Re: System vs Individual

[Jim McKinley <leaders@earthlink.net>]

Excerpt from: The Los Angeles Times (Business Section) 5 Dec. 1993

In Endless Pursuit
A Hero in Japan, Deming Continues His Quest for Quality at Home

by Carla Lazzareschi
Times Staff Writer

To illustrate, Deming offers his trademark "red bead" parable.
It is a highly theatrical performance highlighting his view of management's 
foolish assumptions both about production processes and the ability of 
workers to control their output in a flawed system.
Six volunteers are selected from the audience and taught how to make white 
beads. first, they must shove a paddle with 50 depressions in it into a box 
filled with beads. Then they shake the paddle so the beads fall into the 
indentations. Only when every depression has a bead in it can the paddle be 
removed. The process must be followed exactly, because this is the way 
management wants to "make" white beads.
But wait! The box of 4,000 beads supplying this carefully controlled 
assembly line includes 800 red beads. Yet management wants the workers to 
make only white beads. So three inspectors hover over the six workers 
counting the red beads as the paddles are removed and exhorting them to 
strive for "zero defects" in their work.
After each of the three production runs, the workers producing the highest 
number of white beads are given merit raises for their efforts. The three 
workers with the worst records get a stern dressing down and are dismissed 
for their shoddy workmanship.
This is Deming at his pedagogical best and the audience laps it up, 
laughing during every bean count and after every pep talk.
Of course, the moral of the story isn't lost on anyone. Only management can 
fix the problem, either by purchasing an unflawed bead supply or by better 
equipping the workers to sort out the red beads. But management, Deming 
says, often doesn't see the flaws in its systems and rarely listens to the 
workers who do.
The result, he says, can only be failure.
"All that happens comes from the system, not the workers," he says. "It's 
absolutely frightening, . . . . just frightening."

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Jim McKinley   Excellence in Leadership   Leaders@EarthLink.net
721 N. McKenzie St.  Suite 2  Foley, Al.  36535-3542