillac story that involves Toyota. But the Ron Moen, part of the story is, I told him about the starter and the starters between the heads in the v not outside, like most starters, but inside the V of the engine? And he said, yes, if you'll go look at page, whatever, do economics, there's a diagram there in Dr. Demings book, that is the engine he was talking about. And he said, How many miles do you have on that car, the first that it failed, you has over 300,000 at that point. And in order to go get my car unlocked, so the Toyota dealer could repair my Cadillac, Rod loaned me his car. And so that was my first time meeting. There's a reference to it in the video clip of that comp,
John Willis: 16:10
that it's, you know why so the thing that stuck with me, it almost became an obsession of like, thinking I understood it, and then sort of like, stumbling across something else a year later, two years later, and then oh, now I really understand it was wrong. No one said that. I think what I heard in an interview with him where he said that the first time he heard Dr. Deming speak, it was at some statistical academia thing and, and he started explaining the concept of analytical statistics versus enumerates statistics. And he said it all the classic says this is we're all sort of like, mad or like, upset. And I, I spent, like this sort of journey over the years, trying to really understand I knew something Ron understood, that I didn't understand. Being him being a statistician may not be that there was more every time I thought I understood it. There was something deeper behind it. And I think I've recently gotten to a point where I can really explain. And I guess along with that, I'd love to hear your thoughts on this. But one of the things I had sort of finally clicked to me was, I'm going to sort of mangle this quote from one of Demings papers. But it was something like Deming saying that it's not the job of the statistician to solve the problem. It's the job of the statistician to enable the sort of subject matter expert to find out or enable them to go find out where the problem is, and what the cause is. Yeah. And then I think that sort of glued together me everything about statistical process control, the charts, the visualization, the common versus special cause. And I finally got to a place after many years that like to understand what I heard years ago with Ron saying, the difference between analytical and enumerated statistics.
Dennis Sergent: 18:06
Yeah, the data that's out there is noise. And this is my understanding, by the way from the telecom world, the data is everywhere, we've got volumes of it, the important thing, my belief, is to sort out the signals of something going on either something going on the way it should, or something that's not going on the way it should, and you need to pay attention to that. You need to go find out what triggered that. Out of all that noise out of all that data, it's wonderful to be able to sort it in a way that you can put to use right away. Whether it's the supervisor calling and saying, you know, well, there's something going on on this hour, what was going on at that hour, to the people who work in the process, and that's where the real power is, is talking to the people who are doing the work.
John Willis: 19:12
Ya know, I think that it's clear. You know, I guess that brings me to, you know, probably the profound part of our podcast now. You said that, like, it was sort of New Economics. You know, as you sort of journey, you know, you had read, it's like, awesome that you actually watched that. I don't know what I was doing in 1980. And I certainly wasn't watching the NBC documentary. But but, you know, you read out of the crisis, you add new economics and New Economics, right is where he sort of codified his profound knowledge. Right. And yeah, and you told me a story, like we can break down this sort of profound knowledge, but most people who've listened to podcasts or have done that before many times, but you had a great story about your first job right and then and how like your manager couldn't understand whether you were doing a great job or a horrible job, or you want to tell them, it's pretty fast, it works its way into the sort of the elements of profound knowledge, in my opinion.
Dennis Sergent: 20:13
Well, yeah, I think what I related to you before, there were lots of very early lessons that I had that came from the Bell system perspective of quality. And I've got to say, this name for posterity. Joe German, first day on the job taught me about the importance of quality, if I wanted to attain some kind of productivity, and he made a clear distinction, and I owe it to his memory to say his name. Some weeks, and maybe months later, still on that summer job that lasted for quite a while, my supervisor came to me three times in a short period of time, like within a couple of weeks, and asked me about this particular order. And we had these very thin paper orders that had all the details, all the codes that said, run a wire from here to here, to make this telephone number work at this location for a customer. It was very electromechanical in those days. And he brought out this trouble ticket, brought out this order, had me look at it, sure enough, my initials were on the order. And I went to the place on the distribution frame, and I looked, and I saw Boy, this was not good work. I corrected it. We know when he was watching, did everything properly to make it right, and apologized profusely. And on the third occasion, as I was really shocked that this had happened again. My boss said, Hold on a second. He said, I want to check something. And he went off to his office. And after everybody else came back from lunch, was it the lunchtime is when these conversations were taking place? He, after I had my lunch, he called me into his office. And he said, I'd like to show you something. And I thought, oh, gosh, you know, I'm so new, I'm gonna get fired. What he showed me was a control chart. I didn't know what it was called at the time. But what he showed me was a control chart. And he showed me what the volume of work was. For me, what my productivity was day by day by day. And he said, you see here, he said, This is your productivity on the days that these errors occurred. And he said, Now, your work is pretty good. But he said, It looks like you did 80% of the work on these days. And you might be good. But you're not that good. There were four other people working with you. And it's just not rational to think that you did 80% of the work and not for other people to 20% of the work. And he said today when I came out, I noticed something. Your co workers tool pouches were hanging on the end of the distribution frame while they were out to lunch. And I looked and I noticed that your pin in your tool pouch is green. Nobody else's is green. So I went back and I recalculated counting just the ones that were green, and you were about 20% of The work volume. If I just counted the green ink on the paper log. He said I don't know who's testing. I don't know who they're testing. Are they testing you? Or are they testing me? But my supervisor introduced me that day within I don't know, weeks of my first start on the job. He showed me a control chart. And so he said don't worry about it. He said I think I will just let people know that. I have discovered an interesting problem. And he said we'll see what happens. So he said keep doing what you're doing and I did. I want to fast forward to about 2005 or 2006. I happen to be taking my wife by my old neighborhood and I pointed out where one of my co workers used to live a couple of blocks away. You And as we rounded the corner, who's sitting on the front porch. But my coworker, and so my wife and I pulled up, stop, got out and talk to her on her porch, caught up after several years. And I just gently asked her if she remembers certain events where this occurred. And she got the biggest smile on her face. And she said, yeah, she said, I wondered how long it would take Dale to figure that out. So that, is that the story?
John Willis: 25:37
Yeah, no, I guess there was some sort of collate and problem with initials or something like that, or?
Dennis Sergent: 25:42
You're right, absolutely. Some of my co workers were using my initials, but they were doing it in blue and black ink. Yeah,
John Willis: 25:51
that's really I mean, that's, I mean, that's analytical statistics, right? It is, like, like, you know, to be able to sort of, you know, sort of unpeel or look for layers of, you know, not just accept, like, a sort of a first order. Like, okay, you know, Dennis is making the first round error as well, let's take a look at it. Let's play, let's apply analytical statistics. And this is an anomaly, right? One person can't be doing this much work. Okay, something else needs to be discovered. And then, like, outside of the domain of ethical statistics, it's the green pen. But yeah, I mean, I love that story. Because it really sort of, you know, so going back to sort of New Economics, right? You know, that profound knowledge, you know, one of the things when I was writing my book, I knew it would be critical to try to explain where Deming came up with those elements and how he did right. And, you know, and as I sort of went through all the things of like, where he gets their knowledge from where to get, you know, theory of variation, where to get their psychology, where to get, you know, appreciation systems, I realized that, in my mind, the proper way to explain profound knowledge is it should be ordered. It should be theory knowledge, which is how do we know how do we know what we think we know? Right, which that that story is a classic story of like, we think we know, the dentist is creating the most amount of errors. But how do we know that? And then the what I think theory variation, which comes second in the order is, how do we understand what we know. And that was using analytical statistics. You know, and you know, and I think that, to me, that's a great story. You know, and then, you know, I mean, maybe at that point, actually, you know, there was a theory of psychology, right, which is the human nature of how to deal with you and realize, you know, like, we could get into sort of intrinsic or biases, or like to be able to uncouple, the classic use, you said early the prevailing system of management. Fortunately, that manager wasn't sort of pinned into the prevailing system management, which might have fired you had the most amount of errors that day, right. There was. And then, you know, again, you can also think that he was sort of a systems thinker, too. And that, you know, he really had to step back and say, you know, let me think about all the components of this thing. It's not feasible, you know, who knows if he ever got to the bottom of it or not?
Dennis Sergent: 28:40
Right? Well, I think he must have because the manipulation of the numbers stopped.
John Willis: 28:45
Okay. Better, right.
Dennis Sergent: 28:49
Yeah. And this is the thing that, you know, gave me an appreciation for looking at other factors besides just the number that has had an error today. Dennis had another error. Another day, Dennis had a third error a third day. And so the common thing is not just Dennis Dennis data's more error error, but it's what's the system delivering over time? And it was that thinking about what's the system and what's the evidence of the system, over a period of time. And Dr. Deming and others that he learned from that I've learned from him, emphasize that no number in isolation has any meaning it's over the period of time that statistics really have a huge impact on our understanding of what's going on in the system.
John Willis: 29:47
Yeah, and I think also like the brilliance of, of him, you know, coming up with those sort of four elements to analyze the complexity of a system. You had told me And I, it's probably just that I'm not a good listener, but you said that, you know, because one of the things that I struggled, it was easy, easier to understand where Deming got theory knowledge, you know, mostly shoe it mostly pragmatism, right sort of the philosophy part, which you would basically asked him told him, Hey, you should read this book by Clos, you know, variation, like, of course, right. Like, all the bodies of work that Stuart had, right, which was, you know, probably was the core of the brown book, as you said, and system thinking, I did a fair amount of research on what he did during World War Two and who he had worked with, but psychology was always a tough one. Because one, he was a humanist, like, we knew that about him and who he was and how we thought about people. But you had suggested that he had familiarity, like he interned at Hawthorn. That's a fact. And that, that, like, we knew there were a lot of interesting studies going on about work habits. And you know, I always said that Hawthorn was sort of the best, the the sort of the Dickens, it was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was, it was a place that, like, outside of the building, it was this incredible place for people and culture, you know, to sort of get loans, you know, like, and I've written about this in the book, but inside it was a sweatshop, you know, inside the factory. And so, can you tell me again, the story that your theory was that, you know, the Deming was probably directly related to some of those that work?
Dennis Sergent: 31:35
I'm not sure that Deming was doing any of the research,
John Willis: 31:40
right, no, good.
Dennis Sergent: 31:42
But if he truly went there, and refer to it in his books about keeping away from the stairs and quitting time, yeah. And my theory is that that could have informed his thinking about the psychology of people. He was there. As he was fulfilling his role as Shewhart was coaching him in his PhD. I think he had to have observed some of these aspects of the Hawthorne experiments. Just recently had a chance to discuss with one of Ron Molins colleagues at API, Cliff Norman, who wrote that CO wrote that PDSA paper, and I was telling him about this. And he, he, he suggested that I should read this book that takes a really critical look at the Hawthorne experiments, and Elton Mayo in particular. And so as I have dug into the records from a Bell Laboratories of the Hawthorne experiments, as I've read, Fritz ruthless burgers book on the Hawthorne experiments, I read this other one. And I'm not quite through with it yet. But they're picking apart all of the details that were being tested. That informed Elton Mayo, and some people want to, shall we say, argue with what Mayo believed. But the thing that is most remarkable to me as looking at all of those records and references, is that the experiments were looking for these manipulative things that they could change. And what they kept finding out was the big variable was the people. The people were not as predictable as they wanted them to be as cogs in a machine. This was not long after Frederick Taylor died, and, you know, a wild variety of industrial engineers were marching down the path of mechanistic organizations. And what was being discovered at Hawthorne works is, people were not cogs in the machine. So I think maybe Deming picked up some of his understanding of psychology from whatever he observed there and elsewhere, because he was an observer of life, even in hospitals in later life. He he was an observer when he was in Japan. He tried to respect the people in the culture there made many observations about the culture of the people he was working with. So it's just my theory.
John Willis: 34:41
No, I love it, I think because there's there's clearly a Nexus you know, I had suggested I did an interview with Doris queen and I think I told you about like, most people don't know her, but she spent like the last year of Demings life traveling with him. She was a nurse that Deming had met At one of his seminars and she just that she really clicked on the way she thought about like nursing and hospital and and I suggested to her that sort of that could it be that that Japan changed Deming as much as Deming changed Japan? She said, huh, yeah, I think you're onto something. Not that I'm like, but But you're right. You know, like, if you read like, sort of all the notes from his secretary about, like, he would, you know, he just loved he would buy food from the PX, he would literally love Saki, he loved that he'd sneak out to go to kabuki theater. And he just fell in love with that culture, and to understand the nature of how they thought clearly reflected in his further work. But I think you're right, I think he had a lot of that instinct, long before he went to Japan. And you know, I can't imagine that with all that. The way he was such an inquisitive person and just sort of wanted to turn every stone over the find out, like, I mean, if you look, I haven't been, but like the Library of Congress rightly has, like, supposedly, there's a whole wall of letters that he's written to people in most obscure. Like, he'd read something about somebody, he'd write them a letter saying, Hey, I'd love to know more about this or that. To your point, I can't imagine if he was there. He wasn't asking questions or observing. It had to have an imprint. On the way he saw it.
Dennis Sergent: 36:30
Yeah. In the he was a note taker. He, he took notes of conversations he had with people and he sometimes was generous with his credits for ideas. Somebody that is working on the statistics modules for the Deming next program, has been credited by Dr. Deming with this idea. And I heard someone ask this gentleman, Mike fighty. You know, did you really say that? He said, Well, no, I didn't say it quite that way. But Dr. Deming cleaned it up for me. Yeah. And, and one of the things that really got me fascinated and Dr. Deming is, as I was reading, the New Economics, he had a credited there to a hank Kerr a belly from Michigan Bell, the Michigan Bell caught my attention. And I knew a hank Carol belly, I thought maybe this is Hanks, dad. So I called Hank. And he said, No, that's me. That's me. And I met Dr. Deming, and it changed my life. And Hank was clearly outside the prevailing system, in my experience at Ameritech.
John Willis: 37:57
Ya know, the, you know, that whole idea of the prevailing end, like, you know, the, like, and, you know, we, you know, like, you know, I'm deeply involved in what's called DevOps, and you know, how a lot of stuff works, and like, we're still battling this, you know, I mean, it's the same. It's, you know, it's what he was trying to correct in the 30s. But, you know, in the 50s, he goes to Japan, and then we coined this as lean like, and, you know, we go from lean manufacturing, to Lean software development to, you know, agile to DevOps. Right. And, like, we're just always constantly battling this sort of this prevailing system of management that, that it just, it's just this calcium buildup that like, was just, it just never go away. Right.
Dennis Sergent: 38:45
And like the way you phrase that calcium buildup,
John Willis: 38:48
yeah, yeah, because it just sort of builds right. But so I guess I was gonna ask you, so like, out of all the things, you know, this is sort of an unfair question, but you're a good bloke, and you can get it. And of all the things that you've learned from Deming, you know, you've got and I want you to tell everybody about your practice and what you do and all that. But what do you think is probably the most effective things that you've been able to use? In your practice that you sort of find that like, like, yes, the fact that I took this in sort of, from my learnings of Demi and it actually works when I go to customers it is that is enough to sort of clarify or,
Dennis Sergent: 39:31
well, it's not because every customer is different. Every customer has a different understanding of their system and their systems place in the world. So I think the thing that helps me most in my work is understanding how they understand their system and most What they think they know about their system, they don't really know. It's a superstition or a myth. Yeah. And so, helping them get over the cognitive dissonance, when they start to learn that what they think they are doing by rewarding performance is actually damaging performance. It's a very, very subtle task. I have a colleague who has since passed, Tommy Smith said he was not a consultant, but an in assaulted PA. And he was all over safety. But, you know, people have cognitive dissonance, because they think they know what they really don't know. And so I find the best way to help them is to help them recognize that they can get the evidence themselves if they learn a simple tool, like the Plan, Do Study Act, cycle, PDCA, whatever you want to call it. And if they learn to look at data over time, to fairly simple methods, it's not just the tool, it's the how do you use it? And when do you use it. And sometimes I'll use the metaphor, because there are a lot of my customers who are so focused on tools, it's everything I can do, to get them off of acquiring some tool is going to be the magic solution to whatever their people problems are. So, you know, I just tried to help them understand that, that they, that there is a better way, and that they can be way more successful when they start to learn how to use the methods. And just because you watch a doctor, perform surgery with a scalpel, and you have a scalpel in your hand, having watched that surgery once doesn't mean you know what you're doing with a scalpel.
John Willis: 42:09
Now, there's so much there. I mean, again, it's it just goes back to this messaging that we you know, we try to you I mean, one of the things that I found, which was, you know, early in the DevOps movement, you know, a lot of us were like, Oh, this is amazing. And then you know, so you learn that, like a lot of it came from lean, you know, and there's there's sort of good lean badly. We don't need to go into that. Like there's the, you know, like anything else agile, that's good, agile, bad, agile, there's good, lean, bad, lean, but, but then you go back to lean. And then, of course, where did that come from, like Toyota production systems. And then, you know, you know, and I'm very careful not to say that, like Deming created the miracle in Japan, you know, one is, Japan created the miracle Japan, there were many contributors, you know, Duran, there was just like, there were definitely a lot of contributors. Deming was incredibly influential in that contribution. But I think a lot of like, Deming, the trap that you can run into is that, that you get so into Deming, and you're so in sync with the way he thinks you start sort of repeating these sort of Pollyanna, you know, like a one guy criminate this, like the like Toyota exists because of, you know, because of Deming, and that's just, you know, that, you know, Deming would probably get very upset, you know, today. If, but I guess the my rant is that they're all the same problem, right? It's the same problem, whether you go back to the 20s, the 30s, to 50s, the 80s 90s, and now, you know, 2023. It's it, like you just said it, like, you know, whether it's PDSA or not, I think you're right, it's PDSA, but it's how do we know what we think we know? How do we understand what we know? Like, you know, so how do we know is we got to question how do we understand we need to look at data.
Dennis Sergent: 44:16
Well, in this is the thing that a lot of people misunderstand about, not only Toyota and lean, but about a Demings role in Japan, and their turnaround. They did the work of people in Japan, in these Japanese companies in the whole country did the work. They got the results. Deming helped them see things differently. But they were on a search that began long before Deming got there. Before the war. They had their methods they had learned a lot from Frederick Taylor. But after the destruction of the war, they were looking for solutions from somebody who they looked up to, they looked up to Deming, they looked up also to Duran at a certain stage. They were very respectful of Homer Sarasota. Wanted Walter Shewhart couldn't get him right, that Deming instead, but they had a long journey with lots of things that they had explored. And they just kept looking for how do we keep improving? They didn't, even though they said they wanted to go after perfection. They continue to improve to this day, and it's not just Toyota. It's a lot of Japanese.
John Willis: 45:41
That's right. That's right. There was I mean, that's why it's been referred to as the miracle Japan was not just, you know, it's an interesting, you know, this could be another podcast but the Saracen Duran in Deming, you know, they're just like, the, again, another classification of humans is to sort of, like compare and who's better, like, it's, it's like, you know, sort of NFL football, right, like, who's better and there's just this like, terrible noise out there from people about Sarah, you know, it wasn't Deming, it was saris, and it wasn't Deming, it was Duran. And the point I've made to all of these, I tried to stay away from the argument that hey, it's everybody. But the one prevailing fact is that Duran and his followers tend to are a lot tend to downplay Demi's contribution, Saracen and his followers, in fact, downplay Deming. I mean, I've letters that he's written, daring, never downplayed anybody else's contribution. He never, you know, he always gave credit across the board. So like, that's my only one prevailing fact is this man gave credit to everybody. And there's, there's, you know, depending on where you get the quote from, there's things about Taran saying that Deming didn't really understand management, and then sericin says that, you know, well, they didn't even want Deming they wanted sure, like, it's just all this nonsense. And like, you said, find me one place in Demmings work, you know, where he uses, you know, continuous or whatever, right. And like, find me one place where Deming said something disparaging or downplayed anybody else's contribution. I dare you to find that.
Dennis Sergent: 47:29
Yeah, I haven't found it yet, either. And, in fact, I've found references to those individuals who have criticized him. So So,
John Willis: 47:42
yeah, I mean, that just tells you a lot about contribution. So where do people find you? I know you're out there. I mean, clearly, anybody who listens to this would, could benefit from your experience. And like, hopefully, you know, people, you know, that might listen to this think, hey, you know, somebody that really understands Deming, and like all your experience in management leadership? What how it I'll put it in the show notes too, but like, how would people find you?
Dennis Sergent: 48:08
Well, they can find me at my company website, it's Sergent results.com. And the Deming Institute is another place where they can find me, I'm very pleased to help them with some of their programs, I've been honored to be selected to present some research papers to the Deming Institute research seminars. And so I would just say that's probably the best way to reach me is through the surgeon results.com. And of course, my phone number, which you have. You're welcome to share that with anybody.
John Willis: 48:55
I know, when people reach out to me and want direct or any sort of email introduction, I would be glad to do that. I I thoroughly, I'm so glad that you reached out to me. I've just enjoyed this as our second conversation together. We got the second one. I'm like, I'm honored. And I really, just, I love the way you think. And it's just been a blast having a conversation with you. So
Dennis Sergent: 49:19
well. When you have time, I would like to share some thoughts with you that I discovered a long time ago about what I thought of as the equivalent of the DevOps world way back when,
John Willis: 49:32
okay, yeah. Let's let's let's put it on the calendar. But it's okay. I'll give you something that yeah, the week was like, let's keep this as a continuous conversation because there's just a lot we can both learn from each other. So
Dennis Sergent: 49:45
yeah, it's it's all about learning. It is about learning.
John Willis: 49:49
That is the number one if there's one principle between all this is constantly be learning so Alright, Dennis, it was it was a blast. Thank you so much.
