Re: Quality tool training a mistake

["Jonathan Siegel" <jmsiegel.info.research@worldnet.att.net>]

The many excellent posts on this topic touch on one of my most difficult
problems with trying to deal with Deming's work.

Deming had a perspective that a consultant's sole audience should be top
management. And a consultant shouldn't bother without top management's
undivided attention and complete commitment to radical change. Deming wrote
in his code of ethics and pattern business contract, that he considered it
the consultant's responsibility to end an engagement if the client did not,
in the consultant's sole judgement, live up to their end of the bargain.

I imagine that few of us are presently in a position to make many
engagements on these terms. In fact, many of us aren't in a position even to
get the ear of management at the CEO/Board-of-Directors level, let alone
their undivided attention. What is one to do? What happens when the only
work there seems to be for one is to teach quality tools, work in "quality
assurance" department, work as a statistician or computer programmer, etc.?
Deming said ithat he wouldn't teach in an environment where teachers'
careers are decided by the surface impressions of students (or consultants
by clients) Yet that is precisely the world we live in. How are we to earn
an honest living?

Jonathan Siegel