Introduction

How do you know that the learning you and your colleagues are doing is leading to changes in behavior? In this episode, Bill and Andrew discuss little tests you can do to see if the transformation you're working toward is really happening. 

0:00:02.0 Andrew Stotz: My name is Andrew Stotz and I'll be your host as we continue our journey into the teachings of Dr. W. Edwards Deming. Today, I'm continuing my discussion with Bill Bellows, who has spent 30 years helping people apply Dr. Deming's ideas to become aware of how their thinking is holding them back from their biggest opportunity. Today is episode 22, and the title is, Test for Understanding Transformation. Bill, take it away.

 

0:00:30.7 Bill Bellows: Hey, we've been at this podcast for about a year now, right?

 

0:00:36.6 AS: It's incredible how long it's been.

 

0:00:39.8 BB: And in the beginning you said, I've been at this for 30 years, right?

 

0:00:43.7 AS: Yeah.

 

[laughter]

 

0:00:46.7 BB: Maybe we should change that to 31.

 

0:00:48.3 AS: Oh, man, there you go.

 

0:00:51.2 BB: All right.

 

0:00:53.0 AS: That reminds me of the joke of the janitor at the exhibition of the dinosaurs and the group of kids was being led through the museum and their guide had to run to the bathroom. And so they were looking at this dinosaur and they asked the janitor, "How old is that dinosaur?" And he said, "Well, that dinosaur is 300,032 years old." "Oh, how do they know it so exactly?" He said, "Well, it was 300,000 when I started working here 30 years ago."

 

[laughter]

 

0:01:28.8 AS: So there we are.

 

0:01:31.4 BB: That's great.

 

0:01:33.3 AS: Thirty-one years.

 

0:01:34.0 BB: All right, all right, all right. So first thing I wanna say is, as you know and our listeners know, I go back and listen to this podcast and I interact with people that are listening too, and I get some feedback. And in episode 19, I said the Germans were developing jet engines in the late 1940s. No, it turns out the Germans were developing jet engines in the late 1930s and they had a fighter plane with a turbine engine, a developmental engine in the late '30s. They didn't get into full-scale development and production. Production didn't start till the tail end of the war. But anyway, but I was off by a decade. In episode 21, I mentioned that checks were awarded within Rocketdyne for improvement suggestions and individuals who submitted this and it could be for an individual, maybe it was done for two people, three people, I don't know, but they got 10% of the annual savings on a suggestion that was implemented in a one-time lump sum payment.

 

0:02:36.1 BB: So you got 10% of the savings for one year and I thought, imagine going to the president of the company and let's say I walk into the president's office and you're my attorney. And I walk in and I say, "Hey, Mr. President, I've got a suggestion. You know that suggestion program?" He says, "Yeah, yeah, yeah. Come on in, come on in. And who's this guy with you?" "Well that's Andrew Stotz." "And who's Andrew?" "He's my attorney, and he and I have been thinking about what this is worth." "Well, tell me about it." "No, well, before we get into it, we've got this form to sign here."

 

0:03:10.9 AS: Andrew.

 

0:03:11.1 BB: "Right? And you wanna see the idea or not? But we don't have to share it." But I thought, imagine people going to great length and really taking advantage of it. Well, a few of us that were involved in our InThinking Roadmap training, what we started to propose is we want a piece of the action, Andrew. So the proposal we had is that, Andrew, if you come to one of our classes, a study session on The New Economics or Managing Variation of a System, we'll have you sign a roster, right? And so if you are ever given a check for big numbers, Andrew, then we're gonna claim that our training contributed to your idea and all we ask is 10%, right?

 

0:03:58.1 AS: Of your 10%.

 

0:04:00.9 BB: I mean, I think that's fair, right? But imagine everybody in the organization becoming a profit center.

 

0:04:08.7 AS: Crazy.

 

0:04:10.4 BB: That's what you get. All right.

 

0:04:14.5 AS: And the lesson from that is focus on intrinsic motivation. People wanna make improvements, they wanna contribute.

 

0:04:23.8 BB: You start... You go down the slippery slope of incentives, which will be part of what we look at later. There's just no end to that. All right?

 

0:04:31.4 AS: Yeah.

 

0:04:32.2 BB: So I mentioned in a previous podcast that I had an interaction, met the army's first woman four-star general, and I just wanna give you some more background and interesting things that happened with her relative to this test for understanding transformation. I don't know April, May, 2008, someone on her staff reached out to me and when they first... When the guy got a hold of me, I said... From the Pentagon, he called me, I think it was like 8:00 or 9:00 o'clock at night here. Whatever it was, it was after hours in LA so it was after hours in DC. I remember saying to the guy, "How did you find me?" He says, "There's a lot of stuff on the internet." So he says, "I came across a presentation you did for Goodwill Industries." And he says, "In there you talk about... " He says, "There's some really good stuff in there."

 

0:05:29.0 BB: And I said, "Like what?" He said, "You have a slide in there about you can minimize loss to society by picking up nails in a parking lot." And that was an example of what I used Dr. Taguchi's work, minimizing loss to society. I said, "Yeah, I remember that slide." He says, "We don't do enough of that in the Army." And he says, "Hey, we've got a conference next week, late notice. The keynote speaker bailed out." And he's calling me on a Monday. The presentation's a week from Wednesday and he says... And also he said that the Army had an initiative called Enterprise Thinking and Enterprise Thinking was part of what we called our effort within Rocketdyne. We used the terms Enterprise Thinking, organizational awareness, and that InThinking personal awareness. We were using those two terms. So he did a search on that, found my name, and he says, "What do you think?" And he says, "We're gonna... "

 

0:06:24.3 BB: If I agree, we'll have a follow-up vetting call the next day. So he calls me up the next day and it's him and a two-star general. There are three people in the room, all senior officers, and he says, "Okay, so, but tell us what you do." So I shared the last... It sounds funny, is what seems to have been the last straw in their interest was having me speak, was my last straw story. Remember the executive from the European airline and... Right? So I tell that story about my efforts within Rocketdyne and Boeing about this airline executive and how this deeply resonated with this executive of this customer of this company that buys a lot of Boeing airplanes that we focused on the one cause, not the greater system.

 

0:07:13.2 BB: And within minutes of sharing that story, they started laughing, leading to it a few minutes later to them saying, "you're the one."

 

0:07:19.2 AS: [laughter] That's very interesting.

 

0:07:21.3 BB: You're the one. So for our listeners, I'd say, let this be a reminder of how a personal story guided by insights on how Dr. Deming's System of Profound Knowledge can open doors for you. And you can use that story, come up with your own stories, but you just never know when you're gonna be in a situation where you need a really simple story. So as an aside, they contact me, like I mentioned, 10 years later, and I think I shared with you offline that the speaker I was replacing was the great Richard Rumelt, the strategy professor from UCLA, who for whatever reason needed to bail out. And then when this podcast is posted, I'll put a link to the slides of the presentation.

 

0:08:05.7 BB: It's about 45 minutes long. What was not covered... I went back and looked at it earlier to say, what did I share with them that got them so excited? All I know is it fit into 45 minutes to an hour. What was not covered was the trip reports, whether Red Pen or Blue Pen, Last Straw/All Straw, Me/We organizations. But after it was done, as I'm coming off the stage, General Dunwoody in uniform comes up to me. She was thrilled. Her exact words were, "You hit it." She says, "Bill, you hit it out of the park." And I thought, well, I had help from a lot of people. She then says something to me that I'll never forget. So we're face-to-face, right? Let me just... Right?

 

0:08:45.1 BB: And she says to me, "Bill, you've got a real challenge on your hands. Bill, you've got a real challenge on your hands." So prompted by that, I held my hand out, my right hand, which is what you do to initiate a handshake, and then she reaches out to shakes my hand and I said, "General Dunwoody, we have a challenge on our hands." [laughter] And she erupted in laughter. And my only regret, even though we went out for drinks for the next couple of hours, but my regret was not having a photo of her and I doing a double high five as she laughed. So then I remained in touch with her for the next six to eight months when she was promoted to four-star and she looked for opportunities to get me to the Pentagon, which she did. And I was trying to get her or somebody on her staff to come to Rocketdyne to learn more about what we're doing.

 

0:09:38.1 BB: But I say I share this anecdote as an example of a Test for Understanding of a transformation. So what is a TFU, test for understanding? This is something I got exposed to in my Kepner-Tregoe Problem Solving and Decision Making training, which I talked about in one of the first episodes. And in our training to deliver what was then a five-day course, we were coached on how to interact with seminar attendees, including how to answer questions and how to ask questions. And one of the things we got our knuckles wrapped for was saying, are there any questions? Because no one answers that. There is... And if I had said that when I was being certified, I'd have failed. So instead we're coached on how to ask questions or make comments, which serve as a test for someone's understanding of what I presented.

 

0:10:27.9 BB: For example, for me to reply to General Dunwoody with we have a challenge on our hands was to test her understanding of what I said and her laughter is a response that I could be expecting with something short. As an aside, an appreciation, we've talked about Ackoff's D-I-K-U-W model data, raw data information. You turn that into what, where, when, extent, knowledge. If we convert that to how does something operate looking inside of an automobile, how do the pieces work together? Remember he said understanding is when you look outward 'cause knowledge looking inward, Russ would say, doesn't tell you why the car is designed for four passengers. That comes from looking outward. And then wisdom is what do we do with all this? Well, the Kepner-Tregoe training was Test for Understanding and now that I'm inspired by Ackoff, well in my university classes, I ask "Test for Information" classes. I have them watch videos and say, what company was Russ working for?

 

0:11:31.1 BB: This anecdote, that's information. Nothing wrong with those questions. I can ask for "Test for Knowledge" questions asking how something operates. So what I don't know is like, why are they called Test for Understanding? They could be Test for Knowledge, Test for Information, Test for Wisdom. And obviously TFI test for information could be true, false, multiple choice and test for knowledge and understanding could be short, but then I want to go deeper. And so what I wanna share is in one of my university courses, I share the following, true, you can't make it up news stories. It says, once upon a time a national airline came in dead last on on-time performance one month even though it had offered its employees everything from cash to pizza to finish first in the US Department of Transportation's monthly rankings. Does that sound like incentives, Andrew?

 

0:12:33.0 AS: It's all there.

 

0:12:33.8 BB: If we finish first, pizza parties. Now if they got exposed to Rocketdyne, they'd be handing out checks for $10,000. So in one of the research essays, for a number of the courses, every week, every module, I give them a research essay very similarly, giving them a situation and then what's going on with the questions is having them think about what they've been exposed to so far. And so question one in this assignment is given this account, list five assumptions that were made by the management team of this airline? And so I just wanna share one student's response. He says, "assumption one..." And also let me say this comes from the second of two Deming courses I do. So these students have been exposed to a one, one-semester course prior to this. So this is not intro stuff. This is getting deep into it.

 

0:13:34.3 BB: And so anyway he says, "assumption one, offering incentives like cash and pizza would motivate employees to prioritize on-time performance." Okay? That's an assumption. "Assumption two, employee morale and satisfaction directly correlate with on-time performance. Assumption three, the issue of on-time performance primarily stems from..." Are you ready? "Employee motivation or effort. The incentives provided were perceived as valuable by employees." And you're gonna love where this goes. "Assumption five, employees have significant control over factors that influence on-time performance such as aircraft maintenance, air traffic control and weather conditions."

 

0:14:20.2 AS: Good answers.

 

0:14:23.0 BB: Again, what I think is cool and for our listeners is what you're gonna get in question two, three, four, and five is builds upon a foundation where these students have, for one and a half semesters been exposed to Deming, Taguchi, Ackoff, Gipsie Ranney, Tom Johnson, the System of Profound Knowledge, hours and hours of videos. And so this is my way of Testing their Understanding. And so if you're a university professor, you might find interest in this. If you're within an organization, this could be a sense of how do you know what people are hearing in your explanations of Deming's work or whatever you're trying to bring to your organization? So anyway, I then have them read a blog at a Deming Institute link, and I'll add this blog when this is posted but it's deming.org/the insanity of extrinsic motivation. All right. And they've been exposed to these concepts but I just said, "Hey, go off and read this blog." And it was likely a blog by John Hunter.

 

0:15:32.0 AS: Yep.

 

0:15:32.2 BB: All right, question two. All right. Now it gets interesting, is that "in appreciation of Edward de Bono's, "Six Thinking Hats"," which they've been exposed to, "and the Yellow Hat, which is the logical positive, why is this such a great idea? Listen, explain five potential logical, positive benefits of incentives, which would explain why they would be implemented in a ME Organization." And so what's seen is I have them put themselves in a ME Organization, put on the Yellow Hat and think about what would be so exciting about this. And so logical, positive number one. "Incentives can serve as a powerful motivator for individuals within the organization, driving them to achieve higher levels of performance and productivity. When employees are offered rewards for their efforts, they're more likely to be motivated to excel in their roles," Andrew. Logical positive number two, enhanced performance. Explanation, "by tying incentives to specific goals or targets, organizations can encourage employees to focus their efforts on key priorities and objectives.

 

0:16:46.9 BB: This can lead to improved performance across various aspects of the business, ultimately driving better results." Number three, attraction and retention of talent. Oh, yeah. Explanation, "offering attractive incentives can help organizations attract top talent and retain existing employees. Attractive incentives can serve as a key differentiator for organizations seeking to attract and retain skilled professionals." Now, let me also say, this is an undergraduate class. As I mentioned, this is the second of two that I offer. Many of these students are working full-time or part-time. So this is coming from someone who is working full-time, probably mid to late 20s. So these are not... They're undergraduates but lifewise, they've got a lot of real-world experience.

 

0:17:44.0 BB: All right. Logical positive four, promotion of innovation and creativity. Explanation, "incentives can encourage employees to think creatively and innovative in their roles. By rewarding innovative ideas and contributions, organizations can foster..." Ready, Andrew? "A culture of creativity and continuous improvement, driving long-term success and competitive advantage." And the last one, positive organizational culture. "Implementing incentives can contribute to a positive organizational culture characterized by recognition, reward and appreciation. When employees feel valued and rewarded for their contributions, they're more likely to feel engaged, satisfied, and committed to the organization." But here's what's really cool about this test for understanding, I get to position them in the framework of a ME Organization with the Yellow Hat.

 

0:18:40.9 BB: Now question three, in appreciation of Edward de Bono's, "Six Thinking Hats" and the Black Hat, what Edward calls a logical negative, list and explain five potential aspects of incentives, which would explain why they would not be implemented in a WE Organization. And this is coming from the same person. This is why I think it's so, so cool that I wanna share with our listeners. The same person's being forced to look at it both ways. Negative number one, potential for... Ready, Andrew? "Unintended consequences." Oh my God. "Incentives can sometime lead to unintended consequences such as employees focusing solely on tasks that are incentivized while neglecting other important aspects of their roles. This tunnel vision can result in suboptimal outcomes for the organization as a whole."

 

0:19:30.7 BB: "Number two, risk of eroding intrinsic motivation. Explanation, offering external rewards like incentives can undermine intrinsic motivation leading employees to become less interested in the work and more focused on earning rewards. Number three, creation of unhealthy competition. Explanation, incentives can foster a competitive culture within the organization where employees may prioritize individual success over collaboration and teamwork. This competitive atmosphere can breed..." Ready? "Resentment and distrust among employees." Can you imagine that, Andrew? Resentment and distrust? That seems like it would clash with my previous positive thought, but it really just points out how careful management needs to be.

 

0:20:19.0 AS: Yes.

 

0:20:19.2 BB: All right. Cost considerations. "Implementing incentive programs can be costly for organizations, particularly if the rewards offered are substantial or if the program is not carefully managed. Organizations may be hesitant to invest resources and incentives, especially if they're uncertain about the return on investment if budget is of concern." And then number five, "short-term focus over our long-term goals." Explanation, "incentives often improve short-term gains rather than long-term strategic objectives. Employees may prioritize activities that yield immediate results, even if they're not aligned with the organization's broader goals or values."

 

0:21:02.7 BB: And then question four, here's the kicker. "In appreciation of your evolving understanding of the use of incentives, share, if you would, a personal account of a memorable attempt by someone to use incentives to motivate you, so that so many pizza parties or bringing a small box of donuts or coffee in for working a weekend I was supposed to have off." And then question five, "in appreciation of your answer to question four, why is this use of incentives so memorable to you? They were very ineffective. I often felt insulted that my boss thought that $20 worth of pizza or donuts made up for asking me to give 50% of my days off that week."

 

0:21:55.5 AS: Here's a donut for you.

 

0:22:00.6 BB: Here's a doggy bone, here's a doggy bone. I just wanted to share that this time. Next time we'll look at more.

 

0:22:09.3 AS: One of the things that...

 

0:22:10.6 BB: There are other examples of Test for Understanding. Go ahead, Andrew.

 

0:22:12.3 AS: One of the things that I wanted to... What you made me think about is that you and I can talk here about the downside of incentives but we have to accept the world is absolutely sold on the topic of incentives.

 

0:22:27.2 BB: Absolutely.

 

0:22:27.8 AS: A 100, I mean, 99.999% and if you're not sold on it, you're still gonna be forced to do it.

 

0:22:34.5 BB: Well, you know why they're sold on them, 'cause they work.

 

0:22:39.7 AS: It's like a shotgun. One of those pellets is gonna hit the target but...

 

0:22:47.7 BB: That's right.

 

0:22:48.4 AS: A lot of other pellets are gonna hit...

 

0:22:50.6 BB: And that's all that matters. And then what you get into is, you know what, Andrew, that that one person walks away excited, right? And that's the pellet that I look at. And I say, yep, and what about those others? You know what I say to that, Andrew? Those others, you know what, Andrew, you can't please everybody.

 

0:23:07.8 AS: Yeah.

 

0:23:07.9 BB: So this is so reinforcing. There's one person that gets all wrapped up based on my theory that this is a great thing to do and I hone in on that. And everything else I dismiss as, "ah, what are you gonna do? You can't please everybody." But what's missing is, what is that doing to destroy their willingness to collaborate with the one I gave the award to?

 

0:23:33.1 AS: Yeah, I'm picturing a bunch of people and laying on the ground injured by the pellets but that one black, or that one... Let's say the one target that we were going after, that target is down but there's 50 other people down also.

 

0:23:50.6 BB: No, but then this is where I get into the white bead variation we talked about early, early on, is that if all I'm doing is measuring, have you completed the task and we're looking at it from a black and white perspective and you leave the bowling ball in the doorway for the next person, meaning that you complete a task with the absolute minimum requirements for it to be deemed complete. Does the car have gas? Yes. You didn't say how much but when people then... When those people that were summarily dismissed didn't receive the award, when they go out and don't share an idea, don't give somebody a warning of something or not even maliciously leave the bowling ball in the doorway but believe that the way to get ahead is to do everything as fast as possible, but in doing so, what you're doing is creating a lot of extra work for others, and then you get promoted based on that. Now you get into... In episode 22 we talked about, as long as there's no transparency, you get away with that. And then the person at the end of the line gets buried with all that stuff and everybody else says, well, my part was good and my part was good. How come Andrew can't put these together?

 

0:25:26.8 AS: In wrapping this up, I want to think just briefly about how somebody... So we're talking about understanding transformation, but we're also talking about incentives.

 

0:25:39.8 BB: Yes.

 

0:25:40.5 AS: And I would like to get a takeaway from you about how somebody who lives in a world of incentives, how do they, after listening to this, go back to their office and how should they exist? It's not like they can run away from a structure of incentives. Maybe when they become CEO, they decide, I'm not gonna do it that way, but they're gonna go back to their office and they're gonna be subjected to the incentive system. Obviously, the first thing is we wanna open up their mind to think, oh, there's more to it than just, these darned employees aren't doing what I'm telling them, even when I'm giving them incentives. But what would you give them as far as a takeaway?

 

0:26:27.1 BB: Well, I'll give you some examples of what some brilliant colleagues did at Rocketdyne, as they became transformed, as they became aware, and one is politely decline. Say, I don't, I don't need that. Just again you have to be careful there. There could be some misinterpretations of that. So you have to be...

 

0:27:03.2 AS: What if you're required to put an incentive system on top of your employees?

 

0:27:09.5 BB: Well, first, if it's coming down to you to go off and implement this, then one thing you could do is create a system which is based on chance. Everyone who contributed an idea, their name goes into a lottery for free lunch the first Wednesday of the month, and everybody knows. So then we're using the incentive money but using it in a way that everyone deems as fair. So that's one thing. And you just say, I'll... So then if your boss asks, have you distributed the incentive money? You say, yes, but you're distributing it based on a system of chance of which everyone realize they stand an equal chance of winning.

 

0:27:56.9 AS: Okay. So let's address that for a second. So your boss believes in incentives. They ask you to implement this system. Now you proposed one option, which is to do something based upon chance, but now let's look at your employees under you that have been indoctrinated their whole life on the concept of incentives. And you give them a system of chance and they're gonna come back and say, wait a minute, you're not rewarding the person who's contributing the most here? Now obviously you have a teaching moment and you can do all that, but is there any other way that you can deal with this?

 

0:28:33.7 BB: No, it could be tough. You've got to... You may have to go along until you can create a teaching moment. And what I did with the colleagues, when there are these a "great minds doing great things" events, and an announcement would go out as to who are the privileged few that got invited to these events, and I would tell people that if you go to the event, then that's what I would say. You can decline, you can politely decline. There's some things you can decline.

 

0:29:17.4 AS: I guess the other thing you could do, you could also... When you have to, when you're forced to reward, you can celebrate everybody's contribution while you're also being forced to give that incentive to that one person that has been deemed as the one that contributed the most.

 

0:29:36.9 BB: Well, I'll give you another example that a colleague did, a work colleague. He didn't do it in a work setting. Not that it couldn't be done in a work setting, but he signed up to be as a judge in a science fair in a nearby school. It was a work-related thing. And as it got closer, he realized... It was a... It would involve... What is a science fair without the number one science experiment? And my theory is you can't get a bunch of adults and a bunch of kids together in any organized way without giving out an award that just, it's like, oh, we got everybody together. We got to find a way to single somebody out. So when he realized what was going on, instead of not going, what he did, he took it upon himself to interact with every kid whose science experiment he watched and asked them lots of questions about it, about what inspired them? What did they learn?

 

0:30:30.6 BB: So what he wanted by the end of the day was that they were more intrigued that someone came and really wanted to know what they learned and less inclined to listen to who won the award. And I've seen that in a work setting, again, where we had events and the next thing you know there's an award and I thought, well, what can we do? Well, we can go around and really engage in the people who's got tables set up for the share fair knowing at the end of the day, we have this. We just can't break this, we just can't break this.

 

0:31:08.2 AS: Yeah. All right. So...

 

0:31:10.3 BB: But the other thing I've seen, I've seen people who received rewards, use that money. Literally, one guy in the quality organization at Rocketdyne received an award. It might have been for a $1000. He used the money, Andrew, to buy copies of The New Economics for everyone in the organization.

 

[laughter]

 

0:31:31.7 AS: Well, that brings us to another possibility, is that you convince your boss that you at least want to give... You want to reward the whole department.

 

0:31:40.5 BB: Yes.

 

0:31:40.9 AS: Any reward that you do, you want to reward your whole department. And so that could be something that your boss would say, "Okay, go ahead and do that." And they're not gonna go against it as opposed to trying to, say, no, I won't do it this way, but...

 

0:32:02.1 BB: Well, towards that end, I've seen people that are rewards crazy. At Rocketdyne, there's one guy in particular in a machine shop manufacturing environment and some big program wanted to thank five out of the 50 people in his organization with t-shirts. And he said, "You either give me 50 t-shirts or no t-shirts."

 

0:32:27.6 AS: Yeah.

 

0:32:28.8 BB: And I thought that was really cool 'cause this... And I don't know to what degree his exposure to what we were doing, but I thought that's what we need more of. Come back with 50 shirts and we'll take them.

 

0:32:44.1 AS: Okay. Let's wrap this up by doing a brief wrap-up of why you're saying... Why you've titled this Test for Understanding and what can the listeners take away.

 

0:32:56.6 BB: The idea is again, if in a seminar learning event situation is one thing, but if you're involved in leading in a transformation within your respective organizations, what I'm suggesting is that you think about how to Test the Understanding of that transformation's progress with your audience. And we talked in the past about leaving a coffee cup in the hallway, see if it's still there. That's a Test for Understanding of the culture of the organization. And that's what I'm suggesting here, is there are simple things you can do such when somebody says, come see what my son did. You can say, your son? Or is it, was there a spouse involved? And just as you become aware of the nuances of this transformation, you could be looking at somebody look at two data points and draw a conclusion and they're just a day out of some seminar with you about understanding variation and they're looking for a cause of one data point shift.

 

0:34:13.0 BB: So it's just, what can you do day in and day out, just your little things to test the organization or test an individual's understanding of this transformation process that we're talking about, which is, how are you seeing things differently? Are you becoming more aware of incentives and their destruction, more aware of theories? That's all. What just came to mind is... And the other aspect of it was this idea that very deliberately with the foundation of ME and WE, Red Pen/Blue Pen, then you can build upon that by saying to somebody, how might a Blue Pen Company go off and do this? How might a red pen company go off and do that? And that's not a guarantee that either one of them is right, but I find it becomes a really neat way on an individual basis to say, as you just pointed out, Andrew, so how would I as a manager in a Blue Pen Company deal with that awkward situation?

 

0:35:19.2 BB: Well, if I was in a red pen, this is what I would do. And so it's not only testing for understanding, but also the power of this contrast. And that's what I found with a group recently, especially the students. If I give them the contrast, I think it's easier for them to see one's about managing things in isolation and all that beckon such as belief in addition and root cause analysis, and one's about looking at things as a system. So it's not just Test for Understanding, but a test of both foundations is what I wanted to get across.

 

0:35:57.0 AS: Okay, great. Bill, on behalf of everyone at The Deming Institute, I wanna thank you again for this discussion. And for listeners, remember to go to deming.org to continue your journey. If you wanna keep in touch with Bill, hey, you can find him on LinkedIn and he listens. This is your host, Andrew Stotz, and I'll leave you with one of my favorite quotes from Dr. Deming. I mean, I say this quote every time until I will be bored stiff of it, but "people are entitled to joy in work."