S4 E4 - Bill Bellows - Unraveling Complexity in Safety and Quality Part 2
In part two of their discussion, John Willis engages in a deep dive with Bill Bellows on the multifaceted world of safety, quality, and systems thinking. Inspired by the pioneering work of Sydney Decker, Dr. Woods, and Erik Hollnagel, they explore the nuanced perspectives on safety and quality that transcend conventional understanding.
John and Bill navigate the intricate connections between thoroughness, efficiency, and effectiveness, drawing parallels to the foundational principles of Deming and Ackoff. They dissect the Efficiency-Thoroughness Trade-Off (ETTO) principle introduced by Hollnagle, pondering its implications in the context of operational safety and quality management.
The conversation further delves into Russ Ackoff’s insights on systems thinking, the DIKW (Data, Information, Knowledge, Wisdom) model, and the profound impact of understanding complex systems on improving organizational outcomes. Bill shares anecdotes from his experiences, illustrating the practical application of these concepts in real-world settings, including his work at Rocketdyne and with the Deming community.
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: There's something I've been like, really thinking about a lot.
And so, you know, I have a lot of friends and I, I definitely encourage you to look at some of the works like Sydney Decker. And if you really want to go, yeah. into the real deep realms of this type of thinking is Dr. Woods. And he did the he basically did the, they're all students. These, these friends of mine are students of Dr.
Woods. Dr. Woods basically did, I think his first gig was Three Mile Island, a sort of a retrospective post mortem. He did both Challenger, he was part of Congress. And they do, they think about safety in a completely different way, which totally maps really well to the Deming and Ackoff stuff. And unfortunately I have a hard time getting them to, to see the value of like, if I want to just call it lean and but like, and I know it's a lot bigger than that, but there is a, there's a guy, Eric Hollenagle, and [00:35:00] he created this thing called the ETO efficiency, thoroughness trade off.
And, and I, and, and it's, and it's used a lot in, in sort of safety of like, you know, what the thoroughness versus efficiency, and I started thinking about, like, how does this, and a little bit for preparation is, because I've been sort of watching a lot of ACoS videos, I'm going to go back now, read some of those books, but you know, he talks about, you know efficiency versus effectiveness, and I'm just wondering if, Like where does thoroughness play in because if you look at the definition of thoroughness versus effectiveness Maybe i'm going i'm going down a rabbit hole here But I think you know i'd love to get your thoughts on it Thoroughness is like about the process the completeness the accuracy and effectiveness is more about the outcome the outcome the outcome and i'm just wondering if if you know if we had to rethink a deming a cough version of efficiency, maybe, versus thoroughness, which more aligns with, with Hulnagle's[00:36:00] sort of, you know.
Bill Bellows: Well, let me say, Am I rabbit holing it, or Well, no, no, no, no. But let me, let me throw something out that you just mentioned that prompted the thought. So, Russ spoke at Rocketdyne every year from 2003 through 2007. In fact, it only came out to Canoga Park, where Ralkodyne is located. He would it only came out for two days, it was too far to go for one day.
So we'd have him for one day in Canoga Park and the second day, the other day in Huntington Beach, which was a former McDonnell Douglas facility, then acquired by Boeing. So I had a great friend down there, Frank DeSandy, and Frank would be the host down there. Frank loved. Loved Russ. And so so it worked out well.
It would be one day on one side, one day on the other side, then he'd fly home. And then [00:37:00] all those sessions were recorded. And Russ gave us permission to record him. He got a copy of this DVDs. He said we could distribute them within Boeing, and we could also distribute them to academics. So we had them produced in volumes and gave them to all of our friends.
I mean, within Boeing, had them on the inside Boeing web pages, distributed them to, you know, friends who are professors at universities around the world. Well, the, not too long ago, a friend in the Deming community, Dave Nave, who runs the DemingCooperative. com, I believe it's com maybe it's org, but it's Deming Cooperative website, and, and I said, Dave, I'd like to get these videos out there.
Russ gave us permission, and so we received permission from [00:38:00] Russ's, one of Russ's daughters, and we have that, you know, have that writing, and The majority of those videos are available. So again okay, let me do a quick look just to make sure we sent people
them in cooperative. org to go there. I mean, just do it. If you just do the Google search for Deming Cooperative Ackoff, you'll go right there. And these are half day and 1 day sessions, meaning 3 hours or 6 hours and in there. You'll hear Russ talk about, another simple aspect. Of his work, and there's a lot of depth to his work, and there's some really simple concepts.
And and so my university courses, you know, I cover a range of things. I mean, it's not an ACOF course, but I put in what I think is relevant to quality management and the rest of what I cover and it's the one is we have efficiency and effectiveness that always comes up, right? But another way to look at it, going back to where you're coming from is a [00:39:00] model.
I believe attributed to Russ. There's variants of it. I don't like the variants. The model, the acronym of the model is D. I. K. U. W. and and if you do a Google search, you can find some really short videos of Russ explaining it and D is data. Data is numbers that come out of a computer, come out of a or go into a spreadsheet numbers and then I is information.
And Russ's explanation is information is what, you know, the, the writer writes, you know, what happened on what date, and, you know, these two cars collided, three people were injured, they were sent, you know, at what time, that's information. Now, Dr. Deming would say the dictionary and encyclopedia are filled with information, but you have to write the sentence yourself.
And so what I find is, is that Dr. Deming and Ackoff use the term information very similarly. And I [00:40:00] don't know the answer. And in fact, another great video, you can find this on YouTube, is volume, you can find excerpts of volume 21 of the Deming Library, and it's a conversation between Russ and Dr. Deming.
You can also find a 50 page double spaced PDF file of what was Extensively a 3 hour conversation between the 2 of them in the early 90s, and that conversation, you know, was videotaped by Claire Crawford Mason condensed down to a 30 minute. Okay. And you can find at least 1520 minutes. Of that volume, 21 of the 2 of them, and then there.
Russ explains to Dr. Deming this D. I. K. W. W. model. So D is data is information. K is knowledge. Right? And Russell says, you know, knowledge is you take your car apart, [00:41:00] learn how to all the pieces you develop a theory of how these things work together. Russ also refers to that as analysis looking inward and he says you know, and when you look at Dr Deming referred to his work as a system of profound knowledge.
That's the same knowledge work, right? So knowledge from Russ is a theory. If we do this, then this happens. So we when we learn how. Yeah. When we take these things apart, which I'm sure you and I know, you know, taking apart a phonograph and think, what's inside of this? How do you take the screws out? What goes on?
That's knowledge. But Russ would also say is, taking apart the car and putting it back together does not tell you why the driver in the United States sits on the left hand side. He said that comes from the next letter, which is you understanding. It also refers to that as synthesis analysis is when we look inward, how these things [00:42:00] work together, you know, also, that's the, you know, so analysis and knowledge in the D.
I. K. U. W. model. Very, very, it's the same thing. But then when you look outward to the containing system that the car is in, then you realize the car, you know. One is, you know, why is the driver on the left hand side? That cannot be explained by taking apart. Russ would also say, why is the car designed for four passengers?
You have to look outward at society to see the average sized family. Okay. So that's the, the, on the one hand, analysis is looking inward, synthesis is looking outwards. One is not better than the other. But it's just really neat to understand that Going inward and understanding how all these things work together doesn't answer questions that you get going the other way, which is the knowledge, the understanding piece now, why did Dr Deming refer to his work as the system of profound knowledge and not the system of profound understanding?
I [00:43:00] don't know. Not that he didn't know what those words were. Now let's get to the, to the fifth letter W wisdom and wisdom. Let me back up. Russ would say, and this is a really cool model, so why don't we have the D I K U W, data information, knowledge and understanding, Russ would say those four letters are about efficiency.
Right? Yeah. Which is doing things well. There's a
John Willis: great like 10 minute video out there that I found and I'll post it. Yes. Literally. Oh, that's exactly what tells it what you just exactly. Yeah. And
Bill Bellows: you'll find, for whatever reason, you'll find models, you'll find it. For the 5 letters by some other people.
Okay. Yeah,
John Willis: I mean, I've been hearing this
Bill Bellows: my whole life. But going back to your, your question on the rabbit hole. Russ Russ's explanation when I explain my students is the. Data, information, knowledge, and understanding [00:44:00] helps you do things. Well, the wisdom piece. Is about what are we doing with the D, the I, the K, and the you.
What are we doing with it? And, and, and so the awareness that comes from those is one thing. The wisdom piece is about effectiveness, which is doing the, doing the right thing, right? And, and one explanation I get for that is, you know, I remember years ago being in a staff meeting reporting to the VP of engineering at Rocketdyne, and there was a lot of talk about rewards and recognition.
And it was the first staff meeting I went to. And, and I knew, I knew everybody in the room. I knew the VP. I had recently moved into his organization and and they're talking about survey results and every director presented their annual survey results. And then what is your solution to improve this?
Nearly every one of them had as a solution [00:45:00] more rewards and recognition, and it was one after another, after another, and as one colleague in there, I was making eye contact with any because he knew where I stood on.
We would roll our eyes. Right. And I was. You know, after number 10, it was all set to just, I want to go on record. I'm new here. I didn't, I, I just, I, I just chose not to. And I'm not saying that's right or wrong, but I use that as an explanation of the wisdom piece is what am I doing with this, you know, and, and picking the moment to mention those things.
And that's what I, I think is a really neat way of looking at wisdom is, so you've got this understanding, you've got this knowledge, what are you doing with it? And I wear. I wear on my wrist, three silicone bracelets. And so one has my, my ID in case I fall off my bike and go unconscious. Somebody can see, oh, this is Bill Bellows.
And they can call the 800 number and get all my medical [00:46:00] information and find my wife. So I, I wear this all the time. You never know when you're going to need it. And then I have a a yellow one. Which is from Armstrong, the cyclist, and it's, it's from his organization, you know, Livestrong, and that's reminded me of, of, of family members, friends who have died of cancer.
Okay, the white one, one, it has on it one from the organization one. org, which I think was co founded by Bono from U2. And it's about world hunger, dealing with world hunger. I, I wear it to remind, to me, the white one. Is a reminder of the wisdom piece. I've been given an opportunity to learn a lot of great things from a lot of exciting people.
What are you have to be careful where you use that information. You know, you don't want to be the bull in the china shop. You want to be, you know, pick the moment. You know, when I tell, [00:47:00] I remember years ago telling some young NASA people that were coming to Rocketdyne for the first time. And they were asked by some more senior people to come meet me.
And I met with them. I know that one guy in particular and he says, you know, but I'm, I'm just a new hire. I'm just, you know, I'm just way down here on the totem pole. And I said, but can I explain to him the things we were doing that NASA was benefiting from? And I was looking, you know, just wondering, how can I help?
How can I help? I said, well, I said, you can ask questions. He says, but who am I to ask questions? I said, here, here's what it could be. I said, you could walk up to somebody senior. And say, hey I understand you're doing some really cool stuff using Dr. Taguchi's work on that engine over there. Are we are there people looking at how to apply that to the space shuttle main engine?
I said, that's a question you can ask. But I said, but don't ask the question in the meeting. Because you're in a meeting of, you know, with 25 people, the VP's in [00:48:00] there. I said, he or she may not know where you're coming from. I said, but you can walk up to them after the meeting in the hallway and say, hi, my name is, you know, Joe Jones.
I'm a new guy and I'm just, I said, so, and I just cautioned him. There's a lot you can do, but pick your moments and that's what I find in all the consulting that I do is. Try to explain 1st of all, trying to remind myself as Dr Deming would say, how could they know? A friend of mine gave me this for my birthday years ago, and it's a name.
And it says, how could they know? So it's right here to remind myself , you know? Yeah, yeah. How could they know how, I mean, when I give students essays to write for all my courses, I don't take off for what they write. How could they know what they don't know? What I wanna know is what do they know? Do they, and then through the course will find out what they don't know.
I just want an honest answer. [00:49:00] Now if I find they didn't. If I have an impression that they're not doing the work, not reading the assignments, not watching the videos, and then copying from WhatsApp, you know, that's different. I may take off there. But, short of that, I think you know, Dr. Deming, and I, of all the things I've ever heard him say, how could they know?
And again, how could they know what they don't know? They don't, well then how can you be angry with them for what they don't know?
John Willis: I mean, you know, that was sort of the research I found from sort of what I learned about Deming was, he, you know, and I think it comes back to there's a couple, you just raised a whole bunch of things that we think a lot about in sort of this DevOps and this new way of doing IT software delivery service.
You know, I think like the, Deming was, unbelievably empathetic to the worker, but very low tolerance for the leader, [00:50:00] you know, who, who put those things in, like, even the story that I had with Doris Quinn, where, you know, someone at GM was giving a, you know, like, control chart presentation, and Deming started asking her all these questions, she got flustered, and that night, you know, with Doris Quinn, he was just inconsolable about, and this was Doris Quinn telling me this, that he just was, and he wrote her a letter.
apologizing to, to the woman that had Doris Quinn give it to her the next day. And then he chewed the leadership because they did. But yeah, I think the, the, the word that comes to mind is, you know, and I, you know, not to get too meta here, but I tried to have put my kids the power of empathy, you know, like, you know, how would they know?
Well, let me think about what you may think about it versus what I think about it. And let, let me just not assume that not even what, you know, what you think. Is completely the mental models, you know,
Bill Bellows: and it takes you[00:51:00] know, it is about being empathetic and stepping back to realize is they, they may not know.
And, and the first time I saw it, I think in February, 1990, and he said it's talking about mostly about a lot about bad, but, you know, how could they know? How could they know? I mean, how could they know the difference between how you respond to a special cause versus a common cause? How could they know?
How could they know? It says the answer is frightening. And, and and that got him upset. But you, but anyway, I, I would encourage our, our, our viewers to, to look at memories. Yeah, no, I think there's a KUW model. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. The idea of being the effectiveness. Is the wisdom piece, but I
John Willis: get that.
So allow me still to drill down on the difference between effectiveness and thoroughness and again, where, you know, again, again, it comes down to operational definitions or what does the word mean? You [00:52:00] know, like, and, and, and, like, you can check that. But if we take the 2 words on sort of face value, you know, 1 sort of.
Sort of defines the sort of the process to completeness and the other one sort of defines the outcome and I think that's an area that, you know, Deming was very concerned about is is thinking about the outcome. And again, I know it's just words, but but that's what
Bill Bellows: I'll give me. I'll give me a really neat, really neat thoughts on on thoroughness.
So I. And this is funny. I find it funny. So I went to college for two years of community college, and then my next seven years at University in, Troy, New York, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, founded by Stephen Van Rensselaer in 1824. Stephen Van Rensselaer, Was a brother in law of Alexander Hamilton.
They married sisters. And so he was a third or fourth generation Dutch [00:53:00] landholder in upstate New York one of the wealthiest men in the United States of all time. He would make the top 50 list. If you put everything very wealthy guy. So the university founded by him and a slogan, it was the slogan showed up.
Everywhere. The slogan at Harvard is Veritas, Latin, right? The slogan at RPI, Regulatory Polytechnic Institute, is knowledge and thoroughness. Everywhere. Knowledge and thoroughness is every. Okay. The thoroughness word, you know, the thoroughness word comes up. Well, I was involved in a, a 7 or 8 month problem solving investigation of a Major problem in the tank engine that I've mentioned, talked about in the, in the, in the Deming Institute studies and it involved these two gears.
We talked about last time, these two gears coming together and one fit inside the other and, and, and the thoroughness piece was that, that drove me, drove me nuts.[00:54:00] The Thoroughness piece was a sense of every time someone came up with what might be causing this problem, the protocol was every idea that was brought up due to thoroughness was investigated with a 10 hour test.
And so one of the ideas that came up as to what was causing the where, you know, somebody said, Well, it could be. That those 2 gears are in an are in a current path where there's electricity flowing somehow through those 2 parts. And what's causing them to wear is actually electrical and electrical contact that there's that there's electricity flowing through there.
And so when I heard that came up in the meeting, I said, well, and I said, [00:55:00] if there is current flowing through there, then instead of having the gears where. You know, where the teeth gets finer and finer, you would see arcing of, you would see some sense of, of the electrons trying to jump between the parts.
I remember saying to the guys, like, you stick a screwdriver into a socket and the tip melts. So that's not wear, that's melting. And we don't see evidence of melting on the teeth, do we? No, we don't. Well, nonetheless, due to thoroughness, we ran a 10 hour test with and without. The a ground strap and the role of the ground strap would be to have the current flow in the right direction of it instead of flowing it through.
And I looked at that and said, you could just argue through the, the where mode itself is evidence that it's not a current issue. But no, the protocol was Bill. We have to be [00:56:00] thorough. Right? Right. And so to me, that's this, I guess that's what you go is what it is. Ain't what it's all cracked up to be,
John Willis: perhaps.
No, but, but I guess that, I guess that's the, so this gives me a, a better way to, to understand because I, you know, ever since I heard you talk about the efficiency and effectiveness on the Deming, on the Yeah. Deming Institute podcast. And then, you know, I saw, I, I started thinking about Ido and I, I think I sent you a link, but, and then you know, as I was preparing for this, I came back and I think, I mean that the, the beauty of IDO is it's a trade off.
Right. That you need to understand the trade off between efficiency and thoroughness. But, but I think that, I don't know, maybe there's a middle ground between efficiency, effectiveness, and thoroughness, because again, by definition, effectiveness, I mean, there is something to be said about thoroughness as it applies to the actor.
I mean, it applies back to [00:57:00] basically.
Bill Bellows: No, if, if thoroughness is. I don't have a problem with thoroughness. Right, just don't over obsess about it. In that situation, I felt there was plenty of reason to To not do the test that we could just argue through that, that to me, it was about you know, in that regard, I would say what I was hearing was being thorough as being efficient.
I was trying to say is there's, there's a place for efficiency. I mean, if we may have a protocol for following a detailed process, but we follow it when it makes sense. So it may have to do with finding a place to go for lunch. Well, it depends on who we're going to lunch with. If we're going to lunch with a, with Russ Achoff, then we're going to be careful to find a place that's quiet.
Find a place where there's,[00:58:00] you know, but not every person coming to visit is Russ Achoff. So there's so that's what I would say if, if you're seeing, you know, there's a, there's a place for thoroughness. And then there's a place. I mean, just like there's a place for uniformity, then there's a place for variation, right?
John Willis: Right. That's right. Well, I mean, it goes back to, like, being you know, if dogmatic's the right way to say it, but like, thoroughness is, you know, sort of being unique. You know you know, sort of chain to the idea that, like, in that case, sorry, Bill, we can't have a logical discussion about this. We have to do the thoroughness.
Yeah, that's
Bill Bellows: right. And I like the word chain very much to me. Thoroughness is being chained to something out of dogma. Without a sense of a system and and the idea that it depends. Well,
John Willis: it could be though. But I mean, again, that's taking Yeah, I think that's the correct but I do think there's a lot to be and this is one of the things I love doing This is why like I love having you on the podcast.
I I [00:59:00] you know, I want to introduce you to the people That like study how to run large computer systems and infrastructure. And, and so that like, you know, and I'm hoping some of the people you know, that like, I doubt Sydney Decker, whatever, you know, get to the level. He, he writes like a book a minute. So I don't know.
Yeah. But but yeah, I mean, it's like, I've always been fascinated by the, the sort of the more than just the lean. And I think that's you know, Steven Speer. Yeah. Well, you remind me a lot of Dr. Spear in that, you know, sort of that brilliance, but no ego and very easy to talk to on very complex discussions, but you know, that one of the times we did this thing with actually the safety people.
And, and, and Speer represented lean, you know, he's MIT Sloan and all that stuff. He won a Shingo award for one of his, I mean, he's the guy that did the, I don't know if you know Dr. Speer, he did the, his PhD was like decoding the, it [01:00:00] the Toyota production system DNA. It was like one of the most heavy, it's downloaded HBR articles.
Bill Bellows: Oh, this is Speer? Yeah. Yeah, I, I, I used 1 of his articles when I taught at Northwestern years ago.
John Willis: So we, you know, we did this thing where we, we pinned him against these critical safety people and him and actually it was supposed to be Mike Roethlisbeer and you know Dr. Cook and and, and, oh, Sydney Decker, right? And, and, and Rafa dropped out last minute, but Spears, like, you know, when we kept asking about lean, you know, we don't think lean, we hate lean with a lot of, and he said, well, first off, let's stop calling it lean it's toy production systems, you know, and he said, you know, and he's, you know, like, so it's the abstractions.
I think that's another thing, right? Like, you know, he says disciplines or he doesn't say abstractions, but I think that's what he means. They get us in trouble, you know, so.
But anyway, no, I think probably this [01:01:00] is a, a good breaking point. I guess, where do we go next? Who else is in your bag of tricks that we should know about?
Bill Bellows: Well well, let me say, we talked earlier about Taguchi and there's a thought I had earlier that I wanted to. Sure. That is insights from Dr.
Taguchi. And one, I mean, he had expressions, Deming had expressions, Russ had expressions. One of Taguchi's many expressions was the idea of not being worse than a thief. Have you heard that? No, no. Worse than a thief. And I have, I have students, I expose that to students, then I have them, I have them in one of the essays give me examples of everyday being worse than a thief.
Well, Dr. Taguchi said a thief is someone who steals your wallet. Perhaps finds 20 in it. They're up 20. You're down 20. He said, but[01:02:00] what about the person who doesn't pick up the nail in the parking lot saves a second potentially causes someone, you know, the inadvertently the step on the nails, a piece of glass.
It's an impregnated in their foot. Worse than a thief is I could have spent a few seconds to pick up the nail on the way or to pick up the piece of glass, and I didn't. What makes it worse than a thief is that the time I saved was a fraction of what it cost you. Costs somebody in society. And, and the idea that we, you know, strive to get something done with a focus on efficiency, and, and what Taguchi's talking about from a systemic point of view.
Perspective is what is that savings that I am making costing others and I think it becomes pretty damning to, I mean, the implications are damning. [01:03:00] And I think, but I, but I think the, I like the simple example I, years ago, I started using the picket, the idea of picking up and down the parking lot, prevent the flat tire, prevent the issue.
And that caused 11 coworker in particular. To never walk past a nail or a piece of glass and it brought me by his desk one day in his office and you know, open up the drawer and there was this a place in the drawer, you know, for pencils and it was filled with nails. He says, I can't walk past a nail again.
And then beyond that, he would several times a year combine my office. You know, and, and I might not be there any, and there was outside my, my office was my name Ted, my, you know, there's a plaque on the wall, you know, screwed in and, you know, Bill Bellows and, and there'd be a, a piece of nail or a piece of glass.
And I knew where it came from. Oh, that's hilarious. And so this idea of not being worse than a thief. I mean, worse than a thief could be [01:04:00] running that red running that yellow light in a fraction of a second to get where I need to be. And causing an accident as a result of that and and I'm trying to save a second to get to the doctor's appointment.
And now I cause this multi car fender bender. So I think it's really poignant to think about, you know, an individual level, you know, I don't want to be worse than a thief. I don't want to run that light. I don't want to
so just like, you know, these pithy things from Russ on it. Yeah, the writer you do the wrong thing. The wronger you become. But, you know, I must not being worse than the thief. That's a personal responsibility. Well, I mean,
John Willis: I sort of, I think ties back to the whole concept systems thinking. Right? So if you know, I mean, again, I think the worst book I ever read, which is one of the not the best book I read was the Denella Meadows thinking and systems because now you really.
But like, everything you see is a system and like, you could, you know, the, the, it's not a rabbit hole, right? Like, if you see something, you know, but you, you, [01:05:00] like, you see a nail, you're like, let me pick that up or you see garbage, you know, or in the side of the road, pick that up. Right.
Bill Bellows: You see, and this is what I tell the Boeing executives when we're striving for zero defects and, you know, striving for improving quality.
And there was a, a huge effort by the military there by the Air Force to Drive requirements that were way beyond our systems capability and the beauty is that really opened the door for people to pay attention to what we were doing with. With Dr. Taguchi's work and Dr. Deming's work, but I would tell them, because the Air Force gave us a timetable, you know, they want us to achieve zero defects on this hardware by a certain date, and the volume of the production was going from one engine to many engines to lots of engines and, and you know, and there was a timetable, you know, we have to, I mean, they, they wanted everything to meet requirements.
No, no red beats. You know, no red beats in the entire [01:06:00] rocket, you know, the vehicle, the engine, and that set the stage for question two. And I said, the more we pay attention to question two and start asking how much gas is in the car, the better we're going to be able to provide things that are all white.
If we manage, if we manage the white bead variation, we can end up with no white bead. So anyway, but I remember telling them, if you want an idea of the progress we're making every single day, I said, every time you walk into the restroom, count how many paper towels are on the floor near the trash can that can't quite find their way into the trash can.
How many newspapers are on, I mean, you walk into a conference room. And the chairs are not returned back to their position. You walk into the conference room and there's coffee stands. I said, that is an indication and everyday indication of how we treat one another, right? And I use that as a reminder of.
How can we expect to [01:07:00] achieve zero defects to achieve, but be managing the white bead variation end up nowhere? I mean, that's an indication of how we treat one another. There's everyday indications. Another thing I would tell people in the classes I was doing, we would have visitors, and I'd say let's run an experiment during the break.
I'd say you know, John, on your way, you know, for those of you on your way to the restroom, they needed escorts to head to the restroom. I said, do this. I said, between here and the restroom, you know, one minute, okay, I said, take an empty coffee cup, take an empty can of soda, and between here and the restroom, find a file cabinet that you can put it on top of.
And then during the next break, see if it's still there. Yeah. In other words, are people walking past these things? I said, you know, crumble up a piece of paper into a ball and then put it somewhere in the hallway.[01:08:00] And see how long it sits there. Well, isn't there a famous That's an indication of the culture.
John Willis: There's a, there's a famous study, and I'm trying to remember if it's the Good Samaritan study. Where they tell they've paid it. It's called it's I think it's called a good Samaritan study. It was just like, you know Yes, where they literally tell the students they have to be here And I think they're going to do something on sort of a Christian discussion I think they were told they had to be here by a certain time the one study group They would literally they plant like somebody who was like hurting on the floor and they would literally step over him to get to the Meeting versus I don't know.
It was something like that. But
Bill Bellows: yeah, but as I find is he I mean, put something where it doesn't belong.
John Willis: Yeah, yeah, no,
Bill Bellows: no, totally, yeah. Simple, and, and just, and then just, it's, it's, and it, you know, it's not to say everybody needs to go do something, but the question is, you know, for how long will that coffee cup stay there?
For how long will that trash can not be emptied? For how long will that science experiment be going on in the [01:09:00] refrigerator? And, and this, you know, for how long, I mean, Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts, you know, our sons were, our son and daughter were in both, and, They were trained, when they, you know, spent the weekend hiking, camping out in the woods, they were trained to leave the campsite cleaner than you found it.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. And that's what we're talking about. It's the very same thing. And so, I mean, whether that's at home, you know, putting the dishes away, you know, cleaning up after ourselves in the kitchen, or are we leaving it for somebody else?
John Willis: Yeah, and every time you give me someone new, so I've, for a while there, I was doing this qualitative analysis of digital transformation, a fancy name.
I did, I learned enough to do qualitative analysis to be sort of cocktail party smart enough to, but I would interview, I've done, I've done a couple of top five banks where I've interviewed four or five hundred people. And, you know, and one of the things you try to understand is those sort of behavior things, mostly around technical, the things they [01:10:00] do do, they don't do, how they don't share what they do, that become the systemic, either positives or negatives, but it seems to me like if I ever do that gig again, I might do some simple things of like, you know, leaving things around or, you know, just seeing how they react in a, in a room, you know, to get, cause I think that that's, that's an interesting test onto itself.
If you're like, if I'm in a, I've been at a bank in the UK where I interviewed like 400 people over a summer. Right. And it would have been interesting. And I'm usually, and I'm, I'm brought in by the CIO. Right. And, and the. And I basically go through all these imaginations of like trying to understand ba behavior between teams and, and, but like, it would be just interesting to be able to do that kind of test of like in the one meeting room where, you know, highly paid people of like one of the critical teams that create like all the banking systems for a certain space and retail.
Like, did they, you know, literally mess the place up, you know, or see if they, I don't know. [01:11:00] It'd be, I think you could actually, I mean, I'll, I'll tell you this. There's a game, we might have talked about this, Mike Rother, one of his students created a game called Kata in the Classroom, and you literally break out in teams, and they have to put together a puzzle, and the puzzle is literally, it says right on, it's a specific puzzle you have to use it's like a, 15 pieces, it's three year olds or above, and you literally tell the students that they have to complete this puzzle in 15 seconds as a team, and they can't do it.
It's just impossible. Right? And, and, and so there's all sorts of learnings about sort of CADA and how to, you know, how, like, when a manager says it has to be 15 seconds, right after the first, you know, CADA, or you call the first sort of PDSA, they realize, oh, the manager's crazy. Let's try to do like 50, you know, and then they cut it down to 30 and 20.
So they learn. it's, You know the sort of iterative process, but one of the things I find is when you do the sort of retrospective at the end The way they think about what [01:12:00] that problem was, if they saw it as just hey, I haven't put puzzles together since I was 10 versus, oh, man, I learned a lot about incremental and scientific and how to apply hypothesis thinking.
Like, anyway, I, I, I just, you made me think all about that as some of the tools I've tried to use to try to understand organizational behavior, at least as it applies to the spaces that I'm somewhat an
Bill Bellows: expert. The other thing I'm reminded by what you just said is when it comes to, you know, picking up after one another, you can bet the Cub Scout leader, the Boy Scout leader, the Girl Scout leader is employing a great focus on thoroughness to have them Go through that campsite.
Get rid of everything. That's thoroughness. But that's, you know, that's a situation where you can bet that the scout leader is very deliberately allocating two hours at the very close. [01:13:00] We're not rushing out of there. And so the idea is that there they're saying we're going to spend that. We're not going to rush the last two hours.
We're going to give that the proper time. Again, depending on the situation, there may There may not be time for thoroughness. We're in the middle of a, you know, we have to evacuate this house immediately. We don't have time to wash all the dishes. And that's what we're talking about is again. That's the trade
John Willis: off, right?
I think I do have a hard stop here. Yeah, you too. This is great. I'm gonna throw a a thought in your ear from possibly another one. If you still wanna do this is Duran might be an interesting discussion at some point, but I don't wanna do that right now 'cause I do get . It's okay. I saw your mind explode.
I'm like, uhoh, we don't have the time, but but I'll feed you some of the things I've been thinking about Duran, and maybe we can, but I don't know. Or I'll, I'll let you sort of, if you think there's another relevant
Bill Bellows: description. Yeah, I don't, I don't know. [01:14:00] I, I've read articles about Duran. I've watched videotapes, documentaries on Duran and I don't, I don't.
John Willis: All right. Well, that sounds good. Bill, like always fantastic. We'll find other topics. Yeah, we, I don't, I think there'll be no shortage of topics,
Bill Bellows: so all right.
