From The Practice of Management by Peter Drucker, The Demands of the Enterprise on the Worker (page 268): The enterprise must expect of the worker not the passive acceptance of a physical chore, but the active assumption of responsibility for the enterprise’s results. This attitude not only is necessary for organizations to prosper today, it [...]
The Essential Deming, includes material from Dr. Deming’s letters, speeches and articles. Several are from his lectures at Fordham University, including: Tyranny of the Prevailing Style of Management (page 184-5): We’re living in prison. Under the tyranny of the prevailing style of management. A style of interaction between people, between teams, between divisions, between competitors. [...]
The Essential Deming includes (from an interview with Dr. Deming): Knowing How to Manage People Is the Single Most Important Part of Management (page 170) If factory workers are unemployed —or anyone, for that matter— it is because of bad management, and not because unemployment is inevitable. Page 171: Of course, when you talk about [...]
Martin Fowler offers insightful details on the problems with using sales commissions (click on the right arrow button at the very top middle to see the next slide). Some quotes from his presentation: there are serious problems with the sales commission model, problems that led ThoughtWorks to get rid of all sales commissions in 2013 [...]
The merit rating nourishes short-term performance, annihilates long-term planning, builds fear, demolishes teamwork, [and] nourishes rivalry and politics. It leaves people bitter, crushed, bruised, battered, desolate, despondent, dejected, feeling inferior, some even depressed, unfit for work for weeks after receipt of rating, unable to comprehend why they are inferior. It is unfair, as it ascribes [...]
Joe Dager, Business 901, has published an interview with me in a podcast: Dr. Deming on Lean in 2012. I hope you enjoy the podcast. Download podcast directly or via the Business901 iTunes Store. I discussed some of my history with Dr. Deming’s ideas on management and my thoughts on the application of those ideas [...]
The greatest waste in America is failure to use the ability of people. … Money and time spent for training will be ineffective unless inhibitors to good work are removed. Page 53, Out of the Crisis by W. Edwards Deming The power of Dr. Deming’s ideas on management increase the more deeply they are explored. [...]
From Lean Thinking by James Womack and Daniel Jones (page 126): the management of Wiremold was soon enrolled in the Deming seminars. As Orrie Fiume notes, “Deming’s Fourteen Points were a perfect fit with our values and we loved the principles. There was only one problem: Deming teaches what he called a “Theory of Management,” [...]
Dr. Deming explained that paying sales commissions to staff introduced distortions into the organization that damaged overall performance. Each topic has different connections to Deming’s system of profound knowledge, as he laid it out in the New Economics. The problems with sales commissions heavily touch on all of the four areas of the management system. [...]
In Out of the Crisis, page 101, Dr. Deming states the following as one of the seven deadly diseases: Evaluation of performance, merit rating, or annual review… The idea of a merit rating is alluring. the sound of the words captivates the imagination: pay for what you get; get what you pay for; motivate people [...]