In Their Own Words

John Dues, a new generation educator applying Dr. Deming's principles, discusses the secret weapon for improvement in schools: engaging students. Topics include involving students in the improvement process, flexibility and innovation in education, ongoing improvement and the PDSA cycle, addressing biases, and the importance of engaging students in finding solutions for improvement.

The hosts discuss the concept of perfection and its impact on continuous improvement. They explore the red bead experiment by Dr. Deming and the importance of pushing beyond surface-level change. They also delve into the difference between reaching a door and getting through it, and emphasize the end of perfection and embracing continuous improvement.

Exploring Dr. Deming's philosophy in education, the podcast highlights the importance of continuous learning for managers. It discusses the value of being a learning organization, the role of a manager in education and business, and the significance of managers as unceasing learners. Stories about unused computers in schools and the benefits of cooperation and learning from competitors are also shared.

John Dues, a new generation of educators striving to apply Deming's teachings in schools, discusses the role of prediction in improvement. They explore the use of data charting and the Plan-Do-Study-Act cycle to gain knowledge. Topics include understanding prediction as a measure of knowledge, visualizing weight data over time, and using a plan-to-study-act cycle for weight loss.

Bill and Andrew discuss the importance of moving beyond meeting requirements to unlock investment and achieve amazing things in the 21st century. They explore the history of interchangeable parts and the significance of acknowledging variation when setting requirements. They also touch on the process of sorting and selecting candidates based on different characteristics, and the value of considering how people use your work.

In this third discussion in a series on the Role of a Manager, David and Andrew discuss how a manager should view, and treat, people. Deming wrote, “It’s just not ranking people, it is instead recognition of differences between people and an intent to put everybody in position for development.” David applies this to education: literally looking at how to support everyone with limited resources. 0:00:02.2 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 David P. Langford, who has devoted his life to applying Dr. Deming's philosophy to education, and he offers us his practical advice for implementation, and before we get started, David, I have to apologize my voice, I got a little bit hoarse. The topic for today is Optimizing Diversity. David, take it away.   0:00:28.7 David P. Langford: Well, you've been talking too much, Andrew. So we've been working in this section in Dr. Deming's book, The New Economics, and we've talking about the role of the manager, and the reason we're doing that is because I often get asked all the time, well where do we begin, and what do we do and how do we start stuff? And people get fired up about Deming concepts, and then they wanna know what to do next, and so that's why we've been talking about this about the role of a manager in a system and studying the aim of systems so on and so forth.   0:01:06.5 DL: So this is point number three, and I will just take a stab at just reading it. First off in Deming's words, so he says "A manager of people understands that people are different from each other. He tries to create for everyone interest and challenge and joy in work, tries to optimize the family background, education, skills, hopes and abilities of everyone. It's just not ranking people, it is instead recognition of differences between people and an intent to put everybody in position for development." So in today's lingo lingo, we would call that diversity, and there's lots of different diversity, of course, there's diversity in cultures, there's difference in languages, there's diversity of thought. There's lots of different ways to think about this.   0:02:01.9 DL: And I really like what Deming is talking about here. He said... He's talking about, what's your role as a manager? And so in this podcast, we're always talking about what are these things mean in education, obviously, Deming was talking mostly to corporate managers and people like that in business, but he was also an educator himself, so I always applied all these things to education in the same way. So as a teacher, you are a manager of people in a classroom, and when that group comes into the classroom, your job is to optimize the ability of them to work together, and that's what Deming is talking about here. And so there's lots of ways to do that. One of the ways that I picked up on a concept that was in Lean management called huddles, in which the Lean managers are taught to have a huddle with your employees first thing in the morning, well I transferred that into education and taught teachers all over the world have a huddle first thing in the morning. I just read a local research paper that came in on the web the other day, and a teacher was talking about the value of morning meetings.   0:03:28.5 DL: Well, call it whatever you want, but a huddle is just that basically, you just get everybody together. And it works fantastic, even kindergarten, whatever it might be, and get a chance to optimize their diversity. What happened over the weekend? What was memorable or not memorable. Does anybody have anything they wanna talk about? Something that happened that maybe you need support with or you don't have to say anything, but if you wanna say something, you can. And I've always found those things just to be amazingly helpful to everybody, because once somebody in the group knows that somebody else is hurting in some way throughout the day, they can do little tiny things, and kids have amazing hearts and will help people if they know that they need help. Another way that I've taught people to optimize the diversity through the classroom or problems and issues that people have is an exercise called fear and a hat, and with fear and a hat you get people to write down what are their fears, and works really great, like when you're trying to form a group, like in the beginning of the year, maybe even like day one, what are your fears about this year and what's happening or this class or just anything. You don't have to put your name on it.   0:04:58.8 DL: In fact, we don't want you to put your name on it and then just drop it in this hat, and everybody drops it in a hat and then you rummage them around and you pull one out. I've had kids put in things like, well, I don't know how to swim, and I'm afraid that other people are gonna find that out, and I'll get ridiculed for it. And these are high school kids. And so all we do is get in the huddle and just say, Okay, this... If you had a friend that had this fear or you had this fear, what advice could you give them about how to operate or what to do. And amazingly, kids come up with just fantastic ideas about how they could help somebody else, or sometimes kids will say things like, well, you could tell somebody else, you could tell somebody that you don't know how to swim, and so maybe they could help make accommodations for you or help you work through that, or you could take a swimming class and learn. It's never too late to learn how to swim.   0:06:03.8 DL: I have a good friend in Texas said she started taking a swimming class when she was, I think, 55 years old. Never learned how to swim really had convinced herself she doesn't know how to swim, and she started taking the class and lo and behold, she actually learned how to swim. You can overcome problems at any stage in your life, and when I read this point that Deming's making is that your job as the teacher/manager in that class, is to find out what is the diversity that you're dealing with in that class, and then learn how to optimize it within the group, because chances are the next group that comes in next year, you're probably gonna have somewhat the same diversity of thought and culture, you don't often get radically different groups in communities, you pretty much get the same kinds of kids coming through a system, unless they come from outside the country or outside the state, etcetera. And that diversity or those differences between people is something to be celebrated, not to be looked down on. And... Yeah, so I just found that to me, that's what Deming is talking about, is your job as the manager is to understand all these things about people, and then learn how to optimize that. And he goes further about... Go ahead what?   0:07:43.2 AS: At the end of that sentence. At the end of that whole section, he says, in an attempt and an attempt to put everybody in position for development. What... Is he talking personal development, is he talking development of the organization. What does he mean knowing that next section, he's gonna talk about learning, life-long learning and coaching and things like that, what do you think he meant by this word development?   0:08:10.1 DL: I think just that, that the development of the person. I've had students in classes that I didn't hear this one girl I had in class she didn't make a sound, didn't ever... You'd call on her she just look down at her desk. So I quickly learned, I can't really do that, I can't single her out, she was so embarrassed about that, and it was finally about January or February, one year, about six months into the school year, she was in a group, and they were going around the group and you could either participate or just say pass, and she couldn't even say pass. She would... It would just get to be her turn and all the kids just knew, Okay, well, we just waited a little bit here and then we're just gonna go on because she's not gonna say anything, and I'll never forget that it got to be her turn and all of a sudden, she looked up and she said, in the softest voice. Well, I think that... Around the kids and they were just like, everybody froze and it was like, oh my God, she speaks. And don't say anything, don't do anything, don't intimidate her in any way or she'll never speak again.   0:09:24.8 DL: But this was a girl that two weeks later, I had her giving a multimedia presentation in front of corporate heads at Motorola Corporation, and I'll never forget at the end of that that one of the managers came up to me and said, "Where do you get these kids?" Well, there's no way that he could see a nine months process in place, and this child had come in, and in many cases, sometimes people would have just written her off, but just gradually, tiny little challenges and getting the group to understand that their job was to support people that... You're always gonna have an issue or a problem going on. Well, that all came from this point, number three, of Deming's right here.   0:10:17.1 DL: And so when I would take students out to do presentations, we would talk about this very point, and everybody had a job of supporting everybody else. So when somebody got up to do a presentation, there was somebody running their video, there was somebody running this, there was somebody making sure their sound was correct, there was somebody who was doing this. And every time a student got up, there was this huge support network, and I will not forget, I went to a major state department, education state department at a capital in the US, and these kids gave a presentation, and I had just tons of people in education department, coming up to me saying the same thing, "Where do you get these people." And I thought, wow, you don't really even know the background of these students, some of them, we had to take them downtown and show them a stop light and go over the rules of the stop light, they'd never seen one before in high school, and these are the very same kids that are giving this presentation in front of all these people. So...   0:11:26.4 DL: To me, that's what he's talking about here, is getting everybody to work together, challenging them different levels, giving them experiences where they're learning new things and working together, but you're actually... You're creating a team, you're creating an interactive team, and it's a conscious effort that you're doing that, it just doesn't happen organically or by itself, it's a conscious effort that every day you're thinking about how can I optimize this team and move people forward? And if you do that and you think like that, pretty soon you have this amazing team of people.   0:12:10.2 DL: So I remember, I think in one of the videos that The Deming Library, there's a superintendent that I worked with in Texas for years, and he was talking about. People would come to his district and experience being around his staff, big staff, 3000 teachers in his district, and invariably superintendent from outside the district would say to him, "Where do you get these people?" Even in a system that big, and the first couple of times that would happen, he would just look at them kind of blankly and just say, "Well, I get them the same place you do, but I guess we just go about working together differently and thinking about supporting each other differently."   0:12:58.5 DL: The other thing I found out that through this process is that you have to be very patient because whether you're talking about students in a classroom whether you're talking about employees or entire student body or whatever it might be, you have to be patient that they're gonna come around over time, if given the right amount of support and challenge through that process. And be very cognizant of the small little ways that people are actually are moving forward and they are learning and they are feeling like they're supported, because if you don't have a very supportive classroom, you're not gonna get kids to take risks. You don't get kids to take risks, they're not gonna learn new things, they're not gonna try new things, and basically the only ones that achieve in an environment like that are the ones that really didn't need to be in the class in the first place, probably they could already aced everything that you are gonna have them do in that class, but you have to always remember that your job is to optimize the system and as... Get as many of these people to the highest level possible in the time that you have to work with them.   0:14:14.4 DL: And people that do that are very profound, and that's why Deming calls it Profound Knowledge, because when you see people like that, you are truly amazed that this can go on, so...   0:14:29.0 AS: One last thing for me is, why did he need to write this point, it seems so obvious that we should be trying to get the most out of everybody and get the uniqueness out of each person and bring that into value to our system, to our customer. I'm just curious, why isn't this being done?   0:14:56.1 DL: He's saying that, this is not about ranking people, so if you think your job is to rank people, you're not gonna be thinking like this, you're not gonna be thinking that, oh no, my job is not just to find out the weak ones and get rid of them or the people who can't do what they need to do, my job is to develop everybody as quickly as possible, giving them new opportunities and being supported within that organization. When you do that, you get amazing creativity at the same time. Because creativity gets shut down any time people feel intimidating... Intimidated, those kinds of things. This is also where bullying comes in, so if you're setting up the classroom where you're more concerned about ranking and rating people and grading people, then you are about optimizing the whole... Everybody's learning in that class. You're really opening it up for bullying and all kinds of things that go on. I've run into so many examples of parents telling me that all of a sudden their child was doing really good the year before, and all of a sudden this year, they're in a class and they just... They wanna quit, they wanna give up, they wanna get out, whatever it might be, and people wanna blame it on bullying, but you have to realize that 98-99% of the bullying is systemic.   0:16:33.8 DL: So the degree to which you have that going on in your organization, you need to be thinking about, okay, what am I doing that's actually encouraging bullying. And when you're grading people to 1/1000 of a point and ranking them and holding people up as being superior to other people, and things like that you're gonna get bullying, because the only way to exceed an organization that's like that is to put somebody else down. If I tear somebody else down, then somehow psychologically, that makes me look better, kind of thing, or even to the point of I'm gonna get rid of them 'cause they're a threat to my ranking and what I look like. And so... It's deep, it's profound. That's what the word profound means is deep. When you think about it in an organization, the last point I would wanna make about this is that because he's talking about your role as a manager, well, if you take this on as that, this is your job, I will guarantee you, you will be happier. You'll come every day, when you meet those students, you're just much happier about being with them because you're supporting them, but they're supporting too. They're supporting you as well.   0:18:01.5 DL: I used to do low ropes course training, and some of you may have heard of things like trust falls and things like that, where you fall back and somebody catches you, but we did a lot of those kinds of things with teachers and students to get teachers to learn to trust their students, and I'll never forget, I was in a middle school one time and I had taught all the teachers about how to run certain events and said, okay, well, here's how you do the first trust fall and then you can go all the way up to having somebody stand on a table and have all the students lined up behind them, and then they have to really trust and fall back and have the students catch him. Well, I was just kinda going around to all the groups, making sure everybody was safe and they were doing things correctly, etcetera, and I came by this one group in the cafeteria and this pretty veteran lady a teacher, she was really great at getting all her students that were in the group to do this trust fall and they well, clap and they were all happy about catching somebody and supporting them and stuff, and then this one little girl turns to her and she said, now is your turn.   0:19:12.0 DL: What this teacher came up with, oh, well, it's this, I'm too old to this, I can't do that, and they just let her go on with all these excuses, and finally one of the little middle school kids said, "Oh, but you have to." And you could just see the blood drain out of her face, but everything was... She had to step up on this step and then step up onto the table every time she would make an incremental leap in performance, kids would cheer like crazy. And she finally did it, it took a long time, but she finally crossed her arms and closed her eyes and fell back in those middle school kids caught her.   0:19:58.2 DL: And she burst into tears. And she told me later, she said, "You know, when I hit those kids hands my first thought was, in 20 years of experience, I had never really trusted my students with anything." And I thought, oh that was amazing. And I checked in with her a months later and a year later, and everything she said my whole life changed because of that kind of experience. So either you lead and you do these kinds of things to optimize the group and the diversity of the group that you have then and teach people to work together and support each other, or you end up leaving them up to their own devices, and then you end up managing the behavior that it produces all the time, because I can tell you that teachers that work in this kind of environment and really work diligently to optimize the diversity within their classrooms, they're not dealing with behavior problems, they're not dealing with bullying, they're not dealing with all the kinds of things that a lot of teachers think that that's their job. I'm supposed to keep track of all that and punish people that are doing it and etcetera. And Deming would say, well, you don't know what your job is.   0:21:23.2 AS: Well, let's wrap it up by thinking about optimizing diversity with the idea that the objective of a manager is really to get the most out of people and to get them to work as a team, and I think about it in the business world, it's the same thing and bullying that happens in schools, goes into the business world, and when you start ranking people, you start... And you have a scarce reward, you know, it just turns into pitting people against each other. You've talked about a couple of tools, one of them is the huddles, which is one way a morning meeting or a huddle, a very short morning meeting to check in with everybody and the value of that, and the second tool you talked about was "fear and a hat" and anonymously putting fear into a hat and then discussing those, sharing those in a group. You talked about the importance of supporting each other and working together to overcome challenges, and ultimately the idea of getting the most out of people and out of the system is also about creativity and getting that creativity, you never know where things will go. Is there anything you would add to that, wrap up?   0:22:38.1 DL: No, I think that's done well with that, except the final thing we talk a lot about... Deming talking about people have a right to joy in their work. Well, the same thing in schools, students have a right to joy in their learning, and if it's mudville every day and I hate going to school, there's something systemic probably going on that needs to be looked at and understood. And it all depends on the largest system that you have to work with it. So you may not have a supporting school, but it doesn't mean you can't optimize your classroom and these 30 students that you see every single day.   0:23:22.4 AS: Well, David, on behalf of everyone at the Deming Institute, I wanna thank you again for this discussion for listeners remember to go to Deming.org to continue your journey. Listeners, can learn more about David at langfordlearning.com. This is your froggy host, Andrew Stotz, and I will leave you with one of my favorite quotes from Dr. Deming, and it's very appropriate for this discussion, "People are entitled to joy in work."

Education is often touted as data- or evidence-driven. But in this discussion, John Dues contends that educational data is often fiction, given how easy it is to distort, both via the inputs and outputs and through manipulation. 0:00:02.6 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 John Dues, who is part of the new generation of the educators striving to apply Dr. Deming's principles to unleash student joy in learning. The topic for today is Data is Meaningless Without Context. John, take it away.   0:00:28.3 John Dues: Yeah, thanks for having me back, Andrew. I'm thinking a lot about educational data, and I think about how it's often presented, and I think so often, what we're actually doing with our educational data is what I call writing fiction, which is taking a lot of liberties with the data that comes into our system, whether it's state testing data or some other type of data that gets reported out to the public, and we often sort of manipulate that data or distort that data in a way that paints our organization or our school system or our state in a positive light, and I think we do that sometimes at the detriment of actually working to improve those organizations or those systems because we spend so much time trying to paint this positive picture instead of just putting the data out there.   0:01:26.3 AS: And it's interesting you talked... One of the interesting things about what you're saying is that it could be accurate and good data, but it's just the context or the structure of how it's presented makes it meaningless.   0:01:39.9 JD: Yeah, we try so hard to sort of paint it in this positive light to make it look like we're doing a good job. Everybody wants to do a good job, but I think we often do that at the detriment of our systems.   0:01:54.7 AS: One of the things that made me think about it, in the financial world, we have a code of ethics, and that is basically that... Particularly for CFA charter holders, financial analysts, that you have to present a complete picture of your performance. So if you have 10 customers that you're managing their money and one of them, you really bombed out and you decide you're gonna do the average of the nine that you did well on and then go out to your clients and say, "This is my performance," that's a very... You have an obligation to accurately represent your performance. And when I think about it in all the charts and graphs that people are making in education all around, I would say that most people probably are just, I would call it CYA, cover your ass type of charts [laughter] of, "How do we make this look good?"   0:02:43.9 JD: Yeah, I think... I read somewhere that there's sort of three ways you can respond to your data. You can actually work to improve the system, which would be a positive, and then the other two ways are two forms of a negative, one is you could distort the system itself, or you could actually distort the data. And a lot of times, there's not sort of a nefarious motivation underneath that distortion, but there's sort of, again, this desire to paint your organization or your system in this positive light. So sometimes they're straight up unethical behavior or cheating, but most of the time, that's not what I'm seeing and that's actually not what I'm talking about here today. It's more of this sort of taking liberties, writing fiction. "Okay, we declined from two years ago, but it's up from last year." Those types of sort of distortions of the data that I think are fairly common in education sector, probably all sectors too, so.   0:03:49.9 JD: I think... Maybe I'll share my screen for the folks that have video and I'll talk through it for the listeners that don't have video, but one of the things I often think of and focus on is state testing data, because so many people are looking at that data all the way from State Departments of Education, the school system, the individual schools, the individual teachers and classrooms with their students, and then of course, families get these state testing reports as well.   0:04:23.8 JD: And a handful of years ago, I was looking at one of these reports from the Ohio Department of Education and sort of picture this fancy, glossy, colorful PDF. It's got this big headline on it, it says, "Ohio students continue to show improved achievement in academic content areas." Then it's got a table with all the state tests, all the different grade levels, and three columns for three different years of data. And then in the last column, there's these up green arrows for where there's been improvement from year over year and then these red down arrows for where there's been a decline, and I was thinking to myself, "Well, in some of these areas, one, some of the percentage changes are so small that just on that... In that realm, they're sort of meaningless, like fifth grade science goes from 68.3% in one year and it goes up to 68.5% in another year. That's essentially a rounding error when you're talking about 100,000 or so students that are taking the test. I think calling that improvement is a stretch at best.   0:05:39.0 JD: And then I was focusing on third grade reading specifically because that's such a critical area. In Ohio, there's actually a third grade reading guarantee, so if you don't pass the test, there's the potential there that you could get held back in third grade, so there's a lot of focus on that data. So I was reading on in that state education department document. It said, "Well, third grade did see this decrease this year, but when you look back two years, it actually had... Third graders actually had an increase of proficiency." So again, you actually have a decline from this previous school year to the more recent school year in this document, and they're still making this claim because if you go back two years versus this most recent year, you do see improvement, and so you start to think to yourself, "Well, what is improvement? Do we have a definition of improvement? And if so, what has to be present?"   0:06:43.4 JD: And a few years ago, I came across this definition in sort of a seminal work in our area called The Improvement Guide, and the author sort of outlined a definition for improvement, and it sort of has these three components, and this made a lot of sense to me. If you're gonna claim improvement, you have to, one, alter how work or activity is done or the makeup of a tool. So you had to change something. Basically change something about the work you're doing. That change had to produce these visible positive differences in results relative to historical norms, and then the third thing is it had to have a lasting impact. And so when I go back and I think about that state testing data or really any type of data, you start to ask this question, Is this really improvement, or again, is this writing fiction? Is this not really improvement, but we're twisting the numbers to sort of fit our narrative?   0:07:45.0 JD: So when we think about that state testing data, do we have knowledge for how worker activity has been altered systematically. And if I can't point to that, then how am I gonna take the so-called improvement and bring it to other places in the state that may not have had those same improvements? Do I have these visible positive differences in results going back and comparing to historical norms, not just last year or even two years ago, but five or six or eight or 10 years worth of data. And then have I been able to sustain that improvement? Has there been a lasting impact? Have I been able to hold the gains? And if I haven't been able to do those three things, point to what we change compared to historical norms and then sustain that improvement, I would argue that we haven't really brought about improvement. We can't claim that we've improved our system.   0:08:46.9 AS: It's interesting. Before we go on the numbers that you were showing, roughly, the average there is something like 60%. What's the 40? That 60% is what? And that means 40% is not that.   0:09:07.7 JD: Yeah, I'll go back. So when you're thinking about state test scores, most states have some type of threshold, like we have this goal that X percent of our students are gonna be considered proficient on any given test. So in Ohio, that threshold is 80%. So the state says, in order to meet the benchmark, any given school needs to have 80% of its students, let's say, on third grade reading test have to meet this proficiency standard. And so what we saw in this particular data is that in the 2015-16 school year, 54.9% of the kids met that proficiency threshold. The following year in '16-17, 63.8% of the kids met that threshold, and then in the most recent year in this particular testing document in '17-18 61.2% of the kids were proficient. So just about 40...   0:10:04.8 AS: So even if it was a sizable increase, it wasn't just statistically insignificant, it's still roughly 40% of the students aren't proficient. No matter even what the government says about what's the minimum standard, it would be hard to really argue too much about improvement when you're so low. [chuckle]   0:10:32.8 JD: That's right, yeah. And that's what you often see in these types of these documents. So 40%, a significant minority of students are not proficient on the third grade reading test, and 60% are, and there's these incremental increases and decreases depending on the year that you're looking at.   0:10:54.6 AS: It's like the Titanic heading for an iceberg and you say, "I've turned the ship one degree, but we're still gonna hit the iceberg."   0:11:01.9 JD: But we're still gonna hit, yep, yep.   [chuckle]   0:11:04.3 AS: Alright, keep going.   0:11:06.0 JD: Yeah. So I think what's really important thinking about data in context, when you start actually stepping back and saying, "Okay, let's look at third grade reading over the course of 16 or 17 years versus three years," this very different story emerges. Part of that story is that context, so what has changed about Ohio's third grade state reading system over the course of those years? So if you go back all the way back to the 2003-2004 school year, you see Ohio is giving a particular test called the Ohio Achievement test, and you see as that's administered each year for six or seven or eight years, the results are sort of bouncing around this average, somewhere in the neighborhood of 77-78%. Then you have a change in about the 2011-12 school year. Now, we're given this test called the Ohio Achievement Assessment, but it's pretty similar, just the name has changed, the test itself is still the same, and you see basically these very similar results. And then all of a sudden, you sort of fast forward to the 14-15 school year. Anybody that's an educator from back in that time period, they'll sort of recognize that now we're getting these new common core standards, these more rigorous college and career-aligned standards, we start giving these new tests.   0:12:38.7 JD: So Ohio switches to the PARCC Test for the '14-15 school year for one year, and even then, the test itself changed pretty significantly in terms of format, but you still see pretty similar results that you've seen for the past 11, 12, 13 years. Then all of a sudden, that next school year, that 2015-16 school year, so that's the first year from that testing document, you see the results drop off a cliff and you start thinking, "Well, what happened to third graders?"   0:13:11.7 AS: Right. From, let's just say about 77 down to the next data point is 55.   0:13:18.6 JD: Yeah, just under 55% now. So you have this just about a 20, 22% drop in one school year. Now, the test did change again. Now it's called The Ohio State Test, it was called the PARCC Test, but the test itself, the format itself isn't probably what brought about that precipitous drop. Instead, what's happened is the legislature in Ohio has changed what it means to be proficient on the test. So basically, each sort of proficiency level has a cut score, and the cut score has increased for an individual child to be considered efficient. So the kids are no different in '14-15 than the new crop of third graders are in '15-16, but what has changed is what you need to do to be called proficient, and so because of that change, you see this huge drop in test scores along with this new test, and then over the course of the next three years, you sort of see an increased in test scores, and then a decrease in test scores, and then an increase in test scores, and then a decrease in test scores. And the Department of Education is claiming that there's improvement happening, but really what's happened is a whole new system has been created. You really change that third grade reading state testing system into this brand new system, whereas the average had been bouncing around 77% or so. Now you sort of have this new average bouncing around that 60% mark.   0:14:56.9 JD: And again, the kids are no different from those previous years, it's just the test and what you need to do to be considered proficient has changed. And the problem is, is that if you don't look at data like this, if you don't sort of...   0:15:11.5 AS: As a run chart or as a continuum of genuine information that's coming out of the system as measured by some measurement style.   0:15:21.0 JD: Yeah, and annotate it with point to the year that the new test goes into effect, point to the year that the definition of proficiency has changed, point to the year that schools had to switch from paper and pencil test to computer-based test because just a year or two or three after, those sort of memories become really fuzzy, that context becomes very fuzzy and you start to forget, "What year did we switch to computer test? What year did the standard switch? What year did the proficiency cut score switch?" And so if you don't have that sort of running record, that gets completely disconnected, the data gets disconnected from the context, and then you're likely not to make sound decisions because of that lack of context.   0:16:09.2 AS: And maybe I'll raise a few points here about the chart that we're looking at, and this chart is fascinating to me. The first thing that I think about, as a financial analyst in the stock market, basically, if anything is wrong in my chart and in my data and then I put my money down on that, it's gonna get taken from me in the stock market. And I have to really be very rigorous in how I'm looking at data.   0:16:39.1 AS: And when I look at this, I just think this is just so full of so many different ways that could go wrong in the way that things are measured, the way people are incentivized, those types of things. And the other thing that you realize is what you're showing here is that it's a description of the system. It's trying to describe things that are going on, and you're trying to describe certain points, which you can't do in charts that are... Bar charts and things like that. A line chart or a continuous point chart or a run chart really illustrates that. But also I think... I just realized that so much of almost every bit of charting is meaningless or just... Or is even giving you a wrong signal. There's so many things that I think about that and I'm just curious, 'cause you also said something before to me about how maybe people just don't pay much attention to it and then they just accept it for what it says and they don't go and look at the data, think about it and go into more detail. Those are some of the things that come out of my head as I'm looking at this, but what else do you want us to take away from this?   0:17:58.0 JD: Yeah, I think one thing, without the context and the annotations on a line chart or a run chart, data shown over time, you do forget. That's one thing. That's just human nature. You're gonna forget. I'm not gonna remember what happened 10 years ago in my testing system. I'm probably not gonna remember what happened five or even three years ago. The second thing I would say is that the vast majority of data that gets presented is in a table or a spreadsheet, and that data is usually what I would call limited comparison, so this year's data compared to last year's data or this month data compared to the same month last year. And so we're usually trying to draw conclusions with just two or maybe three data points, and that gets even worse when we sort of layer sort of a color-coded stoplight type system where we label certain data red and certain data yellow and certain data green and then we look for the red and the green data, even though the differences between those two, the scales that we use to to assign those colors is often arbitrary and meaningless.   0:19:11.0 AS: One last thing I would add to it, and I think you're gonna show us a good, an example of a good use of data, but also you have to ask the question, Are the people who are preparing this data incentivized to produce a particular outcome, and when you understand the incentives involved, it helps you also understand where it could go wrong.   0:19:33.2 JD: Well, I think that's exactly right. I think what happens oftentimes is the state testing data is a part of an a accountability system, and the point of an accountability system is to sort the good from the bad and to issue sanctions and rewards, and we sort of point to that data and say, Well, your scores are low, you need to improve. And so we sort of conflate this idea of accountability data or accountability goals and improvement goals, and those are really two different things, and so you brought up sort of this idea of CYA or cover your ass type stuff, and when we point towards accountability data, that's what people are gonna do because they are being held accountable for this data, they're gonna cover their ass. If we're truly using data for improvement, there's a completely different mindset. For one, the data tends to be local and well-known to the people that are using it, and if there's not sort of sanctions tied to it, then there is this ability to be more honest and candid about that data because we're using it for improvement purposes rather than using it for accountability purposes.   0:20:51.9 AS: Okay, that's great, great description. Alright, keep going. What do you wanna show us next?   0:20:56.8 JD: Yeah, I think this last chart. And so for the listeners, I've taken the five most recent years of third grade reading test data and put it in an actual process behavior chart, or some people call them control charts, and the advantage here is like the run chart, we're seeing data over time, we're seeing the variation, we're seeing the data move up and down over time, but with the process behavior chart, we're adding these upper and lower natural process limits or some people call them control limits and define, sort of, predict the future of what's gonna happen in this particular system, as long as things move along at the current steady state, and so remember, I was gonna say, just remember in that third grade reading data, and they sort of said, "Well, we improved, and then we did decline this most recent year, but if you look back two years, it's actually an improvement," but actually what you see is, if you play that out over five years, you see the data increase and then decrease, and then increase and then decrease, and that's a very sort of common occurrence with this type of data where there's this natural variation, it becomes obvious when you plot the dots over time, and you really see what is happening with this data is it's just sort of moving about an average, about a 60% proficiency rate.   0:22:35.1 JD: Some years it's a little lower than that, some years it's a little above that, but it's all within the limits of the system, so that tells us that all of that's present is common cause variation, just sort of this every day sort of expected up and down in the data, there's sort of nothing special that's happened to use Deming's terminology, there are no special causes present that would be... So there's these signals we can look for based on patterns in the data, but that's not to say that we're satisfied with this third grade Reading System. So to your point earlier, that average proficiency rate for the state, so we look at all of the third graders in the state of Ohio, and they took this test over the course of five years, about 60% of the kids were proficient in any given year. So that means 40%, two of the five kids that are taking this test are not proficient. So we have a stable but unsatisfactory system, but because there's no special causes, no special events to study or point to what we need to do is improve that third grade reading system across the state.   0:23:47.0 JD: And so that's a completely different mindset than pointing to a single data point saying, "Oh, we've gone down, what are you gonna do, or issue sanctions to this school or to this teacher", that's not the way to improve. What we need to do is improve the system of third grade reading instruction across the state, so a completely different mindset.   0:24:08.1 AS: That's a great explanation. The idea that I get from you is the idea of taking all of the emotion out of it, and let's say how do we use this to improve? And what you're describing here is, and what you've done is you've taken the most recent period of time, now, some people would say, "Oh well, you should look at it over a longer period of time", but what you've described is that the system has changed.   0:24:30.1 JD: That's right.   0:24:31.9 AS: There's been some significant change, and so it may not make sense to look at that prior period, so now you brought it down to the most recent period, what's operating under the same type of system, and what you find is that it's pretty much random variation, which I'm even surprised for 2020, 2021, given COVID and all that, I would have thought that instead of coming down to 53 or so, that that would have come down to 40 or something, just because now maybe it does in the next year, I don't know, but... Okay, that's a great illustration. Now, you had an example to try to show the good use of a chart.   0:25:11.2 JD: Yeah, I have a personal example. I can sort of talk through, this one is a little busier, but I think what I'm trying to illustrate is one, I think when I think of continual improvement, I think that is the same thing as what I would call intermediate statistical methods, that's equivalent to continual improvement. Those two things are the same thing. So what I mean is that in order to bring about improvement, it's very, very powerful to use one of these charts, whether it's a run chart or a process behavior chart, but the point is display your data over time and see how it's performing, and then what you can do then is run these systematic tests, this is sort of that theory of knowledge component of Deming System of Profound Knowledge, specifically the Plan-Do-Study-Act cycle. So you sort of run this structured test to try something within your system, in this case, if you can see the video of this, I'm displaying my weight over the course of three or four months, and you kind of see that over time, it's slowly shifting down, but there's a lot of ups and downs in this data as I'm trying various things, so I have PDSA 1 marked with a vertical dotted line, I gave PDSA two marked with a vertical dotted line and PDSA three marked with a vertical dotted line.   0:26:46.5 AS: And for the listeners that don't know what PDSA is, it's Plan-Do-Study-Act. It's that cycle.   0:26:53.0 JD: Right, Plan-Do-Study-Act cycle, these scientific tests where I'm trying something, maybe it's related to my eating habits, or maybe it's related to my workout habits, or maybe it's sort of a combination of those two, but I'm writing those things down in this Plan-Do-Study-Act cycle. And then the second thing, I'll describe for those that are only listening, I'm also annotating when special events have happened that then lead to signals in my data. So for one, I have in December, towards the end of December, it's probably not hard to guess I have these holiday cheat days marked because you see this jump in weight that goes above the sort of upper limit, which says to me, "Oh, wait, something so different has happened in my system, and that I really need to attend to that", right. Now, if I had waited until February 21st, the day we're recording this, to look back and see this highest data point in my system over the last three or four months, I probably would not remember what caused that. Because I annotate it as it happened, I have this picture, I have this narrative tied to my data that allows me to think back and reflect and figure out what happened to make the weight in this case jump off the page. Over time, what I'm trying to do is both shrink the limits, so lessen the variation around the average, as well as again, in this case, it's weight, so a decrease is good, so I'm also trying to bring that average data down over time and so the idea would be the same no matter what type of data, whether it was those state test scores, whether it's attendance rates, whatever it is, homework completion, whatever it is that you're trying to improve, this sort of same combination of understanding variation, combining it with these Plan-Do-Study-Act cycles. This is the method, This is continual improvement, I think in a nutshell.   0:29:00.2 AS: Fantastic. Alright, I think that illustrates it well, and maybe if you stop sharing that screen and then I'm gonna show you something, John, and for the viewers, they'll be able to see it, but for the listeners, I'll explain it. I'm gonna walk over to my other part of my room here for a second, I'm gonna grab the chart that I fill out each day.   0:29:26.9 JD: Oh my.   0:29:27.8 AS: And this is my chart, and for the listeners out there, I'm holding up a big chart paper, and it's related to my top three goals. I ripped it by... But my goals are related to sales, to health as in yoga and doing exercise every day and my sleep patterns. And I'm tracking how many hours I work on each one, or how many hours I slept, how much time I did on yoga, and I'm not even putting in any kind of limits into it. What I like to do is to track data and just observe, don't try to think about it, don't try to work towards it, just chart it and start observing, and one of my goals is to sleep more. I wanna sleep seven hours, and on average I sleep about six, and I don't have a solution for it, but I know that charting it and observing it and starting to think about it just raises the awareness and gets me thinking, "Okay, I'm far away from my goal, what do I need to do"? So charting is just fantastic, and I think that what you've described is a great way of understanding it.   0:30:34.0 JD: Yeah, I think when you read Deming stuff or listen to him talk, there's often these sort of short phrases that he'll refer to or say, and over time you start to understand what he was saying in just a few words, these powerful statements. When I think of looking at data in a chart over time, Deming said, "Knowledge has temporal spread", four words, knowledge has temporal spread, so what does that mean? So it's not until... Sorry, it's not until you understand or look at data unfolding over time and how it's moving about, how it's varying from point to point, it's not until you see that over the course of 20 or 25 or 30 points that you really start to know how your system is performing, and I think that's really what I was trying to show with the state testing data, with this personal example in a process behavior chart. I think that's the power of the Deming methods when you put all this together.   0:31:43.7 AS: Fantastic. Well, let me try to wrap up a couple of things, we start off with the title of our discussion, which is Data is Meaningless without Context, and you were asking the question like, Are we really improving or are we just writing fiction here? And I was thinking about a lot of cases, people are of massaging the meaning of it. And then another thing that you raised was the idea of what is improvement, do we have a definition? What does it mean? And then you reference the improvement guide book, which talked about the three things that are critical for being real improvement, first that it alters something, second that it produces visible results, and third, that it has a lasting impact. I wrote after that, I was taking notes and I thought, Is it repeatable? Was kind of what they're saying, but I think from a business perspective, and maybe from an education perspective, the better word is it replicable, can it be implemented at other places and brought the same type of improvement? And then finally, I'll wrap up my summary of what you said with your discussion about accountability data versus improvement data, and how improvement data, it's important not necessarily to tie it to incentives, that data is really for how do we understand the system and how do we think about improving that system through a PDSA and other things. Is there anything else you would add to that summary?   0:33:11.5 JD: Yeah, I think that this idea of what's the purpose of the data? Is it for accountability? Or is it for improvement? I think that it sort of gets at one of Deming's 14 points, which is drive out fear, he said, "Where there is fear, there will be wrong figures", and I think that really ties to that idea of Well, what's the purpose of this data? If there's fear and people are thinking that they're gonna be sanctioned in one way or another, then you're not gonna get correct figures, that's just sort of human nature, and I think that's why all this stuff sort of fits together, and you need the sort of full picture about the four components of the system of profound knowledge, the 14 points like drive out fear. And it's bringing all those things together at the leadership level to create the conditions for improvement to actually occur in an organization.   0:34:04.7 AS: Yeah, and I'd imagine as your organization really improves, you'll kinda laugh at all the charts and graphs you used to produce or you used to talk about, and now you're really making use and making data meaningful. So John, I think that's a great discussion. And on behalf of everyone at the Deming Institute, I wanna thank you again for it. And for listeners, remember to go to Deming.org to continue your journey. This is your host Andrew Stotz, and I'll leave you with one of my favorite quotes from Dr. Deming, "People are entitled to joy in work".

The podcast discusses the concept of quality and how different experts have varying perspectives on it. It explores the importance of going beyond meeting requirements and adopting a gas gauge mindset in organizations. The podcast also delves into the hero mentality and the need for prevention, as well as the importance of focusing on the customer in business choices. It emphasizes the misconception that quality only means meeting requirements and highlights the need for organizations to shift their focus towards improvement opportunities.

In this episode, Andrew and David discuss how managers can help people to see themselves as components in a system, working with those before and after them in the process of educating children - for the benefit of all. This podcast series is inspired by chapter 6 in The New Economics, Andrew and David apply Dr. Deming's 14 points for "the role of a manager of people after transformation" to the world of education. (Note: this is not about Deming's 14 Points for Management.) TRANSCRIPT 0:00:02.3 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 am continuing my discussion with David P. Langford, who has devoted his life to applying Dr. Deming's philosophy to education, and he offers us his practical advice for implementation. Today's topic is cooperation with proceeding stages in education. And ladies and gentlemen, we are going through a checklist or a list that Dr. Deming put in his The New Economics book on page 86 of the third edition, or page 125 of the second edition. And the title of this list is Role of a Manager of People.   0:00:45.4 AS: This is the new role of a manager of people after transformation. The first point on the list, which we previously talked about was, number one, a manager understands and conveys to his people the meaning of a system. He explains the aims of the system, he teaches his people to understand how the work of the group supports these aims. And today we will be talking about number two. He helps his people to see themselves as components in a system to work in cooperation with preceeding stages and with following stages toward optimization of the efforts of all stages toward achievement of the aim. David, take it away.   0:01:26.7 David Langford: There you go. If you understand that, then the podcast is over. [laughter] So yeah, I think the profound nature of Deming's work was his ability to take these simple concepts and just state them. And for me, working in education, people, they start to get the philosophy and they start to understand Deming, et cetera, and they always wanna know where to start or what to do. Well, here you go. These are all steps of what to do, where to start. So the last podcast we were talking about the development of an aim. And so you... The first question you have to decide is, do I have an aim of the system? And is that being communicated? And we talked a lot about that going through that. So the second point actually feeds on that, and remember this whole section is the role of the manager of people, see, what are you doing with the people in the system?   0:02:25.7 DL: And so this whole point is about understanding a systems' perspective in any organization. But in education, it's really clear. And we've said several times that the product of education is the learning itself. It's not students. And I think people really get screwed up on that, when they start to think about that, "We're producing students." No, you're not. Yes, students are going through the process, but they're gaining a level of learning that's gonna, that's getting them closer and closer to the aim of the system, right? And so those things are measurable, and then you can begin to understand those. So what he is talking about here in step number two is... Often when I work with educators, no matter what level, university, K through 12, whatever it might be, I'll throw out the idea that, let's say you're a 10th grade math teacher.   0:03:32.8 DL: What's the one thing you could be doing this year that would significantly increase the performance of your students next year? And a lot of times people say, you know, better technology and they'll go through this whole list of all these kinds of things they could do. But that's what Deming is talking about here. You could keep right on doing the same curriculum, the same thing you've done for 15 years, but if you start working with preceding stages, where did these students learn math before they got to you? Right? And so if you're a 10th grade math teacher, one of the best things you could do is start working with the ninth grade math teachers. Like going over, what are they doing, how are they teaching it? What's happening? How are they going through stuff?   0:04:22.4 DL: And you're actually preventing your own problems. Later in The New Economics, Deming talks about that prevention is the key to quality. And that's what he is talking about here. If I am going upstream in the process, so to speak, and preventing my own problems, right? I could actually just keep doing the exact same thing I've always done. I'm gonna get better results because I'm now preventing problems that I used to have to work with all the time. And some people say, well, you know, our students are coming from outside of our organization and I don't have the chance to do that. Well, you sort of think of a class that you're teaching as a system in and of itself.   0:05:06.7 DL: So what I could do is the first week of school is not gonna be, you know, really getting to the subject at all, right? I'm gonna become my own preceding stage [laughter], I'm gonna make sure that all these students have the same base knowledge that I need them to have in order for the rest of my teaching, the rest of my curriculum to actually work really well. That might take a week, it might take two weeks, but it'd be worth it to you [chuckle] to go back and do that rather than just keep on doing the same thing and expecting a different result and then putting pressure on people to make, sort of make them think it's their fault that they're not achieving.   0:05:48.9 AS: One question I have just because I'm not familiar with education so much, more business, if I think about business and I think about the preceding stages. You've got a manager in that department and he's got his own motivations, or she got their motivations, they've got their KPIs, and they've got all these things that are preventing cooperation. But it must not be true in education, David, when people are so dedicated to helping young people, it must be that the ninth grade math teacher is absolutely ready and willing to cooperate with the 10th grade math teacher. Wouldn't that be?   0:06:25.4 DL: Oh, when I started working with schools I often would have teachers come up to me at breaks and stuff and say, you know, I taught with this guy across the hall for 11 years, and I can't tell you anything that he does over there, or she does over there. The silo mechanisms of, you know, close my door, do my thing and don't communicate was just rampant. And it's still largely that way. And especially in a lot of universities, just people working in silos, you know, the college of business has no idea what the College of Education is doing and vice versa and so on and so forth. And you begin to break down those barriers. Deming talks about that later too. But you break down those barriers between departments, you start to see everybody wins. Student are better trained. The whole system seems to work together.   0:07:24.6 DL: I remember when we first started having visitors come to our high school where we'd been working with Dr. Deming and trying to implement these things for several years, after about three or four days, I'd have people that were visiting would say, you know, everybody here seems to know what everybody else is doing. And I'd say, isn't that the way it is in your school? And they said, no, I have no idea what other people are doing. And so I had to really start to think about, well, what had we done? Well, one of the things we'd done was we kept reiterating this point, right? Work with preceding stages, understand what's going on.   0:08:08.3 DL: We actually formally set up time where you could actually get together as a department or get together and look at a whole curriculum throughout the entire system. Now, some districts have over the last 30, 40 years, you know, they'll have a K through 12 curriculum alignment, right? And that's getting towards this point so that we're all working in preceding stages. So I don't have fourth graders, fourth grade teachers spending time doing stuff that has already been done in second or third grade, right? And the kids are just going, you know, they might be really dutiful kids and they just don't say anything, but they're just bored out of their minds because they already did this, right?   0:08:54.7 AS: When you were speaking, it made me realize the importance of step number one, about identifying the aim and getting everybody on board with that aim and communicating that and helping people see their role in that aim. Otherwise, there's like no incentive for people, oh, why are we having another meeting to talk about this? You know, what's the point? Well, when the aim is clear, all of a sudden the intrinsic motivation just explodes.   0:09:19.0 DL: Yeah. I mean, my own children is a good example. Remember one of my kids came to me and said, you know, dad, this is the third year we've done an insect collection in science. So were they really good at collecting insects by the end of the three years? Well, yeah, but they could have had a much higher knowledge about insects or something else that was going on rather than just this mundane project of going out and collecting insects and categorizing them.   0:09:51.4 AS: One of the questions I have, there's two points to this that I was thinking about. One is kind of the academic freedom of a teacher to be able to, you know, particularly in a university, they want to feel like I can do and say what I want. The second one is that they're so damn busy trying to prepare their lectures that it's hard. David, cooperation is difficult to bring a system to optimization. You realize like one of the reasons why people don't do it is it's just hard. It's way more coordination. Tell me your thoughts on that.   0:10:24.2 DL: You just described why Deming calls it Profound Knowledge, so the places that it is happening, right? Or making it, making sure that it's important. Setting aside time, talking about specifically how we can do that. You get a new professor in, you got economics 101 and Economics 102, right? So are they aligned? And the benefit in the end is for the students, right? Because they're not going through the very same thing that they just went through in economics 101, right? And the students will recognize things like, wow, these people are actually really working together. They really understand what's going on.   0:11:11.2 DL: And if I'm teaching economics 201 and I can constantly refer back to now when you took 101, I know that you went through this exercise and you went through this and you had this kind of experience, and this is how we're gonna build on that in 201 and... Right? So that's what Deming is talking is about here, is that if I carve out that time to work with preceding stages, the benefit is for me and my students and my classes and, in that, everybody wins, right? Because as a professor, I can go on to a higher level knowledge with the assurance that these students had this level of knowledge and mastered it before they got to my class. And that's the whole idea basically about why we've set up classes like 101, 201, 301, right? That's supposed to be the philosophy, really understanding that.   0:12:12.6 DL: And I'd say most departments or school districts, they loosely sort of do that. But from experience, if you consciously put in the effort to align curriculums, communicate with the preceding stages you get a huge benefit out of that that's just unbelievable. And Deming goes on to say, you know, and the following stages, right? So let's say we're using this example of Economics 101 and 201 or whatever you might be, right? And then some of those students are gonna go on to 301. Well, I would wanna know that my students were much more prepared going to the next stage. So how am I gonna do that? Well, I'm gonna start talking to the teacher in the next stage and saying, hey, how are my students doing? And were they prepared to come into your class or not prepared or, you know, what's happening?   0:13:18.7 AS: I was thinking about how one of the... I had a discussion with someone this past week, and it's a guy my age, you know, young and healthy and happy. [laughter] And getting close to 60. And he said, young people these days, you know, blah, blah, blah and all that. And I said to him, I said, you know, I think basically the young people these days realize they've kind of been let down by us and we've done all kinds of, you know, whether it's safety or whether it's education or whether it's, you know, whatever. There's so many things where I think that they just don't trust it. And then we go to online learning and all of a sudden all of these adults are giving us these super boring presentations. And it's like, we are not delivering to young people.   0:14:10.4 AS: And then, oh, add on 32 trillion in debt. Oh, by the way, you gotta pay that also. And the streets are, you know, cities are on fire and all of that. And then you just think, yeah. Part of what's happening is that when we incentivize teachers to optimize their classroom, that's what they're gonna do. They're gonna do their KPIs and they're gonna focus on that, and they're not gonna be thinking about how are these kids going through this process and getting to a result that we want? And yeah, you just made me think about that, but I don't know. What are your thoughts on that?   0:14:45.6 DL: Well, Deming talks about in the last sentence, that work with preceding and following stages for the optimization and efforts of all stages towards achievement of the aim. So what are you trying to accomplish with the achievement of this aim? I'm working with a college of business now, and through the pandemic, almost all the classes went online and now students are graduating and going to work and stuff. And what are employers saying? These people aren't trained as well.   0:15:20.4 AS: The communication skills.   0:15:22.5 DL: Yeah. The university is struggling because they know this online thing doesn't work as well, but they're struggling with, how do we change this? Because the following stages are telling you the learning that these people are coming out with is not the same as it used to be. We used to be able to depend on the quality of the students coming through the system. And now we can't depend on them. Well, that's dangerous because that could lead employers to say, okay, we're no longer going to hire people from this university. We're gonna go to some other university and look for places. So I always think about, you know, Deming is talking about the system, but how big of a system are we talking about, right? Could be talking about a whole university as a system, and the more I can get the entire university to talk to each other, work together, align curriculums, right? Well, who wins in the end? Well, students going out into the world, right?   0:16:24.8 DL: And they get to employers and employers start to realize, wow, I never knew that I needed somebody with this kind of knowledge. And so, who's first on your list to hire next year? I want more of these. Very simple example, the first couple of years that I was leading classes and teaching my high school students about this, well, in Alaska, the popular summer job is what they call the slime line. So working in fish plants, salmon processing plants on the line where fish comes through and you have to process them and gut them and take their heads off and do all this kind of stuff. So we didn't tell students about anything, but after about two years, I got some phone calls from these canneries, managers in these canneries and they said, hey, do you have any more of these students? And so I called them back up to talk to them about what was happening.   0:17:31.5 DL: And they said, well, we found out that every place there were students from your high school that were on the slime line, productivity improved. And sure enough, they started talking to these kids and they said, well, we took this to heart. And one kid said, all I did was I just said to the guy next to me, when you pass that fish to me, it'd be really helpful if you just turned it like this. And then all I have to do is do this. And then he said to the guy next to him, he said, what do you want me to do? What would be most helpful for you? And that guy says, well, that girl says, oh, well turn it like this or do this, and then this would happen.   0:18:14.2 DL: Just that, that's a very simple example. But employers loved it, [laughter] because productivity started to go up. One student said, yeah, it actually got to be more fun because I put a chart up behind me and how many fish we were processing per hour. And it sort of became a game to see if we could increase not only the quality of what we were doing, but the number of fish that we were processing per hour. Well, you might say, well, you know, yeah. What's the big deal about that? Well, guess what? Those canneries wanna hire those people again next summer. [laughter], you got a guaranteed job if you wanna come back.   0:18:50.6 AS: It's interesting because when you actually ask that question, or when you ask someone, hey, would you mind when when you send it over to me, could you put it in this way? People would be like, I never even knew that you needed it that way.   0:19:06.2 DL: Yeah. Or you'd find out that people have been ticked off at you for some cases years because you just keep on doing the same darn thing, but nothing ever changes because that person never doesn't ever say anything to you, and you never asked. You have to be proactive in all this too, going to the following stages and saying, hey, what could I be doing differently that would be significantly helpful for you?   0:19:36.6 AS: Yeah. Also, you reminded me of a story, when I was head of research in a research team here in Thailand, I had about five analysts. And our objective is to write high quality, big reports. I hired the best analysts. They know exactly what they need to do. They love doing it. And what I did is I put up on the wall a bar, a stacked bar chart showing each person's output each week. And what I did is I just put it up on the wall. I didn't explain it. I didn't, you know, I just looked at it occasionally, I went back to my office and and I didn't, I mean, I never really explained or said anything. And then one time one of the younger analysts came to me and she said, I think I've just figured you out. And I was like, what do you mean? And she said, I had lunch with a counterpart, like at another, a competitor, and she covers the same sector.   0:20:30.2 AS: And she asked me, how many reports did you do last month? And I said, you know, meaning my employee said, I did, I don't know, 10. And she's like, oh my God, how did you do 10? And she said, how many did you do? And she said, well, I did three, and there's similar style reports. And she's like, well, what's Andrew's target for you? And that's when she looked at me and she said, I realize you never set a target. You just put that information up on the wall. And it got all of us looking at it and thinking about it. And then I realized that I was producing 10 reports compared to my competitor was producing three. And that just made me think of that when you were talking about putting that up on the wall.   0:21:15.4 DL: The genius of Deming, Dr. Deming is when he went into manufacturing plants. And here you have a manufacturing plant where this person is stuck doing the same thing all day long. Right? Well, from early studies, from Hawthorne studies back in the 1920s and thirties, what did we try to do? Well, we gotta motivate these people, right? So, let's turn up the heat. Let's turn down the heat, let's play music for them. Let's do this, let's try. And what they found out is everything that they did actually, productivity worked, but they couldn't figure out what was it for a while.   0:21:52.5 DL: But, in the end, what was really happening is employees were perceiving that that management cared. And so they were trying to do stuff to make things better, but the genius of Deming was he just said, put people to work improving their own process and taught them how to do that, how to do a PDSA, and how to look at improving their own process. And it actually work started to be enjoyable. And that's what we're trying to do. And yes, you gotta do stuff. I've had teachers, especially math teachers tell me, well, not everything can be fun. Sometimes math is just hard. Well, maybe in your class, but I'm sure there are places that people make...   0:22:45.1 AS: How about if you just smile?   0:22:45.5 DL: Yeah. Make math really fun. And kids look forward to coming every day and being a part of it and learning the next level of what they're doing. And change the situation, you get a different result, rather than what we've always been taught to do is we leave the situation alone, but then we manage the behavior, it produces either good or bad. You know, we reward the good and try to get rid of the bad, which is a classic example of what Deming said don't do.   0:23:15.3 AS: So, let me wrap it up by asking a question and then I'll review kind of what we talked about. Based upon this discussion, if I was taking over at let's say a high school or something like that, and I thought about this specific lesson of what we're talking about today, I made the aim clear, everybody knows, and now I'm thinking about it. Would it make sense to say, alright, what I really want is I want each teacher to know the one proceeding stage and the one... What would you call that? The stage after.   0:23:51.1 DL: Following stages.   0:23:52.4 AS: The following stage and the previous stage. And therefore, what I just wanna do is start a discussion where they have to have kind of like a regular meeting or some way to get them together to talk and just focus on one step behind and in front. And if you did that, it's like the whole place would be on fire with conversation. Would that be a good place to start with this?   0:24:16.3 DL: Yeah, absolutely. You start with the largest system over which you have influence. And it depends on what your job is. If you're just hired as a teacher in a system and you realize these people don't talk to each other, they don't work together, well, you don't have to go get permission from anybody to talk to preceding stages. You just go into that person's room at the end of the day and say, hey, you got a few minutes I wanted to chat with you about something, you know.   0:24:44.0 AS: Make a new friend.   0:24:46.3 DL: Or yeah. And or following stages, you go to them, I guarantee you, you go to them and you say, what could I be doing that would significantly help you next year?   0:24:54.7 AS: Well, sit down, let's talk.   0:24:57.7 DL: Oh my gosh. Yeah. They would love you to death, right? And so it's a great way that you actually start to gain power of changing things in the system because all of a sudden then your department actually seems to get along and function well together and students are doing well. And then I guarantee you somebody from another department is gonna say, what are you guys doing over there? What's happening? Well, why do you ask? Because students in my class are saying, why can't we do what's happening over there? See? And so that's how you actually start to expand influence. And pretty soon you're operating on a bigger and bigger system, even if that wasn't your original role, but Deming said the source of power is knowledge. So you become very powerful because you know how to improve processes and systems.   0:25:51.5 AS: It reminds me of a... When I was writing Transform Your Business with Dr. Deming's 14 points. I had a friend of mine help me with the editing, and he would come over sometimes and he was... He never heard anything about Deming and he didn't know much about even business that much. He just seen all kinds of negative things happen [laughter] in the business world. But what he said is, he said, you know, I've been reading what you're writing and understanding this, and I think Dr. Deming is a humanist. He really cares about the human potential. And I was just like, that's it, it's not about this, charts and the graphs, and it's not, it's about how do we tap into the human potential.   0:26:34.0 DL: Yeah. Well, the average workers in corporations loved Deming mostly because he just berated management, totally, that you were the problem. You know, let these people do their job and get out of their way and you'll be fine. Instead of you trying to manipulate and incentivize and manage and punish and all the things that you think your job is.   0:27:00.2 AS: Let your people free. So let's wrap up. We've been talking about the list that Dr. Deming gave us in the third edition on page 86, the second edition on page 125, and it's called Role of a Manager of People. And Dr. Deming said, this is the new role of a manager of people after transformation. The first part we talked about, he talked about understanding a system and making sure that people understand the aim, but now this discussion has been about number two, he helps his people to see themselves as components in the system to work in cooperation with proceeding stages and with following stages towards optimization of the efforts of all stages toward achievement of the aim. And what we talked about is that the product of education is the process of learning and the idea of working with teachers in maybe prior grades, prior processes. And maybe a lot of what we've really talked about is communication and alignment. Is there anything else you'd add to that?   0:28:07.9 DL: No, that pretty much sums it up. I would, I will say that if you're listening to these podcasts and you're in education and you're trying to figure out where to start or what to do, we're explaining to you what to do. And so each one of these podcasts, if you just went back and did one thing we're talking about, and by the time we finish going through all these, you'll have a massive transformation of your classroom, your system, whatever it might be going on within that. But here's a great place to start right here.   0:28:36.5 AS: Wonderful. David, on behalf of everybody at the Deming Institute, I want to thank you again for the discussion. For listeners, remember to go to deming.org to continue your journey. Listeners can learn more about David at langfordlearning.com. This is your host, Andrew Stotz, and I'll leave you with one of my favorite quotes from Dr. Deming. People are entitled to joy in work.

Andrew talks to Justin Marcharia, Round Table Training Africa's Managing Director, about his collaboration with The Deming Institute. His goal is to help new and small businesses in East Africa use the Deming philosophy to grow in sustainable ways. TRANSCRIPT 0:00:02.2 Andrew Stotz: Hello. 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 here with featured guest Justin Macharia. Justin, are you ready to share your Deming journey?   0:00:17.2 Justin Macharia: Oh, yeah, I'm ready.   0:00:19.5 AS: I'm excited to learn... I mean there are so many things that I would like to ask you about your Deming journey and where your Deming journey is and all of that. But let me introduce you to the audience. Justin Macharia is the managing director of Round Table Training Africa Limited. Justin has been working with the Deming Institute over the past couple of years to enable DemingNEXT access into a number of East African countries through his organization. It's gonna be beneficial I think for all of our listeners to learn about this partnership and the impact that we think the Deming Institute can have in East Africa. And also, it's a great opportunity for you, Justin, to share why you think that Deming is important part of development in your part of the world and why you see the opportunity as kind of first time opportunity to enable businesses to learn and apply the Deming method. So maybe you can just talk a little bit about what you're doing first, and then we'll get into your Deming journey.   0:01:29.9 JM: Thank you Andrew. Yeah, so Deming Institute in Africa, basically East Africa, that's Nairobi, Kenya started off in the year 2020. And we've walked the journey with Kevin and Tim. And basically what we've... We've found that there was an opportunity to instill best practices in manufacturing, hospitality, and any other organizations that are moving from either raw production or the value chain addition. So what inspired us into getting into and partnering with Deming was basically the... We have a lots of trainings, consultants in our area, but however we found that they were lacking in terms of the depth and the philosophy and the models and tools. So what happens is, basically is we reached out to the Deming Institute and we did a presentation and asked if we could partner with them. And of course we had to give a little bit of background about ourselves.   0:02:34.9 JM: And what is basically happening in East Africa right now is... 'cause East Africa is be in in agribusiness, but agribusiness is on only probably small scale to large scale and mostly of the cash crops for export. But more and more now people are getting into value addition and processing. And that comes with a lot of systems, processes and management skills that are required for that. Apart from that, there's a lot of manufacturing going on and it's probably sometimes ad hoc and learning on the job which can... It can be very expensive and a little mistakes and system and processes or a lack of there of. So that has actually created the need and the appreciation and like probably Andrew had mentioned that, just a little bit earlier, is that everybody knows Deming, anybody who is in a management course, 'cause they always talk about Deming at some point during the introduction as the gurus of quality management. So the take up has been gradual and slow, but we're getting somewhere with it right now.   0:03:42.3 AS: And maybe for the listeners out there I'll explain about, what the Deming Institute is doing with DemingNEXT and trying to get, obviously all the video material that's available about Dr. Deming's teaching, but also providing all the resources necessary for training. So for those that are listening that think, God, I really wanna get more training into my company related to Deming. Well, the Deming Institute has made so much of that available through DemingNEXT. So I think that's an important message to everybody out there, is that it is a resource not only for your own personal development, but how you can bring some of that training into your company or any company that you're interacting with. Maybe you just tell us briefly about what your expectation is or what you expect to be doing with that material and with your own material and how are you doing that training. And maybe just tell us a little bit about that.   0:04:39.9 JM: Well, thanks Andrew. So what the DemingNEXT actually offers a lot of resources like you mentioned. There are PDFs, there are case studies. Because as much as we train a local organization, it's always good to give them a case study of basically where it has worked before, the successes because the industry and the verticals, probably is it the service industry, is it the telecommunication, we find 'cause somebody believes in the credibility of a process by basically seeing it has worked before with somebody else. And this what... The challenges they went through. So it shortens the learning curve because you don't have to go through the mistakes they did. They share with their case studies. And this improves like what Deming talks a lot about is the continuous improvement.   0:05:30.0 JM: Continuous improvement. So you progressively improve as you go on, get the feedback from the customers, feedback from the system itself. And this has really helped in terms of... The resources that are online on DemingNEXT has really helped in fortifying what the facilitators are actually telling and teaching the participants.   0:05:52.7 AS: Fantastic. So for all the listeners and viewers out there, make sure that you go to DemingNEXT to understand what resources are available and if you are in East Africa what's the website, your website that they could go to to learn more about what you guys are doing?   0:06:09.8 JM: Well, yeah, thanks. Our website is www.roundtabletraining.co.ke. There you'll find a wide array of programs and also the links to the Deming resources as well.   0:06:24.5 AS: Fantastic. So tell us about... You know, now it is time for some of the fun stuff where we talk about your Deming journey. And as you and I talked about before we turned on the mic, the recorder, you're early in your Deming journey. You've started recently and you're learning. And I know there's plenty of listeners that are early in their Deming journey. And I know there's some old timers also that are listening that are like, okay, so what's it like? So maybe you can tell us about the story about how you first came to understand and learn about Dr. Deming's teachings. And what was it that hooked you that made you think, I want to bring this training to other people?   0:07:02.6 JM: Thank you. Yeah, so my journey basically, my career has been spanning over 20 years, actually about 23 years. But actually within my career I have interacted with so many training institutions from ICT to management and leadership. However, there's always something lacking in them. There's always something I was feeling we're not giving them the depth and the case studies and proven models, things that have worked. So that's basically around 2020. Basically around the COVID time.   0:08:25.7 JM: I went actually searching and interacted with... I saw Deming. I saw... There is a Deming Institute in the US and we decided, okay, let's approach them because we know about Deming and Dr. Deming's philosophies. It's been trained and taught. But what really caught me and I remember and many people remember is the PDSA cycle, the PDSA that one... Everybody knows about that cycle. So when we reached out and they actually said, all right, we can give it a try. And hence we started off the journey in East Africa like that. So the PDSA and appreciation of systems and all that, those are the ones that basically caught us on teaching.   0:08:27.9 AS: And maybe we can talk a little bit about what's happening in Africa for I know a lot of listeners they may not really know all the stuff that's going on in your part of the world in East Africa. And I know Kenya is going through a lot of growth these days. Maybe you can just tell us a little bit about what's going on there in particular in relation to business and development. You mentioned the idea of being a resources exporter and trying to add more value to that. Yeah, maybe walk us through a little bit about what's happening in the economy of Kenya.   0:09:01.1 JM: So Kenya is very strategically positioned in Africa. It's basically the gateway of the East and Central Africa region which covers the DRC, Rwanda, Tanzania, Uganda, Ethiopia, Southern Sudan. So the economy is basically very robust especially in the... Recently the financial market, the mobile banking. Maybe some of you have heard of the mobile banking actually was actually birthed in Kenya with something called M-Pesa. So the service industry apart from the Agro and the traditional products that have been traditionally produced.   0:09:44.7 JM: There is hospitality, tourism. I know you've heard of the big five safaris. So tourism is really huge in East Africa. Not only Kenya, but Uganda, Tanzania as well. So with that is the traditional ways of commerce and the GDP relies heavily on that. However, the service and the technology has been growing recently. And thanks to the internet there is are a lot of resources as well. People are either going to school or they are self-teaching themselves. So a lot to offer from this point of view in terms of tourism, Agro-business, service, telecommunication and all that. So it's a great place to be.   0:10:32.8 AS: I'm curious, I've lived in Asia almost the majority of my life, let's say the last 30 years. And as I look back at America, I see a reason, one of the reasons why Deming has a hard time is that people are so individually focused. Like individual, they want individual compensation. They want individual rewards. They do not wanna be part of a system so much and all of that. And you can see that compares to let's say Japan where they really value being part of that system and society. They do not want the individual rewards the way that it's done. And you see every country is different. And I'm just curious, what are the motivations that drive, what are the things that drive people there that the way people think about business and doing business so that we can then understand what part of Deming is most appealing?   0:11:28.0 JM: Oh yeah, so yeah, actually it's a... I can say probably East Africa and Kenya has a lot to borrow from Japan 'cause people do get a lot of value by coming together and they value that. So there are these things we call Chamas, is like coming together maybe 10 people pulling resources and getting to a certain business investment. So it's really big all the way from the ground up we call it table banking. It could be from, let's say ladies coming together. So it's a big thing. So but what normally lacks in moving it... The transition to growth is what is normally the difficult part. They could get to point... From point A to point B but managing the growth, the change by instilling processes, systems that will enable them to grow and scale up now becomes a challenge.   0:12:28.0 JM: Hence that's why DemingNEXT and also the membership. The membership which we are also... Introduced to the market which we have individual membership for DemingNEXT and the corporate membership is what we actually been proposing to even these what I call the Chamas basically pull in and learn from the rest of the world how processes and they're very simple processes actually, DemingNEXT, actually has very simple way of breaking things up to people. So that kind of people come together in terms of business and investment but the growth trajectory is what that lacks and that's why DemingNEXT has come with this philosophies to push guys and help people move to the next level.   0:13:11.3 AS: Yeah moving to the next level is interesting 'cause I know when I moved to Thailand Justin I went out I taught a Just-In-Time inventory management class in 1992 and at that time the Japanese had really come to Thailand and producing cars. So I took my students out to a Toyota factory and I remember that the guy, the Japanese guy said I have to apologize that most of our managers are Japanese. In the beginning we just have a lot of training that we've been doing and over years you know it will grow where we'll have more of the Thai people in management. And then what you see now is when you visit Toyota and you realize wow that they've really done a huge amount of training. And many of the Thai staff that started at a low level have moved up into management and you know carrying on.   0:14:02.8 AS: So I can imagine that part of what you're talking about is that transition to just developing the core skills and then slowly developing into management and how to manage that business or your own businesses better and better. I guess that's kind of the transition that you're talking about. Would that be right?   0:14:21.2 JM: Oh yes yes. Because what is normally said managers normally they're not appointed. They grow into the position. So as they grow into the position there are some skills that we may lack in terms of managing the teams. And I like what Dr. Deming's philosophy of the psychology the soft skills part of it and relying on the process and not the big stick approach. So yeah it really helps especially new managers to fit into the role and get the rest to follow and emulate the good practices.   0:14:56.6 AS: Tell us something about let's say the characteristics of people there. And I'll give you an example. In Thailand, obviously in America if you raise your voice and you shout and you yell and say I want this and that, it... People, nobody likes that but they don't mind that, it's not a big deal. But in Thailand you never raise your voice and you just would never do that. Or else it would be people just wouldn't buy into that. And maybe tell us one characteristic that you see in Kenya that is part of the characteristic of the workforce or the way people feel socially like something that maybe an American as an example may come and think that they're bringing their culture but in fact they're not very sensitive to let's say some feeling or way that people do their... They live their lives and they think about things. Maybe you can give us some example.   0:15:51.8 JM: Alright yeah. So basically like sometimes it is very common with Kenya and of course it's spread a little bit across the region as well is appreciation the soft skills. It's continuous, celebrating small successes as well. So the populace, the employees would like to feel appreciated in the workplace. Otherwise if it's like over reliant on the processing and the system like okay it was part of your job you don't need a pat on your back. That kind a thing sometimes like oh a little pat would've helped. So it gives a smile to people. So it is the same with thank you did a good job. Even though it was part of the job. It's something that the populace really appreciate. So sometimes when you get maybe some probably managers from a different place and it is none of that it creates the silos and people pull out a little bit and it becomes an eight to five job. They're not enjoying it. It's like okay I'm just doing my job. But that's what I can actually think about right now.   0:17:00.5 AS: Yeah it's a great point and it obviously people around the world want intrinsic, they wanna feel that they're contributing to the value. And I think different societies have different need for that. I would say for Thais, they don't have as strong of a need for that but everybody likes to know when I'm contributing to the success of the organization and the role that I'm playing. So that's definitely and I'm guessing that people you know a lot of times when you look at Thailand's got an agricultural history, America has an agricultural history but it didn't last for very long because it turned into kind of in commercial and industrial agriculture. But when you look at countries that just have such a foundation in agriculture you have to work together or else in harvesting in planting villages work together in Thailand. Is that part of the history and part of the culture there? Or what's it like as far as teamwork versus individual work?   0:18:00.8 AS: Teamwork has actually been part of the culture. Because let's talk about the "Good old days" is when you're going to the farm you would go as a team. If you are ploughing, you'll plough as a team, harvesting you'll harvest as a team. So that's the same thing that has come down the generations. And even at work even though you are in the service sector you'll decide okay let's get together and let's do this. Let's get together and do this investment or let's do this team building. So it has carried on the generations and the only time maybe individualism comes and it's silos and like corporate politics, some groupings form within the organization. But that is... A good manager will know how to break the silos and to get people communicating again. So when Deming as well it gives... Has multiple courses that you can basically custom-make to break the silos which is a very popular one especially engagement, emotional intelligence and all that.   0:19:05.1 AS: Yeah. And in fact, what you learn is that the natural state of things is people don't want silos, they don't wanna be put up against each other like that.   0:19:14.8 JM: True, True.   0:19:16.5 AS: And so by breaking that... I'll tell you a funny story, when I was first working in an investment bank in Thailand, it was 1994 maybe at that time, and the Human Resource sent around a memo or a survey and they asked us to just tick what we thought and... The question was, "Would you like to have a company uniform that you would wear to work?"   0:19:41.8 AS: Now, as an American, I was like, "What? Why would I want that?" I'm an individual, I got my clothes, I don't need that. And so I just thought, nobody would answer yes to that, and then the next day then Human Resources said, "Well, it was unanimous, everybody wants a uniform, and we're gonna be working on getting those uniforms for everyone." And I was like, "Okay." I really didn't understand that about Thai people versus American people, and it just is a funny story about the idea that people wanna belong, and it's interesting that it's... In America, it really is like that individual and independent, which has it's value for sure. But that feeling of belonging, I think, is what I really like about the Deming content and what... The message of Dr. Deming. And it makes me think about... One of the questions that I like to ask is why Deming? Why now? And I'm curious, what would you answer to that, 'cause some people would say, "Oh, it's the old stuff and it's been around for a while, and there's new philosophies and new books and all that." but why would you say Justin, Why Deming? Why now?   0:20:56.1 JM: Yeah, Why Deming? Why now? Is really simple because we are in a transformational transitionary period for East Africans, and a lot of things have probably been done a little bit ad hoc, you're learning on the job, which is, we all know is costly, it's costly to learn on the job. So Deming philosophy brings forth a lot of tools and methodologies that you can basically move to the next level using international best practices. So basically what we know is a lot of tools of Deming also have been adopted in different ways, there are probably some software, have actually been designed and the background is basically the Deming philosophy, you know the PBC cycle, is it variations, understanding variations, all those things that help you to move to the next level. The PDA cycle again that again is known with the Toyota, everybody knows about Toyota and Japan after the World War II and how Deming, Dr. Deming really contributed to that. So it is done, proved, luckily also Deming Institute has also modernized the PDA cycle, there is the modern one now that it is now... It is in cognizant to the current challenges that we have today. So Deming... Right now it's in the right place, everybody should go back to the roots, those who deviated from the roots are finding themselves in unknown territory, they need to come back to the roots and we move forward.   0:22:31.3 AS: Fantastic, and I know for the listeners out there, whether you're in East Africa or wherever you are in the world, one of the things that I always see nowadays, it's like everybody thinks that KPIs and particular individual key performance indicators are the way to manage people, and I think one of the things that I really enjoy about the Deming material and the Deming method is that it's miles beyond just tracking someone's behavior, it goes much deeper than that, and it's about the psychology and bringing out the intrinsic motivation of people and getting them involved and when you do that, ultimately you unleash a power of the people that's fantastic. Maybe as we wrap up, one of the things I'd love for you to do is just share maybe one of your experiences in your training over the years that you... A story or something that you have felt like is a proud moment for you.   0:23:31.2 JM: Alright. There could be a couple I'm trying to see which one could it be but I can... Let's see. There's a time we actually had some group in-house trainings 'cause we offer open trainings, so that we get people from different organizations, but this particular one where we got into an in-house training, and so the facilitator basically got... Was sent to the organization and it was basically, the soft skills, so it was a three-day program, and what came out of it was not... Basically was not even the training, that was... Had been positioned to be trained the moment, the psychology of pains, and the breaking of the silos that came up, it became like a team building and that team building now changed the whole perspective of the training and in fact we had to change the course trajectory mid-way so that now, people can now... Because what we realized was that there were just silos, all over the place, and the training itself would not have earned any... Gotten any dividends, if it went on like that. So it was changed and they actually called us some time later to come and give them their training that had been planned, so that is why I remember that we had to change the course in between because the silos were just crazy inside there, so that one was memorable.   0:25:00.5 AS: It's interesting that you referred to silos many times in this discussion, it's clearly an issue that Deming can help solve, which is...   0:25:08.1 JM: Yes.   0:25:09.8 AS: It's happening all around the world, but it's great to think that you've got a solution, and for the listeners out there, again, if you're in East Africa, reach out and figure out how you can get some of this great stuff and this great training to your business. Well, Justin, on behalf of everyone at the Deming Institute, I wanna thank you again for coming on the show. And let me ask you, do you have any parting words for the audience?   0:25:36.9 JM: Alright. I'd like to... If you're in East Africa, you can go to our website at roundtabletraining.co.ke enroll into any program or contact the number that you'll find there, and we can come and have a visit and talk to you more about what and how Deming can transform your organization.   0:26:00.1 AS:  Fantastic, and that concludes another great story from the worldwide Deming community and how... We learn how Deming is making a footprint in East Africa. Remember to go to deming.org to continue your journey. This is your host, Andrew Stotz, and I'll leave you with one of my favorite quotes from Dr. Deming: People are entitled to joy in work.