S4 E13 - Beth Blankenship - Exploring Deming's Legacy and Modern Applications
In this episode, I have a conversation with Beth Blankenship, a seasoned expert in quality management and a fervent disciple of W. Edwards Deming. We dive deep into Deming's profound principles and their continued relevance in today's digital transformation landscape.
Beth begins by sharing her journey from an IT background to becoming a passionate advocate for Deming's teachings. Her story includes a moment at a Deming seminar, which sparked her lifelong dedication to quality improvement and management systems. Beth reflects on her experiences working in various sectors, emphasizing the importance of teaching and genuine engagement in quality initiatives.
A significant part of our discussion revolves around Deming's influence on Japanese industry post-WWII and how his principles of systems thinking, variation, and profound knowledge reshaped their manufacturing processes. Beth provides insights into her extensive research, including the historical context of Deming's ideas and their foundational roots in the work of Walter Shewhart and other early 20th-century scientists.
Beth also critiques modern methodologies like Six Sigma, highlighting how they often miss the holistic, systems-oriented approach Deming championed. She underscores the necessity of focusing on customer needs and continuous innovation, rather than merely eliminating defects.
Our conversation concludes with Beth's reflections on the enduring impact of Deming's work and her current efforts to disseminate his teachings through papers, podcasts, and an upcoming YouTube channel. She passionately advocates for the preservation and application of Deming's principles, aiming to educate a new generation of quality management professionals.
You can find Beth Blankenship's LinkedIn below:
https://www.linkedin.com/in/beth-blankenship-deming-scholar-5351432/
Resources and Keywords:
David Kerridge's papers: Beth Blankenship mentions publishing 20 of David Kerridge's papers on LinkedIn, with more to come. These papers are described as good for capturing Deming's thinking.
Deming's lectures at Fordham: Beth mentions having three days of lectures from Deming to the Deming Scholars at Fordham, which she plans to make available on YouTube next year.
"Leadership in the New Science" by Margaret Wheatley: A book mentioned as influential in Beth's research.
Journal of Management History: Beth co-authored a paper with Pete Peterson for this journal about who influenced Deming before 1940.
Shewhart's first book: Mentioned as having quotations from physicists Arthur Eddington and Percy Bridgman before the table of contents.
"The Logic of Modern Physics" by Percy Bridgman: A book that influenced Shewhart and, indirectly, Deming.
Library of Congress: Mentioned as a source for letters and records related to Deming's work.
"Mind and World Order" by C.I. Lewis: A book that Deming reportedly read 13 times at Shewhart's insistence.
Arthur Holmes' lectures: 81 lectures on the history of philosophy, available on YouTube.
Beth Blankenship's upcoming work: She mentions working on 4-5 papers explaining the origins of Deming's thinking, to be released on YouTube in the fall.
John Willis' book: Mentioned several times, though the title isn't given.
"Learning to Lead, Leading to Learn" by Katie Anderson: A book mentioned that includes interviews with Dr. Yoshino about Toyota.
Beth's upcoming YouTube channel: She mentions plans to create one later this year.
Transcript:
John Willis: [00:00:00] Hey, this is John Wills again. We've got another profound podcast. Really excited for this one. Beth Blankenship. Beth you want to say hey and tell everybody who you are?
Beth Blankenship: Oh, gee. So do you want me to go into my story about how I met Dr. Deming?
John Willis: Well, why don't you start off with what do you, what do you currently do and and a little bit about your background and then we can get into how you, what, you know, what, what you're interested in, Deming, but I think it's, I, I was interesting in like, who are you and, and, you know, I, yeah, who is Beth?
How does Beth become Beth?
Beth Blankenship: Yeah, so I grew up in Maryland, but we lived in many places around the country and We moved to Texas and I ended up going to the University of Texas and I was going to study psychology, but my father wanted me to be an accountant. So I ended up studying I. T. And so we have similar background.
And. [00:01:00] I got to study with this wonderful, wonderful woman, Eleanor Jordan, who led the first business IT program, and this was 80s but I quickly learned after I worked at the Washington Post, I worked for Deloitte Tushras Doing various things and I really was not interested in it. And I found myself you know, I'd been in D.
C. been to Boston and came back to Houston was working in the medical center. And within it and I came across an article about Dr. Deming. I won't go into the details of that right now, but I ended up spending after, after going to Fordham, I spent most of about 15 years leading quality initiatives, reporting to CEOs or VPs coaching board members, my, the [00:02:00] thing that I was, was really.
taken with was helping people learn because I, that's just the thing that interests me the most. And so I was really engaged in teaching people. And, but then after the I don't know, about 15 years, you know, Six Sigma started to come around. And other methodologies that I did not feel like were authentic.
I could not, I could not do that. I was not capable of doing that. It was too much against my, my grain. I guess I would say I'm a purist. And so I continue to work and right now I'm actually working on a government IT project, managing a team DevSecOps and JIRA and all those things. But I. I pretty much, pretty much spent about 25 years researching and [00:03:00] writing and I had many, many questions.
And so I went in a different direction as people went. And I am now at a point where I'm, I'm able to, I'm going to start doing papers and podcasts. And then maybe I was working on books, but I have, my ideas are just like, there's so much to do. My one book would turn into this book and that book and that book.
So I just said, you know what, you're probably more suited to doing YouTube. So I just started turning my papers into. My, my research into papers. And and so right now I'm just putting out like the fundamental stuff and then I'll never stop. And so and, and so just kind of give you like where I'm at right now.
I'm I said, I need to get these David carriage papers available to people. I tried to create a website a couple of times. I'm not good at that. [00:04:00] And then I thought, how can I do that? You know, make these available. And then it just hit me, let's put it on LinkedIn. And I put a couple of my things on LinkedIn before and I took them off, but I, I put 20 of David's papers.
There's a lot more which, which will eventually go up. And Dave thinks we should do a book on David's papers, which I think is a great idea. So, but David carriage is such a good person. To read for capturing, you know, Deming's thinking that I just wanted people to have that available. So, so I guess you could say this is the year I'm coming out after being in hibernation.
I pretty much stopped doing public speaking, going to seminars. And for the last 15 years, I've just been in hibernation doing my research.
John Willis: I will warn you you know, that my world is, you know, is a niche y world, but I think if you ask Bill Bellows, there's a danger here now because a lot of people in my sort of world [00:05:00] are going to reach out to you after this podcast, which is going to be a good thing.
Beth Blankenship: I know. It's hard to keep. Yeah. But,
John Willis: but yeah. But
Beth Blankenship: Well, it's probably the right timing because things happen for a reason
John Willis: that Absolutely. Yeah. Bill talks about like, I keep hearing people like that. I know. I'll run into a conference, I'm like, oh man. Thank you for having those podcasts with Bill Bellows.
You know, I had a great conversation with him and I asked Billy last time I talked to him like, Hey, you're getting a lot of pings from a lot of people I know, right? He's like, yeah. You know, so yeah, no, I think, I think that there's so many ways I want to go here, but the, I, I think the interesting thing, it was Dave who said was telling me about David Carriage and that, that you had this body of work and I definitely want to talk about you about that in another conversation, like I have some ideas that we could, you know, maybe if you're interested in, but the thing he said, which I, I, you know, I always felt like bad, like, you know, I, when I first read, you know, I did, I think it was Tony earlier, I was challenged to look at Deming's [00:06:00] 14 points.
And then I read, I think I read New Economics first. And, and, you know, like being naive, didn't even know what, like if there was an order. And I didn't get it. I just didn't, you know. Then I, you know, I did some more stuff and then like the whole profound knowledge stuff was like, you know, like, I mean, the parts of it, like the variation, you, you know, you dig a little deep and you get some surface level on it, but you know, the, the knowledge and epistemology, like where are they going here?
And then certainly psychology like, whoa, ho, hold on a second. And and then I did some more work and then I, I read you know, out of the crisis, I'm like, it I'm now less, I understand it less now, . Yep. I totally get that. And what Dave said out loud that day, like he said something about Deming really wasn't great at writing and like, Oh my God, thank you.
Now I can say it out loud because you know, somebody from, and then he said, well, let me tell you about a guy that really has written this sort of nailed Deming's ideas and [00:07:00] I've been reading. I've been trying to catch up, but, and like, he was so right. Like, like, I think out of, yeah. Everything I tried to learn about Deming, some of the articles that I've read that you've published are like the, you know, the chaos one.
And I mean, those are like, oh, my God, this is exactly what I think Deming was trying to say in a way that like. Everybody can understand.
Beth Blankenship: You're talking about David Carriage?
John Willis: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Sorry. Yeah. I guess, you know, what, the I, I'm sure that, that you saw that or had some type of. Yeah. And
Beth Blankenship: we will I do have three days of when he came to Fordham, I have three days of lectures from David to the Deming Scholars.
And next year I'm going to make them available on YouTube so that other people can actually hear him talk because You know, you just get so much even more about David when you hear him speak.
John Willis: And so what was the, you know, so according to Dave, there was really sort of a, sort of a beautiful think [00:08:00] tank going on there at Fordham.
And so tell, tell me a little more about that.
Beth Blankenship: Yeah. Well, I have to tell you kind of before I got there. So here I was in Houston feeling like I had a dead end job. I was in my twenties and I'm late twenties and I just happened to an article about Deming in a journal. And so he was coming to Houston to the Marriott at the Galleria and I asked my boss if I could go and he said, no, it makes sense.
I mean, it was, I was working in it. And so I came back and I said, can I have a vacation? And so I went to vacation. I went to the seminar and I had been to many seminars in my life. And I walked into the grand ballroom of the, Marriott at the Houston Galleria and all three, you know, ballrooms were open together and the energy in the [00:09:00] room was just knocking you, it knocks you over.
There was so much energy. And I knew nothing, absolutely not one, went to the University of Texas, very good business school, knew not one thing about W Edwards Deming, it was just something in me that, that was awakened when I saw that article and I went and and so about the second or third day, I mean, of course, it was very engaging and you know, you have his dominant personality and his And we were just getting a downlink from Atlanta.
We didn't even see him live. And but his words were really capturing people. And I do remember that people were particularly taken by his discussion about how organizations destroy people. And but that wasn't the thing that got me. Got me. I'm not that it didn't move me, but it was like the second or third day.
[00:10:00] And he said, he walks across the room and he says, if I was to measure a length of a table more, you know, again and again, I would find that the measurements were not alike.
John Willis: I love this.
Beth Blankenship: And if you didn't measure, if you measured the length of table or anyone in the room measured the length of a table, the measurements would all be different.
And there are reasons for this. There's the position of the pencil of the measuring instrument. There's where you're standing, blah, blah, blah. But at the end of the day, even if you were able to take a series of exact measures of the length of a table, you would still have variation because the molecules at the end of the table are jumping around.
So there is no true value of the length of a table. There is no true value of anything. Well, I'm like, my, my dad was a physicist. So, you know, I grew up hearing about linear equations and we had a microwave in the sixties in our [00:11:00] basement because he worked at Westinghouse and he worked on the nuclear sub, the Nautilus.
And like, so hearing all this, you know, I'd heard the, these kind of This kind of language but I had no skill in math. So I would, you know, I couldn't be a scientist, even though I tested out as, you know, loving science, but I didn't know at the time that this was had something to do with science and but, but at the time I'm just sitting there and I said to myself.
Well, first of all, I looked around and I, I said, I saw nobody else was disturbed. And I was, I was disturbed. And I said to myself, I said, is this guy a kook? I mean, what is he talking about? What does this have to, what are measurements of molecules have to do with management? And it just, Really it was the thing that got me about Deming.
It's
John Willis: so amazing, you know, I, like, I feel like there's so many things I wish I would have [00:12:00] known before I wrote my book. Because I didn't get into operational definitions until like almost the book was almost done and squeezed a couple of things in there. But I love his quote, like, there is no true value of any character.
Data condition that is I'm obviously reading this that is defined in terms of a measurement or observation. And I mean, it takes a lot to be able to get that one where you're like, okay, I'm walking to the next conversation, right?
Beth Blankenship: Yeah. And it took me years, but I. Now it's all clear.
John Willis: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. No, I, or and the story about the history of operational definitions and where that came about is a fascinating story, which is one of my papers as well.
Yeah. I wrote about that. Oh, well, again, I wish I could have written a book, but that's from the, you
Beth Blankenship: could just, you could do another book.
. So. The seminar was a four day seminar and at the end there was some, I went to one of the facilitators because I was like, where can I learn?
And it's someone that's well [00:13:00] known in the Deming community, I won't say their name who I became, you know, I just, admired very much. But he said, there's no place and I'm like, I spent my four days. I'm, you know, this guy's changing my life and what, you know, and so I really, I went home and that was really devastated.
And I did something I'd never done in my life. Like after about a week or two, it didn't go away. And I wrote Deming a letter.
John Willis: Oh, wow.
Beth Blankenship: And I asked him where I could learn and he wrote me back. And I've, I've, I was asked to tell this story a number of times, but he said, Dear Miss, dear Miss Blankenship, thank you for your kind letter.
I had trouble to read it because it was written with blue ink on blue lines because I, I thought, should I type it or should I write it? And I [00:14:00] wrote it. I should have typed it. And then he said It came while I was in Japan. Marta Mooney came up with an extraordinary idea. Fordham University will have a magnificent program.
Please contact Joyce Orsini at Fordham University. And, and so that was that was at the time when they were they had, you know, that's a whole nother story, but Fordham had gone to Deming in the early 1980s about bringing his ideas because they wanted something that worked. And the faculty at the graduate school of business You know, went to Deming and then Deming said, well, the only person who can do this as Joyce Orsini, and they were lucky enough to get her.
And then 10 years later, they, they started this MBA program. So so I went and it was like, it was like, like here for me, being in a Deming seminar with Deming was like going into another [00:15:00] realm, someplace like older or different. And the same was that Fordham. I felt like I was going into another realm and it was really because of the ideas.
And Joyce Orsini was just the most amazing teacher. And I mean, One person said to me, he said, Joyce is Saint like if you ever want to see anyone who's the embodiment of Dr. Deming, it would be Joyce Orsini. She's a very, she's a private person and I respect her privacy, but I just can't say a much as enough about what she has done for so many people in being our teacher.
And the thing that I learned at Fordham was if you want to understand Deming, you have to go through Shewhart. And so it was very difficult for me and now I know why it was so difficult. It wasn't just so anyway, it was very difficult. [00:16:00] And through the years I've come to love, have a love hate relationship with Shewhart, but now I, now I can actually explain his.
His first book and most of his second book. But after the program ended, I still hadn't answered my question. I had more questions than answered answers. And and so David carriage happened to come and speak to the Deming scholars and then And at a subsequent visit at a seminar, him and I started to become friends.
And then the other person that was key for me was Pete Peterson of Johns Hopkins. He was a management professor maybe the most published professor in the Academy of Management. And at the Deming, once the Deming Institute formed in the early nineties,
They had breakout sessions and they were looking at what is the aim of the Deming Institute and there were a number of people who were [00:17:00] interested in research. And so I happened to be sitting next to Pete Peterson and like what would a research group do at the Deming Institute? And now that the Deming Institute ended up saying they're not going in that direction, but I went in that direction.
And I, I early in When, when we were finishing Fordham, this book came out by Margaret Wheatley called Leadership in the New Science, and there was always this thing in me about something about science, but I couldn't explain it. I didn't know. And And so Wheatley writes beautifully about metaphors and physics, about applying them to management.
And I took them to someone, and I won't say who, and I said, what do you think about Wheatley's book? And they said, it's not scientifically valid. And then I asked, I said, is Deming's work scientific? And they said, some of it.
John Willis: Wow.
Beth Blankenship: And [00:18:00] so I had this thing in me that Deming's ideas came out of science, but I couldn't put my finger on it.
And I was really from the beginning, always interested in like where things come from. And so During the 90s, Pete Peterson, David Carriage and I started corresponding from Scotland and then when he would come to town, we would like me, we would be together. He would come to my house and we would work.
We did some presentations together and then Pete Peterson invited me to. Me, Ron Stupak, who was the editor of, and Pete is in, was in Baltimore, I was in Baltimore the Journal of Management History was doing a series of articles on Deming, and he asked Pete if he would like to write one. So Pete invited me, and so we went to the Hopkins Club, and we're talking about, Ron had a whole list, and one of them was who [00:19:00] influenced Deming.
And I said, well, what about. The people who influenced Deming before 1940, because no one knows about that. And so he's like, okay. And and so Pete and I, Pete said, we'll do two papers. You write one Beth and I'll be the coauthor and then I'll write one and you'd be the coauthor. And I ended up not going along to be the coauthor on his, because it was, it was about a topic that I didn't really think.
I really wanted, I wasn't really sure what he was going to say, you know, and so we, I just had the one article and then later he asked me to co author a book with him on the Great Baltimore Fire, but I couldn't do it because I was just so driven by my own research, getting my questions answered. And it took me until about the late 90s before I went back to Shewhart's book.
And, and I saw before the table, his first book, before the table of contents, before the preface, there were quotations from two physicists [00:20:00] Arthur Eddington, and who was in England, and he proved Einstein's theory of special relativity. I forget which one, but the one where he went to Africa to prove, you know, that, but Eddington wasn't the important person for me.
The other person was Percy Bridgman. And Shewhart had quoted the logic of modern physics and both quotations were about probability. And so that sent me back to Shewhart. Well, I read Bridgman and then I, and then I could start to see Deming's thinking came out of physics, but you have to go through Shewhart.
So then I started studying the whole history of science and then the whole history of philosophy and, and, and exactly how, how it all came together. Cause Shewhart was a physicist. He was, he, and, Like 1916, when he was writing his thesis on the something of in a viscous median, it was about gases. [00:21:00] And so statistical mechanics, quantum mechanics, atomic theory, quantum theory.
So Shewhart based the control chart. And I'm just saying this on basically the idea of kinetic theory of gases where you have a system of atoms. And he came up with the concept of a process. And so there's a whole, so one of my papers actually goes into that whole history. But it's a very clear history of you know, how Shewhart developed his ideas.
And then But Shewhart was a physicist. Deming was a physicist. The first time they met Deming was not impressed with Shewhart. Even Deming had been to the hall. I mean, so you got to go to the library of Congress to see these letters because that's where you really find so much that, you know, and so Pete Peterson and I went to the library of Congress 15 times and you, you start to really see what happened and [00:22:00] so what.
My, my four to five papers, depending on if I split one up, that will be coming out this fall on YouTube will be explaining the origins of Deming's thinking from Shewhart to Deming in his thirties, and then how Deming ended up going to Japan. And we find the history, the origins of the PDSA cycle of a learning organization, the history of the control chart.
And then we get to also see. What Deming did in Japan, what did Deming teach the Japanese? Because you talk to five people and they were all have different stories about what Deming is about. And I was recently at a hospital and I was, I was a patient actually was last year as a patient in this hospital.
And this doctor who was treating me was on the board of the hospital. And somehow we started, I said, Oh, I've been treated [00:23:00] so well here. You, the quality of care is so good. And she, and then she said, Oh, we're implementing Japanese management. And we even went to Japan. And so I was so impressed. And, but later I spoke with one of the managers and and I could see that.
Just because it was Japanese quote Japanese management. It wasn't what Deming taught the Japanese. And so we think that because it's Japanese that it came from Deming and with Deming and. And so you're going to get the same results as Deming get, as the results that came from Deming working with the Japanese, but we're not getting the same results.
And the reason we're not is because we're not doing what Deming taught the Japanese.
John Willis: Oh,
Beth Blankenship: I mean, we're doing pieces, but But there's a, I, I spent a lot of time on this. I didn't, I never got to the connection of, of Shewar's kinetic theory stuff. But you know, I, when [00:24:00] I, I was telling you earlier, when I wanted to understand where profound knowledge came from, the, the, you know, the two really strong points that came out, which was pragmatism, C.
John Willis: I. Lewis's Mind in a World Order, and that, that converged with Percy Bridgman's work in logic physics and all that. And then that, that's a good part. But I, the one thing I think about Japan, which is, That he, I think Deming learned as much about Japan as Japan learned from him, because there was this tsunami culture and this, this culture, and I've seen it, I did a Japan study trip last year with a bunch of people, and you can see right from elementary school, that culture of intrinsic motivation.
So I think there's, the one thing I worry sometimes when I've read all the books about Deming is this idea that Deming was the miracle maker in Japan. I think Deming influenced Japan incredible. The miracle in Japan, [00:25:00] you know, was created by the Japanese. That's just been my,
Beth Blankenship: well, I mean, I would say that.
You needed the two because when Deming got to Japan the engineers had no confidence. They were starving. They had no food. They didn't have a plan. And he taught over 80 percent of the leadership of Japanese companies. And he had a very clear message. And while he was significantly, if in fact, and he has said this, if it wasn't for Shewhart, he would not have been able to do what he did.
But what he brought to the Japanese was Everything he had learned, including, I guess, C. I. Lewis was, C. I. Lewis and Percy Bridgman were the two most people who later influenced Shewhart. Early Shewhart was physics. But Deming was clearly, yes, he was influenced by C. I. Lewis. You probably heard the story about Deming reading the book 13 times.
And Deming was also influenced by Shewhart, but then he did bring up, because Deming [00:26:00] did all of his own work in the 1930s, And then, so he brought a very unique point of view and a, and a clear, direction on what they needed to do. And they had his organization as a system diagram production as a system.
He said every Japanese CEO had that. In his office. So I think I totally respect your point of view. I question you needed both and you also needed. There were other things. You also needed the environment that.
John Willis: Right. Exactly. Okay. The
Beth Blankenship: Americans created under General MacArthur. So all of those things, but what I'm kind of focusing on right now with my current paper is what Deming actually taught the Japanese.
John Willis: Yeah. And that's important. What message,
Beth Blankenship: because my view, I was really like relating to you when you were talking about Yeah. Deming's books, you know, because he [00:27:00] wrote tremendous numbers of academic papers about statistics and other topics around mostly statistics, but he never wrote academic papers about management.
And Joyce Orsini would tell us, you know, we need those. But but reading Deming's book, my, my personal view, this is just me. My personal view is that people that by looking at Deming through a historical lens, you get a much better understanding. When you see how ideas evolve, where they came from.
I mean, Einstein stood on the shoulder of giants. Then you get a better feel of, then things make more sense. But when you look at out of the crisis, to me, I mean, the message that Deming taught the Japanese was very concise. But when you get to the new, to the out of the crisis, I mean, it's all over the place.
He's talking about like some of the things he taught, the things he taught the Japanese and then he's talking about the seven deadly diseases and the 14 points and how is anybody going to really focus on what exactly they need to do. And then when you look at his [00:28:00] second book, this is just again me talking like when he looks at the organization as a system, it becomes less clear what you're supposed to be doing and there's a more of a focus on managing the system, which is very important.
But that core message. Kind of gets lost. So both are valuable depending on where you are in your process. But like I said, so I. My, my focus of all my attention and my writing is, is basically Deming, Shewhart letters between them and some Japanese.
John Willis: Yeah, no. No, and, and I, I guess my only point was one of the things I, I, I didn't feel there was the, the, you know, like there's a lot of ways I want to go here and I actually want to go back to your the six sigma questions too.
But the, the thing I, I like as I was going to, I was finding myself becoming a sycophant of Deming. And it's really easy to do. And, and then, you know, you start [00:29:00] looking at the books, and then I started, you know, sort of understanding that, you know, because there's this you know, there's all this, like, debate about who really created it.
Was it Sorensen? Was it Duran? Was it Deming? And, like, that's all nonsense. And, and, and I think, you know, one, one of the things I think you realize is there were so many ingredients there, you know you know, and, and I think your other point that you made is that it was the perfect timing, like if you leave the reckoning, right?
Like, and, and, and the way he describes how
Beth Blankenship: he even says that, he says in 1950. the circumstances might not have been the same a year before or one year later. They, he said the time was just right. So that's a very important point that you're making.
John Willis: No, I agree. I agree. And again, like we wouldn't be on this podcast if I didn't think Deming's influence was just so impactful and still needs.
It's why I'm so excited about what you're doing. And I can't wait to get access to some of the stuff because, you know, I [00:30:00] had, I was on an Island by myself. I didn't know anybody when I was writing a book. And I, same thing. I had to understand where did profound knowledge come from? I, you know, I, I knew one person couldn't invent these ideas themselves.
Beth Blankenship: You're right. Yeah.
John Willis: So I had to go back and, like, again, I, I actually got one of my brilliant PhD friends to read CI Lewis the world of Fact, because when I say Right, that Deming said it took, I I heard seven or 13 times. 13. Yeah. Yeah, I'm like, well, and I have a friend that has, like, three degrees, one in philosophy, one in I.
T., one in tech, and I was like, you know, Jabe, could you mind reading this book, explain to me before I try to read it? And that, that helped me a lot. You
Beth Blankenship: really do need the philosophy to help to understand that. That
John Willis: was, I knew he, he knew it. And, and in fact, he opened up, you know, part of my book, I go back to Sonder is in like the, the beautiful story of how terrible a human that was, who actually created pragmatism and, you know, and like I told you earlier, before the call, I, I like telling stories, you know, I like to like teach the idea, but [00:31:00] the, the people behind the stories.
But but yeah, no, I, I think what, you know, Deming's influence in Japan is. Like, I have had somebody come up to me one time, and I always pronounce Sorensen's name wrong or whatever, just because I'm bad at that kind of stuff, but the guy MacArthur originally sent over, and there were these people that say, you know, Deming wasn't their first choice, and whenever I get that, I'm like, do you think the outcome would have been different if it was Shewart?
Beth Blankenship: Sorensen, though, I mean, and I have those, I have his class. Someone gave me the stuff, the Sorensen and I do, there is an article at the Library of Congress that talks about exactly what happened with Sorensen, and then they also invited Shewhart, but Shewhart didn't want to go. But I think the problem, not, not problem, but one of the things is that those guys were just teaching Shewhart, not, not that it's just Shewhart.
John Willis: Right, right. But,
Beth Blankenship: but Deming I mean, I don't think I'm going to say it [00:32:00] now, but he said something very controversial about that. And the bottom line is Deming taught much more than control charts. And you probably know this.
John Willis: Yeah, no, I mean, part of it was I, I covered a lot about sourcing in my book as well, because there was a point where JUSE knew he wasn't teaching the full, almost, I won't say conspiratorial, but like he, they, he knew that the, the training, that the total quality, whatever sourcing is created.
The, the, the Kurchikani and all those guys knew, Koyangi knew that, like, there was more, and that's why Koyangi sent a letter to Deming. So every time I hear that, like, well, they didn't really want Deming at first, and, like, who cares? Like, the, but I, you know, I think the JUSE I
Beth Blankenship: don't know, I, I, see, this is No, so I would, I mean, I haven't heard any of that.
But just, just by going to the history from like, I have some, a number of Joyce Orsini gave me, [00:33:00] gave us quite a few The Deming prize. By Korinagi and then yeah, well, so this is a letter to Deming inviting him,
right? So in this and in the Library of Congress, you can see their history and the history from the point of view that I've seen is that the Japanese engineers had heard about Deming's work with, what's his name in the U.
S. world. The US war effort and working and teaching Shewart's control charts to the US government agencies during the war. And so the Japanese that heard of that, and the Japanese that also heard about Jersey name and who Deming promoted in the 1930s on sampling. And they'd also heard of Walter Shewart.
And they, there were no. No materials available. And so Deming was invited in 1947 through General MacArthur's you [00:34:00] know, recovery group to do the census and to do the Japanese census. And the story that I've read about from the Japanese is that they heard Deming was in Japan and then they asked him if he would be willing to teach.
So it was more like, I don't know if Deming actually would have. ended up in there if he hadn't already been there doing work on the census. No,
John Willis: no, I, I, again, I do cover all of that. He, he was over there, he was doing census in India and then they, they sent him over to census in Japan. And, and there was this whole thing where there was a bunch of knowledge before the war of what was going on.
And I, I, I knew that, so there's a thing in, in Habersham's book about reckoning. Where they would, he said that when the Japanese, so the, the the JUSE, they were wartime statisticians. They were very much like the equivalent of what Norbert Wiener and all those guys were doing in Aberdeen, where Deming was as well, with Herbert Simon and all that, right?
They were literally wartime statisticians, so they knew there was a [00:35:00] lot more here. And and then in, in, in Habsburg's book, the, the Reckoning, he says whenever they capture, A plane, you know, an American, you know, plane, he said they were sick by the gap in quality. Compare this. So they knew there was something there and then they knew, I didn't know they knew he was at Aberdeen, that Deming was at Aberdeen during, like, that think tank that was going on during World War II.
But yeah, so the point is that that, you know, they, but they, and then the research I got, which was, they were really frustrated By what Sorensen was teaching because he was just teaching sort of control charts and and stuff like and they knew there was a lot more there anyway. So yeah, that's why I basically fully agree with you.
So
Beth Blankenship: But I'm not criticizing Sorensen . I, I just don't have it in the top of my mind about, you know, what I read about that. And that wasn't my focus. You know, my yeah.
John Willis: So you had sent in early and this is like, this is awesome. The, [00:36:00] you had said something earlier, which is, you know, a lot of things, like, I told you, I came into this late, right?
Like, in like, 10 years ago is when I really like fell in love with where you
Beth Blankenship: became possessed
John Willis: possessed. Exactly. Right. Late bloomer. I'm 65 years old. So that's kind of, but, well, I'm no spring chicken either. Yeah,
you know the the, well, it's funny because the time that you're sounds like you're going to Fordham, I'm sitting at Exxon and not realizing, and you've been realizing, not realizing that there's a lot of management stuff that actually is absorbing Deming's stuff.
Yeah. And we're doing, we're maniacal about data and And not learning many years later that a lot of that was influenced by them. But then another story, which is I, I wound up working for G capital and my wife was a black belt. And I, I joke, they give you green belts. They just like, it's like, you know, the kid karate, right?
They just get start you off at a higher call a belt just so you keep [00:37:00] paying. And so I, I don't think I could say I'm a qualified green belt but I saw some beauty in Six Sigma, but I saw the dogma, like, like this, and especially at GE, right, where, like, you know, the Welshian of how to do this.
But then as I learned more about Deming, I'd run into, and I would say it's mostly east, northeast coast, almost like Deming doesn't exist in the word lean. But almost like they went out of their way to make it look like he never existed. And then the ones that actually do will say stuff like, you know, that Jack Welch six sigma Deming stuff never worked.
And it just drives me nuts. Because from my understanding, like, you know, maybe there was a spark. Six Sigma that came from some Deming ideas, but from my research, I don't think Deming ever approved of it. And I think anybody who really gets Deming can see what you said. The non pure, the, you know, the purists cannot [00:38:00] abide by that.
Anyway, any of that makes sense that I just talked about? Well,
Beth Blankenship: it's really an interesting point 'cause I forgot to finish my story earlier. So I was at this hospital and then and then I, you know, I was back there. A number of months later for another reason and I was speaking with this manager and they're doing lean and it's a large healthcare system in Baltimore, very well known.
And and she started telling me about a problem they're having. And she said, there is a doctor who is able to cure this problematic illness, which is a great, but he prescribes medicine. That no one can afford. And she said, I can't get him to change. And this is part of a team of 15 quality people, all very young, but their, their [00:39:00] hospital system is part of a larger group of hospitals, starting with the Northwest coast that is implementing lean and the way they have it organized is that.
Like I met with their team that There's like, you know, 14, 15 team members. They're each assigned different departments. And so, you know, walking out the door, I didn't give her an answer, but walking out the door, you know, you could really see the thing, the one, if there's one thing, cause I'm definitely no expert on Six Sigma.
Even though GE actually came to Fordham with asking for Deming scholars in the early nineties to help them create this thing. And I don't know if any, I think one of them might've gone, but anyway So they had this problem, and the problem they're having is the same problem, the same reason why I am not, like, bought into Six Sigma, in that they're not, [00:40:00] so if I was at this hospital, I'm like, well he's managing his function.
You can't, of course the doctor is going to, like, it's not my problem what they're doing over in that other department, I'm only worried about my department. Well, make him responsible for the process instead of his function. Organize your hospital around the concept of a system. Don't have all your quality people working on different departments separately.
And so, it's pushed down. It's pushed down in, in the lower functioning, like director level man, but no one's managing the system as a whole. And so my view of some of the things happening in Six Sigma, it was very much, you know, we're doing these great improvement projects, but you know, sometimes one department needs to underperform.
So the system as, as a whole can perform optimally. [00:41:00] You know, sort of like when you have your Thanksgiving dinner, you get tired. So your body is, body can, your body can you know, process your big meal. So that's, I'll just stop talking because I don't want to overwhelm.
John Willis: That's a great way to explain it because I, you know, I thought about it over the years because there were definitely things I really liked.
I mean, I literally you know, I ran a group of about 40, you know, ad hoc developers and coders and did everything. They put computers together, they put laptops together, they. Big servers, they wrote code and, you know, and one of my peers was owned the server farm and like his defects, you know, per million were like uptime, you know, like, so if you anyway, like, and, and I, and I'd actually try to be pure, like he's, when you said pure, it resonated with me because that was so unpure, right?
Like, like that was, He had, you know, billion dollars of investments in making sure that service don't go down, you know, like, from, like, you know, [00:42:00] multi million dollar generators that, like, will flip on when the power goes off to battery farm operated, you know, fields of data, like, so, you know, And, and I'd be trying to do very pure things like, you know, well, is it, could it be the lines of code?
And could it be the, and finally I gave up and I went to my thank God my wife wasn't my black belt because I don't think we would have gotten married, but I, I, I'm like, I'm like, okay, you know, if you're going to force me, then I'm going to say the amount of times my door is open. Opens to my office in the time it shuts, you know, and I think that became the impurity of Six Sigma was the non systems thinking, you know, that like that.
I think they just miss that part of them and certainly a psychology and and but you know the, you know, but they had the theory and knowledge. They did have some of the, you know, I mean there was some advanced stuff in the variation. Anyway. I But the point is no,
Beth Blankenship: but when you say, okay, so when you say they had the theory of knowledge, I mean, I know where you, I think I know where we're gonna go, but could you expand on that?
John Willis: [00:43:00] Mm-Hmm. ,
Beth Blankenship: are you talking about the but the may you
John Willis: know the design. I mean, so in, okay, so,
Beth Blankenship: so here, let me say something to you. And this there is someone who, you know. It was really upset when I said this to him over 20 years ago when he was in D. C., but it's very unsettling, and I'm going to have a paper called The Controversy, because when I say it's very unsettling, it's especially unsettling to people who've been doing this kind of work, and I almost feel bad having to say it, but if you get it, you'll be unsettled because I'm unsettled.
But Deming, David carriage says this in his papers. I found it in Deming's writing more than once. Deming wrote improvement is necessary, but unimportant. So if you're looking at all the efforts that we put in and it's, you know, we're putting out fires, we're getting rid of the chaos and organizations.
We're bringing order. Shewhart gives us [00:44:00] that. But what if, what if we had What if organizational processes were like processes in nature that were stable? What if we didn't have to put out fires? What, what did Deming say we should be doing? And that's the message. Of managing as a system, but managing, like he says it in two different ways.
In 1950, he said, you're focused, you got to focus on the customer. It's all about the customer and everything else is about redesign innovation or redesign of your product. But when you're looking at his, his new economics, he says, your goal is to optimize the organization. You have a system. The goal of management is to optimize, but it's not to optimize.
And he talks about how everything's equally important, but really the consumer is the most important thing. And so he used all of his knowledge that he didn't get from Shewhart in consumer research and [00:45:00] sampling, and it was his own thing where he says, if you Japanese. Want to be able to sell to America.
You got to understand Americans. And so that's really the core of it. And so it's very unsettling. I hate to have to say it.
John Willis: No, no, it's spot on. It's the core system thing. It's why I think, you know, I'm such a big fan of Bill Bellows, right? Like, cause he just pounds system thinking, right. It is, you know, and it's something that, you know, in my world, it's sort of DevOps, the DevSecOps and all like we get, because we were sort of born.
On complex adaptive systems, complex systems, like where we know that, like, there is a butterfly. We even have a term called a Heisenbug, which means certain bugs that happening in these incredibly complex systems that like figuring out how to fix that. It's sort of a waste of time. I mean, that sort of is
Beth Blankenship: interesting.
John Willis: Yeah. No, so I think you're right. I mean, it is, you know, I love this conversation. I love all these conversations [00:46:00] because you have in your head, like, how things work and how you explain it. Then you hear somebody else explain it. You know, sort of better or different, and I think, you know, it is, I've always known, like, the most powerful message that comes out of understanding Deming is systems thinking.
Right. I think in. And you know, and even like to your point earlier, like, what did, what did she would teach? And then what did Deming do with that? And Deming, you know, she was manufacturing, right? Like physicists manufacturing, you know, sort of, you know,
Beth Blankenship: took it out of the manufacturing.
John Willis: Exactly. Exactly.
And that's where he was able to see, you know, To your point, the flow and the downstream and even to when he, you know, I don't like some of my research, I didn't cover too much of it, but Deming did jury, jury, jury, jury statistics or jurimetrics in the 60s, right? For trucking companies that were getting into these massive lawsuits and he has all this writing about about how the same [00:47:00] messages that he was giving to the Japanese.
About you need to work to get, you know, this is now not a time to compete with each other. Like he was giving that to American sort of like teamsters and, you know, unions and, like,
Beth Blankenship: And when he would testify, you can, you can get some of those records in the Library of Congress, but you have a really good understanding of history.
Yeah, no, I
John Willis: mean, it, it, it was, I mean, the, the gift I was given was trying to figure out Why Deming came up with system of profound knowledge at 93 years, 92 years old.
Beth Blankenship: Well, he didn't,
John Willis: he came out,
Beth Blankenship: right. I
John Willis: get, no, I mean, in other words, where the way,
Beth Blankenship: the way Joyce explained it to us was like, I mean, so he clearly did.
So if you look at system of profound knowledge, we had understanding very, if you look at the, from a piece pieces, we had the organization as a system. We had theory of knowledge, which you can see him apply it in a number of ways. And Understanding variation, but [00:48:00] as he became, as Joyce would say, in the 90s, as he saw the damage
John Willis: to
Beth Blankenship: people that that's when he became more interested in psychology, but he never, he just never wrote it down that way.
And then there were two people, Nitibha Kayess and Barbara Lawton, who, I think, Who influenced his view to see it in the new economics, who influenced I think the way he wrote about a system.
Okay. I actually, I think what so much of what they do like the example I gave about the doctor is really great, but I almost feel like the focus on the customer almost gets lost a little bit, even though Americans have really adopted that, but we haven't really adopted the system thinking.
And that I think what you say is right on the money. I'm talking about Bill right on the money about that concept.
John Willis: No, we have that trouble, you know, even today. We, I think and again, I think, you know, the other thing that, like, you can, I think tie [00:49:00] back is, The Japanese influence to them. They, you know and other actually a friend of mine who we argue about them all the time, but he's still a friend is Dr.
Steven Spear, right? Who wrote high velocity edge. And, you know, one of the things he talks about is, and this is just Toyota, but, and but, but he talks about how that if you really wanted to understand the pole system, you would, and why it really, like he says, he says, if you want to, if you Go to the true Obi Wan Kenobi's of Toyota and you could get them to actually open up and tell you they would tell you the pull system was about Really a community and it was a community thing where they wanted everybody who was involved with the line of manufacturing a car Whether you're sleeping for sweeping floors or turning brakes that you had a responsibility that somebody Your neighbor your brother your parents might be spending 70 of their Annual [00:50:00] income on a Toyota car, and they wanted you to know, no matter what you did, you were responsible for that, right?
Beautiful, right? And that's beautiful. And so when I was telling you earlier, I did a Japan study trip. You see that immersive occasion in the in the Katie Anderson, who's written, you know, I prefer you read my book first. Okay, but before I recommend other books, but Katie Anderson wrote learning to lead, leading to learn, right?
Yeah. where she interviews this Dr. Yoshino, who basically had four decades of Toyota starting in 66. And I got to ask him, because there's a, again, Northeast, there's a Northeast gang that tries to act like Deming had no influence on Toyota, which is nonsense.
Beth Blankenship: Well, yeah. And if you look at the 1965 paper speech at the Deming prize, the the president of Toyota, what is his name?
I'm actually just starting to write about that. He talks about, he's He [00:51:00] explains Deming's influence on Toyota there and I did just recently see a posting on LinkedIn, which I don't really have time to really look at all of them, but he was basically saying, you know, there was Deming did not influence Toyota, but if you look at the actual words of the CEO.
That was a different story.
John Willis: There's a plaque in the wall, the main, you can't actually get into the original building, but it says, it says that quote about his, every day we think about the influence of Deming. But I got to interview this Yoshino guy, I wasn't able to do it publicly, and I asked him, he hired in 1966, he worked with Ono, he worked with Shingo, he was a peer Masayono Moto, he worked with all these guys, and I asked him, and he, he laughed when he, when I, I, I implied that there are people that believe that Deming had no influence and he said, he firstly chuckled and he said, let me tell you, when I got there to Toyota at 66, 1966, he says the impact of Deming on all those people, Ohno Shingo, [00:52:00] Masumoto, and and he said that the thing Deming taught us is to understand data.
We didn't get data. Right. It's really what systems thinking, which was anyway.
Beth Blankenship: So yeah, no but it's not just systems thinking because one of the things that the Japanese did, they, they trained, they hired statisticians, they trained statisticians. And America is not like this whole group of 15 people at this hospital.
Not one of them is a statistician.
John Willis: Right.
Beth Blankenship: And so are and the way people want to say, Oh, you have six or seven data points and you have a trend. Well, you need is actually you need 120 data points or 30 averages for an X bar chart to know if you have a stable process. Not that Deming didn't say that run charts aren't helpful, but the way people throw out the word trend is like, you know, I mean, so it's such a sad thing because yeah.
Be safe. Without that, what you're just saying and that understanding [00:53:00] of data and how to apply it, statistics,
John Willis: simple
Beth Blankenship: statistics is really a loss for us.
John Willis: No, I, I, well, I mean, it's the, the Ron Mowen stuff, right? Where he said the first time he saw Deming, there was a bunch of, sort of enumerated statistics at academia in the room, and, and Deming sort of pissed them all off by kind of introducing a concept of analytical statistics, you know, and to your point earlier about the power of, you know, you didn't say analytical, but I know you meant that analytical statistics is such a powerful, and again, here he goes.
flipping, you know, taking Shewart's data, flipping it to be more than just manufacturing, taking statistics and flippering, to like make it more you know.
Beth Blankenship: And I do have a question into the one person who I think would know, but in doing my writing, I cannot see like Deming was influenced by people right by Neyman and Lewis and Shewhart [00:54:00] and R.
A. Fisher and others, but when it came to actually and Morris Hanson and his sampling, but when it came to actually the idea of consumer research, which is, in my opinion. The need for that as such a predominant. And of course, you know, bringing the feedback. Where did he get that? And so there was just this period in the 1940s where he would have.
Did he get that? I mean, I'm not talking about the statistics. I'm talking about realizing the need to do the consumer research. And so I do have a question in. To someone who might be able to help, but in the writings, I'm saying, he says, this is the first time this has been done. And that's him saying that he came up with that,
John Willis: you know, I, I hadn't ever thought about that.
And I, but I will tell you in my book, I I had to cut it out. I hate, you know, so the problem with books is editors and they're great. My editors were great. I had to cut it out. And so I actually had a story called the devil wears product. [00:55:00] And it was about Deming's wife, Lola Shoup. And, and, you know, you know, she is the person who is responsible for women's clothing sizes.
Beth Blankenship: I didn't know that at all.
John Willis: Yeah, I'll send you the where I took all the I was, I'm very entrepreneurial. So when they made me cut out about 15 stories out of my my book, I realized, wait a minute, I'm just going to create a supplemental book called Profound Stories. She, like after the world, after World War II, all the big zero box and all the mail order, they found they were getting way too many returns on women's sizes. So she did an incredible amount of research from from all the agencies on all this, you know, consumer.
And, and, and so I, that probably had some influence. On his you know, like, there was a tremendous amount of research to come up with what was wrong with the data. You know, some of the statistics that was used early on was, like, people, they'd offer, like, money and food, you know, so [00:56:00] then they had a, you know, a bias sampling because of the, you know, and it's just an incredible story by itself.
So I think there and then him just being involved in USDA and, and all that, probably somewhere in there, his work with USDA and somewhere between, you know, working with what ultimately became his wife is probably this, I, I would imagine there's some really good stuff there, but that's a great question, because that does show up, it shows up, you know, about, you know, all that, and you're right, it's, it's a really great area to explore.
Beth Blankenship: Yeah, I'm, I'm searching for the answer right now in his papers, but Yeah, but it's, it's, it's core and it's core. And you know, it's really funny. I have a Honda, I used to have a Toyota, but you know, my mechanics, you know, I taught, I already know I'm always going to have a Honda or Toyota, but I asked my mechanic once, what do you recommend Honda Toyota, Honda, but it was really funny cause like I have a dog and a friend of mine saw that there were tennis balls on my back seat and she said, [00:57:00] Beth, you can't have those tennis balls in your back seat because they can end up, you know, under your brake pad, you know, under the.
You know, what do you call it? When you're trying to put the brakes on and you can't break put the brakes on in your car because the tennis ball is under there.
John Willis: Okay, okay, yeah, I don't know, but yeah. Because
Beth Blankenship: she's saying that the tennis balls are in the back seat and they could, you know, fall under the front seat and then end up under your feet when you're trying to drive.
John Willis: Oh, got it. Now I got it. Yeah, okay, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Beth Blankenship: But guess what? You can't, it doesn't happen in a Honda because they have a barrier. Between the backseat in the front seat. So the tennis balls can't get through. I mean, it just, you know, I just thought about how amazing that is, because they thought of they thought of that.
And I always wonder why do we have this? Why do we have? And now I know
John Willis: I know I think well, and again, I think that the story I also covered, I think you'll love my book. Hopefully you will. Hopefully you will.
The whole story about Peterson, you know [00:58:00] at, you know, at, at Ford, you know, that his documentary comes out and, and, you know, and Peterson had already struggled with the whole Mazda.
Like, if you ever heard the transmission stories Bill, that tells it better than anybody, but that, like the, the, the. Power consumers would literally say, Hey, I only want the car. They basically had two divisions, an American division was making, and and, and the Mazda that were making transmissions.
And, and like the power users would be like, I only want the cars where the transmissions was made from the Japanese company and none of the engineers could really explain why. And and I, I, it's my theory, I make some theories in my book, you know, and like you said, there's, yes, like, five people of what happened in Japan, like, you get five, you know, so, I've educated myself enough that I believe my theories are worth debating, and and so my theory was that when he saw that documentary, it, it, the light bulb went off and said, because he did actually call him right after that, And ask him to [00:59:00] come into Ford.
And he I think it was because none of his engineers could explain the difference between why, you know, like to them, it was all spec, right? You
Beth Blankenship: know one of my Clark Carbino, who was also at Ford, I'm in our class, Dave and I he got to go to Japan with his company and he said, Beth, there is no variation, it's, Like when you look at their charts, it's like, it's a straight line and you know, gypsy rainy told me once you probably heard a gypsy she, you know, she worked, she was one of the Deming people that worked with in, in Detroit and as a consultant with Deming.
And she said, Beth, it is so hard to manage that variation. It is so hard to do that.
John Willis: Yeah. And you know, and so
Beth Blankenship: that, where I said the comment earlier about improvement is necessary, but unimportant from Deming. But it's necessary, you [01:00:00] know, you need to eliminate that variation. You want, you need to have uniformity as, as a fundamental in making your products, it's not going to make sure you have the best design or the color or whatever, but it's, it's like, It's a necessity before you even start.
You got to have that variation managed.
John Willis: Well, I think this is what Bill Bellows and I sync really well because I think Bill says, and it's the same there, I would think that if Demi could take back, you know, that one question he was asking, or if you had to answer one question, what would you do? And he said reduce variation.
You know, bill's is a little different than mine, but I would think that if he had a do over, he'd say understanding variation. So I don't think it's always about, I I, it's, it's almost the, the, the corollary to your quote about improvement is not is necessary, but
Beth Blankenship: that means quote, not mine.
John Willis: Yeah, yeah.
But I mean, the quote you talked about Yeah. Of dem.
Beth Blankenship: Yeah, yeah,
John Willis: yeah. And it is, I think it's the same thing. Is that like reducing variation is important or is necessary, but not important because it is [01:01:00] understanding variation. Right. Because what you really want is stability. Then this is Bill Bellows, right?
That's what he did. No,
Beth Blankenship: what he was, what Deming was saying was, sorry to interrupt. What Deming was saying was, if you're making carburetors and everyone else is using fuel injectors, it doesn't matter how good your processes are. You're making products that no one cares about.
John Willis: So,
Beth Blankenship: so the caveat to that, the second line, which Deming doesn't say in a few words, but is what he's saying is that improvement is necessary, but unimportant.
Innovation is essential.
John Willis: Okay, yeah, then so that's
Beth Blankenship: the point he was me and I, you know, I think it's interesting that he said that I would want to know when he said it because then, like, My favorite quote of Deming is there's no substitute for knowledge and it goes beyond, you know, but yeah, no, I
would not ever want to underestimate.
I mean, what you just said about Shewhart, without Shewhart, none of this would have happened.
John Willis: Oh, no question. No question. Right. And [01:02:00] that's the shoulder of giants. And I think that if Shewhart wasn't probably influenced by, by Percy Bridgman and, and that's why he was so adamant about Deming reading. Right.
I mean, it was, it was sure. Apparently he told him, you know, you must be men. And to the point that Deming, you know, there are people that tell you to read a book and then there are other people tell you to read a book and there's certain people, the story
Beth Blankenship: writing 13 times. And then he said, I read it 13 times.
I don't understand it.
John Willis: He said, read
Beth Blankenship: it one more time.
John Willis: Yeah. Yeah. No, I mean, like there are people, when they tell you to read a book, like you read that book and like,
Beth Blankenship: this goes into, when you look at their education, because You know, the classical Greek education is extremely important to understanding so many of these concepts.
And I think Shewart had a classical Greek education in high school, college.
John Willis: I'm
Beth Blankenship: not sure Deming had that because he didn't have the knowledge of philosophy in order to understand the mind in a world order, but I'm wondering if Shewart did have some essential philosophy that [01:03:00] could help him because when you read that, I didn't read that book and understand that book until I started, Looking at through the lens of philosophy and, and, you know, I'm still studying philosophy.
There's this wonderful set of lectures through a professor named Arthur Holmes, 81 lectures. The whole history of philosophy and he's not alive anymore, but they're on YouTube and it's, you know, teaches you so much, but, but yeah,
John Willis: No, this is all great. In fact, there's some of the smartest people in my industry when I go back and I, we have that conversation.
They had either a minor or their, their their bachelor's was in philosophy. And, and I think to your point, it'd be interesting that Shewart would like, because you're right, you either get that, like my friend who I asked him to read Mind and World Order for me, I just did a podcast with him, he just, he just got his PhD on a on, it's just a crazy You know, it's like IT and, and, you know, all this you know, what do you call it?
Temporal innovative design, right? Like it's, [01:04:00] it's crazy, right? It's how we think about, like, erotetics and like, and I'll stop there, but, but he's the guy that was able to give me the foundation of why I knew, I knew it influenced Deming. But I knew on my own, I wasn't going to be able to figure out how.
Oh,
Beth Blankenship: I mean, it's not too hard to figure out how, I mean, I'm going to be writing about that, but you should, your contribution, your friend, you guys should do a book together or a paper on explaining CI Lewis's book. That would really help a lot of people.
John Willis: It's in my book. I mean, to the extent that it's in I have a whole section on pragmatism going from the original So the original story is that I think it was Saunders was, you know, Pearson Saunders, right?
And Saunders was this terrible human that just, it was everything wrong with the person, but he was brilliant and he was frustrated about the accuracy of a pendulum. And could, you know, and kind of figured out that there was a pragmatic, you know, what I [01:05:00] would call a diminishing return of how much you had to measure to get, which really became part of the one of many things, but became the part of the birth of pragmatism, which is like, you know, like, almost like, again, that I'm throwing stuff all over the place, but sort of like Not directly related to Taguchi, but in that sort of realm of like, when is the you know how accurate like that's the point of I think what Bill Wallace talks about is if Deming had a redo on like his answer was to reduce variation.
It is a point of which, you know, like the reducing. That now this does correlate to that. That mean quote you said earlier. There's a point of which are you sort of stepping stepping out and figuring out. Am I just improving and improving and proving for improving sake or am I taking a bigger picture of the system?
And I think that's what. Well,
Beth Blankenship: first of all, a couple of things. One, Shewhart actually did not base the control chart control limits on mathematical statistics. He based it [01:06:00] on economic.
John Willis: Exactly. No. Yeah, no doubt.
Beth Blankenship: What he would say that you know, you don't need to have. Like when you go to McDonald's, you know, you're not looking for a prime rib. You're just looking for decent service, not have to wait too long. Your food, your food is hot.
And he said, like, you have a purpose, like you're not trying to have the most ideal variation, even though the Japanese have achieved that. He said, you just need, You know, need to manage the variation for the purpose that you're intended for, you know, and I think he talks about that quite a bit that it's, it doesn't,
John Willis: and I think that's pragmatism, right?
What is the purpose at some point? Are you just going to continue the rest of your life to get the perfect measurement on a pendulum swing?
Beth Blankenship: Well, Deming would say, absolutely not. And so would Shewart. Yeah,
John Willis: yeah, yeah. Yeah, no, I think it's really
Beth Blankenship: fun talking to you. I never get to talk to anybody.
John Willis: No, I love this stuff because like, you know, except for David
Beth Blankenship: Carriage and Lupe Peterson, [01:07:00] David Carriage, he was just such a,
John Willis: right off the bat, like I knew I was all in, you know, because he talked about the purism of the, that you were a pure person and you just couldn't do Six Sigma,
Beth Blankenship: you can't help yourself who you are, even though you might not like it,
John Willis: the idea that like that when you're like, I mean, I, I'm so jealous, right.
That Like you're getting to hear Deming talk about, like, I, I spent a lot of time about his thing, you know, that I think we're doing book where he talks about the measurement of the table. And he really explains that whole idea of why, why you measure multiple times and why you, like, you know, like, you know, like that, like there, there is no, I always joke, you know, I'm a, I'm a big hitchhiker's guide to the universe.
Like there's no, it's not 42. It's yeah. And
Beth Blankenship: it came, it came from. The astronomers. I mean, Galileo's name is
John Willis: recognized. You're going to love my book. Oh, so
Beth Blankenship: you, you, you wrote about the same thing. Okay. I wrote
John Willis: about the, the, that is so
Beth Blankenship: cool. I think
John Willis: I definitely want to hear you, what your comments are, but there's a [01:08:00] couple of rookie mistakes I make in it that I don't know if you know Dick Steele, but he's,
Beth Blankenship: he's,
John Willis: he's given me the, like, when he first read the book, he wrote like this, almost a book about the things he had, and we had a great debate about some of them, and I'm like, all right, there's some errata coming.
Well, you're going to
Beth Blankenship: keep, so you're, what are you going to, You're going to keep these podcasts. You, you might want to consider David Wayne. He'd be a good person to talk to. Oh yeah.
John Willis: Anybody that you think I, I mean, I'm loving having these conversations. I
Beth Blankenship: don't know if you Jonathan Siegel, he, he, he and David carriage and I were like a trio.
John Willis: Okay.
Beth Blankenship: I can give you their information. And then I don't know if anyone has Have you ever talked to Joyce Orsini? I have not.
John Willis: No, I mean, I've read her book. I
Beth Blankenship: don't know if I would talk to Dave about it, because I think Dave talks to I talk I'll send something to Joyce, but I have these
John Willis: interesting conversations where people think, oh, who is this guy?
I never heard of him. I did this with what's his face Dominika [01:09:00] Lepore. I had a podcast with him, right? And I don't know if he wrote The Goldratt and Deming Book. Like, I had to have three conversations with him before he realized I actually knew what I was talking about, you know, you know, well,
Beth Blankenship: Joyce is such a wise, I mean, Deming, Deming hand picked her for, oh, I'm, again,
John Willis: it's one of my
Beth Blankenship: and she's such a, but at the same time, I wanna respect her because, yeah, no, a private person.
John Willis: You read about Doris Quinn. It took me a year to get, I had heard one of her lectures and it took me well over a year to find her, finally convince her to have a conversation. Oh, so you've talked to her? Oh, yeah, I did. I did. I'll send you a link to the podcast. Oh, well, that's
Beth Blankenship: wonderful.
John Willis: Yeah, it's off the podcast.
And, and she's just, I mean, again, she's a, she's a book unto herself.
Yeah, I would love to. Yeah. I'll, you know, I'll, you know, I'll, if you just make the connection
, I, you know, I, I think it's it's important now that, I mean, it's just like what you're doing is, what I'm [01:10:00] attracting, I mean, most of the people listening to my podcast, reading my book right now.
Probably under 35 years old.
Beth Blankenship: Under 35?
John Willis: Yeah, yeah. And, and so, yeah. And so, another thing that's really important to me, not, I mean, I definitely want my book to be successful, but, is I'm finding these really young people who are now actually trying to run, you know, do control charts and, and reading, never heard of Dave, you know, Donald Wheeler, and they're actually trying to really figure out, like, how do we do this stuff?
Which was, Literally kind of becoming a lost art like you don't
Beth Blankenship: know and we what you're doing. That's a really important what you're doing reaching out to these people who are interested in helping them learn. So the ideas. I mean, one person told me when I was from Scotland. If you don't do this, Beth, these ideas will be lost.
And that's kind of like the whole group, you know? So I love they're gonna be
John Willis: reaching out to you after this podcast. So, and like I said, it's like, I think You'll find the passion. In [01:11:00] fact Bill, we decided I was the only sort of person from my world that went to the In2In, and it was Dick Steele who said, you should go here.
And, and it was all people who, you know, like, who had been doing this stuff for years. And I told Bill, I'm like, I want, you know, for, if there were basically 50 people there, I want to do this again when there's 150 of them people from my community. Oh, we're going to try to do in June. We're going to have an In2In THinking where I'm going to be bringing all these.
Again, all these people are going to, a lot of these people, they're not shy, they're going to be reaching out to you once they hear this, I guarantee they're going to be reaching out to you once they hear this podcast, just like they've been reaching out to Bill, and I do think, I mean, there's nothing, I think Deming would be really happy with us right now if he thought that we were getting people that were from 25 to 35 years old that were literally falling in love with these ideas and creating another couple of generations of these ideas, and I know that's happening, you know, so.
Beth Blankenship: He was. His, his [01:12:00] energy was, I met some other people that are well known names that you might've mentioned today, very well known Deming had a goodness about him and you could feel it when you met him,
John Willis: he
Beth Blankenship: really did. And when he spoke sometimes, like he could almost, from my point of view, I don't know if everyone would agree, but you could almost hear the tears in his voice when he was so frustrated because it's like when you have knowledge and other people don't, it's so frustrating when you know things that other people don't and you're trying to help other people understand and they don't understand.
And and one person, you know, because there are all these quotes about him, one person interviewed him and he asked him about his How he would like to be remembered. And he said, for trying to help America from keeping itself from committing suicide,
John Willis: I'll leave you one last story from Doris Quinn, who I keep talking about, but she, they, she went to him to, I guess it was General Motors and it was, [01:13:00] he was, you know, at this point he's the God, right?
So everybody in this younger manager woman. Has to give a presentation about control charts, right? And so he asked her a couple of questions and she's very frustrated. She gets flustered and like, it just turns out to be sort of ugly, even though Deming had no intention of it being ugly. She tells the story, right?
And so they, they literally go back to the hotel that night and she said that They called it their gin time. They both loved gin and they'd have gin and Deming was just obsessed about like how he made her feel and how it wasn't her fault. It was management's fault. And he just wouldn't get off it. So he spent the whole night and he wrote an apology letter that he gave to her.
in the next day to go find her and give her the apology letter.
Beth Blankenship: That is amazing.
John Willis: And then, and he tore management apart the next day. In other words, you know, he knew it was like he so practiced what he preached, right? In other words, Like he caught, you know, how we do this, we, [01:14:00] we, we tend to like, oh my goodness, I knew that.
How did I make that mistake? Right? Like he was just beating himself up because, like, in his heart he knew, and he, you know, like, we know enough about them, and you know more than I do, that, like, there was no way, he was just trying to learn what she understood. And he realized that her frustration was not him or, or, or her, it was that the management didn't teach her right.
And he wrote an apology letter. Isn't that beautiful?
Beth Blankenship: That is incredible. That tells, yeah, that is, I don't have many stories about those people. Experiences like that. That is a wonderful story.
John Willis: Yeah. Yeah. So, well, we shall do this again.
And anyway, so you know, I think, you know, I'll definitely have a link to all your, what you, what you're doing on LinkedIn and but I always like to say, where would people find you if they, if you want them to find you and how would they go about finding you?
Beth Blankenship: , I'm gonna be creating a YouTube channel later this year. Yeah.
John Willis: [01:15:00] LinkedIn
Beth Blankenship: is good. I think LinkedIn is good. Yep.
John Willis: That'd be great. And then I'll look forward to anything that you want to share or anything ahead of time if you want some.
Beth Blankenship: Yeah, and I, this summer, I'm really like I have all this work I've done all these years and I'm just turning them into these six papers and I'm trying to finish it by August 1st.
So after that, it'll be nice to come out and see people more, but I will respond if people reach out to me.
John Willis: Okay, that sounds good. All right. And there will,
Beth Blankenship: okay, well, it was so nice meeting you.
