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¿Y si nadie va a salvarte…y eso fuera exactamente lo que necesitas entender para cambiar tu vida?En este episodio, J.O. Garcia, habla sin filtros sobre una verdad incómoda:Nadie vendrá a rescatarte, a motivarte todos los días o a vivir por ti.Pero cuando dejas de esperar algo poderoso, ocurre: empiezas a hacerte cargo.Este episodio es una invitación a:Dejar de vivir para agradarTomarte la vida personalCuidarte, crecer y sanar por ti y para tiConstruir disciplina desde la identidad, no desde la culpaEnfocarte en lo que sí puedes controlar, usando bloques de 90 díasNo es motivación barata… Es responsabilidad consciente.Escúchalo con mente abierta.Y pregúntate con honestidad: ¿Qué pasaría si dejaras de esperar rescate… y te eligieras a ti?Si este episodio resuena contigo, compártelo.Tal vez alguien necesita escuchar que nadie va a salvarle…porque nunca fue su trabajo.
To i więcej nauczań można znaleźć również na naszej stronie parakletos.pl.
To i więcej nauczań można znaleźć również na naszej stronie parakletos.pl.
Še nekateri vsebinski poudarki oddaje: - Na Istrskem turističnem forumu poudarili pomen čezmejnega povezovanja. - Informacijski center TNP Bohinjka je v desetih letih delovanja prerastel osnovno poslanstvo. - Celjski poklicni gasilci ob 70-letnici s premiero dokumentarca "Golovec 75" o povezanosti treh generacij članov. - Skupine OrgleKids si prizadeva, da bi orgle, kraljico med inštrumenti, predstavili vsem šolarjem v Sloveniji.
To i więcej nauczań można znaleźć również na naszej stronie parakletos.pl.
To i więcej nauczań można znaleźć również na naszej stronie parakletos.pl.
Tierra de El hombre garabato y Asno de Tu otra bonita. En el repaso a la historia del pop español recordamos, entre otros, a Ethel y Los Draks (1971), Los Auténticos (1982), Mikel Erentxun (1992), Niños Eléctricos (2005), ADN (2016) o Monte Ventura (2020).
W świecie, w którym deepfake'i stają się coraz bardziej przekonujące, a oszustwa finansowe z ich użyciem osiągają setki milionów dolarów, pojawia się pytanie: do kogo należy twoja cyfrowa tożsamość? Dania zapowiada rewolucyjne prawo, które traktuje twarz i głos jako własność intelektualną.W tym odcinku programu Technologicznie przyglądamy się nowej, duńskiej ustawie o prawie autorskim, która może stać się pierwszym tego typu przepisem w Europie. Dowiesz się, jak prawo autorskie chroni obywateli przed deepfake'ami i dlaczego jest to bardziej elastyczne narzędzie niż prawo karne. Pokazujemy jak nowe prawo odwraca ciężar dowodu, przenosząc odpowiedzialność z ofiary na platformy internetowe. Poznaj skalę problemu, zobacz, jak ma działać duński model i odkryj, jakie wyzwania stoją przed nim w globalnym, cyfrowym świecie. Czy to początek nowej ery, w której nasza tożsamość należy do nas? Najważniejsze wątki:Dania rewolucjonizuje prawo, traktując twarz i głos jako własność intelektualną. Jest to nowatorskie podejście, które wprowadza nowe zasady ochrony przed deepfake'ami.Ochrona przed deepfake'ami staje się automatyczna. Nie musisz rejestrować swoich cech fizycznych; masz do nich prawa autorskie od momentu narodzin.Ciężar dowodu przenosi się na platformy. To platformy internetowe muszą udowodnić, że miały zgodę na użycie Twojego wizerunku, a nie Ty musisz udowadniać szkodę.Prawo autorskie jest bardziej elastyczne niż prawo karne. Pozwala na dochodzenie odszkodowań i licencjonowanie wizerunku, co daje ofiarom większą kontrolę i możliwości niż w przypadku prawa karnego.Twoja cyfrowa tożsamość staje się aktywem. Dzięki nowemu prawu, głos i wizerunek zyskują wartość ekonomiczną, którą można chronić i sprzedawać.Rozdziały:0:00 - Wstęp0:04 - Wprowadzenie i skala problemu deepfake'ów0:30 - Duńska rewolucja prawna2:16 - Porównanie z prawem w innych krajach3:43 - Jak działa duński model ochrony wizerunku7:27 - Wyzwania i kontrowersje nowego prawa8:47 - Podsumowanie: Nowe perspektywy dla cyfrowej tożsamości
Saga z nakupom reševalnih helikopterjev je dobila novo poglavje. Komisija za preprečevanje korupcije je vložila zahtevek za revizijo za razveljavitev postopka javnega naročila. Pristojni minister Boštjana Poklukarja je napovedal zadržanje za danes napovedanega podpisa pogodbe o nakupu, ob tem pa pozval k hitri odločitvi o reviziji, češ da mora biti pogodba v skladu z zakonom podpisana do prihodnjega petka. Drugi poudarki oddaje: Bodo arabsko-islamski voditelji v Dohi obsodili genocid v Gazi? Pri dolgotrajni oskrbi bi lahko po mnenju sindikata sodelovali tudi poštarji. Izgradnje mariborske infekcijske klinike še ni na vidiku.
Esopo, fabulista de la antigua Grecia, nació en Mesembria y murió en 564 a.c., además de fábulas escribio chistes y aforismos en el siglo VI a.c. sus obras fueron compiladas en la época clásica. Era un esclavo, probablemente de origen tracio o frigio. Se le atribuye un talento notable para contar historias con moralejas, muchas veces protagonizadas por animales con características humanas. Su existencia no está completamente documentada, y mucho de lo que se sabe sobre él proviene de fuentes posteriores, como la obra Vida de Esopo, escrita en época helenística o romana. Su obra es breve y clara. Contiene personajes animales que representan tipos humanos (el zorro astuto, el león poderoso, el burro torpe, etc.). y una moraleja final, que resume la enseñanza ética o práctica del relato.Entre sus famosas fábulas se incluyen: La zorra y las uvas (de donde viene la expresión "están verdes"), La liebre y la tortuga, El pastor mentiroso (también conocida como Pedro y el lobo), El cuervo y la jarra. Las fábulas de Esopo han influido enormemente en la literatura y la educación moral de generaciones enteras. Autores como Jean de La Fontaine en Francia y Tomás de Iriarte y Félix María Samaniego en el mundo hispano adaptaron y recrearon muchas de sus historias.
As No. 4 Clemson and No. 9 LSU prepare to face off, we discuss with Tim Bourret the significance of the Death Valley matchup. Plus, Will Vandervort joins the show.
Witajcie w 75. odcinku Podcastu o technologii!W tym odcinku porozmawiamy o tym, czy warto wynajmować sprzęt elektroniczny, czy może lepiej od razu kupić go na własność.Partnerem podcastu jest Plenti!Dzięki Plenti możesz nie tylko przetestować sprzęt przed zakupem, ale także zarabiać na wynajmie.Dowiedz się więcej o Plenti Partners: https://partners.plenti.app/Jeśli chcesz, żeby reklama Twojej firmy znalazła się w naszym podcaście, przyślij nam maila na kanalotechnologii@gmail.comW tym odcinku poruszamy też takie tematy, jak:- Apple przenosi fabryki do USA- Internet tylko dla pełnoletnich- Koniec NokiiZapraszamy do słuchania!Podcast nagrywamy przy użyciu następujących mikrofonów:- Marcin korzysta z mikrofonu Sennheiser MK4- Dawid korzysta z mikrofonu Logitech Yeti GX- Łukasz korzysta z mikrofonu Austrian Audio OC818Oprawa dźwiękowa podcastu powstaje na sprzęcie i oprogramowaniu marki Arturia.Subskrybuj Kanał o technologii!: https://linktr.ee/kanalotechnologiiObserwuj nas w mediach społecznościowych:https://twitter.com/kanal_o_techhttps://www.instagram.com/kanalotechnologii/https://www.facebook.com/kanalotechnologiiiDawid Kosiński: https://twitter.com/kosa64Marcin Połowianiuk: https://twitter.com/mpolowianiukŁukasz Kotkowski: https://twitter.com/lukaszkotkowskiDo usłyszenia!
Wraz z cyfryzacją naszej gospodarki cała instytucja własności się zmienia. Staje się słabsza, bo przejmuje cechy własności intelektualnej - trudność kontrolowania, nieostrość granic, problemy z egzekwowaniem. To nie jest ani dobry, ani zły trend - to po prostu nowa rzeczywistość, do której musimy się przystosować. Wydaje mi się, że kluczowe jest zrozumienie tej zmiany zanim ... Artykuł WN 086 Tajemnice własności intelektualnej pochodzi z serwisu Bartłomiej Biga.
"Crónicas Lunares di Sun" es un podcast cultural presentado por Irving Sun, que abarca una variedad de temas, desde la literatura y análisis de libros hasta discusiones sobre actualidad y personajes históricos. Se difunde en múltiples plataformas como Ivoox, Apple Podcast, Spotify y YouTube, donde también ofrece contenido en video, incluyendo reflexiones sobre temas como la meditación y la filosofía teosófica. Los episodios exploran textos y conceptos complejos, buscando fomentar la reflexión y el autoconocimiento entre su audiencia, los "Lunares", quienes pueden interactuar y apoyar el programa a través de comentarios, redes sociales y donaciones. AVISO LEGAL: Los cuentos, poemas, fragmentos de novelas, ensayos y todo contenido literario que aparece en Crónicas Lunares di Sun podrían estar protegidos por derecho de autor (copyright). Si por alguna razón los propietarios no están conformes con el uso de ellos por favor escribirnos al correo electrónico cronicaslunares.sun@hotmail.com y nos encargaremos de borrarlo inmediatamente. Si te gusta lo que escuchas y deseas apoyarnos puedes dejar tu donación en PayPal, ahí nos encuentras como @IrvingSun https://paypal.me/IrvingSun?country.x=MX&locale.x=es_XC Síguenos en: Telegram: Crónicas Lunares di Sun Crónicas Lunares di Sun - YouTube https://t.me/joinchat/QFjDxu9fqR8uf3eR https://www.facebook.com/cronicalunar/?modal=admin_todo_tour Crónicas Lunares (@cronicaslunares.sun) • Fotos y videos de Instagram https://twitter.com/isun_g1 https://www.google.com/podcasts?feed=aHR0cHM6Ly9hbmNob3IuZm0vcy9lODVmOWY0L3BvZGNhc3QvcnNz https://open.spotify.com/show/4x2gFdKw3FeoaAORteQomp https://mx.ivoox.com/es/s_p2_759303_1.html https://tunein.com/user/gnivrinavi/favorites
Dlaczego osoby o przekonaniach liberalnych i konserwatywnych patrzą z takim niepokojem na to, co dzieje się z własnością prywatną? Może wydawać się, że to odległa od nas kwestia teoretyczna, ale w rzeczywistości ma fundamentalne znaczenie dla tego, jak będzie wyglądała nasza gospodarka w najbliższych latach. Co się zmienia? Otóż coraz częściej nie trzeba być właścicielem ... Artykuł WN 085 Własność prywatna pod obstrzałem pochodzi z serwisu Bartłomiej Biga.
Audio, spa_t_norav_2025-07-11_lesson_keshor-le-ol-ve-kehamor-le-masa_n2_p1. Lesson_part :: Lessons_series. Avanzar «Como un buey para el yugo y como un asno para la carga» :: Daily_lesson 2
Audio, spa_t_rav_2025-07-11_lesson_keshor-le-ol-ve-kehamor-le-masa_n1_p3. Lesson_part :: Daily_lesson 1 :: Lessons_series. Avanzar «Como un buey para el yugo y como un asno para la carga»
Video, spa_t_rav_2025-07-11_lesson_keshor-le-ol-ve-kehamor-le-masa_n1_p3. Lesson_part :: Daily_lesson 1 :: Lessons_series. Avanzar «Como un buey para el yugo y como un asno para la carga»
Audio, spa_t_norav_2025-07-11_lesson_keshor-le-ol-ve-kehamor-le-masa_n2_p1. Lesson_part :: Lessons_series. Avanzar «Como un buey para el yugo y como un asno para la carga» :: Daily_lesson 2
Audio, spa_t_rav_2025-07-11_lesson_keshor-le-ol-ve-kehamor-le-masa_n1_p3. Lesson_part :: Daily_lesson 1 :: Lessons_series. Avanzar «Como un buey para el yugo y como un asno para la carga»
Video, spa_t_norav_2025-07-11_lesson_keshor-le-ol-ve-kehamor-le-masa_n2_p1. Lesson_part :: Daily_lesson 2 :: Lessons_series. Avanzar «Como un buey para el yugo y como un asno para la carga»
Video, spa_t_rav_2025-07-11_lesson_keshor-le-ol-ve-kehamor-le-masa_n1_p3. Lesson_part :: Daily_lesson 1 :: Lessons_series. Avanzar «Como un buey para el yugo y como un asno para la carga»
Video, spa_t_norav_2025-07-11_lesson_keshor-le-ol-ve-kehamor-le-masa_n2_p1. Lesson_part :: Daily_lesson 2 :: Lessons_series. Avanzar «Como un buey para el yugo y como un asno para la carga»
Audio, spa_t_norav_2025-07-09_lesson_keshor-le-ol-ve-kehamor-le-masa_n2_p1. Lesson_part :: Daily_lesson 2 :: Lessons_series. Avanzar «Como un buey para el yugo y como un asno para la carga»
Audio, spa_t_rav_2025-07-09_lesson_keshor-le-ol-ve-kehamor-le-masa_n1_p3. Lesson_part :: Lessons_series. Avanzar «Como un buey para el yugo y como un asno para la carga» :: Daily_lesson 1
Audio, spa_t_rav_2025-07-09_lesson_keshor-le-ol-ve-kehamor-le-masa_n1_p3. Lesson_part :: Lessons_series. Avanzar «Como un buey para el yugo y como un asno para la carga» :: Daily_lesson 1
Video, spa_t_rav_2025-07-09_lesson_keshor-le-ol-ve-kehamor-le-masa_n1_p3. Lesson_part :: Lessons_series. Avanzar «Como un buey para el yugo y como un asno para la carga» :: Daily_lesson 1
Audio, spa_t_norav_2025-07-08_lesson_keshor-le-ol-ve-kehamor-le-masa_n2_p1. Lesson_part :: Daily_lesson 2 :: Lessons_series. Avanzar «Como un buey para el yugo y como un asno para la carga»
Audio, spa_t_rav_2025-07-08_lesson_keshor-le-ol-ve-kehamor-le-masa_n1_p2. Lesson_part :: Daily_lesson 1 :: Lessons_series. Avanzar «Como un buey para el yugo y como un asno para la carga»
Audio, spa_t_rav_2025-07-04_lesson_keshor-le-ol-ve-kehamor-le-masa_n1_p3. Lesson_part :: Daily_lesson 1
Audio, spa_t_norav_2025-07-04_lesson_keshor-le-ol-ve-kehamor-le-masa_n2_p1. Lesson_part :: Daily_lesson 2
W najnowszej odsłonie „Skądinąd” gości mec. Łukasz Kowalczyk, radca prawny, publicysta „Kultury Liberalnej”, specjalizujący się w tematyce prawa autorskiego i prawie nowych technologii. A rozmawiamy o własności w świecie wirtualnym. Rozmawiamy także o tym, kto ma prawo do naszych postów na facebooku. I w ogóle – wszelkich danych na nasz temat dostępnych w sieci. O profilowaniu i nakłanianiu do decyzji konsumenckich i politycznych w internecie. O prawdzie i fałszu w kontekście sztucznej inteligencji. O tym, jak działają duże modele językowe. O tym, czy wielkie korporacje mają prawo „trenować” modele językowe za pomocą naszych treści. O tym, czy stoimy u progu rewolucji w rozumieniu pojęcia „własność”, czy też w dzisiejszych sporach nie ma nic istotnie nowego. A także o wielu jeszcze innych sprawach. Owocnego słuchania!
Se un motivo de bendición para otros y comparte esta programación con tus amigos y familiares.Puedes seguirnos en nuestras plataforma de redes socialesYoutube: https://www.youtube.com/@IglesiaAdventistaDeGazcueInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/adventistasgazcueFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/adventistasgazcueX: https://www.x.com/IglesiadeGazcueTambién puedes escuchar los matinales y predicas cada día en la plataforma de tu preferenciaBuzzprout: https://www.buzzsprout.com/255902Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/5RLxxpOGn9A8hQF5UPvA4x?si=cbvfA7tER7-UyyHDaOYUuA&utmApple podcast: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/iglesia-adventista-de-gazcue/id1452114943?uo=4Entra a nuestra página web y mantente al día con nuestras programaciones regulares y especiales. Podrás entrar a otras plataformas digitales donde tenemos presencia digital, ver fotos de nuestras programaciones, descargar materiales digitales entre otros....
Od danes bo mogoče predčasno oddati glas za nedeljski referendum o dodatku k pokojnini za izjemne umetniške dosežke. Volivci, ki želijo predčasno oddati svoj glas, bodo to lahko storili do četrtka od 7. do 19. ure. Predčasno lahko glasujejo le v okraju stalnega prebivališča, prijava na glasovanje ni potrebna. V oddaji tudi o tem: - Izrael izvedel povračilne napade na položaje jemenskih hutijevcev, obstreljeval tudi Libanon, Sirijo in Gazo - Vajeti največjega evropskega gospodarstva bo od Olafa Scholza dopoldne prevzel novi nemški kancler Friedrich Merz - Za skoraj 7 tisoč dijakov se začenja spomladanski rok splošne mature
Velika večina članic Evropske unije razmišlja o uporabi začasnega odstopanja od proračunskih pravil unije za potrebe zvišanja obrambnih izdatkov, je dejal evropski komisar za gospodarstvo Valdis Dombrovskis. Članice so po njegovih besedah pozvali, naj za sprožitev nacionalne odstopne klavzule zaprosijo do konca aprila, saj želijo zagotoviti usklajeno delovanje. Druge teme: - Beograd ta konec tedna v znamenju shoda podpornikov srbskih oblasti. - Šolska stroka opozarja na nedomišljenost uvedbe predmeta Tehnika in digitalne tehnologije v 7. razred - S prepovedjo elektronskih cigaret z vsemi aromami, razen tobačno, naj bi zaščitili mlade.
Svet je v pričakovanju ruskega odgovora na ameriško-ukrajinski dogovor o 30-dnevnem premirju. Ameriški predstavniki so se odpravili v Moskvo, ruski predsednik Vladimir Putin pa je obiskal vojake v regiji Kursk. Operacija proti ukrajinski vojski, ki je tja vdrla avgusta, je po davišnjih navedbah Kremlja v sklepni fazi. V oddaji pa tudi o tem: - Parlament Republike Srbske sprožil postopek za spremembo ustave - Na vladi danes predlog o gostinstvu, ki omejuje kratkotrajni najem stanovanj - Rokometaši v kvalifikacijah za evropsko prvenstvo do pomembne zmage v Skopju
No ano em que cada mês parece ter 3000 dias, chegou o carnaval. Exceto nos lugares que já têm blocos e festas desde a virada do ano. Quem sou eu para julgar? Esse é o assunto de hoje, mas antes…Recadinhos➡ Estou publicando cris dicas em geral — mas normalmente livros — no meu canal do Instagram e no site crisdicas.com.br. Algumas indicações podem ter link de afiliados para eu ganhar uma comissão, mas todas são sinceras.➡ Não se esquece do nosso Discord, o melhor canto da Internet. O mais novo canal é o #comidinhas, onde o Robinho Bravo meio que ressuscitou o Coisas da Rua e todo mundo dá dicas de restaurantes e receitas.➡ Amanhã começa a nova fase do Clube de Cultura do Boa Noite Internet, com o livro Nação Dopamina.➡ Depois do carnaval, vou abrir a nova turma do Apresentashow, meu curso ao vivo que vai te ensinar a fazer apresentações no trabalho que são um espetáculo. Já deixa seu e-mail na lista de espera para ficar sabendo antes de todo mundo. Como sempre faço, vou dar sessões de mentoria grátis para as primeiras 10 pessoas que se matricularem.O Boa Noite Internet é uma publicação apoiada pelos leitores. Para receber novos posts e apoiar meu trabalho, cadastre-se em uma assinatura gratuita ou paga.Qual vai ser sua fantasia de carnaval?Quando eu era criança, eu tinha uma boa relação com o carnaval — tirando a parte de que meu aniversário muitas vezes era “atrapalhado” pela data. Porque… né? Carnaval! Verão, música, todo mundo alegre. Tentar ficar acordado para ver os desfiles na Globo, ser mandado pro quarto quando começavam as transmissões dos bailes de clube. Ir nas versões infantis destes bailes fantasiado de policial americano. Fora que a semana de carnaval era mais uma desculpa para ir encontrar a primalhada em Miguel Pereira e só curtir a vida mágica dos anos 1970 e 80.Na adolescência, me achei O Inteligentão quando entendi a conexão entre carnaval e quaresma. Não era a páscoa que vinha 40 dias depois do carnaval, mas o carnaval que acontecia 40 dias antes da páscoa. A festa era a despedida dos prazeres antes do período de abstinência radical. Foi assim que virei o adolescente chato que dizia: “Sabia que o carnaval é uma festa religiosa?” Já sou palestrinha desde cedo, como vocês podem ver.Até que, não tem tanto tempo assim, entendi que o carnaval não é só uma despedida da farra antes do jejum, é mais que a famosa “festa de Baco”. É um momento em que estamos autorizados a experimentar identidades diferentes das dos outros 360 dias do ano. De deixar de “ser” para somente “estar”.Sempre me chamou a atenção a contradição de o mesmo homem que seria considerado menos masculino (a maior desgraça possível na nossa sociedade) por usar uma camiseta rosa no trabalho poder sair de Sabrina Sato completa no bloco e ninguém questionar. Na quarta-feira, a fantasia volta para o armário (ou direto pro lixo), assim como a mudança. O que aconteceu no carnaval, acaba no carnaval.Ou uma pessoa com quem me relacionei no século passado, que hoje entendo que era uma das figuras mais conservadoras que já conheci. Mas que contava com orgulho como adorava sair em trio elétrico cheirando loló e competindo com as amigas pra ver quem beijava mais. E tudo bem, não havia conflito nem hipocrisia. É só carnaval.O carnaval não é só a festa da bebida ou da pegação — mas se quiser, pode. É o festival do “viva outras vidas”, materializado nas fantasias, só que muito mais do que “eu sou o Superomi”.Essa ideia de troca de papéis é antiga. Em Roma, séculos antes de Cristo, a Saturnália já promovia uma inversão social temporária. Durante esta festa, celebrada no solstício de inverno (a época do Natal, que também foi influenciado pelo festival de Saturno), os romanos suspendiam as regras da sociedade. Escravos e senhores trocavam de lugar — não só simbolicamente, mas em aspectos práticos da vida. Os escravos podiam comer à mesa com seus senhores, vestir suas roupas, falar sem restrições e até dar ordens. Os senhores os serviam. Lojas, escolas e tribunais fechavam. Guerras eram interrompidas.Os romanos usavam o pileus — um chapéu cônico que simbolizava a liberdade — e trocavam presentes simples como velas e pequenas estatuetas. As ruas se enchiam, a cidade inteira se entregava a banquetes, bebedeiras e jogos de azar, normalmente restritos. Um “rei da folia” era escolhido por sorteio para presidir o caos festivo.Quando o cristianismo virou a religião oficial do império, a igreja tentou substituir essas festas pagãs por celebrações em nome de Jesus, mas o espírito de inversão social já estava enraizado na cultura. Assim, o desejo humano de escapar temporariamente das regras encontrou novos caminhos, novos nomes e novas datas no calendário, mesmo na própria estrutura eclesiástica. Na Europa medieval, a mais famosa destas festas foi a festum fatuorum, a “Festa dos Tolos”, celebrada por clérigos em igrejas da França. Durante um dia, os padres de menor hierarquia zombavam de seus superiores, escolhiam um “Bispo dos Tolos” e realizavam paródias de cerimônias religiosas. Não só o sagrado virava profano, o sério se transformava em cômico.Existia também a Festa do Asno (festum asinorum, porque tudo fica mais católico em latim), onde um burrico era levado para dentro da igreja e celebrado como figura central, em homenagem ao corajoso animal que carregou a Sagrada Família na fuga para o Egito. Ao final da missa, em vez de dizer “vão em paz”, o padre zurrava três vezes, e o público respondia também com zurros no lugar do tradicional “amém”. A Igreja acabou proibindo as duas celebrações nos anos 1400, mas a ideia de um período de licença social não desapareceu.O nosso Rei Momo é a personificação moderna desta tradição de troca-troca. Ele não é o rei de verdade, mas por quatro dias recebe as chaves da cidade e instala seu reinado temporário. A confusão começa, a ordem é invertida, a zoeira impera. A origem do personagem está em Momo, deus grego da zombaria e do sarcasmo, o primeiro sarcasticuzão, sempre pronto pra apontar defeitos, mesmo nos outros deuses — que levou, ora ora, à sua expulsão do Olimpo. Quando a figura chegou ao Brasil no século 19, a ideia era coroar um homem gordo, bonachão, comilão e beberrão para simbolizar os excessos permitidos naqueles dias. É o anti-rei perfeito, que governa não pela austeridade, mas pela permissividade. A escolha do Momo carioca é evento oficial da prefeitura.E tem que ser. A coroação do Rei Momo é um ritual carregado de significado. O prefeito entrega as chaves da cidade ao rei da folia, numa encenação que diz algo como: “O poder real fica suspenso. Agora quem manda é a festa.”Em um mundo cada vez mais centrado na identidade, o carnaval é a hora de ser quem você não é, em uma sociedade que, ali, não funciona mais nas regras anteriores. Mas nem todo mundo se aproveita disso e fica preso nos seus personagens. É por isso que tenho uma leve implicância com um bloco de São Paulo que só toca “punk e rock pesado” (em ritmo de carnaval). Porque seus fundadores não querem ouvir essas “músicas chatas”, sejam elas marchinhas, sambas ou Ivete. Era pra ser inclusivo, achei só preconceituoso.Se o carnaval é o momento de dissolvermos nossas identidades para tentar outras experiências, toca Arerê sim, pô! Deixa os Ratos de Porão pro resto do ano. Mas tudo bem, sábado pularemos lá, porque carnaval também é estar com a nossa galera. Tenho até amigos que são roqueiros.Toda essa história de inversão da ordem se encaixa com o cristianismo ser considerado “a religião do perdão”. Jesus morreu pelos nossos pecados. Jesus existe para perdoar nossos pecados. E o carnaval é o maior perdão do ano. Enquanto aquela prefeita do Maranhão quer trocar o carnaval por um evento gospel (parece que vai rolar mesmo), dá para tentar ver o feriado não como uma contradição aos valores cristãos, mas seu complemento necessário. E se a reza ficasse pra, sei lá, pensando alto aqui, os 40 dias depois do carnaval? Desruptei agora, diz aí.Mas calma. Carnaval não é bagunça. É o famoso “se combinar direitinho…”, mas tem que combinar. Quando eu era um garoto juvenil, comecei a namorar uma menina poucas semanas antes do carnaval. Ela já estava com viagem marcada para a Região dos Lagos e, quando nos encontramos na quarta-feira, tinha um cara na porta da casa dela. Foi o primeiro “é meu primo” da minha carreira. Tudo bem, eu sobrevivi. Era só ter combinado.Então, apesar de todo esse papo de inversão, o carnaval também tem que ter muito respeito. Não é porque na quarta-feira tudo está perdoado que você vai beijar quem não quer ser beijado, ou abusar do espaço do amiguinho. Fantasia não é salvo-conduto. “Não é não” segue valendo. A inversão de papéis funciona ao haver consentimento de todas as partes envolvidas.O que me traz de volta ao cara que se veste de mulher no carnaval, mas não “vira gay” no resto do ano. A questão não é tão simples quanto parece. Ele pode se vestir de mulher, de indígena ou de qualquer fantasia sem consequências de longo prazo. A quarta-feira chega, ele volta ao terno, à vida normal, ao privilégio. O mesmo não acontece no sentido inverso, né? Eu fico aqui imaginando uma cena de carnaval onde um cara vestido de mulher é assediado por uma mulher vestida de homem.O carnaval é uma tentativa de quebra das relações de poder, mas essas relações continuam existindo, é claro. O cidadão romano sabe que não virou escravo para sempre. É só brincadeirinha. Idolatramos drag queens e pessoas trans por quatro dias para, logo depois, voltarmos a uma sociedade que as marginaliza. Vivemos no país que lidera o ranking de assassinatos de pessoas trans.Lá atrás, o carnaval era um jeito dos reis e papas dizerem “aproveitem aí, acreditem que vocês agora estão no poder”. Será que mudou? O negro vira estrela da TV, a mulher vira rainha (da bateria), o morador da comunidade é destaque do samba-enredo. Até mesmo o contraventor que financia a escola é aplaudido na avenida. Ali pode, depois volte para onde você veio, por favor.Se é assim, o carnaval é uma verdadeira quebra ou só uma válvula de escape que mantém tudo como sempre foi? O historiador russo Mikhail Bakhtin dizia que o riso e a festa podem ser subversivos, mas também podem servir para reforçar o sistema. A inversão temporária alivia as tensões sem ameaçar a estrutura. Se sabemos que tudo volta ao normal na quarta-feira, não há perigo real de mudança. A transgressão é permitida porque é passageira. Visto assim, o carnaval é uma festa de inversão de papéis e, por isso mesmo, um ritual de aceitação do resto do ano.Quem acompanhou o Clube de Cultura de “A crise da narração”, vai lembrar de Byung-Chul Han contando que antes da chegada do “storyselling” os feriados tinham função narrativa, contavam uma história coletiva. Hoje, viraram só mais uma data para o consumo, o próximo presente a ser comprado. Será que o carnaval é a última das festas que ainda carrega um significado, ou também virou só “vou beber muito”? Para mim, parte da resposta está em todos os “pré-carnavais” e “carnaval fora de época”. Não há calendário nem ritual, só uma balada temática.Mas esse não é o assunto de hoje. Só quero dizer o seguinte: aproveite o carnaval para tentar ser quem você não é. Pense no que a palavra fantasia pode significar. Nem que seja algo simples como “menos crítico comigo mesmo” ou “não ficar pensando no amanhã”. Imagine possibilidades. Talvez o você do carnaval tenha alguma coisa pra ensinar ao você do resto do ano. De um jeito ou de outro, tudo se acaba na quarta-feira.Por hoje é sóCuidem de si, cuidem dos seus. Mais que tudo, divirtam-se. Até a próxima.crisdias This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit boanoiteinternet.com.br/subscribe
Gospodinjstva bodo za omrežnino za električno energijo januarja in februarja odštela manj. To izhaja iz danes sprejetega zakona o nujnih ukrepih za omilitev posledic obračuna visoke omrežnine za gospodinjske odjemalce. Poslanci so ga na izredni seji državnega zbora podprli brez razprave s 44 glasovi za in nobenim proti. Ukrep sicer prihaja le nekaj tednov pred iztekom regulacije cene električne energije, kar pa bo uporabnike znova udarilo po žepu. Drugi poudarki oddaje: - Po posvetu s šolniki vlada potrjevanje predloga novele zakona, ki naj bi zagotovila razvoj in kakovost šolstva, prestavila na prihodnji teden. - Poljska postaja vodilna obrambna sila Evropske unije in na čelu povezave poziva druge članice k dvigu stroškov za obrambo. - Proruandski uporniki prekršili premirje na vzhodu DR Kongo; iz mesta Goma poročajo o množičnih posilstvih in pobojih žensk.
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In the final episode of the series, Jacob Stoller and Andrew Stotz discuss the difference between typical companies using traditional management and more successful Deming-style companies. If productivity and performance are so much better, why do companies stick with traditional management? TRANSCRIPT 0:00:02.3 Andrew Stotz: My name is Andrew Stotz, and I'll be your host as we dive deeper into the teachings of Dr. W. Edwards Deming. Today, I continue my discussion and conversation with Jacob Stoller, Shingo Prize winning author of The Lean CEO. And ladies and gentlemen, I just received my copy finally. Productivity Reimagined, it just arrived from Amazon. You can get it there. And that's the latest book that he's come out with. And this is exploring applying Lean and Deming Management Principles at the enterprise level. The topic for today is moving forward with productivity. Jacob, take it away. 0:00:41.7 Jacob Stoller: Oh, thank you, Andrew. Great to be here once again. Yeah. Moving forward. That's really Chapter 13. Whether you consider that, hopefully you consider 13 lucky as I think they do in Italy. 0:00:57.4 AS: We do in Thailand. 0:01:00.4 JS: Oh, really? Wonderful. Okay. Perfect. Anyway, so I wrote in the book, I sort of defined where we're trying to go by describing two companies; a typical company, and then the company that we would aspire to for maximum productivity. So I'm gonna read those, just to illustrate. "Company A follows traditional top-down management practices. Leaders determine how the work is to be done, and give orders to their staff accordingly. Individuals, functional groups and departments are treated as independent entities under centralized control. Pay and promotion are determined by individual performance according to a set of predetermined criteria. Employees are ranked and encouraged to compete with each other." So that's company A, your typical company, which probably comprises what percentage would you say? 90%? 95%? 0:02:03.8 AS: 97.9% 0:02:04.4 JS: Okay. Okay. Let's look at where we'd like to go from there. "Company B is managed as an interactive system where people and functional teams depend on each other. Supervisors aren't expected to have all the answers, and they rely on frontline workers to share their workplace knowledge and take an active role in improving their work processes. All employees know they are part of a team culture pursuing common goals and solving problems together to move the company forward." Okay, so that's really, that's where we wanna be. And the reason you would want to go there is because if you take those two companies and they have similar resources, similar markets, perhaps operating in similar region, company B will outproduce company A 10 times out of 10. It's a more productive model, and it's proven to work. So why don't people do it? 0:03:16.3 JS: Well, there's some thinking that gets in the way, some sort of systemic kinds of barriers that are out there. So even people who aspire to making a company better, and I think there are a lot of people out there that think that, but they run into these barriers, and I'm just gonna review them again because we've gone through them in some detail. But the myth of segmented success, that's the really kind of the exact opposite of a company as a system. It's this idea that all the parts are interchangeable. You can take a department, you can give each department separate goals, and they'll all make their goals and it'll all add up. That's the myth, of course. So the myth of segmented success. We have really stemming out of that the myth of the bottom line. 0:04:11.9 JS: And because of that segmented structure, we believe that we can use finance as a proxy for all the quantitative, all the accomplishments of all these different segments. It all adds up. It's arithmetic. We figure, so why not? We just take, everyone makes their numbers, and then they all make their numbers and they all celebrate together. That's the myth, of course. The bottom line doesn't tell you what's really going on in the company. The top-down knowledge myth they run into, and that's this whole idea that managers are supposed to know all the answers, and their job is to tell people what to do. And it's not just people with MBAs. It's people with degrees in psychology and maybe working in HR. It's engineers, it's any person with professional training, figures that they have not only the privilege, but a duty to actually tell people what to do. And if I'm not telling people what to do, I'm probably not doing my job and somebody's going to be looking over my shoulder. So a big fear around that. 0:05:31.6 JS: Myth number four is the myth of sticks and carrots. And this is this idea of Homo Economicus, the idea that people act in their own financial interest and it's perfectly predictable. Performance is down? Well, let's just pay them more or maybe we need some threats here. Maybe we need to threaten them, or maybe we need to get some competition. So somebody is gonna be a little bit worried looking over their shoulder that they might get fired. Fear is a big factor here, obviously. Finally, there's the myth of tech omnipotence. And this stems right from the myth of segmented success. This idea we can take a process and we can swap out technology, we can put in technology and swap out people. We can reduce head count by 5, 10, 15 people and put in a machine in its place. That's been the business case for technology for decades. And we still have a very strong belief in that. So that's kind of what we're stuck with, those myths. And we really have to crush those myths as we go along. 0:06:42.5 AS: You know, Jacob, I was just at a meeting yesterday with a very senior executive at a very large company in Thailand. And I was just talking to him, it's off the record, so we were just chatting, but he was talking about the challenges that they're facing, and I said, so how are your KPIs? And he said, KPIs are just killing us. They're causing us to be siloed. It's setting up competition in the company. People can't work together. And I asked him this question, like, what can you do about it? He says, not much. What am I gonna do? Remove the KPI system? No. We know... 0:07:31.1 JS: Isn't that interesting? 0:07:34.8 AS: That ultimately that's probably one of the best things that they could do and get people to work together. But it just, you know, he said something to me that just made me think about, for the listeners and the viewers out there who are running small and medium-sized businesses who feel disadvantaged so many times when they're fighting against the big giants... 0:07:53.6 JS: Yeah. 0:07:53.6 AS: Take comfort that you can change your business. But many of these big companies, they just can't. And they won't. 0:08:01.2 JS: Yeah. 0:08:03.5 AS: And they never will. So that's what's so great about these types of principles, both Lean, what you're talking about, Deming, is that if you're a business owner, it's a family business, it's your private business or a group of people that you have real control over the business, you can implement these things. And you can build your business to be great. 0:08:23.7 JS: That's interesting, Andrew. I've talked in my book, I've talked with some smaller manufacturers, and at least a couple of them have said they're getting refugees from large corporations. And he'll interview these people and say, well, I can't give you, you know, you won't have 500 people reporting to you or anything. And they say, I don't care. I said, I really, you know, I've had it with this corporate stuff, and they want to be part of a culture that makes a difference. And so that's maybe catching on. I mean, interesting that the gentleman you're talking with also recognized that. 0:09:00.3 AS: Yeah. And he's just as, his hands are tied in some ways. And, so, but that to me is hopeful for the rest of the businesses that can change. And the other thing I was, you know, I always end with my favorite quote from Dr. Deming, which is that people are entitled to joy in work. Yesterday I was speaking to about 75 students in my Ethics in Finance class, and it's the kickoff day. And so it's a real fun, and I talk about a bunch of things, but the one thing I said is that ever since I graduated from university, all I really wanted was a job that I enjoyed, at a place that I enjoyed doing it, with the people I enjoyed doing it with. That's all I wanted. I wanted joy in work and I got it because I walked away from the places and the people where it wasn't happening, and I walked towards the places where I had the opportunity to enjoy it. Of course it helps that I found my love, which is being a financial analyst. It's just, I understand that so well, but this is where I think I want us to think about hope and potential for happiness in work and all of that. And so I know you've got some more steps that you've got to help people. So maybe we move into that. 0:10:27.7 JS: Sure. Sure. Well, and it would be interesting, this gentleman you talked with, I wonder if he's visited any companies that we would admire that are using Deming principles, or maybe... 0:10:39.1 AS: Well, it may give it away, but this company in the past has fully implemented the teachings of Dr. Deming. 0:10:49.2 JS: Oh, really? 0:10:51.5 AS: But they had a changeover in management, and they completely walked away from this and implemented the KPI system. 0:11:00.9 JS: Yeah. Oh my. Isn't that something? Yeah, that happens. That happens for sure. And we've had, you know, in my last book, The Lean CEO, I found some people, number of companies had fallen off the ladder. And gosh, the Shingo Institute had a real problem with that. People were winning Shingo prizes and then they were falling off the ladder, and they changed their emphasis on criteria now, and now they really emphasize culture. You can't just follow the principles, but you really have to get the culture, and they really grill them on that. So, interesting. Interesting. 0:11:38.2 AS: Yeah. 0:11:41.0 JS: But the first step, the reason I asked you if they've visited anybody is really, I think if you're starting from scratch at company A, I think the first thing is to go visit companies. 0:11:48.6 AS: Yep. 0:11:49.5 JS: I mean, you've got to see what's going on in companies that are different to even appreciate what's possible. And it's... 0:12:00.6 AS: 'Cause it's inspiring. 0:12:00.7 JS: It's not only inspiring, but you see things that you wouldn't expect to see. And I think what they said, what these folks have told me over and over again is that what you see is you actually feel it. There's a culture in there, there's a kind of an atmosphere when you walk in the door. And that's what really wows people. I hear that over and over again. So you have to feel that, you can't write that down, or you can't explain that in a talk. So I think that's really the first step. And fortunately, companies that have gone through these transformations are happy to welcome people to come visit, because it helps them reinforce their culture as well. So it's a reinforcing kind of thing. I think after you've done that, gone the rounds a bit, that's when you really need to assess where you are and what you wanna be. And I think there has to be some honest criticism about the kind of company you are. I don't know if you wanna call it soul-searching, but there's not a realization that we don't wanna go on as we were, you're really not gonna do much. So that's, I think, critically important. You're smiling. Do you have a story there? 0:13:20.8 AS: No, but I'm just, you know, it makes sense. It makes sense. I did actually, you know, in Thailand there was a company that I saw in the newspaper many years ago that it came out in the newspaper that they won the Deming Prize from Japan, from the Union of Scientists in Japan. And so I just called the company and I said, congratulations. And they said, great, thank you. And then I said, and I talked to the CEO of the company, and then I said, could I bring my staff from my coffee, you know, management team from the coffee business to come and see you guys? And he said, yeah. And that started a lifelong friendship with a guy named Srini, who was the guy who won that. He passed away about a year or two ago. And I featured him in my book on Transform Your Business with Dr. Deming's 14 Points. But the idea is... 0:14:11.0 JS: Oh yeah... 0:14:12.7 AS: Go out and... 0:14:14.0 JS: I love that book. 0:14:16.2 AS: Explore and see it, see what's out there. 0:14:16.3 JS: Yeah. For sure. 0:14:17.5 AS: Because you also, when you go out and explore, you also find out, hey, we're pretty good at some of these things and there's things that we're doing well, you know? 0:14:23.5 JS: Of course, of course. So once you've assessed your state, I think it's very, very important, even before you start talking to your people, 'cause it's gonna be a transformation, you're gonna demand an awful lot from your people, you've really got to know where you're going, and you have to establish a vision. And companies have different ways of doing that. But the one thing I would emphasize is that it's gotta be a vision with substance. And I think Dr. Deming would say, by what method? [laughter] You say where you're going. Right? So, for example, a hospital. I saw a hospital that did a very good job of that, establishing a vision, and they wanted to be the safest and most compassionate hospital in their region. They said, well, what would that look like? 0:15:13.3 JS: And they looked at, well, okay, safety would obviously be big. There would be fiscal responsibility. Wait time is a big issue in healthcare, be no waiting. I think there may have been one more as well. But anyway, they established these kinds of what I would call aspirational goals. It's where we, really where we want to be, and it's gotta be something that inspires employees, right? You wanna be a compassionate, safe place for patients to come. I mean, that's what people want. So then what they do is they took it a level down, and they said, okay, well, if we're going to have an exemplary safety record, what would that look like? How would we measure it? And they have safe... The health organizations have safety statistics. So, they have an institution, that third party organization that would report on the numbers, so they could set some targets according to that. And then they go down even further. They say, okay, safety. What are the things that we need to do? What are some of our weaknesses? So they say, well, patient falls was one of them. They have things like medication error, hospital acquired illnesses. So all this goes under the idea of no harm to patients, right? 0:16:44.0 AS: Yeah. 0:16:45.3 JS: All goes together. So, they then started to work on the most pressing one. You know, work on targets, do projects together, PDSA kinds of projects. And they chipped away at it and eventually with a number of projects, they were very successful. But I think the key, of course, is that problems in workplaces and hospitals, maybe especially, are very granular in lots and lots of things, so you need all hands on deck. But they were very, very successful at getting a very high rating just through these efforts. So, that's... [overlapping conversation] 0:17:28.8 AS: Yeah, the vision with substance is a great one because I think lots of visions are flaky, and we've been working on the vision for Coffee Works, for my company, and that is we supply coffee to every leading brand in Thailand. And that's something that we can visualize, the employees can visualize, they can also see who we don't serve. And also when we lose a customer that's a leading brand, we can say we messed up, but when your contract's up with our competitor, we're gonna be back because we supply every leading brand in Thailand. 0:18:08.0 JS: Right, right. 0:18:10.3 AS: So, substance, vision. Yep. 0:18:13.3 JS: Yeah, definitely. Yeah. And I guess you share that, been sharing that kind of vision with your people for a long time, right? 0:18:18.3 AS: Yep. 0:18:21.6 JS: But I mean, would you say, how important would you say vision is? I mean... 0:18:23.2 AS: I think it's critical. And I think that part of what happens is that many companies start with a vision, and then they get, it's just so easy to get distracted. And there's so many, you know, business just grows complex, and then all of a sudden you feel like, we can do all of this, we can do this, we can do that, we can do this, we can do that. The best book on this is Good Strategy Bad Strategy by Richard Rumelt. And he talks a lot about what are bad strategies, and he talks about these fluffy visions that really don't help anybody. And so getting a vision with substance, I think is critical. 0:18:58.0 JS: Okay. So we got our vision, it's got real teeth. It's something that we can stand in front of our people and say, here's what we're going to do. And they won't say, oh, this is just another flavor of the month. They'll realize that we're serious and we're gonna do this. The next step, number four, is building trust. And that's extremely important. And one of the manufacturer actually told me a wonderful story about this. He was working in a very... Had a plant in a very rough neighborhood in Baltimore. And when he took over that plant as a general manager, there was terrible culture. People were... He said there was racism and there were just people quitting all the time. And just walking out the door, not showing up to work. You know, the workers hated management. 0:19:56.7 JS: So this guy went in onto the shop floors. I'm your new general manager. And he said he spent the first three or four months just talking to them about their lives. You know, he was committed to the Lean methodology, but he didn't talk about methods, how we're gonna do things different. He just found out what's important to these people. And a lot of 'em were financially strapped. They were in poor neighborhoods. So the direction was really how to make this company more profitable so we can pay you more. And that was kind of a guiding vision and remarkably successful how it did. How he won the people over. And I think there's so many people out there asking people to do things. And, you know, you really have to... Takes a lot of trust. I mean, you're gonna say, I'm gonna admit when I've made a mistake, I'm not gonna cover it up and you're not gonna fire me. You know, that's never happened. So... 0:21:02.9 AS: And I can tell you, for the listeners and the viewers out there, here's a good inspiring movie to get you an idea of thinking about how to get out on the shop floor and understand from the inside what's happening in the business. And the movie came out in 1980, and it's called Brubaker by Robert Redford. And it's the story of a new prisoner warden. 0:21:25.2 JS: Oh, I never saw it. 0:21:27.0 AS: Yeah. Prison warden who goes in as a prisoner, and the governor of the state has sent him in as a prisoner. And so he lives a prisoner's life for, I don't know how long it was, a week, a couple weeks, a month, until eventually he, you know, reveals himself and then takes over. And then he knew all the corruption and all the problems and all the issues, and he went about solving 'em. It's an inspiring movie. 0:21:54.2 JS: Yeah. And more recently, there was a program, I've seen a couple of episodes of Undercover CEO, you know, where CEO actually goes into the workplace in disguise and flips burgers or whatever. And then discovers what's really going on in the company. 0:22:09.2 AS: Yeah, that's a great. That's probably even more applicable. 0:22:11.2 JS: Yeah. Right. So building trust is just... It's very personal. And from that point, you start to make changes. But those changes... My favorite examples, I don't know if this is a general rule, but some of the best examples I've seen are working on safety. You work on safety because improving processes to make them safer is actually kind of like a gateway drug to doing continuous improvement, right? You start to understand what processes are, but first of all, people are improving the process in their own interest. 0:22:50.8 AS: Yep. 0:22:52.2 JS: So you get them very good at making these changes, proposing changes, speaking out, pointing out when other people are not following safety guidelines. Understanding that something has to stop when safety is not there. No, you build on the trust you created and you start to change the culture around that. So that's number five. So you notice I've gone five steps and we haven't introduced any methods or anything. You know, it's... 0:23:23.8 AS: What I noticed from those first five is that they're really all things that senior management need to do before they go out with all their exciting new ideas and start training people and start really bringing that out in a much more aggressive way. 0:23:41.5 JS: Exactly. So really step six is train and transform. And that's when we do all the... That's when we draw the diagrams, and that's when we start the PDSA training or the Kaizen events or whichever type of transformation you're doing. That's when we start to train the workforce and we start to undergo the transformation. So that's all the work, but the transforming work. But we've done enormous preparation before we get there. And I think that's what I've seen is the best way to do it. So we train and transform, and then of course we have to remove barriers as they come. So it might be removing some aspects of the accounting system because they might be holding us back. So you run into the barriers and you take on those barriers as you run into them and you build momentum. 0:24:36.3 AS: Yep. 0:24:38.6 JS: So step seven really is you're building this momentum and you raise the bar. You've done something and now you raise your standards and continue to raise them. And that leads you to a continually improving organization where you're always expecting to get better. People have a joy in work because they know that they're part of making something better. And you continue raising the bar 'cause people like a challenge. 0:25:07.9 AS: Yep. 0:25:08.5 JS: As long as it's a safe environment and as long as it's a team kind of self-supporting workplace. So finally we get to share and learn. So we've gone full circle. You know, you've got... You've gone through a transformation, you're proud of your work, and you start to open the door to visitors because that's where you really reinforce the culture. And, I don't know, you have... You say you have visitors at the coffee place? 0:25:45.9 AS: Yeah. I mean, for me, I just love going to companies that do like to share and learn. And I like to do that too. We get students, a lot of times it'll be like executive MBA students coming to Thailand and others that I'll bring out to the factory, so to get them to see how we do things. But I just personally love to... Well, it's great when you go out to a place, and there's a lot of factories in Thailand for sure where you can just see that they have a vision of what they're doing and they clearly communicate it. I had a company that I saw in the financial data many years ago when I was an analyst that really did something very odd, which was their cash conversion cycle was negative. Normally it's a positive thing for a manufacturing company 'cause they have a lot of inventory and accounts receivable and the like. 0:26:34.9 AS: And so I went out and I met with the CEO and then I said, how did you do this? He said, it took us five years, but we brought our inventory down to seven days of inventory. And how did you do it? And he took me out on the factory floor to meet all the different people doing it. And he said, I put people in teams and they work together and they try to figure out how do we reduce the inventory here? I help them see the overhead cost that's coming from the executives so they could calculate a P&L and understand like, how can they make their section, you know, better? And then he had some of the guys come and speak and explain what they were doing, some of the supervisors and managers on the shop floor. And I was like, wow, this was impressive. So love that sharing and learning. 0:27:22.7 JS: Yeah. No, it's great. And I've had wonderful visits where people are so excited about their work that you think, wow. And of course that means they're really, really productive. I mean, they just... They're doing it because they love it and it's... You can't compare with that kind of creativity that you get from that. So I guess that I'd like to talk a little about the competitive advantages here of taking this journey and, you know, that's the whole point. Productivity becomes your competitive advantage. You outproduce other companies with similar resources. And I believe that the way the world is changing right now, that competitive advantage for company B type companies is going to grow as things... And I have four reasons I cite for that. 0:28:21.0 JS: Reason one is flexibility, adaptability, agility, whatever you wanna call it. You know, we're going with manufacturing and services too much more into high mix, low volume type scenarios. So the mass production machinery approach has just become less and less relevant to manufacturing and also with services as well because it's not... It's less a ones size fits all kinda world. That's one very strong reason. The ability to hire talent. You know, we're just starting to see that. You know, people don't wanna work for these corporations that they feel don't have purpose. And couple of manufacturers actually told me, and this is in the US, I don't know how that compares with Thailand, but in the US he said there's a real crisis not just 'cause people maybe don't have jobs, but because people don't have purpose in their work, so people go home depressed, they take drugs and they've done medical studies on this. 0:29:30.3 JS: You know, if you don't have purpose in your work and you're doing something even though you know it's dumb and you're doing it anyway, just, you know, because to please the boss or whatever, that places huge stress on people. And there are actually medical... They've done medical studies on that, people who work in those kinds of jobs, on the negative effects. So anyway, I think getting the best talent, I hear that more and more anyone I talk to, and I think that's gonna be more and more of a factor. There's a whole deglobalization process going on right now. A lot of reshoring here in North America. People, you know, companies really realizing that sort of the fallacy of having these very, very long supply chains. So it's all about now shortening that supply chain, having immediate suppliers that are close. 0:30:23.9 JS: I mean, that's the only way you're gonna get your inventory turns down to 50 or whatever your friend was talking about. Right? And finally on climate change, that's getting tougher and tougher to deal with. And it's not just about governments not acting, but it's going to be scarcity of resources. It's going to be having to run businesses in difficult climate circumstances. It's gonna be government regulation. It's going to be whether people will come and work for companies that aren't making... Doing their bit to combat this. So those four reasons, I think that's a competitive advantage that's going to grow. And I think it's urgent that corporations act, and Dr. Deming warned that there'd be a crisis coming if companies kept running the way they were, and the crisis is here. We've arrived and, you know, the statistics are terrible. Don't have to bore you with those, but, you know, it's a very rough world and we need, obviously governments will have to act, but we need better companies. Now... Sorry, go ahead. 0:31:48.2 AS: I was... Yeah, that's why he entitled this book Out of the Crisis 'cause there was a crisis then, and the fact is there's still, and it's so many things are harder too particularly in the US with reshoring and that type of thing because education has been decimated also in the US so it's very hard to bring back, you know, engineering prowess and things like that, so. Yep. 0:32:14.1 JS: Yeah, for sure. So I... My sort of wrap up comment would be, answer to your question, not really a question, but your title, you talked about boosting Lean with Deming. So, you know, when we chat about this, but you know what, I was thinking about this, what as a person who wrote about Lean initially and then took a much deeper dive into Deming, what does Deming add, from my perspective? And what excites me the most about Dr. Deming is that I think he was less interested in maybe methods and more interested in fundamental truths. I mean, he really, I think put forward what are really fundamental truths about people, about the physical world and about how people in the physical world interact. And these are, like I say, this is not slogans or anything like this, this is science. I mean, these are proven scientific principles and I think those principles underline any method you use. You know, if you're really following that. And I'm not a Deming scholar enough to be able to say that that's what he meant by profound knowledge. But when you use the term profound knowledge, that's what that means to me. It means just a very fundamental knowledge of the way things work. 0:33:49.8 AS: Yeah. Well, it's exciting to think about how we can learn from what you've written about and what you've talked about. So ladies and gentlemen, the book is Productivity Reimagined: Shattering Performance Myths to Achieve Sustainable Growth. And I've really enjoyed our time, Jacob, to go through all the different myths and to hear the way you look at things which is coming from your direction originally, the Lean direction, and then bringing that thinking together with the teachings of Dr. Deming. So I just wanna thank you and give you the last word. If you'd like to wrap up for the listeners and the viewers to say, what's the main message you wanna get, want them to get out of all the... Out of the book and out of all of our discussion? How would you wrap it up? 0:34:45.4 JS: I would wrap it up by saying, let's look for those fundamental truths. You know, let's not look for slogans, let's not look for techniques. Let's look at what's really true about humans, about the physical world, and let's build our future based on that. 0:35:04.2 AS: Well, Jacob, on behalf of everyone at the Deming Institute, I wanna thank you again for this discussion right now and the prior discussions about each part of your book and the myths and the like. And for listeners, remember to go to deming.org to continue your journey, and you can find Jacob's book, Productivity Reimagined, at jacobstoller.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."
Join Bill Bellows and Andrew Stotz as they discuss what actions (or inactions) make us worse than thieves and how that relates to expiration dates, and acceptability vs desirability. Plus, stories about job swapping, Achieving Competitive Excellence, and birthdays. TRANSCRIPT 0:00:02.3 Andrew Stotz: My name is Andrew Stotz, and I'll be your host as we dive deeper into the teachings of Dr. W. Edwards Deming. Today, I'm continuing my discussion with Bill Bellows, who has spent 31 years helping people apply Dr. Deming's ideas to become aware of how their thinking is holding them back from their biggest opportunities. Today is Episode 9, and it's entitled "Worse Than a Thief." Bill, take it away. 0:00:27.2 Bill Bellows: Welcome, Andrew. I haven't seen you in a while, and great to be back. 0:00:29.1 AS: It's been a while. 0:00:32.0 BB: Here we are. Episode 9 already. Gosh, [chuckle] time flies when we're having fun. First, let me say a shout out to people who are reaching out to me on LinkedIn. I spoke with another one of them this afternoon. It's always exciting to connect with them. And then I ideally connect in a regular basis and help them as best I can, and learn from them as best I can. 0:01:03.0 AS: Yep. 0:01:03.2 BB: So, for those who are thinking about it, they keep hearing you say, "Hey, you know how to reach Bill? Find him on LinkedIn." So, a reminder for those who are waiting for a nudge, here's a nudge. So, "Worse than a thief" is an expression that Dr. Taguchi used when he say, Andrew, "Don't be worse than a thief." And we'll get to that, but let me just give our audience some context on that. 0:01:37.8 AS: Yep. 0:01:39.0 BB: Dr. Taguchi would say... And actually, I don't know if Dr. Taguchi explained it. Someone explained it to me this way. He said a thief could be someone who steals your wallet, finds $20; which means they're up 20, you're down 20; which people refer to as "zero sum gain." Right? So, the thief's gain is my loss, zero sum. What could be worse than that? Well, "worse than a thief" would be a situation where what someone gains is nothing compared to what I lose. A simple example is, [chuckle] I'm not the only one who does this, but if I'm going to the supermarket and I get out of the car and I see a nail in the parking lot or a piece of glass in the parking lot on my way in. So, I'm not talking about walking all around the parking lot. I'm talking about if on my way into the store I see a nail, something that could puncture a foot, a tire, and I spend a few seconds to pick it up, throw it in the trash can right by the door, then my theory is the reason I do that, the reason others do that, is the belief that that little bit of time that I am spending doing that could potentially save someone far more than the few seconds it took me. 0:03:20.9 BB: Well, "worse than a thief" would be, I see that broken bottle, let's say a bunch of shards of glass. And having worked at my father's gas station, I've seen... A nail on a tire is one thing. Nail creates a puncture. A piece of glass in a tire creates a fracture. A piece of glass can destroy a tire 'cause you get a crack and it spreads, and that's hard to repair. A puncture with a nail, yeah, it's inconvenient, but that doesn't destroy the tire. So, I'm overly sensitive when I see pieces of glass in a parking lot, that that could ruin a tire. 0:04:04.8 AS: And ruin a day. 0:04:06.2 BB: Ruin a day, oh yeah. And so the idea is that for someone to not take the time, and the time they save cost you more than they saved, that's worse than a thief. 0:04:19.8 AS: Right. 0:04:20.0 BB: So, if I meet a set of requirements, leave the bowling ball in the doorway, deliver minimally, but in the world of acceptability, what do we call that, Andrew? It's good. 0:04:35.3 AS: It's good. 0:04:36.0 BB: Right? It's good. It's just within requirements, but good. 0:04:41.8 AS: It's not beyond looking good. 0:04:43.9 BB: And forget about beyond looking good; this is looking good. So, I leave the bowling ball in the doorway. I deliver to you the absolute minimum, which is still good. So, your response to that, Andrew, is, "Thank you, Bill." [chuckle] 0:05:00.0 AS: Yeah. 0:05:00.1 BB: And I'm not saying you know what I did, but let's say the situation where I am unaware of the loss function. I'm unaware that what I'm doing is make making your life worse. 0:05:12.2 AS: Right. 0:05:13.3 BB: But the idea is that my shortcut to deliver the D minus; D minus, minus, minus, minus, minus. 'Cause that's still not an F. What Taguchi is talking about is that the amount of resources I save, may be a fraction of what it cost you in terms of extra effort to use it. So, my savings of an hour, a minute, a second causing you far more than I saved, is worse than a thief. But in the world of acceptability, there is no such thing. In the world of acceptability, a little bit within requirements on the low side, a little bit within requirements on the high side, it's all the same. Again, there may be a situation where if you're putting a shelf on a piece of wood on a wall as a shelf and it's a little bit longer, a little bit long on either side, that may not have an impact; may not be touching anything on either side. It doesn't have to fit in. 0:06:25.9 BB: Now, this past weekend, our son and I were installing a new floor at our daughter's condo, and we wanted the pieces to fit in-between other pieces and this laminate floor which is a [chuckle] lot of work. Our son is turning into quite the artist when it comes to woodworking and things. But it's very precise getting things just right, just right, just right. And that attention to detail, that attention to making sure the gaps are just right, minding the gap and not the part. And there were pieces of this floor that he was trying to install. And it was driving him nuts, and finally... He's trying to figure it out and he finally figured it out what was going on. 'Cause he wanted that floor and the spacing between not just to meet requirements [chuckle] not that our daughter gave him and set the requirement, but he wanted the floor in those gaps to be invisible. He wanted things to... Right? He had a higher level, a higher standard. 0:07:25.3 BB: Now, this is the same kid who when he was 13 left the bowling ball in the doorway. But I would've done that. You would've done that. So, anyway, that's the difference between... Another reminder of, one, the difference between acceptability and desirability. But to add to this idea of "worse than a thief," embedded in the concept of desirability is not to be worse than a thief, is to understand the consequences of your action on others, and the amount of time and your decision on how you deliver it and how you meet the requirements. The idea is that, the less time you take in order to save at your end might be causing the person downstream in your organization more than you're saving. 0:08:22.8 AS: In other words, something small, you could adjust something small that would have a huge impact down the line, and you just didn't... You don't know about it. 0:08:32.2 BB: Again, that's why I go back to the nail in the parking lot. To not pick up the nail could cause someone so much more than the few seconds you didn't spend. But again, that could be... [overlapping conversation] 0:08:44.0 AS: And one of the things that makes it easier or better for a working environment is you know your downstream. 0:08:51.8 BB: Yes. 0:08:51.8 AS: When you're walking in the parking lot, you don't know your downstream; it's just anybody generally, and hopefully I've stopped something from happening here, but you're never gonna know and all that. But with a business, you know your downstream, you know your upstream, and that communication can produce a really, really exciting result because you can see it and feel it. 0:09:11.8 BB: Well, and thank you for bringing that up, because I've got notes from... Since the last time we met, I keep a file for the next sessions we're gonna do. And so as things, ideas come up from people that I'm meeting on LinkedIn or elsewhere, then I, "Oh, let me throw that in." And so I throw it into a Word file for the next time. And so somewhere, I can't remember who, but since the last time we spoke, someone shared with me... Hold on, let me find it here. Okay. In their organization, they do staff rotation. They move people around in their organization. And the question had to do with, "Isn't that what Dr. Deming would promote? Is having people move around the organization?" And I said... Hold on, I gotta sneeze. I said, "Well, if I am the person that makes the parts that you have to assemble, and I make them just within requirements unaware of the downstream impact... " I don't know where they are within the requirements, let's say. 0:10:30.0 BB: All I know is that they're acceptable. I machine it, I measure it, the inspection says it's good, I don't know where within it's good. I don't know. So, I'm unaware. All I know is that it met the requirements. And I hand off to you on a regular basis, and then the boss comes along and says, "Bill, I wanna have you go do Andrew's job." So, now, I'm on the receiving end. And maybe you are upstream doing what I used to do. And you are likewise unaware that... You don't know that you're delivering acceptability. All you know is all the parts you deliver are good. You're trained the same way I'm trained, I'm doing your job. Does that change anything? [chuckle] If I take on your job and let's say, banging it together, whereas the week before you were banging it together, does that rotation create the conversation? 0:11:27.2 AS: So, you're saying rotation for the sake of rotation is not necessarily valuable if in fact, what could be more value is just the two of us sitting down and saying, "So what is it that you're doing with yours and what do you need?" and maybe visiting the other side or something like that. 0:11:44.9 BB: My point is, until the thought occurs to either one of us on the distinction between acceptable and desirable, neither one of us is the wiser as to why we do what we do. So, having people move around the organization and take on different roles, absent an understanding of this contrast, absent an understanding of what Dr. Deming is talking about, which includes these distinctions, that's not gonna do anything. 0:12:16.0 AS: Right. 0:12:16.8 BB: I would say it's a nice idea, and you hear about that all the time about oh the CEO's gonna go work at the front desk. But if the CEO goes to the front desk, again, unless he or she has a sense of what could be, that things could be smoother than what they are because of where they've worked before and it's so much smoother over there, that could lead to why at the Atlanta office does it take so much longer than the LA office. Now I'm beginning to wonder what might be causing that difference. But if I just take on your job for the first time, or if you and I every other week change jobs. So, I'm doing your job, we are both doing assembly, we're both making the parts. Absent an understanding of the contrast between a Deming environment or a non-Deming environment, which would include an appreciation of what Dr. Deming would call the System of Profound Knowledge and the elements of psychology and systems and variation, the theory of knowledge, just not enough. Insufficient. Nice idea. But it's when at Rocketdyne we would call "reforming." 0:13:39.0 BB: And we started 'cause Russ... Dr. Deming talks about transformation, and Russ talks about reforming. And so I started thinking, "How would I explain what... " I just thought it was too... My interpretation of what Dr. Deming is saying of the individual transform will begin to see things differently, okay. My interpretation is, I begin to hear things differently, I begin to hear the contrast between somebody referring to their son as "their son" versus "our son," my idea versus our idea; I start paying attention to pronouns, so I start hearing things differently; I start to think about, see things as a system a little... I become more aware, visually more aware. 0:14:43.9 BB: And to me, another aspect I think about relative to transformation is that, if I'm the professor and you're the student in a class, or in any situation, I don't see... I think about how I've contributed to whatever it is you're doing. I have somehow created the headache that you're experiencing. If I'm upstream of you in the organization, whether that's me delivering a report or a tool, or I'm the professor delivering the lecture, I began to realize that your issues I've created, and I begin to see things as a... I begin to see that I am part of the issue, Part of the solution, part of the problem. When I explained to students this, I began to realize as a professor that I am not an observer of your learning, asking "How did you do on the exam?" I am a participant in your learning, saying "How did we do in the lecture?" And to me, that's all part of this transformation. 0:15:53.0 BB: Now, the other word, "reform," which is associated with things I've heard from Russ. He talks about... Yeah, I'll just pause there. But I started thinking, well, Deming's talking about how I see the world, how I begin to see relationships differently, think about variation differently. That's a personal transformation. Reforming, and others began to explain to people at Rocketdyne and I do with clients and students is, reforming is when you and I swap jobs. Reforming is when I look at the process and get rid of a few steps. Reforming is changing titles. Reforming is painting something, [chuckle] changing the color. I think I shared, maybe in the first podcast series, I was doing a multi-day, one-on-one seminar with a pediatrician in Kazakhstan, who came to London to meet me and a bunch of other friends to learn more about Dr. Deming's work. And the entire thing was done through a translator. 0:17:07.1 BB: And so I would ask a question in English, it would be translated to Russian then back to me in English. And so at some point, I said to Ivan Klimenko, a wonderful, wonderful guy. I said, "Ivan," I said [chuckle] to Yuri, the translator, I said, "Ask Ivan, what's the fastest way for a Red Pen Company, a non-Deming company, a "Me" organization, to become a Blue Pen Company, otherwise known as a Deming company or "We" organization." And these are terms that we talked about in the first series; I don't think in this series. But, anyway, I said, "So what's the fastest way for a non-Deming company to become a Deming company? A Red Pen Company to become a Blue Pen Company?" 0:17:44.9 BB: And so he asked, and I'm listening to the translation. And he says, "Okay, I give up." I said, "Spray paint." [chuckle] And that's what reforming is: Getting out the red spray paint, having things become neat, clean, and organized, and you're just going through the motions. There's no change of state. And so, "I do your job, you do my job," that's not sufficient. But get us to think about the contrast of a Deming and a non-Deming organization, then you and I changing roles could be enormously beneficial as I begin to understand what it's like to be on the receiving end. Now, we're talking. And I think I mentioned in a previous podcast, I had a woman attend one of the classes I did at Rocketdyne, and she said, "Bill, in our organization, we have compassion for one another." It's the same thing. It's not sufficient. And that's me saying, "Andrew, I feel really bad. I lost a lot of sleep last night thinking about how much time you spend banging together all those parts that I give you. And if there was anything I could do to make things better, I would love to help you. But at the end of the day, Andrew, all the parts I gave you are good, right? I don't give you bad stuff, right? Have I ever given you a defective part, Andrew?" 0:19:12.0 AS: Nope. 0:19:13.1 BB: "So, everything's good, right? Everything's good that I give you? Well, then, if I could help you, but I don't know what else to do. Everything I give you is good. So, it must be on your end." [laughter] [overlapping conversation] 0:19:24.1 AS: And I'm busy. Yeah. 0:19:26.6 BB: Must be on you. And that's what I'm talking about. Now, if I understand that I'm contributing to your headache, I'm contributing to the trouble you're having with an example, now I'm inspired; now I understand there's something on me. [chuckle] But, short of that, nice idea, it's not helping. 0:19:50.0 BB: [laughter] So, the story I wanted to share before we're talking about this role-changing. Again, role-changing by itself, nah, not sufficient. So, see if this sounds familiar. It has to do with acceptability. I'm pretty certain it's part of the first series. I wanna make sure it's part of the second series. So, I was in a seminar at Rocketdyne on something to do with quality. And I think United Technologies had purchased Rocketdyne. They were bringing to us their new quality management system. Not just any quality management system, Andrew. This was called ACE, A-C-E. And, when we first learned about this, I remember being in a room when their United Technologies, ACE experts started to explain it. And some of my colleagues said, "Well, what is ACE?" They said, "Well, it's Achieving Competitive Excellence." "Well, what is it? What is it, 'competitive... '" 0:20:52.2 AS: It sounds like you wanna put that up on the wall as a slogan. 0:20:56.0 BB: It was a slogan, "Achieving Competitive Excellence." And people says, "Well, what is it?" I said, "Well, it's Lean Six Sigma." Well, so why do you call it ACE? Well, our arch rivals, General Electric. they call it Lean Six Sigma. We ain't gonna call it Lean Six Sigma. So, we're calling it ACE, A-C-E, Achieving Competitive Excellence. But it's the same thing as Lean Six Sigma. [chuckle] And so we had all this mandatory ACE training that we would all sit through and pray that the rosters were never lost, were never lost so we wouldn't have to take the training again. So, in the training, there was a discussion of, how does the environment impact quality? And I don't know how it came up, but similar, there's a conversation about the environment could affect quality. And, so when that was raised, I think it was a question that came up. 0:21:56.9 BB: How does the environment affect quality? The physical environment: How hot it is, how cold it is. So, one of the attendees says, "I've got an example." He says, "I worked for a Boeing supplier," and it might have been, "I worked for Boeing in Australia." I know he said he worked in Australia. They made parts, big parts, very tall parts like a 15, 20... Very long section. And I think he said it had to do with the tails, part of the tail for Boeing airplane. [chuckle] He says, "When we would measure it," he said, "we knew that if we took the measurement first thing in the morning before the sun came up and it started to get hot, then there's a good chance that the length would meet requirements. And, we knew that once that part saw the heat of the sun and expanded, then it wouldn't meet requirements. So, we measured it first thing in the morning, [laughter] and that's an example of how the environment affects quality." And, my first thought when I heard that was, "You can't make that story up, that I will keep measuring it until it meets requirements." That, Andrew, is me shipping acceptability. Do I care at all about how that part is used, Andrew? [chuckle] 0:23:18.7 AS: Nope. 0:23:19.9 BB: Do I know how that part is installed? Am I watching you install it and go through all, you know, hammer it? Nope. No. Again, even if I did, would I think twice that I measured it before the sun came up and that might be causing the issue? No, that still would not occur to me. But the other thing I wanted to bring up on this, on the topic of ACE, remember what ACE stands for? 0:23:46.0 AS: Achieving Competitive... 0:23:50.0 BB: Excellence. 0:23:50.3 AS: Excellence. 0:23:51.8 BB: So, Rocketdyne was owned by United Technologies of Pratt and Whitney, division of West Palm Beach, for 10 years or so? 10 long years. ACE, ACE, ACE, ACE, ACE. So, I kept thinking, [chuckle] I said to some of my Deming colleagues, "There's gotta be another acronym which is A-C-E." Achieving Competitive... What? What might be another E word? 'Cause it's not... Instead of ACE, Achieving Competitive Excellence, I kept thinking of this, what might be another way of what this is really all about? And it dawned me. The embarrassment is how long it took me to come up with what ACE translated to. And it was "Achieving Compliance Excellence." [chuckle] 0:24:42.9 AS: Excellent. 0:24:45.0 BB: Does it meet requirements? Yes. And so what is compliance excellence? It gets us back to acceptability. So, traditional quality compliance. But then while I was on the thought of Achieving Compliance Excellence, and then, well, there's a place for meeting requirements. There's a place for compliance excellence. I'm not throwing it out the window. I would say, if I ask you, Andrew, how far it is to the closest airport and you say 42 miles, 42 kilometers, or you say it takes an hour, then embedded in that model is "A minute is a minute, an hour is an hour, a mile is a mile, and all the miles are the same." Well, maybe they aren't. Maybe they aren't. Maybe I'm walking that distance, and I'm going uphill and downhill. Maybe I'm driving that distance. And those changes in elevation don't matter as much. So, then, what I thought was, there's Achieving Compliance Excellence that's acceptability, and then there's Achieving Contextual Excellence, which is my understanding of the context. 0:25:56.7 BB: And given my understanding of the context, if you say to me, "How far is it to the nearest airport?" I say, "Well, tell me more about the context of your question. Are you driving there? Are you riding your bike there? Are you walking there?" 'Cause then I'm realizing that every mile with Compliance Excellence, I just treat it as "a mile is a mile is a mile." They're all interchangeable, they're all the same. With Contextual Excellence, the context matters. And I say to you, "That's a... I mean, 42 miles, but boy, every mile is... They're brutal." And so then just the idea that context matters, that the understanding of a system matters. All right. So, next thing I wanna get to, and we've talked about this before but we never got it in, but I wanna provide, I really... Well, what I think is a neat example. [laughter] Okay. Calm down, Bill. [laughter] 0:26:54.8 AS: Yeah. You're excited about it. 0:26:57.0 BB: All right. 0:26:57.1 AS: So, about your idea... [chuckle] 0:27:00.2 BB: All right. So, again, in this spirit, my aim in conversation with you is to provide insights to people trying to bring these ideas to their organization. They're either trying to improve their own understanding, looking for better ways to explain it to others. And towards that end, here is a keeper. And for those who try this, if you have trouble, get back to me. Let me know how it goes. Here's the scenario I give people, and I've done this many, many times. What I used to do is give everyone in the room a clear transparency. That's when you had overhead projectors. [chuckle] 'Cause people say, "What is a transparency? What is an overhead projector?" [overlapping conversation] 0:27:45.0 AS: Yeah exactly. 0:27:46.8 BB: It's a clear piece of plastic, like the size of a sheet of paper. And on that sheet, on that piece of plastic was a vertical line and a horizontal line. I could call it set a set of axes, X-Y axis. And the vertical axis I called "flavor." And the horizontal axis, I called "time." And, so everyone, when they would walk into a seminar, would get a clear transparency. I give them a pen to write on this transparency. And I'd say to them, "Here's what I want you to imagine. The horizontal axis is time. The vertical axis is flavor." And I would hold up a can of soda and I'd say, "Imagine. Imagine, inside this can, imagine before the lid is put on, soda is added to this can," any kind of soda. Right? "Imagine soda's in the can. Imagine in the can is a probe, a flavor meter. And the flavor meter is connected to the pen in your hand." And what that... Wirelessly, Andrew. So, there's this probe that goes into the soda, into the can. It is, let's say, with Bluetooth technology connected to the pen in your hand, such that you have the ability with this magic pen to trace out what the flavor of the soda in the can is at any point in time. 0:29:31.0 BB: And so I would put on the vertical axis, right, the Y axis, I would put a little tick mark, maybe three quarters of the way up the vertical axis. And so everyone started at that tick mark. And I would say, "Okay, get your pen ready, get it on the tick mark. This flavor meter is inside the can. It's transmitting to your hand and the pen the flavor of Pepsi. If I was to seal this can, put the lid on it, and I say, 'Now the device is activated.' As soon as I put the lid on the can, the pen is activated and your hand starts to trace out what is the flavor of the soda doing over time." And I would say, "If you think the flavor gets better, then you have a curve going up. If you think the flavor of the soda's getting worse, then it goes down. If you think it stays the same, it just goes across." 0:30:37.1 BB: And I would just say, "What I want each of you to do, as soon as that can is sealed, I want you to imagine what the flavor of Pepsi, Coke, whatever it is, I want you to... " The question is, "What do you think the flavor of soda is doing in a sealed can over time?" And I would say, "Don't ask any questions. Just do that." Now, most of the people just take that and they just draw something. They might draw something flat going across. [chuckle] Now and then somebody would say, [chuckle] "Is the can in a refrigerator?" [chuckle] And my response is, "Don't complicate this." [laughter] 0:31:26.1 BB: So, I just throw that out. Most people just take that and just trace something out. And for the one who says, "Is it refrigerated? What's the timescale? Is the horizontal axis years or minutes?" I'd say, "Don't complicate it." [chuckle] 0:31:46.8 AS: "And don't ask questions." 0:31:48.9 BB: "And don't ask... " But you can bring me over and I'll ask you a question. You can ask your questions, I would just say, "Don't complicate it." So, what do we do? Everyone gets a few minutes, they draw it. I take all those transparencies that you can see through, and I put them on top of one another. And I can now hold them up to the room and people can see what I'm holding up. They can see all the different curves. 0:32:17.0 AS: Right. 0:32:18.0 BB: 'Cause they all start at the same point. And then I would say to the audience, "What do they all have in common?" Well, they all start at the same point. "What else do they have in common? What do they all have in common?" And people are like, "I don't know." Some of them are flat. They go across, the flavor doesn't change. Most of them think it goes down at some rate. 0:32:43.4 AS: Yep. 0:32:45.0 BB: Either concave down or convex down. Now and then, somebody will say it goes up and up and up; might go up and then down. But most people think it goes down over time. That's the leading answer. The second leading answer is it's constant. Up and down, rarely. So, I've done that. I've had people do that. I used to have a stack of 500 of transparencies. I used to save them and just go through them. I've done it, let's say in round numbers, 1,500 to 2,000 people. So, all the curves start at that tick mark in the 99.9999% of them either go down or go across. What's cool is, all those curves are smooth. Meaning, very smoothly up, very smoothly across, very smoothly down. Mathematically, that's called a "continuous function." And what I explained to them is, if I draw a vertical line halfway across the horizontal axis, and I look at every one of those curves, because the curves are smooth, if I draw a vertical line and how each curve, your profile and all the others go across that line, immediately to the left and immediately to the right, it's the same value because the curve is smooth. 0:34:28.3 BB: But I don't ask them to draw a smooth curve. I just say, "What do you think the flavor does over time?" They always, with three exceptions, draw a smooth curve. And so when I ask them what do they have in common, you get, "They start at the same point." Nope, that's not it. I don't know if anyone's ever articulated, "They're all continuous functions." Very rarely. So, then I explained, "They're all continuous functions. But I didn't ask you to draw a continuous function." Well, when I point out to them that three times, three times, Andrew, out of nearly 2,000, somebody drew a curve that goes starting at the tick mark, zero time, and it goes straight across halfway across the page at the same level, and then drops down to zero instantly, it's what's known mathematically as a "step function." 0:35:26.9 BB: So, it goes across, goes across, and then in zero time drops down to zero and then continues. So, three out of nearly 2,000 people drew a curve that wasn't smooth. Again, mathematically known as a step function. And each time I went up to that person and I said, and I comment on it, and each of them said, there's a point at which it goes bad. And each of them had a job in a quality organization. [chuckle] And so why is this important? Because in industry, there's this thing known as an "expiration date." What is an expiration date? It's the date past which you cannot use the chemical, the thing. And what's the assumption? The assumption is, a second before midnight on that date, Andrew, you could use that chemical, that acid, that glue, whatever it is in our product; a second before midnight, before the expiration date, you can use that. But a second after midnight, we put this tape and we call it "defective." And so I've worked with companies that are in the chemical business, and they literally have this tape. At the expiration date, we don't use it. A second before midnight, we do. And so what you have is a sense that it goes from good to bad, you know how fast, Andrew? 0:37:15.0 AS: Tick of a clock. 0:37:17.0 BB: Faster than that, Andrew. Zero time. 0:37:21.0 AS: Yeah. 0:37:22.0 BB: Zero time. And so what I ask people is, "Can you think of any phenomenon that happens in zero time?" And people call that's... "Well, the driver was killed instantly." No, it wasn't zero time. "Well, someone is shot." It's not zero time. And so what's cool is, when I ask people to describe a phenomenon, describe any physical phenomenon that happens in zero time, that we go from one location to another, from one state to another in zero time, I've not been stumped on that. Although actually, [chuckle] there are some situations where that happens. Well, the reason that's important for our audience is, that's a demonstration that expiration-date thinking is an organizational construct. It's not a physical construct. Milk goes bad fast. [chuckle] I'll admit, the expiration date on the half gallon of milk, it goes bad fast. 0:38:27.2 BB: But a second before midnight and a second after midnight, it's still the same. So, expiration-date thinking is what acceptability is about; that everything is good, equally good, but once we go across that expiration date, Andrew, then the flavor changes suddenly. And so what I used to kid people is, imagine if that really happened, right? Then we'd have this contest. I'd say, "Andrew, I had a can of Pepsi recently. And have you ever done this, Andrew? You get the can of Pepsi that has the expiration date on it. And if you listen to it at midnight, on the expiration date, you listen closely, you can hear it go from good to bad, Andrew." [chuckle] Would that be awesome? [chuckle] So, I was sharing some of this recently with our good friend, Christina, at The Deming Institute office. 0:39:31.0 AS: Yep. 0:39:32.7 BB: And it happened to be her birthday. And, so I sent her a note and I said, "Happy birthday." And I said, "So, did you change age immediately on the second you were born?" 'Cause she said, 'cause I think she said something like, "My mom reached out to me and she reminded me exactly what time I was born." And I said, "Oh," I said, "so did you feel the change in age as you crossed that?" And she said, she said, "Hi, Bill. Of course, I felt instantly different on my birthday. My mom even told me what time, so I'd know exactly when to feel different." [chuckle] Now, so here's a question for you, Andrew. Can you think of a situation where something changes from one value to another in zero time? In zero time. Again, we don't go from living to dying in zero time. The change of Pepsi doesn't go from one value to another in zero time. The quality of any product is not changing, you go from one side to the other. But can you think of anything that actually happens in zero time: Across that line, it goes from one value to another? 0:41:05.0 AS: Nope, I can't. 0:41:08.8 BB: Oh, come on, Andrew. You ready? 0:41:16.2 AS: Go for it. 0:41:20.0 BB: Did you ever hear of the German novelist, Thomas Mann, M-A-N-N? 0:41:24.0 AS: No. 0:41:25.7 BB: All right. I wrote this down as a closing thought; it may not be the closing thought. We'll just throw it in right now. So, this in an article [chuckle] I wrote for the Lean Management Journal. 0:41:38.0 AS: By the way, it's gotta be the closing thought because we're running out of time. So, perfect. 0:41:43.7 BB: Fantastic! Well, then here's my closing thought, Andrew. You want my closing thought? 0:41:47.1 AS: Do it. 0:41:48.1 BB: All right. So, from an article I wrote for the Lean Management Journal, so here's the quote. "I have witnessed industrial chemicals in full use right up to the expiration date, and then banned from use and tagged for immediate disposal with a passing of the expiration date only seconds before the chemicals were freely used. While they may rapidly sour, it is unlikely that they expire with a big bang, all in keeping with a sentiment of German novelist Thomas Mann's observation about New Year's Eve," Andrew. What he said was, "Time has no divisions to market's passage. There's never a thunderstorm or a blare of trumpets to announce the beginning of a new month or year. Even when the century begins, it is only we mere mortals who ring bells and fire off pistols." So, at midnight on December 31st, a fraction of a second before midnight, we're in 2024 and we go to 2025 in zero time, Andrew. So, legally things change as you go across a line. You go from the United States to Mexico across a line of zero thickness. So, legally things across a line change instantly. 0:43:17.0 AS: Well. 0:43:18.0 BB: A coupon, Andrew, expires at midnight. [laughter] 0:43:22.7 AS: Yep. All right. Well, on behalf of everyone at The Deming Institute, I want to thank you again for this discussion. And for listeners, remember to go to deming.org to continue your journey. And if you wanna keep in touch with Bill, as he mentioned at the beginning, just reach out to him on LinkedIn. 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."
Dobrze znane nam kryształy przestrzenne tworzą się w wyniku oddziaływania między atomami i spontanicznej samoorganizacji atomów w przestrzeni. Kryształem czasowym nazywamy regularną strukturę która powstaje w wyniku samoorganizacji układu atomów w czasie - mówi RMF FM Prof. Krzysztof Sacha z Instytutu Fizyki Teoretycznej UJ, jeden z laureatów Nagrody Fundacji na rzecz Nauki Polskiej 2024, nazywanej czasem Polskim Noblem. Grupa badawcza prof. Sachy rozwija czasotronikę, czyli pionierskie badania nad praktycznym wykorzystaniem kryształów czasowych, które mogą pomóc m.in. w budowie komputerów kwantowych.
Si hay un animal relacionado con las Navidades ese es el burro. Protagonista del Belén y de villancicos pero también es un animal que desgraciadamente está en peligro. Afortunadamente este équido junto con su pariente la mula, está siendo preservado por los amigos de Burrolandia y otros colectivos que los cuidan. Atentos porque os diremos cómo ayudarles. El burro ha sido un elemento clave en la civilización, en los medios rurales pero también en los conflictos bélicos. También como la mula ha sido estereotipado como un animal tonto, testarudo aunque muy fuerte. En la ficción literaria, desde Juan Ramón Jiménez a Robert Louis Stevenson han admirado a estos animales pero también ha sido compañero de Fray Perico o protagonista de cuentos y fábulas. Los dibujos animados tienen estupendos ejemplos como Tonto de Los Trotamúsicos o el asno de Shrek y en el cine no podemos olvidar a la mula Francis, Al azar Baltasar, Dos mulas y una mujer o Eo. ¿Jugastéis al Tozudo o habéis usado EMule? Todo contenido burrístico cabe en es este podcast. Escucha el episodio completo en la app de iVoox, o descubre todo el catálogo de iVoox Originals
As No. 12 Clemson prepares to face off with No. 5 Texas getting tickets will be different for fans of both schools.
¡Vótame en los Premios iVoox 2024! Hace muchos años, dentro del capítulo del FRACASO, Rober nos trajo la historia del rodaje de la película "La Isla de las Cabezas Cortadas", de su protagonista Geena Davis y de un Asno. Escucha el episodio completo en la app de iVoox, o descubre todo el catálogo de iVoox Originals
Čezmejni spopadi med Izraelom in libanonskim gibanjem Hezbolah so se vsaj za zdaj nekoliko umirili, so se pa okrepile izraelske vojaške operacije na zasedenem Zahodnem bregu. Zaradi številnih napadov na Gazo so Združeni narodi prekinili razdeljevanje človekoljubne pomoči v enklavi. Izrael je odredil nove evakuacije. Vojska vztraja v središču Gaze kot tudi na obmejnem območju z Egiptom. V oddaji tudi o tem: - V Franciji se nadaljuje zapleteno iskanje premiera, Macron izključil imenovanje leve vlade - Bolnišnice bodo na sestanku z ministrstvom iskale rešitve glede pomanjkanja radiologov - Pridelovalci zelenjave ambiciozni: v treh letih bi lahko bili v Sloveniji polovično samooskrbni
¿Te quieres anunciar en este y muchos otros podcasts? ¡Escríbenos a ventas@rss.com tenemos algo para tí!---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------El Pulso de La República. El InIn (Informativo Informal) que sale todos los LUNES y JUEVES a las 8 PM EN VIVO. SIEMPRE IMPARCIAL (hasta que decimos algo que no te gusta).SIGUENOS EN TWITTER:http://twitter.com/ChumelTorreshttp://twitter.com/Kaizzerhttp://twitter.com/iraamelnegrohttp://twitter.com/GaboEriveshttp://twitter.com/fayorafaelmxhttp://twitter.com/themebagDESCUBRE MÁS CONTENIDO CON ESTOS SUJETOS https://www.youtube.com/c/Cinerds CONTÁCTANOS: info@maquina501.mxNo olvides suscribirte al canal y darnos tus pulgares arriba. Somos El Pulso de La República y nos despedimos no sin antes decirles que… Los amamos, estupeds.
Continuing their discussion from part 3 of this series, Bill Bellows and Andrew Stotz talk more about acceptability versus desirability. In this episode, the discussion focuses on how you might choose between the two. TRANSCRIPT 0:00:00.0 Andrew Stotz: My name is Andrew Stotz and I'll be your host as we continue our journey into the teachings of Dr. W. Edwards Deming. Today, I'm continuing my discussion with Bill Bellows, who has spent 31 years helping people apply Dr. Deming's ideas to become aware of how their thinking is holding them back from their biggest opportunities. Today is Episode 4 of the Misunderstanding Quality Series, and the title is Quality, Mind the Choices. Bill, take it away. 0:00:31.3 Bill Bellows: All right, Andrew, welcome. So podcast three, I think the title was Acceptability and Desirability. And one correction there, when I went back and looked at the transcript the concept of... At least the first person I heard tie together acceptability, desirability, at least in the Deming community, was a professor, Yoshida, Y-O-S-H-I-D-A. He was a PhD student of Dr. Deming, I believe at NYU but I mispronounced or misspelled his first name. I thought I've heard people refer to him as Kauro, perhaps spelled K-A-U-R-O, maybe that's his nickname, and maybe I just didn't remember properly but his proper first name is Kosaku, K-O-S-A-K-U and he at one point in time was in Greater Los Angeles at Cal State Dominguez Hills. And then I think sometime in the mid '90s, early '90s, last I heard he moved to Japan. 0:01:51.1 BB: I've never met him. I've watched videos of him, there's a classic presentation. I don't know if it's got, it might be online someplace of he did a guest lecture. There was a... Dr. Deming was speaking in Southern California and needed an emergency surgery, had a pacemaker put in, so this would've been '92 timeframe. And Professor Yoshida was called in to give a guest lecture. And that ended up being something that I think was sold eventually. The video, the lecture was sold by Claire Crawford Mason and so he is... I don't know how much of that is online, but anyways. 0:02:38.4 AS: Is Kauro, Kauro wasn't that the name of Kauro Ishikawa? 0:02:43.7 BB: That may be where I... Yes that was a Kauro. There's two Ishikawas. There's a father and the son and I... So I'm not sure if Kauro was the father or the son, but anyway correction there. In the first series we did, going back to '23, 2023, I mentioned the name Edgar Schein, but I don't believe I've mentioned his name in this series. So I wanted to throw that, introduce that in this series today and give some background on him for those who have not heard his name or not aware, did not listen to the first series and Edgar Schein, who passed away January of this year. He was an organizational theorist, organizational psychologist, spent the greater part of his career at MIT. And one of the concepts I really like about what he talked about is looking at an organization in terms of its artifacts. So if you walk around an organization, what do you see? What are the artifacts? That could be the colors, it could be the artwork on the wall, but the physical aspect of the organization Schein referred to as the artifacts. And what he also talked about is if you dig beneath the artifacts, they come from a set of beliefs, and then the beliefs come from a set of values. 0:04:23.9 BB: And again, the first series we did, I talked about Red Pen and Blue Pen Companies, and Me and We Organizations, and Last Straw and All Straw organizations. And those titles should make it easy for our listeners who are not aware to go back and find those. And what I talked about is, this imaginary trip report, if you visited a Deming organization, if we could think in terms of two simple organizations, a Deming organization, and a non-Deming organization in this very simple black and white model. And I had people think about the physical aspects of both, if they were to go visit both. What I then followed up on in our conversation is what you see physically comes from a set of beliefs. Now, they may not be articulated beliefs, what Schein would call espoused beliefs. And then you have what they really believe and I forget the term, I use this for that, but it comes from a set... But anyway, the physical comes from the beliefs, the beliefs come from the values. 0:05:39.0 BB: And part of the reason I bring that up for our listeners, and I'm thinking in terms of the people that have a responsibility in their respective organizations. They could be consultants, internal consultants, working in quality likely, given the focus of this series. First of all, you have to start where you are. But even added on, included in start where you are, is you have to start where your management is. So, if your management is tasking you with an improving scrap and rework, then that's what you better be talking about. Now, you don't have to be guiding your actions based on acceptability because the other aspect is scrap and rework are typically associated... Well, not typically, they are associated with acceptability. The lack of acceptability, acceptability is the idea that this is good, it is acceptable, it meets the requirements, defines...the quality requirements that are defined. 0:06:52.0 BB: If it's good, it is acceptable, if it's bad. There's two categories of bad, bad could be I have to throw it away, that's scrap, which means I can't recover it or rework, which means I can do something with it and perhaps salvage it. And so if your management is tasking you with improving scrap and rework, then first of all, where they're coming from, quite naturally, is acceptability. And why do I say that? Because everywhere I've gone, that is the deepest foundation of quality in every organization I've ever met, worked with, I have met people that work from whether it could be... Whether it's clients that I've worked with, whether it's students, my university classes. Acceptability, scrap, and rework, all go together. And, so if that's where your management is, then they're asking you to focus on improving acceptability. 0:08:05.6 BB: But, you may find it invaluable to shift your focus to desirability to improve acceptability. And that will be a focus, well I get into some of that tonight and others or today, and then on a future podcast later. But, I remember once upon a time at Rocketdyne, the executives were, the VP of Quality was task master asking for improvements to scrap and rework and also things called process capability indices, Cp's and Cpk's. And if you've heard of a Cp or a Cpk, great, if you haven't all I could say is I find them dangerous. I find them, well I say they're all about acceptability. And what makes it, reason I would encourage people to stay away from them because they appear to be desirability, but they're really acceptability. 0:09:15.7 BB: We'll save that for later. But anyway you have to start where they are. So if people are asking for improvements in scrap and rework, then, instead of fighting them, you go with it. And then what we'll be talking about tonight is, is it worthwhile to shift? Well, what does it mean to improve acceptability and the difference between acceptability and desirability? And relative to the title tonight, Mind the Choices is being aware that there's a place for acceptability and there's a place for desirability. And going back to Yoshida in episode three, what I was referring to is, in presentations he was doing from the early '90s, maybe even going back to the '80s, he talked about Japanese companies are about desirability. So, he presented this model of acceptability and desirability. And then, his explanation of what makes Japanese companies, again, back in the '80s, Japanese companies were viewed as those setting the quality standards. 0:10:20.5 BB: And, he was trying to say that the way they're doing that is that they don't rely on acceptability as other companies in other countries do. They have a higher standard. And that's what I wanted to introduce in our last episode, Episode 3. And, what I wanted to do tonight in this Episode 4, is to put some, add some more to that. But, also reinforce I'm not saying that there's anything wrong with acceptability, it's a question of what does the organization need at that point of time? And, really it has to do with... Really, it has to do with how big a system you wanna look at. So if you're looking at something in isolation, which is, I mean, when you look at something and saying it's good or bad, that is the epitome of looking at something in isolation. 0:11:17.5 BB: You're looking at a pen and saying it's good. You're looking at the diameter of a hole and saying it's good. That is not looking at what goes in the hole, that is not looking at how the pen is being used. So by definition, that's what Ackoff would call analysis, which is looking inward. It's not what Ackoff would call synthesis, which is looking outward. And how far outward you look is all according... I mean you could look, it comes down to how big is the system. And I wanna introduce the name Shel Rovin, Sheldon was his full name. Shel was his nickname. I met Shel through Russ Ackoff in 2006. Shel was, he was in charge of the Chief Nursing Officer program, which was a two-week immersion program at the University of Pennsylvania. 0:12:14.5 BB: And he was doing that in the, 2003, 4, 5, timeframe when I met him. And Shel was a dentist by background. He was Dean of the School of Dentistry at University of Kentucky and University of Washington. And I met him through Russ and invited him to Rocketdyne on numerous occasions. And Shel spoke about relative to looking at a system, 'cause people talk about, well "Andrew, we've gotta look at the whole system," but how big is the system? And, so people say, well, systems thinkers look at the whole system. Well, how big is that? Is that 1,000 foot view? And people say, oh no, Bill, it's bigger than that. Is it a 10,000 foot view? Is it... How big is the system? Well, Shel's perspective, and the word I wanna introduce from Shel is relative to systems is boundarylessness. 0:13:12.7 BB: Say that a few times fast. 'Cause systems have no boundaries. So I'm sure our listeners... I'm sure you have heard, I don't if our listeners have all heard, Dr. Deming would say to executives, does your system include the future? He used to ask questions such as what business are you in? What business will you be in five years from now, 10 years from now? Well, why not 15 years from now? Why not 25 years from now? Native American Indians, associated with Native American Indians is the idea of looking at the seventh generation after you when you're making choices. And so what I would ask people is, well, why seven? Why not eight? Why not nine? Why not 10? I mean, within an organization, we could be working with our supplier to try to get across these quality ideas to our suppliers. 0:14:05.5 BB: Well, that's looking at the system. Well, wait a minute. Do our suppliers have suppliers? Yes. Do their suppliers have suppliers? And so relative to boundarylessness is this idea is when people start talking about the whole system, I don't know what "whole" means. What I'd rather look at is what size system are we looking at? That's a choice. That's a choice. So we could decide to look at our suppliers. We're gonna go one step, we're gonna look at procurement. Who do we buy from? Now, we may educate them and give them the responsibility of looking at their suppliers on... But that would be a way of managing quality. Likewise, we can look at the impact of our work on our customer and give them heads up as to how to look at the impact of their work on their customers. But that's looking at the system in an X, Y, Z, physical coordinate, add onto that, the time dimension. And so, again, all I wanna throw out there is that when it comes to making choices on acceptability, desirability, a lot of it has to do with how big is the system that we're looking at. Some everyday examples of acceptability. 0:15:23.5 BB: Again and what I wanna get across is, in part the difference to help people make choices. And so when we were on a vacation in Europe recently, I took a number of photos of people making choices. And,` when I travel, anywhere I travel, especially out of the country, I love walking into supermarkets just to see what they sell that perhaps is not sold in the States or in California. I know there are things you can't find in California that you can find on the East Coast. That's one thing. But I like going into supermarkets just to see what products are there. I mean, you can go to England and find in the refrigerator section, hard cider, apple cider, you know, alcoholic cider that I got exposed to going to a Deming conference in 2000. I've become a fan of it ever since. Well, in the States it's pretty hard to find hard cider, period. You go to England and you'll find, a dozen different brands and each brand may have a number of different types. 0:16:44.9 BB: And so that's, but anyway, relative to that when you walk into a supermarket, if you're looking at canned goods, or just look, well, looking at cider, we can look at this cider versus that cider. We treat a can as a can, whether it's buying tomato soup or cider, we treat all those cans as interchangeable, interchangeable parts. But when we go to into the bakery section, that's where I was taking photos in Amsterdam and I was watching people sort through the pastries. And yet what was laid out were a bunch of pastries of the same style. And yet people were, I want this one, I want that one. 0:17:26.0 BB: Well, part of acceptability is treating all those pastries as the same as we would treat all those cans of tomato soup as the same. Now relative to tomato soup I know you live with your mother, and I'm willing to bet your mom, early, early on when she took you to the supermarket, taught you how to buy canned goods, right? And she says "Andrew when you buy a can of something you pick it up, you're looking for dents," right? 0:17:55.1 AS: Mm. 0:17:56.0 BB: Because if it's dented, that's bad. And if it's not dented, that's good. I know my mother taught me that. So I know when it comes to buying canned good we look for dents. If dented, that's bad. If it's not dented, it's acceptable. But I don't see people sorting between cans of tomato soup made by the same manufacturer. They're just, we treat it as they're acceptable. Acceptable implies either one, the differences don't matter or I don't see differences. 0:18:33.0 BB: Desirability is, you wanna see a great example of desirability, go to the produce section and again, either watch people sort through pastries that are all acceptable, and yet they're looking for the biggest one, or... And when it comes to fruit, we're looking for the ripest banana, or maybe we're looking for bananas that are green because we're not gonna use them for a while. So acceptability, again, I'm trying to give everyday examples of acceptability is going in and saying, looking at all the fruit there, and just taking five peppers, whatever it is, and throwing them in the bag and saying, I need five 'cause my spouse said, go get five. And I throw them in the bag. And it could be time-wise, I don't have time to sort through them, or I quite frankly don't care that they're different. That's acceptability. So acceptability is either acknowledging they're different and saying, I don't care. Or... 0:19:29.6 AS: Seeing them as the same. 0:19:32.4 BB: Or pretending they're all the same. And I had a guy in class years ago, and I was asking about buying fruit and I was trying to use the example of we go into the supermarket. We sort through the oranges looking for the ripest one, and this guy says, well, I don't sort through the oranges. I said, well, how do you buy the oranges? I buy them by the bag. I said, do you sort between the bags? He says, no, I don't sort and his arms were crossed. I don't sort, I don't sort. So then I noticed that he had a ring on his left hand, a wedding ring on his left hand. So I said, I see you're wearing a wedding ring. And he said, yep. I said, did you sort? 0:20:15.2 AS: I don't sort. 0:20:15.3 BB: Meaning... I don't sort. And so when you're looking at things that meet all the requirements and saying there is no variation or the variation doesn't matter, that's acceptability, Andrew. When you look at all the things that meet requirements and you see them as being different and saying, I want this one, that's desirability. And so that could be, when it comes to selecting a spouse, when it comes to selecting an orange, when it comes to selecting a parking spot, in a university, you're looking for the, an ideal, the best professor for Thermodynamics II, and there's 10 professors the university says are acceptable. And you talk to classmates and you find out, oh, no, no, no, stay away from that one. What are you doing? You're sorting amongst things that meet requirements, that are acceptable and saying, that's not good enough for me in that situation. 0:21:17.2 BB: Well, what I wanna say then added to that is, this is not to say desirability is better than acceptability. It really comes down to is desirability worth the effort? Because when it comes to desirability, I am looking beyond, I'm looking at a bigger system. So I'm looking at the fruit in terms of how I'm using it. If I'm aware of that, I'm looking at the parking spots in terms of: I'm gonna be in the store for an hour and I want the most shade, or these parking spots have a little bit different distances between cars, and I want a spot with a little bit more width so somebody doesn't ding my car. So what I'm hoping is with these examples, people can appreciate that every day we make choices between acceptability and desirability. 0:22:11.3 BB: Every day we're making a decision based on saying, this is okay, code word for acceptable, or I'll take that one, that's desirability. 0:22:27.6 AS: That's quite a breakdown. 0:22:28.1 BB: Well, and the idea being... The other aspect of it is when you're choosing to say, I want... When you decide that acceptability is not worthwhile, my proposal it's because you're looking at a bigger system. You've got a bigger system in mind. You're not looking at that fruit in isolation. You are somehow saying, there's something about how I plan to use that, which is the reason for this decision. And then it gets into how big is the system that you're looking at? Are you looking at the person downstream of you at work, which that could be an internal customer. People used to use those terms. Are you looking at the person after them, two down from them, three down from them? And that gets into a choice. So what I would tell the folks I was mentoring at Rocketdyne is that they were designing things or going to see how they were used. And I'd say, first of all, nothing requires you to go see how that's used. Your job as a designer, whatever it is in engineering you design it, you give it to manufacturing. But you don't have to go downstairs and see how they're using it. 0:23:47.5 BB: I said, but if you do, you might learn a lot. And then they might say, "well, so I should go talk to the person who's first using it." Well that might be helpful. And then what about the person after that? Well, that might be helpful. And then what about the person after that? Well, that might be helpful. And I was trying to get across to them, we hire really bright people and if we just turn you down to don't look beyond, just deliver the thing, complete those drawings, do whatever it is, pass it to the next person. I said, the system may not require you to go look to see how it's used. 0:24:31.9 BB: But what Dr. Deming is proposing is, the better you understand how it's used, the better you can serve the system. But then you get into the question of how big is the system that you want to be thinking about? And there I would tell them that there's no right answer. I mean, you wanna be and this is what I would tell them is we hire really bright people and then we condition you to believe that it doesn't matter. What I'm proposing guided by Dr. Deming is that there's a possibility that it matters anywhere from a little to a lot, but you won't know unless you go look. 0:25:12.2 AS: Yeah. It's funny. 0:25:12.3 BB: And so what I wanna get... Go ahead Andrew. 0:25:14.4 AS: When I was a supervisor at Pepsi in Los Angeles at our Torrance factory, they asked me to help... Could I figure out how to quicken the pace with which we got 80 trucks or 100 trucks out the gate every morning because it mattered. If you got trucks out an hour late on the LA freeways, now you have overtime and all kinds of trouble. So, what I did is I climbed up... At 4:00 AM I climbed up on top of a building, one of our buildings. 0:25:54.1 BB: Wow. 0:25:54.9 AS: And I had a clipboard, which I always have. I have extra clipboards always with me, here's one right here. And I had paper and then I just observed, and I took a lot of notes. And what I was seeing was all these drivers were, they were checking their trucks and they were spending a lot of time with their trucks. So, after I observed it that morning, the next morning I went down and went around and I asked them, what are you doing? And they said, well I'm checking that the quantity that's on the paper is the quantity that's on the truck. And I said, how could that not be? And they said, the loaders at night don't fill it up right. So, the next night I went and talked to the loaders and I said, drivers are saying that you guys are making errors. 0:26:40.4 AS: No, we're not making any errors. Okay. So, now I gotta dig deeper into the loaders. And then I start to see, okay, the loaders are making errors. So, I went and talked to one loader and said, why are you making this error? He said, well, the production are supposed to put this particular Pepsi item in this spot. But they didn't, they put it in another and I got confused, but it's just 'cause it's normally always there. So, I go to talk to the manufacturer, hey guys come on, why did you put that stuff in the wrong spot? He said, well, sales told us to produce so much that we were overloaded. We didn't have any place to put all of this products. So, we had to basically put it anywhere we could as it's racing off the line and on and on. 0:27:27.9 AS: And then you start to realize like, okay, the system is bigger. Now I went and focused on the loaders and said, how do we make sure that when the loaders load that we can lock the truck and then tell the drivers, you must not open this truck. How do we build the trust between the loaders and the drivers that they're loaded correctly and that they can go, because the drivers don't want to get to San Bernardino or wherever they're going and find out, oh, I don't have what this particular customer wanted and it's supposed to be on here. So that's just a little bit of a picture of kind of a very narrow start that starts to bring in more of the system. 0:28:06.8 BB: Oh, yeah. Oh, that's a brilliant example. And also what you're talking about is a term we used the first series, which is the value of synchronicity. That those handoffs are smooth. And they disrupt... 0:28:26.7 AS: I love that word handoffs, by the way. I was just talking with a client of mine. We were talking about the core processes of the business. And I just now realize that what I was missing and what we were missing in our discussion was how do we make sure that the handoffs work. 0:28:43.6 BB: Well, then the other thing, again a concept you may recall from the first series is, I liken it... I think in terms of two types of handoffs. And, actually, I think in one of the first, maybe in the second episode we talked about this, is associated with acceptability. When I hand off to you something, my report, whatever it is I'm assigned to delivered to Andrew by 5 o'clock tomorrow, you look at it, you inspect it, and you're making sure before you accept it that it is acceptable, that it has all the content. And, if anything's missing a figure, a graph, a label, you send it back to me and then I go through and massage it and then send it off to you. And, part of acceptability is when you say, that's good, then the handoff we're talking about is physical. 0:29:51.6 BB: Right. I mean, there's nothing wrong with a physical handoff. I give it to you physically. And what you may recall me mentioning, I think, again likely episode 2, podcast 2 of this series is I would demonstrate this with people in the class. And I would say, if, if what I give you is not acceptable, what do you do? You give it back to me and you say it's incomplete. And then I go through, massage it. If I now give it to you and all the requirements have been met, it's acceptable. Now what happens? What do you say? And I would kid them and so now you say, thank you. But what I'd also point out is that part of acceptability in a non-Deming organization is the handoff is physical and mental. I mean, physical is: It is yours, not mine. 0:30:38.5 BB: Mental is that if you have trouble with how that fits into what you are doing with it, because that report does not exist in isolation, you're doing something with it. Right. So you're doing your things with it. Now we're looking at the system. And if in the system of you're using it, you have an issue and you come back to me, in non-Deming environment, acceptability is my way of saying "Andrew I'm not sure why we're having this conversation because what I gave you is acceptable." But in a Deming organization, the handoff is physical, but not mental. What does that mean? It means, I'm willing to learn from what you just said and the issues you're having. And now I'm beginning to wonder, there's two possibilities. Either one, what I gave you is not acceptable. There's something wrong with the inspection. 0:31:34.3 BB: Or two, what's missing is desirability, that there's some... What I give you is acceptable, but there's something about how it's, it's um, there's a degree of acceptability, and so instead of viewing it as it's good or it's bad, black and white. Now we're saying there's degrees of good. Desirability is degrees of good. And, so in a Deming environment, when I hand off to you and you have an issue with it, you come back the next day and say, "Bill, somehow this didn't get caught in the control chart." And I said, "well, let me take a look at it," and I may find there was something wrong with the inspection, or I may find that there's a degree of good I'm not giving you that I need to be giving you. So, that can either be an acceptability issue or a desirability issue. I'm willing to have that conversation with you in a Deming environment. So, in a Deming environment, the handoff is physical but not mental. And the learning, as you're demonstrating, the learning that comes from the ability to have those conversations, improves the system. That's a lot more work. 0:32:53.8 AS: So, if you were to sum it up, was that the sum up or would you add anything else to your summation of what you want people to take away from this discussion? 0:33:05.6 BB: Yeah, that's it. I'd like to say one is that there's, acceptability is fine. Choose acceptability, if that's all the situation demands then you've chosen that. But pay attention to how it's used, pay attention to the ramifications of that decision, which may show up an hour from now, may not show up until a year from now. And, the possibility that hiccup a year from now could be either it wasn't acceptable, in which case there's an inspection issue or it was acceptable, which means there's a degree of good, which means it's a desirability issue. And, that gets us into future conversations, talking about degrees of good and the whole idea of variation in things that are good. That's desirability, variation in things that are good. 0:33:57.6 AS: All right. Bill, on behalf of everyone at T he Deming Institute, I want to thank you again for this discussion. And for listeners, remember to go to deming.org to continue your journey. And if you wanna keep in touch with Bill, just find him on LinkedIn. He responds. 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."
Is reaching A+ quality always the right answer? What happens when you consider factors that are part of the system, and not just the product in isolation? In this episode, Bill Bellows and Andrew Stotz discuss acceptability versus desirability in the quality realm. TRANSCRIPT 0:00:02.5 Andrew Stotz: My name is Andrew Stotz and I'll be your host as we continue our journey into the teachings of Dr. W. Edwards Deming. Today, I'm continuing my discussion with Bill Bellows, who has spent 31 years helping people apply Dr. Deming's ideas to become aware of how their thinking is holding them back from their biggest opportunities. Today's episode, episode three, is Acceptability and Desirability. Bill, take it away. 0:00:28.1 Bill Bellows: Thank you, Andrew, and welcome back to our listeners. 0:00:30.7 AS: Oh, yeah. 0:00:31.4 BB: Hey, do you know how long we've been doing these podcasts? 0:00:36.6 AS: No. 0:00:40.8 BB: We started... Our very first podcast was Valentine's Day 2023. I was gonna say 2013. 2023, so roughly 17 months of podcast, Andrew. 0:00:53.4 AS: That was our first date, huh? 0:00:55.0 BB: Our first date was Valentine's Day 2023. 0:00:58.9 AS: All right. Don't tell your wife. [laughter] 0:01:03.1 BB: All right. And so along the way, I've shared reflections from my first exposures to Dr. Deming, as well as my first exposures to Genichi Taguchi. Talked about Edward de Bono, Tom Johnson, others, mentors, Bill Cooper, Phil Monroe, Gipsie Ranney was a great mentor. Last week, Andrew, while on vacation in New England with my wife, I visited for a day my 85-year-old graduate school advisor who I worked with for ten years, Bob Mayle, who lives in, I would say, the farthest reaches of Maine, a place called Roque Bluffs. Roque Bluffs. How's that for... That could be North Dakota. Roque Bluffs. He's in what they call Down East Maine. He's recently got a flip phone. He's very proud. He's got like a Motorola 1985 vintage flip phone. Anyway, he's cool, he's cool. He's... 0:02:15.9 AS: I'm just looking at that place on the map, and looks incredible. 0:02:19.0 BB: Oh, yeah. He's uh, until he got the phone, he was off the grid. We correspond by letters. He's no internet, no email. And he has electricity, lives in about an 800 square-foot, one-floor bungalow with his wife. This is the third time we've visited him. Every time we go up, we spend one day getting there, one day driving home from where my in-laws live in New York. And then one day with him, and the day ends with going to the nearby fisherman's place. He buys us fresh lobster and we take care of them. [chuckle] 0:03:01.3 AS: Yeah, my sister lives in Kennebunk, so when I go back to the US, I'm... 0:03:08.8 BB: Yeah, Kennebunk is maybe 4 hours away on that same coast. 0:03:15.3 AS: I'm just looking at the guide and map book for Roque Bluffs' State Park, and it says, "a beautiful setting with oceanfront beach, freshwater pond, and hiking trails." 0:03:25.9 BB: Yeah, he's got 10 acres... No, he's got, I think, 20, 25 acres of property. Sadly, he's slowly going blind. He has macular degeneration. But, boy, for a guy who's slowly going blind, he and I went for a walk around his property for a couple hours, and it's around and around... He's holding branches from hitting me, I'm holding branches from hitting him and there's... Let alone the terrain going up and down, you gotta step up and over around the rocks and the pine needles and all. And it was great. It was great. The week before, we were close to Lake George, which is a 32-mile lake in Upstate New York. And what was neat was we went on a three-hour tour, boat ride. And on that lake, there are 30 some islands of various sizes, many of them owned by the state, a number of them owned privately. Within the first hour, we're going by and he points to the island on the left and he says it was purchased in the late '30s by Irving Langmuir. Yeah, so he says, "Irving Langmuir," and I thought, I know that name from Dr. Deming. That name is referenced in The New Economics. 0:04:49.1 BB: In fact, at the opening of Chapter Five of The New Economics, the title is 'Leadership.' Every chapter begins with a quote, right? Chapter Five quote is, "You cannot plan to make a discovery," so says Irving Langmuir. So what is... The guy's describing this island purchased back in the late '30s by Langmuir for like $5,000. I think it's... I don't know if he still owns it, if it's owned by a nonprofit. It's not developed. It's privately held. I'm trying, I wrote to Langmuir's grandson who did a documentary about him. He was a Nobel Prize-winning physicist from GE's R&D center in Schenectady, New York, which is a couple hours south of there. But I'm certain, and I was looking for it earlier, I know I heard of him, of Irving Langmuir through Dr. Deming. And I believe in his lectures, Deming talked about Langmuir's emphasis on having fun at work, having fun. And so I gotta go back and check on that, but I did some research after the day, and sure enough came across some old videos, black and white videos that Langmuir produced for a local television station, talking about his... There's like show and tell with him in the laboratory. And in there, he talks about joy and work and all that. 0:06:33.5 BB: So I'm thinking, that's pretty cool. So I'm waiting to hear from his grandson. And ideally, I can have a conversation with his grandson, introduce him to Kevin and talk about Deming's work and the connection. Who knows what comes out of that? Who knows? Maybe an interview opportunity with you and Irving Langmuir's grandson. So, anyway. 0:06:52.7 AS: Fantastic. 0:06:54.7 BB: But going back to what I mentioned earlier in my background in association with Deming and whatnot, and Taguchi, and I offer these comments to reinforce that while my interests in quality were initially all things Taguchi, and then largely Deming, and it wasn't long before I stopped, stepped back and an old friend from Rocketdyne 20 some years ago started focusing on thinking about thinking, which he later called InThinking. And it's what others would call awareness of our... Well, we called it... Rudy called it, better awareness of our thinking patterns, otherwise known as paradigms, mental models. We just like the way of explaining it in terms of becoming more aware of our thinking patterns. And I say that because... And what I'm presenting relative to quality in this series, a whole lot of what I'm focusing on is thinking about thinking relative to quality. 0:07:58.8 BB: And so last time, we talked about the eight dimensions of quality from David Garvin, and one of them was acceptability. And that is this notion in quality, alive and well today, Phil Crosby has created this focus on achieving zero defects. Everything meets the requirements, that gets us into the realm, everything is good. Dr. Deming and his red bead experiments talked about red beads and white beads. The white beads is what we're striving for. All the beads are good. The red beads represent defects, things we don't want. And that's this... Thinking wise, that's a thinking pattern of "things are good or bad." Well, then we can have high quality, low quality and quality. But at Rocketdyne, when I started referring to that as category thinking, putting things into categories, but in the world of quality, there's only two categories, Andrew: good and bad. This either meets requirements or it doesn't. And if it's good, then we're allowed to pass it on to the next person. If we pass it on and it's not good, then they're going to send it back to us and say, "Uh-uh, you didn't meet all the requirements." And what I used to do in class, I would take something, a pen or something, and I would go to someone in the seminar and I'd say, "If I hand this to you and it doesn't meet requirements, what are you going to say?" You're gonna say, "I'm not going to take it. It hasn't met the requirements." 0:09:36.4 BB: And I would say you're right. All the I's are not dotted, all the T's are not crossed, I'm not taking it. Then I would take it back and I'd say, "Okay, now what if I go off and dot all those I's and cross all those T's?" Then I would hand them the pen or whatever the thing was, and I'd say, "If all those things have been met," now we're talking acceptability. "Now, what do you say?" I said, "Can you reject it?" "No." I say, "So what do you say now that all those things... If you're aware that all those requirements have been met, in the world of quality, it is as good, now what do you say?" And they look at me and they're like, "What do I say?" I say, "Now you say, thank you." But what I also do is one more time... And I would play this out to people, I'd say, "Okay, Andrew, one more time. I hand you the pen, Andrew, all the requirements are met. And what do you say?" And you say, "Thank you." And I say, "What else just happened when you took it?" 0:10:45.4 AS: You accepted it. 0:10:47.3 BB: Yes. And I say, "And what does that mean?" "I don't know. What does that mean?" I said, "It means if you call me the next day and say, I've got a problem with this, you know what I'm going to say, Andrew?" 0:10:58.5 AS: "You accepted it." 0:11:01.5 BB: Right. And so, what acceptability means is don't call me later and complain. [laughter] So, I get a photo of you accepting it, you're smiling. So if you call me back the next day and say, "I've got a problem with this," I'd say, "No, no, no." So acceptability as a mental model is this idea that once you accept it, there's no coming back. If you reveal to me issues with it later, I deny all that. I'd say, I don't know what your problem with Andrew... It must be a problem on your end, because what I delivered to you is good. And if it is good, then there can't be any problems associated with it. So, if there are problems, have to be on your end, because defect-free, everything good, implies, ain't no problems, ain't no issues with it. I'm thinking of that Disney song, trouble-free mentality, Hakuna Matata. [chuckle] 0:12:04.5 BB: But now I go back to the title, Acceptability and Desirability. One of Dr. Deming's Ph.D. students, Kauro [actually, Kosaku] Yoshida, he used to teach at Cal State Dominguez Hills back in the '80s, and I think sometime in the '90s, he went to Japan. I don't know if he was born and raised in Japan, but he was one of Dr. Deming's Ph.D. students, I believe, at NYU. Anyway, I know he's a Ph.D. student of Dr. Deming, he would do guest lectures in Dr. Deming's four-day seminars in and around Los Angeles. And, Yoshida is known for this saying that Americans are all about acceptability meets requirements, and the Japanese are about desirability. And what is that? Well, it's more than meeting requirements. And, I wanna get into more detail on that in future episodes. But for now, we could say acceptability is meeting requirements. In a binary world, it can be really hard to think of, if everything's met requirements, how do I do better than that? How do I continue to improve if everything meets requirements? Well, one clue, and I'll give a clue, is what I shared with the senior most ranking NASA executive responsible for quality. 0:13:46.4 BB: And this goes back to 2002 timeframe. And we had done some amazing things with desirability at Rocketdyne, which. is more than meeting requirements. And the Vice President of Quality at Rocketdyne knew this guy at NASA headquarters, and he says, "You should go show him what we're doing." So I called him up a week in advance of going out there. I had made the date, but I figured if I'm going to go all the way out there, a week in advance, I called him up just to make sure he knew I was coming. And he said something like, "What are we going to talk about?" He said something like, "We're going to talk about that Lean or Six Sigma stuff?" And I said, "No, more than that." And I think I described it as, we're going to challenge the model of interchangeable parts. And he's like, "Okay, so what does that mean?" So the explanation I gave him is I said, "What letter grade is required for everything that NASA purchases from any contractor? What letter grade is ostensibly in the contract? What letter grade? A, B, C, D. What letter grade is in the contract?" And he says, "Well, A+." [laughter] 0:15:01.2 BB: And I said, "A+ is not the requirement." And he's like, "Well, what do you mean?" I said, "It's a pass-fail system." That's what acceptability is, Andrew. Acceptability is something is either good or bad, and if it's bad, you won't accept it. But if it's good, if I dot all the I's and cross all the T's, you will take it. It has met all the requirements. And that gets into what I talked about in the first podcast series of what I used to call the first question of quality management. Does this quality characteristic, does the thrust of this engine, does the roughness of this surface, does the diameter of this hole, does the pH of this bath meet requirements? And there's only two answers to that question, yes or no. And if yes is acceptable, and if no, that's unacceptable. And so I pointed out to him, much to his chagrin, is that the letter grade requirement is not A+, it's D- or better. [chuckle] And so as a preview of we'll get into in a future podcast, acceptability could be, acceptability is passing. And this guy was really shocked. I said, "Procurement at NASA is a pass-fail system." 0:16:21.9 BB: Every element of anything which is in that system purchased by NASA, everything in there today meets a set of requirements, is subject to a set of requirements which are met on a pass-fail basis. They're either, yes, it either meets requirements, acceptable, or not. That's NASA's, the quality system used by every NASA contractor I'm aware of. Boeing's advanced quality system is good parts and bad parts. Balls and strikes. And so again, for our viewers, acceptability is a pass-fail system. And what Yoshida... You can be thinking about what Yoshida's talked about, is Japanese companies. And again, I think it's foolish to think of all Japanese companies, but back in the '80s, that's really the way it came across, is all Japanese companies really have this figured out, and all American companies don't. I think that's naive. But nonetheless, what he's talking about is shifting from a pass-fail system, that's acceptability, to, let's say, letter grades of A's or B's. That would be more like desirability, is that it's not just passing, but an A grade or a B grade or a C grade. So that's, in round terms, a preview of Yoshida... A sense of, for this episode, of what I mean by acceptability and desirability. 0:17:54.7 BB: In the first podcast which was posted the other day, I made reference to, instead of achieving acceptability, now I can use that term, instead of achieving zero defects as the goal, in the world of acceptability, once we continuously improve and achieve acceptability, now everything is passing, not failing. This is in a world of what I refer to as category thinking, putting things in categories. In the world of black and white, black is one category, white is a category. You got two categories, good and bad. If everything meets requirements, how do you continuously improve if everything is good? Well, part of the challenge is realize that everything is good has variation in terms... Now we could talk about the not all letter grade A, and so we could focus on the things that are not A's and ask the question, is an A worthwhile or not? But what I was saying in the first podcast is my admiration for Dr. Deming's work uniquely... And Dr. Deming was inspired towards this end by Dr. Taguchi, and he gave great credit to that in Chapter Ten of The New Economics. And what I don't see in Lean nor Six Sigma, nor Lean/Six Sigma, nor Operational Excellence, what I don't see anywhere outside of Dr. Deming's work or Dr. Taguchi's work is anything in quality which is more than acceptability. 0:19:32.0 BB: It's all black and white. Again, Boeing's Advanced Quality System is good parts and bad parts. Now, again, I'm not suggesting that there's anything wrong with that. And I would also suggest in a Deming-based organization there may be characteristics for which all we need is that they're good. We don't need to know how good they are, we don't need to know the letter grade. And why is that? Because maybe it's not worth the trouble to discern more than that. And this is where I use the analogy of balls and strikes or kicking the ball into the net. If you've got an open net... That's Euro Cup soccer. There's no reason to be precisely placing the ball. All you want to do is get it into the net. And that's an area of zero defects, maybe all that is worthwhile, but there could be other situations where I want the ball in a very particular location in the strike zone. That's more of this desirability sense. So I want to clarify for those who listened to the first podcast, is what I'm inferring is I'm not aware of any quality management system, any management system in which, inspired by Dr. Deming and Taguchi, we have the ability to ask the question, is acceptability all that is required? 0:20:55.7 BB: And it could be for a lot of what we do, acceptability is not a bad place to be. But I'm proposing that as a choice, that we've thought about it and said, "You know what? In this situation, it's not worth, economically, the extra effort. And so let's put the extra effort into the things where it really matters." And if it doesn't... So use desirability where it makes sense, use acceptability elsewhere. Right now, what I see going on in organizations unaware of Dr. Deming's work, again, Dr. Taguchi's work, is that they're really blindly focusing on acceptability. And I think what we're going to get into is, I think there's confusion in desirability. But again, I want to keep that for a later episode. Now, people will say, "Well, Bill, the Six Sigma people are about desirability." No, the Six Sigma people have found a new way to define acceptability. And I'll give you one other fun story. When I taught at Northwestern's Kellogg Business School back in the late '90s, and I would start these seminars off by saying, "We're going to look at quality management practices, past, present, future." And so one year, I said, "So what quality management practices are you aware of?" And again, these are students that have worked in industry for five or six years. 0:22:17.6 BB: They've worked at GM, they worked at General Electric, they worked for Coca Cola, banking. These are sharp, sharp people. But you got into the program having worked somewhere in the world, in industry, so they came in with experience. And so they would say, zero defect quality is a quality management practice. And I'd say, "Okay, so where'd that come from?" And again, this is the late '90s. They were aware of the term, zero defects. They didn't know it was Philip Crosby, who I learned yesterday was... His undergraduate degree is from a school of podiatry. I don't know if he was a podiatrist, but he had an undergraduate... A degree in podiatry, somebody pointed out to me. Okay, fine. But Philip Crosby, his big thing was pushing for zero defects. And you can go to the American Society for Quality website to learn more about him. Philip Crosby is the acceptability paradigm. So, students would bring him up and I'd say, "Okay, so what about present? What about present?" And somebody said, "Six Sigma Quality." So I said, "So what do you know about Six Sigma Quality?" And somebody said," Cpk's of 2.00." And I said, "So what's... " again, in a future episode, we could talk about Cpk's." 0:23:48.5 AS: But I said to the guy, "Well, what's the defect rate for Six Sigma... For Cpk's or Six Sigma Quality or Cpk's of 2?" And very matter of factly, he says, "3.4 defects per million." So I said, "How does that compare to Phil Crosby's quality goal from 1962? Here we are, 1997, and he's talking about Motorola and Six Sigma Quality, a defect goal of 3.4 defects per million. And I said, "How does that compare to Phil Crosby's quality goal of zero defects in 1962?" And the guy says... [chuckle] So cool, he says, "Well, maybe zero is not worth achieving." 'Cause again, zero was the goal in 1962. Six Sigma sets the goal for 3.4 per million. Not zero, 3.4, to which this guy says... And I thought it was so cool, he says, "Well, maybe zero is not worth achieving." So, there. Well, my response was, "Well, what makes 3.4 the magic number for every process in every company around the world? So, what about that?" To which the response was crickets. But what I want to point out is we're still talking about zero... I mean 3.4 is like striving towards zero and admitting some. It is another way of looking at acceptability. It is... And again, and people claim it's really about desirability. I think, well, there's some confusion in desirability and my hope in this episode is to clear up some of that misunderstanding in acceptability as well as in desirability. And they... Let me just throw that out. 0:25:58.1 AS: Yeah, there's two things that I want to say, and the first one is what he should have replied is, for those older people listening or viewing that can remember the movie, Mr. Mom with Michael Keaton, I think it was. And he should have replied, "220, 221, whatever it takes." And he should have said, "Well, yeah, 3.4, 3.5, 3.6. It's could be around there." 0:26:27.5 BB: Well, the other thing is, why we're on that is... And I think this is... I'm really glad you brought that up, is, what I would push back on the Lean and the Six Sigma, those striving for zero defects or Cpk's of 2 or whatever they are is, how much money are we going to spend to achieve a Cpk of 2, a zero defects? And again, what I said and... Well, actually, when I posted on LinkedIn yesterday, "I'm okay with a quality goal of 3.4 defects per million." What I'm proposing is, instead of blindly saying zero defects is the goal and stop, or I want Cpk's of 1.33 or whatever they are everywhere in the organization, in terms of the economics of variation or the new economics, is how much money are we going to spend to achieve zero or 3.4 or whatever it is? And, is it worth the return on the investment? And this is where Dr. Taguchi's loss function comes in. 0:27:49.2 BB: And so what I'm proposing, inspired by Genichi Taguchi and W. Edwards Deming is, let's be thinking more about what is... Let's not blindly stop at zero, but if we choose to stop at zero, it's an economic choice that it's not worth the money at this time in comparison to other things we could be working on to improve this quality characteristic and that we've chosen to be here... Because what I don't want people to think is what Dr. Deming and Taguchi are talking about is we can spend any amount of money to achieve any quality goal without thinking of the consequences, nor thinking about, how does this goal on this thing in isolation, not make things bad elsewhere. So we have to be thinking about a quality goal, whether it's worth achieving and will that achievement be in concert with other goals and what we're doing there? That's what I'd like people thinking about as a result of this podcast tonight. 0:28:56.0 AS: And I think I have a good way of wrapping this up, and that is going back to Dr. Deming's first of his 14 Points, which is, create constancy of purpose towards improvement of product and service with the aim to become competitive, to stay in business, and to provide jobs. And I think that what that... I link that to what you're saying with the idea that we're trying to improve our products and services constantly. We're not trying to improve one process. And also, to become competitive in the market means we're improving the right things because we will become more competitive if we are hitting what the client wants and appreciates. And so... Yeah. 0:29:46.3 BB: But with regard to... Absolutely with regard to our customers, absolutely with regard to how it affects different aspects of our company, that we don't get head over heels in one aspect of our company and lose elsewhere, that we don't deliver A+ products to the customer in a losing way, meaning that the A+ is great for you, but financially, we can't afford currently... Now, again, there may be a moment where it's worthwhile to achieve the A... We know we can achieve the A+, but we may not know how to do it financially. We may have the technology to achieve that number. Now, we have to figure out, is, how can we do it in an economically advantaged way, not just for you, the customer, but for us. Otherwise, we're losing money by delivering desirability. So it's gotta work for us, for you, but it's also understanding how that improvement... That improvement of that product within your overall system might not be worthwhile to your customer, in which case we're providing a... The classic... 0:31:18.8 AS: You're not becoming competitive then. 0:31:21.8 BB: The better buggy whip. But that gets into looking at things as a system. And this is... What's invaluable is, all of this is covered with a grasp of the System of Profound Knowledge. The challenge is not to look at goals in isolation. And even I've seen people at Lean conferences quote Dr. Deming and his constancy of purpose and I thought, well, you can have a... A non-Deming company has a constancy of purpose. [chuckle] The only question is, what is the purpose? [laughter] And that's when I thought, a constancy of purpose on a focus on acceptability is good provided all of your competitors are likewise focusing on acceptability. So I just be... I just am fascinated to find people taking Deming's 14 Points one at a time, out of context, and just saying, "Well, Dr. Deming said this." Well, there we go again. [laughter] 0:32:29.9 AS: Bill, on behalf of everyone at The Deming Institute, I want to thank you again for this discussion. For listeners, remember to go to deming.org to continue your journey. If you want to keep in touch with Bill, just find him on LinkedIn. 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."
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