Re: Deming and accountability

[TQNELSON@aol.com]

In a message dated 7/4/1999 7:11:04 PM Pacific Daylight Time, pjm184@inil.com 
writes:

<<  I am curious to know  if Dr. Deming commented on this thinking? >>

Yes, Dr. Deming commented on this many times. His/our key concern is that 
individual accountability only enters the picture when we have evidence that 
allows us to distinguish between assignable and common causes (and the 
numeric evidence of control charts is only one example, and that not 
involving the most important areas which "cannot be measured"). Now that does 
change depending on where "in the system" you are. As he noted in TNE, pp 
172-175 (which can be applied to a lot more than just The Red Beads and I 
recommend a rereading of it highly), the worker, and even the forman were 
"victims of the system," i.e., were not accountable as the variances had a 
"common cause." Management, however, was accountable, and what we saw was "a 
display of bad management."

It is the same principle on which he based his teachings on grades, ratings, 
rewards, etc., i.e., to take action in assigning blame, giving individual 
rewards and all like action, without being able to identify and illustrate 
which results stem from common causes (and that what we are acting on are not 
such) but from assignable causes that we have then investigated and validated 
the source (you may never reward/blame just because there is "an assignable 
cause" without investigating to determine what that assignable cause is/was).

To do otherwise is what Dr. Deming refers to in above cited text (#13, p. 
174) that there was "no basis for management's supposition that the three 
best Willing Workers of the past would be the best in the future."

Even as the dialogue on grades, systems, etc., is/has illustrated this is one 
of Dr. D's most difficult points for our culture to accept (indeed, Dr. Kaoru 
Ishikawa said we [the United States] could never accept it). When a culture's 
member are largely dependent, in/for their assigned self value, on extrinsic 
measurements, recognition, acclaim, etc., of others, vs. intrinsically based 
on the natural value and goodness of every person (which we had, at least 
"tasted," in our earlier days, and the writings of Jefferson, Lincoln, etc.) 
then it is nigh impossible for "the top" (which, always recall, Dr. D. said 
is where it "has to start") to accept that the current social, economic, 
education, business, which has put these people at the levels they now 
occupy, has been grown/developed on the doing precisely the opposite 
(rewarding /punishing all actions/outcomes as due to attributable/special 
causes only [Mistake 1]) and is just plain wrong (and of course it would be 
equally wrong to do the opposite [Mistake 2]) and pretend everything was due 
to common causes. Both are involved, but investigation is required to 
differentiate between them, and then know what to do.

As Dr. said (and I have cited before [ref. TNE pp 106-107]) it only takes one 
"unexplained failure" to totally disprove a theory. I challenge all to 
examine our "theory" (current U.S.) of "success" reached and supported via 
rewards, grades, punishments, etc.. If that theory is valid, how can you 
explain ANY of the currently failing, some now even imprisoned, past "A" 
students, the rewarded--then fired workers, the now imprisoned, once 
esteemed, business and government executives, the sports idols "fallen from 
grace," and on, and on, and on.

Remember, ONE failure disproves a theory, "NO number of examples establishes 
a theory." (So don't pay any attention to those who ask for "more examples" 
to prove a theory, if you've got an example that disproves it though, by 
SoPK, such a request will let you know who is tampering.)


Del Nelson
American River College

When "We, the People..." have been replaced
by dollars, profits, and greed,
It is time to start over
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