S4 E 17 - Dr. Barbara Lawton - Insights on Evolution and Learning in the Digital Age
In this episode, I sit down with Dr. Barbara Lawton, a distinguished statistician and expert in experimental design. Dr. Lawton shares her journey from studying biology and ecology to diving deep into statistics, eventually finding herself at the Rocky Flats nuclear weapons facility. It was here she experienced a pivotal moment that led her to W. Edwards Deming's teachings.
Dr. Lawton recounts how a significant project at Rocky Flats fell apart due to budget cuts, illustrating Deming's principle that quality is determined in the boardroom. This realization propelled her to attend a seminar by Deming, which profoundly changed her perspective on quality and management. She describes her experience of traveling with Deming, learning from his insights, and understanding the importance of continuous learning and adaptation.
The conversation delves into Deming's System of Profound Knowledge (SoPK), highlighting its relevance in today's fast-evolving world. Dr. Lawton emphasizes the need for an appreciation of systems, understanding of variation, psychology, and theory of knowledge, and expands on these concepts by integrating ideas from physics and ecology. She discusses the role of entropy, thermodynamics, and the dynamic nature of systems, explaining how these principles apply to modern organizations and leadership.
Dr. Lawton also touches on the importance of emotional intelligence, mindfulness, and effective communication in leadership. She advocates for creating environments that foster continuous learning and adaptability, essential for navigating the complexities of today's digital landscape.
You can find Dr. Barbara Lawton's LinkedIn Below:
https://www.linkedin.com/in/barbara-lawton-8b920b6/
Show Notes:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sZ2U7F0RJd0
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WWiH5S55iDg&t=25m28s
Resources and Keywords:
Book: "Chaos and the Evolving Ecological Universe" - This book was described as having a significant impact on Dr. Barbara Lawton's understanding of chaos and evolution.
Book: "Organizational Culture and Leadership" by Edgar Schein - Dr. Lawton described this as a book that "blew her away" and helped her understand the anthropological roots of organizational culture.
Dr. W. Edwards Deming's work, particularly his System of Profound Knowledge (SoPK).
The work of Chris Argyris, particularly the "ladder of inference" concept.
Peter Senge's work, particularly "The Fifth Discipline" (though it was mentioned as being difficult to read through completely).
Donella Meadows' "Thinking in Systems" was mentioned as a good book on systems thinking.
Max Planck's quote about science advancing "one funeral at a time" was discussed.
Stuart Kauffman's work was briefly mentioned (though not recommended for general reading).
Dr. Lawton mentioned that she gave talks expanding on SoPK in the 1990s, which might be available as resources.
The concept of "guided evolution" in organizational change was discussed extensively.
The importance of understanding thermodynamics and energy dynamics in organizational systems was highlighted.
Dr. Lawton mentioned she has some presentations not on YouTube.
Transcript:
John Willis: [00:00:00] Hey, this is John Willis. We got another podcast for the profound podcast on all things Dr. Deming, but everything really, anything. Got a great, another great guest. I mean, I'm, getting a good run here. We've had some, like the last four guests have been incredible. So we've got another great guest here.
I guess Dr. Barbara Lawton, would I say?
Dr. Barbara Lawton: Yeah.
John Willis: Hi, Dr. Barbara Lawton. How would you, would you like to introduce yourself?
Dr. Barbara Lawton: Thank you, John. I'm I'm very happy to be here. First off, just really enjoy enjoyed going through and thinking about topic and what we were going to share today. So, just as a quick introduction for myself.
I think it's relevant for me to just give a little bit about my educational background is I started out in biology. Biology is my love biology and ecology and so that's where my bachelor's degree is. I studied at [00:01:00] American University in D. C. So I had some great internships when I was an undergrad with USGS, Geological Survey, Fish and Wildlife Service, and so on.
And I saw that if you wanted to be a biologist in the world at that time, you needed at least a master's degree and some way to differentiate yourself. So that led me into statistics. And the statistics, a master's, a Ph. D. in statistics, And so what I come out with through my education is really as a statistician, a specialty in experimental design and actually geostatistics, believe it or not.
So spatial statistics, where that took me is my very first job out of my Ph. D. program was at Rocky Flats. Now, I, you know, very few people probably know about Rocky Flats at this day and age, but it was part of the nuclear weapons program in the [00:02:00] United States. It was the facility it just outside of Denver, Colorado that made the plutonium pits very heart and core of the, of the nuclear weapons.
And so I hired into a group of 12 statisticians, most of us PhDs, And our job was really quality by design. You want to develop quality in the manufacturing process up front because it's not a good thing to do destructive testing on plutonium pits. So, okay. I'm a young, eager statistician at Rocky flats.
What Lawrence Slivermore would do or Los Alamos is they'd make, they'd come up with a new design for a weapon system and then throw it over the wall And we had to figure out, how do you make this thing? So I'm working there, I'm in my very, I'm in my third year at Rocky Flats. And I'm [00:03:00] working on a new weapon system.
We're doing a fully saturated design. So if you know what that is, is a fully saturated design with eight experimental units. It means that you're, you're squeezing every ounce of information out of the design. And but there's, it's a very high risk approach because if you lose one experimental unit, you basically lose everything.
It's just the data is not worth it. It's not worth anything. So here I am working on this weapon system for a year. We're down. It's, it's hard to get these plutonium pits. They're, you know they're using the material, obviously for production. And so we squeeze out a few here and there. We've got seven over a nine month period.
We're down to the eighth and management declares a budget cut and cuts out the [00:04:00] last experimental unit and wipes out Everything that we've just learned for the past year on this new weapon system cost too much. They cut it out. And until that moment, I did not understand. I had heard that Deming would say the level of quality is set in the boardroom, but until that moment, I didn't understand that.
I thought, Hey, it's us geeks. You know, it's us statisticians, us engineers. We're working here. We're building quality and upfront in this manufacturing system. We're building quality. And it's gone. And I, I just, it just hit me over the head. I just lost nine months of my life and it was gone. So it was like, I have to go find this man, Deming.
I have to go find him. And fortunately it was. Within three weeks he was coming to give a four day seminar in Denver, Colorado
John Willis: You knew about him you knew about him and you [00:05:00] knew the kind of quote but sort of lingered but it was like that Was sort of an aha moment of like oh this really hit me now. I really need to understand this person much better
Dr. Barbara Lawton: I didn't have a clue what that meant, you know, I I i'd heard about him maybe because That's what, I mean, that's what our goal was, was to design quality in up front.
Right. And using experimental design primarily. And until that moment, no, I hadn't a clue. So it was, yeah, it was a huge aha for me. And so Deming had a four day seminar going on and I went to my manager and said, I have to go, I want to go to this. And they said, no. So I took a week of vacation and paid a thousand dollars, which was a lot for me at that time to go to this seminar.
So I go to the four day seminar. I'm listening to him. Bells are ringing left and right in terms of the things that he's [00:06:00] saying. For example, the MBO management by objective, how he's against it. I saw that at Rocky Flats. I saw that Rockwell had the contract with the government to run it at that time, and what they, the way that Rockwell got paid, it was the basic fee plus a performance bonus at the end, and the performance bonus was, was based on how well they did in terms of reducing contamination, skin contamination from the workers, from plutonium.
Okay. Or from radioactive materials. Okay. So there's a basic fee for running the facility plus then an award based on how well they did reducing in contamination. If this was MBO, they had a number.
John Willis: That's probably the first NBO I've ever heard that I actually do like, by the way, but you know, let me
Dr. Barbara Lawton: tell you, let me tell [00:07:00] you how they did it.
John Willis: Okay.
Dr. Barbara Lawton: So, yes, Rocky Flats Rockwell did get the get the bonus at the end, they met the goal, but you know how they did it is they changed the definition of what is the skin content.
John Willis: Yeah. Okay.
Dr. Barbara Lawton: Instead of it being one square inch of skin or more excuse me, one square centimeter, They changed it to one square inch.
So they just enlarged by three times how big a skin contamination has to be before it gets reported.
John Willis: Okay.
Dr. Barbara Lawton: So small skin contaminations were not reported. So there you go. That's greatly reduced. Yeah.
John Willis: Yeah. No, that's a terrible number. Yeah.
Dr. Barbara Lawton: The second thing is that, is that when you get contaminated. Is you have to go straight to a decontamination people would get contaminated and then they [00:08:00] find the decontamination rooms lock and it's in the decontamination rooms that it's recorded.
So, if the decontamination room is blocked, you can't get into record the fact that there was a contaminant and you just walk around. Spreading contamination of it, you know, so there was these types of things that were happening on site for Rockwell to meet its goal. So here is, so all these things that Deming was saying in that seminar, I was seeing it, I was seeing it on site.
I was seeing what FEAR was doing to even my 12 PhD statisticians, how FEAR would keep us from sharing and from really improving amongst ourselves. I saw what the ranking system was doing. So all these things that Deming was talking about, I was like, Oh my gosh. He's he's in my workplace. He knows what's [00:09:00] going on.
Yeah Okay, so what happened there?
John Willis: Barbara, can I tell you a really quick story? You're gonna love this and I I think it might turn you on some people that you'd really like to read There's a friend of mine. He's prolific writer about safety culture resilience and they study like they they they primarily study like When when fatalities happen in hospitals or aviation and they try to look for it So that they're very Deming in their thinking but they don't really claim Deming but Sydney Decker tells the story how the one of the things they hate is this idea of like How many days since last accident right, you know, because it says killed people, right?
And so he tells a story about where the company it was like a dirty factory and all and they gave everybody self medicated fanny packs. So they didnt have to report their injuries.
Dr. Barbara Lawton: Actual
John Willis: The dirty bathroom and self medicate, as a way to keep reported numbers down. The last two parent is called a Good for them. [00:10:00] They have to go through public school.
They have a, there's very few platitudes, people that need stuff from their mother. Right. Exactly.
Dr. Barbara Lawton: So here I am in this four day seminar and he's just naming everything that I, you know, so many things that I'm seeing and it's, and I would go up. I mean, I grew up in New York City, so I got the chutzpah and I would just go up to him every break and go, I have to learn more.
How do I learn more? How do I learn more? Four days pass. I've been bugging him. Fifth day is just for educators. Much smaller group. And I was teaching an experimental design class at Rocky Flats. I designed it and was teaching it. So I stayed for the educator portion of it. And on that 5th day, they gave some table assignment for us to do at the tables.
And. So we did that, and then I got up [00:11:00] and was the one to present it on an overhead projector. Here's the, the, the plastic with the drawing on it, and I presented it, and Deming said to me, I want a copy of that. Or, he said, I want that. And it's like, I'm holding it and saying, I'm the person who's bugged you all week.
I want to learn more. You know, I'm holding it hostage. And so he took my business card at that point, and then, you know, nothing. And a week later, I am sitting at home, it's like a Wednesday night, Thursday night, having dinner with my husband, and the phone rings. It's one of the, those moments in life where you go, I know, this is Deming calling me.
Wow. This was two weeks later, and it was, I picked up the phone, and it was Deming. And he said, you know, Barbara. Barbara. And he explained to me that the woman who was going to travel with him [00:12:00] couldn't, and could I come? It's like, huh, could I come? Absolutely. So, dropped everything, took another week of vacation, and flew to Washington, D.
C., and then traveled with him for that week. And so that's, that's the first week I, I traveled with him.
John Willis: Wow.
Dr. Barbara Lawton: And yeah.
John Willis: Did you
Dr. Barbara Lawton: know
John Willis: what year that was,
Dr. Barbara Lawton: you know, I tried to think about it. I believe that was 88 just before he turned 89.
John Willis: Okay. Okay. So
Dr. Barbara Lawton: it must have been 88.
John Willis: Okay.
Dr. Barbara Lawton: So yeah, so I, I traveled with him that first week and he kept a schedule that would have kept a, well, that destroyed me. You know, I don't know how he lived through it. You leave New York on, on or leave Washington DC on a Sunday night. Why didn't. Oh, excuse me. Or did we leave on Monday [00:13:00] morning? Don't remember, but he went Monday, taught at Fordham University, at NYU, Monday night we fly to, to Detroit, he consults for a week, and it's, these are long consulting days.
I had just absolutely no idea how he did it, but what we did is we had in the hotel adjoining rooms, and we would keep the doors between the rooms open. So, you know, we could go back and forth between the rooms. This is maybe Thursday or something in the week. And I called my husband at the end of a very long day.
And I'm saying, you wouldn't believe how this week is going. I'm exhausted. And as I'm on the phone, I hear Barbara, you know, I jump, Oh my gosh. And he does it again, Barbara. And I thought, Oh my God, he's having a heart attack, you know, and I put the phone down and I run in into his room. [00:14:00] And at the far end of the room is where the windows are, and there's a desk in front of it.
He's sitting at the desk, and he has this little, like, desk lamp. And the light is just shining down right in front of him on the desk. And I go up to him, and I, you know, Dr. Deming, and he looks up at me, and he has in his hand this little oh, those little cards, those little three by five note cards. He carried them around with him all week in his pocket.
He would take notes on it while I get to him and he's holding up this card. And he says to me, look what I learned today. And it just blew me away. You know, here is this man who everybody reveres, who everybody puts on a pedestal as the guru who knows all this. And here he says, look what I learned today.
And I, I [00:15:00] have to tell you, I think that is the single biggest lesson I, I learned from him was in that book is I here I am, you know, going through getting a PhD and you do it, you know, your power in the workplace, at least a lot of mine came from my education from what I knew. And so if there's the power of knowledge and here he is like sidestepping that.
It's not about how much you know,
John Willis: but what you
Dr. Barbara Lawton: learn, you
John Willis: know, I'll say something I've
Dr. Barbara Lawton: never
John Willis: said on a podcast, but most people who really know me, you know, I, I I've been brought in front of you know, some of my friends are You know, professors, you know, with PhD students and, and they'll bring me in the lecture and, and, and they'll say, you should listen to this person and I'll talk about some of the stuff I work on [00:16:00] and, and then then students will say, well, where did you go to school?
I'm like, I'm lucky. I got, I grew up in New York as well. I'm lucky. I got out of PS 25 high school. And that's the highest education I've had. But you know what the difference is? Why I can have conversations with people like you, I can have Sidney Decker, some of the smartest people I've ever met, it's because we're all learners.
And we just, we just insatiably learn. And I wish I could have met Deming, Dr. Deming, because in some ways I think he would have yelled at me and been impatient with me. And, but, but, but I think what he would have loved is the fact that I, that when you told me the story about the card, I mean, I, I, you know, Like learning to me is, is the gold.
It is the gold of the universe. You know, it is the people who can just want to have those kind of conversations. And again, that's why I love doing podcasts like this. So yeah, no, that's that's one of the better meeting Deming stories that we've had on any of these podcasts. [00:17:00] There is, I, I, I don't think you've read my book.
I need to send you a copy, but one of the gems in my book was this woman, Doris Quinn. And I don't, most people. I
Dr. Barbara Lawton: do know, yeah.
John Willis: You do know, okay, good. That was gold. I, I had like two podcasts with her and I wrote a whole chapter about her in my book about, you know, and she talked about some of the stories she told about traveling with Dr.
Deming are just golden, you know. So, you know, she said one time, she said that if you know, if she came on that plane ride. With him and she didn't have any questions. He just get mad. He'd be like, he'd get mad at her. He wouldn't talk to her for like an hour, you know, like she had to come with her like hard questions.
All right. Well, awesome. So I, you know, I, 1 of the things I thought was fascinating about when I went back, so I was listening to some of your, your lectures and all you know, and I think a lot of people don't really dive into this part, but, you know, you talked about. Yeah. Well, one, [00:18:00] I got the one quote. I love that that system of profound knowledge and most people who've gotten this episode in this, but we don't have to explain what system profound knowledge is to people listening to my podcast at this point.
You said it's a mental model of the world and I, you know, like I, I, I think a lot about systems thinking and mental models and what, you know, I, I, you know, think a lot about, you know, Senge and, and Kahneman and, and mental models are a big part of how I try to, Do what I do for a living, but I like, wow, of course, you know, system of Profound Knowledge is a mental model.
And I love that and how you sort of like, but then your, your expansion of SLPK where you, you, you know, you talk about you know, like really, you cover a lot of really cool things, you know, when you talk about chaos and complexity. And then specifically and, and I think most people listening to this podcast will love this part.
Like how the thermodynamics and entropy and, and, and I, I think [00:19:00] it'll be back step just a little bit and then I want to hear you sort of take this take the whole thing on here. But is the way I got introduced to Dr. Deming was I actually came to a go rat. You know, most people know the story. I, I, I, I fell in love with Dr.
Golerat. I, a good friend of mine wrote a rewrite book of his, a book of a rewrite, a modern day rewrite, called The Goal. And I, I, I listened to Beyond The Goal and, and Dr. Golerat says, this little part explains a physicist. And he says, physicists think differently. He goes to this really cool explanation.
He says, Oh, by the way, I started out as a physicist. So did Dr. Deming. I found that Dr. Shewhart did as well. Right. And And I thought, well there's something there. And a good friend of mine was a physicist and, and and I started picking his brain about the whole, and, and I realized that Goldratt and Deming and Shewhart, certainly Goldratt and Deming, the way they thought differently was because they were sort [00:20:00] of baptized during a whole different, like a, a second scientific revolution.
You know, Newton, you know you know, Newtonian to quantum, like the whole, and, and that just took me that now for the last 12 years, you know, I think that happened to me about only 10 years. So I've only been studying and understanding thing for a little over 10 years, but like to me, that was the launching pad was there was something here about, you know, non deterministic.
And what was this was there was a core behind why were these guys so different from all the other men? I've been in management theory stuff my whole career. I mean, I went to Crotonville for God's sakes, you know back, you know with GE but but Six Sigma and which we don't want to go there, but The point is that, like, that was the first time where I thought, well, this stuff makes sense, and here's why it makes sense.
Anyway, so when I'm listening to your explanation of, like, you know, thermodynamics and [00:21:00] chaos, I thought just, and the expansion of SLP, and let me, though, in one point, I love how you take Edward Shane, Shine, Shine's work, and anthropology, I think that all is just, it's, I think it's a really good way, and I know it's complicated.
But to me, it, it, I think it makes more sense to explain his ideas through that lens.
Dr. Barbara Lawton: You opened up a couple of big topics there. Sure. You know, the first one about physics, I have to say that physicists know that the models that they have of the world are, are approximations that they don't have it right yet. And they keep searching for deeper and deeper understandings. They don't work at the surface, like in the.
Tangible world so much you know, Newton did, yeah, proverbial apple falling from the tree, right? Hitting him on the head. [00:22:00] But but they don't work in that world. They work in that, they are trained to think in a different world.
So I think that piece, we live in this tangible world, and we manage in this tangible world, and we do see it as, you know, Fairly static and not dynamic. And I think that that having a dynamic view. And so as an ecologist, for example, that is where I started. So ecology also has a dynamic view. It's, it's continually evolving and changing.
And then physics as well. You've got the laws of thermodynamics telling you that everything is moving towards greater and greater entity. Continuously. And, and that's, you know, that's, you could say forever. So I think there's a, a predisposition to the idea of evolution and change. [00:23:00] Whereas, though not early on, not early on, I'll just have to argue with you for a moment on that.
I was going back and looking at the quote from Max von Planck, where he said, Quick quote. Actually, I'll paraphrase it. Science advances one funeral at a time. So it's all the opponents. So a new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light rather because its opponents eventually die and a new generation grows up.
That is familiar with it. So science advances one funeral at a time. Now, that's, that was what he said watching Einstein with his theories of relativity.
John Willis: No, Plank was the key to me, like that was, that was what literally launchpinned me because that's how I got, I went from, I, I wrote a, there's a thing [00:24:00] called DevOps, which I'm a big part of.
And I wrote a Deming to DevOps, but I actually start with Boltzmann to Plank that works his way through Einstein that literally gets me to sort of how Deming is like trained in a way to think completely different. I don't think it's a death time. I think it's a truth. It's a death of what we think a truth is at a time.
Dr. Barbara Lawton: Well, and basically his view was that people are so, they're, I'm going to say identity is so attached to the ideas. That's right. Of, yeah, that, that's how science advances, because they don't have an open mind. Right. They cannot let go. This is what I was saying when Deming put up that card said, look what I learned today.
Yeah, he's basically saying, I don't know. Right. There are things I don't know that I can and if I had to, you know, at the end, when we summarize in some way, I'm going to say, that's what it all comes down to at [00:25:00] the very end is developing human beings that have that capacity to have ability to Open their minds and are secure enough in their own identity, who they are, that they can change their minds and their thinking about things, change their opinions, change their stances.
You know, to me, that's the bottom line of it at the end, and it's why I eventually went into leadership development.
John Willis: And I,
Dr. Barbara Lawton: and I
John Willis: simplistically call them learners, right? I mean, like, that, that, that people that, that literally, like the fact that you are, no matter who you are. What status you, you know, anybody views you as, are you willing to just constantly learn and listen and, you know, so yeah,
Dr. Barbara Lawton: there you go.
And I think that is a great way to just describe it is as learners by coming back to the idea of physics is young. [00:26:00] For me, that's a really important piece to it is understanding it. It says the world is continually evolving and changing. It is not static. You can't hold it still. As much as you would like the system you have in place now, it is changing to the rate at which it changes depends on many factors, but it is changing.
And, and that's what the all the physics basically leads us to. And it also in my mind explained what the role of organizations are and processes and systems. It actually enhances. From a scientific perspective, it actually enhances the rate at which entropy occurs. And it's, that, that was key. It seems like you're fighting always entropy.
Well, there is a role that systems and organizations play, and I needed to [00:27:00] understand those two things and put them together to be able to say, what's the role of systems in energy flow and in thermodynamics? I don't know that working, you know, working individual, people who are interested in Deming's ideas have to understand all of that.
Maybe at a, you know, lower levels than, than deep dive. It's an important concept, but I don't think they have to study physics to get there.
John Willis: Well, I, I think what I liked what you did, like you, you talked about like the, sort of the history, you know, of humans, right? And then you, you took the shine approach, right?
And, and at first I was like, well, you know, this is too simple, right? You know, like hunter gatherers to the the industrial age, to the information age, right? And like, and, and like, there's a lot of places to go here. So, but you talked about S curves and I, I believe a lot in the, sort of the, the, the [00:28:00] These short cycle changes but and I, first I was thinking, well, is she being too sort of macro here?
Because isn't everything just a constant S curve, right? And then I, but then as I went through, like, again, I watched two videos and I went to the second one. I'm like, no, no, I think you did a great, not that you need a pat on the back for me, but you did a great job because we needed an abstraction. You, you were putting a more simple abstraction for people to understand.
You know, that, that, like, how we go through these S, S curves, and then we get to the thing, and then we started, you know, the death, I guess, of, you know, back to Max Planck's quote but then but then the idea that there is this, there, there, that there's this chaos. In the process
Dr. Barbara Lawton: opening if there's an opening that happens,
John Willis: right?
Well, you were saying that this equilibrium, right? There's sort of a decent reach this like, and I think you did a great job of, you know, doing [00:29:00] things like, you know, hot and a cold room and and all these and and sort of the meta thing that I got out of it. Because we're not going to cover two hours of what I watch and many more I'm sure you talk about is that the idea was if you could understand that these, these thermodynamics, that you could basically sort of manage the outcomes in a way, understanding, and I guess like you were talking about.
Yeah. In other words, there is no matter whether you leave it, if you leave it alone, chaos is going to form organization that's, that's thermodynamics, right? And And, but, but there were ways that I'll use my words, tweak it at certain points. And then there was a whole opening of like where profound knowledge fits into that and how we can create this type of maybe the organizations that we.
We prefer to have, and then even at a higher macro level, the kind of people and communities that we probably must [00:30:00] have. And even when you were talking about it, you know, you know, a while back, it's even more scarier now. We can end with that discussion about, you know, like if we don't sort of tweak these thermodynamics of how people, humans work together and communicate, there are some real serious dangers.
Dr. Barbara Lawton: I agree wholeheartedly. Thank you. With this piece about how to, how to guide Evolution. Evolution, yeah. Boy. I only have,
I was gonna say one example, personal example of that. Now, there are others along the way that from other people, but the one personal example I have of that is I was working for a company so. Fortune 600 part of, at that time striding for Fortune 500 [00:31:00] and the, in the paper industry. And the paper industry at that, in those years, was changing quite, in a specific direction.
What was happening is you were having like the Kimberly Clarks and the Georgia Pacifics, the big companies, starting to buy up all the little ones and just consolidating. And so the way that the paper mills and that's where we started doing business had to change. It was being changed by the corporate structure, the corporations, the in the paper mills.
They used to buy. We were, my company was a supplier paper mills. The, the way that they would buy, they'd have a, an agent buying and our sales person would come in. And it was a good old boy network. Like, the salesman would know the mill manager's wife's [00:32:00] name, kids names and birthdays, and special events, and, you know, tickets to the hockey game or the football game, whatever it is.
Who is that? Really? What type of liquor are they like, anniversary, you know, that's how they, that's the sales relationship. Yeah. The big companies like the Kimberly Clark's again and the Georgia Pacific's, they were changing the mills, what individual mills could do, and they were looking for cost reduction and what kind of savings they could get, that sort of thing.
So, by my company, the company I was working for, Was still having success, but not to the same degree as they were before. Like they, their, their, their the margin with which they were, their margin, their profit margin was decreasing. And their number one standing in the [00:33:00] world was also diminishing.
So we could see that this, you could see this train coming, right? You can see this, this environment changing. And so we had to change how the sales process went from the salesman to the mill manager and how they interact and intervening there, seeing that this, this is not working, it's starting to, they're starting to push harder on the old way of doing things, right?
Increase the incentives for the salesman, that kind of thing. Have to redesign this process. And in the way that we did it. The way that we were working it is really taking the successful salesman from my company, bringing them into the paper mill and, and creating a structured interview process that I would lead at or, you know, not the [00:34:00] salesman.
The salesman was there and he'd listen and I'm creating an interview process and asking the mill manager, how your life is getting tougher. What is the stress that you're facing on the job, you know, on and on about how their life is changing and the sales person, you know, for him, this turned out afterwards, as we're talking about, to be a big aha.
He didn't know these things, but now he could go back into the company and rally and say, I know what my customer wants, and I can be the representative for how we need to change how we interact with it. He became kind of a, an advocate for the mill manager. And that to me was a piece of guided evolution is now that we've put in the sales people in there to say, how does this need to change?
And having senior [00:35:00] management listen and saying this reward, listening to them, and it took a lot to get those sales people to say the reward structure you've got in place is not supporting what we need to do to serve our customers better and have a better, you know, relationship. That's a big, I want to say BFD, you know, that's a big deal.
That's, in my mind, guide or devil or creating the environment where it didn't go into. Pushing harder on the old way, things getting chaotic, but actually recognizing that where the energy was, was shifting and changing and opening up, creating a structured opening for them to redesign to make it better.
It worked. Did that make sense?
John Willis: Yeah, no, it did. It did. There's just so much here, you know, and for what I'm wondering about, like, how am I getting, am I getting it right? And then how is anybody who's listening who hadn't [00:36:00] watched 2 hours of your videos? But again, it goes back to, like, I think if I can put it in, like, the part of what you talk about is.
You know, if we use the industrial to information, right, like that, that, that sort of the energy is changing there, like the industrial, and there's sort of a sidebar is, I think when you talk about like the way the world was and the way sort of humans, the relationships are in the industrial era, it's really more of a A Western, because there is some interesting stuff that happened in, you know, Toyota and East where it was different.
But, but, but let's stick with it. So the Tayloristic view of the world that was happening that, like that, and, and, and, and, you know, I still deal with companies today. That's still in that sort of command and control. You know, the world still hasn't changed. It's 1920. So if you're taking that box in that example, cool.
As we're going into the information age, the, the, you, you described it like there was a box [00:37:00] around like the way, the way sort of the world was, and unfortunately that, or fortunately really, that the, the box has expanded, and, and then I think like in that example, like you said, in the paper mill world, right, their box was this good old boy network, it was the way things work now, it was this, Big corporations buying these little corporations trying to infuse their sort of management styles Here and and there is that sort of that what you call disequilibrium that's happening, right?
And so now to be able to recognize that and maybe i'm failing here to be able to recognize that and and and what you did a lot of in your in your your lectures was that How we went from the way things were changing information age, like we were able to communicate faster, we were able to do things faster.
So if we couldn't recognize those patterns, so that's the other thing I think, like patterns of progress.
Dr. Barbara Lawton: [00:38:00] So,
John Willis: so again, trying to think, all right, so then let's tie it back to what is Deming trying to say, like system of profound knowledge, right? We have, we have, you know, theory of knowledge with the epistemology.
We have we have the, the variation Right. We have psychology and we have systems thinking. So to be able to sort of expand to that, thinking about the, this thermodynamics, right?
Dr. Barbara Lawton: Well, you could, I mean, you could think of it as thermodynamics. You know, I was thinking of it For myself is, is really about evolution and change and the thermodynamics is the underlying through forces.
John Willis: Okay,
Dr. Barbara Lawton: again, you and I don't have to know how to how an engine works in order to drive a car. And so I think that understanding evolution and change how that happens. Is it's not necessary for everybody to understand thermodynamics, you know, at that level. [00:39:00] There's how do we create a simpler way to talk about it that people can understand what are the forces driving change, certainly in this paper mill example, it's recognize it's a larger scan of the environment and seeing that things are changing and does the structures that we have the way that the way that we interact with Is that, continuing the, is that going to enhance the flow of energy or enable us to continue to be successful?
Because that's what success is. It's the flow of energy. It's human energy and dollars, basically, economics. So how do you keep an open eye for that? And really, really senior management, that really is their job. Yes. To be looking at the environment and understanding the changes and getting ahead of them rather than trying to milk every last dollar out of the old way and making the old way stick, but I just don't [00:40:00] know that managers have the view that evolution is natural changes natural and happening at a faster and faster rate.
I don't know that you come out of an MBA program. Do they talk about that evolution is happening at a faster and faster rate and. And do they develop the competency and the capability, the understanding that's necessary to lead through that, to manage for that? I don't know.
John Willis: Yeah. Yeah. And I think, well, I mean, sometimes when I just go back to like, you know, my sort of meat and potatoes way of thinking about this is like, if we could just grasp system thinking.
Dr. Barbara Lawton: System thinking, yes, is a big piece. Right. And that's where my
John Willis: Go ahead. Finish your sentence. Yeah. Yeah. Go ahead.
Dr. Barbara Lawton: Well, that's, that's That's what my contribution is, was to Deming at that point, because I came from [00:41:00] outside the system, right, with, he says, profound knowledge, there's nothing special about it, it just means that it's from outside the system, right, out, it's outside knowledge, and so that's what I brought from an ecology perspective to, to write the first piece on appreciation for a system for him, was that, all right.
And yes, systems are evolving. Unfortunately, at the time that Deming and I were looking at it together, which we did for many years, actually, or for the years where he still could process new information. After his surgery in 90, 91, he really couldn't process new information anymore. You know, he, yeah. So there was a, just a couple of year window there where he could really process new information when I met him.
And we talked about appreciation of a system, but [00:42:00] at that time, it was, we talked too much about, I think, too much about optimization as, which has a static feel to it rather than the dynamic piece of it. So,
John Willis: you know, but it is appreciation
Dr. Barbara Lawton: for system.
John Willis: Absolutely. Well, I think like that, the reason I, I, you know, I know it's, it's hard to go down this whole, You know entropy idea.
And I know it, it, it, it, in some ways it, it, it'll scare a lot of people, not scared a lot of people, but the people like, Oh, but like, I, I think that what I liked about, or I'm trying to summarize what I like so much about, it's one of those things when you can, you know, like, you know, one of the arts of teaching or learning is like, you can learn something that you know yourself.
But the next level is be able to explain it to other people. Right. I listened to all your videos and I'm like, I get it now. I'm like, wait a minute. Why can't I explain it? But I think it, the, the thing I liked about that, that sort of [00:43:00] example of, of guided evolution, right. Through this idea that there are these sort of patterns of like chaos.
Yes. Chaos creates organization anyway, but can I just, and I'll use my word, tilt it. So I think in that example. That is, you know, or in the macro level example of systems thinking is, is, I think the thing I really liked was that you were giving us some insight into how to connect those two. Like, it is a system, right?
And, like, you know, if I go back to the paper mill thing, right, there, like, there was these, this, this entropy happening, right? Like, like it was, it was happening. It was going, things were going to fall out the way it was going to fall out. Right. And if all the chips fell in the right way, they were going to be successful.
If not, they were going to be not so successful or somewhere in the middle. But you took the opportunity to do some guided evolution in like, look for those sort of pressure points
to [00:44:00]
optimize. And, and so that is, That is you know, like one way you could describe that is a lesson in systems thinking.
Looking at the higher level of the bigger picture. Let the, the, the old school, old boy sales guys see the bigger picture. And now they get to see how the, you know, the world is sort of has this, you know, everything's connected. Sometimes that just telling people, Hey, you need to be a systems thinker. I
Dr. Barbara Lawton: like the words you use, you know, if you're meat and potatoes, you've picked up a perfect, you picked up a perfect word, pressure point.
Okay. Pressure point is exactly what happens. Pressure is what causes the system to change, so to form something to serve it, and that's what you need to look for is the pressure points, and ask, how do I best address this pressure point, and it's interesting because the answer is in the [00:45:00] smallest details.
It's a, it is the mill managers talking to the salesman. It wasn't the, the, let's say VP of sales saying we're going to do X, Y, Z, you know, coming up with something it's, it was allowing now, I don't know how this all turned out in the end I did. I wasn't there for the complete follow through of it, but here the VP of sales gave the salesman, you know, his best salesman, this chance to do this.
To listen, interview, come back with ideas, whether or not the VP listened to it, would be a whole nother thing. Right? But the answer is down, is in the system. It's not from up, way up above and, and if you think about how it's a granularity piece, it's [00:46:00] like, it's, it's in the fine grain that you look for the answer.
But pressure point, I thought, I think that's brilliant. I think it's brilliant way to say it.
John Willis: Yeah. I think I'm trying to put it all out of my head. Like, you know, it's like if it's systems thinking is like, we need to be able to look outside, you know, we can't always be stuck in the example we, we, you know, like in your whole example of the industrial age, right?
Like we, we thought things work this way and that's the way we do it. You know, the, the, You know, it's the, the greatest quote is, you know, the worst Grace Hopper's quote of the worst faith sentence and, you know, kind of is this the way it's always been done. Right. Right. So so the, the idea of like, when you hear that it's back to the earlier, like you're Deming, you're the smartest guy ever.
Everybody gives you accolades all over the place. Everybody wants to hear you. They, they, they want their, they want you to fly to his wherever they are. They want you there, him there to tell him everything. And he's not falling into the trap that he [00:47:00] knows everything he's holding up a card to you saying You know, look what I learned right that that is the key that if we can all just understand that That there is no truth, right?
This is physics, right? This is this the scientific method, right? I'm ranting but it is there is no truth, right? It's a stopping point of where we're at right now We now have to question. What does that mean?
Dr. Barbara Lawton: I agree with you.
John Willis: I
Dr. Barbara Lawton: really agree with you. When you say there is no truth. I agree with you. Okay.
And it's and when you keep saying systems and putting it into systems, I'm realizing there's the difference between an open system and a closed system. And this is where an open system, the world is, you know, we're, we're one big open system. We can't go to isolationist where you try to be just a closed system and not be influenced by the rest of the [00:48:00] world.
COVID taught us that, you know, when all the supply chains stopped and broke down and. And I think a lot of the inflation started through the, that supply chain breakage, you know, for, for years there and, and we're an open system. If we go to war with China tomorrow, I mean, how would we survive?
That's why we're trying to bring chip manufacturing back here. It's, we're an open system. And as one place changes, that affects us. So, even if we're not changing in this moment, everything else is. Yeah.
John Willis: Some would argue that there is no such thing as a closed system, right? Because, again, Correct. Correct.
Dr. Barbara Lawton: I, I agree.
John Willis: We, we have this debate in, in IT infrastructure where the, the, the gentleman I mentioned earlier and some of the people that think like it is, you know, people think that they're, they're large computer systems draw a diagram and they say, this is the way it [00:49:00] looks like. Yeah, it never looked like that.
Ever because it should change. It's just constantly changing. It's so it's so these complex systems. So I love the idea of the, you know, the all you talk about. Let's sort of like, again, learning from chaos. I'm going to list some of the books that you that. You, you, you talked about one book that and now we're going to be able to find it, that you said sort of changed your life, and that
Dr. Barbara Lawton: Yes, Chaos on the Evolving Ecological Universe.
Why,
John Willis: why, why that book? I, I ordered it, I don't have it yet, but why, why
Dr. Barbara Lawton: It's an old book now, okay, and it's but it's the one that introduced me to
Well, chaos and, and the role in evolution, I mean, chaos and the evolving ecological universe. That book just was huge for me. But other books organizational culture and leadership by Ed Schein. That book just [00:50:00] blew me away. It, it you know, my head exploded when I read it. And really understanding human anthropology.
Where the roots are of organizational culture. It's no different, you know, organization is a little tribe has its own culture and understanding the, that culture and leadership are just two sides of the same coin. Oh, it actually have this great little quote here, he says, leaders, create culture, which leaders create and change cultures.
Well, managers and administrators live within them. The role of the lead, the role of the leader is the creation, management, and destruction, creation, management, and destruction.
John Willis: Love it. Love it.
Dr. Barbara Lawton: Culture. That's the job of a leader.
John Willis: So I mean, that is a nuance, but we, we, we, we talked a lot about like, you know, this modern, what we call DevOps, which is [00:51:00] development and operations and how they work together.
And we say that things like, you don't change culture, you change behavior. But, but when you add in that, you can destroy culture, you're, you're, you're like managing it and destroying. And I think is is a good way to put it. I, you know, one of the things, I guess I wanted to sort of like, if, if we haven't confused, or I haven't confused the heck out of everybody who's listening right now.
I think there is a good way, and I don't want to summarize because a couple of things I want to talk about, but if we were thinking about the expansion of SLPK, which is which I think was sort of the core of those lectures that I watch, like, yes, SLPK is like great stuff, right? But like, how do we, you know, if I had to expand it, I think you, you know, I would, you would agree that, you know Shine's work and book and the the, the Chaos and Evolution books are good, like, for everybody's listening, watch Barbara's video or videos for sure, and we'll put the [00:52:00] links to those, but like those two, those are two good bodies of work that help explain the way you're thinking, I think, correctly, the expansion of SOPK.
Dr. Barbara Lawton: Okay, so I, I definitely recommend Ed Schein's book. It's because our understanding organizational culture and leadership is imperative. Now, that is a book, again, a dense book. He's got shorter books that will give you pieces and parts of it, but for me, understanding that culture and the anthropological view of it is really important, necessary, I believe.
So I would absolutely put in there understanding. Organizational culture and leadership is one piece, and leading, and leading it, and leading evolution. So, when I go to the Chaos book, I absolutely would not, [00:53:00] I can't recommend, I can't recommend it. It's, you know why dive down into the deep work that other people have done. So, for example, reading Stuart's work.
John Willis: Right, yeah. Why
Dr. Barbara Lawton: would you do that? You
John Willis: can't, you shouldn't, yeah.
Dr. Barbara Lawton: You don't, yeah, well I want to say the same thing with the, Okay. You know, chaos and the evolving ecological universe. For me, that's where I needed to go.
I needed to understand it at that level. But, that's me.
John Willis: But I people need to understand what you're, I mean, I, I'm certainly, you know, recommended watching your videos, right? Because I think you took me through a journey where, you know, if I read the book or I get through, I mean, I, I'll admit, I, I, I still don't think I fully have ever gotten through the fifth discipline, you know, I mean, everybody, you know, I think 90 percent of people said they read the book lie, you know you know, it's one of, you know, like that and Ulysses are probably the two hardest books I've ever tried to read in my life.
[00:54:00] You know but and I agree there, there are, there are better books, like in systems thinking, I don't know, Danella Meadows, right? Thinking Systems to me is, is the book, right? That's the, everybody, you want to know it, you know but I do think, So if it's not that book, I think your lecture about how chaos turns into organization and are these patterns and you know, and we'll, to my words, or I think I got the words from you, but pressure points that you create, I mean, I think you have to, I think you have to have a certain level of that to have the appreciation to understand what you made that I think are profound.
Dr. Barbara Lawton: Thank you. I do think it's important to understand. I, I don't know of a. Who's put it together in a way that you can buy a book about it. I on, I don't.
John Willis: Okay. Fair enough. Recommend. One other
Dr. Barbara Lawton: thing. And then there's one other piece I'd have as
John Willis: an
Dr. Barbara Lawton: [00:55:00] OPK. Okay. And this is much later after I gave those talks that was back in the nineties, I think, is 15 years of my career was really this piece about human development.
And this. You know, Deming calls it knowledge of psychology, really understanding emotional intelligence is part. It could go under psychology, for example, self awareness is huge, you know, absolutely huge to be able to look at, I mean, look at yourself, understand that
a thought is nothing but a firing pattern in your brain. And Your thought is not who you are, it's, you have to be able to change your thinking, and to change your thinking, you can't be attached to it, you can't change it, it's nothing but a firing pattern in your brain. You can change your [00:56:00] thinking. So there's this piece of it, this is where all the mindfulness movement comes from, if you look at all of the mindfulness, it's, it's self awareness as the, as a piece of emotional intelligence, self management.
The ability to manage ourselves as human beings and not let our emotions drive us. How many leaders lead from fear? I bet a lot. I bet a lot. The higher up you go, the more you have to lose. So, I believe a lot of leaders So, self management is a huge piece. The ability to work with your own emotions on this.
The ability to have effective communication where You could talk at, at different, you can say here's my opinion and say here's [00:57:00] the, the thinking that I had behind it, here's my standard, here's my mental model, if you will, here's the data that I'm using that, that gives me, that leads me to this opinion.
We typically fight just on our opinions. When you talk about where the world is now, especially let's say in the United States, yes. The huge factionization of what's going on, the partisanship. It is where we become identified with our. Our thoughts, our beliefs, our opinions, we're so identified with our opinions, we cannot even listen to the other side.
If we're going to survive as a species, okay, my, I really believe we need this emotional intelligence, this ability to have self awareness, mindfulness, self management, deep communication where we can look at our mental models. [00:58:00] Look at our belief systems to say, oh, yeah, well, I guess I believe this. It's a belief.
I don't know that it's true. Like you said, no truth, right? No truth, right? I don't know that it's true. Let me look at data. Let me look at dis-confirming data, not just the data that support me and make me feel good about myself. So this piece about human development, I don't know what to call it. I honestly don't know what to call it.
It's, it's much more than knowledge of psychology. It's where I spent the last 15 years of my career was developing engineers. That's what I wound up doing. First I was the Deming Professor of Management, then went into Leadership development. This, this is where I realized if we're going to be able to change anything, change starts on the inside.
The ability to change, that deep [00:59:00] ability to change, be a deep learner.
John Willis: Do you, do you follow anything by Argyris, like the ladder of inference in that work? Yes, and
Dr. Barbara Lawton: that's part of the tools for effective communication. Absolutely.
John Willis: Yeah, to be able to Break out of those, like, those loops, right, where, and I think the, the mental model stuff, some from Senge, but, you know, we talk a lot about in sort of the, our sort of modern technology domains of trying to make better organization design and better organizations, really trying to delve in on the, you know, the, the blessing and curse of mental models.
Right. And that, like, you know, way. You know, a lot of what we do, a lot of people I work with, you know, focus on, like, when there's a large incident in a large data center, you know we don't really know what happened. It's very complex, very complex system. So it's almost like an investigation where you try to get people's mental models, and you don't try to, you don't drive them down the [01:00:00] path, well, didn't you see this, or didn't you let them draw a picture, and you realize that everybody has a different picture.
So it's almost like an investigation where you try to get people's mental models, and you realize that everybody has a different picture.
Dr. Barbara Lawton: Yes,
John Willis: of this thing. And then it's really more of a, like, another friend of mine would say an adduct reasoning, almost like a mystery mystery novel, sorry, of trying to put it back together.
But yeah I hadn't really thought about, I mean, I, I, I've looked at mindfulness among all the things, but I, I, I, I, the things I think about is the sort of the mental model, having people understand. I think you said it really well there. These are just sort of neurons firing at some point that makes us all feel queasy that like we're just electronic impulses, but it's a, you know,
Dr. Barbara Lawton: it's part, it's a good piece of what we are, you know, is, you know it's electrical and chemical impulses, you know, it's a firing pattern in your brain and a belief is, or a thought is just a, a firing pattern, you know, in your [01:01:00] brain.
And then there's an, and there's an emotion that goes with it and motions and, and firing patterns are all related. So understanding how that all works but having the, and what mindfulness does is gives you. Behavioral experience, because you're always looking at behavioral experience and and tools, practices that you can use to cultivate self awareness and self management.
So mindfulness is a, is a tool in my mind that many different domains use with, it could be It could be a counseling domain, it could be a leadership domain, it could be a spiritual domain. Mindfulness is just a tool, a technique, a practice, if you will,
John Willis: that is very useful. I think if you're, if you're game, another podcast on that whole subject would be interesting.
I'd love it. All right, good, [01:02:00] good. Two more things I wanted to sort of nail down here. One is, one is just an observation that I thought that again. You know, I what again the thing I like so much about listening to your I've been so busy over the last two weeks I I work on way too many things at any given time and i'm like I kept thinking like, you know, can I stop here?
Can I stop here and I kept watching your videos because they were so fascinating but the some of the things you did were just so awesome Like you summarized all the things I think about them in like in like three simple You Lines almost we said there were three key points like analytical statistics And and I and I because that that was the thing.
I I I I tried to understand. You know You know the understanding variations this across control all that stuff and it wasn't till I heard some podcasts where somebody talked about how Deming sort of introduced this idea of analytical statistics. And then I, that just, then I went to my really smart friends and said, okay, what does this really [01:03:00] mean?
And then, you know, I got baptized in that. So the analytical statistics you know, I, I definitely have talked about that on podcast. Unknown and unknowable, right? Like that's the other sort of like key point. Like you said, there was like three key points of understanding. I mean, analytical statistics, right?
Like, like and then the, the, that there are unknowns and unknowables, right? Like, and like the, like, you have to manage these things. Like, again, that goes back to the physics, right? Or the thermo, the, the,
Dr. Barbara Lawton: like,
John Willis: like it, it, it divorces us from thinking we're in control. Sorry, buddy. There are unknowns that I know and unknowable.
You're like, you're gonna have to deal with it. And then and then expanding the pie, like, I wouldn't mind you just adding a little bit to that idea of like, expanding the pie. That was also a very brilliant takeaway from, if you remember. I don't even remember. Oh, sorry. But I think it was about the box.
Dr. Barbara Lawton: Yes.
John Willis: It was about the box. And you got to [01:04:00] constantly be expanding. I think it's what we've been talking about for the last hour is constantly expanding your knowledge and looking for those pressure points. So the only last thing I think is I really think that the thing I was really sort of like I thought was so interesting is you talk a lot about The acceleration of this entropy, the acceleration of change.
And it's just, you know, it's, it's just, it gets, we see it, it gets faster and faster and the things change. And even when, from the videos I was watching, right, where, you know, in the sort of nineties and two thousands. You know, you think about what's happened in mostly my career and now, you know, in this, what's going on now with the acceleration of technology is, is just, you know, a good friend of mine says there's a, this, this guy is what they call white hat hacker.
He's, he's an amazing human. He's been on CNN. He, he thinks about the real dangers of the world with cyber hack. He's there. They're He calls them [01:05:00] Category 3 hurricanes. I don't know why he doesn't call them Category 6, but he says in the 20th century there was only one Category 3 hurricane, and it was, you know, mass destruction, weapons of mass destruction.
He says that in this century we've already got three. We've got synthetic biology, we've got cyber, Cyber terrorism. And we have, and I, I'm very pro ai. I am actually writing a book on the history AI right now. So, but I can see both sides, but artificial intelligence and, and I thought, you know, as, as you were sort of your talk as it went through, we need to create smarter and healthier communities by under understanding these thermodynamics of change.
I just thought there was, there, there's like, that's, that's a thread I, I have to pull now since you, you opened up that, that, that window. So mixed metaphors. But
Dr. Barbara Lawton: a community is, is a group of people [01:06:00] that, and so you're, it's hard for the community to have capabilities that the individuals don't. So this ability to look deeply is something.
That I believe we, I know how to cultivate it one individual at a time. If I, I'm not in a leadership position of a community, how do I cultivate it in the community? I, I don't know where to go with that, honestly. I'd have to say, again, where I, I have to think about that. Where I had gone is after trying to make organizational change in so many different settings. Right. And Rocky Flats. And other organizations that I've been in afterwards and finding that I didn't know how.
I didn't know how. I tried Deming's approach of doing four day seminars and, and telling people and talking to people. And, [01:07:00] and yet where it really came down to was more this guided evolution. Creating. And this is this is about culture. How do you create culture? You have to create an environment in which people can actually learn and experience for themselves.
It's experience that changes thinking, you know, with some other things involved, like surfacing the old mental model, seeing that it doesn't work. And then, you know, creating new ones, because you can't embed new ones on top of old ones, they have to be surfaced in place. Right. Oh, yeah. Okay. And, and and that's what with the sales group, we were finally starting to do, but it's, I think the only one that I have that kind of experience with.
So I went and said, okay, what I can do in this world in my life, my career was to go and develop individuals like the students, [01:08:00] the, engineer who Came and said, why don't you go talk to Barb? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, but that's what I found I could do was begin to develop human beings that have been introduced to the ideas and given some experience.
So in teaching, it was always an experiential class. They did, they did lab experiments on themselves in their life. That was what they did. That was what I knew how to do, but yes, we do. I do agree completely. We do need community, people, individuals that, and communities that have the capacity, this intelligence of self awareness, self management, ability to investigate, to learn, to communicate, to.
Do as you were talking about with Argyris, you know, [01:09:00] communication down to that level. Be able to, for you and me to be able to stand together, and instead of arguing at each other, stand side by side and look at something together. And you say to me, you know, it looks this way to me. And I'm saying, well, when I look at it, it looks this way to me.
And, and how we can get to see through each other's eyes and understand the big picture. You know, it's like the blind men and the elephant. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Remember that? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, so it's the blind men and the elephant. We all see it differently than just, and be able to talk to each other about it rather than fight.
So I'm going to just say it very quickly for your listeners. You've got an elephant, and you have Several blind men around the elephant, right? And, and each one describes the elephant. One walks up to the elephant and [01:10:00] touches the leg and says, Oh, the elephant is like a tree. And another one walks up and touches the elephant, and he's got the side of the elephant.
He says, Oh, the elephant's like a wall. And another one goes up and grabs the, the tail of the elephant, and he says, No, the elephant's like a rope. Right. And another one grabs the trunk of the elephant and says, no, the elephant's like a snake. And instead of fighting with each other, you know, it's, it's a snake, no, it's a rope.
And going into who's going to be right and who's going to win in this situation, right? How do we stand next to each other and look at it together and say, Oh, help me see through your eyes and let's find a solution. Right. Because honestly, the elephant. Is the world we live in, and we can see it. Honestly, it's impossible to see.
We can only see through our little windows, you know, these little pieces, and [01:11:00] figure out what are we going to do together. And there, Deming was absolutely right. Cooperation. Win win. Yeah. Cooperation.
John Willis: Yeah, no, he he definitely you know, that's the, you know, I, I spent a lot of time trying to research what happened, what he'd do in Japan and all, you know, and probably the biggest thing was, you know, that the idea that he just told everybody, you know, that whole Mount Hawken, you know, where, you know, 85 percent of the wealth of, the controlling wealth of Japan is in his one seminar and, and he's basically telling them they have to cooperate.
Yeah. Absolutely. Like you can't compete with each other you like the way you're going to be an economic power is you have to cooperate And you know in the 60s he tried to do that with like the trucking like a lot of people don't know he he was doing like geometrics and he was doing all this stuff and You know in that sort of down time before he became refamous again, right?
And And he was basically trying, he was being brought in by all the trucking companies and, and, and transit, and he was telling them the [01:12:00] same thing. Like you shouldn't be competing with each other. You need to cooperate. So yeah, he was, he pretty much had that down. Yeah, no, I, I guess I'll, I'll sort of, and I definitely want to come back and do the mindfulness thing.
Cause I didn't, I didn't find much of that, or, you know, I, you know, I probably could have looked harder, but I, and I was so fascinated by you know, the, I really think, honestly, I think most of the people that listen to this this podcast. are going to find the value. I found great value out of the two lectures I watched.
And I, and it made so much sense to me in everything I've studied so far, right? You know, from, from, you know, struggling to read Sengei to, you know, spending a decade trying to understand the Deming character and try to understand what sort of profound knowledge is to, you know, to mental models and, and arduous and, and, and even this whole news, which you really, if you're sort of.
It's still really interesting. I could turn you on to these people [01:13:00] who, who analyze fatalities and, and it's, it's so Deming. My biggest question is try to convince them that they actually are saying the same thing. Deming is saying they, they have this anti pattern against lean because lean in their mind, ruined hospitals and killed people.
But, but, you know, became deterministic, right? The, the, the 14 steps of lean, the checklist, the, you know, but anyway, but, but. So they're sort of think Deming is responsible for lean. But I ramble sometimes all the times, but your work, I thought really connects. And I know it will connect a lot of dots with people who follow me because like, why would they follow me if they don't think like me you know, that, that I just found a lot of value in, you know, I know you're saying maybe it's too complex, so we didn't need to understand it, but I think there's a level we, there's a level, maybe you're right.
We don't have to go like, I don't. I, you know, I'll be honest, I've only gotten probably a quarter [01:14:00] away through most of Shewhart's books, right? But that's all I needed, right? I needed the history of measurement tools, right? But, and I, and I understand everything I needed via through Deming, right? And there is a line where you don't have to understand like what my physics friends understand about thermodynamics and entropy.
But, but boy, there is a, there's some line there where I think we should all understand. And I think you do a great job of explaining that and like somewhere in those lectures is that line to help us understand. I think what you eloquently said is an expansion of SLPK because SLPK by itself is like, what do I do with it?
Dr. Barbara Lawton: SLPK was the beginning, not the end. Yeah.
John Willis: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Dr. Barbara Lawton: Beginning. It's the first attempt to, as far as I know, the first attempt. To begin to describe. The world as it was evolving into and, and not what, what was in the [01:15:00] past, but it's the beginning, not an end point, you know?
John Willis: And how do you sort of, how do you expand, right?
This is great. You're right. It's a good, it's a good summary. It's a, it's a great sort of, you know, four elements to understand complexity, like, but, but what are the, what, how do you sort of expand on it? And I think that, you know, Edgeshane Shine, and some level of understanding chaos theory or complexity is very important.
So energy,
Dr. Barbara Lawton: I would say energy dynamics. I would label it energy dynamics.
John Willis: Got it.
Dr. Barbara Lawton: Okay. And, and, and that, that's the first and second laws of, you know, thermodynamics. But how that, how that plays out in organizations in daily life. How do we see that? It is, it is what is driving. It goes on. We just don't see it.
So it gives us a way to see what structure does, what process does, and, and what role it actually plays. And when you understand that, and you can say, I mean, [01:16:00] we do talk about it from a business perspective. We say, what is the market? Is there a market for this? And that's basically a pressure point. It's, it's pressure that's there that's not being served.
It's a, it's a pool of pressure that if we can create the right. Low structure, you know, which the problem is it's
John Willis: uncoupled with how we manage humans and people, right? We like yeah, we say like we study the heck out of the markets and then we say do this Right, and we don't we don't like study the energy flow of the people that have to do that right now again, that's the brilliance of your and I think of your your body of work really so well, so If you know, I, I've, you know, one of the things that's been interesting about my Deming book, it's got me in touch with a lot of people that I probably would have never met.
You know, it's my last four or five, if you want to listen to some really interesting podcasts I've done with some other old school Deming people that have just worked with them, you know, have different [01:17:00] ideas about how you know, some of them very much overlap with your ideas. But the what, what happens is the people in my audience, mostly a lot younger than me, want to reach out to you. So if that's something that you'd be interested in but beware
Dr. Barbara Lawton: Give them my email address. I'm retired. And so I'll do what I want and you know, when you want There
John Willis: you go, no, no, yeah, no, they're like I always tell the these But I get these fascinating guests on these are people that are insatiable learners, you know, and when they you know, when they hear these people, you know, I'll check back, you know, I'll tell new people beware.
Like, if you get your email, these people, like, they're aggressive learners, and they're gonna like what you have to say on this podcast, and they're gonna reach out to you. And so there might be a lot of them. So yeah, that sounds
Dr. Barbara Lawton: good. So what I'm gonna do is also look for a few I might [01:18:00] have some presentations that are not on YouTube, but that may be I can put that just to address the piece about mindfulness, about leadership, but again, in the last 15 years, okay, of my career.
John Willis: Yeah, that would be really good. I did a podcast recently so do you know David Carriage?
Dr. Barbara Lawton: Yes, of course.
John Willis: So, this woman, got all his writings, and she's, I'm going to try to create I'm creating a sort of a prototype of a, an AI system where you can communicate with him through his writings.
Wow. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So you know, cause I, I've been doing a lot of, I do a lot of work with like I said, I'm writing a book about the history of AI, but I'm also been sort of shifting my whole technology scope on how to take corpus of data and, and turn it into these type of chatbots. And so I've created a prototype where you literally can sort of ask questions of him.
His writings are prolific too. So
Dr. Barbara Lawton: [01:19:00] anyway,
John Willis: all right, well.
Dr. Barbara Lawton: Okay.
John Willis: I hope you enjoyed this. I, I did. I thoroughly did. I
Dr. Barbara Lawton: did. It's fun. It's not at all what I thought we were going to talk about. So, but I thoroughly enjoyed it, and I hope it was useful, and I hope it was useful.
John Willis: Yeah. I, I think what's gonna happen here, I'm thinking to myself, like, sometimes, you know, I think there was so much to cover, and there was so much, like, inside baseball that you really had to watch those videos.
I think what's gonna be useful is, I think the people who are going to go back and sort of study your body of work, it's gonna be incredibly useful, because people who didn't know who you were. Are going to now see what your work was and I think your work is brilliant. Honestly, so
Dr. Barbara Lawton: Thank you so much.
John Willis: I
Dr. Barbara Lawton: really appreciate that.
Great.
John Willis: So I think it is it's going to be very useful for a young group. I really want to learn and probably hopefully carry the torch of Dr. Deming. So, great.
Dr. Barbara Lawton: All right. Well, it's been a pleasure, and [01:20:00] maybe we'll be doing this again.
John Willis: Yeah, we'll see if we can schedule, on your time schedule, but a podcast on mindfulness, so.
Dr. Barbara Lawton: All right, take care.
