Re: Confusion about Deming in Business 2.0

[Roger Key <roger.key@onet.co.uk>]

Hi There DEN, Hi There Dr Berglas
I guess this will be one of many replies to the posting on the DEN about
your article To Keep Your Workers, Set Them Free_ in the 12DEC00 issue of
Business 2.0.

My intial thought was to write a very rude response based on assumed
ignorance.  But then I decided to do so would be to express my ignorance.
Part of Dr Deming's philosophy was based on the work of CI Lewis who (in
part) suggested that the reality that an individual holds is expressed in
the language used by that person.  Thus we should assume that Dr Berglas
really does believe the statement he wrote about WED and TQM.  I would like
Dr Berglas to inform us where this belief comes from.  He is part of the
research facility at the Anderson School of Management at the University of
California Los Angeles so I would assume that they have good research
facilities.  Is it from here that the erronious idea that WED was anything
to do with linear thinking and motiviating of staff.  I am guessing that Dr
Berglas has not read Out of the Crisis or the New Economics and in relation
to the motivation statement has not had contact with Alfie Kohn.  Or if he
has that he has a different understanding to the rest of us and that his
understanding should be addressed and understood in turn by us.
What worries me is that a person from the background that Dr Berglas
evidently has (Working at the uni, PhD) can have an impression of the work
of WED that is 180 degrees out, and to be arguing in his article FOR
something that has certain resonance with WED and the SoPK but using WED as
an example of what we have to get away from.  If this is the view of WED in
academia I wonder what WE have been doing to allow this misunderstanding to
come about.

I am hoping that Dr Berglas will enter into dialog with us as I for one
want to know where the system has broken down to such an extent that the
view that Dr B has of WED has occoured.  Remember it is a perfectly
legitimate outcome for the system, the question is:  Is it common cause or
special cause.  Looking at the Business2 glossary - which again seems to
have an interesting take on WED and TQM.  It may be common.....  There
again the interesing take that Dr Berglas and Business2 have may come from
the same source and thus may be a special cause.


---------------------------------oooOOOooo--------------------------------------
Roger C. Key 				 mailto:roger.key@onet.co.uk
Prescient - The Whole as One
(44) 01639 871062
Web based training for Organisations,	 http://virtual-deming.com
Leadership and Life!