Podcasts about Deming

Another rare two-fer this week! This time we've got the legendary Peter Deming, ASC and Darran Tiernan on the program to talk about how they shot Spider-Noir (and plenty more)!Enjoy!► ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠F&R Online ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠► ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Support F&R⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠► ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Watch on YouTube⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Produced by Kenny McMillan► ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Website⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ► ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Instagram⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠

The damage from your Q1 goal doesn't show up until Q3, on someone else's dashboard, after the person who flagged it got fired.Part 2 of the Outcome Trap series. Brian and Om argue why you can't see the trap from inside it: second-order effects land too late to trace, the people who spot trouble get removed, and the truth fractures across team dashboards until nobody owns the whole picture. By the end you'll have questions to ask before any number you set quietly destroys the business.Listen or watch as we discuss and debate:Why Goodhart's Law turns every new leading indicator into another surface to gameHow Sears split into 40 competing units and imploded while every department hit its OKRsThe Wells Fargo whistleblower fired for 'tardiness' eight days after calling the ethics hotlineWhy Deming's 1986 warning to eliminate numerical goals got ignored for forty yearsTwo questions to ask before setting any targetIf you've ever been in a company where every conceivable metric was green while the business slowly bleed out, this podcast is for you!.#OKRs #Deming #GoodhartsLawW. Edwards Deming (Out of the Crisis, The New Economics), Goodhart's Law, Peter Senge The Fifth Discipline, The People's Republic of Walmart, Sears (Eddie Lampert), Wells Fargo (Bill Bado), Frances Haugen Facebook testimony, Careless People by Sarah Wynn-WilliamsLINKSYouTube: https://youtu.be/BuWgxH8VpRISpotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/362QvYORmtZRKAeTAE57v3Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/agile-podcast/id1568557596INTRO MUSICToronto Is My BeatBy Whitewolf (Source: https://ccmixter.org/files/whitewolf225/60181)CC BY 4.0 DEED (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/deed.en)

Cinematographers Darren Tiernan, ISC and Peter Deming, ASC are the DPs of Spider Noir, the new MGM Plus and Amazon Prime series starring Nicolas Cage as the hard-boiled 1930s New York detective version of Spider-Man. The character is based on Marvel Comics featuring Spiderman Noir, and first introduced in Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse. Tiernan and Deming created a series that looks like a classic film noir using vintage lights, custom LUTs and a “noir vocabulary.” We dive into: -How the production created a dual release simultaneously in both black and white and color. -Lead DP Darran Tiernan worked for months on LUT development and a workflow that kept every department aligned on both versions from day one. Monitors on set showed what the scenes would look like in black and white. -Why both Darren and Peter used old tungsten lights with Fresnel lenses instead of LEDs whenever possible. Not out of nostalgia, but out of necessity for getting the hard light that defines film noir. -How rigorous preparation, from shot decks before the first meeting to photo boards and green screens on location, allowed creative freedom to take risks in the moment when the cameras were rolling. -Why the goal was never to recreate classic noir but to absorb its philosophy of shadow, composition and expressionistic light and apply it to this specific story. That distinction is what makes Spider Noir feel fresh rather than like a period piece. Find Darran Tiernan: https://darrantiernan.net/ Instagram: @dazt Find Peter Deming: Instagram @peter_deming Spider Noir is now streaming on MGM Plus and Amazon Prime. SHOW RUNDOWN: 03:10 Close Focus 14:42-01:06:55 Darran Tiernan interview 01:06:58-01:39:36 Peter Deming interview 01:40:40 Short ends 01:53:43 Wrap up/Credits The Cinematography Podcast website: www.camnoir.com YouTube: @TheCinematographyPodcast Facebook: @cinepod Instagram: @thecinepod Blue Sky: @thecinepod.bsky.social

Peter Deming, ASC on shooting Evil Dead 2 with director Sam Raimi and working with director David Lynch on Lost Highway, Mulholland Drive, and Twin Peaks. Find Peter Deming: Instagram @peter_deming Spider Noir is now streaming on MGM Plus and Amazon Prime. The Cinematography Podcast website: www.camnoir.com YouTube: @TheCinematographyPodcast Facebook: @cinepod Instagram: @thecinepod Blue Sky: @thecinepod.bsky.social

The thing everyone agrees is the right way to work has quietly produced some of the worst corporate ethics violations in modern history.Product Manager Brian Orlando and Enterprise Business Agility Leader Om Patel discuss and debate how outcome-based goals can and often do go catastrophically wrong - from Facebook to Wells Fargo - and introduce a stakeholder outcome mapping tool you can use immediately.Listen or watch to understand:How outcome-based OKRs quietly enable the worst ethics failuresThe invisible gorilla experiment which illustrates how goals function as mental blindersThe headlines test for stress-testing your goalsA stakeholder outcome mapping exercise to surface hidden tradeoffsWhy the system doesn't need evil people - just good people with bad incentivesThis podcast is for anyone who is looking to understand how the efforts of well-meaning and "not-evil" people can and often does go off the rails. It may also be tangentially useful to leaders who are tired of pretending outcome goals are automatically ethical... but you first must WANT to change....and if you do like this one, get ready for a Part 2 next where we'll discuss WHY the damage from outcome-based goals is often invisible until it's too late, why organizations systematically destroy whistleblowers, and what Deming figured out decades ago that the tech industry still ignores!#ProductEthics #OKRs #ProductManagementState of Product 2026 by Atlassian, Careless People by Sarah Wynn-Williams, Facebook's Ethical Failures Are Not a Bug They Are a Feature by Betty (2021), Invisible Gorilla Experiment, Locke and Latham Goal Setting Theory, DemingLINKSYouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@arguingagileSpotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/362QvYORmtZRKAeTAE57v3Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/agile-podcast/id1568557596INTRO MUSICToronto Is My BeatBy Whitewolf (Source: https://ccmixter.org/files/whitewolf225/60181)CC BY 4.0 DEED (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/deed.en)

What if the problem isn't your strategy, your people, or your tools, but the lens you're looking through? In this first conversation with Andrew Stotz, quality educator Balaji Reddie explains why so many organizations chase Deming's 14 Points and prizes but miss the philosophy underneath. He also gets into what changes once you start seeing your organization as one connected system. There are a few surprises along the way, like why his employees actually celebrated the day he got rid of performance appraisals. 0:00:01.9 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 here with featured guest Balaji Reddie, who is an educator and trainer in teaching of Dr. Deming and quality management generally. Now the topic for today is a deeper perspective of the teachings of Dr. Deming. Balaji, how are you?   0:00:29.6 Balaji Reddie: I am fine. It's wonderful to see you this morning. I have been looking forward to this for quite some time now.   0:00:37.0 Andrew Stotz: Yeah. In fact, we've been talking back and forth in the past and then we had a meeting recently to get going on this because you've got so much to share. And one of the things I just said is a deeper perspective on the teachings of Dr. Deming. Maybe you could just give a little background of yourself for those people that have never heard of your journey. Maybe tell us a little bit about your journey, the Deming journey, as well as what you're doing now.   0:01:02.2 Balaji Reddie: All right. So I am an electrical engineer by profession and my first job which I got was in a lamp, a bulb manufacturing company which made automotive lamps. And that's where I chose to be in the quality department because I was being shunted around in all the different departments and the owner of the company asked me, "Where would you like to be?" and I said, "Quality." I don't know, when I look back why I chose. I think it appealed to me as an engineer and also the fact that I wanted to be a manager. It combined engineering and something to do with managing people. I don't want to sound dramatic, but I don't think I chose quality, I think quality chose me. But what I did after that was conscious. I did a postgraduate diploma in quality management, the first structured course in the country, and then went on to a Master of Science in quality management here in India.   0:02:00.2 Balaji Reddie: So that's been my journey here as far as working. I worked a lot. I used to teach part-time, but I made this switch 20 years ago to be an educator primarily and decided to put all my focus into creating the next gen of managers. At the same time, during the bit of a free time that I have, I do consult, but that's not the core profession of mine. So, yes, I'm an educator and a trainer. You can say that. I teach quality management, anything to do with operations, supply chain, et cetera, but there's always been a Deming slant to it. Along with that, I've also liked to... Because I went into the works of Dr. Juran, I got a good chance to meet with him and be in touch with him. It was only the last six years of his life, but I think he had very little time to give me, but he gave me time. So I have a good perspective of both these gentlemen. And if you know quality, they're the pioneers.   0:03:01.5 Andrew Stotz: Yeah. And I'm curious, when you first started out with the degrees and the, as you mentioned, getting a diploma and then a master's, was Deming front and center in there or was that a secondary thing? What was it like in the beginning?   0:03:19.6 Balaji Reddie: Oh, my entire focus was actually Deming. I needed to be qualified in that. I wanted to qualify myself in quality, that's what I meant here, because there was no... I was looking for a structured course on the subject. You had these training programs, certificate courses, but this one caught my attention when they said we have a diploma in quality. And part of the course was we had to, there was a project like a dissertation, and we had to show how we implemented this in our companies where we were working. And for those who were not working, they were provided companies where you go and actually implement these. So it was a win-win. So the company gained and you gained. That's how it was. That's what I liked about that course. Same with the masters. It was a complete two-year course. This was a year-and-a-half or three semesters. That was more elaborate, the masters. So, yeah.   0:04:18.0 Andrew Stotz: And what is the state of Deming and the teachings of Dr. Deming in India? We know that many companies in India have implemented the teachings of Deming over the years. But of course, there's a lot of people that just know nothing. I'm just curious, what is the state right now as far as the teachings of Dr. Deming?   0:04:40.3 Balaji Reddie: Oh, I'd like to... Just a slight correction there. We have the highest number of Deming Prize winners, but that does not necessarily mean that they're implementing the teachings of Dr. Deming. In fact, many of them after having got the prize... I worked in a company, we were suppliers to one of them. And when they came to do a vendor assessment to our factory, obviously there's a lot of buzz. Everyone in the company, they called me the Deming man. They used to call me that. And so when these guys came down and they were talking and when they gave their business card which had the Deming Prize logo, so they said, "Oh, we have... You know, Balaji is here and he's our Deming man." So who's he and what is this? And so they came and met me and they said that, "We got the Deming Prize." I said, "Excellent." But I said, "Just because you got the Deming Prize, I mean, have you worked on the Deming philosophy?" "Isn't this the same?" And I said, "No." And I, of course, joked with them, and they said, "So how do we learn?" And I said, "Pay me." [laughter] Anyway, yeah, then we got talking and they realized that there was such a big gap in what they were doing. For instance, when I spoke to them about performance appraisals and having quotas and things like that, they were like, "What?"   0:06:04.9 Andrew Stotz: Interesting. And when we talk about the Deming Prize, when I asked you that, we're talking about the Deming Prize which is offered by the Union of Japanese Scientists and Engineers through their Deming Prize Committee. This isn't something done through the Deming Institute.   0:06:12.3 Balaji Reddie: No.   0:06:19.7 Andrew Stotz: Yep. Okay. And do people study Deming there in India anymore or is it fading out or...   0:06:26.7 Balaji Reddie: Well, yeah, that's what I said, they do know. The good part is that because of the fact that the Deming Prize winners are there, at least they know about Dr. Deming. And then they're curious to know, "Oh, what did he teach?" Because again, they've been given that perspective that he taught, well, wrongly, PDCA, and he focused on the 14 points. And then when they read the 14 points and then they get... Because when you read it just without understanding, you can actually... It can put off certain people. You may get a little repulsed and say, "Oh, my God, what's he saying?" But then there are certain people who get intrigued and say, "Wait a minute. This is challenging. He's saying that we need not have quotas? Then how are you going to get work done?" And that's where the questioning begins. And there have been normally these trends where some companies where they called me over, I shall not name one of them, one of the students I was teaching in class and I was talking about the 14 points, and then she comes up to me and she says, "I've spoken about you to my father, and he's working in this company, and they're going for the Deming Prize. He wants to meet you." And then she brings him to the college the next morning and then we had a lovely discussion. And he said, "We've been discussing the 14 points." And I said, "You know what? You're putting the cart before the horse. You need to discuss profound knowledge first." So he said, "I'll put you in touch with my HR, the human resource." And then that lady got in touch with me, then we had a good chat and I explained to her and she understood very quickly. Incidentally, Andrew, that's something very amazing, when I speak about these things to the HR people, they take to it like a fish takes to water. They say, "You're right. What can we do about appraisals? Appraisals are wrong." But they also know they're shackled. They do not have the authority to break and come out of it. There have been some cases where they've been bold enough, but many of them... That's one of the things I've seen over these last 20 years that I've been teaching, that everybody principally agrees, but they also say that we're bound by it.   0:08:37.6 Andrew Stotz: That reminds me when I attended my first seminar when I was 24, and I was very intimidated by all the people in the room. I was just fresh out of university, working at Pepsi in Los Angeles. I flew into Washington, D.C., and so I sat right in the front row and I just decided I'm not gonna look at anybody behind me because they're all bigwig executives. But then when I heard Deming really show no mercy and really be tough to them, I was like, "Wow, wow, this is interesting." And he was getting to the... As a factory supervisor, which is what I was at Pepsi, I could just see he was getting to the heart of the matter. And so, yeah, a lot of things are very obvious to people in the factory, but then it's the leadership that is an issue. I'm curious when we think about... Let's imagine that someone listening to this has never heard of Dr. Deming and it's their first time, they stumbled upon this, they're hearing you speak. They're gonna ask the question, "Why does this matter? What benefit do I get from this?" How would you describe that to someone who knows nothing about Dr. Deming and his teachings?   0:09:59.3 Balaji Reddie: Oh, well, when you start getting aware of what this man had to say, let me tell you, when you start actually getting to it, you'll find that what you've been missing all this time in life. And then when you actually get to implement this, it'll be way, way better than where you are right now, sometimes totally in a very, very different direction. And you begin to realize that you had an illusion of knowledge, that you thought you were correct, and then suddenly a new perspective comes in. Just to make a point here, I don't want to be boastful about this, but I'm really proud to say this, that in all the companies that I worked, I removed performance appraisal. None of the companies I worked in had performance appraisal. And the day we removed it in one of the companies, there were actually celebrations.   [laughter]   0:10:56.7 Andrew Stotz: Yeah. Which for many people listening that don't know anything about the teachings of Dr. Deming may think, "That's crazy, because I thought that we run business through performance appraisals, KPIs, and the like." One of the ways I was thinking when you were just speaking was it's a little bit like Deming's... You're a fish, and Dr. Deming is a guy that's gonna come up and tell you, "Oh, by the way, you're surrounded by water." And you're like, "Wait, what do you mean? What's water?" And then all of a sudden he brings this awareness like, "What am I swimming in? I am swimming in something, and it's called water." And it's like everything that's going on, the concept of how we learn, the concept of variation, the concept of psychology, it's like all of these are foundational things that we've been swimming in, but we really haven't been paying attention to. And I think he woke me up to a lot of that. So what should we talk about today? What do you got on your mind?   0:11:55.7 Balaji Reddie: Well, I presume that the audience would be someone who's read about Deming, or if they have not read, I can go it either way.   0:12:05.9 Andrew Stotz: Yeah, I mean, I would say just let's go into what your learnings are and what you want to teach us today and share with us, and then people can follow along.   0:12:17.4 Balaji Reddie: All right. So let's begin with what he meant by Profound Knowledge, because that was something he put together only towards the end of his life. I'm reminded of a few things that led to me thinking about these things. One of the very first books that was written on him was by Mary Walton, The Deming Management Method. And with due respect, she was an excellent journalist, and so she followed him around. Everyone was intrigued to know who this man is because he had just gained popularity. If Japan Can... Why Can't We? And so she wrote this book, I think as early as '84, if I'm not mistaken. And she followed him around for almost three years before she actually published the book. So she attended four-day seminars, and she's trying to understand what this man was. So the biography bit of it was very nice. But if you go there in the preface and in one of the chapters, there's a very interesting conversation where she says, "I asked Deming that why don't you set up a body, an organization? Why are you doing this all alone?" And he didn't say a word to her, and he just mentioned to her, "I'm good." So I believe he was still looking for the answers to offer something to the world. He had it all in uncoordinated stuff here and there, but that came much later, I think in 1989, when he finally put it all together and called it Profound Knowledge. Because that was when a year, a month or so before he passed away, he set up the Deming Institute. I think he thought he was ready now to leave behind a legacy that others could build upon, right?   0:14:08.0 Balaji Reddie: And so that he called it... Again, I'm looking for the missing link here—. Apparently, when he wrote it, as he called it deep knowledge, but it was someone who gave him the word profound, and that's how the name stuck. So I'm still trying to find out who did that. I saw this in one of the letters to Henry Neave, where he was writing to all of his colleagues, he called them, and taking feedback from them. And in that, he said that, "I profess this is deep, this is wide." And somebody said, "It's profound." I forget. I really want to find out who it is. I asked Bill Scherkenbach, and he said, no, it wasn't him. Henry, of course, no. I asked Bill Latzko, and he said, "No way. I never said that." So I really don't know who said it, but he christened it "profound." And we all know now, it sounded very pompous to begin with when you hear profound, and then you say, "Wait a minute." When you start getting into it, you say, "He's right. There's no other word to describe this. It is profound." So what exactly is Profound Knowledge? Now, it's a different way of looking at things around you. And especially he designed this or created this for man-made systems, organizations that you and I work in, helping us to look at things differently, right? And that's why he said it's a different lens. And when you see things differently, you ask different questions, right? When you ask different questions, you get different answers. When you get different answers, you draw different conclusions. When you draw different conclusions, you take different decisions. And when you take different decisions, that's when you get different results. It's insanity to expect different results by asking the same questions every single time. All right.   0:15:53.8 Balaji Reddie: Now, what exactly is, again, what do you mean by this whole thing, the lens? He brought together four seemingly disconnected sciences, right? He never invented any single one of them, but he saw the interconnections. All right. And the four sciences, he felt that if you had good knowledge, working knowledge of these four sciences, you need not be an expert in them, just enough for you to understand what's going on around you. All right? And in no order of importance, he had his title for each of those sciences. One was he called it appreciation for a system, which I would like to say very simply is connectedness, right? Because when people say systems thinking, okay, then you have the systems thinking experts who jumped into the picture. And I think they were caught napping. To be quite honest, Andrew, I think the people from the world of management were suddenly caught napping, and the experts were completely caught napping because they realized they'd missed the bus. Here's this man who caught everything together and put it into place, right? And so when they were... When they said systems thinking, so the systems experts came in and started trying to find out, "Oh, but he missed out on this, and he's confusing this with that." That's where it is. Dr. Deming knew where to start. All right? He said, "Yes, of course, it's all about systems, appreciation for a system, the fact that nothing exists in isolation." So I would like to say connectedness. Everything's connected to everything. When you start having that systemic approach, you realize you're not dealing with events, you're dealing with eventualities, and that there are always a huge myriad of inputs that create the outputs that you see in front of your eyes, right? And there's so many other attributes that they're separated in time and space, et cetera. We can talk for this forever. But the short word here is connectedness. Second...   0:17:56.1 Andrew Stotz: And I would say that the systems experts retreated soon after because they're nowhere to be found when we look at it these days, because everything's divide and conquer.   0:18:07.6 Balaji Reddie: Yes. Yeah, because there were people like Russell Ackoff, Stafford Beer was mentioned many times, and then their books. Now, I went on to read their books and I found, yes, they were going deep, but Dr. Deming knew where to draw the line and said, "That's it. Please don't go beyond this," and it depends on where you are, what you want to study. So draw your line around that and say that's it. And I think that thinking came from the next science which I'm talking about, which is understanding of variation, right? Now, although we say understanding of variation and people talk about the control chart, I think that's just the manifestation. If you look at the philosophy behind it, what Walter Shewhart actually was trying to do was to draw a line between when to act on the process and when to leave it alone, right? He came out with... He demarcated, and that's where it turned into the control chart with data. But broadly, Deming started applying this everywhere, right? He said that there are some things which are in my control and some things out of my control, and so he drew a line. And same with systems thinking, that how big and how deep should I go? And that's why he said every system must have an aim. Without an aim... So the aim and the purpose decide where you're gonna stop. You can't just keep on saying, "Oh, yeah, finally, okay, the whole world is a system." Fine, great, I get that. But I'm trying to study this, okay? My company, my organization, this process, these people. So you draw the line and say, "This is my purpose, so let me restrict." Again, I repeat, he knew where to stop. People tend to go overboard. And so he always said, "Begin with the aim, begin with the purpose." The purpose is the reason the system exists, and the aim is the direction in which you're headed. So you keep going there, keep revisiting that to let yourself remind yourself that I need to stop right here. Okay, and that's it. When I come to it later, because he said... Coming to the third part of Profound Knowledge, where he said you must have a theory of knowledge.   0:20:13.4 Balaji Reddie: Now, when people hear the word theory they get very put off. At least in my country, the broad doctrine is that theory is the opposite of practice. And so they think that theory belongs to the books and theory belongs at home. And when you come into the company, we all believe in being practical, right? And as you go through what Dr. Deming had to say about theory, you realize theory is a guide to better practice. And all the great practitioners are actually theorists. It's just that they don't know it, and we need to remind them. I've had enough of experience on this in my own company. And I remember when I turned on the light bulb for one of the very, very senior people in my company, he went completely quiet. He did not say anything, but I loved the way he reacted or responded to this when he started doing things very differently after the interaction that we had once. So that's with theory of knowledge. And...   0:21:19.9 Andrew Stotz: And would you say that theory of knowledge, would you correct my description of it, which is that you need to have a method of... You need to understand how you acquire knowledge?   0:21:40.1 Balaji Reddie: Yeah.   0:21:40.2 Andrew Stotz: And you gotta figure out, because acquiring knowledge, for instance, as an individual, we can play around lots of different ideas and experiments and stuff like that, but acquiring knowledge within an organization is a much harder thing. And so first is the idea that there's a level of rigor that you need in an organization to make knowledge stick.   0:22:06.9 Balaji Reddie: I think it's more about awareness. When you become aware of how you're converting information into knowledge. When you... He makes you aware of that, right? Dr. Deming gets you aware, he makes aware, "Okay, okay, wait, what's happening here?" Now, that method and all turned out to be the Plan-Do-Study-Act, whatever you call it. But he helped you understand how you're doing this, right? And you become cognizant. You get your cognitive behavior, you get very aware of things happening around you, right? You start asking the question, "Why? Why is this happening?" And then you get to the bottom of it. "Oh, when I do this, I get this." And that's when it becomes powerful for you. And then you also, "When I do this, I do not get this." And the more the theory fails, the more powerful it gets for you, because you know where it fails. So that's the awareness thing. So connectedness, being aware of the fact that it's beyond just numbers. It's about where, the variation bit, the third bit is about awareness, like I said, about learning, and the fourth, of course, about people. And he said here that all of us are born with a learning system, right? Each one of us has a learning system, a system of learning, but every single one of us has a different system of learning. We learn differently, and we learn at different speeds, at different paces, right? And so understanding the learning process of a person and then putting that person on the right job, right? He said you have to stop that person from working, and that's where joy in work comes in. People enjoy their work. I think the bottom line there is empathy when you start understanding why people do what they do, whether it's your people in the company, the customers, your suppliers, the entire system. So he says the learning process of every person needs to be understood. You want to control the market, you need to understand what makes the customer tick. You want to keep the suppliers with you, you want to understand what makes the suppliers tick, right? And what makes them tick.   0:24:23.3 Balaji Reddie: So that's the fourth part, which I would put as the word empathy. Trying to empathize. So putting this all together, he said that's what he called as Profound. So if you look at it in a broad sense, connectedness and empathy are very philosophical, and the variation and theory are very scientific. So he wanted us to be scientific and philosophical simultaneously. It's not either-or, it's and. And that's difficult to do, right? You have the big divide. You have a set of people who say, "Oh, I believe only in data. Show me the data, show me the results." And then there's a whole other set of people who says, "You gotta feel. You gotta feel for the company. Motivate." Yeah, but neither is wrong, but neither is complete. And this is complete. So this is where I found that I think we could begin, that we need to look at all these four sciences together. And of course, then came the 14 points which he laid out for us. Now, these 14 points, now if you look at them, because I just discussed the four... Of course, I've not gone into depth of each of the sciences, but I think good enough to understand what we are trying to deal with here, then you'd see that the 14 points are actually 14 consequences of this way of thinking. That you don't try to do the 14 points. When you start thinking this way, you end up with the 14 points, right? And there are some things which need to be done, right, and we need to start somewhere with this. And one of the main things that he always said is that people need to be educated about this, that people need to learn about this. And so education and training is important even when it comes to profound knowledge. And he said someone has to take the lead, all right? Someone has to get things done. And so that was his point number 14, that create a critical mass of people in the company that understand, believe, and will work towards these 14 points, right? So I'm gonna begin right there.   0:26:43.1 Andrew Stotz: I was just thinking about his saying, "One need not be an expert in any one point, [chuckle] any one of these areas." With the System of Profound Knowledge, the more I've studied it recently, which I've been working on a project recently where I had to go back to the System of Profound Knowledge, you really see that he's trying to provide a coherent, holistic system.   0:27:16.1 Balaji Reddie: Yes. I call it as a theory of leadership and management.   0:27:23.6 Andrew Stotz: Yeah. And then you start to realize that if you can understand these four things, which isn't that... It doesn't have to be that complex, it can be pretty amazing. And I know one part of my business is investing, which I do on behalf of my clients. And one of the things that makes me stand out as unique is that I don't get distracted by the random variation in the markets. And so that doesn't mean that I'm gonna get it right all the time, but what it means is that my mind is much more clear when I understand. And as I tell people about variation, I say, if you think about just your birth, the beginning of your life is a random event. You had no influence over that, who you were born of. And therefore we at least know that randomness plays one role in your life. But when you start exploring the possibility that randomness is all around you just like water, it just wakes you up and you start to realize, "Aha, I've been reacting to things," and punishing and rewarding and all of that stuff that's happening in companies. And what I'm really doing is I'm just chasing my tail. Or as Dr. Deming would say, putting out a fire. A man could run... A manager could run... Could put out fires their whole career and never improve the system.   0:29:02.8 Balaji Reddie: Yeah. A lot of activity, no work.   0:29:04.5 Andrew Stotz: Yeah.   0:29:06.2 Balaji Reddie: Okay. Incidentally, when you said about investing, one of my students who did something fascinating, I've yet to get to the bottom of it, I never sat down and asked him how he did it, but he used control charts for the stock market. And one day he explained to me, he was trying to rather, because I never... I'm not into all of that investing. That's done by my wife. I just sign the papers and she puts it in. So I... I mean, I might as well be shown the Constitution and say, "Okay, this is what it is," you know? But yeah, so he... I remember sharing with him and he said, "Can I use this for stock market?" I said, "Look, son, I don't know how this works, but I presume what you can do is this. If you had yesterday's Sensex numbers and you have today's, then you can draw a control chart for the differences, you know? And then you get an upper limit and a lower limit. And then if today's closing is so much, it can rise up to the upper control limit, that is the difference. You can add the difference to today's closing and say it can rise to so much, it can fall by so much, and likewise to the lower control limit." And then his eyes just lit up and he said, "I know what to do." And that was it. And I didn't meet him for a week. And a week later, I meet him and he says, "I want to show you something." And he opened his laptop and there were control charts all over the place and I just couldn't figure out, "So what was all this?" And then he said, "I've been following these. There are some blue chip companies and there are some..." I don't know, I don't understand these things much, but he said that, "I'm drawing a control chart for these and so I know that when it crosses the upper control limits, that's the max I can get for the share, so I sell."   0:30:55.7 Andrew Stotz: Yeah. I mean, the hard part... The stock market is purely random most of the time and it's a challenge. But one of the things... I gave a speech to my investors and I did control charts and I did it as a way of helping them understand the markets.   0:31:04.2 Balaji Reddie: Okay.   0:31:12.7 Andrew Stotz: To predict the markets is hard.   0:31:15.7 Balaji Reddie: It's hard.   0:31:16.4 Andrew Stotz: But the control chart allows us to kind of.. It allows us to understand that most of the variation is just normal ups and downs.   0:31:24.8 Balaji Reddie: Yes.   0:31:26.5 Andrew Stotz: And so don't freak out about it. That's the first thing that really helps me. So that area of variation I find very fascinating.   0:31:34.7 Balaji Reddie: Very fascinating. I used it for COVID data, by the way. And there was a lot of criticism about that, but I knew I was going in the right direction because I was plotting the charts for the percentage positive and not the number of cases that were being tested positive every day. And so if the percentage positive lay within limits, then we were safe. I mean, everyone wants a zero, I get that. But I'm just saying here, having said that we're collecting the data and we are turning out so much of positive every day, then it should lie within certain controllable or predictable limits. And when it crosses the limit is when we get a little worried. And that's what I used this for initially. I remember it was Lloyd Provost who stood by me, whereas the other practitioners were saying, "No, you cannot use control chart for COVID and for data and for epidemic and pandemic." Whereas Deming himself used it for an epidemic of cholera somewhere. I read it in his work and where he used the c-chart and he saw that areas where the points were outside limits and then they tested the water and well, well, whatever it was, it turned out to be that he found the special cause and blah, blah, blah. So that's what gave me the idea of using the control chart for COVID and it was quite fascinating.   0:32:56.5 Andrew Stotz: Yeah. Yeah, unfortunately there wasn't a lot of independent thinking during that time.   0:33:02.5 Balaji Reddie: Yeah. [laughter]   0:33:03.0 Andrew Stotz: Real serious groupthink at that time. So I had my experience in my PhD research and my job as an analyst all my life where... And I teach my students believe nothing, believe no one, demand evidence. And so I'm constantly digging and that's just the heart of being an analyst. But when I go back... I want to go back to when I was starting at Pepsi. The reason why my boss recommended me to go to the Deming seminar was simple because I knew how to work a computer. And that was 1989 when I went to work at Pepsi. And what I had, all of these loaders that were loading up trucks with Pepsi each night. We would load about 80, 90 trucks each night. And in the heat of the summer, we would work till 2:00 or 3:00 in the morning, but generally we would finish at 11:00 or midnight. But they were just... I would go to the drivers in the morning and then the drivers would come back in the afternoon and complain that the product that they needed was not on the truck. And there was just... And I went to the loaders, they go, "I put it on the truck. I don't know what you're talking about." And so there was this battle between the night loaders and the truck drivers. And so what I just did originally was I just started... I did inspection. The first thing I did is I said, "Look, before you close the doors on the trucks at night, I just want to count myself to understand what's happening here." And then I started keeping a record of that and I put that in Excel, it was Lotus 1-2-3 at the time, and then I put up charts of each person's error rate each night. And so we had a long chart. And I never actually even told them what I was doing, I just put up on the wall. And then they started looking at it over time and talking about it and then asking me questions. And it wasn't for the purpose of blaming, it was the purpose of just understanding.   0:35:01.2 Andrew Stotz: But then what we really started to see was that some people were much more accurate than others. And then we started to ask the question, "Well, how are they doing it?" And then they explained how they kept records of what they were doing and all that. And so we started to see that we could improve this. And we started to improve those numbers quite dramatically until we got to the point where I told the loaders when they were done that they were to lock the trucks and seal them and the drivers were not allowed to open them. They had to take them as is. And when everybody realized we really have to build from the beginning that this is loaded right, then we started to have massive efficiency. In the number of... Let's say you have 50 or 100 truck drivers that come in at 5:00 in the morning. It could take you till 9:00 AM to get them out the door if they've got problems and they're checking their trucks and all that. But if you've got it set right and you've done it right, we were able to rush people through the door and the drivers would get out to the LA freeways much earlier and that makes a difference for the whole day. So that was my first experience with it all. And then my boss just said, "Well, seems like you know about statistical quality control." I said, "I have no idea. I have no idea what that is." But he said, "You should go to Washington, D.C. And study with Dr. Deming." And that's my little story.   0:36:20.4 Balaji Reddie: Oh, wow. Okay.   0:36:21.6 Andrew Stotz: So how would we... What's the best way to wrap this up and think about what somebody who doesn't really necessarily have experience with the System of Profound Knowledge, you've given them some good overview. What would you like them to take away from this?   0:36:39.2 Balaji Reddie: Well, if you have now come to know about what this is, I think you could go to the W. Edwards Deming Institute website and you could subscribe and start looking into the learning pathways, systems thinking, there are a lot of catalogs available there and they've done a great job of putting things together. So they could do that reading, of course, you need to start reading, but the danger in reading Dr. Deming's work is it could put you off sometimes. And I would recommend a good place to start reading and understanding the Deming philosophy would be Henry Neve's book, The Deming Dimension. It's a very good start, one of the best introductions. You could always build upon that. So along with having Out of the Crisis, The New Economics, and Essential Deming, which was put together by Joyce Orsini, these are the three essential Deming books which contain papers, his own works, and then use Deming Dimension as a guide, so to say. You could read the books together and you could read profound knowledge to begin with. And once you get a good idea about what there is, then the question comes is where do we start? And that's where I just ended by saying that we start at point number 14 about creating a critical mass and take on leadership, right? So somebody has to take the lead. So what we could do is, I think the next time we meet, we could begin with that, how do we start? So we'll talk about the principles of leadership that W. Edwards Deming spoke of and what did he expect the leaders to do once you've decided or you've started seeing things differently and you say, "No, I need to do something about this. I need to start somewhere." And so we'll start with the principles of leadership. That's the way I look at it.   0:38:44.5 Andrew Stotz: Fantastic. Well, I look forward to our next conversation, how we can start to think about how we take this information and make a better world and make a better company, feel better. And so from everybody at the Deming Institute, I want to thank you again for this discussion. And for listeners, remember to go to deming.org and jump into DemingNext to continue your journey.   0:39:09.7 Balaji Reddie: Yes.   0:39:11.1 Andrew Stotz: It's an exciting tool. And this is your host, Andrew Stotz, and I'll leave you with one of my favorite quotes from Dr. Deming, and that is: "People are entitled to joy in work."

Have you ever felt like your business is hitting revenue targets but missing something bigger? Like your team is busy, but not truly fulfilled. Like you're succeeding on paper, but if you were on your deathbed, you'd wish you'd done things differently. Most leaders operate inside a hidden trap: short‑termism. We measure quarterly earnings, optimize employees like machines, and accidentally sacrifice the very people who make the company run. The result? 20% of employees are happy. The other 80% are checked out or actively working against you. In this episode of Insight Out, I sit down with Mitchell Levy – TEDx speaker, PhD candidate, author of 60+ books, and the creator of the Executive Abundance framework. Mitchell has interviewed over 500 thought leaders on credibility, built multiple six‑figure businesses, and spent 18 months researching why companies lose their way even when they're profitable. Mitchell reveals why 98% of people can't articulate their purpose in 3–9 words (and why that's a crisis), how a single sentence from a friend forced him to pivot his entire business, and why the “empty chair” at Amazon's executive table might be the most powerful retention tool you're not using. He also shares his controversial take on AI, remote work, and why forcing people back to the office proves we haven't updated our metrics since the 20th century. If you've ever struggled to explain what you do, wondered why your team feels disconnected, or suspected that shareholder value shouldn't be the only scorecard, this conversation will change how you lead. In this episode, we discuss: [00:00] Why Mitchell pivoted despite building a career on credibility [02:29] From credibility to clarity [07:03] "Sell them what they want, deliver what they need" [09:03] What is the Executive Abundance engine? [12:16] The Silicon Valley software story: releasing 50% buggy code [15:47] The five stakeholder groups and why investors come fourth [17:07] The Deming and Japan calisthenics example [23:40] What "community" really means and how it's been overlooked [27:11] The ecosystem vs. the engine: what's the difference? [32:49] The four Cs of the Executive Abundance engine [34:10] What is clarity and why do 98% of people lack it? [47:26] Defining executive abundance in plain language [48:14] Where to find Mitchell and the book launch details Notable Quotes [07:05] “Sell them what they want. Deliver what they need.” — Mitchell Levy [08:47] “I cannot change anyone. I cannot teach anyone. But I can allow somebody to see a framework and if they can see a framework and insert themselves inside it, they can change themselves.” — Mitchell Levy [11:45] “We act and become what we measure.” — Mitchell Levy [13:56] “There are companies where 20% of employees are happy and 80% are either checked out or aggressively working against the company.” – Mitchell Levy [15:20] “Companies say, I care about my employees and I care about my customers. But then you look at the numbers and the answer is no, we don't.” — Mitchell Levy [18:30] “No one on their deathbed ever says, ‘I wish I'd made more money.' They say, ‘I wish I'd taken better care of my family. I wish I'd spent more time with my kids.'” – Mitchell Levy [20:07] “If you take care of your employees, they'll take care of your customers. If you take care of your customers, they'll take care of your investors.” – Mitchell Levy [23:30]  “He [Bezos] would leave an empty chair in every meeting for the customer.” – Mitchell Levy [33:15] “98% of people think they have clarity. 98% don't.” — Mitchell Levy [42:30] “There's an audience I add a lot of value to.” — Mitchell Levy [47:26] “Abundance is not about money. It's about bringing quality of life to five different stakeholder groups, not just one.” — Mitchell Levy [49:41] “If we optimize the employee out of the equation, what happens to the economy, which is a consumer driven economy?” — Mitchell Levy Mitchell Levy Website: mitchelllevy.com Book: Executive Abundance LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mitchelllevy/ Billy Samoa Saleebey LinkedIn: ⁠https://www.linkedin.com/in/billysamoa/ Email: ⁠billy@podify.com⁠ and ⁠saleebey@gmail.com⁠  Insight Out  Website: ⁠https://www.insightoutshow.com/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In their insightful dialogue, Dr. Katie Deming and Freddie Kimmel delve into the language and mindset surrounding cancer treatment, shedding light on empowering holistic approaches. Dr. Deming critiques the perception associated with cancer, advocating for reclaiming personal power to foster healing. They stress the importance of intentional language use and holistic modalities like fasting and emotional work in empowering individuals on their healing journey. This conversation unveils the transformative potential of mindset and offers valuable insights for navigating the complexities of cancer care. Furthermore, Dr. Deming and Freddie Kimmel discuss the societal perpetuation of certain language patterns and the need for individualized approaches to healing. They highlight the importance of understanding the impact of language and the availability of human optimization tools. Their conversation underscores the necessity of conscious awareness in choosing alternative paths to conventional treatments, emphasizing the importance of credible information and progress over perfection. Dr. Deming's holistic approach encompasses physical, emotional, and spiritual elements, aiming to align individuals with their healing potential while advocating for boundaries and self-compassion in the healing journey.   Episode Highlights [02:26] – Dr. Katie explains what led her into oncology and hospice care [03:38] – Why modern medicine often treats disease instead of creating health [09:02] – The shared death experience that changed her life and career [18:06] – Walking away from a prestigious oncology career to pursue integrative healing [20:16] – Why healing cancer requires emotional, mental, spiritual, and physical alignment [25:04] – How trauma, stress, and environment contribute to illness [28:08] – Gerald Pollack's water research and its connection to human health [31:13] – Why crisis can become an opportunity for transformation [33:03] – How “fight cancer” language can reinforce fear and victim mentality [43:02] – Ice baths, hormetic stress, and activating the body's innate resilience [46:46] – Foundational practices Katie uses to support healing and metabolic health [58:02] – Understanding the true risk-versus-benefit conversation around treatment [01:03:20] – Fasting, ketogenic therapy, and mindset during cancer care [01:07:20] – Why changing daily behaviors matters more than waiting for the healthcare system to change [01:15:23] – How collective crisis may also create an opportunity for awakening and growth  Links & Resources Katie's website: https://www.katiedeming.com Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/katiedemingmd/ Circadian and melatonin disruption by exposure to light at night drives intrinsic resistance to tamoxifen therapy in breast cancer: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/25062775/   UPGRADE YOUR WELLNESS Silver Biotics Wound Healing Gel: https://bit.ly/3JnxyDD Code: BEAUTIFULLYBROKEN LightPathLED https://lightpathled.com/?afmc=BEAUTIFULLYBROKEN Code: beautifullybroken STEMREGEN: https://www.stemregen.co/products/stemregen/?afmc=beautifullybroken Code: beautifullybroken Flowpresso 3-in-1 technology: (https://calendly.com/freddiekimmel/flowpresso-one-on-one-discovery)     CONNECT WITH FREDDIEWork with Me: https://www.beautifullybroken.world/biological-blueprintWebsite and Store: (http://www.beautifullybroken.world) Instagram: (https://www.instagram.com/freddie.kimmelYouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@beautifullybrokenworld Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Discover why most organisations focus too heavily on efficiency while missing the deeper architecture required for true enterprise excellence. In this thought-provoking episode, Gary Stewart shares lessons from Toyota Group companies on systems thinking, effectiveness innovation, and why operational excellence starts with developing people and systems — not just processes.Summary KeywordsEnterprise Excellence, Systems Thinking, Toyota Production System, Operational Excellence, Innovation, Effectiveness Innovation, Efficiency Innovation, Lean, Productivity, Human Systems, Technical Systems, Russell Ackoff, Deming, Continuous Improvement, Leadership, Organizational Transformation, Manufacturing, Economic Complexity, Business Architecture, Absolute Benchmarks Episode Summary:Gary Stewart joins Brad Jeavons on the Enterprise Excellence Podcast to challenge conventional thinking around innovation, Lean, and operational excellence.Drawing on decades inside Toyota Group companies including Denso and Aisin, Gary explains why most organizations focus too heavily on efficiency while neglecting the deeper systems architecture required for long-term effectiveness, productivity, and innovation.The episode explores:The “Perfect Line” concept Human systems vs technical systems Effectiveness innovation vs efficiency innovation Systems thinking and Russell Ackoff Why productivity and innovation decline when organisations focus only on efficiency How Toyota Group companies build sustainable enterprise excellence This is a thought-provoking conversation for leaders interested in continuous improvement, systems thinking, operational excellence, and long-term organisational transformation. Episode Links:Youtube: https://youtu.be/6CRhQXgGQhw Enterprise Excellence Group: https://enterpriseexcellencegroup.com.au/enterprise-excellence-podcast/Contacts Connect with Brad on LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/bradjeavons/. Call him on 0402 448 445 or email him at bjeavons@iqi.com.au. If you'd like to connect with Mr Gary Stewart, please reach out to us. Suggested Next Steps for ListenersRequest Gary Stewart's worksheet from us through contact us on our website, or email.Study Russell Ackoff and Deming Assess whether your organisation focuses too heavily on efficiency over effectiveness Explore how architecture and systems design influence operational performance Evaluate whether your organisation uses absolute or relative benchmarks Reflect on where your organisation sits on the “ascending vs descending spiral” To learn more about what we do, visit https://enterpriseexcellencegroup.com.au/Thanks for your time, and thanks for helping to create a better future.

What does real world STEM education look like in a high school where students run actual manufacturing contracts on industry-grade equipment, intern at MIT, and learn AI ethics alongside CAD? Joe Fatheree (Top 10 Global Teacher Prize, Illinois Teacher of the Year) and Dr. Mark Buckner (Smart Industry Top 50 Innovator, founder of Oak Ridge High School's iSchool and Wildcat Manufacturing) take Vicki inside a $1.25 million state grant program where 26 student-run contracts with 18 companies have produced near-net-shape metal 3D printing, augmented reality experiences, and graduates already working four to five years ahead of their college peers. This extended episode also tackles the AI conversation educators most need: where AI belongs in classrooms, where it doesn't, what neuroscience says about kids' developing brains in the attention economy, and why "just because you can does not mean you should" is the most important lesson STEM students will learn this year. In this episode, you'll learn: How Wildcat Manufacturing's profit-sharing model pays students for real client work The three pathways Oak Ridge graduates take — start a business, $100K+ workforce, or accelerate into engineering Why Mark teaches industry frameworks (Scrum, Lean, Toyota Kata, Deming) instead of "edu-ese" Where AI helps (rapid feedback, math practice) and where it harms (Grok Annie, social companionship, attention erosion) What the "Manhattan Project 2.0" frame means for AI policy and your classroom Show notes: https://www.coolcatteacher.com/e933 EF Explore America STEM Tours sponsored today's show. Show students how STEM impacts the world up close and in action. Students could code robots with MassRobotics at MIT or explore marine ecosystems in Florida's coral reefs or even sit down to talk with a former spy in Washington DC. Students will learn how STEM thinking often shows up where you least expect it. Inspire your students visit efexploreamerica.com/STEM

What if your sales problem isn't your people — but the system they're stuck in? Mike Carr spent years doing what everyone told him to do: commissions, quotas, performance plans. Every new hire came with the quiet assumption they'd be gone in a few months. He even optimized onboarding to make firing faster. Then he did the math: it was costing ~$75,000 every time. He called it "Burning the Porsche." His friend Travis Timmons — who'd been applying Deming's principles — kept nudging him to look at it differently. Mike's first reaction? "This is crazy talk." In this episode, they walk through what changed, what didn't work at first, and why the biggest shift wasn't the system — it was the psychology. If you've ever felt stuck trying to fix your salespeople, this will change how you think about it. TRANSCRIPT 0:00:02.2 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 we have an interesting discussion. I'm going to be continuing my discussion with Travis Timmons, who we've been talking about all kinds of things, including offsites, which I've found very, very valuable. I know the listeners have, too. But we're also joined by Michael Carr, who is a business owner who found the teachings of Dr. Deming about 10 years ago and has been trying to implement it ever since. Why don't we kick it off with you, Travis? Tell us a little bit about how you came across Michael and what your relationship's been like over these years.   0:00:43.5 Travis Timmons: Yeah, thanks, Andrew. Great to be here again. Yeah, Mike and I met, I'll say it's probably 14 years ago, something like that. 13, 14 years ago, a business organization he and I were both part of and sat around a table of other business owners working on problems together. And long story short, and part of the problem solving, got to know Mike a little better and had some individual conversations about how Dr. Deming and the Deming approach was having such a positive impact on my business. Might be of interest to some of the things he was working on in his. And encouraged him to attend the Deming two and a half day. But that's kind of how we met, working on business problems together, having some of the same frustrations that even though we're in different industries, the problems seem to look eerily similar across businesses. So, yeah, that's kind of how he and I met and encouraged him to maybe explore Deming and see if it'd have a positive impact on him like it did for us.   0:01:49.2 Andrew Stotz: We were talking before we turned on the microphone about the idea of how do we reach the young man or woman out there who's looking for answers. And we know Deming has a lot of those answers. So I'm really interested to learn more about you, Mike, about not only, of course, your Deming journey, but maybe tell us a little bit about your business and your experience so people can kind of put you in context, in particular where they are and thinking about where you are and where you were.   0:02:17.8 Mike Carr: Sure. Yeah. I came into business about 25 years ago and I did it kind of accidentally where while I was in grad school, I started a campus chapter of Habitat for Humanity and I had more volunteers than I could handle. So over a weekend, I wrote a small piece of software to let people kind of sign up online. This is before the days of SaaS and everything that we're used to today. And that actually took off so quickly that I was supporting it for free, I was giving it away for free to other organizations - nonprofits. And eventually my wife said, this is taking so much of your time, you either need to start charging for it or shut it down and spend some more time with the family. So I quit my full-time job at the time, put all my effort on what became the business, and quickly found myself running a business with no business background or training because my training was in electrical engineering. So I hired my first salesperson and not knowing sort of how traditional business works, I hired the person on salary, fixed salary, and sort of set up a system for her to sell within.   0:03:39.3 Mike Carr: And again, not knowing Deming, not having any business background. And so I kind of accidentally set up sales the way Deming would have recommended because that's just what I thought made sense. Then later on hired a director of sales who had a lot of success in sales, but traditional sales, and he seemed to know what he was talking about. So we completely switched our sales to more of a traditional sales approach based on his recommendation. And that's when problems really started. Because as we're aware on everyone on the call here, the commissions, quotas, and that kind of thing cause a lot of unintended consequences. So at the time that I met Travis in the peer group that we belong to, I was having a lot of issues with sales. I couldn't figure out how to get sales to work. We were hiring and firing people rapidly. And Travis mentioned Deming to me and the Deming two and a half day training which I attended. And I had become so steeped in traditional sales at that time that after the training I literally said, this is crazy talk, this Deming stuff.   0:04:55.4 Mike Carr: It doesn't align at all with traditional sales techniques. But I gave it a shot and over the next year or two we started implementing it. We started trying things. I kept learning about Deming and at some point I realized this is actually the way I was doing it in the beginning when things were actually kind of working back then. So it was funny how I had come full circle from where I had started.   0:05:23.0 Andrew Stotz: And plenty of people that are listening have commission-based salespeople, bonus incentives, all kinds of different things. And they're like, that's the way you do it and the problems that you face are just part of it. And they couldn't see any other way. And it's way too much risk in their mind to even experiment with another way. So what were the problems that you were facing when you talked about I was facing these problems from the way I was compensating my salespeople? I want to make sure that we connect with people who are like... I don't want someone to say, well, that's not me. I want someone to understand exactly the problems that you were facing and then so they can think, okay, yeah, I probably have that problem.   0:06:11.7 Mike Carr: Right. So it was a lot of... So I'll describe sort of the sequence that we would go through. We would hire someone who seemed really qualified. We would give them a day or two of training, we would give them a telephone and a computer, and we would say, "Okay, you've been trained, you have the equipment, go do some hunting and get some sales," and basically leave them alone to go and do that. Of course, they would sort of rapidly fail because they didn't have the support they needed. They didn't have a system to work within. And so we would start applying pressure, we would start messing with compensation and apply incentives, and then we eventually get to a PIP, a performance improvement plan, and then we would eventually let them go and then do all the offboarding and then start from square one. And we did that so many times that we actually started optimizing our process for rapid hiring and firing. At one point, I moved to these thin client PCs so that we didn't even have to send an entire PC to the person.   0:07:25.7 Mike Carr: We could just send the thin client and put their desktop up in the cloud so that when we had to fire them later, it was just a lot quicker to get all your equipment back. So we optimized for that rapid hiring and firing, and we were literally going into most hires with the assumption we're going to fire this person within a couple of months. And so obviously you can imagine the stress that creates for the person we hired, obviously, but also stress on the part of management because we're just constantly failing all the time. Not to mention the business isn't getting revenue and we're missing all the opportunity that we could be capturing. So one day I said to the management team, let's add up how much it costs us to go through this entire cycle beginning to end in terms of man-hours and salary and so forth and missed opportunity. And the number we arrived at was something like $75,000. 75,000 to $100,000 every time we go through the loop. And so to put this in context, I said to the team, this is as if we had gone and bought a Porsche and then just poured gasoline all over it and lit it on fire every time we go through the loop. So I started calling it Burning the Porsche. Let's just burn the Porsche again, guys. And so we got to call it Burning the Porsche. We were optimizing for rapid hire and fire, and obviously stress levels on all sides were just skyrocketing. So those were the problems that we were facing.   0:09:10.0 Andrew Stotz: And I can hear a skeptical person say, oh, you just didn't know about how to train. I know how to train my salespeople, and I put them through this intense training, then I apply all those incentives and it works. What do you say to that?   0:09:27.4 Mike Carr: So, yeah, we tried all of those things. So we gave them piles and piles of written materials, we made training videos, and of course we wanted to hold them accountable for those things. So we had quizzes at the end of each training section, and assuming they passed the quiz, which was five or 10 questions, written questions, we would check the box. And we would later, when they began to fail, we would point back at the checkboxes from the training and say, "Hey, you were trained on this. We checked the box. Why are you not doing the things that you were trained on and the box was checked?" So, yeah, we tried a lot of different varieties of training and different accountability techniques, and just nothing was sticking. And I think everyone was just getting more and more frustrated. On the part of the person that we were hiring and firing, let's not forget about them. I mean, they're going through this three to six month process that's very anxiety-producing in the system that we had, and it can't feel good for them.   0:10:37.1 Andrew Stotz: Yeah, it's interesting because when you're in that situation, as many people are, there's no way out. It's just tightens the screws tighter. Every book you read, everything you see, every person you talk to, it's just you've got to engineer your KPIs better. That's what it is. We need more granularity in KPIs and all of that. And did you feel at some point, before you met Travis and learned about Deming, did you feel at some point like there's no other choice, I just got to do it this way, or what was going in your head before you came upon Deming?   0:11:24.5 Mike Carr: Yeah, I mean, that's exactly how I felt, is that other people are getting this to work somehow. So it must be that I'm just not applying enough pressure or my compensation structure isn't correct. We need a different mix of base salary and commission, and we need different quotas because other companies seem to be making this work somehow, and I just don't know what magic they're using. So that made me even double down to say I just need to look around and look at more companies and how are they structuring their commissions, how are they holding their people accountable? I started reading a lot of business books on the topic, lots of sales management business books that reinforce that thinking. You just need to get your compensation structure right and everything works. But for me, nothing worked.   0:12:21.5 Andrew Stotz: It kind of reminds me of an AA meeting as I imagine Travis sitting down next to you and then hearing the struggles that you're going through. It's like, yeah, been there. And maybe Travis... Now that we understand the background of kind of where Mike was coming from, let's talk about maybe on that day that you first met or in your first conversations, what were the things that stood out?   0:12:48.3 Travis Timmons: It was probably several months in because we'd meet monthly at that business peer-to-peer. But yeah, to your point, it's like, hey, I struggled with similar things. Mike is pretty humble. He's a super smart guy, PhD in engineering, so he doesn't lack intelligence. So he can figure stuff out, but just like me, was not trained in business. And there's a lot of things out there that just seem to make sense when you read them, but they're not applicable. And nothing seemed to take the entire system into consideration or make an assumption that people were good. That was the other thing that jumped out at me and I had the assumption that would align with Mike's worldview because as he's already said there a few times, he knew he was putting these employees through the ringer as well and he didn't like that. So it just got to a point where I'm like, hey, I found something that is different. It takes a system view and for me, it took the stress off and gave me a construct with which I could work within.   0:14:04.5 Travis Timmons: And with his background in engineering, he obviously knows how to put stuff together, so I thought this would be a good fit for him to at least explore it and look at something different than what the traditional business approach was out there. And it just kind of went from there. He finally got tired of me bugging him about it, I think, and said, yeah, I'll go to this two-and-a-half-day so Travis stops bringing it up. But it's the same thing I was doing before finding Deming. The same problem kept coming up in my organization, and I'd read a book about it or I'd have somebody tell me, "Hey, have you tried this," "Have you tried that?" And it wasn't taking an entire system view to how to solve the system for the business. So that's where I introduced it to Mike and said, "Hey, go check this out. You're a smarter guy than I am. See what you think about it."   0:14:54.7 Andrew Stotz: It kind of reminds me of AI these days because we all use AI in different ways, but I get on the TV, on the internet, talking to friends, like, oh, I'm doing all of this and I'm doing all that and I've redesigned everything. I'm like, so how much more money is in your bank account? Are you really? And it's like there's this excitement that everybody's talking about, but I'm not able to get that. Am I missing something? I'm just not smart enough. But I'm like, "Wait a minute, I'm smarter than those guys. I know that." And that guy he doesn't.... And so maybe you can talk a little bit, Mike, about your journey, your discovery, the seminar, and kind of how it started for you and where did it go?   0:15:48.7 Mike Carr: Right. Well, so let me start at the end of the journey, and then that will illuminate the beginning. So what I realized today, and I volunteer a lot with scouting because of this, is we don't really have, we don't really train young people in leadership. Most schools don't have a class on leadership. They might have some introduction to some type of leadership, say, in sports, but we don't really train people to lead other people or to manage other people. And so what I think happens, my theory is most leaders in business, specifically, lead by copying what they see other people doing. It's a Xerox copy of other leaders, and probably in the same business, in the same company, even. And so I think what we have today is we have a lot of people who want to be good leaders, they want to be good managers, but all they have to go off of is copying from what they see other people doing. And unfortunately, that's a lot of these sort of accountability techniques and pressure techniques. And so going back to the beginning, when I got into business, my background was engineering.   0:17:14.6 Mike Carr: And I had no business background, no business training. I had been in Scouts, but Scouts doesn't teach you really how to manage, how to be a sales manager. And so I was just lacking any kind of a background. So that's where I went wrong at the time, and I looked around to copy other people. How are they doing sales? And for me, I think what I took away from the two-and-a-half-day was here is a framework not just for sales management, but here is a framework that finally gives me sort of the perspective that I could use to develop my own leadership skills in a way that makes personally a lot more sense to me. And I come from an engineering background, and Deming was also an electrical engineer. And so I think it just kind of resonated with me because the techniques and the concepts he was talking about felt very familiar from my engineering training. Let's think of this as a system. Let's look at root causes. And let's think about how changing the system, how is that going to change outcomes?   0:18:22.4 Mike Carr: All of that sort of aligns with a lot of electrical engineering. And so it kind of made sense. But then I said, what Deming's really proposing here is that we take these concepts that are applied to electrical engineering and we extrapolate them to business management. And I thought that's a really interesting idea because I hadn't really thought about that before. And once I made that connection, that leadership framework just kind of came together naturally because now I have a leadership framework that I can build off of and that I understand and that seems to make sense.   0:18:57.6 Andrew Stotz: And how would you summarize that for someone who doesn't know Deming? What are the top three things that you got from it that you really have incorporated into your leadership style?   0:19:11.8 Mike Carr: Well, the number one is the psychology piece. If you're copying off other people for sales management specifically, you're copying a lot of high stress, a lot of judgment approaches, rankings, measuring personal performance, measuring individual performance, not as a team. So you have all of these sort of tricks that people do in sales management. And so the number one thing for me was the psychology piece, which is, no, no, no, let's just start with the assumption that people want to do a good job. And in my case, we're selling software that helps nonprofits. So why are we using these high-pressure techniques? People naturally want to help nonprofits do better. Let's just find those people that have an intrinsic motivation to do that, of which there are many, and then let's give them a system within which they can do that. They can go out and help nonprofits solve problems. And so that was the number one thing is just moving away from the manipulation and persuasion techniques that you see in business books and copying from other business leaders and moving toward the intrinsic motivation piece.   0:20:28.3 Mike Carr: So that would be my number one for sure. And then the number two is thinking, which is Deming's number one thing, is just thinking of everything as a system and a collection of subsystems and understanding. One thing we did early on is previously we would send out a memo across the company whenever we made a sale and we would congratulate the salesperson who closed the sale. And I said, well, it's not... Once we implemented Deming, I said, it's not just the salesperson that made this sale. This sale was the result of everyone in the company working together to produce a good product and provide good support to our customers and do good marketing and all the stuff that's required. It's all of us working together. So we just said, "Let's stop congratulating the one person and let's celebrate the sale across the entire company and congratulate everyone." So it's these kinds of things that sort of just seem natural to me and that just aligned with sort of my worldview.   0:21:34.8 Andrew Stotz: And how do you handle that for the salespeople? Is it the case that in your type of style, in the Deming style, that really only a certain type of salesperson can work in that environment and the rest of them are gonna say, "That's not for me. I want to get the commission dollars and I made that sale, and everybody else's job is to produce and deliver?" It starts with the sale.   0:22:03.1 Mike Carr: No, you're absolutely right. There are people like that, and in fact, we changed our recruiting process. And right from the first screening call now, we start talking about the fact that we pay a fixed salary and we don't have commissions and we don't have quotas. And initially, I thought that would be really appealing to people. I thought everyone we talked to would be like, "Wow, that's exactly what I want." But we actually found and experienced a number of people that when we explained that, they said, "No, that's not for me. I want the commissions and I want the quotas and I want the celebration that comes with closing a sale and I want those things." So we just make it... Today, we just make it very clear up front because we're more about finding the person that's gonna be a good fit and has the intrinsic motivation for what we're doing. And so we're very upfront about it early on.   0:23:08.2 Andrew Stotz: And that makes sense. There are some rainmakers out there who can bring in a huge amount of sales, who are very skilled at it, and they know the game very well. And so they say, "I don't want my compensation tied to anything to anybody else." And they have plenty of places to go work. But for the people that are different from that, that say, "I want to be part of an overall system and I want to contribute to this company," and all that, there are people that also see the value of that. And then I guess from an overall business perspective, when you change the way you looked at the way you're hiring salespeople, the way you're incentivizing them, and the way that you're getting people working together, what are some... Some people say, "Yeah, you're gonna lose some good salespeople. Your sales may even go down if I take all of my great performers and I say, "All right, we're going on flat salary plus some bonus for the whole company when we do well." I'm gonna take a hit in my revenue for the next six months. But what benefit on the other side do I get?   0:24:19.0 Mike Carr: Right. And that's exactly what we saw. Initially, sales went down and we did have some people leave, and we did have some people that we had to ask to leave, unfortunately, because they had been hired under a different system, the pre-Deming system, and they weren't really a good fit for the way we were doing it now. We did have some people stay as well. So it's kind of a mixed bag there. But it did take a number of years to stabilize. And to be honest, Travis probably heard me... Every time I would come to the meeting that we had together, it would be always the same problem: "I can't get sales working." And for the first couple of years, it was always pre-Deming, "I can't get sales working." And then Travis sent me to the two-and-a-half-day training and I implemented all that, and the next two years was, "I can't get sales working." But eventually, it did start working. And also, it's not easy. Deming is not easy. And even Deming himself said there's no instant pudding.   0:25:32.5 Mike Carr: So it does take a lot of study, a lot of learning. There are good resources out there, but there could be more. I think this podcast is one of them that's a really good resource I learned a lot from. But sometimes it's a little bit hard to find resources to help you get up and running. So it takes some time to sort of figure all this out, get all your systems re-implemented from scratch. And so that's why today, when I meet people and suggest Deming, I always suggest just try this one thing or try this one thing. Don't try to just immediately jump in the deep end with both feet.   0:26:14.4 Andrew Stotz: Yeah, I want to come back to that in a second, but I want to go also to Travis because what Mike's talking about is I'm sure all kinds of stuff you faced and dealt with related to incentivizing and all of that. Maybe you can talk a little bit about your experience.   0:26:30.7 Travis Timmons: Yeah, one of the things kind of to circle back, like you said, there are some rainmakers out there. And I think the consistent thing I've heard from smaller businesses under, I don't know, under 10 or 15 million in revenue and under, it's hard to afford what the rainmaker wants to be paid. So when you have that reality as a small business owner, it'd be great to have a rainmaker. You can't afford a rainmaker, but you're trying to put a system in place for non-rainmakers that works for rainmakers. And I don't even... I'm not saying that Deming doesn't work at large organizations, because it absolutely does. But I think that's the reality of... I think who we're trying to reach is the small business owner out there that doesn't have their MBA from Northwestern and doesn't just have any kind of. Like Mike and I, we had zero business experience, but the reality is you need a different approach to have the sales piece work. Yeah, we never really had a sales team in our world, so I didn't have that problem to solve in my organization just by the nature of kind of how we were structured.   0:27:48.3 Travis Timmons: But we did have other issues in terms of the system thinking. And that's where realizing to Mike's point, the one big thing we had to tackle early on was like, hey, if we have a good client visit, it's not just because the physical therapist crushed the visit. The front desk had to have a good experience. The billing team had to get the bill out clean. Everything had to happen correctly for that visit to go well. And in our world, that would be, I guess, our sale. So the system thinking, how do you get the entire team to understand what direction you're going in? So you have to be a team player minded person. I think Mike would agree with that to work well within Deming. But yeah, we didn't have the sales... Now, I've heard plenty of stories over the years in different organizations I've been part of that had the same problem Mike did. And I've heard at Deming seminars time and time again, organizations that made the switch and it was a game changer for their organization. And it doesn't happen in two months, to Mike's point.   0:28:54.4 Travis Timmons: But it has a way to approach things in a systematic and methodological way. If that makes... Does that kind of align with what you'd say, Mike? The system approach and collaboration for the entire team to understand, here's where we're going, rather than sales doing this and development doing this and marketing doing that and accounts receivable doing this, like nobody's trying to get the same thing accomplished at the end of the day until Deming helped me see that in a different light.   0:29:26.3 Mike Carr: Yeah, I would agree with all of that. But I would also say while you're also learning Deming at the same time, so it's a little tricky to learn it all and implement it all at the same time. I explain it to my team as if you're driving a car at 70 miles an hour on the freeway and fixing the car at the same time. It's hard to do both.   0:29:50.3 Andrew Stotz: I thought you were going to say and climbing out of it into another car while you're fixing both.   0:30:02.3 Mike Carr: Yeah. Similar. Yeah, fixing both. So yeah, because that's a good point because you're still running the company you had, you're trying to transition to the new sort of company under the new system, and you're learning about it all at the same time. So it is not... There's no instant pudding, but I would say it's worth it at the end of the day.   0:30:14.3 Travis Timmons: I would say...   0:30:17.0 Mike Carr: I want to... Sorry. Go ahead.   0:30:18.7 Travis Timmons: And Mike, you can tell me if you would disagree with this, I'll just go observationally because you said, "I listened for two years, you complain about sales," and that's true. And then on the flip side of that, when you implemented Deming, it took about two years. I don't think it was that long, but it did take some time. What I think would maybe be interesting for the audience to wrap their head around, and Andrew, you probably could tease this out better than I can, but you've stuck with it. What would be the reason you stuck with it versus everything else you tried for a few months and then switched? And you kind of explained that with the system view, but I think that's the powerful thing is there is a lot to learn with Deming and it's a constant journey. It's a journey. I'm still well over a decade into this and I'm still learning. But what made you stick with this approach versus the whack-a-mole that you were doing prior, if that's a fair way to look at it?   0:31:21.4 Mike Carr: Yeah, I mean, it's really just the way it aligns with my worldview and my engineering background. The systems thinking just sort of makes sense to me. And so I said, it all just lines up so well, and it just seems like it ought to work. I just need to sort of figure it all out and get it in place. And I just didn't want to go back to sort of the high stress, rapid hiring and firing. I would rather put my effort toward bringing value to my customers than spending hours and hours debating how our compensation structure should balance base salary versus commission. I was spending so much of my week fiddling with the commission structure, and I wasn't doing the things that were bringing value to the customer at the end of the day. So now I feel a lot more productive, even if it takes some time to get it figured out. I feel like it's... My time is spent more productively in the things that I do now, figuring out the system.   0:32:34.0 Andrew Stotz: I'm curious because if you objectively look at it, people understand system. In biology, we learn about system. Doctors understand the human body and interactions. And yet we kind of blindly... If I think about it... I take care of my mother, she's gonna be 88 in a couple of weeks. And when you take care of someone that's fragile, everything has a secondary effect. And so it's easy, for instance, if she has to go to the hospital for something and then they see something and they think, "Oh, well, we should just give her medicine for that." Well, okay, have you thought about the fact that that medicine may help her with that, but she could fall because of the dizziness she's gonna get from that, and that fall could pretty much end her life? And also have you thought about the fact that what we're optimizing for is not necessarily what you're optimizing for? We're not optimizing for longevity. We're optimizing for today being the best day it can be. So when I look at, even in the case of my mom, for instance, with blood pressure, one of the things I use is I went out there and I found beetroot, and I basically make a beetroot drink, measure blood pressure before and after and throughout the day.   0:34:09.8 Andrew Stotz: It probably lowers blood pressure more than any pill. And I'm monitoring everything as an analyst, which is my background. And the side effect is good health of drinking... If you drank too much beetroot juice with carrot and other things I mix in with it, that's a side effect. But yet my mom is, "Just give me the pill." And I'm just curious, what kind of world are we in where we do know systems thinking, but it's like it's crushed out of us. It's not even crushed out of us. We know. And if we look at all the things that we do in society, whether it's disease or whatever, it's just constantly, we don't follow it. And I'm just curious, what are your thoughts on that? Or am I wrong? Many people just simply don't understand systems thinking.   0:35:08.8 Travis Timmons: Well, I think it's complicated. I think it's complicated, A, because to Mike's point earlier, we're not taught about this through a traditional structure, or if we are, we're taught about it... Like, I had a background with military training, and it doesn't get much more command and control than that. And that doesn't work in the real world, so to speak. So there's not a lot of training mechanisms out there that prepare you to deal with. I love the fact that Mike, as the engineer, said the most important thing to him was the psychology. I think that speaks volumes to how powerful, when you get the entire system working well, it gets back to the joy in work.   0:36:00.5 Travis Timmons: And Mike might correct me on this, but I think one of the reasons he continues to dive in, as do I, with Deming is it doesn't suck energy away. It just... You have more energy because you have a method and a system to work within that makes sense. Like if I do this over here, if I know that there's an entire system involved, to your point with the blood pressure medication, if I do this, it's gonna have a consequence. And if you have that worldview of your business, if I tamper with sales but I don't fix the product, it's gonna be hard for the salesperson to get sales because my product isn't good. Or that whole system view. But yeah, I think it's awesome that a PhD electrical engineer, super smart guy, the most important takeaway for him was the psychology and energy piece. I think that speaks volumes to what Dr. Deming does.   0:37:02.5 Andrew Stotz: I wrote it down and I wrote down intrinsic motivation. But also, this is another... When Deming tells the story about the girl who makes a Halloween costume with her mom and they don't have much, but it's something nice. And then they go to a Halloween party and then an adult comes up with the idea of having a competition. And of course she didn't win, but it was an amazing experience with her and her mom making this costume over time. And you just think, we understand intrinsic motivation very well, but yet very few people are optimizing for that and truly thinking about that. So both intrinsic motivation and systems thinking we know, but yet for some reason just isn't encouraged.   0:37:57.4 Mike Carr: That's because the first day of kindergarten you get the gold stars. And then it sort of goes downhill from there. But I have a business example of what you're talking about, Andrew, with the understanding systems thinking but not applying it. And I've brought this up with my team in the pre-Deming days. I used to ask, why do we pay the entire company a fixed salary except for these three people over here? What's different about those three people than everyone else? I don't pay developers per line of code written. I don't pay them based... I don't have a quota on how many bugs they're allowed to write per week. It's just not done that way. It's a fixed salary, and we give you some tools to work with and a system to work within. But for some reason, we have these three people over here that we have to treat completely differently from everyone else. Why is that? And the only reason that I could come up with is that's just how everybody else does it. So I think discovering Deming sort of answered that question for me, which was, you don't have to do it that way. You can just pay everyone in the same way because everyone basically is motivated intrinsically to do the job and feel like they're making a difference.   0:39:36.2 Andrew Stotz: One of the ways that we do it in our coffee business is we look at the results of the business every three months. And then I've developed a benchmarking system that looks at what I call profitable growth. Are we profitable and are we growing? And then I look at that relative to our global peers, and then I say, are we profitable and growing more than our peers? And it's a scorecard, but it's a scorecard for the whole company. And then what we do is every quarter we say, okay, we were profitable and growing better than our peers, and therefore we're going to allocate some of the profit that we make as a bonus. And then we do a compensation across the whole company split in a couple different ways. But our objective... And we've had different meetings and stuff, but there was something that triggered my business partner, Dale. I don't know what it was, Travis, but Dale just had his first kind of offsite and he listened to the podcast and he got a lot from that. And he even presented some of the Deming stuff because we've done lots of training, but he was like, many people in our business don't even really know it anymore because it was a while ago that we did a lot of that training and stuff like that.   0:41:16.3 Andrew Stotz: So I wouldn't say that we're implementing to a level that I would if I was running it, but that's also, you own companies and you run companies and you don't want to confuse those two things. But anyways, the point is that once we did that... And then we fly everybody in across Thailand, wherever they are, whether they're sales or technicians or whatever, and bring them together for a day to review the results. And that's the first kind of offsite where we had a very specific... And Dale and I had a meeting a couple of weeks before it, and I went through from what you talked about to help narrow it down, to help him think, "Okay, what do you want to get out of this?" Because I really started to understand that you were really focused and you were not overextending yourself as to everything that you wanted to accomplish. But the excitement that employees feel when they're all in it together, that's what we want more of. And like you said, it's the way we think, and that's the way we want to live. So, yeah, that's a little bit of my story there with what your influence was, Travis.   0:42:29.2 Travis Timmons: That's great. Yeah. And I think, I mean, you mentioned benchmarking and KPIs. And one thing I'd want to make sure listeners understand, because sometimes when we talk about Deming, they think, oh, you just rainbows and puppy dogs and everything's going to be fine. We do have, and I know you do too, Andrew, and I know Mike does, there's a lot of KPIs we look at. And we want to be industry leading. But when you have a different view, it's a long-view and it's a system view. And when everybody's working to optimize the system and understand if we do this well, we get to stay in business and maybe crush the competition along the way, that's kind of fun. But the KPI piece and the Deming system approach, it's a long-term view. So that's just something that came to mind. I've had people say this before, and I'm sure Mike's heard it, because, oh, you're just paying your salespeople a salary, how do you motivate them? How do you keep score? Mike has a KPI dashboard, I am certain. Fitness Matters has a KPI dashboard for sure. Andrew's coffee company has a KPI...   0:43:52.2 Andrew Stotz: No, we don't.   0:43:53.6 Travis Timmons: You have to track.   0:43:55.3 Andrew Stotz: What we don't use is, I just don't use.... We don't use that word KPI, because I hate the connotation of it. But we definitely track and use that for feedback, just like you guys are. But yes, I just it's just I have a pet peeve about that.   0:44:14.2 Travis Timmons: Yeah, yeah, no, I totally get it because it has all the negative connotations that go with how do you make those happen? But like for the common cause versus special cause and variation and all of that. But yeah, it's fun to see when you optimize your system and the entire team works. You have I've shared on the podcast here some of our data and it's just it's fun. It's work. It's work. Every day is hard. But you have a method by which to attack the work. And I think Mike could probably speak to that too with his experience. But that's why he's stuck with it all these years. Even though there was about a year into the process of Deming where he was still complaining about sales, he had a consistent process by which he was tackling it, and it got better along the way, I think.   0:45:08.6 Andrew Stotz: And the thing that I would like to wrap it up with is to just dig a little bit deeper into something that you said, which is it takes time to figure it out. And I would like you to talk about that little bit of learning and application journey because obviously if someone's able to go to a seminar, that's fantastic, but let's take someone in Europe, in Asia, wherever, that they may not have that access. Tell us a little bit about how you started that journey and what you've now seen and what you would recommend, which you already did give some recommendation. But maybe you can just talk a little bit about that because one of the things that's unique about this is that, number one, it's one guy, Dr. Deming. It's not a movement like Lean or something else that has certifications and these traditional things. And so it makes it harder to understand it. It makes it harder for it to spread. But maybe just tell us a little bit about your experience there.   0:46:19.1 Travis Timmons: I'll share my piece, and I'm sure Mike has great examples as well. But yeah, the down and dirty DemingNext is a tool that is available now that was not available when I started my journey. So you get bits and pieces through DemingNext. That's amazing. That was not around when Mike and I either one started our journey, I don't think. Second, if you could just have the concept of looking at your business as an entire system rather than pieces and parts. And then I always recommend people start in one of two small areas. It's either with the PDSAs, plan, do, study, act. That's a very easy, low-cost way to start somewhere in your business. Or operational definitions. Those are the two areas I think are very easy to implement, low cost. And when you apply that to a systems view, I think right there a lot of positive things can happen. And then the DemingNext that the institute has as a resource is one of the things that I think allows more people to get access to Deming and implement it.   0:47:34.3 Mike Carr: Yeah, I would reinforce all of that. The DemingNext program is really good. The two and a half day is really good. I would also recommend going to the two and a half day multiple times if you're able. And I would also recommend taking as many of your management team and C-suite as you possibly can and putting them through the two and a half day or whatever kind of training, DemingNext or whatever training you're using, because I've found that about 80% of Deming is having a shared vocabulary across the company so that you can have these meetings and you can say things like common cause variation and everyone knows sort of what you're talking about. If you don't have the shared vocabulary, it's kind of hard to make the improvements in the business. So whatever training you're using, and I would encourage people to just like sponge mode, just anything you can find, try to gather it all together from whatever place and share it across the company. But the number one thing that I would do if I were starting today is I would... This is one of the things where I think AI can really help you out because you can sit down with ChatGPT and you can just simply say, "Help me learn about W. Edwards Deming."   0:49:00.3 Mike Carr: And you can have a conversation and you can say just ask it, "How can I apply this to my company?" And that's probably going to start a really interesting back and forth. Of course, you need to make sure it's not hallucinating something along the way, but I think that could be a really interesting resource to help learn and relatively inexpensive, and you can get it for everyone in your team and use that as an onboard. You could even ask it, "What is something simple I could try tomorrow that I could see if it works in my company?" and see what it recommends. If I had to start over, that's probably where I would start.   0:49:35.6 Andrew Stotz: That's great advice. And I know also with like NotebookLM and things like that where you can upload the source documents and then have a discussion, AI is super critical now, and I think opens up a whole new opportunity for spreading the message. So that's a resource where you couldn't get it until you talk to Kelly Allen as an example, or others that know it, and here you have a huge resource. I want to wrap up there, but before we do, let's give you guys the last word. Travis, maybe you want to just wrap up your thinking on what we've just discussed and what you want the audience to take away. What do you want them to do? What's your call to action?   0:50:22.7 Travis Timmons: Yeah, call to action would be start learning one thing about the Deming approach and Dr. Deming. I think you'll be surprised how it looks at the business world differently. So I would just encourage people to, as Mike said, be a sponge, whether it's listening to these podcasts, taking a look at DemingNext, ChatGPT, there's all kinds of different routes. But just start to see why is this different. And then the podcast, DemingNext, just so many stories of businesses that were having a hard time and having kind of the life sucked out of the owner that found a different way. And yeah, just happy to have this opportunity to share. I think Mike and I are both passionate about getting the word out to as many business owners as we can because we know it's hard and we know it doesn't have to be. So I would just encourage people to start where they feel comfortable. There's no wrong or right place. You don't have to get a certification in Deming to do Deming.   0:51:06.3 Andrew Stotz: Right, Mike?   0:51:29.2 Mike Carr: I guess my call to action would be to take a step back from the things that you may have seen other companies doing. Maybe you didn't have that leadership training. Maybe you learned leadership and management skills by copying what you saw other people doing. And basically just ask yourself, is there a better way than what I'm seeing other people do? And just open that door for the learning that's going to come with learning Deming and give it a chance. Try something, give it a shot, see how it works for you with the understanding it's not going to work right off the bat. It's gonna take some doing and take some learning. But just try to see that maybe what other people are doing is maybe there's something better than what other people are doing and just allow for that opportunity.   0:52:25.3 Andrew Stotz: Yes. As one of the people in a 12-step self-help program said, you have nothing to lose but your misery.   0:52:38.0 Travis Timmons: Right. Right.   0:52:40.2 Andrew Stotz: So, Mike and Travis, I want to thank you on behalf of the Deming Institute for this discussion. Fascinating. And I really want to encourage listeners to take some action. Go to deming.org and jump on DemingNext. Get access. ChatGPT, NotebookLM, whatever's your tool, go for it. It's right there. And the results you get from it are enormous. Now, this is your host, Andrew Stotz, and I want to leave you with one of my favorite quotes from Dr. Deming, and really, it's what makes it all worthwhile, and that is, "people are entitled to joy in work."

BIO: Tony Martignetti is the evangelist for Planned Giving fundraising for small- and mid-size nonprofits.STORY: Two years into building his business, Tony convinced himself he could become the nation's thought leader on planned giving fundraising — not just for nonprofits, but for all Americans. He walked into a swanky Midtown Manhattan PR agency, got dazzled by a four-inch binder, and signed up at $6,750 per month. Two months and $13,500 later, his only return was a single bylined op-ed in a free subway newspaper.LEARNING: Check your ego. Vet your big ideas with honest, trusted people before spending any money. Understand that PR, even when it works, rarely converts to actual revenue. "This was an ego investment. I did it for my vanity project. I got one placement in a giveaway newspaper on a federal holiday when nobody was in the subway. That was it." Tony Martignetti Guest profileTony Martignetti is the evangelist for Planned Giving fundraising for small- and mid-size nonprofits. Connect with him on LinkedIn.Check out Tony's free How-to Guide on Planned Giving Fundraising.Worst investment everTwo years into running his consultancy, Tony had a big idea. He didn't just want to serve the nonprofit sector; he wanted to reach all Americans and make planned giving a concept that everyday citizens (not just charity insiders) would understand and act on.To do that, Tony decided he needed PR, the kind that lands you on 60 Minutes and gets Charlie Rose calling.He found his way to a prestigious agency in Midtown Manhattan, far from his own modest office in the Flatiron neighborhood. They had an 80-story skyscraper overhead to match. At the pitch meeting, they brought out what Tony describes as a four-inch-thick three-ring binder, every page in a plastic sleeve. Client on The Today Show. Client on Good Morning America. Client on 60 Minutes. Client with Charlie Rose.All this sucked Tony in, and he bought it all—hook, line, and sinker. They kept feeding his ego. He signed on at $6,750 per month.What he got for $13,500After two months, Tony canceled the contract. His total return: one bylined op-ed in AM New York, a free newspaper distributed in New York City subway stations. The placement ran on Martin Luther King Day. A federal holiday when subway ridership was a fraction of normal on a Tuesday.No leads from Good Morning America. No call from 60 Minutes. No magazine profiles. No newspaper reporters are following up. Nothing promising on the horizon. Just $13,500 lighter and one op-ed that almost nobody read.Why the agency let it happenThe agency saw a solo entrepreneur with ideas far bigger than the media landscape could realistically support, and instead of managing Tony's expectations honestly, they kept stoking his enthusiasm to secure the fee. They should have talked him down to what's reasonable to expect. Instead, they completely mismanaged his expectations and kept feeding his ego to capture a fee.The fundamental problem was that Tony's ambition—to educate ordinary Americans about the value of nonprofits, then about the value of supporting them long-term, then to direct them toward specific giving vehicles—was a multi-step awareness campaign that no single PR placement could accomplish. It was simply too much to ask of the media.The uncomfortable truth about PR and revenueYears after the failed agency experiment, Tony had better PR results. He hired a skilled freelance publicist who secured quotes for him in The New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, and the Chronicle of Philanthropy, the leading trade publication in his sector. Reporters on the nonprofit beat came to know him and called him when they needed a source.And yet: not one new client ever picked up the phone because they saw Tony's name in the Times. This taught him a lesson: PR is more about reputation and awareness than revenue.Lessons learnedPR might get done right, and it still won't save you. It can build reputation and awareness over the years. It is not a customer acquisition channel.For early-stage founders, the honest question to ask before writing a large check is: Is this actually going to build the business, or is this about making me feel like I've arrived?Don't go check your idea with the people who are going to get a fee for capitalizing on your pie-in-the-sky idea. The people most likely to validate an idea are often the ones most financially motivated to tell you it's great. Lawyers, consultants, vendors, agencies—all have a stake in your enthusiasm. The honest input has to come from people with nothing to gain: trusted colleagues, mentors, or experienced friends who will tell you what they actually think.Andrew's takeawaysEgo investments are a universal founder trap. Almost every entrepreneur who has started a business has made at least one purchase driven more by identity and aspiration than by clear ROI thinking. Naming it "a vanity investment" is the first step to catching it before it costs you.PR almost never converts to customers. This is one of the most consistent findings across hundreds of My Worst Investment Ever PR can build credibility and awareness over time. But it is not a sales channel, and expecting it to deliver clients, especially early in a business, is a setup for disappointment.The stage of business matters for marketing strategy. Early-stage businesses need direct, efficient client acquisition, not brand awareness campaigns aimed at broad audiences. Align your marketing spend with where you actually are, not where you imagine yourself to be.The media landscape has to be ready for your idea. Tony's vision of educating all Americans about planned giving required multiple layers of awareness-building before a single TV segment could have any effect. Even flawless PR execution couldn't shortcut that process.Actionable adviceAsk yourself: Is this a business investment or an ego investment? Before any significant marketing or PR spend, write down the specific customer acquisition outcome you expect. If you can't describe a clear path from the spend to a paying client, it's probably a vanity investment.Match your marketing strategy to your business stage. In the first two to three years, most professional service firms grow through direct outreach, referrals, and relationship-building rather than mass media. Invest accordingly.Understand what PR actually does. PR builds reputation and credibility over the long term. If that's your goal, it can be worth it. If your goal is revenue next quarter, look elsewhere.If you're going to do PR, set explicit expectations in writing. What placements will they pursue? In what timeframe? What counts as success? If the agency won't commit to specifics, that tells you something important.No. 1 goal for the next 12 monthsTony's number one goal for the next 12 months is to publish his first self-published book: Planned Giving Accelerated, due out in September. A companion course will follow the book's release.Parting words "Thank you very much, Andrew. This was great, great fun. It's very different than what I've done."Tony Martignetti [spp-transcript] Connect with Tony MartignettiLinkedInYouTubePodcastAndrew's booksHow to Start Building Your Wealth Investing in the Stock MarketMy Worst Investment Ever9 Valuation Mistakes and How to Avoid ThemTransform Your Business with Dr.Deming's 14 PointsAndrew's online programsValuation Master ClassThe Become a Better Investor CommunityHow to Start Building Your Wealth Investing in the Stock Market

Rock and roll with Taylor Deming, our Thursday guest on The Music of America Podcast, Songs include Hey Hey Hey, Only A Man, The Groove, Stay and The Good Old Days

Unhappy with the results in your stone shop? Before you blame the stone supplier, customer, or your employees, look at the system that produced the results! In this episode, we delve into the nuts and bolts of systems and processes: The difference between Processes and Systems Systems in a Stone Shop Accountability and System monitoring If you've got a system in your business that isn't producing results, email me, and we'll direct it in a future episode!   Until then, fellow fabricator, keep grinding!!!   Aaron's email: aaron@aaroncrowley.com   Stop Lifting Here: www.noliftsystem.com  

Businesses killed QA with bad org design, but with AI, is there potential for a near-term QA boom?Join Product Manager Brian Orlando and Enterprise Business Agility Consultant Om Patel as we discuss the systematic elimination of QA roles over the past decade and discuss why that decision is now backfiring.That's right, with AI-generated code accelerating at breakneck speed and nobody to properly check or test it, Brian and Om argue that we might be heading toward a cliff of technical debt that will make skilled QA professionals more valuable than ever.We discuss this potential future in five acts:1. The Expensive Lie: Let's Dev Do the QA (until we lay them off as well)2. The Coming QA Boom3. When and Will Businesses Move Software Risk Upstream4. Why Dev Didn't and AI Won't Replace QA5. The Case for Human-In-The-LoopWhether you're a QA professional worried about your career, a product manager who inherited testing responsibilities, or a leader considering QA cuts - this episode provides data-backed arguments for why the QA field may be on the verge of its biggest resurgence yet.#QualityAssurance #AI #AgileLeadershipStack Overflow Developer Survey 2023, Practitest State of Testing Report 2024, World Quality Report 2025 by Capgemini and Micro Focus, GitLab DevSecOps Report 2024, Google Code Review Quality Study 2023, McKinsey Technology Report 2025 (State of AI in 2025), Theo (t3.gg) video on the future of developer roles, Software Quality and Beer podcast by Bob Cruz and Matt Kubal (Checkpoint Technologies), Cooper Bench (AI coding benchmark study), W. Edwards Deming (quality management principles), Toyota Production System (quality ownership model), Eliyahu Goldratt (Theory of Constraints / systems feedback loops), Brook's Law, Melissa Perri, Playwright (test automation framework), Claude Code (Anthropic)LINKSYouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@arguingagileSpotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/362QvYORmtZRKAeTAE57v3Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/agile-podcast/id1568557596INTRO MUSICToronto Is My BeatBy Whitewolf (Source: https://ccmixter.org/files/whitewolf225/60181)CC BY 4.0 DEED (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/deed.en)

Mike Chaput bought his first company at 24, went bankrupt at 28, and started over. When he co-founded Endsight, he and his partners worked hard to establish company values -- and landed on one that sounded great: "Have a sense of humor and take enjoyment from the day." The problem? Elevating humor to the top of the values hierarchy gave permission for blame-based behaviors, including a rubber chicken shaming ritual where the chicken got hung on the cubicle of anyone who made a mistake. Episode page with video, transcript, links and more  The turning point came when Mike encountered W. Edwards Deming's work at UC Berkeley's Haas School of Business and a sales leader told him bluntly that the organization felt like it was always looking for someone to blame. Deming's Point 8 -- drive fear out of the workplace -- made it clear: humor without respect underneath it creates the conditions for people to hide problems from leadership. Mike shares the framework he now uses to test whether values are actually working, how Endsight replaced blame with problem registers, value stream managers, and A3 thinking, and why command-and-control leadership turns teams into panicked prey animals instead of coordinated predators. Drawing on Primed to Perform by Doshi and McGregor, he explains the motive spectrum from play to inertia -- and why fear-based management guarantees low performance.

For most business owners, rewarding employees for doing their jobs well is just common sense. Hit your numbers, get a bonus. Sell more, earn more. Perform better, get paid more. That's how motivation works…right?This week, management consultant Kelly Allan asks owners to reconsider that assumption. Allan is steeped in the teachings of W. Edwards Deming, the management thinker widely credited with inspiring Japan's post–World War II industrial revival. Deming argued that pay-for-performance systems don't actually improve performance. Instead, they create unintended consequences—encouraging people to chase metrics, compete with colleagues, and optimize the wrong things.In Deming's view—and in Allan's—performance isn't primarily about individuals at all. It's about the system they work in. In our conversation, Kelly explains why incentives often backfire and how owners who are curious can begin experimenting with a different approach.

Dan Deming and Sam Vadas react to the latest earnings move from Adobe (ADBE) as shares fall to a near 7-year low. Dan wonders if the selling pressure is a "canary in the coal mine" for the overall AI trade. He demonstrates an example options strategy for ADBE before providing his takeaways on this week's tumultuous trading environment with back-and-forth swings in the energy space. ======== Schwab Network ========Empowering every investor and trader, every market day.Options involve risks and are not suitable for all investors. Before trading, read the Options Disclosure Document. http://bit.ly/2v9tH6DSubscribe to the Market Minute newsletter - https://schwabnetwork.com/subscribeDownload the iOS app - https://apps.apple.com/us/app/schwab-network/id1460719185Download the Amazon Fire Tv App - https://www.amazon.com/TD-Ameritrade-Network/dp/B07KRD76C7Watch on Sling - https://watch.sling.com/1/asset/191928615bd8d47686f94682aefaa007/watchWatch on Vizio - https://www.vizio.com/en/watchfreeplus-exploreWatch on DistroTV - https://www.distro.tv/live/schwab-network/Follow us on X – https://twitter.com/schwabnetworkFollow us on Facebook – https://www.facebook.com/schwabnetworkFollow us on LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/company/schwab-network/About Schwab Network - https://schwabnetwork.com/about

Stop building products nobody wants by discovering the psychological bias killing your strategy!Today, Product Manager Brian Orlando and Enterprise Business Agility Coach Om Patel are taking on the "IKEA Effect." The IKEA effect is the cognitive bias that causes product managers and leaders to overvalue the things they build - simply because they built them! That's right, today we're tackling a bias that's led to so much wasted budget, we're going to end up needing Congressional oversight... not to mentioned the ignored research and "survivorship bias" of trying to be the next Steve Jobs.Listen or watch as we discuss and review:- The Scientific research behind the IKEA Effect (people value items 63% higher because they've built those items)- Why teams ignore expert research and undervalue insights THEY DID NOT SUFFER to obtain- How traditional review committees designed to kill bad ideas often stifle innovation (and what to do better)- Balancing the need for intrinsic motivation (Self-Determination Theory) with the necessity of governance- The "Kill or Nurture" Framework: A new 2x2 decision matrix to evaluate projects based on evidence vs. passionWe also share personal war stories on the product-related IKEA effect, bemoan the struggles of gaining funding for evidence-based ideas, and maybe even distinguish between a wobbly chair and a throne. Tune in if you're interested in ways to stop falling in love with your own bad ideas!#ProductManagement #Agile #ProductStrategyNorton, Mochon, & Ariely (2012) IKEA Effect Study, The IKEA Effect (Harvard Business Review), Self-Determination Theory (Ryan & Deci), Gartner Research, Deming's theories on intrinsic motivationLINKSYouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@arguingagileSpotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/362QvYORmtZRKAeTAE57v3Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/agile-podcast/id1568557596INTRO MUSICToronto Is My BeatBy Whitewolf (Source: https://ccmixter.org/files/whitewolf225/60181)CC BY 4.0 DEED (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/deed.en)

How do you run an offsite that actually changes performance — not just conversations? In this episode, Travis Timmons and Kelly Allan share with Andrew Stotz what happened during the Fitness Matters off-site. They discuss how a Deming-inspired approach helped their team tackle a critical business aim, align around system improvement, and turn employee engagement into measurable competitive advantage. TRANSCRIPT 0:00:02.5 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 Travis Timmons, who is the founder and owner of Fitness Matters, an Ohio based practice specializing in the integration of physical therapy and personalized wellness. For 13 years, he's built his business on Dr. Deming's teaching. His hope is simple. The more companies that bring joy to work through Deming's principles, the more likely his kids will one day work at one of those companies. And we also have a special guest, Kelly Allan, who is a long term practitioner of the teachings of Dr. Deming. And he's also been instrumental in bringing the teachings of Dr. Deming to Travis and Fitness Matters, and particularly to this offsite. So the topic for today is how a Deming style offsite can strengthen your company's competitive advantage. Travis, take it away.   0:01:01.4 Travis Timmons: Hey Andrew, thanks again for having us and super excited to share with Kelly and your audience how our offsite went a couple of weeks ago. The short answer, kind of the upfront, is it was amazing. We had fun, number one, which is always important, but engagement from the team was through the roof. For four and a half hours straight. We worked on the work together and had Kelly there to make sure we were appropriately following Dr. Deming's teachings. Had Kelly there to facilitate and a couple of fun things we did. One was the red bead experiment, which I'm sure we'll talk about as we go through the conversation here. The short answer is I know in the last podcast we talked about the preparation that Kelly worked with myself and our leadership team on in preparing for a Deming focused and led offsite. We did that and it was just amazing. What were your thoughts, Kelly?   0:02:06.4 Andrew Stotz: I'm curious, Kelly, as an outsider helping them, observing, what are your observations of how it went?   0:02:14.2 Kelly Allan: I think there was just incredible energy and interest in figuring out some of the challenges ahead for the company. People came in well prepared and it showed. The interactions in the breakout groups, interactions in the full groups. Often when you're in a full group of 60, 70 people, folks are often, especially new folks, and the company's been growing and adding new people, new folks are often somewhat hesitant to speak up. But the culture of the people in that room, the culture of the organization is bring it on, let's have a conversation, let's hear what people have to say. Let's share theories, let's get down and debate and wrestle with some of these things that are not easy. There's no low hanging fruit here. It's complex stuff in a complex and highly competitive industry.   0:03:28.9 Travis Timmons: Some of the feedback we received, I think I shared last time, Andrew. As Kelly said, we've hired several new team members and they've all shared with me just a breath of fresh air from where they came from before. The power of this offsite with it being focused on some of the core teachings of Dr. Deming allowed them to see how is this different? They know they like it, they know the culture is different. They know they can provide care the way they want to. They know they can have a voice, have an impact on the system. But they didn't really know why they just liked it. Having a Deming focused offsite to explain a little bit, you can't fully explain Dr. Deming in four and a half hours, but we covered quite a bit. Make the system visible, operational definitions. What are a couple other ones with the red bead, Kelly? We did some tampering.   0:04:28.8 Kelly Allan: Making sure that we're not being confused by visible numbers alone. That what's important is how we work on the system so that we're not doing special efforts all the time to get great results. It's built into how we do things.   0:04:43.8 Travis Timmons: To Kelly's point, part of why our team, for four and a half hours we had over 50 people all in, sharing thoughts without hesitation because one of the things we talk about in the very beginning of the meeting, one of Dr. Deming's core philosophies, if that's the right way to put it, Kelly, correct me if I'm off base here, but 96% of issues within an organization are system issues, not people issues. When you put that out there, we're here to talk about the system and improve it and make it visible. We're talking about problems with systems and processes, not people. Then the gloves are off and let's dive in and we're gonna say whatever's on our mind and there's no drama, there's no feeling of any backstabbing or throwing under the bus. We just get to work on making the system work better for everybody. That's where it's fun and fast.   0:05:41.9 Andrew Stotz: What I'm hearing is that Dr. Deming, my favorite quote is "people are entitled to joy in work." And part of the key to joy in work is contributing. People want to contribute in life. I love that word because I think everybody wants to feel like they're contributing to a mission, to an aim, to a goal, to a team. And one of the biggest problems we have these days is siloing off people and getting them focused on this little area and missing the whole bigger picture. And so to some extent, you've proven through what you've done that people really do want to contribute. Throughout this discussion, what we're gonna be talking about is this concept of Deming style offsite. And I'm gonna push back at times to try to make sure that we're clear on what's a Deming style offsite. Because it's not to say that Dr. Deming said this is how you do an offsite. But what we're talking about is your interpretations of how do we apply this thinking to this particular meeting style and offsite and ensure that we're true to that.   0:06:56.6 Andrew Stotz: One of the first questions I would discuss is just the idea that maybe you just had a really open, caring environment. And so is that Deming or was that just that? Or maybe you did a lot of prep. You guys have done a tremendous amount of prep. That's what I was impressed about in our prior discussions. Maybe you prepped, maybe you focused on the one thing. Those types of things is what could go through people's minds. Why is it that you're calling this a Deming styled offsite?   0:07:34.9 Kelly Allan: Well, I think in part it starts with Deming's teachings and continued Deming's teachings. I think it might be useful to start with the aim, to have Travis talk about the time that he spent researching and thinking and what's going on in the industry. And even though we can talk later about their industry leading statistics and data and recognition etc, it's off the charts. It starts with the aim. And Dr. Deming said let's be focused on the aim. And so there are a couple, Travis, you wanna just talk about the content aim and then we can talk about even a more cultural Deming cultural aim.   0:08:21.1 Travis Timmons: That was one of my early learnings years ago, Andrew, was the difference of an aim versus a goal. And so from the perspective of this offsite through the Dr. Deming lens, our aim as an organization is to maintain one to one care because we believe that results in optimal outcomes. And it's very rare in our industry to have one to one care. Part of how we do that is we have to be industry leading in everything we do. And the thing that we are industry leading in, but I feel it was the one thing that we could improve upon was our arrival rate. Patients get better if they show up, team members are happy, they don't want holes on their schedules. Referring physicians are happy. Everybody wins. So that aim of a higher arrival rate was our aim of this offsite and conversation.   0:09:17.6 Andrew Stotz: Can you back up just for a second and define arrival rate for those that didn't listen to prior discussions on it?   0:09:23.9 Travis Timmons: Sure. Arrival rate is a visit we have on the calendar. Do they show up or do they cancel? And part of what we worked on and a little bit of an aside here is operational definition of what's a cancellation on our schedule to make sure we're measuring what we want to measure. A funny aside, competitors, we hired several new team members came from other organizations and they tout an arrival rate that is high, like 92% arrival rate. Right.   0:09:55.9 Travis Timmons: And I asked them in the meeting and Kelly will remember this, I said, I know your institutions claim a 90 plus percent arrival rate. Did you have a 92% arrival rate? And they said, absolutely not. But they had people on their team, for example, the front desk might have been bonused based on arrival rate. So how they would take visits off of the calendar would not negatively impact arrival rate. So we talked a lot about operational definition and our aim is to study what we want to study, not to tamper or. Kelly, you share your favorite saying. There's only three ways to get better numbers, and those are   0:10:39.6 Kelly Allan: Manipulate the numbers which you were referring to from another company. Manipulate the system that gives you the numbers. So that also kind of fits with, well, we're not gonna call that a late arrival or a late cancel or a non arrival. We're gonna call that something else so we can manipulate the numbers. And then the third way, which was Deming's way, which is how do we figure out how to improve the system so that late arrivals go down. So that they're a natural part of what we do when people show up, the patients show up when they need to.   0:11:14.6 Travis Timmons: Yeah. And I think that's one of the things to your point earlier, Andrew, is was it just a happy go lucky meeting because Travis and Kelly have great personalities. Well, we know that's not true.   0:11:26.9 Kelly Allan: Speak for yourself.   0:11:29.3 Travis Timmons: But no, I think anymore people know when they're working on something meaningful that's gonna have an impact on their lives or where you're just there to drink coffee and have snacks. People don't suffer fools, right? They want to be there. To have a team of 50 plus people leaning in for almost five hours doesn't happen just because it's a fun environment. To your point, it's the right question to ask. I appreciate you asking that. It comes down to they understand that we're a Deming organization. They understand that what we're talking about is gonna be implemented in a Deming way. We'll talk about that more as we go on, but that, to Kelly's point, was starting with the aim. Our aim is improving arrival rate. How do we do that? That's where the Deming offsite comes into play. Kelly and I and our leadership team worked on, okay, how do we best convey this problem and this aim to our entire team rather than just five or six leadership people working with Kelly and just coming up with our own ideas and then spitting it out to the team at a monthly meeting?   0:12:47.8 Travis Timmons: The power of them owning and seeing the problem and then working on system improvement is the power of that is unmeasurable, as Dr. Deming would say.   0:13:03.1 Kelly Allan: Yeah. I think we talked about the aim to be able to continue to do the one-on-one care with patients because most companies are doing two patients, one physical therapist, three patients. Locally here in Columbus, Ohio, where Travis and I are at, we sometimes hear about classes of five patients with one physical therapist. Physicians and insurance companies, these people are not getting better. Right? These people are... Or if they get discharged, 'cause that's a way to get a better number. "Oh, we got them out." But they come back because they're not really healed. They don't really know how to take care of themselves the way they do when they come out of Fitness Matters. One of those overarching aims has to do with building the culture even further so everybody understands the why behind the what. We could say the what is how do we increase those arrival rates, and then the meeting was about the how we're gonna figure that out, how to do that. But the overarching piece had to do with the why. Why does this matter?   0:14:16.9 Kelly Allan: How do we see...If we see the organization as a system and we use a fishbone chart as a way to visualize some of that, everybody can see handoffs. Everybody can see how different parts of the system, of that patient journey, that patient story, intersect and how what happens upstream affects downstream and how the feedback loop from the discharge point of a physical therapist discharging the patient, how that can wrap back into the understanding of the customer care coordinators and how they can work with that at the very beginning of that relationship with the patient. It's all a part of a system, all a part of continuous flow. We wanted to make sure that everybody, especially the new people, really had a visual, a view of the organization as a system and how they interact. Part of those weeks of planning, it wasn't every day all day long. You start with some ideas, you refine them, you get some research, you refine them, you refine further. Travis spent a lot of time on that. Part of that value is time for reflection, time to have the others on the leadership team weigh in, give their points of view so that we're really seeing this from a fishbone perspective as well.   0:15:44.5 Kelly Allan: So now we can go into that meeting with everybody, and their homework was in part the fishbone with some instructions on how to do that and some examples of how to do that. And that was pre-work. So people came into the meeting already successful. They had already figured some things out. This just gave launch, just gave liftoff to the energy. They'd done this work, to your point, Andrew, they're making a difference, and it just fed on itself. The output was stunning.   0:16:21.0 Andrew Stotz: Travis, I'm gonna write your company aim as I heard it from you, and that is, or from both of you, is maintain one-to-one care. It's best, it's rare, it works. And the off-site aim was different from the company aim. It was the number one thing that we can do to improve that company aim is improve our arrival rates. Correct?   0:16:51.4 Travis Timmons: 100% correct. And you talk, I think you used the term silos earlier, Andrew. Part of the aha moments and making the system visible and working on this and building culture and teamwork, when everybody sees the complexity within your organization and understands that, there's a lot more willingness to support, like, "Hey, we need to change this process at the front desk," even though it may not be optimal for the physical therapist, as long as it achieves our overarching aim and improves joy in work for the front or less friction for a client coming in. Now the team starts to see and understand, all right, that's a system win rather than silos or turf wars. The amount of energy that is spent on that in organizations is... I couldn't do it.   0:17:52.9 Andrew Stotz: Another thing I think that would be difficult for many people with an off-site is you just had one aim. If we were doing prep in the companies that I know and I own and others, we're gonna list out 17 things we want to talk about in that four-and-a-half-hour off-site. From your perspective, why is it so important to get this one focus, one aim? And then I want you also to tell us more about how it went. We've set it up now, so just one last thing on the setup is this idea of focusing on one thing when you've got 17 different problems in our company and we got everybody together and you're telling me just one thing.   0:18:40.5 Travis Timmons: Well, and Kelly can chime in here because he was instrumental in getting us from pre-work to meeting day. But part of it, that's why it's two-and-a-half, three months of work leading up to this. We had the aim of arrival rate. All right, what are we gonna do? A lot of different ways we could have tackled that. We landed on fishbone and making the entire system visible. And that turned out to be the right move. I think Kelly can correct me if I'm wrong.   0:19:15.0 Kelly Allan: I would agree.   0:19:16.0 Travis Timmons: So we started with the aim and it's like, okay, how do we get 50 people to work on this together? Dr. Deming says make the system visible. And so we chose to do that via a couple different breakouts of a fishbone. And to your point, Andrew, when we did that, now there's understanding of complexity and then where are the biggest opportunities? Because we have seven things we're working on to achieve that aim. There's gonna be three or four large PDSAs. We're doing a software upgrade, which in and of itself... And a funny aside, so our organization's been doing the Deming approach for 13 years. Right, Kelly? We announced that we're changing softwares at this meeting. Right.   0:20:13.7 Travis Timmons: Everybody was like, "Okay, let's do it."   0:20:17.4 Kelly Allan: Unheard of. I see a lot of companies, that's usually panic time.   0:20:23.5 Travis Timmons: And it was announced at the beginning of the meeting. Any questions? "Nope, sounds like the right move for our aim."   0:20:32.3 Kelly Allan: Well, Travis, you provided the why behind the what. The what was that we have to change the software. You provided the rationale from all points of view, including from internal people who deal with the software to making it even less friction for customers and for physicians and for insurance companies, etc. People understood the why behind that what, and now they're ready to work on the how.   0:21:06.4 Travis Timmons: And I would even argue, because I agree with that, and because we've done Dr. Deming and have had success and accomplished so many things that people don't believe we've been able to accomplish as an independent organization, having lenses to look through and "by what method?" That's one of my favorite Kelly Allan-isms. By what method?   0:21:33.5 Kelly Allan: That's a quote from Dr. Deming.   0:21:36.0 Travis Timmons: Oh, okay. We're good.   0:21:38.9 Andrew Stotz: We stand on the shoulders of giants.   0:21:41.6 Travis Timmons: Yeah. There's a high level of trust in our organization that we can implement change. I think that...   0:21:51.3 Kelly Allan: I agree.   0:21:51.8 Travis Timmons: I don't want to undersell that in terms of how powerful that is that I announce we're changing our entire operating software in a few months and the entire team was... And we told them why, to Kelly's point. But to make that announcement and then just have everybody say, "Okay. Cool." I think that's crazy to me. I believe it because of everything else I've seen happen over 13 years. But to have a way, by what method, using Dr. Deming's principles, PDSAs, operational definitions, system view, we're gonna diagram it. Everybody left there confident that, "All right, we can do this and we're gonna do it." Anyway, what would you add to that, Kelly?   0:22:40.9 Kelly Allan: Yeah. I would say that fulfilling the promises that have been made at previous offsites just builds the credibility that this leadership team gets it, understands it, and is interested in engaging people and making things happen and getting things done in a way that doesn't disenfranchise people, it doesn't beat up on people, it doesn't cause harm, but people work together because they wanna figure it out. It's fun to figure it out. Yeah.   0:23:17.5 Kelly Allan: It can be at times a little too much fun, a little too exhausting to figure it out. But we're born wanting to make a difference and people can come to work there and know that they have a voice, they're heard.   0:23:33.1 Travis Timmons: And I think that's our superpower that I've learned from Dr. Deming is if I'm the only one figuring stuff out, we're in trouble. We're in trouble. So the team knows that we're gonna bring stuff, we're gonna talk about it, and we're gonna solve problems collectively through the Dr. Deming philosophy. That's something that just popped in my brain, Andrew, because it was such a non-event. But in most instances, that would have been the entire meeting would have been about that, the side conversations, people coming up to me...   0:24:15.0 Kelly Allan: And Travis, there would have been a lot of discussions at a non-Deming company about, "How do we get buy-in?"   0:24:22.4 Travis Timmons: Right.   0:24:22.8 Kelly Allan: "How do we manipulate people into saying this is okay?" We didn't have any...We didn't spend a minute on that.   0:24:30.5 Travis Timmons: Not one person asked me about the software the entire evening at dinner. It was just like, "We're gonna do it." It just struck me because it was a non-event in the meeting, but I think that would have been rare had we not had our history of Dr. Deming's approach and how we presented it in the meeting.   0:24:52.9 Andrew Stotz: Kelly, you said something that made me think of a book that I read in the past by Richard Feynman called The Pleasure of Finding Things Out. Great scientist. You talked about contribution and the desire for contribution and you talked about how people were figuring things out. And that's fun, that's exciting. That's what people want to get out of their management team and out of their employees. In some ways, I feel like you're talking about recess, a playground. Put all that stuff aside, let's go out and let's build this thing. All the joy that we did have when we were young. Think about, "Let's make a sandcastle! Yeah, you do that, I'll do this." That excitement...   0:25:45.0 Kelly Allan: That's what it was in the room that day. Different breakout groups working on different parts of the fishbone and then bringing them together and debriefing around it. It was very exciting. The energy was high. Andrew, you mentioned something, I think in part you were channeling Dr. Deming there because he also pointed out about how we're born wanting to make a difference, to make a contribution. Then we go to school and that gets beaten out of us with grades and command-and-control teaching, et cetera, et cetera. But to your earlier question about what makes this unique, special in regard to Deming, Travis mentioned the complexity. And so we go right back to the core of Deming: understanding variation and special cause, common cause, the important few things versus the trivial many, and how do you sort through those? That makes it very Deming. It makes it very Deming. The other thing that you won't see, and I've been in a lot of them through the years, in most offsites is those conversations about the why. It's usually, "Competitor's doing this," or, "We gotta make more money," or whatever.   0:27:01.0 Kelly Allan: No, the why for Fitness Matters is to achieve those aims. Right.   0:27:07.1 Andrew Stotz: Some of the things that you mentioned: have an aim, what makes this a Deming style, have an aim, think system, not individual focus, understand variation and how that can help you think system, not individual focus. You talked about pre-work, taking it seriously, and I would say that kind of responsibility for your employees and the environment. I was blown away with the amount of pre-work that we talked about previously. You talked about some tools like fishbone as an example. You've talked about the why. Travis, why don't you give us a very high level... We arrived at this time, this was then, we did this first, then we did that, then that. So we can just understand the structure of this meeting a little bit.   0:27:59.5 Travis Timmons: Sure. We've been big on operational definitions. So the operational definition of start time is Travis will start talking at 12:30 to start the meeting. Learned that one over the years. And I...   0:28:18.2 Travis Timmons: It was at a new location, so we had a couple people go to the wrong place. We put the map inside of the homework, swim upstream, try to make this as easy as possible. But to answer your question, we had an operational definition of the meeting starts at 12:30, and that means the meeting begins at 12:30. Operational definition, we had name tags. From an efficiency standpoint, we had six tables when we were going to do breakouts. People picked up their name tags, it had number one through six on it, so they know what table they would be going to at breakouts. We did a quick intro of every team member and what location they work at because we have had a lot of growth. Put names with faces, introduced Kelly so that everybody knew who he was. There's probably 11 people that didn't know who he was in person introduction and how that was going to be diving more into Dr. Deming. I made it very clear up front that this meeting, we're going to celebrate wins from 2025, but I made it very clear we're going to go through those quickly, not because they weren't huge wins, but because we had a lot of work to do to make sure we stay on that growth and excellence trajectory.   0:29:38.2 Travis Timmons: So we went through all of our wins for 2025. We reviewed our BHAGs, and then we got into the aim. In 30 minutes, we introduced everybody, we went over our wins for 2025, we reviewed our BHAGs, one of which is to be the best, leverage technology better than any physical therapy practice in the country was one of our BHAGs. Then I dovetailed that into, and we're switching softwares in a few months. Any questions? No. We go right into, here's what we're going to be working on today, referenced they're going to be using their homework, so they brought their homework booklets with them. We had PowerPoint slides so they knew what the directions were for the first breakout group. Kelly and I got there early and some of the leadership team got there early. We had the table set. We had the, I call it newsprint, up on tripods ready to go. You want to be prepared. They hit their tables because of the name tag. We had leaders assigned for each table.   0:30:50.1 Kelly Allan: And they were trained in advance. Yeah. Facilitators. Yeah.   0:30:53.5 Travis Timmons: We had leadership.   0:30:54.7 Andrew Stotz: So there was an intro period and then you said, "This is our aim and now go to your tables," or how did that... What were you telling them to do at the tables?   0:31:06.0 Travis Timmons: We told them the aim, reviewed the aim. To your point earlier, Andrew, overarching aim is maintaining our one-to-one care model.   0:31:14.0 Andrew Stotz: Yep.   0:31:14.7 Travis Timmons: Our aim of the meeting is how do we improve our arrival rate as an organization to greater than 85%? One of the ways we're going to accomplish that is making the entire system visible. We're going to go to our tables and we're going to work on... We had the fishbones drawn at each table, but we wanted them to fill in the fishbone as groups from their homework because everybody brought different ideas to the table. We wanted some conversation around that.   0:31:44.2 Andrew Stotz: That was a general fishbone. I think I remember later you talked about then breaking it down into separate fishbones, but that was just a general one to review what they'd done.   0:31:54.8 Travis Timmons: General one, work on the work together. To Kelly's point earlier, just the energy around working on ideas or, "Hey, I hadn't thought about that," or, "I didn't even know we did that in our system." Right.   0:32:07.0 Travis Timmons: Just understanding the complexity and really just getting the juices flowing on, here's what we're going to be working on because the next layer is going to be diving deeper into each one of those.   0:32:18.5 Andrew Stotz: How long was that period of going through the first fishbone and looking at their homework, discussing it together? How long did that last?   0:32:27.7 Travis Timmons: That one was a half hour because they'd already done the pre-work, so we assumed most of it was already going to be done. It was just kind of...   0:32:38.4 Andrew Stotz: Did you have them present any of that or that's just, "Go through that and that'll prep you for the next thing"?   0:32:46.0 Travis Timmons: We had them spend 25 minutes on that and then we saved room for five minutes for them to have kind of sharings or learnings or ahas. What did this experience teach you? Do you have anything to share?   0:33:01.9 Andrew Stotz: They're doing that within their group or they're doing that...   0:33:05.1 Travis Timmons: We went table by table and had them share with the entire team. Table by table, we had the team lead or anybody at the table, "Hey, what'd you think? What'd you learn?"   0:33:14.3 Andrew Stotz: Someone may say, "I didn't even realize that this impacts that and I just realized that now after seeing it." Okay.   0:33:24.0 Travis Timmons: Yeah. What are some of the things you heard, Kelly? I heard, "Oh, this is complex."   0:33:29.8 Kelly Allan: I also heard things like, "Well, I know how to handle this, but I need to define a process so that if I'm out, someone else can do it." Right? It's those kinds of little aha moments. Others were just, "Oh, is there a way for us to systematize that even further?" Again, it was that thinking about the system coming out in their comments. I think another part of the appreciation was really recognizing that a lot of people have to win. Deming talked about win-win being very stable and win-lose is not. They wanted to make sure the patients and the clients win, the physicians win, that the insurance companies are getting what they need, that the PTs and the Pilates people and the MAT people, etc., and the customer care coordinators are also having joy in their work. Because when you have a joyful staff, customers, clients really appreciate that. They just know there's something different. There's something different.   0:34:42.0 Andrew Stotz: And one question is, did you have any drift at that point where people started talking about other things that were unrelated but were key problems they're facing, or was setting your aim and doing the pre-work really kept them on track?   0:34:56.8 Kelly Allan: Great question. Yeah.   0:34:58.5 Travis Timmons: They were focused. They were focused the entire meeting. One of the things I learned it from Kelly or Ray, or maybe you taught Ray, I don't know, but we have a piece of paper we put up at every off-site, Andrew, we call it the parking lot. So that if somebody does have an idea that's outside of what we're there to tackle, we just have them go up and write it down so that they're heard, and it could be important, for sure, but we're not working on that today. We gotta stay laser-focused on what we're here for. So we have a parking lot, which has been super powerful, but nobody went to the parking lot the first half of the day at all.   0:35:39.2 Andrew Stotz: That's good. That's better than the woodshed. Excellent.   0:35:43.5 Travis Timmons: Speaking of the woodshed, this is one of my... I think this is one of the critical learnings, one of the many critical learnings I've had with Dr. Deming and the approach to leadership's responsibility. For me as the owner, at the end of the day, the buck stops with me, is to create joy in work, to create engaged teams where they can do fulfilling work. So you talked about the woodshed. It reminds me another one of my favorite quotes. A lot of owners or leaders talk about, "We have a lot of dead wood around here. Have a lot of dead wood on our team." The first Deming off-site I went to, Kelly said, "Well, there's only two ways that could have happened. Either one, you hired dead wood, and if you did, that's on you with your hiring process. Or number two, you hired live wood and you killed it. Either way, it's on the owner and leadership."   0:36:52.4 Kelly Allan: And I stole that from Peter Scholtes.   0:36:55.5 Andrew Stotz: Okay, got it.   0:36:57.0 Travis Timmons: But that struck me in terms of, okay, responsibility's on Travis to ensure we don't have that. Can't point fingers anywhere else. It's not people coming in with bad attitudes. So anyway.   0:37:15.8 Andrew Stotz: Okay, excellent. So now you've had the general fishbone discussion, you've had people present what were their key learnings from it. What happened next?   0:37:26.6 Travis Timmons: Just some quick aha's, anything from the homework, stuff like that. And then from there we did a couple-minute break and then we went right into the...   0:37:37.9 Andrew Stotz: It sounds like a HIIT, like a high-intensity interval training here. We did a couple-minute break.   0:37:44.6 Travis Timmons: We had work to do, man. People were there to get work done and get on to dinner. We had snacks and water in there they could grab real quick. Restrooms were close. And then agenda, we've gotta stay... And the team understands we have to do what we're doing, we have to be excellent in all categories. So the next thing we did, we came back together as a team, the entire team, and Kelly did the red bead experiment in preparation for the next breakout. Super powerful. For those that have seen the red bead experiment and how Dr. Deming used that to show how the willing worker shows up wanting to get all white beads, right? And the white bead, it's the white bead company, but there's red beads intermixed. No matter how hard they try, or Kelly offered a hundred-dollar bonus to somebody if they would just only bring out white beads the next time they put their paddle in, and it just had that visceral, in-the-moment realization that people show up wanting to do a good job. And issues, so the red beads were what we called cancellations impacting our arrival rate. Therapists want their patients to show up. Front desk wants, the client care coordinators want their patients to show up. Physicians want their patients to show up. So what do we need to do? It can't be bonus them if they show up or just try harder. What's not working? So that was a great...   0:39:23.4 Andrew Stotz: Why don't we go to that for a second. We're gonna have Kelly, maybe you can tell us a little bit about what you observed from that, and then we'll continue on with the rest of the structure.   0:39:36.2 Kelly Allan: Well, the way we set up the red bead experiment was very much focused on the real challenges and real issues that everybody at Fitness Matters faces in terms of this topic of increasing the arrival rate and how complex that is. I think the red bead experiment demonstrates for not only the people who are the willing workers and the people who are the inspectors and the person who is the scribe who keeps the spreadsheet, they realize that the numbers alone are not telling us what's going on. They realize that unless there's a system improvement, process improvement, and people working together to make those happen, you can bribe people, you can incent people, you can threaten people, you can send them home, you can give them a performance appraisal, you can do every kind of command-and-control management, but you haven't improved the system in which people work. There's still red beads. There's still red beads. We have to reduce the friction, we have to change the paddle. We have to figure out how it is we can help make it possible and easier for clients to want to show up so that they can get healthy and so that they can really appreciate what happens when they don't show up, how they are a part of the system. Once they become a patient, they're a part of the system of Fitness Matters.   0:41:18.3 Andrew Stotz: I'm just curious if there was also anything different. You've done the red bead experiment a lot of times with a lot of different types of companies. Were there any observations you had of the way they interpreted that that was either the same or different? What were some of your observations there?   0:41:37.7 Kelly Allan: Well, we planned it so that Travis and his leadership team could really do more of the debriefing so that they would have the context for the people in the audience as well as for the people on the stage, versus just a more generic, which is still powerful, to talk about how the system's in control and is this a common cause system or a special cause, what's really going on. Travis and his folks were able to then bring that context to the red beads, which I think made it especially powerful for this audience, for this group.   0:42:16.2 Andrew Stotz: Excellent. Travis, why don't you continue?   0:42:22.0 Travis Timmons: As Kelly shared, the leadership team debriefed after the red beads of the learnings and how that might be. The red beads were the cancellations that we currently have. Then we introduced, "Okay, now what we're gonna do is go do a deeper dive into the fishbones." There's five primary parts of our system, five bones. Each bone we're now gonna break out and work on the granular details. We did a fishbone for each of the larger bones.   0:43:01.8 Kelly Allan: Why don't you give a couple examples of the bones if you have it handy?   0:43:07.3 Travis Timmons: First bone is what we call initial contact. The first time a client has an interaction with Fitness Matters. Could be website, could be a physician referral, could be a neighbor talking to them, could be driving by. Initial contact, that's bone number one. How does that entire process work at Fitness Matters? Where's the friction point? Are there people that we don't even get into our door efficiently? They're not coming in set up for success, for example. Next bone would be setting them up for the evaluation. Third bone is evaluation day. Fourth bone is every subsequent visit up until discharge. And the fifth and final bone is discharge to ongoing wellness and how do we continue to stay connected? Those are the five bones as you flow through as a client at Fitness Matters, and the five major gates, if you will, is how we looked at it.   0:44:07.8 Kelly Allan: Every one of those is filled with complexity. There are a lot of little details to reduce the friction for the clients and for the system, for the patients in the system. I think that was an aha moment for people as well because a lot of them are in the quadrant four of unconscious competence. They've been doing this job well for a long time and they tend to forget the complexity. We have to identify the complexity so we can work on it and make it less complex, more streamlined, and so new people coming in can appreciate why Fitness Matters makes informed, thoughtful decisions about how they do things. It didn't just happen. These have been thoughtful things that have been worked on for years, but they can still be improved further and we can document them and make them more visible. When people saw all those little bones coming off the main bones, it's like, "Wow, there's a lot of little things that happen and we can impact almost all of those."   0:45:18.1 Travis Timmons: In some of the work we've already done on the bones to already have industry-leading arrival rate, but I think we can do better. We're one of the few, maybe one of the few medical appointments people have in their lives, not just physical therapy, but in general, that you go to do a medical appointment, do you know what it's gonna cost you out of pocket before you show up? Generally, you don't. We've swam upstream to make that visible to clients, so they already are coming in knowing what the cost is gonna be and are we providing that value? Just an example of, okay, can we swim further upstream with that and make it easier to pay and make it visible on their insurance deductible and all of that?   0:46:05.9 Kelly Allan: Well, and also, Travis, I think... I was just gonna say in terms of how many times have people been to a doctor's office, they've had to fill out a whole bunch of forms either online or in the office and then nobody ever looks at it. Something that Fitness Matters has been a leader on for a long time, which is how many of these questions are really required? How are we really gonna use that information? Let's not have seven pages. Can we get it down to four? Can we get it down to three? And increase... Because remember Deming's teachings are quality goes up as costs go down. Quality goes up as we have to commit less time. Quality goes up as joy in work goes up. Right? So that's that Deming structure of, no, quality does not have to cost more. In fact, Deming said if you're doing it this way, quality will cost less. And that's in part how Fitness Matters can compete against these big, big companies and win. I think, Travis, you've gotta share some of the statistics about what makes Fitness Matters an industry leader. What kinds of things are measured that you and others look at in the industry?   0:47:17.8 Travis Timmons: One of the big things in the physical therapy industry, Andrew, is what they call outcomes. They're measurable questionnaire by body part that you have a patient fill out at evaluation day and at discharge day, and it gives you a percentage of... In our industry, they call it functional ability. Are you 100% able with your shoulder or do you have a 60% disability with your shoulder? For example, across all body parts, we're 30 to 40% above national average on our outcomes. Not even close. Because of the efficiency, our patients show up. Again, the one-to-one care model is why it's our true north, and everything we do has to support that because of those industry-leading outcomes. Our no-show rate is one of the other things we define. Again, something we're working to improve upon, but we're already nation-leading. Our definition of a no-show is 24 hours notice up into a no-show. Most companies in our industry only call it a no-show if the patient just doesn't show up. With our definition of 24 hours notice or less, we're at 4% to 5%. National average of true no-shows, just not showing up, is 15%.   0:48:45.8 Andrew Stotz: Yeah, I can imagine even probably higher than that, but 15, yeah.   0:48:49.7 Travis Timmons: 15 to 20% depending on the research. Just two examples there. The Deming approach to system thinking, team engagement, getting rid of silos, operational definitions. To Kelly's point, we worked years ago on that initial client intake. I used an example several years ago around the time we were working on that project. My one son, got him an Apple iPad for Christmas. Other son got an Xbox 360. One product we got out of the box and turned it on, it was fully charged and ready to go in about 37 seconds. The other product took all kinds of unpacking, had to plug it in, and as soon as it came up, it said software upgrade required, and it proceeded to spend the entire day of Christmas downloading the update. We just use that as an example of how hard is this? We want that same experience for our clients. How do we make it an unbelievable healthcare experience for our clients?   0:50:10.1 Kelly Allan: Well, and Travis is being way too modest here, so I have to jump in. I don't know if I have the numbers exactly right, but Travis will correct me. Let's say you have an injury or you're recovering from surgery or whatever it happens to be, and the industry average is it's going to take 17 visits with a physical therapist for you to be at some level of functionality. At Fitness Matters, it might be 13 visits. Travis, is that too high?   0:50:42.3 Travis Timmons: 10.   0:50:43.1 Kelly Allan: 10 visits. 10 visits. So cut it in half. They're getting better in half the time. That's Deming.   0:50:52.9 Travis Timmons: Yeah.   0:50:53.3 Kelly Allan: Quality goes up, costs go down. Which is why Travis then can... Insurance companies also love them, right? It's like, wow, these people are getting better and they don't circle back just because they were... Operational definition is they're well. Discharged by somebody else, oh yeah, they had their 17, 18 visits, 19 visits, they're well. No, they're not. They come back or they go somewhere else and they're claiming insurance again. Fitness Matters, they learn how to stay well.   0:51:22.4 Travis Timmons: And that brings in another important thing that we've learned over the years, Andrew, with the Deming approach. Our data is industry leading, and we've worked hard at that. And we've got a great team that works within the construct that we've created through Deming. To get back to the unknown or unknowable quote that Dr. Deming would use, our marketing costs are low because patients go back to their physicians and say, "Hey, this is the best PT experience I've ever had." And after they hear that four or five times with us and they get complaints when they send them elsewhere, all of a sudden we start getting referrals from these doctors we've not even heard of before.   0:52:07.6 Kelly Allan: Yeah. Yep.   0:52:08.9 Travis Timmons: How do you measure that? What amount of marketing dollars would have to be spent to get in front of... Like, we doubled the number of physicians that referred to us in the last year.   0:52:23.6 Kelly Allan: Yes. That's a double, Andrew. Unheard of.   0:52:27.5 Andrew Stotz: Yeah.   0:52:28.1 Kelly Allan: Unheard of.   0:52:28.5 Andrew Stotz: Incredible. So you got amazing outcomes. Let's now wrap up about where did you get to at the end of this? What did you personally and the management team end up with?   0:52:45.9 Travis Timmons: So we had some do-outs. Our closing PowerPoint slide was within two weeks we would report back with one to two updated operational definitions and probably three PDSAs that we were going to tackle. That was kind of our promise back to the team, that we would look at all the work. We have paper everywhere. People got to vote. We had a one-page paper on potential PDSAs, and we gave them little stickers to vote on where they think we should put our time and energy and resources. Our takeaway, our product, if you will, three PDSAs. One that has two under it is the new software. We're gonna start doing online scheduling, automated waitlists. I won't get into all the details, but PDSA one has software change. PDSA two, there was a lot of feedback on, "Hey, it would be great if we had kind of a scripted conversation point for the client care coordinators for these four scenarios: first phone call, first in-visit, how we take payment and make their benefits visible to them, how do we take a phone call and handle a cancellation when they do happen to ensure that it's a positive experience."   0:54:12.4 Travis Timmons: And then how do we handle kind of a no-show? Another PDSA is we're gonna have those client care coordinators create their first version of what they think the best script would be, 'cause they're the ones that do it all day. Why would I try to come up with that? And then have them send it to us and do some feedback there. Then we updated our operational definition of canceled visits so that there was clarity across the system to make sure we're measuring what we want to measure, which is how many people show up to their visits each day. We reported that back to the team last Friday, actually, to make sure we hit the deadline we promised to them. And then we let them know we're also gonna be working on kind of a third or fourth PDSA—I kind of lost track there of how we're counting it under the software—but training the entire team on what does it mean to have client engagement and what is our operational definition of client connection and client engagement. So they know we're gonna be doing that on a location-by-location basis at the March monthly meeting.   0:55:26.4 Travis Timmons: That was our takeaway. A lot of product to come away with, and they're gonna have all of the context from the team off-site to understand what we're getting ready to tackle, especially with the software change.   0:55:40.1 Andrew Stotz: My first reaction to that is, oh, those seem like kind of things that you could have figured out some other way, or there's not that many things, or there wasn't some stunning breakthrough. Explain why you're happy with what you got versus you prepared, you did a lot of work, you got those things. Some of it may be that, hey, we need to go through a process. I may have known some of those conclusions, but if we don't have a process of going through that, first we have the risk of maybe I'm wrong in what I think. And the second thing we have is that we have the risk that it's just a business run by dictate rather than getting real buy-in. I'm just curious if you could explain a little bit about that.   0:56:30.7 Kelly Allan: You said the bad word. You said the B-word.   0:56:34.5 Andrew Stotz: Buy-in.   0:56:35.4 Travis Timmons: Understanding, Andrew. Not buy-in.   0:56:38.4 Andrew Stotz: We're looking for buy-in. No. Okay.   0:56:40.8 Kelly Allan: We change it. How do we get... The conversation changes when you say, "How do we get understanding?" Now it's about the why behind the what that leads to the how, versus buy-in, which means, "How are we gonna sell this to somebody?" Sorry, Travis, I couldn't resist.   0:57:02.8 Travis Timmons: No, it's 100% true. And to answer your question, Andrew, my first answer and probably the most powerful answer we already talked about earlier, but it's very important to reiterate and maybe close with, is because of our approach and the time and investment we spent preparing for the meeting, doing the meeting, the fact that there was zero concern or stress around us switching our software system. The amount of engagement that there's gonna be, 'cause there's gonna be work to be done by all team members in preparation for that software change. I am confident I'm not gonna have to do any motivational speeches leading up to that. I'm not gonna have to bribe people. They want this to work because they understand why we're doing it, they understand the value it's gonna provide, and they understand, now that they have deep understanding of our system, they understand why we need to do this to continue to excel.   0:58:13.9 Travis Timmons: I don't know what that's worth. That's unmeasurable. But I know had I just announced this and not had any process, not a Deming approach, just, "Hey, guys, Travis thinks we need to do a new software and we're gonna change how you document, how you schedule," I feel fairly confident how well that would've gone. That would be my answer, Andrew, is the power of being able to present that to a team. They're already asking me questions about, "Have you thought about this in our system?" We have a shared Word document across the team. What questions are coming up in your system thinking? "How are we gonna message this to all of our clients so that they know they're gonna get new emails for their home program?" Great question. I had not thought of that. That is unmeasurable, but I know we're gonna be successful when we switch softwares because of our approach via Deming. What would you add to that, Kelly?   0:59:14.7 Kelly Allan: I think that's the essential nature of what happens. When you set out with a clear, healthy, thoughtful aim, you have conversations around that with your leadership team and what they can do then to filter that and start to talk about that with their teams at their locations, and then you have time to reflect and continually improve that, you're really creating a racehorse. Most off-sites, and Andrew, you've been to these, I know, they start... It's the 17 things. I thought of this when you mentioned it earlier. We start out, we have a racetrack and we want to have a racehorse. But by the time most companies get to their off-site, they've put so much stuff on that horse that it's now a pack mule. It will eventually make it around the track, but if you're competing with Travis, his racehorse, that team's racehorse has been around that track past you many, many times. You may get there, but they're already onto another track by the time you get to the finish line. You're finished.   1:00:36.7 Andrew Stotz: Yeah. You may even be releasing kittens and he's got a horse.   1:00:42.0 Travis Timmons: Kelly brings up another great point there. The other thing that gives our team confidence, because of our system view, 96% of issues are due to systems and processes, not people, the Fitness Matters team is confident that there's gonna be hiccups with a software change. They're confident they're gonna be able to talk about it in a system view quickly, and they're confident we're gonna implement change to rectify that. That goes into one of the reasons why I got zero shocked looks or zero sidebar conversations the entire day. The only feedback I've gotten is, "Hey, we're excited about it. We think we need to do this. And have you considered this as part of our system change?" I don't know what else as a business you could want.   1:01:40.4 Andrew Stotz: Kelly, I was thinking about a good wrap-up from you is to help the listener and the viewer think about how can they apply this into their business. Let's step back a little bit from Travis and think about the work you do and give us some hope, give us some guidance about, can we do this? How?   1:02:04.6 Kelly Allan: Yeah. Several things come to mind. One is that when you first start to learn about the Deming lens, the System of Profound Knowledge, his approach, it seems, it's different. It is different and it can seem to be, oh my gosh, that's so different. We'll never be able to do that. But the point is, the Deming Institute offers a two-day seminar workshop and they can learn not to be incredibly proficient or masterful in two days of how to go back and do Deming, but they know how to get started and they do get started. And then it just becomes part of, again, the Deming magic is as you start to work on these things, your costs go down, your quality goes up, and sometimes you can raise your prices because of the quality and sometimes you just are more competitive at the existing price, but you're taking work and rework and waste out of the system through the Deming approach, which allows you the time. That's the big constraint in most companies. I don't have time to work on improvement. I gotta fix this.   1:03:29.9 Andrew Stotz: Yeah. Right.   1:03:30.9 Kelly Allan: So that's a fix that's gonna fail. That's a fix that's gonna fail. So I think the message is you just want to read The New Economics. If you get the third edition, start with the new chapter. It's like 40 pages and it sums up a whole lot of what we've been talking about. Then there's DemingNext videos through the Deming Institute. You can get your feet wet there. You can then, if you want, attend a seminar or read more things or reach out and have conversations with people. But you just have to try it so that you can see that the payback is there, that the joy in work is there. And in a war for talent, they wanna work for Deming. People wanna work for Deming-based companies because they're not about manipulating people. They're about joy in work. They're about reducing the friction. So you just gotta get started and don't be just because it's so different doesn't mean you can't learn it quickly. You can.   1:04:36.7 Andrew Stotz: Yep. And Travis is a great example of that. In our prior episodes, he talked about the journey, about the pain and all that. I think that's exciting. I'm gonna wrap it up. I just have to laugh because I've been out of the corporate world for a while, just doing my own thing. But I was thinking, you mentioned about buy-in and then you said it means you're selling something. And I thought that's funny. I remember my father used to say, he used to get so annoyed because he'd say, "Yeah, let's talk around this," which was a common thing back in those days. But then I was also thinking another thing that we were saying was onboard. Let's get people onboard with this. What if you're onboard? It pretty much means you're drowning. And I just thought about those types of things that when we talk about fear and work or fear in what we're trying to remove fear and stuff, part of it is the way we speak and the way we communicate.   1:05:41.1 Andrew Stotz: Travis, I feel like I want to leave you with the last word. So why don't you bring us home?   1:05:48.0 Travis Timmons: Yeah, I think I would follow on what Kelly said is I would just the amount of joy, the amount of stress this took off of me as a business owner and as a parent thinking about things differently. And the first time you start learning about Deming's teachings and the System of Profound Knowledge, it seems a little off. Seems a little like this just doesn't seem possible. I've had several people I've talked to about that. It just doesn't work that way. To Kelly's point, I would encourage just try a couple things, whether it be do you have clear operational definitions? Have you done a PDSA? Do you know how to do a PDSA? But the two-day seminars is where you kind of do the deep dive into like, oh, okay, I need to think about things differently. So anyone struggling with a business trying the latest and greatest book that's been out or the latest and greatest compensation model to create ownership thinking within your organization or whatever the buzzwords are, this is a long-term path to clarity and to just an understanding of how you can make your organization a place that has a positive impact on the lives of your employees and your clients.   1:07:17.7 Travis Timmons: And man, if you get that right, everything else follows. Sales, profit, all the stuff that a lot of metrics look at. If you get the point of your job is to have a positive place for your team to work and how do you do that? Deming is the way to do that. Everything else follows after that, in my opinion.   1:07:38.6 Andrew Stotz: And on that note, Travis and Kelly, on behalf of everyone at the Deming Institute, I want to thank you again for this discussion. For listeners, remember, as Kelly and Travis have both said, go to deming.org, go to DemingNEXT. There's resources there so you can continue your journey. This is your host, Andrew Stotz, and I'll leave you with one of my favorite quotes from Dr. Deming. I constantly repeat it because I love it, and that is: "People are entitled to joy in work."

On today's episode of CW Pod, Chris Williams sits down with renowned oncologist Dr. Richard Deming of the MercyOne Richard Deming Cancer Center for an inspiring and insightful conversation about living a healthy, meaningful life. Dr. Deming shares powerful perspectives on how attitude can shape outcomes, the importance of cancer prevention and early detection, supporting loved ones through difficult diagnoses, and practical ways to improve overall health and well-being. The discussion goes beyond medicine, focusing on mindset, purpose, resilience, and building a fulfilling life. If you're interested in cancer prevention, health and wellness, personal growth, leadership through adversity, and real-life inspiration from one of the nation's most respected cancer doctors, this episode delivers valuable takeaways you can apply immediately. Subscribe for more in-depth conversations on health, leadership, and life on CW Pod. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

What if the "healthy" foods you're eating every day are actually starving you?Dr. Katie Deming sits down with holistic nutritionist and teaching chef Monica Corrado to explore the nutrition philosophy behind the Deming Fast. This kicks off a brand new series called Inside the Deming Fast, and this first conversation zeroes in on something most fasting programs completely overlook: what happens after the fast ends. The refeeding phase isn't just a transition back to normal eating. It's the most powerful rebuilding opportunity your body may ever get.Chapters:00:04:03 - Rebuild With the Right Materials00:06:06 - The Anti-Inflammatory Reset00:08:04 - From Modern Food to Ancestral Healing00:09:53 - Clean Animal Foods as Foundation00:12:41 - Why Lectins and Oxalates Matter00:14:28 - The Hidden Cost of Plant Antinutrients00:18:26 - Rethinking Fats for Healing00:19:00 - Processed Oils vs Stable Animal Fats00:23:39 - Malnourished Yet Overfed00:26:53 - Foundational Foods That Rebuild00:30:23 - The Power of Liver and Organ Meats00:41:14 - Is Fertility a Sign of True Healing?Monica Corrado and Dr. Katie walk through the food guide they built specifically for people focused on healing, covering which foods rebuild the body at a cellular level, which ones trigger inflammation.Dr. Katie and Monica break down what antinutrients actually do inside the body and why learning about them could change the way you shop, cook, and eat for good.Monica also sets the record straight and why cutting fat out may be one of the most damaging things the low-fat era ever taught us to do.Plus, Dr. Katie also shares what she's personally learned from working with Monica, including how she eats now, what's always cooking in her kitchen, and why getting the food right turned out to be the first step she had to take with every single client before anything else could work.Press play and learn the four refeeding pillars that prevent you from sabotaging your fast. Access the FREE Water Fasting Masterclass Now: https://www.katiedeming.com/the-healing-power-of-fasting/Download the FREE Healing Tools Guide: https://bit.ly/drkatie-giftguide MORE FROM KATIE DEMING M.D. 6 Pillars of Healing Cancer Workshop Series - Click Here to Enroll Transform your hydration with the Spring Aqua System: https://springaqua.info/drkatie Follow Dr. Katie Deming on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/katiedemingmd/ Please Support the Show Share this episode with friends & family Give a Review on Spotify Give a Review on Apple Podcast Watch on Youtube DISCLAIMER: The Born to Heal Podcast is intended for informational purposes only and is not a substitute for seeking professional medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. Individual medical histories are unique; therefore, this episode should not be used to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease without consulting your healthcare provider.

What do you do when a new data point drops—and all eyes turn to you? In this episode, John Dues and Andrew Stotz explore the leadership discipline required when performance data changes. Instead of reacting to a single data point, they unpack how Deming thinking (understanding variation, avoiding tampering, and pausing to interpret patterns) can protect trust, stability, and improvement. A practical conversation for leaders who want wisdom—not speed—to guide their decisions. 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 John Dues, who is part of the new generation of educators striving to apply Dr. Deming's principles to unleash student joy in learning. The topic for today is when the numbers change and everyone looks at you. John, take it away.   0:00:28.4 John Dues: Yeah, it's good to be back, Andrew. I think this is sort of an interesting topic. Many of us that have been in leadership roles have been in this position where the numbers change, whatever they may be. For me, they're dips in attendance, they're assessment results changing, something like that, a subgroup's results changes from the previous year. Sometimes the changes are small, sometimes they're big. But I'm thinking about times when they're just large enough to draw attention in a meeting. And it's not even really so much the size of the change that's important, it's what happens next.   0:01:12.9 John Dues: So you can kind of put yourself in one of these meetings where you're looking at data and maybe you didn't even expect it, but people kind of notice. Then someone asks what went wrong? And then the next thing that comes is someone suggests some type of fix or solution, and then this pressure starts to build. Especially if they're all sort of looking at you, the silence can feel irresponsible. And so what do we do? We react in some way. We call another... For explanations, maybe from others. We adjust a plan that's already in place. We launch a new initiative or tighten expectations on people, whatever it may be. None of it's out of malice. It's done out of care, most typically, or at least in the settings I've observed this sort of phenomenon.   0:02:13.1 Andrew Stotz: Don't just stand there, do something.   0:02:15.2 John Dues: Don't just stand there, do something. But the thing is, very often it just makes things worse. Right?   0:02:21.0 Andrew Stotz: Don't just do something. Stand there.   0:02:23.8 John Dues: Right, right. The opposite. But even if you know that, it's very, very difficult in the moment to...   0:02:32.5 Andrew Stotz: The pressures.   0:02:33.6 John Dues: Yeah.   0:02:34.9 Andrew Stotz: Well, I have a little... Little thing happened last night when a friend of mine came to see my mom and me, and we went out for there's a restaurant nearby, so we got the walker and got mom going. And her natural inclination was to help mom in getting up and that type of thing. And I was explaining to her the difference between what I call a caregiver and a caretaker. And I was saying that most people are caretakers where they're just taking care and they want to just help. And she's like, "It's irresistible. I mean, in my bones, I want to help." And I said, "It's very hard to see that sometimes the best help is to let her struggle and use her legs to get up, not to help her on that." And that was like a revelation for her last night, it just made me think about that.   0:03:33.8 John Dues: No, that's actually a perfect analogy because her health is sort of a high stakes environment. Just like schools are high stakes environments or many of the businesses that people run that listen to this podcast have high stakes. In our cases, it's students and families matter, outcomes matter. There's a lot of different stakeholders that are interested in what's going on in schools. And when those numbers do change, it can feel like neglect if you don't do anything. We're expected to notice. We're expected to... Good leaders are supposed to respond. They're supposed to act decisively, right?   0:04:12.0 Andrew Stotz: Yeah, because there's another aspect to it too. Let's just say that you have a boss that understands it and you're like, "Yeah, it's just noise. It's not signal." But how many times can you say that? Right?   0:04:27.8 John Dues: Yeah, that's right.   0:04:28.5 Andrew Stotz: That's another kind of pressure in that situation.   0:04:31.6 John Dues: Yeah, that's like the second-in-command type person, right? So they have their own pressure. And what you can see happening, this like visible action is sort of like evidence of competence because you can see it. And so the reaction becomes the default. So just like in this example you're giving with your mom, that action to help is very hard to resist. Even though by doing so, like you were saying, she doesn't get the physical exercise and actually makes things worse in the long term for your mom's health.   0:05:10.4 Andrew Stotz: "Boss, why did Kevin get a promotion and not me?" "Well, Kevin's a man of action."   0:05:14.8 John Dues: Man of action, right. Exactly. Exactly. And there's all these risks for a leader that doesn't react right away. Are they disengaged? If they're asking questions instead of acting right away, are they just uncertain? They lack certainty? Are you ignoring the data if you are pausing or waiting? Again, under these conditions, which I think are prevalent just about everywhere that I've been, at least, reacting quickly feels like the safest move. But I think the conflation is speed and wisdom. But speed is not, definitely not the same thing as wisdom, right?   0:06:02.1 John Dues: In all of our organizations, the data fluctuates naturally over time. No different in schools, like we've talked about. Attendance rises and falls, assessment results bounce up and down, behavior incidents they spike and they dip. And it's not necessarily a sign that something's broken. It's often just how systems typically behave, the systems that we're paying attention to. I think the main mistake leaders typically make in that moment when they see that movement is that they think that automatically means something changed. And so you get these concerns if it's a bad move in the data. If it's a short-term increase, maybe we trigger some type of celebration. So this works both ways, actually. But the main point is that one data point becomes a story. It becomes the story of what's... We try to attach an explanation to this dip or this increase that's actually not grounded in any kind of reality. We would say they're just reacting to noise, kind of like what you just said. And the problem, though, is that there's a number of then very predictable things that happen. First, educators, and I felt this as a teacher. I taught in Atlanta Public Schools, a big district that was trying lots of new things in the early 2000s. You feel this whiplash. So priority shifts, guidance changes. Yesterday's focus is replaced by today's concern.   0:07:44.5 John Dues: And what happens in a setting like that, that I found, is that people start explaining instead of learning. Especially when there's a strong accountability system like there is in education systems, results are questioned immediately, often. And so the safest response at almost all levels of the organization is just to justify what's already happened, not to explore what might be improved. Very, very, very difficult. And that then leads to trust eroding. And over time, what I've seen is that educators learn that any fluctuation brings scrutiny. They become cautious, defensive, quiet. And obviously none of that improves outcomes. And again, just like in the example with your mom, it actually makes things harder to improve in the long term. So this overreacting to this routine variation then often increases variation, and so the system actually becomes noisier and not more capable. You get this vicious cycle. What's that?   0:09:00.5 Andrew Stotz: Tampering.   0:09:01.8 John Dues: Yeah, tampering. Exactly. That's what Deming would call it, tampering. When you intervene in a stable system.   0:09:07.3 Andrew Stotz: It's interesting. The one data point becomes a story is a great, great line. In the world of finance, everybody's trying to get the next wave. As a financial analyst, you're trying to think, okay. And all we do constantly is look at the next data point and say, "Does this confirm or not my view that gold's going to crash now, or gold's going to rise, or US stocks are going to X, or the dollar is going to... " And most of the time, we're just making one data point become a story, and then the next data point comes out and it's like, "Okay, so there's a different story here." And then...   0:09:51.3 John Dues: Yeah. That explanation there it's sort of... The key idea is reaction. It's literally seductive. It is seductive because it feels productive.   0:10:04.3 Andrew Stotz: In my finance work, when I help people with their money, what I do introduce what I've learned from Dr. Deming to say it really helps me separate the signal from the noise in the stock market, and therefore, I will never react. And I even set parameters where I rebalance my portfolio every three months. So when they go, "What are you going to do about such and such?" it's like, "Everything's set. I'm going to wait until the results are in, and I'm going to reevaluate on a framework, on a systematic way," which just helps me from getting whipsawed this way or whiplash this way or that way. And it's proven to be not only great for helping people feel like I have a deeper understanding and follow what I'm doing, but it also improves performance.   0:11:07.7 John Dues: Yeah. And you know, I'm definitely no financial expert by any means, but it makes me think of The Big Short, the movie, when I don't know how true to reality it is, but when the character played by Christian Bale, Michael Burry, is sticking to his guns with his shorting of the housing market and people are coming into his office and screaming at him. He's getting emails that are coming in one after another calling him an idiot, threatening him with lawsuits, and he holds. So that's like an extreme example of not reacting to noise. And you can see what it does to him in the movie, the intestinal fortitude, before sort of it comes to the conclusion. He got less and less certain even though he stuck to his guns, that he was doing the right thing. Right.   0:12:00.3 Andrew Stotz: I got to get that clip because I want to combine that with Mel Gibson in that movie, I can't remember, the Celtic battles in England where he's saying, "Hold the line! Hold the line!" What is it?   0:12:13.6 John Dues: Braveheart, probably.   0:12:16.3 Andrew Stotz: Braveheart. Yeah.   0:12:17.9 John Dues: Braveheart. Yeah. That's because when you're having a conversation like this and you talk about this leadership concept, just about everybody's going to nod along with you. But when you are actually in the moment, very few people hold the line, very few people hold the line. But at least if you have this grounding, at least you'll be more likely to hold the line because you have some techniques and some ways to sort of paint this picture that there's a firm logic. There's never certainty, but at least there's a firm logic for why you're holding the line in a particular situation. But it's very, very hard. Very hard.   0:12:58.2 Andrew Stotz: One question is, could there be such a thing like a mantra that the management team could have? Something like, "One point is not the full story," or something that they talk about in non-emotional times so that they've got it set. So when all of these numbers change and everyone looks at you, it's like, "Guys, remember, one point is not the story."   0:13:28.1 John Dues: Yeah, no, that's a really good idea. That would be a good sort of internal value or something marketing-wise that you could sort of, something sticky that would remind people of this, especially in those moments of anxiety or even panic, depending on the particular situation and the type of data that you're talking about. That's a good idea. I think the key thing is that activity is not the same as improvement. It feels good. It feels good to change something, introduce something new, new rules, new expectations, even though the system itself hasn't changed. And like you said, that's tampering. You make adjustments to a stable system based on something that's just routine ups and downs and it degrades performance. I think a lot of people are familiar with Deming's Red Bead Experiment. Less of them are familiar with the Funnel Experiment. He basically talks about when you are trying to hit a target through a funnel and you move it each time to sort of adjust for the variation from the mark. You actually, he called it going off into the Milky Way in terms of where you end up when you make these adjustments every single time.   0:14:46.1 Andrew Stotz: I thought that demonstration was so... I don't remember that he did it in the seminars that I attended. I remember the Red Bead Experiment. But that tampering is so powerful to understand the mess you can end up in.   0:15:05.7 John Dues: Yeah. And that was in The New Economics. I don't think he ever did it in a four-day seminar that I remember. But the interesting thing is generally the best choice is just to keep the funnel in the same place and keep going. But again, that's very hard. Especially let's say you're doing this as a group activity and group two, three, four, and five, you're looking over and they're making these adjustments every time, and you're just sitting there. And you're like, "Maybe they're onto something," or "Maybe I do need to move." But at the end of it, they're much farther away than you are.   0:15:43.4 Andrew Stotz: And I feel like the title you talked about, "When the Numbers Change and Everyone Looks at You," is evoking that emotion of, "Am I doing something wrong? Other people would do it a different way. Oh, they're making progress. I'm just sitting here." Those kind of emotions are the types of things that cause that tampering.   0:16:02.7 John Dues: Yeah. And then that shows up as initiative overload. You get these contradictory messages, constant course correction like in the Funnel Experiment. And the irony is you typically have a leader who cares deeply and they don't realize they're creating the very instability that makes improvement impossible. It's a tough realization. So what I would say is that when the data does change, the most important leadership move is not action, but it's interpretation. So instead of asking, "What should we do?" maybe a good first question is, "Is this shift within the range of what we should expect?" So just that question kind of slows the moment down. It shifts attention from reaction to understanding and it invites the group to look at data over time rather than point to point. It opens up this possibility that nothing is wrong even if the results aren't yet acceptable.   0:17:15.4 Andrew Stotz: Love that. Love that.   0:17:16.8 John Dues: Yeah, I think it's a really important...   0:17:17.5 Andrew Stotz: Is this shift within the range of what we would expect?   0:17:20.6 John Dues: Yeah.   0:17:21.1 Andrew Stotz: Answer's going to be "Yes, this is in the range." So next topic in a meeting.   0:17:28.5 John Dues: Right. And we've talked about this before. And it's possible when you've asked that question that the system itself looks stable, but it also may be producing outcomes we don't like. And so the key is even in those cases, reacting to an individual data point is not going to help. In that case, if you have stability but outcomes you don't like, you need thoughtful system redesign. But these sort of urgency-driven immediate fixes, overreaction, that's not going to help. That's not going to help.   0:18:06.9 John Dues: So the big thing is pausing before reacting. But that's often misunderstood. We talked about is he or she ignoring the data? Are they lowering expectations? Is that leader just indecisive? I don't think so. I think that's really what discipline is. And pausing, being that person that says, "Let's take a breath and pause here," it creates the space to study patterns rather than focusing on those individual data points. It allows leaders to separate stability from acceptability. It prevents unnecessary pressure then cascading through the system, which is what often happens. And so what I think is when you actually pause, what you're doing is protecting the people in your organization. When you do that, I think in an education system it protects teachers from being judged on noise they can't control. I think it protects leaders from... They are often then turning around and making promises that the system can't actually keep. It's sort of like a short-term thing, but you're hurting the long term. And then it protects students because they don't then undergo all these constant changes that disrupt their learning.   0:19:43.1 John Dues: So I think what a leader, a strong leader does that's different is they ask questions. What does this look like over time? Is this a meaningful signal from what we've seen before? What should we expect if nothing changes? Just some basic questions. I think resisting the urge to explain every up and down movement. And it's really at the end of the day what it comes down to is you're not trying to assign meaning to every data point, but what you're trying to do is understand the underlying system behavior. Now sometimes action is warranted, and in those cases, you're going to act in a deliberate way. When it's not, they're going to communicate that and communicate why we're going to wait in this particular scenario and why that's the responsible choice. So there's got to be this underlying logic whichever direction you're going to go. And I think if you've ever been around a leader like this, it feels calm. It just feels calm. It feels steady. And over time, the key thing is it creates this system that's trusting and then as a result, it's far more capable of improvement. It's far more likely that improvement's going to happen.   0:21:13.4 Andrew Stotz: That's amazing. And I was just taking lots of notes, but I wrote down pause, have discipline, protect employees, protect students. But I wrote down protect the aim.   0:21:27.0 John Dues: Yeah, protect the aim. That's good.   0:21:28.7 Andrew Stotz: Protect the aim of the system. Why are we here? And if we can't do that pause and look at it carefully, there's just no way we're going to achieve that.   0:21:43.3 John Dues: Yeah, no, I agree. And I think the thing is with these situations is that the most damaging decisions in schools are often made after the numbers change, but not because of the numbers themselves. Like even if they've declined, typically it's not to the point that it's catastrophic, but what's catastrophic is the series of decisions that are made as a result of the decline. And so in those situations again, this reaction feels responsible. But really what happens when you react without understanding is it creates more noise, more stress, more instability, and you still don't have the improvement at the end of all that consternation.   0:22:30.1 Andrew Stotz: Yeah, I would sum up my sum of this is the bad manager says, "That's a terrible result. Let's make it worse."   0:22:42.0 John Dues: And that's really what's happening. They're obviously not saying it, but that's exactly what's happening. Exactly. That's a really good summary. And I would kind of sum it up with three big ideas that would be helpful for listeners. I think the first one is that not all variation is meaningful. Most fluctuations actually are just routine, should not trigger action. The second one we've talked about, that overreaction creates instability. Acting on noise makes systems worse, not better. And then the third thing I would say is that pausing is a leadership skill and understanding must come before action.   0:23:30.2 John Dues: And I say it's a skill 'cause you actually have to practice it. I think you have to prepare yourself for what you're going to do when you get in front of a group and you're going to talk about results and those results maybe aren't exactly where you want them to be. You have to practice that, rehearse it. What are you going to say? How are you going to back that up? What's the logic? But I think when leaders learn to have that pause before reacting, they actually protect learning, they protect trust, and then they actually create the conditions for improvement. And I think that's the work that matters most when everyone's looking at you to make a key decision. Not easy, but certainly important work.   0:24:08.6 Andrew Stotz: That's a great wrap. I'm not going to add anything to it. John, 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. You can find John's book, Win-Win: W. Edwards Deming, the System of Profound Knowledge, and the Science of Improving Schools on amazon.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."      

The blog postTL;DR: Deming and Toyota's Fujio Cho asked the same uncomfortable question: why do management systems destroy motivation in people who started out wanting to do good work? The answer points to practices leaders can actually change.Check part 1 of this series in episode 464,

AI had little to no impact on productivity in the past 3 years.This was according to a National Bureau of Economic Research survey released in February 2006 of 6,000 CEOs and executives across the US, UK, Germany, and Australia. Instead of throwing fruit at us, watch or listen as Enterprise Business Agility Consultant Om Patel and Product Manager Brian Orlando discuss why it won't be the loudest Silicon Valley CEO helping us make the most out of these new tools and technology, but boring old process improvement and org design!Yes, the current research-backed consensus (we review more such articles and research) is that AI adoption doesn't lead to productivity gains, but executives are going to still buy it anyway - they've got "positive vibes."

This is a message given by Ted Hanson at Citilife Church, Deming, New Mexico on February 22, 2026

Where Amateurs Play Like Pros! This week on the Golfweek Amateur Tour - The Podcast, we bring you everything that makes the Golfweek Amateur Tour & Senior Amateur Tour special: unforgettable moments, hard-earned victories, and the kind of camaraderie that defines our golf community. We kick things off with Champ Flight standout Ty Taylor from the El Paso Tour, fresh off his third hole-in-one, and maybe the quietest ace in Golfweek Amateur Tour history. No roar. No fireworks. Just a striped six-iron into the wind at Rio Mimbres… and then the realization that it disappeared. Classic. Ty walks us through: His 190-yard par-3 ace in brutal Deming wind Why he almost kept playing the hole-in-one ball (rookie move avoided) How he's stacked up 55 birdies, 4 eagles, and 5 wins in 31 Amateur Golf tournaments Why eliminating “hero shots” is the key to better scores in Competitive Golf Events If you're a high handicapper trying to level up your tournament game, this is gold. The difference between Champ Flight and the rest? It's not magic. It's avoiding triples and playing smart. Then we shift to Hilton Head Island for coverage from the Senior Icebreaker Regional, one of the most relaxed, competitive, and fun stops in our National Championship season. We hear from: Eli Villanueva (Champ Flight) - From 7 back to playoff victory Keith Breazeale (A Flight) - Steady 80-80 consistency under pressure Michael Anderson (B Flight) - Two-time Senior National Champion, doing what he does best David Yi (C Flight) - 88-88 and walks away with the win Butch Novak (D Flight & Tour Director) - Playoff victory and a Firestone plug This is what Amateur golf tournaments are about. Different flights. Different journeys. Same competitive fire. We also get a Myrtle Beach tournament update from Chris Rocha as he preps for a team event and breaks down the strategy behind managing weather, tee times, and team scoring. If you love tournament golf, competitive strategy, and stories from everyday golfers chasing the next great round, this is your golf podcast for everyday golfers. Listen. Compete. Travel. Win. Find your tour at:amateurgolftour.netsenioramateurgolftour.net Because this is Where Amateurs Play Like Pros. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

How do you design a team off-site that actually improves your organization? In this episode, Travis Timmons breaks down the mechanics of a Deming-styled off-site team meeting—from starting months early and setting a clear aim to using pre-work, fishbone diagrams, and PDSAs to drive real change. If you want a real-world example of how Deming leaders create focus, collaboration, and joy in work, this conversation is a practical place to start. 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 discussions with Travis Timmons, who is the founder and owner of Fitness Matters, an Ohio-based practice specializing in the integration of physical therapy and personalized wellness. For 13 years, he's built his business on Dr. Deming's teachings. His hope is simple; the more companies that bring joy to work through Deming's principles, the more likely his kids will one day work at one of those darn companies. Travis, how are you doing?   0:00:35.2 Travis Timmons: Hey, Andrew. Doing well, how are you?   0:00:37.1 Andrew Stotz: I'm really excited. We were just talking about the structure of today's discussion, and the topic for today is the mechanics of a Deming-styled offsite, which I... In today's session, we're going to be talking about the importance of starting early, setting an aim, figuring out and developing an agenda. Also homework, huh?   0:01:05.1 Travis Timmons: Right.   0:01:05.4 Andrew Stotz: Pre-work for attendees. I thought that's interesting as we were going through it. And then you talk about your activities, your outcomes and all of that. So why don't you get into it and walk us through the mechanics of a Deming-styled offsite. And by the way, one last thing. When we say Deming-styled, well, you're certainly getting a lot of support from a true Deming advocate, Kelly Allen, and your understanding of the teachings of Dr. Deming. And so you're doing your best to apply those things in this. Is it a perfect Deming offsite? Well, that's why we say Deming-styled offsite. Maybe the listener or the viewer would add in or subtract some things, but at least we've got the general structures. So why don't you take it away, Travis?   0:01:47.3 Travis Timmons: Yeah, no, happy to, Andrew. So yeah, we have our team offsite. It'll actually be 10 days from now. So from a big picture standpoint, one of the things I've learned is systems, process, organization, and none of that happens quickly. So every time we do an annual team offsite, it's about a three-month work-ahead process for myself and the leadership team. So we start a good three months before the meeting date just to start percolating on what do we need to talk about at this meeting? What's the aim? What do we want the outcome to be? And that doesn't happen with a week of preparation. So we've had to spend some time looking at our KPIs, where do we have an opportunity to have a positive impact on our system? So we have to study our current system, see where there might be opportunities for improvement, understand how do we want the team to engage with that. And for this year's offsite, our big aim... We have two aims for the offsite. One is to make the system visible. Everybody on the team. I've had some learnings through some newer leaders on our team that have been through the DemingNEXT and they've been on our team for a few years.   0:03:04.1 Travis Timmons: But they until going through the DemingNEXT, they didn't fully understand what system view meant. And that kind of hit me over the head like a ton of bricks. It's like, well, maybe that would be a good thing to spend part of our offsite making sure the entire team can visualize and see our organization as a system. And then the second aim from a mechanics, from a KPI standpoint, if you will, is we want to improve arrival rate for our visits. So basically, how many scheduled appointments show up is what we call arrival rate. To have a better impact on patient outcomes, joy in work for our team members, joy in the referral sources that send to us. So yeah, it was about a three-month process.   0:03:49.3 Andrew Stotz: And if I... Just curious, sometimes when I've done offsites or I've attended offsites, it's more general. Here you have a very specific thing, improve arrival rates. Why is it so specific and how do you come to that decision that this isn't going to be just an open discussion about things in our company?   0:04:14.4 Travis Timmons: Yeah. That's a great question. Some years they are a little more general. Like last year we spent quite a bit of time setting a new round of BHAGs, Big Hairy Audacious Goals. This year, looking at KPIs, looking at where the opportunities were to improve, where there were the most breakdowns and frustrations happening in our system that we were hearing consistently across our team. It's like, what's the one thing we can have an impact on that will, if we improve that, everything else will get better. And that was arrival rate. So then we started looking at, all right, how do we dissect that? How do we make it visible to the team so the entire team can work on it together? So that's how we came to that. And it's like, all right, this is a consistent issue. So if you do the control chart, it's like I can almost set my watch to what's arrival rate going to be every week. And until we change something in our system, that's going to be what's going to continue to happen and we need to have an impact on that this year. So that's how we came down to it. It's the one thing we can do that'll have the most impact positively across the entire organization.   0:05:23.1 Andrew Stotz: I often talk about a big company in Thailand that was a Deming-focused company for many, many years, and then a new CEO came in and he made it a different focus company. And the company struggled for years. Whether it's from that or not is a secondary item. But two weeks ago I was giving a lecture and a guy from that company, who is an older guy, was at the lecture. And afterwards we were talking and I said, "What's the difference between the prior guy and the new guy?" He said, "The prior guy set the direction and we all knew it. The new guy kind of has us set it or we go in a lot of different directions. It's not as clear." And so what I was thinking when you were talking about improve arrival rates, I was thinking, yeah, that's leadership. You've identified what you believe is the most critical element at this stage of the business right now, and there's a lot of knock-on effects of fixing that. Whereas if you went into that room and you say, "What's the biggest problem we have right now?"   0:06:35.6 Travis Timmons: Right.   0:06:36.3 Andrew Stotz: Yeah, you're going to get a long list, but as a leader you have to set the direction.   0:06:41.1 Travis Timmons: Yeah. Yeah, and with the leadership team as well. And yeah, where do we... The KPIs and the system, if you study it and look at the outputs through the Deming lenses, it becomes... It's not easy. You got to spend the work and have the tools in place and the discipline to track it all consistently so that you know what your true arrival rate is. I can get in... It's a whole probably different conversation, but tampering and all that kind of stuff. So we know what our data is because of how we've made very clear definitions on our arrival rate and how we don't tamper to get better numbers. But yeah, it's exciting. The team, as crazy as this might sound, we've done these for many years now, over a decade, and the team looks forward to them. And part of that is because we spend the time. I take this very seriously. If I'm going to ask people to come to a meeting for five hours, it better be good. And we better bring... We better have something we can work on as a team to come out of it. And if we don't, that's nobody's fault but mine. So that ownership of the system I take very seriously.   0:07:58.1 Andrew Stotz: A great song, by the way, by Led Zeppelin, Nobody's Fault But Mine. But I would also say that's why I think it's fascinating to continue to go through the structure that you've got, because I think it can guide all of us. So we've learned about starting three months early. I was also thinking about my Crock-Pot. I like to cook slow-cooking food and I put all these different tastes of an onion and a piece of meat, which doesn't really have taste in some ways. And I put them all in a pot and it's eight hours. And if I interrupt it at one hour, there's just, there's not much value there. It needs time to extract the tastes and also bring those tastes into each other until you end up at the end of eight hours. Like, whoa, that's amazing. So...   0:08:51.4 Travis Timmons: Right. Right. Yeah, as you're pointing to, that's kind of how the agenda evolves. So we have an aim of system visibility and arrival rate. Well, how do we put an agenda around that together? So myself, the leadership team, Kelly, we've been working back and forth quite a bit, several iterations of that. So that's part of why you need that three months. You work on it. That sounds great in your head. You put it on some PowerPoint slides and then you share it with folks and they're like, "I don't know really what you're trying to say there, Travis." So there's...   0:09:25.0 Andrew Stotz: It seems like an onion and a carrot.   0:09:27.0 Travis Timmons: Right. Right.   0:09:27.3 Andrew Stotz: But I don't get the taste of it.   0:09:29.6 Travis Timmons: Yeah, so it's just working through those iterations. So miniature, little PDSAs, if you will, of the agenda. But yeah, once we get it to a point where we feel like, okay, we know what we want to work on, then the next big thing becomes how do we get the team involved ahead of the meeting? Because if you... I found very clearly over the years, if the team's not understanding what they're going to be working on coming into the meeting, that you've lost so much opportunity to learn from the entire organization. Because that's where the real learning happens when we do these is stuff that's happening that I don't have visibility of or little workarounds or somebody has a great idea, but maybe didn't feel like it was the right place to bring it up. So just have another opportunity for people to feel very comfortable sharing what breakdowns are happening. But we have homework, right? So that's one of the other big pieces of, if we're going to work on the system, we better know what we're working on that day. And if I don't tell anybody what we're working on until the day of the meeting, we could spend two hours just defining a fishbone chart, which we can talk about later perhaps.   0:11:15.7 Travis Timmons: But the point of the homework is we spend a lot of time, hours preparing the homework booklet that we give to the team about two-and-a-half weeks before the meeting. And it informs them, here's where we're going to be diving deep. We need you to come with the ideas and questions and thoughts already in your head so that we can all just dive in aggressively. Because it's so powerful when they're just bringing the ideas, referencing their homework. You can get so much more done in five hours than if we weren't doing that. So that homework becomes critical and has to match the agenda. If it's disjointed, then you've already lost some trust with your team because they're like, "You had me do all that homework and then we just didn't talk about any of it at the offsite. Like, what are we doing here." So it all has to tie together from a system view, as Dr. Deming would want, hopefully.   0:11:43.5 Andrew Stotz: Yeah. And I don't know, for the listeners and the viewers out there, you probably feel the same way I do, which is kind of like, "Oh, gosh, I should have done more preparing for that last offsite." And also feeling that excitement like, "Oh my gosh, I can unleash a lot from my leadership team, from the company employees through this pre-work and all of a sudden all the mess I have sometimes in offsites of, I don't understand what you're saying by this and what do you mean by that? It could be this." And all of that's gone. And so it makes me... I'm literally thinking about my next offsite and thinking, okay, how am I going to incorporate what you're teaching? So keep going. [laughter]   0:12:26.5 Travis Timmons: Yeah. Yeah, no, it's... And I've learned from some of the best over the years, so it's... I've been very fortunate to learn some of these tools. But yeah, from the homework perspective, it'll accomplish one of our other aims, which is always an aim, but more pointed in this meeting is they start to see the entire system and the complexity that's within it and just start appreciating. "All right, here's everything that has to happen." And, man, we're doing a lot of things really well. And they understand at a deeper level, every piece on our team is critical. There's no silos, no one piece of the equation is more important than the other. If any piece of the equation doesn't happen well, then we're not successful. So that's what with the homework, it just starts making sure from a cultural standpoint and an understanding from the Deming lens, we're all on this together. We have to work on the work together. And the system visibility helps with that, with the homework. And the engagement is so high.   0:13:32.3 Andrew Stotz: Yeah, I'm sure. And that's part of what makes it exciting when I was listening you talk. And I think we're going to need to do a little pre-work on the concept of fishbone, because there are some people that are listening or viewing that may have never even heard of fishbone and fishbone analysis and all that. So maybe as we move into this next part, make sure that you do that pre-work so that we all can figure out exactly what it means, fishbone. And I think you may even have some diagram of that you can share.   0:14:03.4 Travis Timmons: Yeah, I could pull up. If you'd like, I could pull one up to share here. So did that come through for you there?   0:14:12.9 Andrew Stotz: We see it now.   0:14:14.8 Travis Timmons: So this will be... This is part of the homework booklet that we created. So we filled in what we call the main bones. And this is just the patient journey from first contact with Fitness Matters all the way through to a successful discharge. So we have the main bones, I'll call it. If you envision this being, there'd be a fish head at the far right, and then the tail would be at the left. But we just want people to start working on, okay, how does somebody first hear about us at initial contact? Well, they'll write in underneath initial contact, could be website, Google search, could be physician referral, could be my neighbor. So we start penciling in what's all of the ways people first come in contact with Fitness Matters? So we have an understanding of what that looks like. And is it a good first impression? Do we knock that out of the park? And then it just goes through all the major... We look at it as five major bones from first contact to discharge. Second is that initial contact with us to them, scheduling the evaluation. So how many times have they had to call us and leave a voicemail, or can they schedule online, or can they stop in the clinic and schedule, or how did the script come to us, do we capture their insurance data correctly? It just goes how quickly a lot of researching...   0:15:37.0 Andrew Stotz: So many ways to drop the ball?   0:15:39.6 Travis Timmons: Yeah, a lot of research to show if you don't schedule that patient within the first 48 hours of initial contact, the likelihood of them scheduling just plummets.   0:15:49.3 Andrew Stotz: Yeah.   0:15:50.0 Travis Timmons: So a lot of things we have to consider in technology and systems, process, tracking. We have a whole system of how we track how many times we've reached out. We have templates created on how we text message versus voicemail, because some people don't listen to voicemails anymore. Anyway, I could spend an hour just on this fishbone. And then it goes to evaluation day. So when they show up in the clinic, do we have their benefits ready to explain to them? Is the therapist ready for them? Have they looked at their medical history? Do they understand how much they're going to pay? How do they pay? Is it easy to pay? And then the next bone is the plan of care. So all the visits they do, how good are we at scheduling them? How good is the therapist at predicting how many visits they'll need? Is it clear? Do they understand what they owe every visit? So there's not a great experience and then they get this big surprise bill at the end and just ruins everything, right? So we work very hard to be transparent. And then a successful discharge into home exercise and our wellness services.   0:16:52.5 Travis Timmons: So that's what we want everybody to spend some time on with homework. And then at the offsite, this isn't easy to make a patient happy and have a successful outcome. And I think a lot of times in organizations, people don't fully appreciate or see the entire system and understand why this part up here. So if we don't fill out their insurance demographic correctly at the front desk and we rush them back to the evaluation because the therapist is in a hurry, well, now all of those claims aren't going to get paid.   0:17:27.9 Andrew Stotz: Yeah.   0:17:29.1 Travis Timmons: And now we've had a bad outcome for the company. So anyway, that's the fishbone chart. It really helps you diagram at a big level. And then you can dive deep on each one of these bones and turn each of the bone into its own miniature fish, we'll call it, and really dive deeper and deeper, which we'll be doing at our offsite.   0:17:46.8 Andrew Stotz: Yeah. And for the listener out there, think of your own business, what's the chronology of from first contact to delivering this successful experience? Delivering that experience that you're trying to deliver in your business or your school, wherever you are. And this breaks it down into kind of the stages or the phases of that on kind of a chronological order. And that helps you to visualize. And that's part of what you've talked about is the idea of trying to, one of the big goals is visualizing. So that's a great visual of it. Maybe, I think you can probably stop sharing that now. And then also that's, I believe, activity, what I would call activity part one is working on that. Maybe talk a little bit about the mechanics of, now that we understand the fishbone and all of that, what are you asking them to do and then how are they using that?   0:18:51.2 Travis Timmons: Yeah, so the first breakout, we're going to have six tables where they'll use their homework to start filling that in. It's conversation, it's collaboration. It's like, "Oh, this person over here had that on their homework. I didn't even think about that." So that's the goal is that 10,000-foot view, here's the entire system.   0:19:09.6 Andrew Stotz: And are they doing that on a wall together or something like that? Or how is it happening?   0:19:13.4 Travis Timmons: Yeah, we're going to have big newsprint, so it'll be up and big newsprint so everybody can see what's going on. And at the end of the day, we have a very large fish that we're going to have posted and we're going to fill it in with the final product, if you will. That's the entire fishbone. So that's the aim of the first one, is the big picture. Some collaboration, some understanding of the entire system of Fitness Matters and what the complexity looks like. It also allows, one of the things we try to do with this offsite and really in culture in general, Dr. Deming talks about is driving out fear. So newer team members, especially when they start seeing, hey, let's just start talking about stuff, they really start to have a deeper understanding of our culture. And yeah, we do want to talk about stuff. We do want to talk about ways to improve. And then a follow on to that, we're going to do another breakout later in the day. And by table, each table is going to be assigned one of the main bones we just reviewed there.   0:20:20.4 Andrew Stotz: Right.   0:20:21.2 Travis Timmons: And they're going to turn that into a fish itself and do a really deep dive. And what are all the pieces and parts of initial contact? What are all the pieces and parts of eval? So on and so forth. And the aim of that piece is then with that deeper dive into the complexity, the aim is to come away with probably three PDSAs of where do we need to improve our system? Based on that work, we'll have three, maybe four really clear ideas on, okay, we're seeing this as a sticking point. The team's talked a lot about it. How do we improve that? So that's where the PDSAs come from.   [overlapping conversation]   0:20:58.5 Andrew Stotz: So how do you end up figuring out? I mean, everybody's going to talk about, "We need to fix this area, we need to fix this area," or something like that. How do you then... Is it a collaboration, a discussion, is it a voting to say these are the three PDSAs we're going to work on?   0:21:16.7 Travis Timmons: Yeah, so we want it to be collaborative. There's little... Everybody will have little sticker dots. And on one of the breaks, once all these fish charts are filled out, we're going to ask team members to go around and put a sticker by the one that they think would be the highest and best use of our time and resources. So that's kind of an internal, quick, on-the-fly voting just to see where the team's heads at. And they can also have an understanding of how this is hard to... It's hard to choose. We can't work on 20 things. So where do you guys think we need to put the effort? And then at the end of the day, at the very end of the day, I have to decide based on all the feedback from the team and what our resources and capabilities are, then we have to pick three or four. But it's super powerful to have the team involved in that.   0:22:08.4 Andrew Stotz: Yeah, and one of the things about that type of voting is that sometimes people are voting on things that they think they understand what they're voting on and then you find out, actually, maybe not. So one of the fun ones to do in that case is say, okay, if you have one of your ideas up there that wasn't voted for, it could be, and you think it should be, it could be, maybe they didn't understand how you described it or how it's up there. And anybody that wants to make a pitch for that, go ahead.   0:22:37.0 Travis Timmons: Right. I like that.   0:22:37.4 Andrew Stotz: And you'll get a couple zealots saying, "I really think that this one should be up there in a higher priority." And then after that and say, "Okay, anybody want to move one of their dots?" And then that's a fun way.   0:22:52.5 Travis Timmons: I might steal that one. I like that.   0:22:55.6 Andrew Stotz: That's a fun way to say, there's always a second chance, but you got to make your pitch and it's got to convince people to move their dots. So, yep.   0:23:03.4 Travis Timmons: Yeah. I like that. Yeah, so that's how we work on the PDSAs. And it just really at the end of our meeting, I feel like the work we will have done with the homework and the how the agenda is laid out, because we spend a lot of time on the agenda and making some... So we have a timetable on each part of the agenda because my experience has been if you don't plan then things are going to go sideways. Like if you don't have a time commitment to it. And it also gives you a hard break on like, "Okay, guys, there's a couple other things we have to tackle today. This is extremely helpful, but we got to move on to the next thing." But at the end of the meeting, I have the agenda structured in a way that I feel like, I hope I'm not wrong, we'll find out next Friday. I feel like we'll have enough data, enough of the voting, enough of the conversation where I'll be able to report back to the team on like, "Hey this kind of aligns with where I think we need to put our energy and resources. Here's the top three PDSAs we're going to do." And if there was something that had a ton of votes, but we're not going to do that. I also want to be able to share with them why. "Hey, I understand that's big, but we don't have the money to do that one this year," or something like that. Because you don't want to do all this work and then just pick totally something different. And then because then you've lost total trust in your team and that's not good.   0:24:35.6 Andrew Stotz: Yeah. And also, one of the things that I learned after working at investment banks over the years and teaching ethics in finance is that there's firewalls between different parts of an investment bank because they don't want the employees communicating because they're kind of doing conflicting businesses. And so a person working in one area, as I was working in research, is different from a person that's working in investment banking. I may be doing research on a company and saying, "This company is a sell." And that that guy may be doing investment banking and say, "I'm going to help this company raise capital." And we have different objectives. And and they're both legitimate activities that are happening. And we're serving different clients. I'm serving the fund manager who's considering investing. And that person's serving in the investment banking, the CEO of the company and the ownerships and the shareholders of the company. We're serving different clients, but the important thing is that we're not really supposed to know, and we generally didn't, throughout my career, know what the other was doing. But as you go up to the next level of management, they are on both sides of that wall.   0:25:49.0 Andrew Stotz: They must be able to understand what's happening on both sides for various reasons, but most importantly, they have to make decisions about the overall organization based upon a level of knowledge that maybe the people at the lower parts of the organization may be extremely excited and confident and happy about what they're doing, but they can't necessarily connect all those dots. So that's the reason why I would explain in your case that you may have to override something and say, "Look, I've listened, but I do think this is a higher priority because what you guys aren't seeing is how this connects to the implementation of the software."   0:26:25.8 Travis Timmons: Right.   0:26:26.1 Andrew Stotz: "And you're not seeing it because you haven't been doing all of this stuff that I've been doing. And so I'm going to override that one and raise that one. But the other two, let's do those," type of thing.   0:26:36.2 Travis Timmons: Yeah. And that's kind of from a... Totally agree. And that's from a Deming, make the system visible. You also have to explain from a transparency standpoint, in my opinion, anyway, if you're going to go through all this work to your point, everybody doesn't fully understand what our budget is to spend on software next year, for example, and don't expect them to, but I need to know that. So just explaining to them why we're choosing the ones we're choosing, explaining that we can't boil the ocean, and then create the PDSA and we'll give them a promise that we'll report back within... Usually, I report back within a month at the end of the meeting, of the PDSAs build out, you know, what's the aim?   [overlapping conversation]   0:27:22.5 Andrew Stotz: That was my next question. How do you make sure that those PDSAs get done? Because I've left a lot of offsites. I've left them and thought, "Yep, that was interesting. Nothing's going to happen."   0:27:35.8 Travis Timmons: Yeah, no, that's where you start to lose trust from your team as well. It's like if, you know... So we revisit our meetings from last year. Like that'll be part of our recap. Okay, here's what we set out to do last year. So the beginning of the meeting is like, here's the things we talked about we wanted to do and here's what we did. Here's what we still have left to do. But yeah, with a deliverable like this, man, it would be a huge miss on my part if we didn't follow through with PDSAs.   0:28:05.5 Andrew Stotz: And are you managing those or you have one person in-charge of each one of those and then you work with them or what are the mechanics of that?   0:28:15.4 Travis Timmons: Yeah, I think the two larger ones, one of ours is going to include a software change. So that one will be in my wheelhouse for sure.   0:28:22.9 Andrew Stotz: Yeah.   0:28:24.0 Travis Timmons: But yeah, I could envision assigning a champion for two or three of the smaller ones and they won't really be small, they'll be company-wide. The software is a pretty heavy lift.   0:28:36.8 Andrew Stotz: It's interesting because now I can see you've talked about this driving out fear and sharing all information and all of that. And I think that now that I understand your process, I can see that when you get into the hard work of the PDSA, that's going to challenge assumptions, it's going to push the limits, it's going to be testing things that when you get there, everybody knows exactly why that's happening and where that came from. Maybe you can talk a little bit about this concept of one of your goals being driving out fear and using this event as one of the ways to do that.   0:29:17.0 Travis Timmons: Yeah, no, yeah, that's a big piece that I learned from Deming years ago is, people have a lot of fear. What's going on? We don't know. The transparency of this event in and of itself, my experience has been, like, "Oh, I guess we're just talking about everything here, huh?" Putting it out there just makes people comfortable knowing what's going on, what we're working on, what we're not doing as well as we could be and we're aware of it and where it's at in the priority stack. And then also, for five hours they're going to be seeing people speak up. And we call it, "Celebrate the Breakdowns." So from a Dr. Deming perspective, 96, some percent of issues within an organization are due to system issues, not people issues. So they'll start to see, like, hey, when you talk about systems and processes, you can really talk pretty intensely. Very hard to do if you're complaining about how people do things. Right? Because you're... So that system breakdown, we call it Celebrate the Breakdowns, just allows people to be more free and also understand, hey, everybody does show up wanting to do a good job.   0:30:30.7 Travis Timmons: And Travis probably assumes I show up wanting to do a good job. Let's talk about how to make this place better. So that drives out the fear just by making the system visible. And then with the PDSAs, I think it drives out fear from a standpoint of they know when we're going to make a change. This isn't just us shooting from the hip. It's a very organized, methodical, visible way that we know we need to change something. Here's how we're going to do it, and if we're wrong, we'll change it. So that's another way that the PDSA process, my experience has been it also drives out fears because they have a deep understanding of just seeing this entire process. They have confidence, like, "Okay, this isn't just flavor of the month. I'm just going to throw stuff at the wall and see what sticks. This is a big deal. We're going to work on it together. We're going to try it and if it's not going well, we'll try something different collaboratively."   0:31:29.5 Andrew Stotz: I want to wrap it up there and I think... Do you have anything final that you want to add to the process that we've talked about? Is there anything else that people need to know about as they're planning their offsite?   0:31:40.5 Travis Timmons: No, I think we covered quite a bit. I think the big takeaway is it's more work than I think I realized until I had exposure to Deming and some mentors in my life. And it's been a game changer on how much we can accomplish. So the time investment is worth it.   0:31:57.2 Andrew Stotz: And I think we're going to meet again later and talk, and I think we can get an update from you what went well, what do you need to improve, and guide us also as we think about our next offsite, which is pretty exciting.   0:32:11.5 Travis Timmons: Yeah, I look forward to sharing how it went. My hope is I'll report back on at least three PDSAs that we have ready to engage for 2026.   0:32:21.2 Andrew Stotz: I can't wait. Well, Travis, 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. 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."

In this episode, Bill Scherkenbach, one of W. Edwards Deming's closest protégés, and host Andrew Stotz discuss why leadership decisions shape outcomes far more than frontline effort. Bill draws on decades of firsthand experience with Deming and with businesses across industries. Through vivid stories and practical insights, the conversation challenges leaders and learners alike to rethink responsibility, decision-making, and what it truly takes to build lasting quality. Bill's powerpoint is available here. TRANSCRIPT 0:00:02.2 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 discussions with Bill Scherkenbach, a dedicated protégé of Dr. Deming since 1972. Bill met with Dr. Deming more than a thousand times and later led statistical methods and process improvement at Ford and GM at Dr. Deming's recommendation. He authored the Deming Route to Quality and Productivity at Deming's behest and at 79, still champions his mentor's message: Learn, have fun, and make a difference. The discussion for today is, I think we're going to get an answer to this question. And the question is: Where is quality made? Bill, take it away.   0:00:44.9 Bill Scherkenbach: Where is quality made? I can hear the mellifluous doctor saying that. And the answer is: In the boardroom, not on the factory floor. And over and over again, he would say that it's the quality of the decisions that the management make that can far outweigh anything that happens on the shop floor. And when he would speak about that, he would first of all, because he was talking to the auto industry, he would talk about who's making carburetors anymore. "Nobody's making carburetors because it's all fuel injectors," he would say. And anyone who has been following this, another classic one is: Do you ever hear of a bank that failed? Do you think that failed because of mistakes in tellers' windows or calculations of interest? Heck no. But there are a whole bunch of other examples that are even more current, if you will. I mean, although this isn't that current, but Blockbuster had fantastic movies, a whole array of them, the highest quality resolutions, and they completely missed the transition to streaming. And Netflix and others took it completely away from them because of mistakes made in the boardroom. You got more recently Bed Bath & Beyond having a great product, a great inventory.   0:02:51.4 Bill Scherkenbach: But management took their eyes off of it and looked at, they were concerned about stock buybacks and completely lost the picture of what was happening. It was perfect. It was a great product, but it was a management decision. WeWork, another company supplying office places. It was great in COVID and in other areas, but through financial mismanagement, they also ended up going bust. And so there are, I mean, these are examples of failures, but as Dr. Deming also said, don't confuse success with success. If you think you're making good decisions, you got to ask yourself how much better could it have been if you tried something else. So, quality is made in the boardroom, not on the factory floor.   0:04:07.9 Andrew Stotz: I had an interesting encounter this week and I was teaching a class, and there was a guy that came up and talked to me about his company. His company was a Deming Prize from Japan winner. And that was maybe 20, 25 years ago. They won their first Deming Prize, and then subsidiaries within the company won it. So the actual overall company had won something like nine or 10 Deming Prizes over a couple decades. And the president became...   0:04:43.5 Bill Scherkenbach: What business are they in?   0:04:45.5 Andrew Stotz: Well, they're in...   0:04:47.0 Bill Scherkenbach: Of winning prizes?   0:04:48.7 Andrew Stotz: Yeah, I mean, they definitely, the CEO got the distinguished individual prize because he was so dedicated to the teachings of Dr. Deming. And he really, really expanded the business well, the business did well. A new CEO took over 15 years ago, 10 years ago, and took it in another direction. And right now the company is suffering losses and many other problems that they're facing. And I asked the guy without talking about Deming, I just asked him what was the difference between the prior CEO and the current one or the current regimes that have come in. And he said that the prior CEO, it was so clear what the direction was. Like, he set the direction and we all knew what we were doing. And I just thought now as you talk about, the quality is made at the boardroom, it just made me really think back to that conversation and that was what he noticed more than anything. Yeah well, we were really serious about keeping the factory clean or we used statistics or run charts, that was just what he said, I thought that was pretty interesting.   0:06:06.7 Bill Scherkenbach: Absolutely. And that reminds me of another comment that Dr. Deming was vehement about, and that was was the management turnover. Turnovers in boardrooms every 18 months or so, except maybe in family businesses. But that's based on the quality of decisions made in the boardroom. How fast do you want to turn over the CEOs and that C-suite? So it's going to go back to the quality is made in the boardroom.   0:06:50.0 Andrew Stotz: Yeah, and I think maybe it's a good chance for me to share the slide that you have. And let's maybe look at that graphic. Does that makes sense now?   0:07:00.9 Bill Scherkenbach: Sure, for sure.   0:07:02.2 Andrew Stotz: Let's do that. Let's do that. Hold on. All right.   0:07:15.8 Bill Scherkenbach: Okay, okay, okay. You can see on the top left, we'll start the story. I've got to give you a background. This was generated based on my series of inputs and prompts, but this was generated by Notebook LM and based on the information I put in, this is what they came up with.   0:07:48.6 Andrew Stotz: Interesting.   0:07:50.1 Bill Scherkenbach: Based on various information, which I think did a fairly decent job. In any event, we're going to talk about all of these areas, except maybe the one where it says principles for active leadership, because that was the subject of a couple of our vlogs a while ago, and that is the three foundational obligations. And so the thing is that quality, even though Dr. Deming said it was made in the boardroom, one of the problems is that management did not know what questions to ask, and they would go, and Dr. Deming railed against MBWA, management by walking around, primarily because management hadn't made the transition to really take on board what Dr. Deming was talking about in profound knowledge. And that is, as you've mentioned, setting that vision, continually improving around it, and pretty much absolutely essential was to reduce fear within the organization.   0:09:25.9 Bill Scherkenbach: And so management by walking around without profound knowledge, which we've covered in previous talks, only gets you dog and pony shows. And with the fear in the organization, you're going to be carefully guided throughout a wonderful story. I mentioned I was in Disney with some of my granddaughters over the holidays, and they tell a wonderful story, but you don't ever see what's behind the scenery. And management never gets the chance because they really haven't had the opportunity to attain profound knowledge. So that's one of the things. I want to back up a little bit because Dr. Deming would... When Dr. Deming said quality is made at the top, he only agreed to help companies where the top management invited him, he wasn't out there marketing. If they invited him to come in, he would first meet with them and they had to convince him they were serious about participating, if not leading their improvement. And given that, that litmus test, he then agreed to work with them. Very few companies did he agree to on that. And again as we said, the quality of the decisions and questions and passion that determine the successfulness of the company. And so.   0:11:40.0 Andrew Stotz: It made me think about that letter you shared that he was saying about that there was, I think it was within the government and government department that just wasn't ready for change and so he wasn't going to work with it. I'm just curious, like what do you think was his... How did he make that judgment?   0:12:00.0 Bill Scherkenbach: Well, it wasn't high enough. And again, I don't know how high you'd have to go in there. But quite honestly, what we spoke about privately was in politics and in the federal government, at least in the US, things change every four years. And so you have management turnover. And so what one manager, as you described, one CEO is in there and another one comes in and wants to do it their way, they're singing Frank Sinatra's My Way. But that's life….   0:12:49.3 Andrew Stotz: Another great song.   0:12:50.7 Bill Scherkenbach: Another, yes.   0:12:52.1 Andrew Stotz: And it's not like he was an amateur with the government.   0:12:57.5 Bill Scherkenbach: No.   0:13:00.3 Andrew Stotz: He had a lot of experience from a young age, really working closely with the government. Do you think that he saw there was some areas that were worth working or did he just kind of say it's just not worth the effort there or what was his conclusions as he got older?   0:13:16.9 Bill Scherkenbach: Well, as he got older, it might, it was the turnover in management. When he worked for Agriculture, although agriculture is political, and he worked for Census Bureau back when he worked there, it wasn't that political, it's very political now. But there was more a chance for constancy and more of a, their aim was to do the best survey or census that they could do. And so the focus was on setting up systems that would deliver that. But that's what his work with the government was prior to when things really broke loose when he started with Ford and GM and got all the people wanting him in.   0:14:27.0 Andrew Stotz: I've always had questions about this at the top concept and the concept of constancy of purpose. And I'm just pulling out your Deming Route to Quality and Productivity, which, it's a lot of dog ears, but let's just go to chapter one just to remind ourselves. And that you started out with point number one, which was create constancy of purpose towards improvement of product and service with the aim to become competitive, stay in business and provide jobs. One of my questions I always kind of thought about that one was that at first I just thought he was saying just have a constancy of purpose. But the constancy of purpose is improvement of product and service.   0:15:13.6 Bill Scherkenbach: Well, yes and no. I mean, that's what he said. I believe I was quoting what his point number one was. And as it developed, it was very important to add, I believe, point number five on continual improvement. But constancy of purpose is setting the stage, setting the vision if you will, of where you want to take the company. And in Western management, and this is an area where there really is and was a dichotomy between Western and Eastern management. But in Western management, our concept of time was short-term. Boom, boom, boom, boom. And he had a definite problem with that. And that's how you could come up with, well, we're going to go with this fad and that fad or this CEO and that CEO. There was no thinking through the longer term of, as some folks ask, "what is your aim? Who do you think your customer base is now?" don't get suckered into thinking that carburetors are always going to be marketable to that market base. And so that's where he was going with that constancy of purpose. And in the beginning, I think that was my first book you're quoting, but also, in some of his earlier works, he also spoke of consistency of purpose, that is reducing the variation around that aim, that long-term vision, that aim.   0:17:19.2 Bill Scherkenbach: Now, in my second book, I got at least my learning said that you've got to go beyond the logical understanding and your constancy of purpose needs to be a mission, a values and questions. And those people who have who have listened to the the previous vlogs that we've had, those are the physiological and emotional. And I had mentioned, I think, that when when I went to GM, one of the things I did was looked up all the policy letters and the ones that Alfred Sloan wrote had pretty much consistency of three main points. One, make no mistake about it, this is what we're going to do. Two, this is why we're going to do it, logical folks who need to understand that. And to give a little bit of insight on on how he was feeling about it. Sometimes it was value, but those weren't spoken about too much back then. But it gave you an insider view, if you will. And so I looked at that, maybe I was overlooking. But I saw a physiological and emotional in his policy letters.   0:19:00.7 Bill Scherkenbach: And so that's got to be key when you are establishing your vision, but that's only the beginning of it. You have to operationalize it, and this is where management has to get out of the boardroom to see what's going on. Now, that's going to be the predictable, and some of your clients, and certainly the ones over in Asia, are speaking about Lean and Toyota Production System and going to the Gemba and all of those terms. But I see a need to do a reverse Gemba and we'll talk about that.   0:19:49.6 Andrew Stotz: So, I just want to dig deeper into this a little bit just for my own selfish understanding, which I think will help the audience also. Let's go back in time and say that the, Toyota, let's take Toyota as an example because we can say maybe in the 60s or so, they started to really understand that the improvement of product quality, products and service quality and all that was a key thing that was important to them. But they also had a goal of expanding worldwide. And their first step with that maybe was, let's just say, the big step was expanding to the US. Now, in order to expand to the US successfully, it's going to take 10, maybe 20 years. In the beginning, the cars aren't going to fit the market, you're going to have to adapt and all that. So I can understand first, let's imagine that somebody says our constancy of purpose is to continuously improve or let's say, not continuously, but let's just go back to that statement just to keep it clear. Let's say, create constancy of purpose towards improvement of product and service with the aim to become competitive, stay in business and provide jobs.   0:21:07.2 Andrew Stotz: So the core constancy in that statement to me sounds like the improvement. And then if we say, okay, also our vision of where we want to be with this company is we want to capture, let's say, 5% of the US market share within the next 15 years or five or 10 years. So you've got to have constancy of that vision, repeating it, not backing down from it, knowing that you're going to have to modify it. But what's the difference between a management or a leadership team in the boardroom setting a commitment to improvement versus a commitment to a goal of let's say, expanding the market into the US. How do we think about those two.   0:21:53.6 Bill Scherkenbach: Well as you reread what I wrote there, which is Dr. Deming's words and they led into the, I forget what he called it, but he led into the progression of as you improve quality, you improve productivity, you reduce costs.   0:22:33.6 Andrew Stotz: Chain reaction.   0:22:34.5 Bill Scherkenbach: Yeah, the chain reaction. That's a mini version of the chain reaction there. And at the time, that's what people should be signing up for. Now the thing is that doesn't, or at least the interpretations haven't really gone to the improvement of the board's decision-making process. I mean, where he was going for was you want to be able to do your market research because his sampling and doing the market research was able to close the loop to make that production view a system, a closed-loop system. And so you wanted to make sure that you're looking far enough out to be able to have a viable product or service and not get caught up in short-term thinking. Now, but again, short-term is relative. In the US, you had mentioned 10 or 20 years, Toyota, I would imagine they still are looking 100 years out. They didn't get suckered into the over-committing anyway to the electric vehicles. Plug-in hybrids, yes, hybrids yes, very efficient gas motors, yes. But their constancy of purpose is a longer time frame than the Western time frame.   0:24:27.1 Andrew Stotz: Yeah, that was a real attack on the structure that they had built to say when they were being told by the market and by everybody, investors, you've got to shift now, you've got to make a commitment to 100% EVs. I remember watching one of the boardroom, sorry, one of the shareholder meetings, and it's just exhausting, the pressure that they were under.   0:24:55.2 Bill Scherkenbach: Yep, yep. But there... Yeah.   0:25:00.0 Andrew Stotz: If we take a kid, a young kid growing up and we just say, look, your main objective, and my main objective with you is to every day improve. Whatever that is, let's say we're learning science.   0:25:17.3 Bill Scherkenbach: You're improving around your aim. What is your vision? What are you trying to accomplish? And that obviously, if you're you're saying a kid that could change otherwise there'd be an oversupply of firemen.   0:25:38.5 Andrew Stotz: So let's say that the aim was related to science. Let's say that the kid shows a really great interest in science and you're kind of coaching them along and they're like, "Help me, I want to learn everything I can in science." The aim may be a bit vague for the kid, but let's say that we narrow down that aim to say, we want to get through the main topics of science from physics to chemistry and set a foundation of science, which we think's going to take us a year to do that, let's just say. Or whatever. Whatever time frame we come up with, then every day the idea is, how do we number one improve around that aim? Are we teaching the right topics? Also, is there better ways of teaching? Like, this kid maybe learns better in the afternoon and in the morning, whereas another kid I may work with works better in another... And this kid likes five-minute modules and then some practical discussion, this kid likes, an hour of going deep into something and then having an experiment is when we're talking about improvement, is the idea that we're just always trying to improve around that aim until we reach a really optimized system? Is that what we're talking about when we're talking about constancy of purpose when it comes to improving product and service?   0:27:14.4 Bill Scherkenbach: Well there's a whole process that I take my clients through in coming up with their constancy of purpose statement. And the board should be looking at what the community is doing in the next five years, 10 years, where the market is going, where politics is going, all sorts of things. And some of it. I mean, specifically in the science area, it's fairly well recognized that the time of going generation to generation to generation has gone from years to maybe weeks where you have different iterations of technology. And so that's going to complicate stuff quite honestly, because what was good today can be, as Dr. Deming said, the world could change. And that's what you've got to deal with or you're out of business. Or you're out of relevance in what you're studying. And so you have to... If you if you have certain interests, and the interests are driven... It's all going to be internal. Some interests are driven because that's where I hear you can make the most money or that's where I hear you can make the most impact to society or whatever your internal interests are saying that those are key to establishing what your aim is.   0:29:25.7 Andrew Stotz: Okay. You've got some PowerPoints and we've been talking about some of it. But I just want to pull it up and make sure we don't miss anything. I think this is the first text page, maybe just see if there's anything you want to highlight from that. Otherwise we'll move to the next.   0:29:43.0 Bill Scherkenbach: No I think we've we've covered that. Yeah, yeah. And the second page. Yeah, I wanted to talk and I only mentioned it when the Lean folks and the Agile folks talk about Gemba, they're pretty much talking about getting the board out. It's the traditional management by walking around, seeing what happens. Hugely, hugely important. But one of the things, I had one of my clients. Okay, okay. No, that's in the the next one.   0:30:29.4 Andrew Stotz: There you go.   0:30:30.7 Bill Scherkenbach: Okay, yeah. I had one of one of my clients do a reverse Gemba. And that is, that the strategy committee would be coming up with strategies and then handing it off to the operators to execute. And that's pretty much the way stuff was done in this industry and perhaps in many of them. But what we did was we had the operators, the operating committee, the operations committee, sit in as a peanut gallery or a, oh good grief. Well, you couldn't say a thing, you could only observe what they were doing. But it helped the operators better understand and see and feel what the arguments were, what the discussions were in the strategy, so that they as operators were better able to execute the strategy. And so not the board going out and down, but the folks that are below going up if it helps them better execute what's going on. But vice versa, management can't manage the 94%, and Dr. Deming was purposely giving people marbles, sometimes he'd say 93.4%. You know the marble story?   0:32:37.5 Andrew Stotz: I remember that [laughter]. Maybe you should tell that again just because that was a fun one when he was saying to, give them marbles, and they gave me marbles back.   0:32:45.7 Bill Scherkenbach: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, he said there was this professor in oral surgery that said there was a an Asian mouse or cricket, whatever, that would... You put in your mouth and they would eat all of the... Be able to clean the gums of all the bacteria better than anything. And described it in detail. And that question was on the test. Okay, please describe this mouse procedure. And he said all of the people, or a whole bunch of people except one, gave him back exactly step by step that he had taught. And one said, Professor, I've talked to other professors, I've looked around, I think you're loading us, that's what Deming said. And so he made the point that teaching should not be teachers handing out marbles and collecting the same marbles they they handed out. And so to some extent, he was testing, being overly precise.   0:34:12.8 Bill Scherkenbach: He wanted people to look into it, to see, go beyond as you were speaking of earlier, going beyond this shocking statement that there perhaps is some way that that really makes sense. So he wants you to study. Very Socratic in his approach to teaching in my opinion. And any event, management can't understand or make inputs on changing what the various levels of willing workers, and you don't have to be on the shop floor, you can be in the C-suite and be willing workers depending on how your company is operating. Go ahead.   0:35:12.0 Andrew Stotz: So let me... Maybe I can, just for people that don't know, Gemba is a Japanese word that means "the actual place," right? The place where the value is created.   0:35:23.8 Bill Scherkenbach: Sure.   0:35:26.2 Andrew Stotz: And the whole concept of this was that it's kind of almost nonsense to think that you could sit up in an office and run something and never see the location of where the problem's happening or what's going on. And all of a sudden many things become clear when you go to the location and try to dig down into it. However, from Dr. Deming context, I think what you're telling us is that if the leader doesn't have profound knowledge, all they're going to do is go to the location and chase symptoms and disrupt work, ultimately...   0:36:02.0 Bill Scherkenbach: Get the dog and pony shows and all of that stuff. And they still won't have a clue. The thing is...   0:36:08.6 Andrew Stotz: So the objective at the board level, if they were to actually go to the place, the objective is observation of the system, of how management decisions have affected this. What is the system able to produce? And that gives them a deeper understanding to think about what's their next decision that they've got to make in relation to this. Am I capturing it right or?   0:36:40.2 Bill Scherkenbach: Well there's a lot more to it, I think, because top management, the board level, are the ones that set the vision, the mission, the values, the guiding principle, and the questions. And I think it's incumbent on the board to be able to go through the ranks and see how their constancy of purpose, the intended, where they want to take the place is being interpreted throughout the organization because, and I know it's an oversimplification and maybe a broad generalization, but middle management... Well, there are layers of management everywhere based on their aim to get ahead, will effectively stop communication upstream and downstream in order to fill their particular aim of what they want to get out of it. And so this is a chance for the top management to see, because they're doing their work, establishing the vision of the company, which is the mission, values and questions, they really should be able to go layer by layer as they're walking around seeing how those, their constancy, their intended constancy is being interpreted and executed. And so that's where beyond understanding how someone is operating a lathe or an accountant is doing a particular calculation, return on invested capital, whatever.   0:38:47.5 Bill Scherkenbach: Beyond that, I think it's important for management to be able to absolutely see what is happening. But the Gemba that I originally spoke about is just the other way. You've got the strategy people that are higher up, and you have the operations people that are typically, well, they might be the same level, but typically lower. You want the lower people to sit in on some higher meetings so they have a better idea of the intent, management's intent in this constancy of purpose. And that will help them execute, operationalize what management has put on paper or however they've got it and are communicating it. It just helps. So when I talk about Gemba, I'm talking the place where the quality is made or the action is. As the boardroom, you need to be able to have people understand and be able to see what's going on there, and all the way up the chain and all the way down the chain.   0:40:14.4 Andrew Stotz: That's great one. I'm just visualizing people in the operations side thinking, we've got some real problems here and we don't really understand it. We've got to go to the actual place, and that's the boardroom[laughter]. It's not the factory line.   0:40:31.7 Bill Scherkenbach: Yes. Absolutely. And if the boardroom says you're not qualified, then shame on you, the boardroom, are those the people you're hiring? So no, it goes both ways, both ways.   0:40:46.8 Andrew Stotz: Now, you had a final slide here. Maybe you want to talk a little bit about some of the things you've identified here.   0:40:53.4 Bill Scherkenbach: Okay, that's getting back to, in the logical area of this TDQA is my cycle: Theory, question, data, action. And it's based on Dr. Deming and Shewhart and Lewis saying, where do questions come from? They're based on theory. What do you do with questions? Well, the answers to questions are your data. And you're just not going to do nothing with data, you're supposed to take action. What are you going to do with it? And so the theory I'm going to address, the various questions I've found helpful in order to, to some extent, make the decisions better, the ability to operationalize them better and perhaps even be more creative, if you will. And so one of the questions I ask any team is, have you asked outside experts their opinion? Have you included them? Have you included someone to consistently, not consistently, but to take a contrarian viewpoint that their job in this meeting is to play the devil's advocate? And the theory is you're looking for a different perspective as Pete Jessup at Ford came up with that brilliant view of Escher's.   0:42:47.1 Bill Scherkenbach: Different perspectives are going to help you make a better decision. And so you want to get out of the echo chamber and you want to be challenged. Every team should be able to have some of these on there. What's going to get delayed? The underlying theory or mental model is, okay, you don't have people sitting around waiting for this executive committee to come up with new things, time is a zero-sum game. What's going to get delayed and what are they willing to get delayed if this is so darn important to get done? Decision criteria. I've seen many teams where they thought that the decision would be a majority rule. They discuss and when it came down to submit it, they said, "no, no, this VP is going to make the decision." And so that completely sours the next team to do that. And so you have to be, if you're saying trust, what's your definition of trust? If the people know that someone is going to make the decision with your advice or the executive's going to get two votes and everyone else gets one, or it's just simple voting.   0:44:35.3 Bill Scherkenbach: The point is that making the decision and taking it to the next level, the theory is you've got to be specific and relied on. Team turnover, fairly simple. We spoke about executive turnover, which was a huge concern that Dr. Deming had about Western management. But at one major auto company, we would have product teams and someone might be in charge of, be a product manager for a particular model car. Well, if that person was a hard charger and it took product development at the time was three and a half years, you're going to get promoted from a director level to a VP halfway through and you're going to screw up the team, other team members will be leaving as well because they have careers. You need to change the policy just to be able to say, if you agree that you're going to lead this team, you're going to lead it from start to finish and to minimize the hassle and the problems and the cost of turnover, team turnover. And this is a short list of stuff, but it's very useful to have a specific "no-fault policy."   0:46:20.6 Bill Scherkenbach: And this is where Dr. Deming speaks about reducing fear. I've seen teams who know they can really, once management turns on the spigot and says, let's really do this, this is important, the team is still hesitant to really let it go because that management might interpret that as saying, "well, what are you doing, slacking off the past year?" As Deming said, "why couldn't you do that if you could do it with no method, why didn't you do it last year?" but the fear in the organization, well, we're going to milk it. And so all of these things, it helps to be visible to everyone.   0:47:23.0 Andrew Stotz: So, I guess we should probably wrap up and I want to go back to where we started. And first, we talked about, where is quality made? And we talked about the boardroom. Why is this such an important topic from your perspective? Why did you want to talk about it? And what would you say is the key message you want to get across from it?   0:47:47.1 Bill Scherkenbach: The key message is that management thinks quality's made in operations. And it's the quality of the... I wanted to put a little bit more meat, although there's a lot more meat, we do put on it. But the quality of the organization, I wanted to make the point depends on the quality of the decisions, that's their output that top leaders make, whether it's the board or the C-suite or any place making decisions. The quality of your decisions.   0:48:28.9 Andrew Stotz: Excellent. And I remember, this reminds me of when I went to my first Deming seminar back in 1990, roughly '89, maybe '90. And I was a young guy just starting as a supervisor at a warehouse in our Torrance plant at Pepsi, and Pepsi sent me there. And I sat in the front row, so I didn't pay attention to all the people behind me, but there was many people behind me and there was a lot of older guys. Everybody technically was pretty much older than me because when I was just starting my career. And it was almost like these javelins were being thrown from the stage to the older men in the back who were trying to deal with this, and figure out what's coming at them, and that's where I kind of really started to understand that this was a man, Dr. Deming, who wasn't afraid to direct blame at senior management to say, you've got to take responsibility for this. And as a young guy seeing all kinds of mess-ups in the factory every day that I could see, that we couldn't really solve. We didn't have the tools and we couldn't get the resources to get those tools.   0:49:47.9 Andrew Stotz: It just really made sense to me. And I think the reiteration of that today is the idea, as I'm older now and I look at what my obligation is in the organizations I'm working at, it's to set that constancy of purpose, to set the quality at the highest level that I can. And the discussion today just reinforced it, so I really enjoyed it.   0:50:11.2 Bill Scherkenbach: Well, that's great. I mean, based on that observation, Dr. Deming many times said that the master chef is the person who knows no fear, and he was a master chef putting stuff together. And we would talk about fairly common knowledge that the great artists, the great thinkers, the great producers were doing it for themselves, it just happened that they had an audience. The music caught on, the poetry caught on, the painting caught on, the management system caught on. But we're doing it for ourselves with no fear. And that's the lesson.   0:51:11.8 Andrew Stotz: Yeah. Well, I hope that there's a 24-year-old out there right now listening to this just like I was, or think about back in 1972 when you were sitting there listening to his message. And they've caught that message from you today. So I appreciate it, and I want to say on behalf of everyone at the Deming Institute, of course, thank you so much for this discussion and for people who are listening and interested, remember to go to deming.org to continue your journey. And of course, you can reach Bill on LinkedIn, very simple. He's out there posting and he's responding. So feel free if you've got a question or comment or something, reach out to him on LinkedIn and have a discussion. This is your host, Andrew Stotz, and I'm going to leave you with one of my favorite quotes from Dr. Deming, and it doesn't change. It is, "people are entitled to joy in work."

Lou Ann Lathrop is an ASQ fellow, ASQ board of directors' treasurer for 2025, and past chair of ASQ Automotive Division. She also recently wrote an article for Quality about Dr. Deming's teachings. Sponsored by: MAESTRO: The first all-digital, fully connected CMM built for the future.

What happens when an entire company learns to see its work as a system? In this episode, Travis Timmons reveals how his team uses Deming-inspired pre-work, collaboration, and the Red Bead Experiment to make their offsite energizing and impactful. It's a practical, engaging look at how clarity and shared purpose can transform improvement efforts and build a happy workplace. TRANSCRIPT 0:00:02.2 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 Travis Timmons, who is the founder and owner of Fitness Matters, an Ohio-based practice specializing in the integration of physical therapy and personalized wellness. For 13 years he's built his business on Dr. Deming's teachings. His hope is simple. The more companies that bring joy to work through Deming's principles, the more likely his kids will one day work at one. The topic for today is bringing systems thinking to your next team off-site. Travis, take it away.   0:00:41.5 Travis Timmons: Hey Andrew, great to be with you again. And, yeah, looking forward to sharing a little bit about how we're preparing for our next annual team meeting. And focus for this meeting is going to be, well, a little back story, we had three of our newer leadership members attend some Deming learning, some Deming education. And the biggest comeback, the biggest aha moment they had was they now better understood what I meant by the system view and systems thinking, which got me thinking, boy, it would be great if more of our team fully understood what the system meant, how to visualize it, and then how that further dives into the Deming System of Profound Knowledge. So that's what we've been working on. Our offsite is January 30th, so about a month away. We're about six weeks into preparation for that, kind of going back and forth on what needs to be in there. And the biggest thing, the first exercise, they're going to have homework to do coming into the meeting. We're going to have them kind of diagram what they think the system is. What is the Fitness Matters system? And we're going to prime them a little bit.   0:01:51.7 Travis Timmons: We're going to be doing it via a fishbone chart is the method we've decided to do that with. So, yeah, very excited about that. And it's a great way to get the team working on the work together and making sure they have an appreciation, as Dr. Deming would say, an appreciation for the system. And if you don't know what the system means, it's hard to appreciate it. So, trying to make more team members understand that.   0:02:14.7 Andrew Stotz: And what you're describing, I think is like pre-work that you're asking them to do?   0:02:21.1 Travis Timmons: Yes, yeah. So we'll have we've been spending the last few weeks on making sure we get the right questions in there because we want them to come in prepared but not feel like it's overwhelming or not feel like it's too heavy, if you will. But we want them to do the work so that they can come in and we can dive deeper once we get into some of the teachings and making the visible system of what everything looks like for them. So, that's kind of what we're working on.   0:02:49.1 Andrew Stotz: Did you guide them on, "Here's a fishbone chart, here's how to use it," and then, "Here's the system"? Or do you want them to just understand the fishbone chart and how to use it, and then, "Okay, don't talk to anybody else, you come up with what your vision of the system is"?   0:03:05.0 Travis Timmons: Yeah, so we have a total of seven locations. So what we are going to put in the homework is a one-page definition on what a fishbone is, how to use it and maybe pre-fill in a few of the primary bones, if you will.   0:03:20.3 Andrew Stotz: Yep.   0:03:20.8 Travis Timmons: Just to give them a primer. But we do hope they work together around the lunch tables and the break rooms, and the local leadership will be there to kind of guide them. Because that's where a lot of the collaboration and culture starts to happen and continues to build. So yeah, there'll be some learning about what is a fishbone, how to use it, because several have probably not used one before. And then we'll prime it a little bit, but then we want them to work on it, kind of kind of work, struggle a little bit to see, like, "All right, what's been invisible to me that happens behind the scenes, and it just happens." And make sure that then we can kind of dive deeper into when we say somebody has a good visit at Fitness Matters, how does that happen? And it's everything from first contact to insurance, to in the clinics, to how they pay their bill. So, just making sure that somebody understands what piece of the puzzle they play and then how it all works together. So we don't have silos, is one of the things we try to avoid, having silos within the organization.   0:04:25.8 Andrew Stotz: So, just so that the listener and viewer can implement what they're learning from you just to be clear. So, you're giving them the fishbone chart, teaching them about it, maybe filling in some of the main bones, as you said. And then just to be clear, you talked about them discussing things. Are you saying when you're working on your fishbone, talk to others about it and try to figure that out together?   0:04:51.7 Travis Timmons: Yeah.   0:04:52.5 Andrew Stotz: Okay.   0:04:52.6 Travis Timmons: Yeah, we want them collaborating and there's going to be people who wear different hats in our company. Some are physical therapists, some are Pilates instructors, some are client care coordinators, some are billing managers. So it'll be interesting to see what they bring to the table. And part of it is we don't want them to struggle. We want to kind of prime the pump, but we also want them to see the big picture. So that's why we're doing the fishbone methodology is so we can see it when we get to the actual team meeting. And then we're going to work with them on, then you can do fishbones of individual processes or individual pieces of the system.   0:05:33.1 Andrew Stotz: And, I mean, the reason why I'm asking this is because something like a system, for some people, they understand it, but for other people, they'll just get lost. And then what they bring to the meeting is not really some deep thinking on the topic, but, "Here's my best idea of what you meant."   0:05:50.1 Travis Timmons: Right. Right. Yeah, and we assume like some people may not have the opportunity based on how their schedule works to do much interaction and collaboration, others will have more. It'll be interesting to see what each location comes up with. Our hope is it's similar because we do spend time with the onboarding process talking about Dr. Deming, but we don't currently have a full fishbone diagram in our onboarding manual, for example. And that might change after this offsite. We might add that. You might find that that's a very good idea.   0:06:23.8 Andrew Stotz: Okay, so you got them working on their pre-work, which is the systems thinking, lay out your system in a fishbone chart. What's next?   0:06:35.0 Travis Timmons: So they'll have about two and a half weeks to work on that, heading up to the team offsite. And then we have a four and a half hour agenda for the team offsite. And first part of the phase is we're going to have them break out into groups, six groups. We have a total of 50 people there. So, six tables, and we're going to have each of them with posty notes. We're going to have the fishbone, like the bones there, and they're going to use posty notes to kind of fill in the system. That'll kind of be activity one. We're going to talk about what their learnings were from the homework, what were their aha moments or things they hadn't considered or complexities they didn't realize existed. Talk about that for about a half hour, 45 minutes. And then we're going to take a little break and come back and Kelly Allen's going to be there. He's going to walk our entire team through the red bead experiment, which is one of my favorite in-person Deming exercises. So we're going to go through the Red Bead experiment. And if people don't, that's probably too long of a conversation to explain what that is on this conversation, but opportunity there then to show where there are kind of defects in the system, if you will. So the big thing we're working on for this team offsite beyond system view is how do we improve arrival rate? So what arrival rate is in our industry is how many of our scheduled visits, whether it be for personal training, Pilates, physical therapy, how many of the scheduled visits show up? So a lot that goes into why do they show up? Are they scheduled appropriately? Do they understand their billing? Do they have a good experience? Is it easy to do the scheduling? So that's what's going to be our example of a red bead in the Red Bead experiment. So yeah, going to spend about an hour on the Red Bead experiment. And then myself and our director of operations are then going to, at the end of the red bead, when Kelly debriefs what we just saw happen and people feel the angst of people that, you know, put the paddle in and keep pulling out red beads, even though they were offered bonuses and they just can't quite do it. Talk about how that correlates to our system.   0:08:55.9 Travis Timmons: What are our red beads and what can we impact within the system to have a positive impact on less red beads in the system?   0:09:05.5 Andrew Stotz: And just to go back to one thing, you mentioned a total of 50 people. Is this a total, this is a total company offsite or a leadership team offsite?   0:09:13.5 Travis Timmons: It's going to be the entire company. So what we've found is, I think there's just so much value in everybody on the team understanding what's happening. They don't have to be an expert in all of it, but they need to, using Dr. Deming's term appreciate the system.   0:09:30.9 Andrew Stotz: Yep.   0:09:31.4 Travis Timmons: And appreciate the complexities and appreciate their role in it and everybody else's role. And it also allows some opportunities for sure. There's going to be team members that could be brand new to us six months in. When we make everything visible, they're going to have some fresh eyes and point something out to us that we've always done it that way. So we're going to, let's keep doing it that way and they're going to point it out to us and say that's not a good idea.   0:10:02.7 Andrew Stotz: And you've chosen four and a half hours. Sometimes you could look at that and think, that's a long time. And other times you look at and think, that is such a short amount of time. How did you come upon the time?   0:10:15.2 Travis Timmons: So, a lot of feedback from the team, to be honest with you. So there were, early on there were years where we would do an all day. And I got feedback that, hey Travis, we know you love all this stuff. We don't love working on systems quite as much as you do. So how about a half a day? So a half a day seemed to be about right as long as we did the pre-work. So what we found is if we didn't do the pre-work, then there's just so much wasted time getting everybody kind of up to speed on what we want to work on that day. So the team is all kind of, we come to a mutual agreement of like, hey, if you guys will spend extra time on putting the pre-work together, you'll agree to do it. And then we'll agree to have a four and a half hour all-in meeting, gas pedal down and then we're going to, you'll have a celebration dinner at the end of the meeting. So that's what we do.   0:11:08.6 Andrew Stotz: Sounds like you're still getting eight hours out of them. I mean, when you think about it, it's hard to go into something without putting some time aside. And what I'm hearing here is that this is also a very narrowly focused event and that I could imagine the mistake that many people make is, oh, we want to talk about that and we want to talk about that. And don't forget about that. We got everybody together, we might as well talk about that.   0:11:37.0 Travis Timmons: Yeah. Yeah, it's hard to narrow it down to, okay, what are the two or three things that we need to make sure we accomplish in this meeting? So one of the things we have in our meeting, I learned this from Kelly and Ray Kroc, another mentor of mine. We have a big whiteboard that we call the parking lot. And if somebody brings up an idea that's a good one, but we don't have the time to tackle that day, we just go right on the parking lot and tackle it later in the year. But yeah, that's part of leadership's responsibility and feedback from the team is, all right, we got four and a half hours. What are the top one or two things we need to work on as a team? And then that pre-work from a culture standpoint, people tuning in if they're listening to this, one of the things I'm sure everybody hears, you have to have a culture where people have a voice. That's probably one of the things people get most frustrated about when we hire from other organizations. They don't have a voice. They just got to show up and whatever happens, happens.   0:12:42.5 Travis Timmons: And that can suck the life out of you pretty quick. So I've never had anybody do anything other than be excited about the homework. You'll see them in the break room talking about it. It just brings a lot of energy. And folks that have never done an offsite with us before, I always get the question, what are we going to talk about for four and a half hours? What could we possibly talk about for four and a half hours? And then at the end of that they're like, that was amazing. We didn't have enough time. So, kind of a delicate balance there, but we've landed on four and a half for our current size and what we try to accomplish.   0:13:20.9 Andrew Stotz: And the next question is I've sat through a lot of offsites over the years and you end it by going, that was awesome, now let's get back to work.   0:13:32.4 Travis Timmons: Yes. So we always do a wrap up on what are the deliverables. We let them know up front kind of the expectation of we may, we'll probably not have everything fully decided at the end of the day. The purpose of the day is to get feedback from the entire team. And then my goal, and we'll tell them this up front, or I should say aim, not goal. We'll get in trouble with Dr. Deming there, but is to have two to three PDSAs to walk away with. So we wrap it up, kind of report back on what we've all been working on for the day. And then we let them know we're going to report back in the coming one to two weeks on big picture items and then kind of continue to give the team feedback on here's what we did, here's what we worked on, here's what we're now going to implement. Because you're right, you go to a lot of these meetings, a lot of good ideas are tossed around and then absolutely nothing happens. And then when team members see that happen a few times in a row, then they just stop working on the work. So, yeah.   0:14:41.0 Andrew Stotz: I have a client of mine that he does offsites. I think it's every six months. And he does it only with his management team that's to be clear. And that's about roughly 15 people for his business. And he picks a pretty unique location each time. So it's... And it's usually a couple of days, which I would say with a management team, you maybe make more sense than with the whole company. But he has something interesting that kind of ties in with your work. He has me come occasionally and give a presentation and talk about either Deming or some other principles. But in the mornings at 7:00 A.M. they all meet at the gym. And he has trainers and then they go outside usually, if they're at the beach, they go to the beach. And then they have activities that they do together where they sweat and exercise all of them together. And I just felt like that was so unique. And I felt like, I don't know, if I was an employee, I would be like, oh, I don't want to, why do I have to?   0:16:03.4 Andrew Stotz: I could imagine that feeling, but I just felt like he really left the whole event every time as people really connected. And I just thought that was an interesting activity, it just made me think about.   0:16:17.8 Travis Timmons: Yeah. Yeah, no, I think one of the things I've learned over the years is the less I'm up speaking to the team and the more the team is working on breakout. So I plan on out of the four and a half hours, I hope to not be speaking to the team for more than 20 minutes. And just let the work happen because if I'm up there talking for three hours and they're just listening that's another great way to probably kill morale if they're not working on the work together.   0:16:49.6 Andrew Stotz: And so just to rehash what you're talking about, about a four and a half hour meeting, you got pre-work. It's focused on one thing, which is understanding the system. Then you're going to have people talk to each other with this pre-work and then come to it with their own ideas. You're going to put them in groups and do post-it note types of things to try to figure it out, you're going to do it in groups, I'm assuming, for the post-it notes? Is that what you said or is it everybody?   0:17:18.3 Travis Timmons: Yeah, we're going to have them stay with the same group of six because as we work through the process of the larger fishbone, then there's six key elements or six key pieces that I want to make sure we identify. And then I want to have, later in the day, we're going to do a fishbone specifically of each part of that and see if we can identify two to three PDSAs out of those six that we really can have a big impact on whether it's through technology optimization, better training opportunities, better defining operational definitions. Those are the three key areas that I'm assuming based on where I'm seeing things from my seat. That's, I hope, the direction I think we're going to go. But we'll see what the team comes up with.   0:18:09.3 Andrew Stotz: And one of the things that inevitably comes up with the concept of systems thinking is what's a system? You know, come on, for me, it's this and that and for another, it could be the whole world and we could, you know, how do you help them understand system, but also how do you guide what is the system?   0:18:33.9 Travis Timmons: Yeah, I mean, it's tough, right? Because there are things that are fully under our control within our system, like the software we use, the people on our team. So we talk about things in and out of our control. Things out of our control are health insurance companies. Right? But they're part of our, they are part of our system. We interact with them every day, but we have zero real control over decisions they make. Referral sources are another example of... So we talk about the inputs that are coming into our system but not part of Fitness Matters. So it's internal and external conversations, we get into that quite a bit. And then individual...   0:19:13.5 Andrew Stotz: What about people that are trying to narrow it to say, my system is a much smaller thing. How do I think about system?   0:19:24.0 Travis Timmons: Yeah, yeah, we get into that a little bit because you get a lot of that, right? People just want to optimize what they do and everything else will be fine. That's one of the hopes of making the system visible. We get into tampering, system capability and tampering is one of the ways we address that.   0:19:42.7 Andrew Stotz: Right.   0:19:42.8 Travis Timmons: So if somebody says, hey, I just want my little world to work this way and if the front desk could put patients on my schedule this way and I could make my schedule work this way, and I want a 15-minute break here and like, it's like, no, no, this has to work well for everybody. And when they understand an appreciation for how it all works together, then we found they're much more on board with working on being a part of a team, getting their head up a little bit and looking around and understanding patients don't come in just because you're a great therapist or you're a great Pilates instructor or just because the front desk process goes really well. They come in because everything works. And patients and clients can feel that. So we really try to educate them on just kind of that feeling of, is everybody here getting along? Does it feel professional in here? Does it feel like they care about me when I walk in? And it can't just be one person out of 15 in a building caring about them and paying attention to them as the client.   0:20:50.3 Travis Timmons: So I don't know if that answers your question, but we get into kind of why that system visibility is so important. And for them to be successful, the entire system has to be successful. And if you optimize it for one person, that just doesn't happen.   0:21:05.5 Andrew Stotz: Yeah, I like the system visibility that just brings that awareness. One other question is, you talked about a target, how do we improve the arrival rate and how many scheduled visits show up? You've already decided this as a core metric for the business before you've gone into this offsite. It's not something that's up for discussion in this offsite. Correct?   0:21:30.0 Travis Timmons: Right.   0:21:30.4 Andrew Stotz: Okay.   0:21:30.6 Travis Timmons: Yeah, it's the, kind of we... You know, there's a book out there, the One Thing, I think it's called. It's sort of like, what's the one kind of aim or target that we think we need to, from a system view, have a positive impact on in 2026? And that arrival rate is something we study weekly, monthly, daily, really. So we know what historical trends are. And if you look at a control chart view from Deming, the same thing happens every month. And it's like, okay, we have to do something different with our system if we're going to move that. And what are those two or three things we need to do? But yeah, to answer your question, myself and the leadership team came up with like, that's the one thing we got to tackle this year. We have to move that one because it's really been the same basic number, that arrival rate percentage since COVID hit. We really haven't had that fully recover since COVID. And it's like, okay, we've got to get that. We're already ahead of national average by a long shot but we can do better, I feel confident of that. So that's what our metric is.   0:22:47.0 Andrew Stotz: Yeah, that's interesting because you start, I'm sure with, how do we improve ourselves internally so that the experience internally and all of that. How do we have best practices in what we do? But then this one is, okay, how do we accelerate this pipeline feeding into our business? How do we make sure it's as smooth and as efficient as possible from the moment that somebody starts working with us? The easy stuff for us, meaning you, is doing the work at our location.   0:23:22.1 Travis Timmons: Right. And one of the things, just to make sure our team understands again from a system standpoint and Dr. Deming talks a lot about psychology, but we could have a great onboarding experience for a patient. First two or three sessions could be amazing. Greatest physical therapist, greatest personal training experience they've ever had. And then they get their first invoice and they're shocked or don't understand it, and then they stop coming in. So just making sure everybody understands all that goes into, again, our operational definition of a good visit means the entire system has to go well. And most people have a hard time wrapping their head around until they are shown it. I didn't fully appreciate it till I was shown, so, when you see it all come together I think they'll have a better appreciation for why we spend so much time making sure their benefits are understood by the patient. Because patients don't understand health insurance. They just don't. Everybody says, well, it's their responsibility. I'm like, well, that's nice, but they don't understand it. So, that's part of our system too, to your point earlier. Like, that's part of our system, patients don't understand their health insurance.   0:24:43.0 Andrew Stotz: One of the great questions to think about on this is, what if we never lost a customer? You know, what would our business look like today if we never lost a customer? You know, it may be that they're in the physical therapy business, the process is run, the person is improved. They don't need to come back. Great. You haven't lost them, you've achieved the goal. But we... And in the case of my coffee business, we lose a lot of our customers to competitors, and we're constantly back and forth, taking them from competitors, they're taking them from us. Whoever's gaining market share is getting a little bit more than the competitors because of what they've done. But what if we never lost a customer?   0:25:38.4 Travis Timmons: Yeah, that's a great way to look at it. And that's one of the other metrics that we really measure. And that's why arrival rate is the thing we're going after because there's a strong correlation between arrival rate. So they might cancel a visit but then come for all the rest, or they might cancel two, but then come for all the rest. Strong correlation to arrival rate and a high outcome and they go home and they're better, to your point.   0:26:04.3 Andrew Stotz: Yeah.   0:26:05.7 Travis Timmons: But the industry data right now is pretty poor in physical therapy, for example. Current data shows that 80% of patients that start don't finish their plan of care. That's horrible. [laughter]   0:26:19.8 Andrew Stotz: Yeah, it's not just that industry. I mean, I do a lot of courses that I moved online and if you do just a standalone on demand course, the average in the industry is 90% of people do not complete that course.   0:26:36.0 Travis Timmons: Wow. Yeah.   0:26:36.8 Andrew Stotz: And so I asked the question, how do we improve that? And I was able to get to about 50%, but it was basically designing a cohort-based course, guiding them, dripping content, holding their hands, holding them accountable, having all of those different things, but then my goal in my teaching is to deliver the transformation. It's not just to deliver the information. And this way I was able to get closer to my objective, which is the transformation, not the information. So, yeah. Well, if you want to wrap up, any last things you want to say about it and then we'll wrap up this great discussion.   0:27:20.4 Travis Timmons: Yeah. No, I mean, it's been fun working on this offsite. I think one of the things I've learned through the Deming journey, and preparing for these offsites as a leader, a lot of the work... Most of the work happens before the offsite. And I've been to offsites, I'm sure you have too, where there's a very little preparation put in by leadership. And just some slide decks put together. So that's one of the things I've found through the Deming journey, is appreciation and who's responsible for the system, at the end of the day, it's me, something I take very seriously. So the pre-work and having a process by which to, by what method, something I've heard many, many times, by what method are you going to have this offsite? But the pre-work, if somebody's out there looking at kind of starting offsite or they have had offsites and they haven't gone well kind of to your point earlier for your online learning modules or consulting that you do, it's like, but what's the outcome? So if these meetings don't produce meaningful outcomes, then it's a waste of time and resources.   0:28:42.8 Travis Timmons: So we take this very seriously leading up to the meeting. It's hours and hours and hours of prep time. And then the offsite day is kind of almost relaxing for me. I'm just capturing data as the team comes in, so it's fun. It's a lot of fun. Then we leave with a PDSA or two.   0:28:59.4 Andrew Stotz: This is great. Well, I really appreciate this discussion and getting down into the weeds is I think very valuable for all of us as we all try to continue to implement the teachings of Dr. Deming. So, Travis, 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. This is your host, Andrew Stotz, and I'll leave you with one of my favorite quotes from Dr. Deming, which is, "People are entitled to joy in work."

Thanks to our Partner, Pico TechnologyWatch Full Video EpisodeComebacks. Rechecks. Catastrophic parts failures. The stuff that makes everyone's stomach drop. Matt makes the case that a big part of management's day-to-day job is not “policing people,” but acting like an investigator—leading with genuine curiosity to figure out what actually happened and what should change.Using Dr. W. Edwards Deming's framework, Matt breaks problems into two buckets:Common cause: Variation that's built into the system (processes, tools, training, information flow, software, vendors, documentation, workflow chaos, etc.). These problems are repeatable—and if you don't change the system, they'll happen again.Special cause: A true one-off—rare, hard to predict, not systemic. Sometimes the correct response is support, not a giant policy overhaul.The goal: build trust, reduce fear, and improve the shop over time through “constancy of purpose”—not knee-jerk blame.Key Talking Points & Takeaways1) Management's role when things go wrongBe an investigator, not a prosecutor.Start with: What happened? Why did it happen? What made it easier to fail than succeed?2) Deming's lens: common cause vs. special causeMost problems are common-cause (system-driven), not “someone screwed up.”Mislabeling causes creates chaos:Treating common-cause problems like special-cause ones = scapegoating, fear, repeated failures.Treating special-cause problems like common-cause ones = overcorrecting, unnecessary rules, wasted effort.3) Examples of common-cause “system” failures (shop edition)Torque wrench out of calibration.Scan tool software out of date / tooling gaps.No real shop management system (handwritten tickets, misreads, manual re-entry).Process interruptions / constant context switching.Cheap unknown parts sources creating avoidable risk.Lack of SOPs, training, or accessible info.4) What a real special-cause looks likeA normally reliable part fails unexpectedly (the one “bad water pump” out of hundreds).A rare freak mistake by a trusted specialist with no obvious systemic trigger.Response: support the person, document it, monitor trends—don't build policy off a unicorn.5) The trust factor

Travis Timmons shares with host Andrew Stotz how a decade of frustration running his physical therapy practice turned into joy once he discovered Deming's philosophy and embraced systems thinking. Through PDSA cycles, clearer processes, and genuine team involvement, he transformed Fitness Matters from chaotic growth to a scalable organization getting stellar outcomes. His story shows how small businesses can create stability, joy in work, and remarkable results by improving the system rather than pushing harder.   TRANSCRIPT   0:00:02.1 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 here with featured guest Travis Timmons. Travis, are you ready to tell us about your Deming journey?   0:00:19.7 Travis Timmons: Hey Andrew, thanks for having me. And yeah, very excited to share our journey and how impactful it's been on both our company, but also me personally and my family. So, super excited to kind of share where we started before Deming and where we're at today. So I'll just dive right in if that sounds like a good...   0:00:39.9 Andrew Stotz: Yeah. And I think just for the audience here, I'll just mention that Travis is physical therapist, founder and president of Fitness Matters in Columbus, Ohio, going on his 27th year of business. And you know, you and I have had some discussions. You've had a lot of great things that you've written and we've gone through and I think it's really an exciting story, particularly for a small mid sized business owner who's just frustrated as hell that things aren't going the way that they want. And I think your frustration a long time ago was a driving force. So I'm excited for you to share your story. So yeah, take it away.   0:01:22.6 Travis Timmons: Yeah, very excited. Yeah, 2000 is when we started, January 2000. So coming up on 27 years, as you mentioned, do physical therapy and wellness. And the first 10 years I was in business, pretty good at being a physical therapist. Started my own business and had no idea how to run a business. I knew a lot about physical therapy, but just kind of shooting from the hip in regard to business. Spent about a decade struggling, frustrated. We were growing, but growing slowly, growing chaotically. No process, it was just a, it was a heavy burden, to be honest with you. We were growing, but it was kind of Herculean effort on my part.   0:02:10.1 Andrew Stotz: I'm just curious how you were feeling at that time. Like there's gotta be a better way or this is the way business is and I just gotta muscle through this or how were you feeling at the time?   0:02:21.0 Travis Timmons: I was feeling frustrated and isolated. Didn't quite know where to turn. Yeah, I guess that's how, and just a burden. Didn't want to let the team down, I did not want the business to fail. I knew we had something different to offer. Just really had no idea how to scale that in a professional way. And along the journey was very fortunate to have a client who had a very successful business, took me under his wing. Ray Crook is his name. Started mentoring me and as luck would have it, he was familiar with Dr. Deming and a very long story short, after several meetings with him over time, some mentoring, I'd read the book along the way, the E-Myth Revisited and had some learnings from that book that really jumped out at me and came to the conclusion, both with reading that book and some feedback from Ray of basically, hey, it's time to grow up and turn this into a real business. If you're going to do this, let's do it right. And at that, around that time he introduced me to Kelly Allen with the Deming Institute. And you know, so we were 10 years into some chaos, had really no process, just would try stuff, see if it stuck or didn't.   0:03:43.5 Travis Timmons: If that didn't work, didn't really have any way to measure if stuff was working well. So really just a lot of chaos. And became introduced to Deming through Kelly Allen about 10 to 11 years into our journey and man, was that a breath of fresh air in terms of like having a direction to go in. After a few meetings with Kelly, him getting a better understanding of what was important to me, I think him just really understanding that I was serious about wanting to turn our organization into a large, professionally run and well run organization that would have a positive impact on people's lives, both team members and clients. I think he kind of, I think that we were so bad off he took pity on me to begin with, just to be honest with you, and he was like, man, this guy needs a lot of help. He could do some good in the world with what the services they have to offer. But if he doesn't figure out how to run a business professionally, they're never going to scale.   0:04:44.0 Andrew Stotz: And it's interesting that you reached out. I mean, there's a lot of people that are stuck in that situation and they really don't, either they don't reach out or they're afraid to reach out or you know, maybe they think there's no solution or nobody's going to help me. And you know, certainly when you're small, you also don't have huge budgets to hire people to come in and fix your business. You know, I'm just curious, like what drove you to even reach out?   0:05:09.8 Travis Timmons: I think I was fortunate enough to, A, have the mentor with Ray. And then secondly, have always been a believer in you got to check your ego at the door and know that you don't know everything. I think I've seen Business owners that are afraid to admit they don't know everything and so they keep things insulated and that just doesn't get you anywhere.   0:05:35.7 Andrew Stotz: Yeah.   0:05:36.3 Travis Timmons: So I just was fortunate kind of how I was raised as arrogance isn't a good thing, so check your ego at the door and learn from, learn from people smarter than you. And so I kind of took that fully at heart and like, all right, I have no idea how to run a business. I need to learn how to do that from really smart people. Read a lot of business books over the years, but the Deming philosophy, when I was introduced to that at the two and a half day seminar, went to that. I got to the Deming two and a half day in, I think that was 2013. So I was 13 years into the entire journey by the time I had met with Kelly, done some learning. And then at a time where the Deming two and a half day was offered in Ohio to where I could get to it, to your point earlier, budget plays into things for small businesses. So I was able to drive to that one and that two and a half day seminar just opened my eyes up to things that I knew in my heart but had no idea how to make that happen.   0:06:46.2 Travis Timmons: And what I mean by that, Andrew, is one of the key things I took away from that first two and a half day is Deming's belief that roughly 96% of issues within an organization are not people issues, but they're process and system issues. And that aligned with my worldview of if you hire good people, which we did, they show up every day wanting to do a good job as long as they have a good system and process to work within something that's professionally put together. So that was takeaway number one that really resonated with me. And the person responsible for said system is me. There's no passing the buck as the owner. And that resonated with me. It's a big responsibility to own a business in terms of the people and clients you're responsible for. And there's no passing the buck. You're responsible for the system at the end of the day.   0:07:42.3 Andrew Stotz: Yeah. I remember when I was 24 attending Deming seminar, when I was working for Pepsi, and it was a little bit different situation than yours. I could see, though, the same thing resonated with me. I could see that people were hemmed in by the system. And even though many people in the factory had really good intentions and they wanted to do a better job, they literally couldn't because they didn't have the tools or the budget or the this or the that. And a lot of times it's easy for senior management, particularly in a big company, to say figure it out, your job is to figure it out. But that only goes so far and there's eventually a point of exasperation for people working in a company that, like, I just, there's a limit here and I'm not going to kill myself trying to do something that I can't change. And so it just, I was coming from a very different perspective as an employee in a huge company versus you at a perspective of, this is my company, I set the rules.   0:08:46.5 Travis Timmons: Yeah, can do whatever we want. And you mentioned something there. It reminds me of a quote from that first two and a half day, and it still sticks with me a decade and a half later. Almost a lot of businesses complain about the term. We have a lot of dead wood in terms of employees. And the quote, I remember Kelly sharing this, it's like, well, did you hire dead wood? Because if you did, that's on you. Or did you hire live wood and kill it and that's on you from your standpoint of, from a system. And I'm like, man, 100% true. And I hired, I had good people on our team, but we didn't have good processes to keep from killing that live wood I would say. So, yeah. And to your point on budget, yeah, I had and still do have quite a bit different budget than Pepsi. Right. So one of the other things that jumped out at me early on that made Deming very approachable and something I could engage with very easily as a small business owner was the concept of PDSAs, the Plan-Do-Study-Act.   0:09:58.5 Travis Timmons: That was a game changer for us because I was like, all right, I don't have to hire a big business consultant. We don't have to hire or pay for a bunch of software. There's very simple things we can do via the Plan, Do Study Act PDSA method that we can create systems or improve upon systems and those little experimental ways and not have to bet the farm. You know, you see a lot of businesses that try to go through these huge transformative activities, bring in a new software to fix all their problems. Things that are very expensive with no real way of understanding what their aim is, what their theory is, or even if it'll work. So, yeah, your comment on budget there, I think, is what makes Deming so approachable for any size organization, but the budget's really not a limit from the PDSA standpoint. So those were some of my key takeaways very early on on my first two and a half day Deming, it was an eye opener and just really resonated with how, how I saw the world in terms of from a human level. Just had zero idea as a physical therapist with no business training on how to implement and run a professional organization.   0:11:13.8 Travis Timmons: So as things evolved, kind of went from the kind of the term chaos to process. So after that two and a half day, I went back to our team, which was small at the time. I think we had, we were a very small company at the time. I think we had 10 employees, nine or 10 team members at the time and just presented to them like, hey, this is going to be how we run our organization. There's this thing I heard about this guy called Dr. Deming. Some of it's going to seem a little odd, but this is how we're going to do things. And just started out early on, like just with PDSA, educated them on what that meant and we're all going to work on things together. So immediately it started enforcing a culture of improvement and collaboration and voice. Rather than Travis just coming up with random ideas, we worked on them together, made the system visible and then put some experiments in place. I talked to them about operational definition. That was a new term to me and gave them some examples. We wanted every client to have a good visit with us.   0:12:29.2 Travis Timmons: What in the heck does a good visit mean? Right. We didn't have an operational definition of that, so we created an operational definition of this is a good visit at Fitness Matters. So those were some fun things early on.   0:12:42.3 Andrew Stotz: I'm curious. There's two things, the first one is for someone that really doesn't know anything about PDSA, the Plan, Do, Study, Act process or cycle. Could you give an example either of one that you did early on or one that you think is the best illustration of the application of PDSA so people can understand what you're saying, because I know it's a big part of what one of the, let's say, tools that you've used in your process.   0:13:10.1 Travis Timmons: Yeah, one of the early on ones we did that was fun to do with the team because it changed our pricing model for our private pay team. Quick example, like we do personal training and Pilates muscle activation technique. Traditionally in that world, people buy those visits one at a time or you'll buy a package of 10 or 20 at a time at a discounted rate, volume, volume pricing, right. So we had that, we had 10 pack and 20 pack of personal training. We had a 10 pack and 20 pack of Pilates, same for muscle activation technique. And we had clients that would do sometimes all three of those services, but for them to be able to optimize their discount, they had to buy a 20 pack of Pilates, a 20 pack of personal training, and then the same with muscle activation technique. So after learning some things with Dr. Deming at the two and a half day that Kelly presented at, it's like we got to be easier to do business with. Be easy to do business with and how can we do that? So our PDSA was how can we change our pricing model on the private pay services to be easier to do business with and optimize how clients can move in our system freely.   0:14:25.9 Travis Timmons: So part of the concept of PDSA is you trial it, you put your whole theory together of what you think will be true. How are you going to study it? How long are you going to try it? So we had four clients that we knew well, that we told them, we're trying this new pricing model. Would you be willing to experiment on this with us? So we didn't roll it out company wide. We just tried it with a small segment, and we called it Fitness Matters Dollars and the do the Fitness Matters Dollars package. Then the client could use that discounted bundle of money for any of our services. So the discount applied to any of the services they did rather than having to buy a bunch of different packages. So the beauty of it is you can try it small. Had we gotten it wrong, we could have thrown it out and only five clients would have experienced the error. And they knew they were part of an experiment and they were happy to help us improve. It was a big win. That was 12 years ago. That's still how we do our pricing today.   0:15:29.1 Travis Timmons: It makes it very easy for clients to optimize their health within our system and not have to spend a bunch of money with us and have a lot of monetary resistance moving about our system. So that's one example that comes to mind.   0:15:41.4 Andrew Stotz: That's a good one. And I think if you think about, let's say an accountant may say, well, but wait a minute, the cost of three different services is different and that's the idea of how do we simplify this for the client, and that's interesting. Now, did you write it down, did you go to a Whiteboard. How did you actually go through that process?   0:16:02.9 Travis Timmons: Oh, that's 13 years ago. You're testing my...   0:16:06.5 Andrew Stotz: Oh, well, you can think about a current one, too.   0:16:09.6 Travis Timmons: 12 years ago. Yeah. When we're doing a current one, we'll get together as a team. Like, we're having our annual team off-site the end of January. And we'll come up, we try to come away with three, maybe four PDSAs as a team, and we'll write it up on the whiteboard. What's the problem we're trying to solve? Another key quote I've learned from Kelly Allen over the years is "the problem named, is the problem solved." So we want to make sure we're naming the right problem first. What really is the problem? So we talk about that through our entire company so that I'm getting feedback from all pieces of the system and then we'll map it out. Sometimes we'll do fishbone charts to look where in the process are we trying to do an experiment? And then there's the PDSA kind of chart that we'll use for bigger ones so we can study it. What's our aim? What's our theory? What do we think is going to happen with this experiment? How long are we going to study it, and what's our expected outcome? So part of the PDSA magic, as you know, is what are you trying to accomplish by what method, in what time frame, and what do you think is going to happen so you can go back and test your theory after you've studied it? So, yeah, sometimes we, if it's something bigger system-wide, we put it down on paper. We have a PDF that's fillable for each new PDSA.   0:17:35.5 Andrew Stotz: And for some people listening, they may think, well, I mean, isn't that what business does? I mean like owner comes up with an idea and says, yeah, I think we could try this and see what happens. Right. And ultimately everybody's kind of poking in the dark in business. We're not given a manual nobody really knows what we're doing. What's the difference between the way that you are poking in the dark, trying to hey, let's try this, let's try that compared to the PDSA.   0:18:08.5 Travis Timmons: I don't think I learned that till my second Deming two and a half day. So the second time I went, I took some senior team members with me so we could get more eyes around what in the world is this Deming person, who is Dr. Deming? What's this System of Profound Knowledge? To answer your question, I think the realization I had that I didn't have before, kind of going down the Deming journey is I didn't view our business as an entire system. I lacked that awareness of system view versus pieces and parts view. Pre-Deming, there's a problem over here and you go chase that fire and then another problem pop up over here, and to your point like there's lots of books out there on how to solve problems or you know, you hear like there's books out there on ownership thinking. And you know, it's like, well, do you have a culture and a system and by what method do you give people the ability to have that ownership thinking? Yeah, I think that's was the big aha of looking at the entire system. Whereas previously I was looking at it in silos and only trying to solve problems when a fire arose rather than system operationally efficient, trying to get efficient and optimizing the entire system. So that was probably one of the big aha's for me. Didn't happen day one. But as I got to understand Deming more, the system view of how it all has to be working together for optimization just changes your lens totally.   0:19:51.5 Andrew Stotz: So you've talked about PDSA, you've talked about operational definitions, you've talked about systems thinking, three core principles. One last thing on PDSA is like, I wonder what percent of the total value of doing PDSA comes from doing PDSA. In other words, the actual part of forcing yourself to get people in a room to discuss what's the problem, the Fishbone diagram, think about what's our aim, what's our theory, what's our hypothesis? Let's write that down. How are we going to study that? How we know if our hypothesis was true and you know, that type of thing. And sometimes I, after listening to you, I was thinking it, I suspect that a large amount of the final benefit you get from a PDSA is really front end loaded in all the work that you do to set it up.   0:20:48.3 Travis Timmons: Yeah, yeah. Going back to your comment earlier Andrew, on when you were at Pepsi, if I heard you correctly, you didn't really have the ability to share voice or to have an impact on the system. I think you're spot on, the PDSA itself, a couple things, number one as a small business owner, you got to check your ego at the door. Your team sees stuff happening that you don't have visibility on and they're probably going to have better ideas on how to fix it than you might if you're removed from it a step or two. And then the culture of like, oh, Travis is going to listen to my ideas. I find value in that. And then when we implement a change, like nobody likes change. Right? But when you've worked on it collectively as a team and you're ready to move forward with it, that's a game changer. You're not pushing a string at that point. Everybody's leaning in because they understand they're part of the solution and you're allowing that. Where a lot of businesses are top down, command and control, that doesn't usually work very well. So yeah, I think you're spot on, Andrew.   0:22:02.5 Travis Timmons: I think that so much happens with the PDSA process from a culture and team involvement. And if you don't have that, you're going to have a hard time retaining team members, in my opinion.   0:22:16.9 Andrew Stotz: So you look like a pretty relaxed guy compared to probably what you were like many years ago when this all was going on. Maybe take us through. Okay, so you're implementing these things and what's happening, what changes are happening, what transformation is going on with you and with your organization?   0:22:36.9 Travis Timmons: Yeah, so it's a multi-year process that we went through. Still a lot of work, you know, it's not like, hey, this just solves every problem. It just changes all the lenses you look through and you have a by what method path. Here's how we are going to think about our business. So that got rid of a lot of confusion for me. I knew how we were going to go from this size business to my, we had a BHAG, Big Hairy Audacious Goal from Good to Great. We wanted to have four facilities. At the time I went through Deming, we had one. We wanted to have four facilities or more to see if we could replicate our high level of care, team member engagement, all those things. So we were working, I was working just as many hours then. It just was not frustrating, it was exciting. It was a lot of collaboration that was energizing and everything as we scaled got easier. I was not going to be able to scale our business with what I was doing because had I scaled it, the headaches would have just been out of control. The loss of revenue, like there would have just been so much inefficiency on our organization.   0:24:00.4 Travis Timmons: So I would say for that next from 2013 through 2018, we got really locked in. So we spent about, I was a little conservative at the time. I was also in Army National Guard, so had a trip across the pond and just wasn't quite at a point where I could financially roll the dice and start multiplying locations and stuff like that. But around 2018, 2019, we got to the point where the team knew Deming well. I felt like we put a lot of systems, processes in place that were replicatable and I'm like, all right, here comes a real big PDSA. We're going to go get another clinic, we're going to go do another location, and we're going to test it. So that was a big PDSA. A lot of the ones we had done up to that were small. At some point you got to go a little bigger. And we were very confident in our model. So we acquired a practice in our town and like, hey, 80% of what they do is what we do, 20% is not Deming and service lines and stuff like that. So our theory, our PDSA, was can we acquire and put Fitness Matters, culture and process in place and grow?   0:25:26.3 Travis Timmons: And we did. We were very successful with that. I had team member retention with that. You know, a lot of times when you buy out another business kind of, people head for the doors, including the owner. That owner is still working with us six years later, then we started growing. It's like, all right, here we go. We can do another one. We can do another one. Put leadership in place at each location that understand Deming. We have our processes written down. We have operational definitions written down. People know what PDSA is. If they're new to our team, it takes them about six months to figure out what all these acronyms mean. So now we're going quicker since, you know, since in the last four years, as an example, we've tripled our physical therapy volume and doubled our private pay wellness volume. And in the service line, that's fairly fast growth. Probably not fast in the IT world, but in the service line growth in a very competitive market with how physical therapy and referrals work. There aren't many private practices left out there because it's so competitive where we're thriving.   0:26:41.4 Andrew Stotz: It seems like a hard business. It seems like a hard business to scale because there's this personal aspect, there's this interaction. You know, think about the exact opposite. I don't know, let's say Instagram or whatever. There's zero personal interaction. It can scale to billions. What are the constraints to growth that you feel in your business.   0:27:03.3 Travis Timmons: So constraints are reimbursement from health insurance, referrals from physicians, because health care is consolidating. So a health care system buys up smaller organizations, physicians, and then they have physical therapy within those systems and then they're highly encouraged to refer their physical therapy in-house. So that's a big challenge for us. So we don't, we're not owned by physicians. So we have to, we have to be the best at what we do for physicians and clients to want to choose us. So one of the things Dr. Deming really big on at quality, right. You have to continually have a system that has improving quality as you grow. And the way we grow is we have our outcomes. So how well a patient does at the end of a plan of care is roughly 35% higher than national average. We're 35% above the competition because of our processes, our system, our clients, how we look at integrating our clients from the first visit, the first phone call, follow-on visits, the entire, again, thinking back to that system conversation. And I think a lot of businesses, if they haven't been exposed to Deming, they miss that very critical piece of, if your sales isn't aligned with your implementation, isn't aligned with your billing process, anywhere along that service line, going through that fishbone, if it's all not good, like we could give excellent physical therapy care, but if we have a horrible billing system, we lose clients, end of story. If we have a horrible process of answering the phone to schedule evaluations, we're out of business.   0:29:00.0 Travis Timmons: Could have the best physical therapists in the world. So, yeah, that's what it's allowed us to do from a scaling and fun standpoint. And kind of now almost 27 years in we're at a point where, one of the litmus tests I had, like, if we do this well, if we really are all-in on Deming and it's system process definitions and we have it mapped out, this should run without Travis. And I see a lot of business owners are the choke point. Like they want to be the problem solver for everything. Everything has to flow through them, slow stuff down. You're not getting all of the information from your team that could solve problems so much quicker. So one of my litmus tests early on was like, if this really works well, the business should run without me present certainly for weeks and weeks at a time. And we're there. So that's why I look Relaxed now. I didn't look this relaxed a decade ago. So, it's fun, it's fun.   0:30:11.5 Andrew Stotz: I was looking for my Out of the Crisis book, but I went online and I wanted to highlight two of the 14 points because it's something that you mentioned about improving your process and all of that. And the first one is the first point and you know, it's the first point for a reason. And number one is "create constancy of purpose towards improvement of product and service with the aim to become competitive and stay in business and provide jobs." And number five is "improve constantly and forever, the system of production and service to improve quality and productivity and thus constantly decrease costs." So how do you embody that in your business, this, because when I first read the "constancy of purpose," I originally thought it meant pick your direction and stay constant with that. But then I started to realize, no, no, it's about how are we improving our product and service.   0:31:18.9 Travis Timmons: Yeah. So if you're not evolving with, technology is everywhere. Right. So if you're not paying attention to that within how it impacts your business and constantly trying to optimize how technology interfaces with your business, you're in trouble. So, like, we're right now getting ready to, I'd say once a year we do something fairly large within technology. Next year we're going to probably be changing our documentation software because there's a newer one out there that instead of having four different softwares we have to interface with, there'll be one. So that cuts down on rework, that cuts down on learning time for a new team member. There's less resistance for clients to understand how scheduling and billing work. So I don't know if I'm answering your question, Andrew, but I think from a standpoint of, I think it was Jack Welch I heard say years ago in an interview, "there's two ways a business is going. You're either growing or you're dying." And that resonated with me, there's no sitting still because if you do, you're going to get run over. So that's always looking through, can we make it easier to schedule?   0:32:40.0 Travis Timmons: Like right now we don't offer online scheduling for physical therapy. We will in 2026. And if we don't figure that out, it could be a reason that we would eventually go out of business. So I just looked through that mindset. There's always somebody coming after you.   0:32:58.7 Andrew Stotz: Yeah, yeah, that's...   0:33:00.3 Travis Timmons: Complacency doesn't work.   0:33:01.3 Andrew Stotz: I like to think about when I was young and I took a break and I stood still. I was standing on the flat ground, no problem. But now with my 87 year old mother, if she goes one day, two days, three days without movement, she's going backwards and it's harder to catch back up. And I start to realize she's operating on a plane that has been slanted against her. And eventually the slant will win against all of us. But in the world of business if you think, well it's not about growing or dying, well, there's someone out there trying to take your business by providing a better product or service. And that's just the reality that actually is invigorating to know that, and as Dr. Deming said to have a great competitor is such a valuable thing. If you're just poking around and you're doing okay in market you're probably not going to improve as much. So that the focus on improvement is something that I just find really fascinating. There's another question that I have which is these days, way I look at like the job of leadership is that it's like imagine a very strong magnet ahead of you and you're constantly pulled to that magnet.   0:34:37.7 Andrew Stotz: That magnet is the average, the consensus what everybody's doing. And you can't help but feel that force. And if you don't realize that you're being affected by that force, you're just being pulled into it. And what I mean by that is if you say, well, what if we tried something different, a different way of doing something and then you go to customers, no, sorry, your competitor does this. If you don't do that, I'm not going to give you the business. And so you're naturally drawn towards the center or towards consensus, but what you're doing is trying to pull your business and yourself and your thinking and your team away from that and saying there's a different way. And how hard is that?   0:35:24.4 Travis Timmons: It's hard. You have to have a different lens. Comment earlier, the problem named is the problem solved. One of the things, I love that analogy. I've never heard it described that way. In physical therapy it's very common for a physical therapist to have two or three patients scheduled at the same time because the problem that was named by most organizations is poor arrival rate. And if you have holes in your schedule you're not getting paid. So they look at that as a revenue loss. So to answer your question, that's where our industry is. Like you got a double, triple book or you're going to have lower revenue. Well, what that does is it increases, in my opinion, increases the likelihood that people are not going to come because they're going to have a bad experience, they're going to have poor outcomes. Physicians are going to stop referring because their patients aren't getting better. So problem named is the problem solved? And we pulled, I like that magnet. I'm going to use that one. But pulled away and said, no, if we provide one on one care at a very high level and the entire system works well for the patient, they're going to show up, they're going to continue to show up.   0:36:49.0 Travis Timmons: They're going to be happy to pay for the service we're offering because it's going to be exceptional. And because they show up, they're going to get better. And because they get better, they're going to go tell their doctor and then more doctors are going to refer to us. And that's thinking much differently. So that gets to the problem name, problem solved. Or using your magnet example, we are like, physicians come and talk to us all the time. They're like, are you really only seeing the patients one-on-one? Are you really doing that? Because nobody else says they can do that. It's like, yes, we are. That's exactly how we're doing it. And that's why you're here talking to us right now. Because it's so much different. You can't, there's some things that are just immeasurable. Like Dr. Deming talks about that quite a bit. We don't have to market, we don't spend... I shouldn't say, we don't have to market. We don't spend nearly the amount of money on marketing that our competitors do because we have physicians saying, hey, what's different over there? That's invisible. Right? That's invisible.   0:37:56.9 Andrew Stotz: And they weren't saying that in the beginning, but over the time they got that...   0:38:01.4 Travis Timmons: Yeah, yeah. It's a process, but you know, like the flywheel. We use that flywheel example. And now it's like, we're having a hard time hiring enough team members to keep up with the growth. One of the other thing's, "joy in work." Dr. Deming talks about joy in work a lot. And that's to your question earlier about continual improvement and jobs. So we exist, there's a lot of burnout in healthcare. You can't hardly open a business article.   0:38:37.7 Andrew Stotz: Seems paradoxical.   0:38:40.4 Travis Timmons: But it's because two and three patients at a time burdened with administrative stuff. So we also exist because, man, it's so fun when you have a team member join you from one of those other organizations and we've had eight new team members we've hired since July. And I have what I call a fresh eyes lunch with them a month in. And every one of them has said, my spouse can't believe how much happier and more enjoyable I am to be around. If that doesn't motivate you to want to continue to grow, I don't know what does. So that's the joy in work piece that Dr. Deming talked about a lot.   0:39:24.6 Andrew Stotz: And let's now talk about one other thing, which is I was just talking, I gave a speech last night in Bangkok to some business owners and then we had a dinner out and I was explaining to them that like, there's a disease that's come from America, not from Wuhan, China, in this case. It's come America, it's spread all across Thailand. And you really have to be careful with this disease. It's a deadly disease. And I said, and particularly Thailand, where there's harmony. People enjoy working together. They want a fun environment, they want to make friends at work. It's a little, it's very different from a US work environment where it's like, go there, deliver, go home, separate lives. That's not the way Thai people see work. And the disease is, the disease of individual KPIs and saying everybody, by optimizing each individual, we are optimizing the whole. And I'm trying to get them to realize like, there's another way. And I'm curious I'm sure if you're getting people from the bigger institutions and stuff, they're being KPI'd to death. And how do you, how do you manage the idea that I don't want to optimize the individual, I want to optimize the whole system, but yet I also want employees to know they gotta do a good job. So how do you manage that?   0:41:03.2 Travis Timmons: It's hard when somebody comes, because you're right, there's a lot of PTSD. I've got an example from today. So we turned on, within our system, there's a net promoter score that can be sent out to patients automatically after their first couple visits with us. And we turn it off and on from time to time just to get the voice of the customer, right. I think Dr. Deming talks about the voice of the customer and who all. So it's like, hey, we haven't done that in a while. We're going to turn it back on. And there were several therapists that were like, wait a minute, you're scoring me? And then if I get a low score, I'm in trouble. So we have to spend a lot of time educating the team on some of that old head trash. It's like, no, this is to study the system and where we can improve either improving our operational definition, whatever it is, give the team member tools on how to handle a difficult client. But to your point, you have, people's brains are so wired in the way you just described. So part of it is we, we let them know up front, like, here's why we don't have employee of the month at Fitness Matters.   0:42:15.4 Travis Timmons: Here's why we don't have the parking lot for employee of the month at Fitness. Like, all of those rewards, how all of the negative unintended consequences that can go along with that. Like even giving an individual an award in a group setting. Like, we had a team who's one of my clinic directors, the business she came from before, they had like a WWE, like the heavyweight wrestling, big champion belt. They had one of those. And each week somebody would give the belt to whoever they thought was the best employee that week. And she didn't get it for like two months in a row. And she was crushed. She's like, people don't like me. So it's fun to talk about the negative unintended consequences of the individual reward, the individual competitions. We could talk for an hour about motivating via monetary motivation. That's probably a whole nother podcast. But to answer your question, we have to make it very known why we don't do those things. Because as much as people hate some of that stuff, they also expect it. Yeah, why don't, why don't we have employee of the month? You mean I'm not going to get in trouble if I get a low net promoter score from one patient?   0:43:34.3 Travis Timmons: It's like, no, we know we hire good people. We know you do your best job every day. They could be upset because their billing didn't go correctly. So we just need to know. So I don't know if that answers your question, but it's a big thing because you do have to still track KPIs or you're out of business. Like, you do have to know what's going on within your system to measure it. It's just that concept of we all are responsible for the output of the system and the system has to produce exceptional results.   0:44:06.7 Andrew Stotz: Yeah, yeah.   0:44:07.9 Travis Timmons: And we have to have a weight by what method. We have to have a system to create whether you're doing plumbing, electrical work. Like if you're going to scale a business, you have to have a repeatable product that can scale.   0:44:23.2 Andrew Stotz: Yeah. And one of the answers to that too is if you believe 94% of the problems come from the system, then even when an employee is identified as having a bad net promoter score, then the question is, does the 94% apply in that situation? Well, generally yes. And so let's dig in. I have some people that ask me like my, one of the guys last night at this event works for a bank and they have put KPIs into everything. And he was saying, I just can't escape. But another guy was like, well, I have my own business and I can do what I want. I've implemented KPIs, but what should I do? I said the first step in disentangling yourself from this individual KPI situation is just to disconnect compensation to the KPI. So just right there, there's still incentive for the employee to do something bad for the organization to do their best. But when you remove that compensation aspect, you've really taken away a huge part of the incentive. So even if you have to keep KPIs, take away the tie to compensation and then they say, well, that's the whole reason why we're supposed to do it is have the tie to compensation.   0:45:44.5 Andrew Stotz: And I said, yes, it's a little bit of a circular references cannot be resolved.   0:45:49.7 Travis Timmons: Right. Yeah. And I think we even give examples to the team as much as we can around why we don't do those type of things. Here's what would happen. And most people have worked in organizations when you point it out to them. So again, Dr. Deming talks about making the system visible. Point it out to them. If I bonused you like you see this, this used to be a thing at car dealerships. When you're buying a car, hey, you're going to get a call to rate your experience with me. If you don't give me a 10, it's going to impact my pay. And you're like, what? So we talk about that like hey, the net promoter score. If we did the same thing here and bonused you on every 10, then you're going to be bothering your patients to fill that survey out. Or if you're afraid they're going to give you low score, you're not going to, you're going to encourage them not to do it. And then me as the owner, I'm not going to hear about system breakdowns. So to answer your, I think it's an important thing that a lot of businesses like number one, don't tie compensation to your KPIs.   0:46:58.3 Travis Timmons: Like just, it's an output of the system and then explaining it to them and giving examples over time because their brains even though they hated it, like we don't do performance reviews, annual performance review. And people hate them. And I still get asked like hey, when are you doing my annual performance review? It's like do you want to do one? Well no.   0:47:21.2 Andrew Stotz: Yeah. We dropped performance appraisals in 2016 in my coffee business here in Thailand and we never looked back. We didn't come up with any particular stunning replacement. We just knew it was bad and we were willing to just walk away from what was bad. I want to wrap up and just get into the... What are the, let's talk about kind of extrinsic versus intrinsic. There's some external factors that we can say this Deming implementation provided these benefits to our company and then there's this internal or intrinsic benefits that you're getting. Maybe you can go through some of those benefits of where you're at now, what you're able to do now and we'll close it on that note of kind of what's the hope for somebody that's stuck in the situation. They're the entrepreneurial seizure, they're the technician, they're great at physical therapy, they start their physical therapy business and they're just scaling chaos basically. Tell us about, give us hope.   0:48:37.8 Travis Timmons: Yeah, no, happy to, the reason I have had the opportunity to speak in a lot of different settings about Dr. Deming and the reason I do it is because it's brought so much joy to me personally and to a ever growing team. It's having a positive impact on lives and the more I can do that, that gets to the intrinsic motivation. So the joy in work, there's a lot of bad organizations out there that just suck the life out of people. So that's my intrinsic motivation at this stage of the game of if Fitness Matters is bigger, so more jobs, there's more people having a positive experience in life and our outcomes being 35% higher, our community is getting healthier. So that's the intrinsic motivation at this stage. It's fun. I know again, we're not perfect. So continuous improvement to our conversation earlier. But the intrinsic motivation is the busier Fitness Matters gets, the busier Fitness Matters gets because of high outcomes and it's positive experience for more people in life. Extrinsically, I guess that gets to community outcomes. So that's intrinsic and extrinsic. You know, extrinsically, if you get this figured out, it's very easy to scale a business.   0:50:06.0 Andrew Stotz: And tell us about your scale, where are you at or where are your averages versus national averages? You know, what have you accomplished that's driving that external factors, let's call it.   0:50:19.4 Travis Timmons: Yeah. So a couple things. One, externally, a practice like ours nationally on average is growing at 9% to 10%. We're currently clipping along at 25% to 30%. So you know, that flywheel effect and chaos is no longer there. So we have process, so it's easier to scale. The other extrinsic piece is because of our outcomes and continuing scale, we're able to negotiate better rates with our insurance companies to reinforce our strong desire to keep one-on-one care model. So Deming talks about who all is part of your system. So insurance companies are part of our system and we don't have a lot of control over them. But because our data is so powerful externally, we have been able to negotiate higher rates than most of our competitors because our data speaks for itself.   0:51:23.2 Andrew Stotz: Faster growth, the ability to negotiate better terms because you're delivering better product and service generally means higher profit margins.   0:51:34.2 Travis Timmons: Yes.   0:51:34.6 Andrew Stotz: Fast growth with higher profit margins generally means you're generating more cash and you're no longer in cash crisis all the time and you have resources to decide, okay, now we want to expand or we want to invest or whatever.   0:51:50.9 Travis Timmons: Right.   0:51:51.4 Andrew Stotz: Is that...   0:51:51.9 Travis Timmons: Yeah, the cash crunch was real those first 10 years. So yeah, to your point, when you get to the other side of that and process is a big part of that so you're having a whole counting process, but yeah, you get to that size. But yeah, the intrinsic piece, one of the reasons I talk about Deming as much as I can. I've got two sons that are in college. My hope is there's more companies in the world today than there were 10 years ago that know about Deming, because that means there's a higher likelihood that my boys will work at a Deming company. And just seeing what a lot of companies do to people, we as owners have a big responsibility, I feel, we have a big responsibility to have a positive impact on our employees. And you're, as an owner, are responsible for that, in my opinion. And if you get it right, man, is it fun to look in the mirror or sit down with a team member or their spouse and be proud of, be proud of what you built. That's at the end of the day, the intrinsic motivation.   0:52:57.9 Travis Timmons: If you can be proud of what your product is and proud of the impact you're having on your team to where you're not sucking the life out of them, but actually intrinsically motivating them. There's not much else you can accomplish in business that was worth more than that, in my opinion.   0:53:18.5 Andrew Stotz: Yeah, wonderful. That's a great way to end it. What's the likelihood that our children are going to be working in a Deming company? Well, that's the whole reason why we are here talking about it. So, Travis, I want to say on behalf of everyone at the Deming Institute, I want to thank you for this discussion and of course, for listeners out there and viewers, remember to go to deming.org to continue your journey. This is your host, Andrew Stotz. I'll leave you with one of my favorite quotes from Dr. Deming, and I believe it's probably one of Travis's too people are entitled to joy in work.   0:53:56.0 Travis Timmons: Love it. Love it. Thank you, Andrew.   0:53:58.0 Andrew Stotz: Yep.

How do we really know when improvement has happened inside a school or organization? In this episode, John Dues and Andrew Stotz unpack a clear, three-part definition of improvement and show why evidence, method, and sustained results matter far more than year-to-year comparisons. Their discussion offers a practical lens for leaders who want to distinguish true progress from noise and build changes that last. TRANSCRIPT 0:00:02.4 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 John Dues, who is part of the new generation of educators striving to apply Dr. Deming's principles to unleash student joy in learning. The topic for today is, How To Define Improvement. John, take it away.   0:00:23.3 John Dues: Hey, Andrew. It's good to be back. Yeah, I think this is really interesting. Apologies on the front end. I'm a little bit under the weather, so I may sound a little raspy today. But you know, one of the things that's really interesting is there's lots of claims of improvement. In my world, there's lots of claims of school im- improvement. I would even go as far as to say that those claims are like a dime a dozen, something like that. And the reason I say that is not to be mean or anything, but you know, I think that a lot of these claims, they're not grounded any kind of reasonable evidence. And I think sort of even beyond that, that claims are often made without a logical definition of improvement. So I thought in this episode we could talk about a three-part definition that makes it really easy to tell when improvement has occurred and just as importantly, when it hasn't.   0:01:21.9 Andrew Stotz: Exciting.   0:01:23.2 John Dues: Yeah. When I talk about this, I always like to start with a challenge. So, you know, if I'm in a workshop, I'll say, you know, get out a piece of paper and a pen so the listeners could do this as well and think about, you know, the successful improvement efforts that you've led throughout your career. So in my world, maybe it's increase in state test scores or maybe you improved student enrollment in your school. Maybe you did a better job at retaining the teachers in your school. It could be any number of things. Maybe it's decreasing student office referrals or decreasing chronic absenteeism rates in your school or your school system, which are two things on everybody's mind coming out of the pandemic especially. And I tell people, just create a list of those instances. And I give them a few minutes usually. And typically, people come up with eight, nine, 10 or so instances of improvement, whether that's teacher in their own classroom or principal in their school, or a superintendent thinking about the whole system. Then I say to them, now what I want you to do is pause and think, what does it mean to improve?   0:02:46.7 John Dues: What do you mean by that? And that really brings us to this important question. What is improvement? You know, and this was... Full disclosure, when I started thinking about this, I stumbled across the definition in a book I'll show you here in a second. But when I stumbled across this, you know, there was some conviction. And I think that probably a lot of educational leaders or just, you know, leaders in general would say, actually, I never really thought about that. I don't have an answer for this seemingly simple question. And like I said, I didn't have an answer to that question when I really thought about it, when I stumbled across the definition, probably for the majority of my career, maybe the first 20 years or so, if I'm at year 25. So, yeah, the first two decades, I would not have had a clear answer for that simple question. Now, I turn to this seminal work in the field of improvement science called The Improvement Guide. I'm sure a lot of people are familiar with this. And I'll share my screen so people can see the book and kind of share an interesting story about the book. And, you know, when you're... Can you see my screen all right now?   0:04:06.9 Andrew Stotz: Yep.   0:04:08.1 John Dues: So you can see, if you're just listening, you can see the covers of two books. So on the left, a lot of people will recognize The Improvement Guide. But there's an arrow up there. It says, second edition. And a lot of people will recognize that book. Probably less people. Maybe some people that have been doing improvement work for maybe three decades will know this other book, the first edition of The Improvement Guide. It's this purple book on the right, if you're watching. But there's this interesting anecdote that I actually think I might have heard maybe on your podcast when some of the authors were on. And almost as soon as they wrote this first edition, this purple edition, they got this note from this professor in Brazil, and it said, I know you guys are really big into improvement, and you're really big on operational definitions, but you've written this whole book on improvement, and nowhere in the book have you defined what you mean by improvement. So, you know, talk about a swing and a miss.   0:05:15.0 Andrew Stotz: Yeah. And just for listeners out there, you can go to the podcast.deming.org and you can search for quality as an organizational strategy with Cliff Norman and Dave Williams. We didn't talk about The Improvement Guide specifically, but definitely it's worth listening to those two.   0:05:33.3 John Dues: Yeah, and I think... So any of us that feel bad when we come to realize, like, how obvious that question is when we've made claims of improvement and don't have a definition. So even these guys that were writing a whole guide about how to do improvement missed as well. You know, and it's pretty obvious when you think about it that The Improvement Guide, that a book like that should have a clear definition for the central concept. That's right in the title. But it should be just as obvious to leaders that they also need a definition of improvement. And that definition should really precede any improvement claims then. So I thought it'd be interesting to take a look at the definition that the authors came up with in their improved second edition.   0:06:20.9 Andrew Stotz: Improvement in their improvement.   0:06:24.4 John Dues: Improvement in their improvement guide. Right. And the definition is really easy to follow. It's got three parts, and now I've adopted it into my own improvement work. But what they've said is improvement is "a change that alters how work is done or the makeup of a tool that produces visible positive differences relative to historical norms and relevant measures and it's sustained into the future." So we can kind of break that three parts of the definition down now. So in part one of the definition, what you have to be able to do is point to a change that was made that led to better results. You know, that could be a new tool you're using, a new approach, a new framework, maybe it's a new staff role, but something has to change, a new method, something has to change in what you're doing. So that's sort of part one of the definition. Part two is performance improved after the change compared to past results. So that also should be fairly obvious. So you did something different. You noted when you started this new thing, and at some point in relative proximity to when you tried that new thing, the data improved.   0:07:54.2 John Dues: You know, it went up. If that's the direction of good or, you know, if it's like chronic absenteeism or office referrals, you want it to go down. But you see that in the data after you've made this change, that's part two. And then part three is that improvement after the change was sustained into the future. So it wasn't just a temporary thing because you were paying a lot of attention to it, but you made the change. The data improved over time after you did this new thing, and then it kept going into the future.   0:08:27.9 Andrew Stotz: Which is the hardest part, by the way.   0:08:30.1 John Dues: The hardest part, I'd say too. Assuming you could bring about improvement, then sustaining it into the future, especially as you maybe take your eye off it a little bit, and then work on something else, that's very, very difficult.   0:08:43.1 Andrew Stotz: Yeah, the initial seizure that you get into of making change can be really powerful compared to the energy, you know, devoted to sustaining it.   0:08:55.9 John Dues: Yeah.   0:08:56.3 Andrew Stotz: And you could also argue, if something's not easily sustained, was it really an improvement?   0:09:02.8 John Dues: Right. I think that's just right. And, you know, what I do in the workshop then is then after I go over the definition, I ask people, now, think back to your list of successful improvement projects. You know, and for the listeners, if you pause, then you created your own list and then you heard that definition. Then I just asked the participants, would you revise your answer after reading this definition of improvement? And ask people, okay, now how many things, how many items are on that list? And a lot of people, if they're being honest, are left with none, actually. You know, because this definition sets a really high bar. But I think it is the right bar if you're actually interested in improving outcomes in your school, in my case, or in your organization. And I think what you often run up against is, this is kind of a simplified version of most improvement claims. But in my world, you hear claims, something like, you know, our state test scores improved. Right. The translation is, this school's or this year scores are higher than last year's scores.   0:10:25.8 John Dues: But that claim falls really short of that definition. Well, okay, the scores are better than last year. Well, what did you do to make them better? Also, a single data point is probably not enough to back that claim up. Let's instead turn to an example that meets the definition, and it'll help you understand how powerful this can be in practice. So, you know, let's suppose that you've been working to increase some student outcome measure. Let's say we gather it on a monthly basis, whatever this thing is. So now I'm going to show you a visual that has some data plotted over time. And the three parts of the definition of improvement have been labeled right on that chart. And having this visual is very, very powerful. This is when this definition really clicked. So I'll go ahead and share my screen again with you. All right. Can you see that chart?   0:11:35.9 Andrew Stotz: Yep.   0:11:36.9 John Dues: Okay, great. So first off, if you're watching that, you can just see very quickly that the claim of improvement has been substantiated with evidence. So for the people that are just listening, we have some data plotted over time for the first 15 months and it's kind of traveling along around an 80% average. And then all of a sudden that data shifts up substantially to now it's humming along at about a 91, 92% average. And it's much harder to sort of internalize this without being able to see it. But I'll do my best to explain it. So the first thing was, part one. There's a clear point in time where a change was introduced. So that's labeled as part one. Right in between month 15 and 16, there's an arrow there on the chart where some change was made. If this is a teacher's data, maybe they made some type of change to how they were instructing the class.   0:12:55.3 Andrew Stotz: In research, sometimes we'll call that time zero.   0:13:00.6 John Dues: Time zero, absolutely. And then second again, there's this clear difference in results after the change was introduced as compared to historical results. So that's part two. So there's this positive, visible difference relative to historical norms. Now, you know, this is an example for illustration purposes and I wanted to make it very clear, like this delineation, this definition. But in reality, you know, if you're a teacher trying this new method, for example, it might be that even if the method is successful, you're not maybe going to see the results immediately. Right. But this illustrates, what you're hoping to see. And it makes it very clear. And then part three on here, that improvement was sustained in the future. So you see the bump in scores in this, whatever this outcome is in this hypothetical in month 16. But it wasn't just months 16 and 17, it carried forth for another 15 months at this much higher level. So you can very quickly start to see there's this profound difference between most improvement claims and one supported by this three part definition. It makes it very simple. When do we introduce something new? And then what does the data look like over time after an initial baseline period?   0:14:36.9 Andrew Stotz: It reminds me of something I often say to people, which is, do you ever make the same mistake twice in your business? And of course, everybody says yes. And I ask them, imagine if you never made the same mistake twice, how would that change the outcome of your business? And then we have a discussion about that. But the point is that most people just live in a world where they never are able to really sustain improved performance. They just fall back to the same things. And this chart is a good way of understanding, have we truly sustained improved performance?   0:15:24.4 John Dues: Yeah, yeah. And you have to have a method. You know, that's why Deming would frequently say, you can't just have a goal. You have to be able to answer the question by what method? So that's why part one of this definition was calling out whatever change was introduced. Because in this system, in that baseline period from month one through 15, while there are some ups and downs in that data, it's really just bouncing around that 80% average. And if you don't change something in that system, then you're very likely just to keep getting those same results over time. Some fundamental change has to be introduced so you have a stable system, but it's not satisfactory. So you got to change something. And then you're going to keep gathering the data to see if that change had an impact. So again, it's not rocket science. And it was pretty intuitive to see that definition in that improvement guide. And then actually this sort of chart I'm showing you with a three part definition combined with a control chart or a process behavior chart, I saw this in their latest book called Quality as an Organizational Strategy.   0:16:42.0 John Dues: And when I saw the visualization of the improvement definition, which was only in like text form in The Improvement Guide, then it all just clicked. Oh, this is so obvious what this definition actually means and how you could tell if something has improved or not. So I think anybody that's doing improvement work, you know, whether you're in schools or some other type of organization, and whether you're the superintendent of the entire system, the principal of the building or the teacher in a classroom, all of you can use this. A student could use this, an athlete could use this. This definition, it doesn't really matter. It's sector agnostic and can be applied, you know, pretty widely against different contexts. But it makes it very clear how to tell when things are getting better, how to tell if, you know, maybe things are going the other direction or if they're just staying the same. Makes it very, very clear.   0:17:36.8 Andrew Stotz: Yeah, I mean, it's a great thought exercise that you started with that, you know, got me thinking and I'm sure for the listeners and the viewers got them thinking, like, what changed? Where have we really improved? And one of the hard things in business, and I'm sure it's the same in teaching, is that ultimately personalities and ultimately it's about the people, whether that's business or teaching. And one of the things that you can say about people that's commonly said, whether it's true or not, I'll leave you to think about that. And that is people don't change.   0:18:19.8 John Dues: People don't like to change.   0:18:21.1 Andrew Stotz: They don't like to change. And I would argue that they rarely change.   0:18:25.9 John Dues: Yeah, yeah, no, I would agree with that.   0:18:28.5 Andrew Stotz: I mean, the whole mission of life is to get to a point where you don't have to change. That is the human body, the human mind is just like trying to get to that point.   0:18:42.6 John Dues: Yeah. Unfortunately, it doesn't work.   0:18:45.6 Andrew Stotz: Yeah. And then you die.   0:18:50.1 John Dues: Yeah.   0:18:51.3 Andrew Stotz: But it just gets me thinking too, about... And for everybody, here we are at the... We're discussing this on the 9th of December. So we're getting near the end of the year, thinking about what we're trying to do next year and all that. And in my coffee business, as an example, we've had our shares of ups and downs, but we've tried to right the ship as far as making sure that we've got the right balance of profitability, the right number of staff, cash flow and a buildup of cash so that we have the resources to go after markets. And the question is, that I always have in my mind is, how do we prevent ourselves from slipping back into some old habits of maybe spending on marketing and sales and then not getting the delivery of that, and therefore the costs go up, but the revenues don't follow? How do we ensure that the improvements that we're making right now aren't just lost six months from now? And this starts to give me some ideas that I'm thinking about.   0:20:00.5 John Dues: Yeah. I mean, and once you get that improvement, like, how do you sustain it? How do you have the discipline to do that?   0:20:09.1 Andrew Stotz: Well, I think the first thing that this raises is, are we clearly measuring, first, whether the improvement happened?   0:20:19.3 John Dues: Yeah.   0:20:19.7 Andrew Stotz: And second, whether it was sustained?   0:20:22.8 John Dues: Yeah. And even before that, you know, just having a baseline. Most people have the data somewhere, but they haven't plotted it like this so it's clear what the typical performance is currently, a lot of people don't even take that step. You know, it's just last year, this year. Last month. This month.   0:20:39.8 Andrew Stotz: Yeah, that's good point. That's a good point. That's something you pointed out to me a long time ago about looking at, you know, my enrollments in Valuation Masterclass Boot Camp and saying, well, you need to understand, you know, what's the system you're operating in, and therefore, you've got to understand what that system can produce before you start thinking about, you know, what's your next steps.   0:21:01.6 John Dues: Yeah, yeah. And like I said in the middle of this episode, you know, this is a very high bar. This is not easy to accomplish. It takes discipline. It takes continual improvement. Dr. Deming talked about he liked using continual versus continuous because a lot of this would be discontinuous. You know, you have a focus, you may be improving an area, then you have to change your focus. But you can't keep your eye totally off this other thing. Like you were just saying, you have to kind of keep your eye on multiple things to keep an organization going. And that's part of the challenge of running an organization for sure. Be it a coffee business or a school.   0:21:39.9 Andrew Stotz: Yeah. It's interesting that we're talking about the definition of improvement long after we talked about the method of improvement, like PDSA.   0:21:50.5 John Dues: Yeah, yeah. And that's probably the best method I've come across. So, you know, in this visual that we're looking at, for people that can see it, you know, part one, a change was introduced. The most powerful tool that I found thus far is the PDSA cycle. That's where you would document the change. And again, this is for illustrative purposes, but in reality you probably have to run multiple cycles and kind of learn your way to a better system rather than you're probably not going to see this. Now, there are some things where you may see this start improvement between month 15 and month 16, but the reality is, in most situations that's going to take multiple rounds of PSAs and where there's sort of a gradual improvement over time. Again, you know, there are some things where you could see an improvement like this, but most stuff, it just takes sustained effort over time and continual learning and continual improvement type stuff.   0:22:51.4 Andrew Stotz: Yeah, I mean, this really helps me, and I'm sure for the listeners and the viewers to put PDSA in a very clear spot, which is, it's the tool for sustained improvement. Because you could imagine that in this chart where we have time zero and we have the past, let's say that's our starting point. We don't have any future data, but let's imagine that according to PDSA, we decided that we would try out and test out one particular method. And we find after testing it, no improvement, no change. Okay, that wasn't what we expected. Now we got to go back and adjust and then run the PDSA again. And then let's say we do that again and we find very little improvement. Okay, that wasn't what we expected. And our goal is to really try to get to a higher level of improvement. And let's say the third round, we get to a point where we get, oh, now this has sustained, you know this has produced improvement way beyond the others. The question is, can it be sustained? And that also has to do with the constraints of the system.   0:24:01.0 Andrew Stotz: Because if you don't have the proper, let's say, electricity, steady electricity supply, or you have problems with employees coming and going, bad training or whatever, you may find that you did make an initial improvement, but you weren't able to sustain it, so you couldn't really call it an improvement, it was more like a test.   0:24:24.0 John Dues: Yeah, yeah. These are all things that make improvement work so challenging, especially in a complex organization. Very, very challenging. No doubt. But I think this is probably a good place to wrap up and summarize. But I think just having this clear definition for the concept of improvement, I think there's sort of these three big ideas that I think from this episode that can put you on the right track. I think one is just recognizing now kind of being listening for this in your organization that most improvement claims lack evidence. So when you hear somebody in your organization make a claim, this went up, or this got better, or that got better, you know, ask for some evidence. How do you know? Let me see. Show me what you're seeing. How do you know this is improvement? So I'd call that sort of big idea one is, this idea that you need evidence.   0:25:27.7 Andrew Stotz: Yeah. The other thing I would take away from it, too, is actually in the process, you end up narrowing in on one thing. That chart is about one specific outcome.   0:25:42.6 John Dues: Yeah.   0:25:43.6 Andrew Stotz: And once you get so narrow to one specific outcome and you're tracking it and following it, it gets you more focused. And I think that to really get sustained improvement, you have to focus. And it's so easy to be distracted by the 15 things that need to be improved that you see as you walk down the hall in a school every day or as you... But in the end, true improvement is really hard. You can't improve 15 things. You can probably only improve one right now.   0:26:13.2 John Dues: Yeah, you gotta have a focus area for sure. What's the most important thing or the most important few things? Yeah. So the big idea one is, you know, from what I've seen, most of these improvement claims lack evidence. You need evidence. The second big idea is very simple. You know, you have to have this definition, and it's got to precede any improvement claims. Whatever your definition is, that this is the one I would use, this is the one I do use. But you know, before you can make a claim, you have to have a definition that clearly outlines when the thing has happened and when it hasn't. And in my mind, big idea three, is use this three part definition because it makes it so easy to tell when things have improved again and when things haven't. Yeah, after you apply these three big ideas, you know, I think you'll be able to answer the question, have we improved with conviction. You know, it makes it very, very straightforward. I like very straightforward things. And this is very straightforward.   0:27:14.8 Andrew Stotz: Yep. Most improvement claims lack evidence. John, 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. You can find John's book, Win-Win W. Edwards Deming; the System of Profound Knowledge and the Science of Improving Schools on Amazon.com. This is your host, Andrew Stotz, and I'll leave you with my favorite quote from Dr. Deming, and that is that people are entitled to joy in work.

In this follow-up episode of the Everyday Business Problems podcast, Dave Crysler is joined again by Sean Stormes, founder of the Demand Creation Institute, to go deeper into variation, systems thinking, and why most leaders chase the wrong problems. Building on their first conversation, this episode focuses on how to recognize real signals versus noise, why rushing to solutions makes things worse, and how purpose, culture, and continuous improvement actually work together. Sean shares practical examples from decades of leadership experience, including how Deming's principles still apply today, why most organizations unintentionally reward the wrong behaviors, and what it really takes to slow down, reduce chaos, and build durable growth systems. What You'll Discover: How to tell the difference between normal variation and real system problems. Why reacting too quickly to spikes and dips often creates more chaos. How Deming's thinking applies to modern leadership, culture, and decision-making. Why most companies celebrate problem-solving instead of problem prevention. How fear shows up in organizations and quietly blocks improvement. The role of purpose and mission in breaking down silos and aligning teams. Why continuous improvement is a force multiplier when it's done right. How slowing down actually leads to faster, more sustainable results.

In this episode of Innovation Meets Leadership, host Natalie Born welcomes back Ron Crabtree—founder and CEO of MetaOps and MetaExperts, global process improvement leader, and one of the most respected voices in Lean and operational excellence. This conversation takes a deep dive into value stream mapping, a powerful visual methodology that helps leaders uncover hidden inefficiencies, reduce cycle time, improve quality, and identify the smartest opportunities for digitization and AI.If you want a clearer view of where your business is wasting time, losing money, or missing value, this episode is your blueprint.[00:00 – 03:00] Why Value Stream Mapping Still MattersRon returns to discuss deeper layers of process improvement and Lean thinking.Deming's foundational principle: If you can't describe your work as a process, you don't know what you're doing.Value stream mapping as a visual + data-driven methodology to understand workflow end-to-end.[03:01 – 07:00] Defining the Mission: What Problem Are We Solving For?Understanding the organizational challenge: cost, quality, speed, or customer experience.Toyota's SQDCMP hierarchy (Safety, Quality, Delivery, Cost, Productivity, Morale).Selecting the scope and granularity of a mapping effort based on the business challenge.[07:01 – 10:00] Where Digitization and AI Fit InWhy not all automation opportunities are equally valuable.Using value stream mapping to identify high-ROI areas for digitization and AI.[10:01 – 14:00] Beyond Manufacturing: Value Stream Mapping for Any IndustryHow even non-technical environments—like historical sites—benefit from mapping their visitor and customer journey.[14:01 – 17:00] Swim Lanes, Roles & the Hidden Complexity in HR ProcessesUsing swim lane diagrams to visualize handoffs, approvals, and compliance requirements.A real-world hiring example showing a six-month cycle time inside a government agency.[17:01 – 20:00] The Power of Hard Numbers in Decision MakingWhy mapping requires both visuals and data to measure true performance.Ron's example from a defined benefits company: identifying the percentage of time spent on rework, verification, and corrections.[20:01 – 23:00] When Processes Are Physically InefficientHow spaghetti diagrams expose unnecessary movement, travel time, and equipment downtime.Distinguishing internal vs. external activities to reduce waste during machine setup or maintenance.[23:01 – 26:00] The University Email Story: From 17 Steps to ZeroA university's onboarding process involved 17 steps and two weeks of delays.A powerful demonstration of innovation + efficiency working hand in hand.[26:01 – 27:00] Efficiency vs. Innovation: Why Leaders Need BothMany companies over-index on either efficiency or innovation—but not both.Understanding your value stream helps leaders see where inefficiencies hinder innovation.Ron shares where listeners can find his work, his podcast, and how to connect.Quotes“If you can't describe what you're doing as a process, you don't know what you're doing.” – Ron Crabtree“Value stream mapping helps you see where to apply digitization and AI with laser focus.” – Ron CrabtreeConnect with Ron CrabtreeWebsite: metaexperts.comLinkedIn: Ron Crabtree, MetaOps & MetaExpertsPodcast: MetaExperts Workforce ExcellenceIf this conversation inspired you, leave a review and share this episode with a leader who's ready to rethink how their organization creates value.

BONUS: The Agile Organization as a Learning System Think Like a Farmer, Not a Factory Manager "Go slow to go fast. If you want to go somewhere, go together as a team. Take a farmer's mentality."   Simon contrasts monoculture industrial thinking with the permaculture approach of Joel Salatin. Industrial approaches optimize for short-term efficiency but create fragile systems. Farmer thinking recognizes that healthy ecosystems require patience, diversity, and nurturing conditions for growth. The nervous system that's constantly stressed never builds much over time—think of the body, trust the body, let the body be a body. Value Masters, Not Scrum Masters "We need value masters, not Scrum Masters. Agile is a useful tool for delivering value, but value itself is primary. Everything else is secondary—Agile included."   Tom makes his most provocative point: if you asked a top manager whether they'd prefer an agile person or value delivery, the answer is obvious. Agile is one tactic among many for delivering value—not even a necessary one. The shift required is from process mastery to value mastery, from Scrum Masters to people who understand and can deliver on critical stakeholder values. The DOVE Manifesto "I wrote a paper called DOVE—Deliver Optimum Values Efficiently. It's the manifesto focusing on delivering value, delivering value, delivering value."   Tom offers his alternative to the Agile Manifesto: a set of principles laser-focused on value delivery. The document includes 10 principles on a single page that can guide any organization toward genuine impact. Everything else—processes, frameworks, methodologies—are secondary tools in service of this primary goal. Read Tom's DOVE manifesto here.  Building the Glue Between Social and Physical Technology "Value is created in interactions. That's where the social and physical technology meet—that joyous boundary where stuff gets done."   Simon describes seeing the world through two lenses: physical technology (visible tools and systems) and social technology (culture, relationships, the air we breathe). Eric Beinhoeker's insight is that progress happens at the intersection. The Gilbian learning loops provide the structure; trust and human connection provide the fuel. Together, they create organizations that can actually learn and adapt.   Further Reading To Support Your Learning Journey Resources & Further Reading Explore these curated resources to deepen your understanding of strategic planning, value-based management, and transformative organizational change.    

BONUS: Quality 5.0—Quantifying the "Unmeasurable" With Tom Gilb and Simon Holzapfel Clarification Before Quantification "Quantification is not the main idea. The key idea is clarification—so that the executive team understands each other."   Tom emphasizes that measurement is a means to an end. The real goal is shared understanding. But quantification is a powerful clarification tactic because it forces precision. When someone says they want a "very fast car," asking "can we define a scale of measure?" immediately surfaces the vagueness. Miles per hour? Acceleration time? Top speed? Each choice defines what you're actually optimizing for. The Scale-Meter-Target Framework "First, define a scale of measure. Second, define the meter—the device for measuring. Third, set numbers: where are we now, what's the minimum to survive, and what does success look like?"   Tom's framework makes the abstract concrete:   Scale of measure: What dimension are you measuring? (e.g., time to complete task) Meter: How will you measure it? (e.g., user testing with stopwatch) Past/Status: Where are you now? (e.g., currently takes 47 seconds) Tolerable: What's the minimum acceptable? (e.g., must be under 30 seconds to survive) Target/Goal: What does success look like? (e.g., 15 seconds or less)   Many important concepts like "usability" decompose into 10+ different scales of measure—you're not looking for one magic number but a set of relevant metrics. Trust as the Organizational Hormone "Change moves at the speed of trust. Once there's trust, information flows. Once information flows, the system comes to life and can learn. Until there's trust, you have the Soviet problem."   Simon introduces trust as the "human growth hormone" of organizational change—it's fast, doesn't require a user's manual, and enables everything else. Low-trust environments hoard information, guaranteeing poor outcomes. The practical advice? Make your work visible to your manager, alignment-check first, do something, show results. Living the learning cycle yourself builds trust incrementally. And as Tom adds: if you deliver increased critical value every week, you will build trust.   About Tom Gilb and Simon Holzapfel   Tom Gilb, born in the US, lived in London, and then moved to Norway in 1958. An independent teacher, consultant, and writer, he has worked in software engineering, corporate top management, and large-scale systems engineering. As the saying goes, Tom was writing about Agile before Agile was named. In 1976, Tom introduced the term "evolutionary" in his book Software Metrics, advocating for development in small, measurable steps. Today, we talk about Evo, the name Tom uses to describe his approach. Tom has worked with Dr. Deming and holds a certificate personally signed by him. You can listen to Tom Gilb's previous episodes here.    You can link with Tom Gilb on LinkedIn    Simon Holzapfel is an educator, coach, and learning innovator who helps teams work with greater clarity, speed, and purpose. He specializes in separating strategy from tactics, enabling short-cycle decision-making and higher-value workflows. Simon has spent his career coaching individuals and teams to achieve performance with deeper meaning and joy. Simon is also the author of the Equonomist newsletter on Substack. And you can listen to Simon's previous episodes on the podcast here.    You can link with Simon Holzapfel on LinkedIn.  

BONUS: Testing as Measurement—Why Bug-Hunting Misses the Point With Tom Gilb and Simon Holzapfel The Revelation That Almost Caused a Car Crash "Tom said like 10 sentences in a row, kind of like a geometric proof, that just so blew my mind I almost drove off the road. I realized I had wasted hundreds of hours in boardrooms arguing about errors of which we were aware of perhaps 10%."   Simon shares the moment Tom's framework clicked for him. The insight? Traditional testing—finding bugs and defects—is the wrong focus entirely. It's a programmer's view of the world. Managers don't care about bugs; they care about results, about improvements in their business. Tom calls this shift moving from "testing" to "measurement of enhanced or increased value at every cycle." The American Toast Problem "How do we make toast in America? We burn the toast, and then we pay someone to scrape off the black bits off the bread."   Vasco invokes Deming's classic analogy to describe traditional software testing. The entire testing-at-the-end approach is fundamentally wasteful. Instead, Tom advocates for continuous measurement against quantified values. If you expected 3% progress toward your goals this week and didn't get it, you've learned something critical: your strategy needs to change. If you did get it, keep going with confidence. Four Questions at Every Checkpoint "Where are we going? Where are we now? Where should we have been at this point? And why is there a gap?"   Drawing from fighter pilot doctrine, these four questions should be asked at every micro-cycle—not just at quarterly reviews. Fighter pilots ask these questions every minute during critical missions, with clear abort criteria if answers are unacceptable. Most organizations have no abort criteria for their strategies at all, guaranteeing they'll discover failures far too late.   About Tom Gilb and Simon Holzapfel   Tom Gilb, born in the US, lived in London, and then moved to Norway in 1958. An independent teacher, consultant, and writer, he has worked in software engineering, corporate top management, and large-scale systems engineering. As the saying goes, Tom was writing about Agile before Agile was named. In 1976, Tom introduced the term "evolutionary" in his book Software Metrics, advocating for development in small, measurable steps. Today, we talk about Evo, the name Tom uses to describe his approach. Tom has worked with Dr. Deming and holds a certificate personally signed by him. You can listen to Tom Gilb's previous episodes here.    You can link with Tom Gilb on LinkedIn    Simon Holzapfel is an educator, coach, and learning innovator who helps teams work with greater clarity, speed, and purpose. He specializes in separating strategy from tactics, enabling short-cycle decision-making and higher-value workflows. Simon has spent his career coaching individuals and teams to achieve performance with deeper meaning and joy. Simon is also the author of the Equonomist newsletter on Substack. And you can listen to Simon's previous episodes on the podcast here.    You can link with Simon Holzapfel on LinkedIn.

BONUS: Continuous Strategy Engineering—Beyond Waterfall Planning With Tom Gilb and Simon Holzapfel Strategy Professors Are Decades Behind "The professors of strategy have no clue as to what Evo is. They are locked in decades ago, waterfall mode."   Tom's analysis is stark: the people teaching strategy in business schools haven't undergone the same agile transformation that software development experienced. They still think in terms of 5-year plans that get tested at the end—a guaranteed recipe for discovering failure too late. The alternative? Decompose any large strategy into weekly value delivery steps. And if you think that's impossible, ask any AI to do it for you—it will produce 52 reasonable weekly increments in about a minute. Why OKRs Aren't Enough for Complex Systems "If you're doing small-scale stuff that OKRs were designed for, like planning your personal work 14 days hence, OKRs are wonderful. If you're designing the air traffic control system for Europe, they're just too simple."   Tom distinguishes between tools appropriate for personal productivity and those needed for complex organizational strategy. OKRs force some thinking, which is good, but they weren't designed for—and have never been adapted to—large-scale systems engineering. His paper "What is Wrong with OKRs?" documents roughly 100 gaps between simple OKRs and what robust value requirements actually require. Check out Tom Gilb's paper on what's wrong with OKR's and how to fix it.  The Missing Alignment Layer "We have no mental model for most of leadership about how you actually align people around clear vision."   Simon introduces the concept of a Hoshin-Kanri "sprinkler" system—imagine strategic clarity flowing from the top and misting over everyone's desk as alignment. Most organizations lack anything resembling this. They have Moses descending from expensive consultant retreats with tablets, but no continuous two-way flow of strategic information. The result? Teams work hard on things that don't matter while critical values go unaddressed. About Tom Gilb and Simon Holzapfel   Tom Gilb, born in the US, lived in London, and then moved to Norway in 1958. An independent teacher, consultant, and writer, he has worked in software engineering, corporate top management, and large-scale systems engineering. As the saying goes, Tom was writing about Agile before Agile was named. In 1976, Tom introduced the term "evolutionary" in his book Software Metrics, advocating for development in small, measurable steps. Today, we talk about Evo, the name Tom uses to describe his approach. Tom has worked with Dr. Deming and holds a certificate personally signed by him. You can listen to Tom Gilb's previous episodes here.    You can link with Tom Gilb on LinkedIn    Simon Holzapfel is an educator, coach, and learning innovator who helps teams work with greater clarity, speed, and purpose. He specializes in separating strategy from tactics, enabling short-cycle decision-making and higher-value workflows. Simon has spent his career coaching individuals and teams to achieve performance with deeper meaning and joy. Simon is also the author of the Equonomist newsletter on Substack. And you can listen to Simon's previous episodes on the podcast here.    You can link with Simon Holzapfel on LinkedIn.

BONUS: Impact Engineering—Finding Agile's Lost North Star With Tom Gilb and Simon Holzapfel The Clarity Problem: Why Organizations Start with "Fuzzy B*S*!" "Everybody seems to start from a position of fuzzy b*s*. Nice-sounding words. Management does it, professors do it, politicians do it. And they don't even feel very guilty about it."   Tom Gilb doesn't mince words when describing how most organizations define their objectives. The fundamental problem isn't a lack of ambition—it's a lack of clarity. When leaders are asked about their critical values like "extremely high security" or "employee happiness," they typically respond with circular definitions that provide no actionable direction. Tom's approach starts by exposing this gap and then demonstrating that any value—no matter how "soft" or intangible it seems—can be quantified. Using AI tools, he's shown clients over 1,400 different ways to measure human happiness alone. Why Agile Lost Its North Star "Agile's lost its North Star because the economic problems it was trying to solve within the organization are now mismatched with the digital world."   Simon Holzapfel offers a structural analysis: Agile developed primarily to allay the concerns of pre-digital capital—investors who needed reassurance that their money wouldn't disappear into failed projects. But today's digital economy operates differently. Capital now moves like a service (SaaS model), and innovation is fundamentally stochastic—you can't predict when breakthroughs will happen. Organizations using flow-focused tools when the real problem is value creation are applying yesterday's solutions to today's challenges. The First Step: Quantify Your Critical Values "If you ask AI to quantify employee happiness a hundred different ways, it will do it in one minute for free. So you can no longer be in denial."   The path forward starts with brutal honesty about what your organization actually cares about. Tom's approach involves:   Identifying the top 10 critical stakeholder values Defining clear scales of measure for each Establishing where you are now (status) Setting where you need to be to survive (tolerable level) Defining what success looks like (target/goal level)   This isn't about adding bureaucracy—it's about creating shared clarity that enables everyone to row in the same direction.   About Tom Gilb and Simon Holzapfel   Tom Gilb, born in the US, lived in London, and then moved to Norway in 1958. An independent teacher, consultant, and writer, he has worked in software engineering, corporate top management, and large-scale systems engineering. As the saying goes, Tom was writing about Agile before Agile was named. In 1976, Tom introduced the term "evolutionary" in his book Software Metrics, advocating for development in small, measurable steps. Today, we talk about Evo, the name Tom uses to describe his approach. Tom has worked with Dr. Deming and holds a certificate personally signed by him. You can listen to Tom Gilb's previous episodes here.    You can link with Tom Gilb on LinkedIn    Simon Holzapfel is an educator, coach, and learning innovator who helps teams work with greater clarity, speed, and purpose. He specializes in separating strategy from tactics, enabling short-cycle decision-making and higher-value workflows. Simon has spent his career coaching individuals and teams to achieve performance with deeper meaning and joy. Simon is also the author of the Equonomist newsletter on Substack. And you can listen to Simon's previous episodes on the podcast here.    You can link with Simon Holzapfel on LinkedIn.

What if more quizzes created more joy—not stress? Lee Jenkins shows host Andrew Stotz how Deming-inspired practices like random-concept quizzes, student-led charts, and "all-time best" celebrations turn classrooms into true learning systems that build confidence, motivation, and real understanding. A simple shift in method—massive shift in joy. (View the powerpoint referenced in the podcast.) TRANSCRIPT 0:00:02.2 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 talking with Lee Jenkins, who is a career educator in public schools, completing his full-time work as a school district superintendent. During that work, he was introduced to the teachings of Dr. Deming and has been applying those teachings to his life and work since. In his business, Crazy Simple Education, he helps people apply Dr. Deming's principles in their schools to bring joy back to learning, to help kids learn more. The topic for today is how educators have applied Dr. Deming's ideas to learning. Lee, take it away.   0:00:42.8 Lee Jenkins: Thank you so much, Andrew. It's amazing what Dr. Deming taught in five minutes. I've been able to teach that for over 20 years. It's just amazing. And then you see in the next slide, it was Lou Rhodes. And this is just a short little review of what we did on the first podcast. But he's the one that said, I think you're going to enjoy this. Little did he know how much I was going to enjoy that in 1990 when he said that. And then in 1992, heard Dr. Deming in person as the statistician. And he described in five minutes just a little touch of what was different about a classroom as opposed to all the other systems that he was teaching. And so over time, you're going to see how it's been implemented with great joy with so many people. He taught that education should have a learning system instead of an inspection system. And that's what we have, is an inspection system. The state departments of education inspect the schools and the teachers inspect the kids. We don't have a learning system. So if you think about that distinction, it's truly a learning system. And you're going to see that as we go through this today.   0:01:51.2 Andrew Stotz: Lee, I was just... After listening to you in the last episode and listening to some of our other great guests on the show, I talked to my students about this. And one of my students, after I went through it and talked about the random sampling as an example of questions to understand the level of knowledge that students as a group are getting, one of my students at this prestigious university I teach at in Thailand said, "So why are you grading us? "   0:02:26.1 Lee Jenkins: Yes. Yes. That's it.   0:02:27.4 Andrew Stotz: And I said... Lee, I need help. I gave my best answer and that is, "I decided that right now, the fight with the university to change the way it's done is not a fight I'm prepared to take. But what I'm going to do is try to deliver the best experience I can in the room." Now, that was a bit of a cop out, but that's part of... People who are listening and viewing this are also caught in a system, in a trap, an inspection system. So it's just great to hear you talk about this and it can help us think about how we can handle it.   0:03:09.9 Lee Jenkins: People say that education hasn't been improved for 50 years. Then think about it. We've had an inspection system for 50 years. Maybe that's the problem, right? So here's what Dr. Deming taught. Tell them what you want them to know first week of school. Here it is. You're going to give them a weekly quiz. The quiz is going to be the square root of the total number of concepts you want them to learn. So a teacher teaching a second language, 400 vocabulary words, they had 20 words a week at random out of the 400. It's simple, but it's crazy that you don't... People say, "How can you assess them on something you haven't taught yet? " You can, if you have a learning system. And then he said to build a scatter diagram and a class run chart. And let's look at those two just to review. The scatter diagram, and if you can't see this, it's just across the x-axis on the bottom. It says 1 to 14, which is for half a year. The y-axis goes from 0 to 10 because there are 10 questions every week in this classroom. And we have a dot by how many kids got 0 right, how many kids got 1 right, how many kids got 2 right. And if you look at over a semester, you can see all the dots moving from the lower left corner up to the upper right corner. So that's the scatter diagram.   0:04:29.7 Andrew Stotz: That's all the students in the class. That's not one individual student.   0:04:33.0 Lee Jenkins: That's not one student. It's the whole class because you're the manager of the learning of a classroom. He taught that. And then he said graph the total correct for the whole classroom.   0:04:46.6 Andrew Stotz: So you just did what he said.   0:04:49.8 Lee Jenkins: Yeah, add it up. It is simple and it is crazy. I mean, all the coaches who are listening to this know when you go to a game, you add up the total for every athlete. You add it up to get a total for the team. Then that same coach is in the classroom on Monday and they never think about that this is a team of learners. It's the same thing. Add it up. And they love it. And they help each other and they contribute and they celebrate when a struggling student helps the class out as much as a student that's advanced.   0:05:24.2 Andrew Stotz: Yeah. I mean we're social creatures, right? We want to be part of a group. We want to contribute. It's just such a clear principle.   0:05:35.0 Lee Jenkins: Yeah, it's simple. So then here's the expansion. Here's different things that happened over time with the process, and we'll share those with you. One was people said, well, ya know, my problem is not... It's partly they don't remember what I'm teaching well enough, but they clearly don't remember the prior courses. So this is a high school math teacher teaching geometry, and so she has half of her questions are coming from geometry because they're teaching geometry. But the other half of the questions come from the four courses they had in math prior because she knows they don't remember it. And then there's a secondary science department. The same thing. They said half of our questions for every quiz have to be from the prior courses, not just the current one. Because students think...   0:06:29.6 Andrew Stotz: Wow! That's fascinating. And before you go for that, so let's look at geometry. You've got these buckets. Before geometry is algebra two, and before that is algebra one, and before that's pre-algebra, and before that is math seven. I remember my pre-algebra class at school with Dr...Mr. Tyler. He was the football coach, and that guy was a slave driver. Even if you got the question wrong, if you structured your answering process right, you would get half points.   0:06:58.9 Lee Jenkins: Oh, okay. Yes.   0:06:59.6 Andrew Stotz: He helped me learn the structure and the order of solving algebra problems, but if I didn't do that well or I didn't have him as a teacher, I could end up in geometry not actually knowing that. But what the heck is this geometry teacher supposed to do if they find out that the class doesn't really understand some of the prior core principles?   0:07:21.7 Lee Jenkins: Well, they, obviously, they need to teach it, and so part of it they do. The other part of it is the kids don't want to forget the prior courses. If you just throw all these into a bucket and they don't say where it's from, they don't... Well, okay, I missed a question. But when you say, you're in 11th grade in geometry, and you missed the 7th grade question, they don't like that. So it builds, it's a visual. It's right in front of the room every day. They can see, I need to know all of this. And the science teacher is the same thing. The kids say, I'm in chemistry now. I don't need biology. Why do I need that? Until you see it right there in front of you every day, and you think, oh, I'm supposed to learn this.   0:08:12.9 Andrew Stotz: Gosh, it just brings me back to when I was in high school, and I really got frustrated because the pace was really fast, and I felt like I didn't fully understand the prior material, and now I'm on to the next. And that was, and I felt like I was building on a shaky foundation, and this is a part of addressing that.   0:08:33.7 Lee Jenkins: It is, absolutely. So that's one of the changes that was made. Teachers took and expanded that to the whole curriculum as opposed to only the course they're teaching.   0:08:43.0 Andrew Stotz: And just to think about that, is that in order to truly do that, you really want to have the math, the pre-algebra, the algebra, the algebra 2, and the geometry teachers all working on the same playbook.   0:08:56.2 Lee Jenkins: Yes, yes. And when we do make those lists for each class, there's no duplicates.   0:09:02.7 Andrew Stotz: Right.   0:09:04.3 Lee Jenkins: I mean, like with the science, I remember the biology teacher saying to the chemistry teacher, "You teach that? I teach that also." And they'd been teaching next door to each other for 10 years and didn't know it. So they have to say, who owns that one? So it's all a system that's tightly designed.   0:09:25.1 Andrew Stotz: And in the academic world of universities where I've taught, there's this thing that they want to give you independence to teach what you want in the way you want. I don't know about what's happening in schools these days, but is the curriculum pretty much set and therefore the teacher can't veer from that and therefore this would not be a problem? Or is it that, hey, every teacher's doing something different and it doesn't all work together?   0:09:53.6 Lee Jenkins: Right. What's the "what." The essential "what", needs to be agreed upon no matter who's teaching it. Now, on these lists, we don't put trivia. And trivia should be in the classroom. It's fun. It's interesting, but they're not accountable for it.   0:10:11.3 Andrew Stotz: Right.   0:10:11.7 Lee Jenkins: So it's what's essential for the kids to know. And the teachers, when they have time, the principal sets aside a day and said, okay, science department, get together, get this listed, what you want. They like that discussion and the agreement of what's expected.   0:10:30.1 Andrew Stotz: Yep.   0:10:31.8 Lee Jenkins: The next thing that was added, Dr. Deming did not talk about students graphing their individual progress. So this is a student run chart, not a class run chart. So you can see...   0:10:46.3 Andrew Stotz: Yeah, that's interesting. Before you even go into that, it makes me think about the factory. It was kind of accepted that the statistics guys would kind of run the run charts and management would look at it. It would be public, it wasn't hidden. But the idea of really bringing the accountability to the people on the production line is what this reminds me of.   0:11:10.0 Lee Jenkins: It's exactly the same, and the kids like making the graphs. When you see, this is a younger child, but it's done by a high school child, not all of them, but some of them, but who like to doodle, they become very, it's kind of pieces of art, but they own it. They own that learning. They can see how they're doing, and they're so happy when it goes up, but it goes down at times. Why does it go down? They went down because bad luck, because it's random. Sometimes you choose the hard ones, but overall, you see a progress of going up and up and up, and so that's why it's not an inspection chart. It's a learning chart. It's showing a picture of my learning.   0:11:58.8 Andrew Stotz: And just to be clear, the first two charts we saw were looking at the overall classroom, but now the chart you're showing is one student mapping their progress throughout the quizzes.   0:12:11.7 Lee Jenkins: Yes, every student does their own, and if the teacher is scoring the papers to give them back to them, the results, they have to change, a slight change, instead of putting how many, they put a plus at how many correct, because you're graphing the number correct.   0:12:30.6 Andrew Stotz: Yep.   0:12:32.8 Lee Jenkins: And then another thing is kind of a celebration, a thank you, when students do better than ever before. So if a student had two right and then three right, and then they finally had five right, they never had five right all year long, they do something for the kid quickly to just say, yay, this child went and hit the gong. Just means I did more than, got more right than ever before. So what's the power of that? Dr. Deming wants every student to win. And I've been in classrooms six weeks after school started, maybe four or five in that time, and say, "Is there anybody in here who hasn't had a personal best? " I've never had a hand go up. They all have by then. Now, so you can be a struggling student, you can be an advanced student, but they all have a record of doing better than ever before, and we have ways of celebrating that.   0:13:32.4 Andrew Stotz: And that also is the idea of the objective really here is to improve ourselves relative to our prior selves.   0:13:43.7 Lee Jenkins: Yes, you're in competition with your prior self, that's it, yes. And I would say it's even 1% of the time that I saw somebody twist that and make it into a bribe. It's not a bribe, it's a thank you. I'm so proud of you, it's a thank you. It's a completely different mindset. They want to do that. And if we look at the next one...   0:14:09.8 Andrew Stotz: And just to understand this one last thing is that, are you saying that in a classroom when a student hits an all-time high, they go up and bang the gong or the teacher bangs it or what?   0:14:19.3 Lee Jenkins: No, the kid does it, the kid does it. Or whatever's done. One, you know that in sports where they make a tunnel and the athletes run through that tunnel of other athletes. There was a classroom that did that. The kids made a tunnel and the ones who had an all-time best that week ran through the tunnel. Okay? And there's...   0:14:41.0 Andrew Stotz: Yeah. And you could do simple things. You could also just say, if you did an all-time best, stand up.   0:14:46.6 Lee Jenkins: Yeah, it could be... But we try to make it something fun.   0:14:51.3 Andrew Stotz: Yep, yep.   0:14:52.3 Lee Jenkins: Something that's enjoyable for them. And it depends on the age. Here's one, another classroom, they wrote their name on a shape when they had a personal best. If you go to the next slide.   0:15:05.4 Andrew Stotz: Okay.   0:15:05.8 Lee Jenkins: You will see there's a collection of probably 200 shapes. With individual kids, they wrote their name on it when they had a personal best. And see, it's everybody. And it's a graphic in the hallway that lets all the other classrooms see, look how much we're learning.   0:15:29.9 Andrew Stotz: Right.   0:15:30.3 Lee Jenkins: Because every time you have a personal best, you put your name. This happens to be a star instead of a feather, but they put it up there.   0:15:36.7 Andrew Stotz: Yep.   0:15:39.1 Lee Jenkins: And then here's a middle school. When they have a personal best, they write their name on the whiteboard. And the kids have made kind of a Scrabble out of it, a crossword puzzle, where they can use the letters from somebody else's name to make their name. They love it. And they particularly like it because their friends who happen to be in that classroom but a different period, when they come in, they see their friends' names. Again, it's everybody. It's simple. Write your name on the whiteboard when you have a personal best. And then this is a high school. They had the game Kerplunk. And if anybody's not seen that, it's a cylinder. And it has holes. About halfway up it has a bunch of holes. And you put straws through the holes. And then you put marbles on top. When a kid has a personal best, they pull a straw out. When you pull enough straws out that all the marbles on top come crashing down, that's why they call it Kerplunk. And then the class does something for a couple minutes of fun. But it's everybody.   0:16:49.0 Andrew Stotz: Right.   0:16:49.8 Lee Jenkins: Then here is, they added the word all-time best. That was an addition.   0:16:57.7 Andrew Stotz: Right.   0:16:58.1 Lee Jenkins: And this is a class run chart, like I showed you last time, where you add up the total for the whole class. But when the class has more correct than ever before, it's an all-time best. We use that word for kids also, and you'll see in school that the initials ATB are very common in the schools.   0:17:22.1 Andrew Stotz: Right.   0:17:23.3 Lee Jenkins: It's one of the most common things. And you can't see it, but I'm looking at this when they had 28 quizzes in the year, and there are one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight times during the year out of 28 that the class had an all-time best. Also, if you look at the x-axis, it's 28. Dr. Deming said every week, and it was changed to 28 instead of every week.   0:18:03.6 Andrew Stotz: Right.   0:18:03.9 Lee Jenkins: That was a huge deal for me because I knew that every week was too much. There's snow days. There's things that happen, and you just... In the schools, it's too much going on for it to be every week. But I also knew that every other week's not enough. Not for kids to really prove that they're learning. Plus, they like them. They want...   0:18:29.6 Andrew Stotz: So, what does the 28 mean? Why 28?   0:18:33.5 Lee Jenkins: It's seven times a quarter instead of nine times a quarter. That's why.   0:18:37.1 Andrew Stotz: Okay.   0:18:38.3 Lee Jenkins: So, out of a quarter, two times they didn't. And actually, the complaint the kids had was, why aren't we doing one this week? And so, in a sub-sense, it's only for the teacher to just kind of a sense of... It just eases up a little bit. For the teacher, not for the kids.   0:18:55.8 Andrew Stotz: So, in other words, rather than strictly tying it to a week, you tie it to the number of quizzes that you're going to do, and then you manage that.   0:19:08.6 Lee Jenkins: Yeah, and I've never heard anybody say they couldn't get the 28 in. It's reasonable.   0:19:12.5 Andrew Stotz: Right.   0:19:13.1 Lee Jenkins: Yeah. It's a reasonable...   0:19:16.3 Andrew Stotz: Just for people that don't recall, like myself, I can't even remember what numbers of days in the classroom and numbers of weeks in a class and stuff like that, can you just remind me what that is?   0:19:29.6 Lee Jenkins: Okay, in a year, the school is divided into quarters, and there's 36 weeks in the year. So, there's nine weeks per quarter, and we're quizzing seven of those nine weeks.   0:19:42.8 Andrew Stotz: Perfect, okay, got it. Okay.   0:19:46.5 Lee Jenkins: Now, here is something else that has been added, and it is the goal. And so, Dr. Deming talks against numerical goals, and we agree with that. That goal is not an artificial number. It's the best from the prior year. So, it's a real number. So, the students are trying to outperform the prior years.   0:20:18.6 Andrew Stotz: So, this is the best that the system could produce in the past period?   0:20:23.8 Lee Jenkins: Yeah, are we smarter than the kids that you had the last several years? Are we smarter...   0:20:29.5 Andrew Stotz: Am I teaching better? Are you learning better?   0:20:33.5 Lee Jenkins: No, it's a challenge. It's a challenge, and they are so excited when they do better than the prior years. So, how did they get so high up there? Part of it is because there are kids who get, on the quizzes, they get perfect, perfect, perfect, perfect, and it's kind of boring for them. And so, we've come up with... When you get them all right seven times, it could be five, it could be six, we've usually gone with seven, then you don't take the quiz anymore in the room because you've proven you know it. And then we give you a harder one.   0:21:17.0 Andrew Stotz: Right.   0:21:18.3 Lee Jenkins: The class gets credit for the quiz you didn't take, plus how many you get on the next one. So, that helps it to go on up because you've got kids that are, the word we're using is they test out. They've proven they know it.   0:21:34.9 Andrew Stotz: Yep. Yep.   0:21:36.5 Lee Jenkins: We use the, when I talk with the teachers, the flip of the coin statistics. If a kid gets a perfect score, you have a 50% chance they're lucky, and a 50% chance they know all the content for the year.   0:21:49.7 Andrew Stotz: Yep.   0:21:49.9 Lee Jenkins: You don't know what it is. After seven times, you're up to 99% sure they really do know all of it.   0:21:56.3 Andrew Stotz: Right.   0:21:57.1 Lee Jenkins: Yeah. Oh, this day, this is a run chart from a middle school, and they had one more right than ever before. They are beyond happy. And you will see kids in the rooms doing a chest bump.   0:22:20.2 Andrew Stotz: Yep.   0:22:20.4 Lee Jenkins: A kid that's struggling, and says, it was me. I'm the one that put us over the top. If it hadn't been for my two questions right, we wouldn't all be celebrating. And of course, if you don't count it, you'd never know as a student or a teacher that you had your best. Nobody'd never know.   0:22:43.3 Andrew Stotz: Yeah. Yep.   0:22:44.0 Lee Jenkins: Count it out and graph it. Oh, they're so happy.   0:22:48.2 Andrew Stotz: Yeah.   0:22:48.5 Lee Jenkins: So that... And then here is a run chart by grade level. This is 16 classrooms together.   0:23:01.5 Andrew Stotz: What does that mean, 16 classrooms?   0:23:03.9 Lee Jenkins: There's four science classes, four English, four math, and four history. And we took all of those questions right from 16 rooms and calculated a percent correct.   0:23:19.2 Andrew Stotz: So in other words, how we're learning as a school or how we're learning all the subjects, how would you describe that?   0:23:25.9 Lee Jenkins: This was grade seven.   0:23:28.3 Andrew Stotz: Right.   0:23:28.9 Lee Jenkins: This was for the grade seven teachers. They wanted to have a total for their grade level.   0:23:35.5 Andrew Stotz: And so it starts off on quiz number one, that students got 16% correct. That's quiz number one.   0:23:46.7 Lee Jenkins: Right.   0:23:46.9 Andrew Stotz: Or quizzes number one.   0:23:50.7 Lee Jenkins: For quiz number one. Right. You can't say week one, it's quiz one.   0:23:53.2 Andrew Stotz: Yep, yep. Sorry.   0:23:53.8 Lee Jenkins: And this is for first semester, because there's 14 right there.   0:24:00.4 Andrew Stotz: Yep, yep. And then by the time they get to quiz number 13, that's, or quiz number 13 for all four subjects brought together into one measure, they're at, say, they've gone from 16 to 55.   0:24:14.5 Lee Jenkins: Yes. So you can say that at halfway through the year, the seventh grade class, 16 classrooms, but seventh graders know half of the content. And you know it's in their long-term memory. They couldn't study the night before.   0:24:31.9 Andrew Stotz: Right.   0:24:31.8 Lee Jenkins: Because you don't know what's going to be chosen at random. They know half of the content.   0:24:37.8 Andrew Stotz: And interesting that we see kind of a linear rise. I wonder if there's an exponential rise towards the end as the students get totally pumped up and into it and they're learning more.   0:24:47.8 Lee Jenkins: They are. They want to get as close as they can. It won't land on 100%.   0:24:54.0 Andrew Stotz: Yep.   0:24:55.0 Lee Jenkins: Somebody's going to miss something, but it gets really close.   0:24:57.7 Andrew Stotz: Yep.   0:25:01.3 Lee Jenkins: Now here's something else we've added. Because Dr. Deming talked about the classroom, this is a whole school. And they're all taking a math quiz. It's an elementary from kindergarten through fifth grade. On Thursday afternoon, the teachers go in to their computer on a Google Doc and they put in how many questions their classroom got right on the quiz that week. It's all set up in advance and there's a total. And then on Friday, the principal announces if they had an all school time best, all-time best for the school. And you can see...   0:25:45.8 Andrew Stotz: And the number here is 3878 I see in quiz number 28. Is that the total number of correct answers out of accumulating all the different quizzes of quiz number 8, all the different classes that do quiz number 28?   0:26:00.4 Lee Jenkins: Yes. On quiz 28, they answered 3,878 math questions correct.   0:26:06.2 Andrew Stotz: And somebody could look at this and say, "Oh, come on, kids are just going to game this, right? It's just quiz questions and all that." Now, I think I understand why that's not going to be the case. But how would you explain to somebody that says that?   0:26:21.4 Lee Jenkins: Hey, as the kids get older... Let's go back. This is math.   0:26:28.0 Andrew Stotz: Yep.   0:26:28.5 Lee Jenkins: So the concepts are the same, but the questions are different. So they can't game it. And other subjects where it's not math, teachers tell me that three different questions per concept is enough and they don't game it. They can't. But if you only had for every question for the year, I mean, for every concept, if you only had one question, they would game it. They just remember the answer to the question.   0:26:58.7 Andrew Stotz: Right.   0:26:58.9 Lee Jenkins: Yeah. As they get older.   0:27:00.7 Andrew Stotz: And what would you say to some people that may look at that and say, "Oh, you're just teaching to the quiz or teaching to the exam? "   0:27:13.3 Lee Jenkins: Well, we're saying, here's what you're going to learn this year. University professors give out syllabuses. A syllabus is what you're going to teach, which is different from stating this is what the kids are going to learn. And so when you list what you want them to learn, this is evidence they learned it. Now, yes, we're teaching to what we said we want them to know. It didn't come... When you teach to the test, that often means that somebody else made up the test that I've got to teach to that test they made up because there's high stakes.   0:27:55.3 Andrew Stotz: Right.   0:27:55.6 Lee Jenkins: But when we as faculty say what we want the kids to know, we're not teaching to the test, we're teaching to what we said we want them to know.   0:28:05.5 Andrew Stotz: Yep. Yep. And then the other thing I would say is when you get students so deeply involved in the whole process, ultimately young kids actually are not going to necessarily celebrate cheating.   0:28:22.8 Lee Jenkins: No, no, they're not.   0:28:25.5 Andrew Stotz: They understand right and wrong. They haven't gotten to the level where adults are, where we put a lot of gray area between right and wrong and politicians will lie about this and that to get in office or get money or whatever.   0:28:37.4 Lee Jenkins: Let me tell you a story about the cheating. There were three fourth grades in a row in a school. And in the middle between the other two fourth grades, they did cheat early in the year. They got a very high score. Then the teacher found out how they cheated and stopped it so they couldn't do it anymore. But they couldn't get classroom best because they had an artificial high score. So they're saying to her, "We cheated teacher, take it away that score that we cheated." She says, "No, you cheated." It took them till November before they could have a classroom best.   0:29:16.7 Andrew Stotz: Right.   0:29:17.4 Lee Jenkins: So they paid a price for it. Now, people have fun with random. This is out of the state of Delaware. It looks like a skeleton from Halloween and they spray painted lima beans, put them inside the skull, wrote numerals on them and you draw the numerals out and that's the concept you're going to quiz. So there's been fun with how you do random, fun with how we celebrate.   0:29:55.0 Andrew Stotz: Right.   0:29:55.2 Lee Jenkins: Fun with making the graph pretty with I get to put Google... I mean, I get to scribble on it and do different things that make it pretty. Yeah. And here is a... There is a styrofoam nose. I'd say it's a meter tall styrofoam nose. And the teacher had slips of paper with the concepts on them. And an eighth grader said, that is boring. Brought in a styrofoam nose and you put the slips up the nostril and that's where you pull out...   0:30:26.2 Andrew Stotz: Only kids are going to come up with that.   0:30:28.1 Lee Jenkins: Yes, I know. And this is a history teacher, world history. She has 65 concepts are going to learn during the year. She gave them the list, put the 65 on a tongue depressor, put them in a bucket. She pulls eight out each week and the kids have to put the eight in chronological order from memory.   0:30:52.3 Andrew Stotz: Right. That's interesting.   0:30:53.5 Lee Jenkins: But they can't do it in the beginning.   0:30:55.1 Andrew Stotz: Yep.   0:30:56.0 Lee Jenkins: But by the end of the year, you want every kid to be able to pull any eight you pull out and put them in chronological order, not because they know dates, but because they know history.   0:31:06.2 Andrew Stotz: Yeah. Yep.   0:31:10.1 Lee Jenkins: And then here from Saskatchewan is a teacher who hyperlinked the periodic table. It's up on the whiteboard. So in the bucket are the names of elements. So if a student pulls out the word potassium, they go up to the whiteboard and they click on the letter K. It's hyperlinked. When they click on it, up comes a question about biology. The question has nothing to do with potassium.   0:31:42.6 Andrew Stotz: Oh!   0:31:44.4 Lee Jenkins: It's just a clever way to do random.   0:31:48.6 Andrew Stotz: Yep. Yep.   0:31:50.1 Lee Jenkins: Okay. And then we celebrate as a whole class. This is a class that's celebrating doing the wave. They've been to athletic events. They've seen people do the wave at athletic events. When the class has an all-time best as a class, they do something quick to celebrate. They're doing the wave. This classroom, they have a spinner. And the kids chose 10 ways they wanted to celebrate. I said, "What's your favorite? " And they said, "Hamster ball." I said, "What's a hamster ball? " They said, "We've got a hamster in the room. We put it in a hamster ball, put it in the middle of the room and watch where it goes."   0:32:32.7 Andrew Stotz: Yep.   0:32:34.4 Lee Jenkins: Fun. This is the whole school again. Just celebrating. One principal, when the school had an all-time best, somebody came in and cut his tie off. And he had dads giving him all their old ties to cut off. Yeah. And then they like to do item analysis. That's kids doing that.   0:32:59.0 Andrew Stotz: Right.   0:33:00.1 Lee Jenkins: They like to tell you what it is we most need help with.   0:33:04.2 Andrew Stotz: So this is looking at errors to say what we're struggling with. What does that mean?   0:33:07.7 Lee Jenkins: Yeah, here's the most room, most missed item in the whole room, all the way to the right, the item that nobody in the room missed it.   0:33:15.8 Andrew Stotz: Yeah, like allusion. I'd miss that too.   0:33:21.1 Lee Jenkins: And then we made histograms. So it's taking the data from the scattered diagram and putting a different one together for each week. So the kids see an L-shaped curve in the beginning, a bell curve in the middle of the year, and a J-shape at the end of the year. And this was taken because they were so excited that they could see the J finally. They knew the J was coming, and there it was.   0:33:47.8 Andrew Stotz: Yep.   0:33:49.7 Lee Jenkins: Yeah. And then we used the information from the scatter diagram to calculate effect size and to see what's the effect of all of this compared to all the other things in the world that have been done. And we got six times the average of the effect size research from John Hattie. If you don't cram and forget, you actually just remember, of course, it's a lot higher. Duh, of course.   0:34:15.5 Andrew Stotz: Yep.   0:34:18.0 Lee Jenkins: And we did the scatter diagram that I showed earlier, we mentioned earlier, that's what we use. And when John Hattie saw the scatter diagram, he said, "That's what you need for effect size."   0:34:29.6 Andrew Stotz: Right.   0:34:30.3 Lee Jenkins: Because effect size is you increase the mean and you reduce the variation. I've been talking a lot about knowledge. I haven't been talking about skills. The same process works for skills. And this is the dichotomous rubric. It's on my website. It's blank. It's free. And we use the dichotomous rubric to measure skills.   0:34:53.4 Andrew Stotz: Yep.   0:34:56.6 Lee Jenkins: So this is my pastor. It was, school was starting, he called two kids up on the platform and he said, "What are you excited about school? School started. What are you excited about? " The girl says, "See my friends." And the boy said, "Quizzes."   0:35:09.3 Andrew Stotz: Yeah, making my charts, seeing the quiz, watching the progress.   0:35:13.3 Lee Jenkins: It's hard to believe, but that's exactly what happens. And there's the Jenkins curve, which is the loss of enthusiasm year by year through the grades. I would have never done this without Deming because he talked about graphs have to be long and skinny.   0:35:29.3 Andrew Stotz: Man, we just grind down the kids in a normal situation.   0:35:32.9 Lee Jenkins: Just grind them down.   0:35:34.4 Andrew Stotz: Yep.   0:35:34.7 Lee Jenkins: Every year, fewer and fewer kids love school.   0:35:37.3 Andrew Stotz: Yep.   0:35:39.9 Lee Jenkins: So podcast number three, when it comes up, will be the future. What can we do because of all this that we haven't done before? It'll be fun.   0:35:51.2 Andrew Stotz: Wow! That is a lot of stuff. If you were to take all that we just went through, which was really fun and exciting, what would be the one takeaway you want people to get from that?   0:36:04.2 Lee Jenkins: The takeaway is that we can keep the intrinsic motivation alive that children were born with. And when we keep it alive, the complaint in the staff room will be, I can't keep up with all these things that these kids want to learn.   0:36:22.3 Andrew Stotz: Yeah.   0:36:23.7 Lee Jenkins: Instead of complaining that they won't sit still, they won't do the work, we'd be saying, "I can't keep up. They want to learn so much. I'm overloaded with what they want to know."   0:36:32.7 Andrew Stotz: And the end result is they become lifelong learners.   0:36:38.0 Lee Jenkins: Yes, absolutely. Yeah.   0:36:38.2 Andrew Stotz: Yeah.   0:36:38.9 Lee Jenkins: Yeah.   0:36:39.2 Andrew Stotz: I'm going to wrap it up there. And Lee, on behalf of everyone at the Deming Institute, I want to thank you again for this discussion. It was fascinating and it was fun. So for listeners, remember to go to Deming.org to continue your journey. And this is your host, Andrew Stotz, and I'll leave you with one of my favorite quotes from Dr. Deming that ties directly in to what we've been talking about, and that is, people are entitled to joy in work. And I'm going to add in, learning.

Dan Deming says small caps typically show strength at the end of the year and expects the pattern to recur this year. He shares specific stock picks: Corning (GLW), Cummins (CMI), and Danaher (DHR). Dan explains why he likes each stock and touches on potential opportunities in commodities. ======== Schwab Network ========Empowering every investor and trader, every market day.Options involve risks and are not suitable for all investors. Before trading, read the Options Disclosure Document. http://bit.ly/2v9tH6DSubscribe to the Market Minute newsletter - https://schwabnetwork.com/subscribeDownload the iOS app - https://apps.apple.com/us/app/schwab-network/id1460719185Download the Amazon Fire Tv App - https://www.amazon.com/TD-Ameritrade-Network/dp/B07KRD76C7Watch on Sling - https://watch.sling.com/1/asset/191928615bd8d47686f94682aefaa007/watchWatch on Vizio - https://www.vizio.com/en/watchfreeplus-exploreWatch on DistroTV - https://www.distro.tv/live/schwab-network/Follow us on X – https://twitter.com/schwabnetworkFollow us on Facebook – https://www.facebook.com/schwabnetworkFollow us on LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/company/schwab-network/About Schwab Network - https://schwabnetwork.com/about

Wil and Nicholas open by talking about “flowing like water” and how that mindset shows up in hospitality: staying adaptable, humble, and open. Nicholas traces his path from teaching skiing to unexpectedly building a career in enterprise software and QA with major pharma and tech companies, then starting a nonprofit, and finally helping open Feast Bistro in Bozeman. He describes the harsh reality of the first two years at Feast: the gap between fantasy and the P&L, mispriced menus, long hours, financial strain, and the grit required to survive COVID. What kept them afloat was humility, constant feedback from guests, and a deep belief that hospitality is about service, not ego.Those struggles led him to create Check This Out, a simple SMS-driven retention and word-of-mouth platform built first for Feast. Traditional marketing (direct mail, email, social) felt like guesswork because he couldn't track what actually drove revenue or distinguish new from returning guests. By counting every mailer and transcribing every comment card, he discovered that over 80% of guests came because someone they knew recommended Feast. That insight became the backbone of Check This Out: use SMS to bring guests back more often and amplify referrals with trackable, time-bound offers that clearly show who is driving traffic and sales. Throughout the episode, Nicholas emphasizes the same core ideas he's lived by: hospitality as service, learning over knowing, capital-efficient building, and using simple tools that actually work.10 Key Takeaways Hospitality is a gateway industry.Nicholas entered it through ski instruction and serving tables, learning empathy and customer focus, skills that shaped everything he's done since. Boredom fuels creativity.Long, quiet Vermont summers sparked the imagination that later helped him pivot careers and eventually become an entrepreneur. An unlikely path to restaurateur.Years in software QA taught him how to build systems that solve real user problems, experience that later informed Feast and Check This Out. Most pro formas are fantasy.Reality hits fast in restaurants: labor, food cost, pricing, and traffic rarely match projections, and the P&L forces honesty. Underpricing is a common early mistake.Feast discovered they were charging too little and had to adjust based on real customer behavior and feedback. Equity builds commitment.Giving chefs, GMs, and key partners skin in the game helped Feast survive the hardest stretches and come out stronger. Listening is everything.Nicholas embraces Kaizen and Deming's cycle: feedback from guests and staff only matters if you act on it without ego. Word-of-mouth is the true growth engine.His analysis showed 80%+ of guests came through personal recommendations, far more than any ad channel. SMS outperforms email and social.Near-100% open rates and fast response times mean campaigns drive real, trackable revenue, something other channels can't match. Check This Out delivers “butts in seats.”Restaurants use it to send compelling texts and let guests forward offers to friends, giving operators clear attribution and measurable ROI instead of guesswork.

The first step to transformation is to stop doing what no longer works." – Marcia Daszko On this episode of On the Brink with Andi Simon, I sat down with Marcia Daszko, a visionary leadership consultant and author of Pivot, Disrupt, Transform: How Leaders Beat the Odds and Survive. Marcia's journey—from being "excruciatingly shy" to mentoring leaders at Apple, Boeing, and the U.S. Navy—reveals a rare combination of courage, curiosity, and clarity. Her lessons, rooted in the teachings of Dr. W. Edwards Deming, challenge leaders to abandon outdated management practices and embrace a deeper, systems-based way of thinking. From Management Fads to Meaningful Leadership Marcia began her career in marketing before being mentored by Dr. Perry Gluckman, a close associate of Dr. Deming, who revolutionized management thinking through systems theory and continuous improvement. What she learned was not just what to do, but how to think. Too often, organizations chase the latest management fad—Six Sigma, Lean, "best practices"—without understanding the systems that create real success. Marcia calls these "tragedies" because they add complexity without meaning. She estimates that 50 to 80 percent of organizational waste comes from such misguided efforts. Her process begins with a bold question: "What do we need to stop doing?" Once leaders remove what's not working, they can open the flow of communication, creativity, and collaboration—what Marcia calls the "system of profound knowledge." When systems make sense, people thrive. Watch the podcast here: Learning to See Differently Like many of my guests, Marcia helps organizations "see, feel, and think" in new ways. She starts by asking questions that uncover hidden assumptions and systemic barriers. Employees usually know what's wrong, she says, but no one listens. When she leads workshops, she doesn't rely on PowerPoint slides. Instead, she creates experiences—conversations, simulations, and reflections—that shift perspectives. "I don't get resistance," she explains, "because the exercises take care of that." It's an anthropologist's insight wrapped in a strategist's toolkit: people don't change because they're told to—they change because they experience a new way of being together. The Strategic Compass for an Uncertain Future In today's world of disruption, Marcia argues that leaders don't need a roadmap—they need a compass. The future can't be predicted; it must be navigated through exploration, experimentation, and learning. Her Strategic Compass helps executives pivot as they encounter new "rivers and mountains" in their business landscape. Leadership, she reminds us, is not about control but curiosity. The most powerful organizations foster environments where everyone can learn, question, and contribute. Her three "legs of the stool" are: Innovation as a business strategy Continuous improvement as a business strategy Quality as a business strategy Sadly, she says, quality and customer service—once foundational to success—have too often been forgotten. Building a Culture of Trust and Curiosity Both Marcia and I share a passion for culture change. She emphasizes that great leaders reduce fear and build trust. When people feel safe, they can be curious and collaborative. It's not enough to post company values on a wall; leaders must define the behaviors that bring those values to life. Her workshops often transform even the most rigid workplaces. In one session, an employee of 15 years said it was the first time he had felt truly appreciated and engaged. That's the power of inclusion, curiosity, and respect in action. Leading in the Age of AI As we discussed the rise of artificial intelligence, Marcia was unequivocal: "If you're afraid of AI, you'll be left behind." She sees AI not as a threat but as a tool for learning and transformation. The challenge, she warns, is to build guardrails—policies and ethics that guide its use responsibly. In an age when consulting firms can generate proposals in minutes, leaders must rethink how people create value. The winners will be those who empower their teams to use new tools, think critically, and continuously learn. Key Takeaways Stop before you start. Identify and eliminate wasteful management practices that add complexity without results. Think in systems. Every part of your organization is interconnected. Problems are rarely isolated. Create flow. Open channels for communication, creativity, and collaboration. Replace fear with trust. People thrive when they feel safe to contribute. Stay curious. Learning is not a phase—it's a way of life. Use AI wisely. Embrace new tools, but balance innovation with ethical governance. What You Can Do Next Run a "Stop Doing" audit. Gather your team and list processes or habits that no longer serve your mission. Eliminate one per quarter. Host a curiosity circle. Ask open-ended questions like, "What assumptions are we making?" or "What would our customers say if they were in this room?" Map your system. Visualize how information, decisions, and accountability flow. Look for bottlenecks or blind spots. Pair technology with humanity. Use AI or analytics to inform—not replace—human judgment. Model the behavior you want to see. As Marcia says, leadership begins when everyone sees themselves as a leader. Marcia Daszko's work reminds us that transformation is not about new tools—it's about new thinking. If you're ready to pivot from managing the past to creating the future, this episode will show you how. To learn more about Marcia: https://www.linkedin.com/in/marciadaszko/ Connect with me: Website: www.simonassociates.net Email: info@simonassociates.net Learn more about our books here: Rethink: Smashing the Myths of Women in Business Women Mean Business: Over 500 Insights from Extraordinary Leaders to Spark Your Success On the Brink: A Fresh Lens to Take Your Business to New Heights Listen + Subscribe: Available wherever you get your podcasts—Apple, Spotify, Stitcher, YouTube, and more. If you enjoyed this episode, leave a review and share with someone navigating their own leadership journey. Reach out and contact us if you want to see how a little anthropology can help your business grow.  Let's Talk!

BONUS: Organizations as Ecosystems — Understanding Complexity, Innovation, and the Three-Body Problem at Work In this fascinating conversation about complex adaptive systems, Simon Holzapfel helps us understand why traditional planning and control methods fail in knowledge work — and what we can do instead. Understanding Ecosystems vs. Systems "Complex adaptive systems are complex in nature and adaptive in that they evolve over time. That's different from a static system." — Simon Holzapfel   Simon introduces the crucial distinction between mechanical systems and ecosystems. While mechanical systems are predictable and static, ecosystems — like teams and organizations — are complex, adaptive, and constantly evolving. The key difference lies in the interactions among team members, which create emergent properties that cannot be predicted by analyzing individuals separately. Managers often fall into the trap of focusing on individuals rather than the interactions between them, missing where the real magic happens. This is why understanding your organization as an ecosystem, not a machine, fundamentally changes how you lead. In this segment, we refer to the Stella systems modeling application. The Journey from Planning to Emergence "I used to come into class with a lesson plan — doop, doop, doop, minute by minute agenda. And then what I realized is that I would just completely squash those questions that would often emerge from the class." — Simon Holzapfel   Simon shares his transformation from rigid classroom planning to embracing emergence. As a history and economics teacher for 10 years, he learned that over-planning kills the spontaneous insights that make learning powerful. The same principle applies to leadership: planning is essential, but over-planning wastes time and prevents novelty from emerging. The key is separating strategic planning (the "where" and "why") from tactical execution (the "how"), letting teams make local decisions while leaders focus on alignment with the bigger picture. "Innovation Arrives Stochastically" "Simply by noticing the locations where you've had your best ideas, we notice the stochasticness of arrival. Might be the shower, might be on a bike ride, might be sitting in traffic, might be at your desk — but often not." — Simon Holzapfel   Simon unpacks the concept of stochastic emergence — the idea that innovation cannot be scheduled or predicted in advance. Stochastic means something is predictable over large datasets but not in any given moment. You know you'll have ideas if you give yourself time and space, but you can't predict when or where they'll arrive. This has profound implications for managers who try to control when and how innovation happens. Knowledge work is about creating things that haven't existed before, so emergence is what we rely on. Try to squash it with too much control, and it simply won't happen. In this segment, we refer to the Systems Innovation YouTube channel. The Three-Body Problem: A Metaphor for Teams "When you have three nonlinear functions working at the same time within a system, you have almost no ability to predict its future state beyond just some of the shortest time series data." — Simon Holzapfel   Simon uses the three-body problem from physics as a powerful metaphor for organizational complexity. In physics, when you have three bodies (like planets) influencing each other, prediction becomes nearly impossible. The same is true in business — think of R&D, manufacturing, and sales as three interacting forces. The lesson: don't think you can master this complexity. Work with it. Understand it's a system. Most variability comes from the system itself, not from any individual person. This allows us to depersonalize problems — people aren't good or bad, systems can be improved. When teams understand this, they can relax and stop treating every unpredictable moment as an emergency. Coaching Leaders to Embrace Uncertainty "I'll start by trying to read their comfort level. I'll ask about their favorite teachers, their most hated teachers, and I'll really try to bring them back to moments in time that were pivotal in their own development." — Simon Holzapfel   How do you help analytical, control-oriented leaders embrace complexity and emergence? Simon's approach is to build rapport first, then gently introduce concepts based on each leader's background. For technical people who prefer math, he'll discuss narrow tail distributions and fat tails. For humanities-oriented leaders, he uses narrative and storytelling. The goal is to get leaders to open up to possibilities without feeling diminished. He might suggest small experiments: "Hold your tongue once in a meeting" or "Ask questions instead of making statements." These incremental changes help managers realize they don't have to be superhuman problem-solvers who control everything. Giving the Board a Number: The Paradox of Prediction "Managers say we want scientific management, but they don't actually want that. They want predictive management." — Simon Holzapfel   Simon addresses one of the biggest tensions in agile adoption: leaders who say "I just need to give the board a number" while also wanting innovation and adaptability. The paradox is clear — you cannot simultaneously be open to innovation and emergent possibilities while executing a predetermined plan with perfect accuracy. This is an artifact of management literature that promoted the "philosopher king" manager who knows everything. But markets are too movable, consumer tastes vary too much, and knowledge work is too complex for any single person to control. The burnout we see in leaders often comes from trying to achieve an impossible standard. In this segment, we refer to the episodes with David Marquet.  Resources for Understanding Complexity "Eric Beinhocker's book called 'The Origin of Wealth' is wonderful. It's a very approachable and well-researched piece that shows where we've been and where we're going in this area." — Simon Holzapfel   Simon recommends two key resources for anyone wanting to understand complexity and ecosystems. First, Eric Beinhocker's "The Origin of Wealth" explains how we developed flawed economic assumptions based on 19th-century Newtonian physics, and why we need to evolve our understanding. Second, the Systems Innovation YouTube channel offers brilliant short videos perfect for curious, open-minded managers. Simon suggests a practical approach: have someone on your team watch a video and share what they learned. This creates shared language around complexity and makes the concepts less personal and less threatening. The Path Forward: Systems Over Individuals "As a manager, our goal is to constantly evaluate the performance of the system, not the people. We can always put better systems in place. We can always improve existing systems. But you can't tell people what to do — it's not possible." — Simon Holzapfel   The conversation concludes with a powerful insight from Deming's work: about 95% of a system's productivity is linked to the system itself, not individual performance. This reframes the manager's role entirely. Instead of trying to control people, focus on improving systems. Instead of treating burnout as individual failure, see it as information that something in the system isn't working. Organizations are ever-changing ecosystems with dynamic properties that can only be observed, never fully predicted. This requires a completely different way of thinking about management — one that embraces uncertainty, values emergence, and trusts teams to figure things out within clear strategic boundaries. Recommended Resources As recommended resources for further reading, Simon suggests:  The Origin of Wealth, by Eric Beinhocker The Systems Innovation YouTube channel   About Simon Holzapfel   Simon Holzapfel is an educator, coach, and learning innovator who helps teams work with greater clarity, speed, and purpose. He specializes in separating strategy from tactics, enabling short-cycle decision-making and higher-value workflows. Simon has spent his career coaching individuals and teams to achieve performance with deeper meaning and joy. Simon is also the author of the Equonomist newsletter on Substack, where he explores the intersection of economics, equality, and equanimity in the workplace.   You can link with Simon Holzapfel on LinkedIn.

Charlie is an internationally renowned consultant, practitioner, author, speaker, and trainer, of Lean and Agile improvements spanning over 4 decades. Charlie has published 20 books to date, in healthcare, manufacturing, and a children's book and received two Shingo Prizes. Seven of the books have been translated into other languages. There are more in the works. Charlie spent over 13 years with AlliedSignal (now Honeywell) and has been implementing TQM/ Lean Principles and Thinking since 1985. He was the first TQM/Lean Master and a Strategic Operations Manager for AlliedSignal where he received several special recognition and cost reduction awards. Charlie is an external consultant for the Maryland World Class Consortia (MWCC) and a co-author for the resulting World Class Guidelines in 1998. He has been a keynote speaker for the MWCC, Chinese Industrial Engineering Institute, China's Benchmark Lean conferences, and Agile DEVOPS conference in Portugal and done several Lean/ Agile podcasts to date. He has put on training seminars for The Dark Report's Quality Confab and Executive War College.Charlie started Business Improvement Group (BIG) in 1997, and along with his son and other partners, spent the last 28 years implementing successful Lean Implementations and World Class Kaizen events for small to fortune 100 companies across the U.S., Canada, Mexico, Puerto Rico, Europe and Asia. He has taught Lean Thinking Principles to students from all over the world.Charlie is following in the footsteps of his grandfather, Charles W. Protzman, Sr. who, as part of the CCS, under the direction of MacArthur in 1949-50, along with Homer Sarasohn, taught CEO's of over 50 prominent Japanese Telecommunications Companies an eight-week course in American Industrial Management. It was Protzman and Sarasohn that then recommended Deming to JUSE, to continue their quality teachings leading to Deming's 8-day Quality Course starting in 1950 and creation of the Deming Prize.Charlie has a BA and MBA from Loyola University in Maryland.Link to claim CME credit: https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/3DXCFW3CME credit is available for up to 3 years after the stated release dateContact CEOD@bmhcc.org if you have any questions about claiming credit.

Everybody wants instant pudding. But real improvement? That takes time. In this Japan Series episode, Jason breaks down one of the most misunderstood truths about lean: it's not a quick fix, it's a lifelong evolution. Through stories of Japanese temple builders who plan 200 years ahead, and lessons from Deming and Toyota, Jason explains why lasting excellence doesn't come from one big "revolution," but from consistent, long-term commitment to improvement. Still, there's a catch. Before you can evolve, you have to start on the right foundation. That means installing the right operating systems, Takt, Last Planner, and First Planner, fast and decisively. Revolution builds the baseline. Evolution keeps it growing. If you lead a construction company or project and you're ready to build something that actually lasts, this episode will show you how to do it. Listen now and start playing the long game. If you like the Elevate Construction podcast, please subscribe for free and you'll never miss an episode. And if you really like the Elevate Construction podcast, I'd appreciate you telling a friend (Maybe even two

What if your problems are the best thing that ever happened to you? In this Japan Series episode, Jason dives deep into a truth most leaders avoid, problems aren't punishment, they're potential. From broken school systems to broken job sites, from national complacency to daily construction chaos, Jason calls it like it is: we've forgotten how to learn, improve, and take responsibility. But here's the good news, every challenge is an invitation. To innovate. To cooperate. To rally together instead of tearing each other apart. This episode connects lessons from Japan, Deming, and decades of jobsite experience to one clear idea: Be happy when you have problems because they show you where to grow. If you lead teams, build projects, or just want to see America (and our industry) rise again, this one will light a fire in you. Listen now and start turning problems into progress. If you like the Elevate Construction podcast, please subscribe for free and you'll never miss an episode. And if you really like the Elevate Construction podcast, I'd appreciate you telling a friend (Maybe even two

With Joe out this week, Paula Deming joins Jared as a guest host! They discuss Board Gaming 101, Doctor Who, and why changes in established media are tricky. Plus, a debate on the use (or overuse) of Perception in Pathfinder 2E! Watch the video here: https://youtu.be/F2wpMbCztJk⁠ Access exclusive podcasts, ad-free episodes, and livestreams with a 30-day free trial with code "GCN30" at ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠jointhenaish.com⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠. Join Troy Lavallee, Joe O'Brien, Skid Maher, Matthew Capodicasa, Sydney Amanuel, and Kate Stamas as they tour the country. Get your tickets today at ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://hubs.li/Q03cn8wr0⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠. For more podcasts and livestreams, visit ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://hubs.li/Q03cmY380⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices