S4 E3 - Bill Bellows - Navigating Organizations Through a Systems Lens Part 1
In this episode, I sit down once again with Bill Bellows to explore the interconnected nature of quality thinking. Our conversation ventures beyond traditional boundaries, drawing on Bill's unique insights into systemic thinking and its implications for organizational excellence.
We delve into the philosophy of interconnectedness, illustrating how quality extends far beyond the superficial, embedding itself into every facet of production and service. Bill shares enlightening perspectives on the importance of viewing organizations as whole systems, where every element is interrelated and changes in one part can ripple through others.
Bill's LinkedIn can be found here:
https://www.linkedin.com/in/bill-bellows-218435/
Show Notes:
1) Ackoff videos on Deming Cooperative, https://demingcooperative.org/ackoffvideos/
2) Ackoff on DIKUW - article, https://faculty.ung.edu/kmelton/Documents/DataWisdom.pdf
3) Ackoff on DIKUW - video, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MzS5V5-0VsA&t=21s
3) Deming and Ackoff - excerpts of Volume 21 of the Deming Library, ("A Theory of a System for Educators and Managers”),https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2MJ3lGJ4OFo
4) Deming and Ackoff - transcript of full recorded of Volume 21 of the Deming Library ,https://ackoffcenter.blogs.com/ackoff_center_weblog/2011/04/a-converstaion-between-russell-ackoff-and-edward-deming.html
5) Ackoff - Memories, https://www.amazon.com/Memories-Hardcover-Collectors-Russell-Ackoff/dp/0956537995
6) Ackoff - Differences That Make a Difference, https://www.amazon.com/Differences-that-Make-Difference-Distinctions/dp/1908009012/
Transcript:
John Willis: [00:00:00] Hey, this is John Wells again, and it is another profound podcast and you know, the, the, this new friend of mine who is just a wealth of knowledge and, you know, the you know, I, I'll say this really quickly, that there are certain people that are just so intelligent and you feel privileged to talk to them because there's no ego on their side.
They literally talk to you as an equal regardless of where you know, you're coming from and there's a Most people know me who know who my list is and this gentleman Bill Bellows has been added to that list Hey Bill good to talk to you
Bill Bellows: again Likewise, John. Always a, always a pleasure. Yeah.
John Willis: Yeah. So I guess we wanted to follow up.
There was a couple of things. You know, I, I, like I said, I, I, I, you know, what I really enjoyed was, I really wanted to understand, you know, again, I've been listening to your podcast on the DevOps Institute and I recommend everybody go through all of 'em. There's like a hundred of 'em now, right? No, just kidding.
It's . No, [00:01:00] and, and they're incredible. But like, one of the things like you, you often mention tag gci and, and you often mention Ackoff. And it sounds like you had a reasonably good relationship with ACOF too. So, and so in the last session, I really wanted to get, you know, I really wanted to understand more than just the textbook version of, of who Taguchi was and why he was important.
And I felt really good about that. And today I'd like to start that conversation with ACOF, but you wanted to sort of close out a couple of things that we had from the podcast.
Bill Bellows: Yeah, yeah, yeah. And well, we, we spoke about what I call the two, two fundamental questions of quality management, which is something I came up with a couple of years ago, working with a client, trying to help them understand some issues and and quality management question number one is, is does this characteristic, does this distance, does this pH, does this flow rate meet [00:02:00] requirements and, and requirements are typically A, an upper or lower?
It could be, it has to be above a minimum. Mm-Hmm. . That could be a requirement. It could be, it has to be below a minimum. But quite often they're set with a, a, a minimum X. They go back to the late 17 hundreds. And the concept of interchangeable parts, and my explanation is, you know, as to why we need tolerances as if I was to, as a supplier sell you something, you know, a, you know, a granite table and you said, you know, there has to be a, a given thickness.
You know, all the way around, well, first of all, it's not gonna be the same thickness all the way around, because we understand from Dr Deming and, and his work with Shewhart and, you know, Don Wheeler expands on this is there's a variation. You're not going to get the same thickness and, but let's say it was the same thickness.
Okay, and I measure it and I sent it to you and then you send it back and say, Bill, it's not exactly [00:03:00] 1. 00. And then we go back and forth. We don't have a deal because my measurement device and yours don't agree because of this thing called variation and your process versus mine. Okay. So out of that, we end up with, I'll tell you what, in order to have commerce, which we both want, we'll say it has to be 1.
00 plus or minus 0. 010 or something like that. Then we end up with a band, people call it, you know, like kicking field goals, anywhere in between. Well, they call it go, no go too, right? Go, no go, all of that. Oh, okay. Question, quality management question, what is it? Is it within the uprights? Is it three points or not?
That's very, very basic. And there's a place for that. There's an absolute place for that. I, I used to think otherwise, I've recovered. Question two is how many ways are there to meet a set of requirements? And, and as I mentioned last time, I, I would say people in an audience, I would say [00:04:00] infinite. Then I had a guy call me.
I said, what do you mean infinite? I said, okay, 463. Cause there's, if you put decimal places and you can end up with an infinite number of decimal places and, and question two. Is a different realm than question one, and there's a place for one, and there's a place for two. So, when you're at home in the garage, cutting a piece of wood to a given length, and and this is, I also appreciate last time we talked about measure twice, cut once, and, and over the weekend I was putting wood trim in our daughter's condo on some of the doors, and, and I did, I'm sure what others do is, you know, I mean I put the two sides on, you know, 45 degrees in the top, around the door, and then I'm putting the piece across the top.
And, you know, 45 degree angle on both. And I, and I want to get as close. I mean, I want the angles to be just about right. And and so I, and the length just about right. Because if it's [00:05:00] not exactly right, then I've got to put wood putty in there, or You know, you know, hammer it in terrible, right? But I, but I went back and forth.
I had to saw in the backyard in her backyard and I would go, you know, I, I marked it to where I wanted had the angle. Then I would go out, measure it a little bit too long. And I go back into the back outside and shave it off. And this is me as the producer of the piece of wood and the 1 putting it together.
So what happens at work is that I'm, I'm typically 1 or the other. And so at, at, at, at home, I'm sorry, at work. You know, you're the one putting the around the frame and you give me the angles must be the length must be and I provide them to you and and question one is I could be all over the place in terms of the angles and then you then have to compensate by using wood filler or, you know, massaging it and and that.
Effort to put it together is [00:06:00] integration. Everything eventually is integrated. You know, a software module is integrated to a larger system. So that's integration. So Taguchi's concept of the loss function is, what is the effort required downstream in a question two concept to get those pieces, those things to integrate?
And what he talks about is the, if you get the length just right, and the angles just right, then the piece goes in nice and easy. And if it's a little too short, or the angles are a little not quite right, then you might have to compensate with, you know, putting, putting in the gaps. If it's a little bit too long, you might have to You know, you say or malice
John Willis: when you're putting your car back together,
Bill Bellows: right?
When I went to Dr. Taguchi's memorial, he died in 2012 and and I was amongst those who [00:07:00] got a chance to speak and, and, and about, you know, what we learned from his, his influence and, and somebody else got up and spoke and, and at the time he was working for Chrysler and he said, At the end of the assembly line at Chrysler, this is not 2012.
He said at the end of the assembly line, Chrysler has these people have a four foot two by four covered with carpeting that they call the enforcer to put to help get things together. And and so I look at as it if I'm at home, I'm, I'm less likely to be the need that enforcer if I'm the one that's Making the parts, trying to meet the requirements exactly right, like we talked about last time, you know, right on the bullseye, right in the, not just in the bullseye ring, but, you know, dead nuts in the center of that.
And then what I'm balancing is, the [00:08:00] better I do that, the easier it is to assemble. Alright, so now let's step back. The, the idea, so that's question one and question two, and the loss function is. What are the consequences to others? It could be Patrick Mahomes throwing a pass to a wide receiver, and if it's dead nuts on target, you know, it's smooth, easy catch into the end zone.
If it's a little bit too short, the wide receiver has to slow down, or maybe leap up, end up tumbled upside down. That's called loss. And it could be an injury. That's called loss. And so I think what happens in football, you know, not that I know these people, but you know, they're striving for exactly as we are at home, they're striving to be exactly in the right place.
But in that case, Mahomes is not the one catching the ball. You know, it's, it's Travis Kelsey, I think, if I have his name right. But it's still, that's, teamwork is getting these things together. And loss is the idea that, you know, a little bit too short is not [00:09:00] good, you know, a little bit too long is not good, I'm looking for that sweet spot.
Now, one, one comment that was made in, in one of the posts is a very common mis, misconception, is this idea of reducing variability. And, and in the Six Sigma world, there's talk of You know, shrinking it to zero and people have said that, well, Dr. Deming was once quoted as saying, can you summarize your philosophy in a few words?
And he said, reduce variation. I, I think he would clarify that. And if you read the new economics, you can see that's not exactly what he meant. It doesn't mean shrink to zero because he of all people knew that there's always going to be a variation. The balancing act is, okay. How much time am I going to spend making the distribution closer to the target value?
That's called accuracy. So it's not precision that is incredibly uniform, in which case, you know, I always have a huge gap and I always have to bang it [00:10:00] together. What Taguchi is talking about is, is balancing the effort of being on the ideal value, when we cut that piece of wood at home, trying to get it exactly the right length, exactly right angle.
There's always going to be a variation. But what I'm balancing is, What I'm saying is that I'm willing to spend a few seconds if it saves me a minute in assembly, but I'm not going to spend an hour to save a minute. And so the economics he's talking about, the economics that Deming's talking about is that we will, I don't look at it as reducing variability.
I look at it as managing variability. And if we can have a lot of variability. And don't have to do this because the consequences don't warrant it. So if I'm putting a shelf on the wall, and there's nothing to the left and nothing to the right, and, and that, and I've got a requirement that the piece of wood has to be, you know, 12 inches plus or minus an eighth, well, there's nothing on either side, [00:11:00] so I can have a lot of variability because it doesn't affect how that shelf, you know, depending on the shelf, it may not affect how it hangs on the wall.
But if I'm putting that in between two things, so I just wanted to say, accuracy is Is what Taguchi is talking about the ability to be consistently on an ideal value with the level of variation warranted and it's not zero and it's not shrink forever. It's an ideally you'd like to have a lot of variation and that's a concept in Taguchi's work for another day.
But what his methods, what his methods are about fundamentally is How to manage the variation and the ideal scenario is to have a lot of variation going in, but incredible uniformity coming out. Yeah.
John Willis: Yeah. I mean, that's the way Taguchi was described to me by a really good friend of mine, Jay Blum and and.
There'll be a day where I can put all these people together that but [00:12:00] that's still the way I sort of understood that it really is in sort of my words, you know, probably don't align exactly with the Taguchi doctrine, but it's how far can you stretch it? And what's the, like, there's going to be variation.
And what is the last function of, you know, like, like going from the, there is no such thing as zero and working out and what is the sort of economics or the societal impact. Yeah, that's
Bill Bellows: it's the, it's the not so much. Well, let's just say this is the impact to the system, which begins as soon as I hand off that right module of software as soon as I hand off to the next person.
Integration begins. So, so, and in Taguchi's language, he talks about minimizing loss of society. And I think the danger of talking about society is that we could overlook the impact to the organization and all [00:13:00] that occurs in the two by fours they're using. And then, because then we move from. You know, when you think about, you know, the society is the outside customer, then John Willis is the inside customer.
What you're just talking about the consequences downstream. No, I
John Willis: think that's what I felt. We did a such a great job because, you know, even like you said, and the gentleman, Adam Hawkins, who Okay. Who did his review? I think the conclusion was we were all were like, what the heck is he talking about society?
But I think when you start thinking about systems thinking, you, you get it like that. It is, you know, it starts with the next person downstream. It starts with the integrated division. It starts with the 1st customer, the customers, whatever they're selling to somebody else. And then ultimately, Yeah. You know, somebody gets hurt.
I mean, you know, or, you know, but you know, one of the things I was thinking about when you said this, and I don't know if you, I, I when I was first trying to understand Deming's work, right, it was very confusing to me, you know I didn't have an industrial engineering degree, you [00:14:00] know, like you know, and I, I was really just struggling to understand this, like I think everybody, like we did a book club on my book club, and some of the brightest people I know were like, John, can you explain this common cause special cause one more time?
I'm like, okay, let me see if I can do this, right? But I, one of the quotes I saw, and I never, so I've attributed to myself, because I can never find out who did it, but misunderstanding variation is the root of all evil. And and I, I think when, when you said, you know, with Deming, when somebody asked Deming, if he could say this in one word, you know, reducing variation, I think if he had a redo, he might say understanding variation.
Yes, I'd be 2 words, but yeah, yeah.
Bill Bellows: Somebody asked him once, I think somebody says to Dr. Deming, are you suggesting, you know, we all be left handed? No, it's don't be, don't be silly and, you know, or, or. You know, that we all think the same, that we're, you know, we're gonna turn us all into automatons. No, the idea is,[00:15:00] is to manage variation and have diversity where diversity makes sense.
And then you get into it, what does diversity even mean? And, you know, I had a person in class once and she said, so, you know, Deming organizations value diversity. I said, Yeah, I said, I said, the challenge becomes what does that mean? And, and, and within Rocketdyne, which part of Boeing at the time, there's a huge diversity program, you know, coming out of HR.
And one friend who got excited by Deming's work came to me one day. And he said, he said, all this talk about diversity. He said, it's all talk. He said, if you really think we value diversity, he said, Offer a different, a different opinion and they'll find out how much we off how much we value diversity. He says, what we want are people that look the same and sound the same.
And, and I guess we get into what, what is diversity? Is it that we go to [00:16:00] different colleges that were left handed, right handed that were, you know, colors of our eyes, their heights. I mean, diversity has many dimensions. And, and I, your comment on diversity. And. And I'm managing variation in society. I think we have a hard time, dealing with differences, whether that's where you went to college, you know, I went to USC, you went to UCLA.
Oh, or let's say we both went to USC. Then I say, well, John, but I was class of 75 and it's like we often I find is. Yeah, it's, it's not enough to accept that we're different. I
John Willis: mean, I'd like to have the conversation about operational definitions at some other point, because I think that that that plays heavily into, you know, Deming's thoughts of, you know, coming from Shu and Bridgman, Percy Bridgman's ideas about operational definitions.
And, but, I mean, that's a whole subject on itself. But [00:17:00] I think this is a great sort of parlay. To to a cough you know, and I've got so many questions about a cough that, like, I want to. Understand deeper. I, you know, I guess the, the cliche is this such thing as an ACOF cliche, but the is that he's a sort of you know, he represents systems thinking but, but I guess, I mean, the things I I'm interested in is like.
His his thoughts about efficiency versus effectiveness, his thinking about cognition you know, the, and, and very sort of these sort of abstractions. But let me, let's start all the way back. Who is Russell Ackoff? What does he mean to you? What did he mean to your career? Kind of like what we did to to, Taguchi with Taguchi in our last.
Bill Bellows: I guess. Well I met Russ Ackoff at a Deming conference in 1999. Actually, I would [00:18:00] say I saw him speak. I didn't go up and talk with him. I had, I'm sure I had heard of him. It was a few years later. He spoke in Los Angeles. You know, even the backup. Russ was born in 1919. On February 12th, 1919, his full name is Russell Lincoln Ackoff.
So, one of the, one of the first questions, as I got to know him, I said, so, is, I said, so, are you named, is your middle name Lincoln Ackoff? I mean, is that due to a family reference for Abraham Lincoln? And he said, no, I said, I was born on Lincoln's birthday and the the attending doctor gave me my middle name.
He said that the space was blank. And he said, so from the, from the attending physician who, who helped my mother give birth and that's where the Lincoln, [00:19:00] that's where the Lincoln name came from and, but Russ was a professor spent a major portion of his. academic career at the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School of Business.
Prior to that, he taught at Case Western Reserve in Cleveland and also another university in greater Detroit. And there's but he's a fascinating guy, architect by background. He graduated from the University of Pennsylvania, again, where he later went on to earn his Ph. D. and, and teach. But he graduated in 1941.
And then at the end of the year, he was in the Navy, and I'm not sure, I believe he enlisted, and he spent the majority of, of his Navy career in the South Pacific, on the, in the Philippines, he was an officer, a a [00:20:00] great, great book, if people are looking for a, an autobiography, I'm not aware of a biography of Russ, there's many articles about Russ, you could say, or short biographies, but I got to know him In the last seven or eight years of his life.
And just as just before he died, he had published about six or seven manuscripts that all came out and books after he died. And I got a chance to see most of them. And, and 1, I would encourage people to take a look at if you're looking for you know, who was Russ Ackoff a book entitled memories and it's it's like 15 short stories from his professional life, his time in the Navy.
I mean, an amazing man for where he was and when he told me once he, when he was in the Philippines that he got a, he happened to see the, the telegraph or whatever that came in that said,[00:21:00] you know, the military shifting from an invasion of Japan, to an occupation. And then several days later, you know, the atomic bombs were dropped and he, he was on the, on the Philippines.
When General MacArthur returned to the Philippines, because MacArthur is very famously left the Philippines and then, you know, thousands of soldiers who were left behind and captured by the Japanese and that led to the Bataan Death March and, and MacArthur famously said, I shall return and Russ was there when he returned.
And there's a very famous picture of MacArthur trudging through the, through the surf when he came back to the Philippines and Russ was there. Which is pretty cool. He shared an elevator. And we worked in the same building as MacArthur. It wasn't very fond of MacArthur, but it was amazing is he's almost a Forrest Gump.
It just where he was and when the stories were just just [00:22:00] remarkable. So I would encourage people to find the book Memories published by Triarchy Press, distorted the hardback, the hard copy. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And, so but you mentioned systems thinking, and he was a, easily, probably, you know, the person that Deming learned an enormous amount from relative to systems thinking.
Now, the two of them met, I believe, in 1951, 1952 timeframe. Anyway, you know, Dr. Deming learned a great deal about systems thinking from, from Russ. Now, what I don't know, given what you just said, you know, we all know that, You know, one of the most famous diagrams Dr. Deming shared to the Japanese is this loop called production viewed as a system showing the inputs A, B, C, D from, you know, the raw materials being converted and, you know, and then passed through the system [00:23:00] out to the consumer and then a big loop with consumer research and so that's, I mean, Deming called it production viewed as a system that is not linear, a beginning and an end, but Round and round and round.
And but what else I got to say is so I met, you know, came across Deming's work, as I mentioned earlier in the late, actually 1990. In the late 80s, I heard of his work, found it obtuse. And then in meeting Russ, like 1999, I saw him present. I thought this is pretty cool stuff. I know I saw his name in the New Economics And 1990, or 2003, he spoke in downtown Los Angeles as one of half a dozen or so lectures that he gave for an organization, One Day Primers.
And that is what really got me hooked, you know, able to, you know, focus on him and, and hear[00:24:00] some amazing stories that brought a lot of things together. One of the first questions I ever asked him that, that, that day. Again, it was a one day lecture. Towards the end of the day, Russ gave the audience like a half hour break.
And he said, you know, we've got an hour and a half left to go. I've shared with you a bunch of material. So why don't You come up with some questions and we'll spend the rest of the day answering your questions. So, as the audience of maybe 150 or so people was working on that, I went up to them. I had met him earlier in the day because several dozen people in the room worked for Boeing and I arranged for them to be there.
So the organizer introduced me to Russ and I it was funny as, you know, he says, you know, this is Bill Bellows from Boeing and all these Boeing people are here at his. Encouragement and and my and it's oh, nice to meet you. And I said, oh, by the way Diana Deming Cahill sends her regards. Dr Deming's [00:25:00] eldest daughter that I had dinner with the night before.
So we had a connection there. So I went up to him during that break period. And I said, I got 2 questions for you that may not be mentioned to the audience, but I would just like to pick your brain. It says, okay, what I said of of all the things you've learned from all the things Dr Deming learned from you.
Over the years, what do you think he would say stands out as, you know, a major, major thought and vice versa of all the things you learned from him, what would you say stands out? His first response was, it's funny. He says, well, I don't, I don't know. What do you learn from me? So, but then he said, he says, I think, and he called him ed.
He took great pride in calling him medicines. Everybody else calls him Dr. Deming. He says, I call him Ed. And by comparison If I [00:26:00] introduced you to him as Professor Ackoff, he would say, John, call me Russ. He was a first name guy. Dr. Taguchi was a Dr. Taguchi. Edward De Bono you can call Edward. So it's interesting how these people, you know, some of them, everyone including Dr.
Taguchi's son refers to him as Dr. Taguchi. Anyway, so he says, you know, I don't know what he learned from me, but then he says, he says, I think Ed's understanding of systems was very implicit, and I helped him develop a better, explicit understanding. Can I explain to students as, I think Deming was, had an intuitive sense, I mean, Deming was, Dr.
Deming was not an academic, as was Russ, in the theory of systems, he had a, You know, a hands on sense of, of, I mean, he knew the words, he knew it has to do with relationships, you know, looking at [00:27:00] things in a circle that kind of thing. And I thought that was a really excellent explanation that he helped him develop a better explicit understanding.
Now, and then I said, okay, so what did, what did you learn from him? And his answer was he never, he was never overly Overwhelmed by the quality movement, and he said, the more he got to know Dr Deming and I don't know that they exchanged emails and, you know, I think they knew each other professionally.
They had high respect for one another in their respective fields. They had great respect for one another, and they may have been in the same room at different times in their careers. And so he said, you know, he just looked at the quality stuff. You know, what's the big deal? And, and it became, began to see that there's more there than meets the eye.
Now, let me also [00:28:00] say, we're talking earlier about variation. And I think you'd be hard pressed to find the word variation in Russ's work. That was not Russ's field. Now, Russ was a A master at understanding statistics and things like that. I mean, so, I mean, he was an incredibly multidimensional person for his understanding of people to systems and psychology.
But I would say that I would propose that Russ's understanding of variation was very implicit. I don't think you'd ever see in any of Russ's work a reference to a control chart. So, so what I think is neat is. If I look at Deming's work through the lens of the system of profound knowledge and see that piece called Systems, you know, and the other pieces, you know, and understanding of variation of psychology and theory of knowledge.
Well, you're not going to find, I mean, you may find a lot of depth in Dr. Deming's [00:29:00] experience and his background in variation, not in psychology, not in systems. The theory of knowledge may be second to his influence from Schuhart and mine in the world order. And, and Russ's Ph. D. is in philosophy, so but, so that's what I would say, you know, some background, some background on Russ, and I mean, his books ranged from, you know, several hundred page academic books, you know one entitled Recreating the Corporation, you know, a textbook to, you know, to memories another neat book, you kind of, you mentioned Efficiency and effectiveness.
He wrote a another book again just before he died about 80 pages called differences that make a difference and it's filled with maybe 50 explanations of 50 or so pairs of [00:30:00] terms that he finds important in terms of operational definitions and one pair that many people screw up me included is is the difference between efficiency and effectiveness and maybe You You know, I'm not saying it's bad to think they're the same, but I find it invaluable what I learned from Ross.
He looks at efficiency is doing things right and effectiveness is doing the right thing. And, and so he would say, you know, the writer, you do the wrong thing. The wronger you become. I love that. And so, and, and some of that on efficient and effective, some of this, he borrowed, I would say he was inspired by, by Peter Drucker and and he had, I got an impression that he and Drucker had a similar relationship as he did with Russ, as Russ did with Dr.
Deming. You know, they knew each other. They were [00:31:00] titans in their fields. But I find in terms of recommendations, I would first recommend people read memories and just, just again, it's Forrest Gump. If you don't know who Forrest Gump is, go watch them where Russ was in all these places. It's just fascinating.
And then next I would look at differences that make a difference. He's got a another small book for Triarchy Press is about systems thinking. There's management of small doses. I mean, he, he wrote. Nearly 30 books, if you include the ones that came out after he died. Another interesting story, his, the woman he was dating when he was in the Philippines was a Red Cross nurse.
And Russ shared with me that they had plans, plans to get married after the war. Well, her, it didn't happen. Her, her plane was shot down by the Japanese over Australia and, and she was killed. [00:32:00] And, so just, you know, he's again, he's, he's in his twenties. I mean, what, to imagine the things he experienced, I mean, he's, he's the epitome of the greatest generation.
I
John Willis: mean, Deming is some of that too, and I want to stay on, on, I want to get into a little deeper on effectiveness and versus efficiency and his sort of hierarchy of thought or cognition. But Deming is that, you know, as I sort of kept peeling the, you know, the onion, if you will, or unhurling the onion, like it just seemed he was sort of a Forrest Gumpian type.
Oh,
Bill Bellows: yes. Oh, very much so. And your book does a great job. He, I mean, his interactions with Short, his interactions with Sir, sir, Ronald, a Fisher, the father of design of experiments and his being, you know,
John Willis: like the, you know, the incredible, you know, his whole, I mean, the, the the top seeker classified, you know, the [00:33:00] I, I think to me, there's not a lot of information, but the Aberdeen proving grounds, you know, he had, you literally had Yeah.
Yeah. Yeah. You had Norbert Wiener, you had Claudia Shannon, you had, like, it was unbelievable, it was like, as the Manhattan Project was going on over here, there were these, Herbert Simon, and like, these genius people that are all basically bouncing around each other, trying to do ballistics and missile, and Deming was right in the middle of that, I mean, and that's a story that's not told too often either, but Well, and
Bill Bellows: you mentioned earlier Leslie Simon was in there.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, he was in both projects. And Simon's a West Point graduate who played a major role in, in in the testing of all the, you know, these weapons systems. And and I didn't, I think it's in, in reading your book, I think I came across, I, I'd heard his name before, but you know, these are, but you're right, these are very much.
Just to cut myself
John Willis: in the back, as I'm watching the movie The recent movie that about the atomic [00:34:00] bomb and all that, and I don't know why I'm forgetting it, but I'm telling you, I'm like, he was in my book. He was in my book.
