That happens a lot, we honestly translate aims to goals. And then we do stupid things in the name of the goal get it the way of the aim.
We forget the aim sometimes and put the goal in its place. Mike Tveite, Achieving goals but failing to achieve the aim. Watch this short video for a great story illustrating this problem in action:. There may be cases in which incentives work only as intended, but I suspect they are relatively rare. The trouble is that we are usually dealing with complex systems people and organizations that may behave not at all like our myths would predict. The best policy may be to avoid incentives altogether and focus instead on creating systems in which intrinsic motivation, cooperation, ethical behavior, trust, creativity, and joy in work can flourish.
To improve results, as Brian Joiner said, we have 3 options, to: distort the system, distorting the data or improve the system. Improving the system is by far the most difficult. If the focus is just on meeting a target improving the system is not a sensible strategy. Distorting the numbers, a form of creative accounting aimed at looking good rather than doing well, is rampant in American business. Given a standard to reduce employee turnover, one vice president of human resources simply changed the formula for calculating turnover.
This change reduced the turnover ratio while improving nothing. Distorting the system often occurs because performance appraisal encourages individuals to squeeze or circumvent the system for their short-term individual gain, rather than improve it for collective long-term gain.
Some people will think of experience they have had where they found slogan, exortations or targets useful. Some of these fall into just a silly example of you used a slogan and had success and think there is causation.
You will often see such stroies about successful sports teams and how their season long slogan helped them succeed. It seems pretty silly to act as though the slogan of the winning team mattered.
There is a second way that people have found slogans or targets as useful that is more compelling, in my opinion. This gets into tricky teritory but I think it is worth talking about this is just my own take on things — which might stray a bit from a conventional understanding. When a slogan becomes a manifestation of a vision that drives how the organization makes decisions it can be seen as useful.
After the war, Deming tried to get US companies to continue to use these ideas, but he found little response. US Manufacturers were facing soaring demand from consumers after the war, and felt little need to think about efficiency and quality.
Japan credits Deming for playing a major role in the success of Japanese manufacturing products, especially in Japanese improvements in quality and efficiency. As Deming said, his phone rang off the hook. What did Dr. Deming teach the Japanese? In his book Out of Crisis [1] , published in , Dr. Deming summarized his teaching in 14 points:. No one can put his best performance unless he feels secure.
Se comes from the Latin, meaning without, cure means fear or care. Secure means without fear, not afraid to express ideas, not afraid to ask questions. Fear takes on many faces. A common denominator of fear in any form, anywhere, is loss from impaired performance and padded figures. In point 10, Deming says that the primary cause of poor work is not lack of effort by workers. Eliminate targets, slogans, exhortations, posters, for the work force that urge them to increase productivity.
Would you sign it? Posters and slogans like these never helped anyone to do a better job. Deming was famous for insisting on measurements, but he also thought numbers should not be used to judge workers. Goals are necessary for you and for me, but numerical goals set for other people, without a road map to reach the goal, have effects opposite to the effects sought. Deming emphasized repeatedly the need to remove barriers that prevent good work. Denove and Power [2] describe the work of J.
Power and Associates in performing customer satisfaction surveys for many companies. The threatening quote is from an early video series and Deming said it in response to an interviewer question. God Bless Dr. The Deming disciples will keep his work going at least through their generation, he changed the way I look at work forever.
Just the red bead experiment forces so much of our thinking into reality and makes you look at things so much different. What a huge contribution into the future! I agree. I have participated in the red bead exercise and I have facilitated it.
It really teaches you to look at a system and the silliness of blaming individuals for system problems in a whole new way. Many of the quotes from Dr. Deming are not written down, but from talks he gave.
All these versions, or different quotes, all make the same point and it hardly matters whether the quote is exactly right, as long as the point is made. After all, the four Gospels all report quotes in different ways, but from the same talk.
Great point, Lawrence. One cannot be successful on visible figures alone … the most important figures that one needs for management are unknown or unknowable, but successful management must nevertheless take account of them. He knew the limits of the science. That said, he showed how it could be an incredibly power tool to improvement. Yes, I find it really interesting that Deming, a statistician, said that the most important thing for managers is psychology.
Front-line workers always get it. They are the ones being abused because of common-cause variation. I bet the higher you go in the organization, the less likely the exercise is to be believed. Completely agree. The first time I ran the red bead experiment was for line workers at a GM assembly plant in They got it immediately with a mixture of humor and sadness.
This plant went out of business about 5 years later. Even if we do not attribute the saying to Deming the spirit certainly has Demings main philosophy. What Flinchblaugh quoted also indicates the same thing- A must have- to accept change and a good breathing system.. I agree, that the spirit matters most.
Thanks for a different point of view Mark. Organizations do an amazing job of survival even when they deliver very little value. But as a Deming advocate, I certainly found value in much of what he advocated.
I do have to agree that understanding the psychology of change is more important than knowing what to measure. By using lean tools, we could improve a log even without serious measurement. Just wanted to share that I did find value in using it. I can imagine Dr. People resist doing the right thing for a variety of reasons. Talk about stating the obvious. And about a non argument. Interestingly enough, the one most opposed ultimately turned around and became a supporter.
I think short quotes are wonderful because they can pack tons of meaning into a short quip that you can take in quickly. The problem is to then do what Dr. Deming implies is necessary — change — you need the knowledge necessary to make the right changes. While change may well be necessary. Change is not sufficient. You need to know what to do then change.
Similar to Dr. Deming repeated the same sentiment with different wording. I believe he probably said both these and many more. The easily available written record of his quotes is somewhat sparse mainly the New Economics and Out of the Crisis.
The new Essential Deming, is great for many reasons but one is giving us easy access to a bunch of original text directly from Dr. Lots of Deming quotes are from the notes better or memory leaves lots of room for error of those that attended seminars.
This is useful gets lots of nice quotes but is risky as sometimes I think either the people took notes incorrectly or out of context or Dr. Deming misspoke.
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