Episode 3 -Doris Quinn

In this episode, I have an amazing conversation with Dr. Doris Quinn. Doris has a fascinating story about how she met Dr. Deming and all traveled with him in the last few years of his life. We also discuss Doris's amazing career from nurse to leading to a Ph.D. in process improvement and quality education and one of the leading industry healthcare quality leaders.

Resources:

1. Book: "On Being Wrong" by Kathryn Schultz - Mentioned as having a profound influence on Doris Quinn and related to Deming's theory of knowledge.

2. Book: "Mind and the World Order" by C.I. Lewis - Mentioned as an influential book for Deming, recommended to him by Walter Shewhart.

3. Report: "To Err is Human" - Published in 1999, discussed as an important report that highlighted issues in healthcare quality and safety.

4. Report: "Crossing the Quality Chasm" - Published in 2001, mentioned as another significant report on healthcare quality.

5. Book: "The New Economics" by W. Edwards Deming - Mentioned as one of Deming's important works.

6. Deming's System of Profound Knowledge - Discussed in detail, including its four components: understanding systems, understanding variation, theory of knowledge, and psychology.

7. Doris Quinn's upcoming book - She mentions working on a book about her experiences traveling and working with Deming.

8. American Society for Quality (ASQ) - Mentioned as formerly ASQC, which sponsored some of Deming's seminars.

9. HCA (Hospital Corporation of America) - Mentioned as where Quinn worked and first got involved with quality improvement.

10. MD Anderson Cancer Center - Mentioned as where Quinn worked later in her career.

11. Various influential figures in the quality movement are mentioned, including Paul Batalden, Tom Nolan, Gipsie Ranney, Peter Scholtes, Brian Joiner, and others.

Transcript:

John Willis: 0:00

Hi, John Willis is doing podcast I've got a fascinating guest, somebody that I've been incredibly interested in, in my timing discovery, Darcy want to introduce yourself?

Doris Quinn: 0:11

Sure, my name is Doris Quinn. And I have an undergraduate degree in nursing, a master's in curriculum design and nursing. And my doctorate is actually in policy development and program evaluation, which I discovered was like, kissing cousin to quality improvement I met, you know, Dr. Paul, but Haldun back in the late 80s. And Paul was our QA coach, and got involved with quality improvement back in 8788. And never looked back.

John Willis: 0:45

Yeah, I think, you know, I mean, you know, so the people who know Dr. Deming, you know, you're like any, if you start sort of digging into anything like me, your name pops up, and we'll talk about, like, why you know, why you have such a fascinating story. But as I went back and started, you know, trying to learn more about you, in general, I thought it was just fascinating, your journey, right? You, you start out as a nurse, and you do some quality and issues around bedding and linen. And then you're sort of you know, so your biography on the internet doesn't really show anything. And the next thing you want to do industry leaders in quality initiatives, and then obviously, your work with academic, so I just thought it'd be fascinating to get from a nurse to a PhD. And then, you know, the fact that, you know, the, you did all this, you know, and like I said, become really one of the leaders, you know, thought leaders in quality initiative. So, that's as fascinating as your Deming story.

Doris Quinn: 1:44

Yeah, thanks. Well, I guess I'd be hard pressed to say I'm a master. I think that I've been in the field a long time, but I certainly had a lot of mentoring along the way. So as I told you in, in, you know, after an undergraduate degree in nursing, I did you know, different kinds of nursing, I did public health and then a school nurse after my two boys were born a year apart. And then in 78, I was offered a full scholarship for a master's degree because they were so desperate for graduate level nurses back in the 70s. So that took me to Washington, DC. The other interesting damning connection there is that after graduating, my first job as Director of Education was at Sibley Hospital, which, incidentally, was Dr. Demings hospital. He had been hospitalized there and with an I once went for some blood work with him to after I was traveling with him. So the other interesting thing that we did is that in 1982, I was still at Sibley, I ran into a missionary with just come back, you know, from I can't remember where he had been with his children. And so my husband and I had always thought it'd be so cool to have, you know, to go overseas. And so with a six and seven year old, in tow, we moved to California for years training. And then we were assigned to New Guinea, we went to Papa New Guinea, we had a three year contract, but we stayed a fourth year. So my husband was a builder to keep building an addition to the agricultural school where we had been assigned. So after that, and 1987, we came home back to Portsmouth, New Hampshire, where I had worked as a new grad, and HCA had just become started getting involved in quality improvement. And that's when I met up with Dr. Bhutta Walden, who was kind of the QA, I consider him a master he was, you know, very much into the the quality field since the early 80s. Having gone to a Deming seminar, and then realizing that health care needed to get on board here. So I met, you know, I worked with the quality projects, and we used to our course was called quality 101 at HCA. So I went to Nashville took my first quality course and absolutely fell in love with it. It just felt like that's what I was meant to do. So in I mentored my hospital until 1990. And the doctor told and asked me to come to corporate and be a trainer. And I had no sooner a lot arrived in Nashville, that Dr. metoden said, Now when are you starting your doctorate? And I said, Oh, come on, Paul. I'm 40 years old. I have two kids and college ad isn't in the cards. Every staff meeting, he would write on the board doors, Quinn, PhD, that's hilarious. And I say Paul, do this as well, he wouldn't take no for an answer. So I actually, you know, decided to take one course. And I was hooked program evaluation really was the best thing for my career.

John Willis: 5:13

I was, you know, I think there's always that you have to work hard and there's this thing about being in the right place at the right time in people's careers, you know, and and then those people that peak come your mentors, you know, I think it's, it's really interesting you before you met Deming, it sounds like that battalion, I think you said Dr. Watani. He was he was pioneering south, because he must have drank the original Deming Kool Aid, right? Like, because, like, if he was involved in like, 8081 that's really when America was really first getting introduced him. So he must have been a real innovator and then have that person as a mentor to sounds. You know, it's to your, your good fortune, i The New Guinea stories interesting. Like, that was the thing that I that I that really, you know, so I, you know, I was stumbling along. And I think I read in one of the Deming books about your story, and as Oh, my goodness, is a fascinating story. And, and I sort of scour the internet and found, you know, a video of you giving a presentation. And, you know, and what, I want to get to what drew me to it, I think, you know, I might my thesis is this what, why this story is so fascinating between you and me. But so you were saying you went over there really volunteer? No missionary work? I guess it What was your role there? Was it? Was it health care? Or was it education and health care?

Doris Quinn: 6:34

Yeah, it really was health care. And I think because, you know, New Guinea is just barely above the Stone Age. I mean, their buildings are very simple. They have very little technology. Now, granted, we left in 87. So I have no idea if there are even cell phones and you can eat, you never know. So my role was certainly the first was to run an ad post, the school had 80 students. And so I had to learn about malaria and thingie. And even leprosy, I had one student who came down with leprosy, you know, tropical illnesses. And so that was really my, my job was to run the a post. But because I also had a background in education, I taught classes, my husband build teach building skills. So our teenage students could build, you know, decent houses, not grass huts could collect rainwater. And so I taught classes, I ran the a post, I got grants. So after two years, this was a boy school, and we got there, but I was able to get$25,000 to start the girls section. So that was why we stayed an extra year, so Terry could build the my husband, Terry could build the girls section. So it was our sons went to an international school. And though they were the only Americans, they were not the only white. So we had kids from Europe. And we had kids from all over the world who came for the oil palm industry for a logging the Japanese were logging in that area. So it was really a wonderful experience for all of us minus the malaria I could have done with

John Willis: 8:28

that. Well, that was a couple of things. You know, I was going back, and I watched one of your videos, and I know, we had some correspondence. And, and, you know, and I think, you know, one of the stories that you told and you know, in which we tell first is why Deming seemed to get an interest in you. But we can hold that for a second that I think the story that that that sparked my interest was the original one that you had said in one of the video things was he talking about? How you know that there was some debate from some of the students if they, you know, if they got sick, and they needed medicine or and like whether they should give medicine? Or should they go, you know, with spirits and magic, right? Like, which is, you know, not really making fun of it. That was the way that was the culture. Yes. And I thought that to me, you know, you had a similar story in our correspondence about, like, how, you know, how you, the students that grew the best crops, instead of them just telling other people how to show them, the, you know, what they did? And I think those are really good stories about how, you know, I think about so how do you change culture? And I think one of the brilliance is of Demings, you know, probably primary thesis or do you want to call it system profound knowledge, right, is the theory of psychology. And I thought that, that, you know, when you said, you know, to the particularly on the first day discussion, you said to the students, you know, like, hey, why don't you take this medicine and if this doesn't work, then go to the village and get you know, you know, where I think one of my memories were like, You Some of the other people arguing like that stupid witchcraft or spirits and magic will never work. And your take was like, that's the wrong approach. For a culture that doesn't understand, I just, I think, to me, you nailed the cultural part of, you know, how do we change people?

Doris Quinn: 10:19

Right. So I think that, you know, we tend to be so arrogant, you know, we sort of think we've got all the answers and, and I think I heard that a lot from Dr. Deming as well, because, you know, you become a manager. And it's like, all of a sudden, somebody opened your head and put all the answer. And very often, you're wrong. And so I think anytime you put down people, you've already lost them. So I think that, you know, the students had, we're learning from their parents, you know, about spirits and magic and, and so I think that it was very important for me to run the two side by side. And, and that was something that Deming picked up on, you know, that I was able to say, yep, come get my medicine. And if it doesn't work, so my medicine worked for malaria, it worked for infections, it worked for pain, but it did not work for Dengie. If the students got a knee, and sometimes they did, there was nothing that could be done. So I would send them to the village and I'd say, Okay, go get magic. And sometimes the students will come back and say, Wow, the magic didn't help, but at least my pain pills work.

John Willis: 11:36

Yeah, they go. And if they think that's the real fascinating, you know, is your story of like, so I, I always loved that because it to me, it was immediate, like, you know, theory of psychology of a system for knowledge. And but you have the great story that you tell if you could tell it, like how that transpired. Like how did you get from sort of that story being tell the story and and how's your professional relationship with Dr. Deming?

Doris Quinn: 12:04

Yeah, well, my, I think the thing that is most interesting, people always asking me, so how did you meet Dr. Wu, how did you get to travel with him? So in the conferences, he would teach from eight to four, and you know, we'd have some time for lunch and breaks. But back in the 8889, he was still pretty agile, he could teach all day. And so at four o'clock, he would go rest, take a nap. And then we were anybody who was interested. So my first Deming seminar was in Cincinnati. And you know, we had some of the real masters I mean, the Tom Nolan's and gypsy Rainey and Peter shoulders and shurkin, Bach and Brian joiner, I mean, these were the topic leaders. And so one particular conference, probably about 100 of us would stay out of the 800. And so we would, we were discussing leadership. And one of the things that we talked about was what is the role of leaders and of course, Deming talked a lot about the role of leaders. So when Deming came back for a debrief thing about 530 or so. And so we started to talk about this notion of leadership. And I told Dr. Deming that I said, you know, you tell us what to do, but I'm not a senior leader, you know, I have no authority in my organization. I'm an educator. So it'd be nice if you kind of told us a little bit more about what we could do, as, you know, support staff. And I said, let me give you an example. I had just come back from New Guinea. And I said, our students there had no standing in the village. And so how could we teach the villagers a different way, you know, flash and burn used to be what they would do. But people were not dying as much from infections and from malaria. So they were running out of land. So I told Dr. Deming and the group how he initiated projects so that the students could demonstrate what they learned, rather than, you know, march into the village and say, Okay, I just learned that this is what we ought to do composting we ought to do. And so this idea of a demonstration project got his attention. And I said also, we're just starting our journey and we always ask our class our participants to do a project very early on we didn't they just went to class and then we kind of hoped somebody was going to take on a project but after a while, we realized that that was really important. So I said that's my demonstration project like my New Guinea kids and so Oh, I think that got that Dr. Demings attention

John Willis: 14:54

did the the first aid was also get his attention because I went to me is really biased. All right,

Doris Quinn: 15:00

yeah, yeah, I think I think that did get his attention. But after you know, to the rest of the story is after he was intrigued by by New Guinea story. So at the end of the session, everyone would line up to have him autograph our book out of the crisis. And so he looked up at me and said, Now you were in New Guinea? And I said, Yes. And he goes, which join me for dinner. I want to hear some more about that. Well, you can just imagine my reaction, it was like, Oh, my God. Yeah. So that was really got it. Yeah, that was an introduction.

John Willis: 15:41

But he, I guess he just loved that. But it's funny in my industry, there's, there's people that like know Deming really pretty well, there's some people that want to know more about them. And then there's people on the fence. And then there's deniers, it's so weird, like, you know, and a lot of deniers will say, Well, he never really managed people or, you know, and I think, you know, I guess part of my theory was, you know, I don't care about that, like, leaders don't have to have, you know, leaders or leaders. But I think that when he met you, he saw a synergy between your practical experience. And his, you know, the things he knew, were right and correct. You know, would you agree with that, or?

Doris Quinn: 16:23

Yeah, and, you know, I remember hearing that, you know, he's never been a manager, he's, but as a consultant, especially, you know, early on, even before Japan, when he was still working for the Census Department, or, you know, did an internship at Hawthorne, and he would listen to people, as a consultant. He'd say, now tell me about this, or what do you, you know, how does this work for you? Where, and I think that's the part that people don't realize that he collected data on how people were managed for, you know, I mean, he was a postdoc in his 20s. He died at 93. That's a lot of years. No, you know, so he may not.

John Willis: 17:11

Yeah, I mean, not, I'm not trying to say that. Any space that academics in but a good friend of mine, Jean Kim, who's written sort of co author with him, but he's very well known author in our area, and he calls me one of the greatest boundary spanners that he knows. You know, I think that's, that's that relentless. You You said something like Deming was relentlessly curious, you know, and I think that I love that because I, you know, again, not trying to compare myself to Dr. Deming by any means, but, but like, that defines me, like I loved sort of looking at, you know, I, you know, like the, even the Library of Congress, and his correspondence is clear that he just, like, if he was interested, he said that he wrote a letter to you sounded like, he was interested in you and invited you to, you know, travel with him, you know, which is, I think, just fascinating, right?

Doris Quinn: 18:03

Yeah. What a gift. Real gift.

John Willis: 18:07

Yeah. So, you know, I think, well, then you had another one given. So I love some of your stories, too. Like you said that, you know, a little later in your travels, he was doing the seminar to some of the in Detroit. And he was talking about the merit system. And Toyota pointed out like, and let me tell you that there's one story, right.

Doris Quinn: 18:26

But that was really interesting, because the three big automakers were jointly sponsoring it was the ASQ. See, they, you know, they dropped the, I guess now it's in his queue, but, and so they had quite a big fanfare, and there was a huge group and a big banquet. And so after a while, they asked Dr. Deming to speak, and he just laid into a sq see, you know, how come you still are having annual appraisals, how come the ASQ C is not championing the abolishment of such a terrible thing? And our management practices are like what Doris Quinn saw and Papa New Guinea? Yeah, that's awesome. Yeah. Magic in the spirit. Yeah. So he was really he was tough on them. Yeah,

John Willis: 19:18

no, I love it. I mean, I was telling you last time we talked that there's a video out there some reasonably humorous clips of him. And there's a there's a question that somebody asked in their seminar and he, you know, he's, he's older because he can't hear and he's got somebody who has to answer questions. So somebody asked, the question is, you know, how would you improve the merit system? And then he asked his assistant to sort of tell him what it is. And he says, he gets like, angry goes improve. He says, Could you think of a better system to destroy humans? You know, like, how would you? What improvement would you make? And then the poor student and ask, well, then, what would you replace it when he's like, then he even gets even matter. He says replace? He says abolish thing for God's sakes. And so he didn't like Merit Systems, which means I don't either. So I, you know, another reason why I think there's, you know, I feel this kinship with him, I was

Doris Quinn: 20:11

gonna say, as a manager, I hated doing those annual appraisals. And the more difficult it got, the more HR would try to Well, now, let me show you 32 pages of verbs that you can use, and it's just crazy how we still tried to pitch an old people.

John Willis: 20:32

No, I it's still it's the rapid I mean, I think our industry just renames it, you know, like, people get mad at me. And I say, like, yeah, you know, okay, you know, originally MPOs, you know, became KPIs. And then now, you know, the, the current Buzet, the Googles, and all those places are, okay, ours, you know, but like, they're, they're deterministic footprints of future events, you know, like, these are the things I'm going to set out to do this quarter and for the rest of the year. And it's just, it's not honoring the complexity of, of the way things really work. And, you know, and, and it's in, you know, I think it's just unfair. You know, that, because it doesn't take into, say, the systems themselves, right, you know, so you're not to get in too deep. But the whole red bean thing is like, it's a great example of showing how most of those systems are just really, they have no value. I did want to talk about theory knowledge, though, to know. So you know, there is the kind of don't or do want to put you on the spot a little bit to do the elevator pitch on system of profound knowledge. You gain for that, I mean, doesn't have to be gory detail.

Doris Quinn: 21:42

Yeah. Well, I think that in his last book, he really outlines a system of profound knowledge. So understanding systems, and for me, that's all about processes. I mean, I am rabid about doing flowcharts. Because I think that if you don't see all of the steps, it's really easy to demoralize people understanding variation. You know, again, as a manager, if I had a 6% deviance in my budget, somebody said, Well, tell me what you did. Well, I don't know what I did. My secretary made it up, because I didn't have any data. So all the mischief that we do not understanding Common Cause and special cause variation. And then theory of knowledge, you know, how do we learn? And how do we know what we know? You know, sometimes we are so absolutely sure. And it's like the kids in New Guinea, you know, they close their windows at night, because the spirits were out at night. Right? Well, how do we know that? You know, and so this whole notion of always questioning what you think, you know, and then finally, psychology. And I think that when I went to the seminars, probably half to two thirds of the time, Deming did not talk about statistics, he talked about the dignity of the individual. And I think people that feel like they have no standing, they can't speak up, because their processes are so screwed up. They know data that the managers refused to look at, then quality is going to suffer. So I think even though psychology was kind of like the fourth thing, if I was to reorder them, I would make that number one, because I think that's what he really thought was number one.

John Willis: 23:40

Yeah, I think that's again, I'll tie that back to why I think Deming was interested in you so New Guinea story, right, I think, you know, it had the, the markings of the example through psychology, right? In other words, you know, so many times will will come in with all the science, you know, I think the brilliance for me was just around analogies, like okay, variation, yes, you know, system process control system thinking a little harder, but like it, there's a lot of data around, you know, that complex adaptive system, adaptive capacity, all those things, you know, and, you know, variation in, in knowledge, right, like I think, you know, that's you know, epistemology, or in our do want to circle back to that, but but in also, like, very simply saying, Plan, Do Check Act or something like that. But the brilliance of such profound knowledge is you put a lens on that very few other people put on, which is like, you could get all that right. But if you don't understand so like, to your point, you know, hundreds of years of culture. You couldn't argue the technology or the Gantt charts or the control charts, to people just didn't believe that medicine solve the problem, right. So you had to be able to work within the psychology. And I think the bias is on both sides, right? Sometimes like we come in thinking we know the answers like you said earlier or The people that you're trying to help change, they might be right. They might be wrong, you know, like, being able to arbitrate. That whole theory of psychology, I think is important.

Doris Quinn: 25:12

I can't remember if we talked about this book when we first spoke, but there's a book called on being wrong by Katherine Schultz. And that book had a profound influence on me. And I think it's very much theory of knowledge. And it really is the whole thing that we are just so convinced that we've got it right, because we've done it that way for, you know, forever and ever. So I think that anytime we say things, or you know, as a manager, I would walk into staff meetings, and I'd say, Okay, we've got when I was creating, helping to create the quality college, you know, I knew we wanted something online that people could there were 20,000 employees at MD Anderson. And so we wanted to be able to touch more people. And, you know, it was all a matter of trusting my educators being able to say, you know, I don't have the answer. I'm not sure how to do this. And I think those are the managers that do the best job, you know, trust the people that you've hired. If you've hired idiots, then this is a Mayakoba moment.

John Willis: 26:24

Okay. Yeah, I had a call with a good friend this morning. There's a lot of studies in complex systems and adaptive capacity. And, and he made this comment this morning, which is, you know, we've talked about some help some people in our industry will call things a science. And, you know, he made this great quote is that you can't call the science unless you can prove all the things that you've done wrong. You know, you know, a different that was an interesting like, that like site, and I think that ties back into Plan, Do Check Act, right, which is, you know, that, like, there is really there's no such thing as right or wrong. It's, it's an experiment. And there's a results, and the analysis of the results determined. The next step, or multiple scopes. We, we did talk about like, not that we want to dissect it, I have a good friend of mine, one of my co workers, he's got, like, you know, degrees in like, all sorts of crazy stuff, including philosophy. So I'm going to get him on a podcast to tell me and he's actually a damning fan, too. So tell me about CI Lewis's mind and newer world order. But I think that the interesting there is, like, you know, I was taught Demings influence was his physics and all this new science that was coming out, you know, sort of deterrent in the night, you know, again, him then getting his degree at a time where, like, science was incredibly interesting, right, quantum physics and statistical engineering and all these things with gases. And, and but what I didn't realize was that, you know, he was also heavily influenced by philosophy, and particularly, supposedly sure told him, Hey, you need to read this book by CS Lewis. And it was a major in that it was really daunting of pragmatism. And, you know, and how that played in the way he was thinking. And I think we all agree even Deming said that it was the hardest book you've ever read. Like, so. But but but but you had mentioned like you that you felt that that was a big influence on him as well, right?

Doris Quinn: 28:21

Yeah, yeah. He, he talked about it. The thing that was really cool about being able to travel with him is that after a long day, whether or not we would go back to his home in Washington, or we were in a hotel, and after dinner, he loved gin. Tangri gin was favorite. So we would have, we would have our gin, he said it. But those were the moments that we could have conversations about, you know, his kids and his wife died in 86. And so I met him in 88. So, you know, Lola had just died. But one of the things was the fact that Shewhart was the one who was heavily influenced by Louis and, and I think that as I asked him about it, I said, Dr. Deming, I got an old copy of this book, and I said, I don't understand. Well, you know, he did say in his class to start a chapter six or seven, don't start at the beginning. And so I think that there was a lot more in his background, he was really, as I said, a relentless learner. So he did talk about that the influence of that book and being able to it's why theory of knowledge was so important in his profound knowledge.

John Willis: 29:41

Yeah, no, I you know, I think, you know, again, comparing myself to the brilliance of that guy, but a good friend of mine who is in my industry, you know, he's, he's developed a whole genre of software and he was a physicist that became a computer science professor in any created a whole product, open source product that He's become a good friend of mine. But he wrote a book in search of certainty. And it's basically a physics view on it. And I've had to read that book. You know, I think Deming said he had to read a read CS Lewis book six times, I've had to read Mark's book four or five times, to, you know, to to get it straight. I guess that's the point of people who are relentless, you know, learners, right. And I think that sums up the theory of their vows very well. The other area that we talked about, which I think is sort of just fascinating, the Deming isms, right is you didn't suffer fools, right, like, so you had some, like we talked about, like, how, you know, like, he just didn't like grandstanding or it? You know, I think that again, why I feel I would connect so well with him. In my travels, I you know, the people that ask a question that a religious want to tell the rest of the class, how smart they are, like zero tolerance for that?

Doris Quinn: 30:52

Yeah. So I often would see that in the seminars, because if I was his assistant, I was the one who had to repeat the questions, if he hadn't heard it. And sometimes I'd hear the question, and I wanted to say, I don't think you want to answer this.

John Willis: 31:12

Yeah, then he could play that. Could I? I'm wondering if you're the one in that video, I saw where he's talking about the merit system. And he gets all angry because he has an assistant. And he has to ask her what the question. So there's a delay, like, he's sort of in a friendly mode, like, hey, what's the question? And then, and then she whispers to him, and then you know, and he's like, what? You know. So that could have been your role, but then he didn't help. Yeah, but I love the idea that like, possibly there are ones that he could play that I couldn't hear it card, right, which is like that. So but you told that there was also the story about and I think it's like, I know, I've got some notes on him being this ultimate unionist. Right, like, you know, he was was the other thing that you get is his passion and where it's going from, right. It's not only really good science, and like some management theory, science, you know, grounded, I think, from a lot of early statistics, even his work as an engineer, and non deterministic thinking, but the idea that he really, he just felt that, that his thoughts about like humans, and and, you know, you told a really good story about there was, he was in a process of not reviewing, but listening to some person's quality initial presentation metric. That's a great story.

Doris Quinn: 32:31

Yeah, well, she she was fairly new to the company. And I think it was one of the automakers, but I'm not gonna swear to it. And so the managers were presenting QA projects that they had done as part of their classes. And so this board gal is presenting a project and she clearly did not understand the statistics of the variation that and so the more he asked the tough questions, the more flustered she became, until it was really clear that she did not understand what Dr. Deming was asking nor kutchi answer. So later on that evening, but in our, you know, our special quiet times after dinner with Deming was quite

John Willis: 33:18

huh, your gym time? Yeah,

Doris Quinn: 33:20

our Gin Tonics. And so he finally said, I should not have been so hard on her. It's not her fault. She has not been trained. So he sat down and wrote, you know, a handwritten letter and said, I apologize, you know, I shouldn't have been so hard. I will talk to the management about the fact that you did not have enough education to do this project. And so the next day when I was able to find her in the audience, and I gave her this letter of apology from Dr. Deming, so he would often do that. I mean, he, you know, didn't suffer fools lightly, but he was very kind to people who, clearly it wasn't her fault. You know, what had happened? So,

John Willis: 34:10

you know, I think that the why I liked that story so much, it's a practice what you preach, right? Like it was, you know, like, like, that's not gonna show up in any book about Deming, right? Like, maybe your book, but we'll get to that but, but that that's just an example of like, you know, people who say this, this this and, you know, and they philosophize, and then so you watch them in their the way they do things in it doesn't always line up with how they present things to the world. And that just shows me that there was a new, you know, that he was the real deal on all this stuff. But I think that's a great story of, you know, him checking himself and saying, you know, what, like, you know, I did the thing that like, I hate that happens is somebody getting blamed when, individually when it really is a system problem.

Doris Quinn: 34:56

Right, right, that's for sure he did practice

John Willis: 35:00

Yeah, no, that's, you know, and again, I think that whole humanistic approach, and I'd mentioned to you that, you know, it like just something to ponder that, I've always thought that, you know, there were probably moments that, you know, again, I would assume that Deming the way he was brought up the way, you know, he was just, you know, he was brought up to be a, you know, good human or an empathetic person. And then I have a theory that Python got to see the worst of the workers, you know, all the hawthorn experiment stuff, and Hawthorne effect comes out to be really great stuff for sociology and studies. But, I mean, it was really just, you know, treating people like animals, you know, and like, experimenting against them. And he's there during that. So I can't imagine that he didn't see some of that in his early career. Like, I don't want to be involved in many systems that look like this. And then moving all the way to hits the Japan. It's the intrinsic beauty of that, that culture. You know, and you know, I feel by Tommy's, right ready to write the new economics, like all those things must have had the cumulative effect on his

Doris Quinn: 36:07

Yeah. Yeah, I, I would think so. We never, we never talked about the hot the one plant and some of that I learned from while reading seal the seal Killians, his Secretary of almost 40 years, but he was much more eager to talk about the day's events. So when we went to Nashua corporation, or if we went to the car manufacturers or yellow freight line, he was more interested in debriefing the day's activities and making sure that I had my questions answered. So that was the other thing that was very important. As I traveled with him, I had to have questions. So if I hadn't seen him in a month, we get on the plane, he take a short nap. And then the first thing he'd say, well, Doris, what questions do you have for me? Oh, that's great. And only? Did I not have any questions? And I think I was up all the way to California. Yeah, no, that's because if you were gonna travel with them, you had to be a learner, you had to be a student,

John Willis: 37:16

you know, I was, I was I do this is once a year presentations, for certain colleges that use one of my books is a reference, it's not all of them. But there's a couple. And you know, and they were talking about, you know, where people hiring and I said, you know, it's a smaller colleges. And, you know, I could deal with any students, like, you know, to the professor, like, you recommend some of your top students, but you can't just send me a resume, what you need to do is figure out all the things, I've got tons of stuff out there, like and write up something by just figuring out who I am and what I talk about, that might sweat. And it's not an ego thing. For me, it's like, I will know that you're a learner, and then I will take you to somebody who I know is at Nike, or at Disney or people that are, you know, leaders in those positions. But like very much again, I keep apologizing for comparing myself to Deming, but but like, you know, that's the way I do things is I want to see, if I'm going to recommend you to some person, it's not just that you got straight A's or even that you studied the work that is important. It's that you're relentless learner. And so that's such a great litmus test for me is like, you know, write something up that you think I'd be interested in. You know, so yeah, that's pretty cool. The other thing that we, you know, I think we, you know, you know, get a couple more topics to talk about, but I think the other interesting thing is, you know, why is health care plays Deming, and when I, you know, I was telling you earlier, you know, my first podcast is with this friend of mine who introduced me to Deming, you know, and he went right into, I was a big goal rap fan, and he was like, you know, you got to read Deming, it all starts with Deming. Okay, just read like five or six books from goal, right. And, and I felt like, I had all the answers and like, oh, man, now I gotta go read all about this other guy I never heard of and, you know, and so I go in and I like I said, in the first thing, you start you running through the system for about an hour. That's right. And in New Economics is great, but like, it was hard for me to grok the examples assistant professor now it's particularly the variation was simple, you know, I think theory knowledge reasonably and system thinking, but it was it was actually the theory psychology that stopped me. And I went out and every The only things I found were on the internet or all healthcare examples. And like, really good examples, and I realized that wow, healthcare really got into that dynamic. And so I'd asked you when we had a call earlier, like, Why did health care? You know, why is health care seems to be one or more, you know, most people think it was manufacturing, but it seems to me if you if you survey the internet, I think the health care people seem to have taken his work The farthest.

Doris Quinn: 39:51

Well, I think the first thing is that we bury our mistakes. So when Dr. retardance started in Early 80s, looking at what Deming was saying, and looking at variation in health care, and I remember doing a flowchart of liver transplant. And we had three hepatologist, who had to review the patient. And as I was doing the flowchart, I'd say to the staff, the, you know, the nurses and stuff, and I said, well, then what happens? And they said, Well, it depends. If Doctor A is on duty, this is what we do. If Dr. B's on duty the doctor sees on duty. And so when I went to the three hepatologist, that liver experts, and I said, Okay, you guys do a three different ways. Who's best? Well, you know, back in the 90s, they looked at me like I had three heads, what do you mean, who's best? Well, you have three different ways what's, what data do we have, that tells us one of you is better than the other. So the variation, first of all, was as was adding a lot of cost to health care, and it made it more likely to have mistakes. So I think that because you know, To err is human came out in 99, that finally said, Guess what, we in healthcare are not the gods that you thought we were, and then crossing the quality chasm that came out in 2001. And I think that we finally had to own up to the fact that our systems were really screwed up. And I hate to tell you, I still teach in health care, and we still have screwed up systems, right? We don't understand data. You know, certainly the psychology of you know, I remember working with residents, and they were working these unbelievable hours and have them help them It not only if they made a mistake, but if they forgot something that the faculty wanted to do. So we know we have a much higher, I mean, a defective car, you know, but a defective system that kills people. Right. I think that made us take notice.

John Willis: 42:15

Yeah, no, and I think you I think that's why, yeah, no, I mean, the stakes are, you know, very high. Right? Like, you know, can you know, so it's critical. Yeah. critical services. And, you know, and yeah, yeah, again, like, we could both go on and on about, like, why understanding variation at a, at a science level or statistical process levels is credibly important, especially for like, health care, right, like and things you do, and all that. So yeah, no, I think that that's pretty interesting. You know, I, you know, you told me about that two errors human. And I went and took a quick glance at it. And I noticed there's one of these days, I'm gonna connect you with my good friend, Richard Cook, you know, and so he's, he's got this references to him all. He's an anesthesiologist, and he's, he's been doing a lot of work in it. He's like, the coolest person I know, because you talk to on a Tuesday, he's like in the 70s. And he'll still be going into the operating owners, anesthesiologists, and on Thursday, he'll be like some bank doing an IT outage incident. Postmodern, like, there's nobody cooler on the planet that has can say that in one week. Right. So yeah, I would love for you to sort of virtually meet Richard Cook and see if I can do that. I guess last but certainly not least, you know, you have this fascinating damning story. So just, you know, you want to close up about us writing a book. And you put all this in place where we can hold it. Tell us a little bit about the book or it's coming along?

Doris Quinn: 43:46

Yeah. Well, I think for years, people kept saying that I should write about my experience. And, you know, having rubbed elbows with the likes of Brian joiner and shirking back, and you know, Tom Nolan, and I always felt like I was such a peon who would care, you know, what it was like traveling with them. But I think the more you know, the fewer of us that are left that knew him personally. Yeah. Then I think that it is important that people know my side of the story. I don't think there are any. Now Dr. batata, has written a lot of books, but Paul did not travel with him personally. So I think that I do have the story. And so about two years ago, I actually started getting an outline together, and I had pretty much a finished book, and I had a publisher in England, but I ran into difficulties with some of the stuff that I had quoted liberally from Dr. Demmings seminar and MIT Press. ohms. You know, his books and so I had to kind of back up and say no, I can't use this material. So I've had to rewrite two chapters. And I actually think that I like this version better. A lot of what we talked about is, you know, how I met him profound knowledge. I kept a diary of all of our consulting engagements. So wow, even even our, let's have our gin, you know, what did we talk about? We had some,

John Willis: 45:27

I can't wait, I want to be a first customer. So

Doris Quinn: 45:33

it's coming along, I've got the interest.

John Willis: 45:37

You know, anytime you want to put a couple eyeballs on it, or just when you're ready to promote it, I'll just think there'd be a lot of fascination of like I said Deming is in a reasonably interesting topic in my world. And it and we have an area we've specified is called DevOps, you know, and so there's a lot of banter about Deming and Demings, 14 points less about profound knowledge. But, but you know, those those, like, excuse the pun, the poignant points, really expressed a lot of ways people are thinking about modern tech, you know, information technology delivery, you know, it's sort of the backstops and some of the, you know, and you know, so like some of the big even sort of tech giants influence from from manufacturing into, to knowledge work, really. So anyway, so I think your book will be very well welcomed in, in my space, so Well, good. I hope you had fun, and

Doris Quinn: 46:30

I did. I always do talking about the master. There you

John Willis: 46:33

go. Yeah. No, it's great. So. All right, well, thanks again.