After World War II, American industry returned to the production of peacetime consumer goods, for which there was unprecedented demand and no competition. Untouched by the war, the industrial heartland produced automobiles, washing machines, vacuum cleaners, mixers, lawn mowers, refrigerators, furniture, carpets, and all the goods for the growing postwar suburbs inhabited by a generation of prosperous Americans.
Corporate America had fulfilled the promise of “scientific management” made by an influential industrial engineer named Frederick Winslow Taylor more than three decades earlier. Taylor had argued that human performance could be defined and controlled through standards and work rules. He advocated the use of time and motion studies to break jobs into separate, simple steps to be performed repeatedly without deviation by different workers. Minimizing complexity would maximize efficiency, although it was just as bad to have overperformance as underperformance in a Taylor-style system.
Scientific management evolved during a period of mass immigration, when the workplace was inundated with unskilled and uneducated workers, and it was an efficient way to employ them in large numbers. This was also a period of labor strife, and Taylor believed that his system would reduce conflict and eliminate arbitrary uses of power because it would leave little discretion to workers or supervisors. Hence the evolution of the rule-bound and overburdened American corporate governance structure.
In these post-war years, quality took a back seat to production. Quality control cam to mean end of line inspection. If there were defects and rework, there would be enough profit to cover them. Although some quality control persisted for a time, particularly in the defense industries, for the most part, the techniques taught by Dr. Deming were deemed unnecessary and time-consuming, and faded away. By 1949, Dr. Deming sadly says, “there was nothing, not even smoke.” This setback only served to strengthen Dr. Deming’s conviction as he considered what had gone wrong.
Purpose of Dr. Deming’s Management Theory
As a statistician, Dr. Deming’s lifelong mission had been to search for sources of improvement. World War II had quickened the pace of quality technology, but as World War II ended, progress in quality control began to decline. Many companies saw it as a wartime effort and felt it was no longer needed in a booming market. Given the failure of statistical methods for quality control, he figured out what might have caused the failure and how to avoid it in the future. He gradually came to the conclusion that what was needed was a basic management philosophy, with which statistical methods were consistent. He was ready with new principles to teach when the Japanese called on him in 1950 to help rebuild their country.
The goal of Dr. Deming’s management theory, also known as “Deep Knowledge System,” challenges leaders to embrace a new paradigm based on the following three main points:
The purpose of the new paradigm transformation is to ‘unleash the power of human resource contained in intrinsic motivation’ and foster an environment of full cooperation between people, departments, companies, governments and countries to achieve win-win scenarios through the process improvement. , teamwork and innovation.
The deep knowledge system is a suitable theory for leadership in any culture or business. In some circles, people incorrectly think of Total Quality Management with industrial connotations. For example, in health care, the customer is the patient, and output could be equated with the quality of patient care. In fact, many of the concepts adopted by TQM relate to interpersonal interaction as much as to other, more production-oriented criteria.
Therefore, the key dimensions of TQM can be identified as: team development, statistical quality control, process management, customer needs assessment, fact-based decision making, continuous quality improvement, and benchmarking. The application of this management theory requires a focus on the new kind of world of interdependence in which we now find ourselves. The prevailing paradigm in the Western world is not based on any holistic or comprehensive theory; it is just the cumulative result of a variety of experiences and reactive methods:
Managers who base their leadership on the paradigms listed above will be lost in the new economic age. Such leaders need to open their minds and change in order to learn the new paradigms of Total Quality Management (TQM).
Assumptions of Dr. Deming’s Theory of Administration
Dr. Deming’s management theory is based on four assumptions:
1. The role of management is to optimize the entire system, not just its components
For example, Western-style management: Reward and punishment performance appraisal systems optimize system components.
For example, Deming-style management: A better way is to assess an individual virtue over the long term, to know if it is inside or outside the system, and to understand performance problems as special or common cause. According to statistical research by Deming, Ishikawa, and Juran, more than 80% of problems are related to common causes or organizational system problems.
2. Cooperation works better than competition
For example, Western-style management: internal competition to recognize the top 10% of salespeople in an organization creates a system in which 90% of the population is labeled as underperformers or worse, losers to the top. which are in the lower half.
For example, Deming-style management: On any given distribution curve, 50% of the population will be below average and only 10% will be top performers. There’s no point in growing an organization of malcontents because no one wants to be labeled a loser. If the system is stable and you have good hiring policies, a better way to manage is to aim to shift the distribution curve to the right through continuous improvement and elimination of common causes of variation. All employees in the system should be recognized for company achievements, rather than just the top 10%.
3. Manage using both a process and results orientation, not just a results orientation
For example, Western-style management: Asking to sell 30% more (for an MBO goal) without understanding the process to achieve that goal, or providing a process to achieve the goal, creates a failure syndrome (demanding unreasonably higher results has the opposite effect that contradicts the Pygmalion effect).
For example, Deming-style management: A better way is to analyze historical performance using statistics. Then base sales growth targets within +/- 3 standard deviations of the mean, where 99% of the sample population is predicted to reach the target, and shift the curve to the right improving the sales process . If a stable system is pushed beyond its limits, the system usually breaks down.
4. People are motivated by a combination of intrinsic and extrinsic motivation
For example, Western-style management: recognizing people solely through extrinsic motivation by handing out plaques, commendation letters, bonuses, and pats on the back to motivate employees.
For example, Deming-style management: A better way is for management to combine extrinsic and intrinsic motivation to increase quality and pride in work. Intrinsic motivation is the enthusiasm and positive stimulation an individual experiences from the sheer joy of an effort. Management can unleash intrinsic motivation by creating a culture that encourages employee participation in using process improvement tools like the Deming wheel (SDSA and PDSA) to innovate and improve quality.
Each of these assumptions is directly associated with the interrelationships between people. All of them revolve around a key concept, the receptivity of the management style by those who not only lead but also by those who are led. The implementation of management philosophies obviously revolves around employee motivation, and not all employees are easily motivated or receptive to management styles that differ from those of which they have been accused.
What motivates an individual, therefore, is at the heart of the Total Quality Management philosophy. Motivational theory itself has a long history of both direct and indirect applicability to many aspects of management in general and Total Quality Management in particular. In fact, the importance of teamwork in the organizational environment cannot be underestimated. However, before employees can effectively interact as a team, they must be able to function independently efficiently and productively.
Such independence revolves around numerous factors, some of which are learned in childhood and others can be instilled in the professional environment. An important part of this independence is being able to relate to teammates and turning criticism and resistance, which exists from some teammates, into a positive factor that influences team performance.
Leaders who apply Deming-style management must be adept at shaping independent workers and teams. A high-performance team is, to some extent, the product of the individual personalities of the players, personalities that have roots going back to childhood. Deming’s teachings recognize that an individual’s qualities or lack thereof can be refined in the professional workplace. Finally, Deming has influenced my thinking in a number of ways. What he highlights is the wisdom behind the value of teamwork, process improvement, individual vs. systemic issues, and the pervasive power of continuous improvement.