S2 E6 - John Hunter - Curious Cat (Part 1)

This is part 1 of a two-part episode with John Hunter. John Hunter's background includes two areas of focus: management improvement and information technology program management. His experience is in improving the performance of organizations. For the last 15 years, his focus has been on management improvement with a concentration on using technology to aid this process.

Linkedin
Curious Cat
Johnhunter.com

Here are some links John sent me.

Sales Commissions

https://deming.org/eliminate-sales-commissions-reject-theory-x-management-and-embrace-systems-thinking/

(including why Fog Creek Software got rid of sales commissions)

Why ThoughtWorks Eliminated Sales Commissions

https://deming.org/why-thoughtworks-eliminated-sales-commisions/

https://deming.org/eliminating-sales-commissions-at-air-force-one/

The System of Profound Knowledge Applied to Sales and Marketing (presentations at Deming Institute)

https://deming.org/the-system-of-profound-knowledge-applied-to-sales-and-marketing/

Related Material:

https://management.curiouscatblog.net/2010/01/28/the-trouble-with-incentives-they-work/

The Existing Management Conditions Limit How Effective New Strategies Will Be

https://deming.org/the-existing-management-conditions-limit-how-effective-new-strategies-will-be/

(with related links including )

https://management.curiouscatblog.net/2010/12/08/building-adoption-of-management-improvement-ideas-in-your-organization/ )

Transcript:

John Willis: 0:08

Hey, it's John Willis again, and we got a great podcast here. This is John Hunter a long time. I mean, I think his whole life has been Deming fan, you get to hear that. He's John Hunter is John Hunter calm and then also curious cat. So he was one of the first websites that I found when I started getting interested in their academic. Just to give you a heads up, it's it, we weren't really long, we could have just gone on forever. One of the things I realized now is, you know, I started getting into Dr. Deming in about 2011. And by the time I was sort of a serious student, all the what they call the greats, were either deeply retired and hard to get ahold of or gone. And so it's, it's sort of rare when I get to talk to you, some of you. If you go back to my original Thoris, clean, which was the third episode, that was great. But this was great, too, because he's been around the greats, he knew the grades, he got to meet Dr. Deming, so I think you're gonna really enjoy. The one thing I will tell you, it was very long, like I said, and we wound up breaking it up into two parts. So this will be the first part. And then right after that, I'll produce the second part. So I hope you really enjoy it. Thank you. Hey, it's John Willis skin. This is another episode of The Deming profound podcast. Just a little intro here, you know, I've said this before that I started looking at darker Deming in about 2012. You know, my second podcast with Ben Rockwood last year is, he's the one who really sort of got me interested and excited about this. And in about later, in 2012, I created a presentation called Deming to DevOps. And, and one of the things I had heard about is this meeting in Hong Kong, in Japan, something around Mount Fuji, I'm guessing, but, um, and it was this really interesting meeting about what Deming spoke to a high percentage of the sort of controlling wealth in Japan, right 1950. And the first blog site I found was this gentleman, I'm about to talk to John Hunter, a curious cat. And then I just started following him over the years. And when I started this podcast that protect me reach out to him. I've been a fan of his for a while. And, John, you want to introduce yourself?

John Hunter: 2:28

Hi, it's good to talk to you. Okay, so a little about myself, I am probably best known for the curious cat management improvement website. I've been doing that for over 20 years. It started a little earlier than it was it had the name curious cat before the web really existed or at least existed that I knew of. So I've been doing that for a long time. In 2004, I started the curious cat management improvement blog, which I continue to do to this day. I wrote a book called management matters a few years ago, it's a ebook. A couple other highlights. I started the W. Edwards Deming Institute website, and I started the blog for them in 2012. And I continue to write for that blog. Largely I've been focused on management improvement, and software development. So that's a quick overview of sort of my background.

John Willis: 4:08

Great, that's great. Um, yeah, so you know, normally if I find somebody who is sort of a Deming, expert or geek or I asked this question, not everybody on my podcast is a Deming sort of expert and of course everybody's heard of him. But but I'm gonna ask you to what was your sort of aha moment? You know, was like What Why did you get so passionate about their damming?

John Hunter: 4:35

Okay, so this is a long answer. Sure. I don't really have an AHA Okay. Ah, I really was introduced to these ideas as a kid. My father has been involved in these things since I was a kid. And so before I knew the name Deming, or even management improvement or anything like that, I became familiar with the ideas and the concepts just in the way that I was raised. We had database thinking he would do experiments to see what would work, he would think in a process based way. So, yeah, we would use visual management for every wasn't called bad. But we would use those ideas in things like chores we were supposed to do around the house, or, you know, those kinds of things. So I started up with this stuff, all the way from being kid before I knew about it in, you know, the name Deming. I guess, the time when Well, there's two pieces, I guess, a specific part of that database thinking is design of experiments, which most people familiar with Deming or lean, don't know about a fair number of people that know about Six Sigma know about design of experiments. But essentially, design of experiments is about interactions. And the fact that the way we often think about doing tasks and experiments is to vary one variable at a time, which, of course, will not tell you anything about interactions between that variable and something else. So it's not a very good way to do experiments, but it's still the way that we often do. And so my father was, he wrote a book with George Box, and Stu Hunter, called statistics for experimenters. And that book is pretty much one of maybe two that are used by people that do design of experiments. Um, that book he was writing, when I was a little kid. And I remember, as a little kid, being exposed to the ideas, not the complex ideas, but the basic ideas. He was published just before we went to Nigeria for a year where he was a professor, and that the ideas from that book just were something that just came naturally through our course of living. And then in when I was in high school, well, when we got back from Nigeria, one of the things that dad decided was he really liked Madison, Wisconsin, which is where he was a professor. And so he wanted to help make Madison better. So he went and talked to the mayor about him helping improve something. And as part of that, he talked to Peter Shelties, who he had known for a long time, people who are familiar with Demings ideas often know Peter Shelties. And if they don't, they should, in my opinion, the absolute best management book, and also the best Deming management book is the leaders Handbook by Peter Shelties. Um, but so dad, and him decided to start with a project in the first Street garage. And that was when I was in high school. And I'm not exactly sure when maybe a year after that, maybe a year and a half. There was a, you know, they would train the city employees and things. And during my summer vacation, I went to one of those city training classes and sat in on that. And so that was probably when I first really heard about Deming or Demings ideas in action. And so, you know, from there, I became, I was interested in the concepts and I became very interested in Demings ideas, and it continued beyond that in various ways. As I started at work, maybe a year into a job with the retirement system for the federal government. They were talking about doing quality, which was, you know, a big deal at the time. And so I got excited about the prospect of doing that, and got involved with that effort. And from there, I really started to do a lot with Deming and quality management, some one of the things I did while I was there was helped set up the ASQ government division where it was some people from the city of Madison, the state of Madison, at that time, I had moved to the secretary defense Quality Management Office. And we had some people from Austin, Texas, and from the state of New York. And so from there, I was able to do continue getting interested in these things, and really, you know, get deep into the ideas of Deming and management improvement.

John Willis: 11:21

Really brilliant. Um, so just sort of a heads up, like the most of the people that listen to this podcast come from, you know, so Well, we got a movement called DevOps, but a lot of sort of sysadmin, Linux System Administration, you know, building data centers, definitely a lot of sort of software, agile software development, people and, you know, and I'm certain parts of the Agile would completely understand, but when you say, digital management or database thinking, and then even sort of DOE design of experiment, can you tie that in? So when I think of sort of Deming, you know, and again, maybe I don't have a good stronger view of things I should know more about, you know, I think about, you know, what he wrote, I think about system, system of profound knowledge, I think about variations, different press Control, I think about the epistemology or the the, you know, the theory of knowledge, the theory of variation theory of psychology and appreciation systems, all those things that have 14 points and go on. But the point being, I don't necessarily think about it, maybe when I was born in my Deming journey, I don't think about, or I haven't really heard the terms database thinking applied to Deming, or digital management, and then, you know, have heard of design of experiments, but can you give, give me a little more sort of education there? Is that? Yeah, so

John Hunter: 12:53

part of it is that design of experiments, if you understand it, and know about it completely meshes with all of that stuff about epistemology? And how do you know what you know, and the theory of knowledge, but most people don't know about design of experiments. I remember, the My dad taught me that, you know, the basic concept, which is that, you know, if you're going to do an experiment, you very several of the variables at the same time. Um, when I was in seventh and eighth grade, I remember there was a class I took where, you know, that was, you know, science class, and I experiment was a design of experiment idea. And I would talk to him about Well, so what are you doing when you're going away and consulting with these companies, you know, because he would go and consult on these topics. And he said, Well, I'm going to teach him about design experiments. And I said, Well, what do you mean, they're adults, they have degrees in engineering, how do they not know this? And he said, No, that literally, I go to these companies, and they still do one design, they still do experiments where they vary one variable at a time. And I could not grasp that concept as a kid. And I now sort of understand a bit more about how the world that I imagined as a kid of all these intelligent adults that know exactly how things should work and have, you know, gone to school and are doing everything correctly, is not a very accurate perception of the world. But so Design of Experiments has not done that much. It isn't complicated. I mean, like I said, I was in eighth grade, I think when I did, you know, design of experiment for myself. Um, one of the things I'll mention, what I usually do with these podcasts is, I will create a blog post with a link to the podcast. And then I'll link to a bunch of resources I have online. So I can link to a couple things for people that are interested in, they'll be great picking up some Orion design experiments. Um, the but yeah, so in general, the Deming community does not talk about it or use design of experiments that much. Having said that, one of the things the people who were on the stage with Deming talking at all these seminars and things, almost all of them were statisticians. And so almost all of them you knew about designing experiments use design of experiments. But, you know, when you're trying to teach this stuff, you can't teach everything. So you pick a few things, and you talk about those things. So design of experiments was not talked about very much, but it's really very similar people who so six sigma has a lot of detractors. And there's plenty of reasons to be a detractor. But my experience is that any management system, if you look at how it was applied, you are a detractor because it's horrible how it's applied, no matter how good it is, you have six sigma, it's applied horribly, and yes, you criticize it, you have lean, it's applied horribly, and you criticize it, you have agile, it's applied horribly, and you criticize it. Now, occasionally, agile is done well. And there's all sorts of wonderful things about it, right? But, um, so the, the people that I knew that were involved in Six Sigma, were a bunch of these same statisticians. And they knew Deming, and they were less focused on, you know, a lot of the things that people know about Deming, respect for people, theory, a psychology and those kinds of stuff. But the idea of understanding variation and understanding that systems are important and understanding that you need the knowledge of the people who were involved, to tell you what's really going on. So that when you're doing, you know, they didn't, they would use, they would, in general use a design of experiment to test something out. Where the Deming, people would do a PDSA, but the way that they would do design an experiment is very similar to PDSA. It's sort of an incremental approach. A lot of times George Box, I think, was the one that coined the term Eve op, which is evolutionary operations, which is sort of similar to what people would think about with PDSA, where PDSA for the people who aren't familiar with it, Plan, Do Study Act. The one of the core principles with that is that you it's not one experiment, you have a concept, you test it out very quickly, you learn from that test, you adjust it a little bit, you test it, again, you learn from that you just did you test it again. And that's what evolutionary operations is for design experiments, you learn some you then test again. So the the concept there, again, is very similar. It's that you are continually learning adjusting your premise. Experiment, again, adjust your premise experiment again. And the design of experiments is just a little more formal way of doing it that sometimes might not be necessary, might not fit very well, for certain things. Like a lot of the Deming stuff, in my opinion, works extremely well, for software development. It's hard to to see where a bunch of Design of Experiments stuff would work for software development. But maybe it's possible.

John Willis: 19:12

Let's let's table that a little bit because I have an interesting conversation. So I just to give you a little bit of background, and I guarantee I've forgotten everything that I learned, but one of my jobs years ago, and then we're talking probably 25 years ago is that Ge Ge capital and I actually was given a green belt. So they basically give you a green belt. You know, you just right? It's like karate, you get it you get it you get a white belt when you start right. But my wife was actually a black belt and and I actually got to go to Croton Ville. And so I did actually, you know, sort of understand I didn't I think like you said don't take what you said which is and I'm going to get to a question here in a minute. But that you know that like a lot of people look at like six sigma done terribly and there's a lot of Six Sigma done terribly. And just basically say It's a terrible thing or even lean is a terrible thing. And you know, there's even a back, shins agile these days in some ways. But, but I sort of Six Sigma done reasonably well i in some ways it was fantastic you know, in some ways it was a little pedantic but, um, but I guess the one thing I you know, back then I knew nothing of Dr. Deming, right. And, and then, you know, I started learning about Dr. Deming, as I said earlier in 2000. And, you know, 1112, right, because I went backwards because I, a friend of mine, Jean Kim, or a book called the finished project. And before he was finished with it, it's a rewrite of purposeful rewrite of the goal by Eleiko. Rat. And he, he forced me before he would let you return a copy of his finished project, to read the goal. And I was just, this is amazing. And then I learned about Deming. But, you know, I, my natural instinct was like in 2013 14, to say, oh, Deming must have been involved in the Six Sigma stuff, everything seems, you know, I couldn't really find I mean, there's some debates out there, you know, again, there's a fair amount of people that say, they don't think he had anything to do it, I find that nonsensical. But,

John Hunter: 21:17

well, basically, I would say that that's probably a truer explanation that he didn't have anything to do with it. Um, the, there's a couple of problems trying to figure it out. But so one thing is, the way that he was somewhat involved is that people who were involved in doing six sigma stuff, either learn some things directly from him, or, you know, from organizations that were doing things based on what he said. So he had an influence, not because he was involved, but because they used some of his ideas. Um, there's a sense in, in much of the Deming community to be a he'd said some bad things about six sigma, and some bad things about total quality management. that were true, how he truly felt and what he truly believed. But I think that the people who then you hear talk about it today, um, don't understand in the same way that he did that. He had problems with how anything was applied. And so he definitely had problems with six sigma, there were definitely big problems for him and how Six Sigma was done. But that's very different than saying anything involved in Six Sigma is bad. This is a long time ago, I went to one of these six sigma conferences that had a couple of the CIO at in GE, there's a lot of stuff done. And a lot of it, I don't think we've done fairly well. But there's an Applied Statistics Department, which is in GE, and was very involved in a lot of this stuff. And those people, in my opinion, were great. People like Jerry Hahn, and oh, shoot, I'm forgetting his name right now. But he was great. Um, they anyway. But those people were at the conference and some other people, oh, Allied Signal did some good stuff. And Bill Hill, who had been Family Friends Forever, was one of those people. And what I would say to the gaming people, yes, it was, who knows 2025 years ago, was look, if you talk to those people, about six sigma, it's all good. Everything they're saying is something that is a good thing. And we should be doing, in my opinion, which is different than taking individual Deming quotes of saying, you know, this stuff is really bad. Deming wasn't trying to figure out, okay, let's look at six sigma, and see if there's some good stuff in there. He was just, you know, trying to get people to do better management and being distracted by Oh, but what about this flavor of management that I like, he didn't want to spend? That's my opinion about where things were. I love

John Willis: 24:36

that observation. I have a good friend of mine who was really into complex systems and just he studies with the guys who do a resilience engineering on sort of, you know, it airline safety catastrophes and, and he it's kind of comforting to think that like, because every time I throw something at him Like a new sort of framework or something like that he's, I don't like, for the, you know, I can like Now just see that vision of Deming saying that, you know, like, my friend, Josh Powell will say, John that's distracting me from what I really want to do is learn the truth about like, how to improve things. So that's pretty brilliant. The did you have you? Did you have the opportunity to pleasure to meet Dr. Deming?

John Hunter: 25:24

Yeah, though, it was when he was really old. So I met him, I don't know, six or seven times. Sort of small, different things, and he couldn't hear very well. So you had to sort of yell. And so I like I like went to one of the two and a half day seminars out with that. And I saw him a couple times when I was at the retirement system. For federal government, he came to speak there once on the ends a couple times for whatever reasons, I would with a group of people went to dinner with him and things like that. And it was good. And so like, he knew my dad fairly well, and knew several people like Peter shell pays and Brian joiner for people who are interested in Deming, are pretty famous, especially if they were interested in Deming a long time ago, they both taught with Deming on the stage. My dad died when I was in college. So he died very close to the time that Deming started become really famous. But and so those seminars and things were basically after he was already dead. But like in, but so Peter Schultz and Brian joiner, were both in Madison, and where I was, and so is George Box. So Madison really had if you look at sort of what was going on in Demings ideas, Madison was, I don't think there can be a debate other than Deming himself was the center of Deming stuff going on in the United States, and joint associates guide consulted all over the country. So you know, they, it spread beyond Madison, of course, but you had all those people in Madison, who were really great. And so we would, I mean, as a kid, those people, George boxes, dad's best friend, and Brian joiner was another statistician, and his wife, Laurie Joyner were great friends. So we had them over to dinner all the time. And I forget, there's actually a point I was making on this. So related to what you just said.

John Willis: 27:47

Yeah, no, I just was wondering that we had you met because, you know, I

John Hunter: 27:50

met Danny, the so when I would meet with Deming, sometimes it was difficult, because you'd have to speak up to them to hear. So that way that I was most able to engage with him is when I was talking about those people. And so he would I, he was interested in talking to me, largely because of those connections. So, you know, he would be interested in talking to me compared to other people that just happen to be there.

John Willis: 28:23

It's cool. You know, I had, like my third podcast. I had heard about Doris Quinn, again, really early on and and you know, over the last couple years, I've been a little more serious about my research on Dr. Deming and so I tracked her down which was easy to find her she's retired somewhere up in New Hampshire and I had her on a podcast and I you know, Peter Shelton, talked about him and him and shortish is an interesting story there. But he, but she talked about when she you know, the first time she met Dr. Deming, you probably were adores queen or

John Hunter: 28:58

Yeah. And I listened to your podcast that you mentioned, okay. People should listen, she said

John Willis: 29:03

in there, you know, like, so I was not, you know, like, I'm still a junior Deming. Geek, but like she said, at one point, she said, you know, all the greats were there, we just shall take is Brian joyor grok kiddo. So apparently, wherever she was in her first thing, they were all in this, whatever, you know, whatever sort of version of her for days with damning or the clashes apparently, they

John Hunter: 29:24

you know what they would do just for people who might be interested. There's a damning four day which is pretty much taught by Deming himself and with helpers, but then they had they started to do these Deming two day, I think there are two and a half days and those ones they would have Deming and Brian joiner and Peter Shoal days and one or two other people maybe Bill shurkin back and that Baker Yeah, um, so there would be those Demings two and a half days on it was largely like, you know, Peter and Brian and these other People speaking and Deming would speak to, I think a big part of the reason they did it is as Deming got older, it became a lot for him to do those four days by himself.

John Willis: 30:10

Well, you know, I was gonna save the the Peter Shelties. Because it does other things. I definitely want to pick your brain on but I, you know, like I said, I was just getting into Deming, and you know, that sort of last decade, right, if you will, and, and so I ran across that, you know, Peter, salting spark, and I'm like, You're right, it was just, you know, oh, my God, everything about this guy, and he did some research. And I found that he was just, he wrote a song like, you know, I don't I think I said this an email to you. But literally, you know, my mother would drag me to Catholic church every Sunday. Right? And, and one of my more pleasant memories was a song called, they'll know we are Christians by our love. And I found he wrote it, and I was like, Oh, my goodness, I have to reach out to this man. You know, I'm, I'm in love with Deming. He's got this book. He's a Deming disciple. And he wrote this song, and but he had already been deceased. So I, I feel like that was a miss for me not to get you know, those people, you know, sort of shortlist of people like, oh, boy, I wish I could have met him. I mean, that just blew me off. I doubt he would have but but I just, I was so disappointed because I was so excited about.

John Hunter: 31:19

Yeah, the, their lot. I mean, Peter was really brilliant. He was also one of the I mentioned that almost all the people on the stage with Deming, were statisticians. He was, yeah, he was one of the few. Um, but yeah, he was, in addition to being really wise, on management ideas. He was just a great person to be around. He was super funny. He's a really good writer, as the book showed, he was the person who I really started to know really well. And I did. I like created his website and did his website. On when I was doing that, actually, I asked him about, they will know, we're Christians by our love. And I said, That's awesome. Let's include that on the website. And he was like, no, let's not. And I said, why not? And he said, what? I just get frustrated. And people know, because he was a priest when he wrote that, right? And he said, people then expect me to behave in a certain way. And Peter was funny, and he was somewhat crude when he was funny. And he said, people then take it, you know, that, Oh, he shouldn't do. It's already he was pushing it. I think he has a swear word or two in the leaders handbook, which was published by McGraw Hill, which was a big publisher, I think there was a big push back on that. I could be wrong. Maybe they push back and took it out. But I think he fought for it and kept it in there. Um, so I had said, Man, I just think that's a cool thing. He's like, Well, why do you think it's so cool? Well, one thing is, it shows this range, it shows something that is great. That's completely separate from this. And

John Willis: 33:08

for two, because I mean, think about me, I'm 62 years old. I mean, that song has an impact on my life, you know,

John Hunter: 33:15

right. That's the thing. I mean, if it had been just been some song I'd never heard of, or there was sort of, it ties so directly to one of the core principles in Deming, but and this is one that Peter was very strong with, is that respect for people? There is, you know, I mean, that to me, if there's any core to Deming, videos, the respect for people and the idea that why Deming is doing this Deming isn't doing this in a sort of business school idea of how can we have GE make more money, right, Deming was really doing this stuff about how to make people's lives better. One of the things the very first blog post I wrote for the Deming Institute blog, I talked about his, his sort of aim with his life and now without looking it up, I can't say it from memory, but it's something like a peace, prosperity and something the like, people should remember. Deming grew up during the Great Depression, right? And World War Two, and he went to Japan after World War Two when it was decimated. Deming understood the vital importance of economic wellbeing to people. And in the United States. It's really easy for most of us who were listening to podcasts about management to completely forget that concept. The idea I mean, we might have trouble you know, keeping our 3000 square foot house or whatever, but you We do not have trouble getting a, you know, food to put on the table. And Deming went through a whole long time of the Great Depression and World War Two and after World War Two in Japan, of just seeing how much economic prosperity made a difference. And that is a huge part of what he was doing and what he was doing in Japan. And over time, by the time we're talking about the 1980s, or 1990s, that had sort of evolved, I guess, in Maslow's hierarchy of needs to Okay, look, we got enough prosperity to get food on people's plates, but how about giving them some purpose for their life? Right, and that sort of string was always there forgetting how to make people's lives better. And Peter, of all the getting accolades, I would say, Peter, was the most sort of focused on those kind of things.

John Willis: 36:03

Yeah, no, I, you know, like a whole nother thread about like, how he, you know, clearly he was humanist, right, like he cared about the human condition, there's no question about it, I think you can almost watch an evolution of, you know, starting with Hawthorn and seeing the sort of the best in the worst of Hawthorn. Right. You know, in some ways, Hawthorn was this beautiful sort of immigrant stream, and in some way, and but the, in the factory, it was, you know, it was, you know, a sweatshop as you can get, you know, and I, you know, I've read, what's his face? Habel stems directly, right. Yeah. And like, Oh, my goodness, like, you want to get a real understanding of what he was witnessing then. You know, that sort of post World War Two, Japan. And you know, so I, you know, I think there's this beautiful, there's a, I guess, you must know, you probably know, everybody. So Ron Mon. Oh, yeah. Yeah, he has a whole nice sort of thread of, like, you know, people sort of look at Deming, so he was different at this point. And no one says, you know, I think he even makes a joke, or somebody asked me, Hey, you know, last time I was at your seminar, you know, you said this, and now you're saying this, and he said, I could picture in his deep voice saying, you know, I will never apologize for learning, you know, right.

John Hunter: 37:23

Totally. Yeah. And that's the one of the things. The other thing I mentioned in that first gaming Institute blog post was that, look, this stuff keeps evolving, getting himself would have evolved that, like, as I write this blog, I'm gonna be quoting him and tying myself but also my personal opinions will come through. And that is exactly as it should be. It's not that we're trying to lock this stuff down, as it was in the year 2000. We're trying to figure out how do we evolve these ideas to fit in the modern organization?

John Willis: 38:01

You know, I just wrote I wrote something that they sent me again, I agree, I think that's the whole point, right? Like, I mean, there's, it's this evolution of the aggregate of all these things. So when there's these debates, the Deming do that. I of course, do this to Duran do that. It's sort of nonsense, nonsense, right? Because all this is a winding road. And it just, I noticed, you know, I guess it is a two fold question here. But I noticed that a lot of people sort of purposely don't give Deming attribution. Now. I love Deming, I'd like fell in love with him. When I first learned about him, it's been a journey of learning more and more about him. But I don't sit here and say, Well, you know, without Deming, you would have had Japan success, so that, you know, you know, because it's, it's, it takes a lot of people. But there seems to be sometimes this backlash against me and like, one, for example is, um, well, there's parts of the lean community that literally just act like he never existed. And then there's parts of like that even the just in time, you know, and, you know, I mean, clearly that's give attribution to touch on on just in time, unquestionably. But by the way, he got that from Charles Saunders from Piggly Wiggly, right. You know, in some ways, you could say for even Adam Smith and Ford created these things that that flew, but you You very rarely hear an attribution of Deming and I, you know, I went back for the podcasts that I you know, I reread the hawk on transcripts that's on your blog, right? Because I hadn't read it in a while and in there, like there's a whole set of paragraph where like, if that's not just in time, in 1950, right, but inventory. And from what I understand those courses that he taught, but even DRAM said this those courses that he taught in Japan were the same courses, Duran made a comment that he just dusted them off from the courses he taught at Stanford. So that means he must have been talking in the late 40s or early 40s. About these concepts anyway.

John Hunter: 40:12

Yeah, I think I mean, one of the things, I can't keep it all straight in my head the way that Deming could, but Deming would give attribution for almost every one of his ideas to other people, right. And his, the only thing I don't remember him ever attributing is the collection of the whole thing into a system. But the Yeah, I mean, he would be able to constantly rattle off who had this idea and who built up this little idea. I've talked about this, again, in blog posts or to the idea, the reason why I think it's important for people to understand where these things come from, is, so they can do a better job of managing, it doesn't matter to get, in my opinion to give Deming his do just because he deserves to get his due. But if you don't understand that many of these ideas came from Deming, you don't learn to look at Deming and see what else is there is one of the things I loved about working with software developers more than any other group by far, they went and found Deming on their own, they heard about these things like agile, and they would dig into it in the same way that they dig into code defined, you know, what's really going on. And they are the ones who I think, have the best understanding and say the most interesting things all talk about Deming, and all sorts of other people too. And they have different levels of how much they care about Deming the person compared to, you know, several of the ideas that come up, but, um, they had that interest to go learn from a sort of a deeper source. And then by doing that, they deepen their understanding of however they're trying to implement agile, one of the things that I get disappointed in all those software developers though is I'm almost unit. If they complain about something, it's that, oh, well, Deming is for the manufacturing floor. And you can't put what I do. I in line with what those unthinking robots in the factory do. And it's like, Look, buddy, the same way that you're mad at your management for treating you like a cog in a machine is exactly what Deming told the managers in the fan.

John Willis: 42:53

This is so good. Yeah. You've you've probably haven't heard my rants because I, I live this all the all the time, right? Because from my worldview of software development, most has been born in the open source community, you know, building web scale infrastructure, working with companies that are building those types of infrastructure. Udemy is more used for quotes and like, yeah, we are we saying DevOps, like almost every presentation has a Deming quote in it, but like, do you really listen to him? And I see very little use of like, the Socratic control or in the thing, I get that same thing, always and I from really prominent people in like the sort of my world where they'll say, you know, Udemy is great, but it only to a point because you can't really map on a manufacturing economy ideas to knowledge economy ideas. I'm like, That's ridiculous. You know, because yes, you can in the, you know, the principles.

John Hunter: 43:56

And because that wasn't what he wasn't trying to come up with something that would make a manufacturing plant. He was trying to manage people. So it's like the it's one of the things. Another complaint against Deming that I think is somewhat accurate, is he didn't give you a prescription. That's right. Well, the reason the fact that he didn't give you a prescription is why it can work so well in software development, just like it worked in the factory floor. Because it isn't, well, you should stand eight feet away from the nearest person or anything. It's concepts about looking at the system, finding how to improve the system, doing Plan, Do Study, Act, experiment, pay attention to the people doing the work. It is funny because I mean, the people that will complain about Deming, being manufacturing and not for us, are exactly the same people that are complaining. Their complaints are exactly what Deming would say. You know, they're not listening to the people that do the world. Yeah, like that's what Deming would say.

John Willis: 44:57

The other thing I sort of you know, I Years ago, I read Toyota supply chain, right? And then you know if you're familiar with the four wheels of learning, right, and I think one or two places where a lot of these people talk about you like, to your point, I think you made this earlier, which is a lot of people say, Well, you can't Well, first off, the thing will always be probably more anything is people just say, Deming just focused on statistics, you know, and, you know, there's like, and other people focused on management, like, there's actually a bunch of stuff out there, where they talk about Taran focused on management. And Deming only focused on statistics like, Okay, what part of Deming did you not read? But, but the thing that like the the people in, you know, sort of the DevOps, or agile or even sort of Lean software development communities will say things like, the problem you have with variation is you can't control variation in sort of ideation. And I say, Well, you know, there's a longer discussion, I just had this thing with Jean Kim Parker's where I tried to explain if you listen to or you read terms by chain, he talks about the four vs. Like, there's velocity, there's visibility, but then there's variety in his variability. And I think what most people I think they conflate the difference between variety and variation. Right? You know, because variety, like so like, in those ideas, like variety is about Yes, expanse, I think it's more like the design of experiments. You know, it's Taguchi if you know, I'm sure you're familiar with him, as well. Right. Where his was variation? And then this is another question I wanted to ask you to. We're variation is people, really smart people completely. Just blow it when they try to explain statistical process control? I've heard some of the most brilliant people I know, say things like, Oh, yes, this brush control, you know, it's not that useful. Because it's a, it's either an anomaly. Or it's not. Like, yeah, that's not the way I interpret, you know, common cause or a special cause. It's just, you know, sort of a signal. And special cause. I mean, common cause is noise. Like yet. That's not exactly. I mean, there's a whole body of like, you know, nuclear power plants that are running. Not that way. I mean, I don't know, I just ranted for a while. But what are your thoughts?

John Hunter: 47:17

Yeah, no, the, the, there is a huge problem with people like to just take anything and stick it in a little cubby hole. So they don't have to think about it very much. But it's like Deming did talk about using data sensibly. But it really is not a big part of what he talked about, it was a big part of what he focused on in the 1980s. Because companies were doing such a poor job of using data that was a really easy way to get wins was just pay attention to data you. Um, but yeah, I mean, it is not the sort of core of what he's talking about it much more respect for people and pay attention to those people. And the way that you can be much more effective in paying attention to those people and the systems is by using sensible data to understand it's like you said, it is more difficult to come up with easy examples in something like software development, then a factory floor, but there are plenty of places where getting an understanding of the system and putting some processes into place. So software, coders will get mad when people talk about processes, because they're used to all sorts of asinine processes that the organization put in place that make their job very difficult. But when what process standardization is supposed to do is to make it easier to do work. So something like I using I'm testing system in your software development so that when you make updates to the code, it's tested to see if there's some problem before you deploy it to the deploy to production. That is a process improvement that makes the process more stable. It doesn't make you any less able to be creative or anything else. In fact, that makes it way easier to be creative because you have confidence that your change isn't going to affect weird things in ways that you don't understand.