Podcasts about obstacles

Description: Four talks from Rothbard's centenary celebration last month in Porto:Ammous: Rothbard on PalestineHoppe: Hurdles, Obstacles, and Surprises on the Road to RothbardianismKinsella: Rothbard's Greatest HitsDe Mombynes: Rothbard & BitcoinThe accompanying book, Rothbard at 100, is available from TheSaifHouse.com

Pastor Greg Melvin warned that sin and disobedience are primary obstacles that block God's power, blessings, and entry into His promises, urging attendees to follow God's instructions and maintain humility, repentance, and steady obedience. True repentance — not mere remorse or emotional displays — requires concrete action: confessing sin, forsaking it, and committing to a changed life so God can restore, forgive, and heal. The message closed with an urgent call for personal self-examination and surrender, encouraging anyone with unconfessed sin to come forward for genuine repentance.

Champions Adjust Mindset Program:https://champsadjust.com/pages/camp-Follow Champions Adjust on socials: INSTAGRAM: https://www.instagram.com/ChampionsAdjust/TWITTER: https://twitter.com/Champs_AdjustFACEBOOK: https://www.facebook.com/ChampsAdjust-Performance Gearhttps://champsadjust.comChampions Adjust 

This episode is a replay from The Existential Stoic library. Enjoy! What do you do when you have a bad day? Do you face challenges head-on, or do you bury your head in the sand? In this episode, Danny and Randy discuss challenges they face and what to do when life is challenging.Subscribe to ESP's YouTube Channel! Thanks for listening!  Do you have a question you want answered in a future episode? If so, send your question to: existentialstoic@protonmail.com

DAY 3 of **40 Days to PMP Exam Success 2026** focuses on one of the most important responsibilities of a project professional: **leading the project team**.Everything rises and falls on leadership. In today's session, we examine what effective leadership looks like across predictive, Agile, and hybrid project environments—and how these concepts may appear on the 2026 PMP exam.Today's breakdown covers the seven key enablers of leading the project team:✅ Establish expectations at the team level✅ Empower the team✅ Solve problems collaboratively✅ Represent the voice of the team✅ Support varied experiences, skills, and perspectives✅ Determine the appropriate leadership style✅ Establish clear roles and responsibilitiesYou will also learn:• How team charters, social contracts, and ground rules establish the operating culture• How to use RACI to clarify ownership and decision-making authority• The difference between an issue, problem, impediment, obstacle, and blocker• How to apply the DIGIVE problem-solving framework• Why leadership is based on influence—not merely position or authority• How leadership differs across predictive, Agile, and hybrid environments• The role of the project manager as the organizational bridge in hybrid projectsWe also break down several major leadership and motivation models, including:

A talk by Thanissaro Bhikkhu entitled "Self-made Obstacles"

SAMPLER & SANS REPROCHES (Podcast)Playlist N° 1390 - Monday 13th, July 2026 - Horaire : 20h00-22h00EBM - DARKTECHNO - INDUSTRIEL & RELATED MUSICGALAXIE RADIO 95.3FM --- www.galaxieradio.fr [ S&SR Top Of The Week : T.A.N.K."Broken Mirror" (Electro Agression Records)] T.A.N.K. "Angst" DIG Album : Broken Mirror (Electro Agression Records) SLEEPWALK "Ruthless Agression" DCD : Dystopia (Electro Agression Records) GUILT TRIP "Y Real" DIG Album : Disharmony Of Existence (Autoproduction) AMORPHOUS "Unconditioned (Remix)" DIG Single : Unconditioned (Semantic Productions) DAMAGE CONTROL & LEAETHER STRIP "Obstacles" DIG EP : Master Of Silence (Metropolis Records) GAMMA VORTEX "Dissolve" DIG Album : Painfather (Scanner) END-TEK "Mission Entropy (TEK Cut)" DIG Album : Mortal Sequence (Aliens Productions) DAVID THRUSSEL "Something Inevitable" DIG EP :The Reign Of Dead Matter (Ant-Zen) KIFOTH "Cowardice (Melinda)" DIG Album : Artificial Territory (Aliens Productions) THIS MORN'OMINA "Epoch" DIG Album : Vestiges (Scanner) SPANKTHENUN "No Further Requests" DIG EP: No Further Requests (Autoproduction) HALLOWS "Wear You Out" DIG Album : Dream (ArtOfFact Records) ROHN LEDERMAN "Paper Plane" DIG Album : Volcano (Les Disques De La Pantoufle) LVCERATE "Anatomiia Rozriziv (Grid User remix)" DIG Single : Anatomiia Rozriziv (Hybrid Moment) GJ106 "Les Voisins Vigilante (Stragulf)" DIG Album : Intelligent Noise Suppression (Autoproduction) T.A.N.K. "Reject" DIG Album : Broken Mirror (Electro Agression Records) ORANGE SECTOR "Done (Elite Force Remix by ELM)" DIG Album Reworx (Infacted Recordings) ASTMA "Exorcism" DIG Album : Astma-Ism (Autoproduction) KOMMISSION Z80 "Time For War" DIG Album : Sic Semper Tyrannis (Kolonn Records) :WUMPSCUT: "On The Battlefield" DIG EP : Zuckerpuppe (Beton Kopf Media) CIRCUIT PREACHER "Entity" DIG Album : Made To Burn (darkTunes Music Group) POWERMAN 5000 "Black Lipstick (DIE KRUPPS Remix)" DIG Single : Black Lipstick (Cleopatra Records) PSYCHE "Eternal (Club Mix)" DIG Album : Future Memories (VUZ Records) PROMO THANKS TO : ELECTRO AGRESSION RECORDS (Nader Moumneh), GUILT TRIP (Karl Lindberg & Magnus Nilsson), AMORPHOUS (Gil.O Santos), METROPOLIS RECORDS (Gary Levermore), SCANNER /DARK DIMENSIONS (Frank) & THIS MORN'OMINA (Mika & Pierre), ANT-ZEN (Stefan Alt), ALIENS PRODUCTIONS (Peter Ryby), ARTOFFACT RECORDS (Jacek), VUZ RECORDS (Holger Vuz Hanraths),PODCAST:YOUTUBE https://www.youtube.com/@SamplerEtSansReprochesYOUTUBE CHANNEL – NON STOP MUSIC -MIX ONLY + LIVE & INTERVIEWS REPORTS ITUNES :https://podcasts.apple.com/fr/podcast/sampler-sans-reproches/id1511413205 MIXCLOUD : https://www.mixcloud.com/SetSRradio/PODCLOUD :https://podcloud.fr/studio/podcasts/sampler-et-sans-reproches DEEZER :https://www.deezer.com/fr/show/1181282 GALAXIE RADIO http://galaxieradio.fr/ go to replay Sampler & Sans ReprochesAMAZON MUSIC https://music.amazon.fr/podcasts/9718c2fe-d841-4339-a3e5-82c31d018ed7/SAMPLER-SANS-REPROCHESHEARTHIS https://hearthis.at/sampler-sans-reproches/ SPOTIFY PLAYLIST : https://open.spotify.com/playlist/2IjyNn1lpGr4j2KOBHYcyG?si=c8139bae46de4de6 ARCHIVE.ORG https://archive.org/download/1390-podcast/1390-PODCAST.mp3

Sometimes our greatest opportunities come in the form of great obstacles.Donate to Moody Radio: http://moodyradio.org/donateto/todayssinglechristianSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Pour en savoir plus sur comment trouver le bonheur et remplir ta vie d'épanouissement, je te donne rendez-vous sur : https://www.sylvainviens.com/Pourquoi avons-nous parfois l'impression de traverser notre vie sans vraiment la vivre ? La peur de changer, le poids du passé, les attentes des autres ou encore le manque de clarté peuvent nous maintenir dans une existence qui ne nous correspond plus.Dans cet épisode, je t'aide à identifier ces quatre obstacles et te partage des pistes concrètes pour les dépasser. Tu découvriras comment reprendre ton pouvoir personnel, clarifier ce que tu veux vraiment et commencer à créer une vie plus libre, plus consciente et plus épanouissante.Parce que la vie est précieuse, il est peut-être temps d'arrêter de la subir pour enfin la vivre pleinement. Tu veux en savoir plus, n'oublie pas la 

What is the difference between traditional addiction recovery programs and biblical discipleship? On this episode, Dr. Johnson and Dr. Okinaga talk through the importance of building relationships and the importance of investing time for the recovering addict. They walk through common failures of traditional recovery programs, and how Christians can understand addiction as a worship issue.Chapters02:05 - Traditional Recovery Programs04:29 - Failures of Traditional Recovery Programs08:47 - Obstacles in the Church12:09 - Discipleship Strategy and Time Investment16:39 - Heart Changes and Repentance20:21 - Addiction as an Issue of WorshipOutro - Continuing Education Units (CEUs) in Biblical Counseling

You and your fiancé want to get married and are applying for grad school. This might pose some challenges to your marriage. Dr. Gary Chapman recommends postponing your marriage until you both accomplish your academic goals.Donate to Moody Radio: http://moodyradio.org/donateto/lovelanguageminuteSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Send us Fan MailAmberly Lago is a widely recognized expert in helping entrepreneurs build their businesses through grit and resilience. As the founder of The Unstoppable Life Mastermind, she has worked with thousands of clients, empowering them to achieve success by developing resilience and perseverance.She is the host of The Amberly Lago Show, a podcast recognized by Apple as being among the Top 1% of podcasts worldwide.An internationally sought-after speaker on grit, resilience, and connection, Amberly has shared the stage with bestselling authors and thought leaders, and has delivered keynote presentations for companies including Lululemon, Google, and Athleta. Her TEDx talk has garnered hundreds of thousands of views.Through her authentic approach and unwavering commitment to serving others, Amberly has built a large and deeply engaged community. She is passionate about helping people overcome personal and professional challenges, equipping them with the mindset and resilience needed to create lasting success.A sought after thought leader and bestselling author in 19 categories, her insights have been featured in national media outlets like Forbes, USA Today (named Top Most Influential Speaker In the nation), The Doctors, Hallmark and The TODAY Show.Amberly has overcome major trauma in her life including 34 surgeries to save her leg after a horrific motorcycle accident. She emerged on top by leveraging her proprietary P.A.C.E.R. Method which teaches how authentically connecting with others leads to unstoppable resilience and success.-Quick Episode Summary:✅ What if your deepest pain became your greatest teacher?✅ Amberly Lago reveals how surviving 34 surgeries and living with chronic pain sparked grit, gratitude, and a new purpose.✅ On Passing The Torch, Amberly discusses resilience, hidden scars, finding joy alongside pain, and why desperation can be the spark for life-changing transformation.✅ Real stories, hard truths, and the secret to turning adversity into your superpower - press play and get inspired to rewrite your own story!-Podcast Chapters:00:00 Random Stuff06:15 Nervous before a big speech12:13 Building Relationships through Research13:45 Turning down an opportunity18:59 Amberly Lago's journey of resilience22:51 Dealing with chronic health issues26:18 Recovering from injuries28:11 Using gratitude to overcome fear31:26 Finding gratitude after the accident35:07 Struggling with alcoholism and recovery37:11 Dealing with hidden struggles41:10 Living with visible and invisible scars46:32 Talking about favorite movies47:31 Talking about celebrity lookalikes51:34 Billboard message for struggling individuals53:46 Expressing gratitude to Amberly-

Most women don't avoid Bible study because they don't love God. Often, something just feels in the way.Fear, overwhelm, insecurity, and even the vulnerability of being known by God can quietly keep us from opening Scripture consistently. But what if Bible study was never meant to feel like a performance? What if confidence in God's Word grows slowly?In this episode, Angie pauses the Cast Your Cares series for a heartfelt conversation about three common obstacles that keep women from studying the Bible deeply. She reminds listeners that Bible study is learned, not inherited.What you'll hear in this week's episodeWhy fear of “getting it wrong” keeps many women from Bible studyHow overwhelm and comparison can make Scripture feel intimidatingThe difference between conviction and condemnationWhy Bible study is more about relationship than performanceHow confidence in Scripture grows through consistent, supported practiceResourcesBible Study SessionsA brand-new four-week guided experience beginning in August, designed to help women study the Bible with more confidence and less overwhelm in a simple, supportive environment.Sign up at this link: https://livesteadyon.com/bible-study-sessions/Step By Step Starter KitA simple, guided resource to help you open Scripture with confidence and study one verse at a time alongside the podcast.Download it for free here: https://steadyon.myflodesk.com/stepbystepVerse of the Week“Open my eyes, that I may behold wondrous things out of your law.”— Psalm 119:18 (ESV)Connect with Angie & Steady Onhttps://www.livesteadyon.comTheme Music: Glimmer by Andy Ellison

Having received his Ph.D. in mathematical logic at Brandeis University, Rabbi Dr. Dovid Gottlieb went on to become Professor of Philosophy at Johns Hopkins University. Today he is a senior faculty member at Ohr Somayach in Jerusalem. An accomplished author and lecturer, Rabbi Gottlieb has electrified audiences with his stimulating and energetic presentations on ethical and philosophical issues. In Jewish Philosophy with Rabbi Dr. Gottlieb, we are invited to explore the most fascinating and elemental concepts of Jewish Philosophy. https://podcasts.ohr.edu/ podcasts@ohr.edu

In this episode, spiritual director John Bruna gives clear and practical guidance on obstacles to our spiritual practice by focusing on the 5 hinderances. He then approaches a variety of antidotes and mind states that will help us overcome these stumbling blocks on the journey to Enlightenment. This episode was recorded on June 17th, 2026.Welcome to the Way of Compassion Dharma Center Podcast. Located in Carbondale, Colorado, the Way of Compassion Dharma center's primary objective is to provide programs of Buddhist studies and practices that are practical, accessible, and meet the needs of the communities we serve.  As a traditional Buddhist center, all of our teachings are offered freely. If you would like to make a donation to support the center, please visit www.wocdc.org.  May you flourish in your practice and may all beings swiftly be free of suffering.

The ALL ME® Podcast How Performance-Enhancing Drugs Shape Society – Dr. Charles "Chuck" Yesalis In this in-depth interview, Dr. Charles "Chuck" Yesalis shares his extensive knowledge on anabolic steroids, their impact on youth, and the ongoing challenges in anti-doping education. Discover the history from the 1970's to today, health effects, and societal influences surrounding performance-enhancing drugs. Takeaways: History of anabolic steroids and doping Health effects and risks of steroids Societal and cultural influences on drug use Policy and legal frameworks for drug control Challenges in education and prevention Chapters: 00:00 Introduction and Guest Introduction 00:34 How Dr. Yesalis and Don's Father Met 00:57 Early Concerns About Kids and Performance Drugs 01:24 The 1988 National Study on Youth Steroid Use 02:17 Dr. Yesalis's Involvement in Anti-Doping Efforts 02:59 Personal Motivations and the Loss of Taylor Hooten 03:26 Public Perception and Media Coverage of Steroid Use 03:53 Influence of Social Media and Body Image on Youth 04:25 Risks of Illegal Substance Use Among Young People 04:51 The Push to Gain an Advantage in Sports 05:19 Health Consequences and Long-term Risks of Steroids 05:43 Origins of Dr. Yesalis's Interest in Steroids 06:16 Understanding Anabolic Steroids and Their Effects 06:38 Historical Research and Early Findings 07:32 The Politics and Science of Steroid Use 08:44 Long-term Health Effects and Epidemiological Research 09:37 The Evolution of Performance-Enhancing Drugs 10:28 Credibility and Scientific Evidence in Anti-Doping 11:08 The Impact of Scientific Misconceptions 11:49 Challenges in Education and Public Awareness 12:58 The Role of Legislation and Regulation 13:47 The Influence of Money and Fame in Sports 14:40 Natural vs. Enhanced Performance and Ethical Dilemmas 15:30 Moral and Ethical Issues in Doping 16:26 Athletes' Willingness to Risk Their Lives for Fame 17:23 Obstacles in Anti-Doping Education 18:13 Public Perception and Media's Role 19:13 Generational Changes and Social Media Impact 19:55 Studies on Youth and Steroid Use in the 1980s 21:10 The 1988 Youth Steroid Study Insights 22:25 Public Awareness and Media Coverage of the Study 23:20 Attitudes Toward Risk and Self-Harm in Youth 23:40 Changes in Drug Legislation and Regulation 24:41 The Impact of the Anabolic Steroid Control Act 25:33 Societal Pressures and Body Image Trends 26:38 Current Perspectives on Testosterone and Medical Use 27:41 Descheduling Testosterone and Potential Risks 29:22 Pharmaceutical Industry and Overproduction of Steroids 30:12 Physician Perspectives on Steroid Regulation 31:34 Dependence and Psychological Effects of Steroids 33:03 Risks of Descheduling and Accessibility 34:18 Medical and Anti-Aging Clinics and Steroid Access 37:43 The Book 'Anabolic Steroids in Sports and Exercise' 39:13 Challenges in Fighting Performance-Enhancing Drugs 40:32 Cheating and Ethical Issues in Sports 40:54 Societal Attitudes Toward Winning at All Costs 41:51 Misconceptions and Public Perception of Steroids 43:08 Health Risks of High-Dose Steroid Use 43:59 Behavioral and Psychological Effects of Steroids 45:15 Physician Involvement and Safety in Steroid Use 45:41 The Role of Medical Professionals in Steroid Regulation 47:26 Reflections on Legacy and Impact in Anti-Doping 48:44 The Mission to Shine Light on the Truth 50:25 Final Thoughts and Personal Philosophy Follow Us: Twitter: @theTHF Instagram: @theTHF Facebook: Taylor Hooton Foundation #ALLMEPEDFREE Contact Us: Twitter: @theTHF Instagram: @theTHF Facebook: Taylor Hooton Foundation #ALLMEPEDFREE Email: info@taylorhooton.org Phone: 214-449-1990 ALL ME Assembly Programs: http://taylorhooton.org/education-resources/face-to-face-programs/

On this episode Brian talks his botched trip to Ft Sumter, his dad and uncle's unfortunate ending to their trip to Idaho, forgot to mention Jul 5th concert at the Windjammer, Isle of Palms, how to navigate obstacles on the river and potential planning for a Missouri River thru paddle, all while navigating the Ashley River ... and so much more, really!!! Have a listen/watch and share with your friends or enemies! Find on all podcast platforms and YouTube! Just Search “Craft Conversations”! It's always best if you watch

Fear and challenges are inevitable, but they don't have to define your journey. In this message, discover how God's Word equips you to overcome every obstacle with faith, courage, and confidence. Be encouraged to stand firm, trust God's promises, and walk in victory.

Late Night in the Library is the side of law school you won't find a textbook for. Produced by Widener Law Commonwealth, this student-run podcast dives into pit conversations, library whispers, and the lessons learned outside the classroom. We talk with students about getting through tough semesters, finding their footing, and the small moments that end up defining law school. Honest and unfiltered, this series centers real student voices and real conversations. Host Shemariel Gray, alongside Widener University Commonwealth Law School Dean andré cummings, sits down with Widener Law Commonwealth alumna and newly sworn-in attorney Grace Mills, Esq. Mills shares how she scored in the top 1.1 percentile of the bar exam, breaking down her approach, mindset, and the strategies that helped her succeed. Topics Covered 0:00 Intro 01:16 Would you Rather 02:47 Current Life 03:50 Day of the Bar Exam 05:53 After the Test 06:24 Plan 08:45 Recipe to SMASH the Bar Exam 09:35 What Grace Did in Law School and During Bar Prep To Succeed 12:20 How to Relax During Bar Prep 13:30 What Did a Day Look Like 15:05 Obstacles 16:20 How Widener Helped 19:18 Lawyers Run in the Family 21:44 First Day as a Lawyer 23:09 Finding out Bar Exam Score 25:00 The Grind 26:38 Advice for Repeat Takers 26:58 Advice for First Time Takers 27:28 Outtakes 28:20 Bar Bootcamp 29:25 How Do you Gas It 29:50 Final Tips The bar exam some people love it, some people hate it but one thing's for sure, if you're a law student, there's no escaping it. So how do you pass it?   That is the one question we are here to answer!   Welcome to Widener Law Commonwealth: Smashing the Bar, a podcast series where we sit down with top-scoring bar passers from Widener University Commonwealth Law School to talk strategy, survival, and the long awaited success that comes after the bar exam!  Widener University Commonwealth Law School is the Pennsylvania capital's only law school, with four specialized centers of legal scholarship through its Law & Government Institute, Environmental Law and Sustainability Center, Business Advising Program, and Center for Equity and Justice. Widener Law Commonwealth offers an exceptional learning experience that is personal, practical, and professional. Visit commonwealthlaw.widener.edu for more information. Transcript: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1j6AStpCVDAQlAKcltCRQHGj457K5Luhv/view?usp=sharing  Music Credit: "Late Night Crush" by Netuno https://www.pond5.com/royalty-free-music/item/312639960-late-night-crush-short-intro-dance-upbeat-house-urban-party 

Today on Table Talk with BBYOInsider we are giving an in-depth look at this week's parsha—Parsha Ma'asei—as part of the Simchat Torah Challenge. 

77 Portal Guided Meditation

In this episode, Laylla and Chelle sit down with Beck Ravenswood, owner of The Serpent's Key Shoppe & Sanctuary in Hanover, Pennsylvania, before their July 22nd court hearing in the fight against Pennsylvania's old fortune-telling law.Yep, in Pennsylvania, a law dating back to 1861 still makes paid fortune telling, including tarot reading, a criminal offense. Beck's case began after Hanover police visited their shop and warned them that offering tarot readings for money could lead to legal trouble. Now Beck is challenging that law in federal court, arguing that tarot reading is protected speech, spiritual practice, and a legitimate livelihood, not something that belongs under threat of arrest in the year 2026.We talk with Beck about what happened, why this law matters beyond one shop in Hanover, and how outdated laws can still be used to target witches, readers, and spiritual workers. We also discuss Pennsylvania House Bill 1562, introduced by Rep. Greg Scott, which would repeal Title 18 Section 7104 and remove the state's fortune-telling ban from the books.If you want to support the effort, contact Rep. Greg Scott's office and tell him you support HB 1562 and the repeal of Pennsylvania's fortune-telling law. You can call his Norristown office at 484-685-3494 or his Harrisburg office at 717-772-0749. Pennsylvania listeners can also contact their own state representative and ask them to support HB 1562.Tarot is not a crimeSign the petition to legalize TarotBeck's InstaThe Serpent's KeyRep Greg ScottHekate Justice Spell * Coming SoonBeck's Spell Want to help? Instructions Below:Choose an Intention and Candle ColorRed Candle: Power to the Pagans of PennsylvaniaWhite Candle: Banishment of Obstacles working against the PA Lawsuit to Legalize Fortune TellingBlack Candle: Protection for Witches in the World TodayAnoint in oil of your choosing and dress with any number of herbs from the list below. (or infuse a carrier oil with desired herbs use to make a Justice Oil for this ritual)Bay Leaf, CedarFrankincense, NettlePepper, PineColtsfoot , ElmHickoryLight your Candle with me on July 22nd (at 10:30am if possible) to weave a web of power over the State of Pennsylvania as we continue our fight to Legalize Pennsylvania Fortune Telling.Got a question? Send the witches a message here!Support the showWant to send us a letter? Witchy things to review?Our mailing address is:Back on the BroomstickPO Box 21Tioga, PA 16946Email: backonthebroomstick@gmail.comYoutube FacebookInstagramBack on the Broomstick Website

Since its founding in 1975 by Robert Craig, an extraordinary mountaineer and policymaker, the Keystone Policy Center has been empowering leaders to overcome national and local policy conflicts they previously thought were insurmountable. The nonprofit center mediates and facilitates dialog -- "it's the Keystone way" -- on agriculture, environment, energy, education, and public health issues. Christine Scanlan, Keystone president and CEO, and Ernest House, Jr., senior policy director. and director of Tribal and Indigenous Engagement, speak with Host Llewellyn King and Co-Host Adam Clayton Powell III.

Contentment is one of the distinguishing marks of the Christian life—but it is also one of the most difficult graces to cultivate. Why is it so hard to gain and so easy to lose? In the third episode of our A Life of Joy series, Justin Miller and Dr. John Snyder examine five of the greatest obstacles to Christian contentment: worldliness, busyness, bitterness, grief, and opposition. Drawing from Scripture, the Puritans, and personal experience, they show how these common struggles pull our hearts away from Christ and how God uses even painful providences to deepen our joy in Him. Rather than settling for shallow happiness or stoic resignation, believers are called to find lasting satisfaction in Christ alone. Show Notes Kingdom Life: Studies in the Sermon on the Mount: https://shop.mediagratiae.org/collections/kingdom-life The Life of Samuel Rutherford by Andrew Thomson: https://www.amazon.com/Samuel-Rutherford-Andrew-Thomson/dp/1164013874 Samuel Rutherford and His Friends by Faith Cook: https://banneroftruth.org/us/store/ebooks/samuel-rutherford-and-his-friends/ Letters of Samuel Rutherford: https://banneroftruth.org/us/store/letters/letters-of-samuel-rutherford/ Want to listen to The Whole Counsel on the go? Subscribe to the podcast on your favorite podcast app: https://www.mediagratiae.org/podcasts You can get The Whole Counsel a day early on the Media Gratiae App: https://subsplash.com/mediagratiae/app

Hey friends thanks for tuning in!  Today's reminder is that obstacles are opportunities!  Whether it be David facing Goliath, the Israelites trapped between the sea and the army of Pharaoh, or the horror of the cross.  God can win and God can get the glory.  So, "Let us not lose heart in doing good for we will reap if we do not grow weary." Galatians 6.9 Please give Jon's new ministry page @wildgamefaith a follow on instagram. 

What if the thing standing between you and what you want isn't strategy, timing, or circumstance, but something operating in a realm you've never been taught to access? In this solo episode, Emily Fletcher shares the insight that has become the cornerstone of nearly two decades of teaching: that most of the obstacles blocking what we most desire are invisible. Not because they're imaginary. They are very real. But because they're happening at a different state of consciousness. Emily introduces the concept of invisible cages: the accumulated stress, inherited beliefs, unfelt feelings, and intergenerational trauma stored at the cellular level that quietly set the upper limit on what we allow ourselves to receive. And she makes the case that no amount of strategy, goal-setting, or external change can dissolve them, because you cannot remove a cage you cannot see. The solution, she argues, is access to the unmanifest: a verifiable fourth state of consciousness, distinct from waking, sleeping, or dreaming, where the body receives rest five times deeper than sleep and begins spontaneously releasing the backlog of stress that creates the cages in the first place. Emily shares a student's story, a profound piece of sculpture from Burning Man, and a discovery about the Egyptian goddess Nephthys that reframed her entire body of work. In this episode, Emily explores: Why the real blocks to manifestation are invisible, and why that's actually good news The "I'll be happy when" syndrome and what it reveals about how most people are trying to manifest How 99.999% of knowable reality is invisible, and what that means for how we approach change The Burning Man sculpture that shows two adults stuck back to back while their inner children desperately try to connect Isis and Nephthys: the twin goddesses of manifest and unmanifest, and the lightbulb moment that tied Emily's work together What happens in the body when you access the fourth state: rest, release, and rising frequency Why the benefits of accessing the field compound over time, just as the harmful effects of stress do One student's story of unexpected income, career clarity, and the emotional courage that emerged Key Moments: 00:00 – The thing keeping people stuck is rarely what they think it is 01:42 – Who this episode is for 03:52 – Trying to solve invisible problems with visible tools 05:09 – The Burning Man sculpture and invisible cages 07:37 – The "I'll be happy when" syndrome 08:06 – External reality as an outpicturing of internal architecture 09:26 – Once you access the field, you get access to more 10:13 – We cannot remove what we cannot see 11:24 – Isis, Nephthys, and the unmanifest 13:25 – Rest five times deeper than sleep 15:30 – The compound effect 17:38 – Cheryl's story 19:10 – Magic Maker: free, three days, July 16 ✨ Magic Maker is officially open for registration. Three days. Totally free. July 16, 21 & 23. Join Emily live for the event she's been building toward all year: three days of activations, tools, and community designed to help you access the unmanifest, release your invisible cages, and start becoming a frequency match for everything you're calling in. Register free: magicmaker.zivameditation.com

Here is the latest episode of Kids These Days, a podcast made in collaboration with Batavia Public Schools that I think listeners to this podcast will love.New episodes will release every month on this feed, but to get them the day they drop, subscribe to the podcast here. Enjoy!-------On this episode of Kids These Days, Liz Mcalpin is reunited with her former fifth-grade student, Kim Nolasco.Now in middle school and thriving, Kim is confronting the differences between elementary school and middle school, the challenges and opportunities that come with being bilingual, and the possibility of achieving her aspiration of one day being a police officer.But what happens when things get hard? From navigating the awkwardness of raising your hand in front of a classroom crush to breaking massive obstacles down into small, manageable goals, Kim reveals her practical playbook for facing adversity head-on.Kids These Days is a podcast from Batavia Public School District 101, produced in partnership with Area Code: Batavia. New episodes every month.For more information about all the great things BPS101 is doing, sign up for our newsletter.To contact us about the episode or recommend a future guest, email us at help@bps101.net.

Champions Adjust Mindset Program:https://champsadjust.com/pages/camp-Follow Champions Adjust on socials: INSTAGRAM: https://www.instagram.com/ChampionsAdjust/TWITTER: https://twitter.com/Champs_AdjustFACEBOOK: https://www.facebook.com/ChampsAdjust-Performance Gearhttps://champsadjust.comChampions Adjust 

“What obstacles keep us from healthy relationships?” This question opens a discussion on the challenges individuals face in becoming marriage-ready, alongside insights on how media representations can influence perceptions of relationships. Other topics include the moral considerations of premarital intimacy for older couples and the implications of annulment on family planning. Join the Catholic Answers Live Club Newsletter Invite our apologists to speak at your parish! Visit Catholicanswersspeakers.com Questions Covered: 03:40 – What obstacles keep people from being marriage ready? 31:38 – I've noticed in a lot of media relationships are not portrayed in a healthy way. What would be good to see in stories and shows to model healthy relationships? 36:55 – My friend is a widower and is now dating a widow. He asked if it is a sin to have premarital sex in old age and in their circumstance? 49:21 – I've been married for 8 years and am going through the annulment process for my previous marriage. Should we wait until that annulment is complete before we try to conceive a child?

Download Porter Here: https://app.adjust.com/216agedwDonation for Future Football Champions: https://www.figuringout.co/pdf/miccup2027Get your hand-picked playbook here: https://www.figuringout.co/pdf/fo-528Guest Suggestion Form: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://forms.gle/bnaeY3FpoFU9ZjA47⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Disclaimer: This video is intended solely for educational purposes and opinions shared by the guest are his personal views. We do not intent to defame or harm any person/ brand/ product/ country/ profession mentioned in the video. Our goal is to provide information to help audience make informed choices. The media used in this video are solely for informational purposes and belongs to their respective owners.00:00 – Intro04:00 – Why Can't India Produce Football Talent?13:57 – Why Isn't India in the World Cup?24:33 – Why Isn't Football as Popular as Cricket?45:20 – The Top 3 Obstacles in the System49:36 – How Common Are Match-Fixing and Betting?59:06 – Why Was Messi Paid ₹150 Crore for His India Tour?1:06:43 – Why Indians Love Being Number One1:11:30 – When Minerva FC Broke Records1:17:03 – When AIFF Hired an Astrologer1:20:52 – India Isn't Incompetent, It's Corrupt1:31:17 – Why Sacking Igor Štimac Cost AIFF Dearly1:39:56 – Can One Star Player Change Everything?1:46:14 – Why Athletes Should Start Young1:53:47 – How Does He Train His Team?2:03:01 – Obsession Makes You a Better Player2:26:15 – Losing in the Finals2:29:51 – How to Overcome Fear2:36:32 – How Can Indians Support Indian Football?2:38:53 – A Gangster If Not a Football Coach2:47:02 – One Piece of Advice Nobody Should Follow2:52:31 - BTS2:53:45 - OutroIn today's episode, we sit down with Ranjit Bajaj Chief Pusher - Minerva Academy Football & Cricket Club, Delhi Football Club & Armed Forces Aspirants Trainer the man who has produced more Indian football internationals than every ISL club combined, with zero government support, zero corporate funding, and mortgaged gold to send his boys to European tournaments.We discuss why India with 1.4 billion people has zero dedicated football stadiums, why AIFF paid an astrologer ₹25 lakhs to pick the national team, and why four Indians are currently playing in this World Cup for other countries.Subscribe for more such conversations.⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠About Raj ShamaniRaj Shamani is an Entrepreneur at heart that explains his expertise in Business Content Creation & Public Speaking. He has delivered 200+ speeches in 26+ countries. Besides that, Raj is also an Angel Investor interested in crazy minds who are creating a sensation in the Fintech, FMCG, & passion economy space.To Know More,Follow Raj Shamani On ⤵︎Instagram @RajShamani ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.instagram.com/rajshamani/⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Twitter @RajShamani ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://twitter.com/rajshamani⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Facebook @ShamaniRaj ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.facebook.com/shamaniraj⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠LinkedIn - Raj Shamani ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.linkedin.com/in/rajshamani/⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠About Figuring OutFiguring Out Podcast is a Candid Conversations University where Raj Shamani brings raw conversations with the Top 1% in India.

Ryan talks to ABC News Correspondent Jordana Miller about the latest developments in U.S.-Iran negotiations, including plans for inspections of Iran's nuclear sites and U.S. assurances to Gulf allies. She also explains why talks are not progressing smoothly and how disputes over Israel's military presence in southern Lebanon are adding new complications to regional diplomacy.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

First-time homebuyers may get short windows of relief, but our co-head of Securitized Products Research James Egan and Senior Economist and Strategist in Morgan Stanley's Private Wealth Management Sarah Wolfe say the bigger story is a housing market resetting around a higher bar to entry.Read more insights from Morgan Stanley.----- Transcript -----James Egan: Welcome to Thoughts on the Market. I'm Jim Egan, Morgan Stanley's U.S. Housing Strategist and Co-Head of Securitized Products Strategy.Sarah Wolfe: And I'm Sarah Wolfe, Senior Economist and Strategist within Morgan Stanley Wealth Management.James Egan: And today, why first-time homebuyers are facing a tougher path to ownership.It's Tuesday, June 23rd at 10am in New York.Buying a first-time home has always been a big step, but for a growing number of first-time buyers today, the goal can really seem insurmountable.Mortgage rates might be down from where they were in the second half of 2023, but they're significantly higher than they were for the several years before that. Monthly payments have roughly doubled for a median-priced home. And my colleague Jay Bacow and I have talked several times on this podcast about how many homeowners feel like they're locked into those lower rates.And they're staying put because they just don't want to give up a two or three-handle mortgage rate for something that has a six in front of it. But Sarah, as we know, this is bigger than just first-time buyers. Now, they often start the housing transaction chain, and when they can't buy, current owners may not be able to sell and trade up.That slows turnover across the market, and it also reduces activity tied to housing – from mortgages and renovations to moving and furniture. And it can keep would-be buyers renting for longer, which adds pressure to rental demand.So, how do you see this situation? Is this just another affordability squeeze, or has the housing market reset to a higher barrier to entry?Sarah Wolfe: I do think that we're on the upper bound of affordability pressures. This is about as bad as it's going to get. But as we discussed in our recent publication of The Economy Explained, unfortunately, we do think that the housing market is resetting at a structurally higher barrier to entry. There's a lot of reasons for that.The first is higher interest rates. Yes, mortgage rates are sitting around 6.5 percent, and they should come down from here, but maybe not better than 5.5 percent, right, in an optimistic scenario. The second is demographic pressures. Remember, we have this tremendous aging population of baby boomers. All of their children are now entering their prime home-buying years, so there's a lot of demand for ownership.The third and fourth ones are land regulation and permitting, which is at the state and local level, really hard to change. And the last one is climate risk. It's just raising insurance pricing and making it much more difficult to buy a home.So overall, we see a world where, yes, mortgage rates come down a bit, improve affordability marginally, but we think neutral and other interest rates at the longer end of the curve are going to be higher than the post-financial crisis period. And what we're going to see is that those forces are going to widen the divide between who can own a home and who cannot. And who gains from that wealth accumulation and who does not.James Egan: Right. So now, you mentioned where mortgage rates are today, above that 6 percent rate. Rates did briefly – in February, we got below 6 percent before they bounced back up here. Why did that short-lived relief matter so much?Sarah Wolfe: I think that short-lived relief showed us that moves in the mortgage rate make a difference, but things are so unaffordable that it didn't make that much of a difference.So, the dip below 6 percent was very exciting. It happened this past February. It was the first time that mortgage rates fell below 6 percent since 2022, and we saw a few things happen. First, it lowered the monthly payment for first-time homebuyers from about two point two thousand dollars a month to one point nine thousand.So makes a bit of a difference. And it lowered the share of income that goes towards monthly mortgage payments from about 26 percent of income to 22 percent, from peak to trough. So, that is a notable improvement. But what we saw in the new home sales data and the existing home sales data, that it did not drive people back into the housing market.I want to turn it back to you though, Jim, because you've actually done a lot of interesting work on this. And how this change in mortgage rates has changed the monthly cost that people have to pay for a median-priced home. Can you tell us a little bit more?James Egan: Sure. So, we talk about the lock-in effect a lot, and it's kind of easy to point to: Well, there are a lot of people with mortgage rates that are around 3 percent or 3.5 percent, and the prevailing rate's at 6 percent, and that's a lot higher, so they're locked in.But when we look at the actual numbers in terms of what we're asking a homeowner to do – to list their home for sale and move to another home today, pay off that existing mortgage, take out a new one. When you take into account how much higher home prices are today…You bought a home in 2016, for instance, right? Let's assume you refinanced in 2020 or 2021 if you still live there, right? Most homeowners did. So, you've actually taken your monthly payment, and it is lower today than it was when you bought your home in 2016. If we assume that your income has risen alongside just median household income over that time period, your monthly payment as a share of your income today is probably sub 8 percent.If you bought over the past three years, your monthly payment is a share of your income. You mentioned some numbers earlier. It's low to mid 20 percent. From a dollar amount perspective, if you were to pay off that 2016 mortgage, as an example, and take out one today, your payment is probably [$]13[00] or $1400 higher. It's like a 200 percent increase. That's very difficult economically for a lot of households, and that's the kind of physical manifestation of that lock-in effect.Now, Sarah, given this significant change in housing math, what does that mean for who is actually able to buy in this market?Sarah Wolfe: It's making who's able to buy into the market a lot more selective. So, what we're seeing is that first-time home buyers today are actually not meaningfully older. They're still about 36 years old, but they are a much more selective group financially. The Federal Reserve Bank of New York put out a great analysis on this recently, and they basically found that the first-time home buyer profile today is taking out a mortgage that's nearly $350,000, compared to $240,000 in 2019 and $200,000, a decade ago. So, significant increase in mortgage balances.At the same time, credit standards have tightened significantly, so that average credit score to get a mortgage has risen quite a bit over the last 5 to 10 years. And what this is doing is it's shifting who can buy and also where they can buy. So, we're seeing higher-quality home buyers moving to lower-income zip codes. So, buying cheaper homes in lower-income metro areas, and so it's wealthier buyers in lower-income areas.And that's the really big shift that we're seeing. It's a demand resorting story. And what we're also seeing, and we hear this a lot when we talk to our financial advisors and their clients, is that family is increasingly helping their other family members put that down payment down; in particular, parents helping their children buy that first home.So, we're seeing that first-time buyers may be feeling this pressure, right, when it comes to rates. How much of this affordability issue, though, is being driven by the locked-in effect specifically?James Egan: So, look, it's clearly playing a role. We just talked about some of the math behind that. But then when you look at what that means on a nationwide basis when it comes to inventory, when it comes to so many other aspects of this, that homeowner who's unwilling to give up that lower mortgage rate, that lower payment, right, their homes are off the market.Existing inventories for sale, they've picked up from historic lows in 2023, but they're still very, very low on a long-run basis. The fewer homes there are for sale, the more upward pressure or the absence of downward pressure that's going to put on home prices, right?We saw affordability plummet in 2022 and 2023 when rates backed up. We saw existing home sales really, really come down as a result. But home prices remained at record highs. They continued to set new record highs. For home prices to actually come down, right, you need people who are willing to sell at lower home prices.Sarah, you just mentioned that lending standards themselves remain tight.Sarah Wolfe: Mm-hmm.James Egan: Those forced sales, those tend to be distressed transactions. We don't see that distress in the market providing the inventory and the motivated inventory to lead to softer home prices. So, it's really that lack of inventory which we think is in large part driven by the lock-in effect that's kept home prices. And as a result, that piece of the affordability equation kind of stuck at these higher levels.Sarah Wolfe: I mean, it's really this vicious cycle, the locked-in effect making it difficult for entry-level buyers to get into the market – and then fewer existing homeowners sell or trade up or relocate. So, on and on it goes.Are there broader implications of this freeze?James Egan: Right. So, we just talked about what that means from an inventory perspective. And then if you think about affordability remaining challenged, lending standards themselves remaining tight, inventory remaining as low as it is, you could argue that we're at one of the more difficult times that we've seen for renters to exit rentership and step into homeownership.Now, there's a lot of different things that drive rent growth, and the fact that you have a stuck renter is just one of them. The other side of that equation can be the supply of rental units, right? So that's just a piece of the equation.But those are some of the externalities that we think about when it comes to how the tightness of the housing market – what the lock-in effect and what affordability is doing there. But outside of the housing market, Sarah, the wider economy, like how do these housing costs play a role there?Sarah Wolfe: Massive effect. Some of the work that we've done shows that housing affordability is the number one driver pushing down fertility rates in America. The number one driver. Above childcare costs, above finding a partner, finding a good job. It's housing affordability. So, you could see how that could pretty significantly ripple through the broader economy.But there's other components, right? So, as we discussed earlier, it's driving migration from unaffordable areas to more affordable regions. That has significant implications. And then putting my consumer economist hat on, as we discussed earlier in the podcast, when people buy a home, they tie themselves to that home. They spend money on couches, on beds, on TVs, right? Durable goods. And if we're going to have more people as renters for longer, that's going to expand the services economy at the expense of the goods economy.All right. Let's take a step back and think about where this is all going. It hasn't been a very optimistic conversation. Jim, what is the outlook for affordability in your view? Do we get anywhere back to the post-financial crisis period or even the pre-financial crisis period?James Egan: When it comes to the outlook for mortgage rates, the outlook for affordability, the outlook for the U.S. housing market – look, we just, throughout Morgan Stanley Research and Strategy, published our 2026 major outlook. From now through the end of 2027, we don't have conventional mortgage rates getting below 6 percent.We do have affordability improving on the margins. We have income growth exceeding home price appreciation that makes it a little bit better, but that doesn't get us back to the post-GFC affordability era, which was very, very affordable. Looking back over the past several decades, it gets us closer to where we were pre-GFC, not all the way back there.But when we think about how that ripples through the housing market and how we think about that evolving from here, look, we do think that the state of mortgage credit availability means there will be a lack of distress. We think that while affordability itself may be challenged and inventories may be low, there is some level of housing activity that has to occur regardless of where mortgage rates are or affordability is.We think we found that level. We think there's support for home sales at these current levels, and that combination of support for home sales, lack of inventory, means that home prices, very little room for them to grow from here. But we think they're going to be pretty supported.So, from a housing market perspective, at a ten-thousand-foot view, we're calling it 1-2 percent growth in sales, in home prices, well-supported. But the affordability outlook that we've outlined throughout this podcast – challenged to see a lot of acceleration.Now, when we pull it back to the first-time home buyer, based on our conversation, it seems that the key question is becoming less about when to buy, more about who can still afford to enter the market.But Sarah, it's really been great talking with you about the housing market today.Sarah Wolfe: It was great speaking with you, Jim.James Egan: And thanks for listening. If you enjoy Thoughts on the Market, please leave us a review wherever you listen and share the podcast with a friend or colleague today. ***Sarah Wolfe is a member of Morgan Stanley's Wealth Management Division and is not a member of Morgan Stanley's Research Department. Unless otherwise indicated, her views are her own and may differ from the views of the Morgan Stanley Research Department and from the views of others within Morgan Stanley.

Erin Brockovich (2000) (directed by Steven Soderbergh) is based on the true story of Erin Brockovich, a legal assistant without formal training, who uncovers one of the most significant environmental lawsuits in U.S. history: the case against Pacific Gas and Electric for contaminating groundwater in Hinkley, California. The film, which features an Oscar-winning performance by Julia Roberts in the title role, explores the role of lawsuits in exposing truth and gaining compensation for victims, the gendered dynamics of legal advocacy, and the challenges of taking on entrenched power structures in society.Timestamps:0:00     Introduction1:59       Who is Erin Brockovich?3:11       Obstacles to holding corporations accountable5:49      How Erin Brockovich overcomes those obstacles8:10      Imbalance of power and resources14:40    Hinkley, California18:00    Accessing records21:16     Tort reform, punitive damages, and proportionality27:10     States and environmental regulation32:22    Causation and attribution science37:30    Whistleblowers              41:17      Finding the “smoking gun”42:53    The practice of law and parentingFurther reading:Banks, Sedina “The ‘Erin Brockovich Effect': How Media Shapes Toxics Policy,” 26 Environs Env't L. Poly' J. 219 (2003)Brockovich, Erin and Eliot, Marc, Take It from Me: Life's a Struggle but You Can Win (2002)Chen, Sarah Small, “Toxic Film: Analyzing the Impact of Films Depicting Major Contamination Events on the Regulation of Toxic Chemicals,” 35 Georgetown Env't L. Rev. 561 (2023)"'Erin Brockovich' Made their Town Famous: They Still Don't Have Clean Water,” Wash. Post (Dec. 27, 2024)Martens, Daniel L. “Chromium, Cancer, and Causation: Has a Death-Blow Been Dealt Chromium Cases in California?” 16 Natural Resources & Env't 264 (2002)McCann, Michael McCann & Haltom, William, “Ordinary Heroes vs. Failed Lawyers – Public Interest Litigation in Erin Brockovich and Other Contemporary Films,” 33 Law & Soc. Inquiry 1045 (2008)“Still Toxic After All These Years,” Grist (Jan. 29, 2019)Law on Film is created and produced by Jonathan Hafetz. Jonathan is a professor at Seton Hall Law School. He has written many books and articles about the law. He has litigated important cases to protect civil liberties and human rights while working at the ACLU and other organizations. Jonathan is a huge film buff and has been watching, studying, and talking about movies for as long as he can remember. For more information about Jonathan, here's a link to his bio: https://law.shu.edu/profiles/hafetzjo.htmlYou can contact him at jonathanhafetz@gmail.comYou can follow him on X (Twitter) @jonathanhafetz You can follow the podcast on X (Twitter) @LawOnFilmYou can follow the podcast on Instagram @lawonfilmpodcast

Obstacles to a Kingdom Impact | Steve PetroeljeThe Church and The KingdomCoopersville Reformed Church is a place where people can meet Jesus, engage in life-giving community, and everyone is welcome. We believe in creating a space where people can have authentic encounters with Christ, discover their gifts and use them for God's glory. Join us for our Sunday services!Visit our website: https://coopersvillereformed.com/Check out our Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/coopersvillerc/Check out our Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/CoopersvilleRC/

There is a kind of person you have met, perhaps only a few times in your life, who operates by a different set of rules.Obstacles that stop most people don't slow them down (they speed them up, actually). They do not wait for permission, for better conditions, or for someone else to solve the problem. They think and they dream and they create. Then they move. [Because leadership is mostly about getting big things done].My latest book “The Wealth Money Can't Buy” is full of fresh ideas and original tools that I'm absolutely certain will cause quantum leaps in your positivity, productivity, wellness, and happiness. You can order it now by clicking here.FOLLOW ROBIN SHARMA:InstagramFacebookYouTube

When spiritual resistance tries to weaken your hands and steal your courage, God gives you the power, love, and sound mind to keep building until breakthrough comes.

"I'm not here to teach you anything new. I'm here to make you see things that you normally would not see." — Dr. W. Edwards Deming In this episode, Deming educator Balaji Reddie reveals the practices that are hiding in plain sight within most organizations. Practices that feel normal. That get celebrated. And that quietly undermine everything you're building. One example: arbitrary targets. An employee collected 2 million rupees in a single day — four times his target. He told no one and did nothing for four days. Because he knew his manager would just raise the bar. That single moment of silence cost the company a genuine breakthrough. This is what Deming called a "faulty practice." And there are many more where that came from. Host Andrew Stotz and Balaji dig into Chapter 2 of The New Economics — Deming's most overlooked chapter. They cover why ranking employees is built on a mathematical illusion. Why chasing quarterly results destroys long-term value. And why the best leaders, from Steve Jobs to Walt Disney, ignored the pressures that trap most organizations. 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 discussions with Balaji Reddie. He's an educator and a trainer in the teachings of Dr. Deming and quality management generally. And the topic for today is becoming aware of faulty practices. Take it away, Balaji.   0:00:26.0 Balaji Reddie: Good morning. Thank you, Andrew. So part three of our series, what we're looking at. So last time we met, we spoke about essentially Point number 14, because we outlaid his profound knowledge. And then I always said that he gave us a lot of clues as to what needed to be done. So I started out by reading some of the excerpts from the book, which we tend to ignore. And then he said, "Here's what I expect." So he expected leadership, a critical mass to be created, and then he gave attributes of a leader. So we listed 17 of those points, which we said principles of leadership. And now once you've created that critical mass and there's someone who's taken the lead and there are a bunch of leaders, maybe, so what do we do next? So when you start becoming aware that you are now in a prison, so to say, because that's what he said here, that they feel it's a fixture, and this is the way things are, this is how things always have been. So he says, "No, you need to understand that these things are wrong." Right? And you first need to become aware, and then we need to look at what needs to be done, perhaps. So he's given some suggestions, and you could always adapt and adopt this. So most of this would be taken from the book, The New Economics, chapter two, which he has titled as "The Heavy Losses." Now, remember, when he wrote this book, it was after the other book, Out of the Crisis, where he had listed his 14 Points. Yes, but he also listed diseases and obstacles. And people tend to ignore that.   0:02:18.9 Balaji Reddie: In fact, I remember having a chat with Bill Bellows on this, and I said, "Diseases and obstacles." And he said, "Obstacles?" I said, "Yes, he has listed 16 obstacles in Out of the Crisis." And he said, "Oh, wow." And he took his copy and he said, "Oh, yeah, you're right. There are 16 of them." And so sometimes you see things that you normally would not see. So when he wrote this, initially, I think many people thought that it was just an extension of those Diseases. But when you start looking deeper, you'll find that he became more elaborate in what he listed as the heavy losses. So he says here that these are things that you start observing and you say, "This is not normal." So the language that he's used is pretty, pretty clear. Present practice, so faulty practices. The present practice, and he says these are only reactive. You only need certain skills and not nearly any theory of management. Whereas when you opt to go to a better practice, you need a theory. So let's start with the very first faulty practice. And this stems from his 14 points too. He says, "Lack of constancy of purpose, short-term thinking, and emphasis on immediate results. Think in the present tense, no future tense." And then he becomes more elaborate and says, "Keep up the price of the company's stock and maintain dividends."   0:04:02.0 Balaji Reddie: Which, well, okay, it seems like you should not do that. No. He says here, you fail to optimize through time. Make this quarter look good, ship everything on hand at the end of the month or quarter, never mind its quality, mark it as shipped, show it as accounts receivable, and defer till the next quarter repairs, maintenance, and orders for material. Just a word here, in the new edition of The New Economics, there's been a spelling mistake there. So if anyone's listening, you can just correct it in the next edition that comes out. Instead of "defer till the next quarter," he's written "defer toll the next quarter." So we need to correct that in the next printing. Now he says here, a better practice...   0:04:52.1 Andrew Stotz: And before you go to there, can we just talk about this for a second?   0:04:56.1 Balaji Reddie: Sure.   0:04:57.8 Andrew Stotz: One of the things that, having been a financial analyst all my career, we get quarterly results from companies in the stock market. And in my own business, of course, I look at monthly results because we close the books every month. And it's definitely one... Donald Trump recently came up with the idea of telling companies not to report quarterly results. And I believe the Singapore Stock Exchange also came up with the idea of maybe we'll reduce the amount of reporting to maybe half-yearly, because we do have half-yearly reporting in some countries, right?   0:05:39.6 Balaji Reddie: Right.   0:05:40.9 Andrew Stotz: But having learned the teachings of Dr. Deming many years ago, long before I became a financial analyst, I always thought, I never really got this one because I thought, what an idiot you would be if you're running a company and all you could see was the market's demand for quarterly performance. And I've always admired those people, I think Jeff Bezos was one that really made it very explicit. "If you're here for quarterly performance, you're not gonna get it." And so I always have said to CEOs, having seen analysts and fund managers, I've visited, taken fund managers more than 1,000 times to meet with CEOs, and CEOs ask me, "What's your advice from seeing all that?" And I said, "Don't listen to this too much." Take it on board, what the discussions are about, but you're the CEO. Your job is to optimize the value of this business. And that means, that doesn't mean making quarterly numbers, manipulating things to make quarterly numbers. So part of what I've said to people is, "Get a backbone. Don't come and complain to me, 'Oh, yeah, but the pressure of the market's quarterly.' Come on." You know and I know that the job of a CEO is to maximize the value of the business, not the quarterly result. So anyways, that's my little pet peeve.   0:07:13.6 Balaji Reddie: Yeah. Yeah, that's right. And if you look at even Jobs, Steve Jobs, when he came back as Apple CEO, he had the nerve and the spine, like you said, to tell the board, "Don't judge me on this. It's gonna take time. And believe me," he said, "someday you will see results." Now, unfortunately, he was not there to see what he's created, but I think anyone in Apple can safely say that they're growing because of the foundation that he laid so long back, right? And I think that was one of the major reasons why he did not make Jonathan Ive as the CEO, because he wanted him to focus on the product and the customer rather than the quarterly results. And I don't think Apple ever played it by quarterly results.   0:08:04.9 Andrew Stotz: Yeah. And here's a good book called Competition Demystified by Bruce Greenwald. And there's a passage in here that's interesting because he published the book back in 2005, so it was long before Steve Jobs really made the company profitable. And he had basically gone through and explained the situation at that time as a strategist looking at the company. And what he said, it says, he just said that "Jobs had managed to restore operating margins, but Apple survived, it had hardly prospered, its future does not look bright." And I use this as an example in my strategy class to help people understand that when you're building strategy, you're thinking long term. And the ecosystem that Steve Jobs created, the value of that ecosystem didn't really truly appear until many years after he was working on it. So anyways.   0:09:06.6 Balaji Reddie: Yeah, so that's a classic case here.   0:09:11.1 Andrew Stotz: Let's keep going. You're on a roll.   0:09:14.5 Andrew Stotz: Oh, that's okay. So now better practice, he says, theory of management. Now see what he writes here. He says, "Adopt and publish the constancy of purpose." Now, that's one of the things that he also changed in his 14 points in the 1990 edition, which he never really published in a book but he gave as handouts in his seminars. Earlier on, it was "Create a constancy of purpose," but he says now, "Publish it." And it should be a proper statement, right? And he also said not just for the company, but for other organization. Now, he perhaps was envisioning or he already saw what is happening in the world today, that it's not one company against another, it's a family of companies against another family of companies, if I may say so. And these companies are globally dispersed, so there has to be something that binds them together, and that's the constancy of purpose. And purpose is why we exist, right?   0:10:13.4 Andrew Stotz: And I want to ask about this.   0:10:15.3 Balaji Reddie: Right.   0:10:16.2 Andrew Stotz: Professor, can I ask you about this?   0:10:18.4 Balaji Reddie: Sure. Right.   0:10:21.0 Andrew Stotz: Because if we go to Out of the Crisis, he has his section, and this for me is on page 24, but I don't know what edition I... Maybe I have an old edition, but it's the chapter "Principles for Transformation." He's gonna talk about the 14 Points, and I want to talk about the first point. And the first point is "Create constancy of purpose for improvement of product and service."   0:10:45.8 Balaji Reddie: Yeah. This is the old edition, 24.   0:10:48.6 Andrew Stotz: And the question that I have is that was he saying... Because now you've said in The New Economics he says constancy of purpose. He just states constancy of purpose. He doesn't say "for improvement of product and service." So my question to you is, is he saying that the constancy of purpose should be about improvement of product and service, or is he saying your constancy of purpose could be any purpose, but you just need a long-term purpose?   0:11:22.8 Balaji Reddie: Yeah. And he says that anything that help people to live better and have a market. That's on page 25. So whatever you do, your purpose should be to make life better, right?   0:11:40.2 Andrew Stotz: Right.   0:11:40.7 Balaji Reddie: And the product is just the manifestation of that. It's the outcome, correct? For example, if you talk about Walt Disney and his statement of purpose, he made a very telling statement, right? And how he came to write that down as a very fascinating tale. But he said, "I'll do anything to make a child smile. I'll do anything to make a child smile." So all that you see was aimed at the child, right? Whether it was the merchandise, whether it was the animated films, whether it was the actual non-animated films, if I may say so. And then, of course, coming out with Disneyland and then Disney World. So whatever he did was for the child. And then after he passed away, they lost that. I think they wanted to just sustain what they had attained, but there was nothing new coming out of Disney. And slowly people started encroaching on their turf, so to say. You had someone like a Steven Spielberg who made ET, and that really pulled the rug under their feet. And before they knew it, there was Goonies and Gremlins, and they were really crumbling. And they thought, "Let's join hands with the devil," and so they hired him to make a film. And that did very badly.   0:13:01.9 Balaji Reddie: We also know that Hook, which was supposed to be on Peter Pan, et cetera. And then they were in a crisis and said, "What do we do now?" And most of the top people were just washing their hands of everything. They were the employees who were left, many of them who had worked with Disney, and they said, Sony was very keen to buy them out. And they said, "We need to keep them out, and how do we do that? The only way we can do that is to make a comeback and let's make another film. And we've not been doing anything original, so let's go back to the drawing board." But they said, "We need something to guide us." And that's when they discovered what Walt Disney had written, "I'll do anything to make a child smile." And they said, "What a shame. We forgot the child. We hired the best, but we didn't do anything for the child." And they added one more sentence there. "Anything to make a child smile, and there's a child in every adult." That's how they created Honey, I Shrunk the Kids. Unique idea.   0:14:03.0 Andrew Stotz: Right.   0:14:03.9 Balaji Reddie: You can see it's a statement of purpose that brought them back.   0:14:07.6 Andrew Stotz: Okay. That helps me to understand that what he's talking about, according to what you're saying, is come up with your purpose.   0:14:14.4 Balaji Reddie: That's right.   0:14:15.3 Andrew Stotz: Okay.   0:14:15.6 Balaji Reddie: And he of course also added the word "aim" later on, which is that direction, because he says there, "Where do we wish to be? And then by what method?" So you should know whatever you do should go in the right direction. So that's the first faulty practice, and also giving us a theory of what we need to do. So go back and try to rediscover your purpose if you don't have it, or maybe just come out with something and see what really ignites you, what really drives you forward. And he's given some bullet points here. No number of successes in the short-term problems will ensure long-term. Short-term solutions have long-term effects. So that's that statement where he said cause and effect are not closely related in time and space. Of course, management must work on short-term problems as they turn up, but it's fatal to work exclusively on short-term problems. So he tells us that there has to be some place where you need to stop and start focusing on the big picture. So that's the very first faulty practice. Now the next one is a real, real bucket of water on your face. "Present practice, ranking people, salesmen, divisions. Reward at the top, punishment at the bottom. The so-called merit system." At the top and bottom. It's an artificial creation because no matter what scale of measurement you use, there will be an average measure and there will be 50% above the average and 50% below the average. That's exactly what the word average means. So making these stupid claims that this is an above-average person or a below-average person does not really mean anything.   0:16:07.8 Andrew Stotz: Because what you're really doing is rewarding or punishing common cause variation?   0:16:14.9 Balaji Reddie: Well, that's one. But when you're artificially creating something which doesn't even exist, right? You're saying top half, bottom half. In fact, that funny statement where there's a headlines in England, this happened in England, which said studies have shown, and they spent half a million pounds on carrying out the study, that 50% of the children in England are below average nutrition level. You don't need to spend half a million pounds to figure that one out. That's the law of averages. And using that to judge people is crazy on some arbitrary scale that you've invented. And he goes on to...   0:17:06.7 Andrew Stotz: So the first question I asked was, is this just a frivolous or tampering with common cause variation? Or the other question that... Or is this part of psychology and the idea of demoralizing people through this type of behavior? Where does that fall in from the System of Profound Knowledge, let's say? Is it variation, psychology, or is it both?   0:17:34.5 Balaji Reddie: It's a bit of both.   0:17:36.4 Andrew Stotz: Yeah.   0:17:36.6 Balaji Reddie: Because if you talk about understanding psychology, what he meant, I think I used the word empathy, that we need to be empathetic. When you're talking about employees, what do you mean by empathy there? Well, we need to understand their learning processes. Each one of us has a learning process, but we have a different kind of a learning process. And then when you understand the learning process of a person and then put that person in the right job, you'll have to stop that person from working. That's joy in work. He says that when you... And that takes time. And the ranking system or the merit rating system is an excuse for not having understood or making an effort to understand your employee. You're becoming lazy. You put the onus on them when actually the onus is on you. You have to find out what makes that person tick, if I may use the word resonates. What resonates with that person, right? And then put that person in the right job. He's been saying this from the beginning. It's fascinating that he said this in Japan when he was teaching the control charting there.   0:18:42.3 Balaji Reddie: He said if you draw the control chart for performance of a worker and then it's all within limits for a long period of time, despite all the training and all the lessons that he or she has been given, then he said, "I think it's time to move that person out from that job and give them some other job." Because they've reached statistical control. Any amount of effort put in will not result in a better output. You're gonna get the same thing. And if you want something else, then you need to shift them or maybe give them some better job, whatever it is. So he always had this, that we need to use these in tandem. And in any case, it's a System of Profound Knowledge, so all the four sciences work together, right? And if you want to ask me, when a person understands their purpose, I'm extending the statement of purpose here to the person, when a person understands why they're doing something, they always do the job better. So that statement of purpose needs to come in here too. Instead of ranking them, sit down with them and have a heart-to-heart with each one of them. This is back again to the 17 principles we discussed last time, that you have to spend some time with them.   0:19:57.9 Andrew Stotz: Okay.   0:19:58.3 Balaji Reddie: And understand what makes them tick. So he says "the better practice is to abolish the merit system and manage the company as a system. The function of every component, every division under good management contributes towards optimization of the system. That is, it's not compromise, it's optimize." We don't say either-or, it's and. And he says "differences there will always be, but the question is, what do the differences mean?" So that's where you can use control charting to figure that one out. And I told you how I did this in my company and I got the HR lady to finally say, "I think we need to remove performance appraisal." Performance management, yes, of course you need to have a system in place because I need to know where I am. Even when we later on come to the 14 Points, one of his most, according to me, most misunderstood points is point number three, cease dependence on inspection. But that doesn't mean you stop inspecting.   0:21:02.8 Balaji Reddie: And we will read that when we come to that as to what he meant. So you need to know what is happening, definitely. For that reason, you do need to have some system in place, but you cannot judge a person based on that. And so he says here that "ranking is a farce. Apparent performance is actually attributable mostly to the system." And a simple equation, that's my favorite, that's what we discussed last night too, Tim Higgins, when he said x + (x * y) = 8. And you've gotta solve this equation when you don't even know both. Both are unknowns. Then how can you figure out what is x and what is y? So the other factor, the Pygmalion effect, right? I think for those who are not conversant with the Pygmalion effect, the play by George Bernard Shaw, Pygmalion, which was made into the movie My Fair Lady, where he picks up a lady from the streets who was a flower seller, a flower lady, a flower girl. And he accepts the challenge of teaching her how to speak good English rather than what they call as Cockney English. And then it's like an experiment and a challenge and he starts teaching her. And then to test himself, he takes her to a party. And there she has one drink too many and she gets a little bit tipsy and then goes back to her old way of speaking, which really shocks the guests in the party.   0:22:41.5 Balaji Reddie: And he's very upset when they come back home and he said, "You'll always be a flower girl." And then she makes a statement, "Treat me like a flower girl, I'll behave like a flower girl. Treat me like a lady, I'll behave like a lady." And that's the Pygmalion effect. You start treating people that they're failures and then they have to live up to that reputation, right? So they continue being failures. You treat them well, so the Pygmalion effect comes into play. And of course, he talks about his red beads. That's an excellent experiment in bringing out many of his principles. Though he did not design it originally for this, that came much later. In fact, in Japan when he carried out the red bead experiment, it was purely for sampling. He invented that experiment for sampling. And he said that he broke down barriers and made things so simple for people. I think the lessons of management came much later at Hewlett-Packard where while he was explaining sampling and then when he went to what he was trying to teach them about management, someone jumped up, I forget the name of the person, who said, "But this is... So this is what you're trying to teach us with that sampling experiment." And then he suddenly realized he could use this. And of course, the so-called, and then raises in pay, et cetera. Yeah, whom to raise? Everybody within the system, blah, blah, blah.   0:24:13.4 Balaji Reddie: So I think last time I explained this about the roles, responsibilities and objectives, right? I borrowed this idea from another company in India where I saw this happen. When we removed the performance appraisal system, we came out with something which was quite different. We used to sit down with the people and explain to them what we intend to do as a company for the next four or five years and what their role is and what we expect them to... How do we expect them to contribute? But then came the next question. We turned around to them, "What do you expect from us as a company to help you grow in this direction or anything else?" And so they would give us certain expectations. And so we negotiated, came down and wrote things down. And then came the best part. We said we're gonna meet not once a year, but every month and as often as possible to discuss. That's why I loved it when the Deming Institute came out and were doing it, I'm sure they're doing it even now, in the two and a half day, from "me" to "we". So when we met every month, we used to ask the question, "How are we doing?" Not "What have you done?" "How are we doing?"   0:25:33.0 Balaji Reddie: And so when I heard that, I wanted to tell Bill Bellows I've been doing this since 2004. And when I heard the "me" to "we" thing, which was around 2017, '18, I think I saw that happen and I was, "Wow. All right." So thinking on the same lines. So the faulty practice, all right, when he talks about this, the second one and what needs to be done. Yeah, he gives some other advice also that if you're faced with problems, cut the dividend, cut it out. And that's, of course, when you're having hardships in the company. So he's given us a set of steps there too. And he says finally, if necessary, cut pay, but nobody loses a job. So, of course, those are extreme cases that we need to do, but he gives us advice what needs to be done. Now, the third faulty practice is incentive pay, pay based on performance. And I think that this has a lot to do with the arbitrary numerical targets that are set, right? And then, "If you do this, I'll give you that." So he says that the performance of an individual cannot be measured except maybe on a long term.   0:27:04.7 Balaji Reddie: He said reward for a good performance may be the same as reward to the weatherman for a pleasant day. He's got no control over it. And he says, "Abolish this incentive pay and pay based on performance. Give everyone a chance to take pride." I think you were talking about this last week too when we said about these arbitrary targets that lead to all of this, where somebody made a statement to me that, "The targets were a distraction to me from what my actual job was. My job is this. The target is just distracting me from my job." So very often people feel that way, right? And pay for performance, "I'm supposed to do this," right? And he gives an example. The top salesman may be a heavy loss to the company by overselling, selling to a customer a bigger copying machine than he, the customer, needs, right? And selling a bigger or fancy insurance policy than the customer can handle, promising immediate delivery, promising unauthorized discounts, et cetera, et cetera, right? It's the same thing, when one of my students was doing this, his internship project, he found that there was excessive inventories that were stocked up at an automotive company, at the authorized service stations and the sellers, and they had excessive stocks of components and that's why the sales had dipped over a period of time.   0:28:42.3 Balaji Reddie: Why were they holding so much of stock? Because the previous purchasing guy, or rather sorry, the marketing guy, forced these guys to buy extra, saying that, "I'll give you a discount," and things like that. And so they overstocked themselves to a point where they did not need anything because he had to meet a target. So he pushed it down their throat without really understanding what repercussions this would have. All right? And the problem with that pay for performance, it sounds good. Get what you pay for, pay what you get for. But the funny thing is you'll get only that much. Another case which I can tell you is how this student of mine was... His job during the internship was to collect receivables from the shops that were buying stuff. This was in the appliances, home appliances industry. And after they trained him to do that, how to call up the retail outlets and outstanding statements and then go collect the money, and his target was 500,000 rupees a day. 500,000 rupees a day collection. Now, one day he collected 2 million. My question is, do you think he reported it? Well, he did. And for the next four days he did nothing.   0:30:22.6 Balaji Reddie: Now, there's also a reason why he didn't report it. Because when you don't have Profound Knowledge, if he reported that he collected 2 million, immediately the manager would have said, "From tomorrow, your target is 2.1 million." Now, this is what happens when you don't understand variation. If you drew a control chart and you said that, "Okay, the average is so much, so I'm telling him to collect 500,000," and he's collected 2 million, he's done something special. As a manager, I'd call him and ask him, "Could you please tell me what exactly you did? Because you've not done what I taught you, otherwise you wouldn't have gone to this extent." Sometimes you don't know why you've been successful. The theory comes from the outside, right? So a manager with Profound Knowledge would sit down and have a talk and say, "Okay, you did this right. Now try doing this again." And he goes the next day and collects 2 million again, and then the next day and 2 million again. And then he comes and says, "Okay, boss, I'm ready for a new target. Raise the bar." Now what have you done? You've improved the system.   0:31:24.9 Andrew Stotz: We have new knowledge.   0:31:26.3 Balaji Reddie: We have new knowledge. And that's why, answering the same question what you asked me, it is a bit of both. So you need to understand that it's beyond... And we need to help the people understand why they've been successful. So better practice, here you go, is "abolish incentive pay, give everyone a chance to take pride." So when they start realizing, like this child, this student of mine, why he hit 2 million rupees that day, it would have been great. Instead, he just kept quiet. So see, you've lost an opportunity to really learn, to find a leverage point in a process which can take the process to another level. The next one he talks about is failure to manage the organization as a system. Instead, components are individual profit centers, everybody loses, right? And I think we have these separate business units, and he says here that they don't optimize for the aim of the whole organization. I think this is again, if you look at his Points number 9, 10, and 11, he very clearly mentions these because one thing leads to another, right? Break down the company into silos, each one focuses on what they're doing, and there's no communication, and they don't know their understanding the relationship of their work with the work of others.   0:32:54.9 Balaji Reddie: They don't even talk to each other. And he says here that "enlarge the boundaries of the system," but that comes when you understand your companies much better. And the system must include the future. Definitely, you start with theory. If this is what's happening in the world right now, this is how the world is going to change. Now he says, encourage communication. Now this part, a lot to do with Point number eight, drive out fear, where he says make physical arrangements for informal dialogue between the various components of the company regardless of level of position. That's a very telling statement. Encourage continual learning and advancement. Some companies have formed groups for comradeship in athletics, et cetera, all right, which provided facilitation for study groups. The company can well afford to underwrite the cost of social gatherings in outside locations. I can give you my personal example here. One of my college friends, and this was the time in the '90s when she came to America to do her Master's and then eventually started working in Ford, right? She did her Masters in applied electronics and she joined there as a design engineer. And that time, the world was a different place, and we Indians from India, we tend to be very, very conservative about a lot of things. We don't want to step on people's toes. So when someone says something, we, instead of opposing it, we keep our mouth shut.   0:34:32.6 Balaji Reddie: And so in meetings when they used to discuss and somebody brought up something and she said, "No, I think there's a problem," and they said, "What's the problem?" and she decided not to say anything, but eventually it turned out that she was right. And so the team members had a grouse against her that she doesn't share and she doesn't talk, she doesn't open up. Now what had happened was the HR lady in Ford, when she'd given her resume, when she asked about her hobbies and activities, one of the things she wrote there was dancing. Now she was learning a form of classical dancing here in India and obviously she could not continue pursue that in the United States at that time. So when that lady read dancing, she said, "You know, Ford sponsors ballroom dancing classes. So would you like to go for that?" So she said, "Oh wait, I learned a classical dance form in India. This has nothing to do with this." So she said, "Well, dancing is dancing. Why don't you just go? And we're paying for it, so why don't you go for it?" So she said, "I just enrolled in that class." Now, the first day when she went for the class, I don't know if you've seen the movie Shall We Dance, Andrew, but Richard Gere and Jennifer Lopez, and if you remember the first day, they tell you to hold your partner's hands and you're blindfolded and you follow your partner. It's about trusting the person in front, right? So she said when she went through that and she had to hold a stranger's hands, the whole barrier was broken.   0:36:08.2 Balaji Reddie: And she said, "I don't know, I had a different kind of a feeling when I came back to work." And she started trusting a lot more and it had an impact. Now, who would have dreamt that a ballroom dancing class could have changed my friend like this? That's Point number 13. You just have a theory that this will make that person a better person. You don't really do things to get a return on investment, but it works. So I think this is a beautiful paragraph by Deming where he says that there are ways and means of doing it and give it a shot. You have nothing to lose, right? Now he comes to the next one. Now this one, I think a lot has been spoken about this, MBO. But very clearly, he says "MBO as practiced." He does not blame Peter Drucker at all. In fact, he says Peter Drucker was clear that the objectives are interdependent and they're not mutually exclusive. He says, "Unfortunately, efforts of the various components do not add up. There is interdependence. Thus, the purchasing people may accomplish saving of 10% over the last year and in doing so raise the costs of manufacture and impair quality.   0:37:31.3 Balaji Reddie: They may take advantage of high-volume discount and thus build up inventory, which will hamper flexibility and responsiveness to meet unforeseen changes in the business." Peter Drucker was clear on this point. It's unfortunate that many people do not bother to read his work. In fact, let me just make a note that it was even Juran who said this, that having these kind of disjointed objectives can lead to a lot of problems. He said, of course, you can't be devoid. And that's why I think Deming has been very clear in chapter one of The New Economics where he says there are some things called as facts, right? Facts of life. So giving an arbitrary target is not a fact of life. He says here how he needs to improve that. So setting numerical goals, arbitrary numerical goals, I would say, right? Work on a method for improvement of a process. By what method? I think even Brian Joiner says that when you set this arbitrary goal. And now he goes on to explain that even further where setting a goal beyond the means of the process, they either distort the systems, distort the data, or distort both. Then management by results.   0:38:56.7 Balaji Reddie: Okay. Take immediate action on any fault, defect, complaint, action on the last data point. I think this again brings to the fore the understanding of variation where you need to look and ask questions and where you say, "Okay, I know this normally happens." So understand and improve the processes that produce that. Understand the distinction between common causes and special causes and understand the kind of action to take. So common causes, most of the time you need management to take action. There's a change in system. Yeah, there are some times when it is when a person close to the process can take that decision. Likewise, a special cause can be taken care of by the person closest to the process, but sometimes you need management action too. So that will always be the case, but it's rare, right? And so he talks about Sears, Roebuck, et cetera, and working on improvement of the process. The other one was buying materials and services at the lowest bid, right? Which he goes back to his Point number four, where he says here that it does not take brains to work with the cheapest. It takes brains to choose the best. Right?   0:40:23.4 Balaji Reddie: And estimating the total cost of materials and services, purchase price. Don't go by purchase price alone. And if I know right, Andrew, this was a point he was working on till the end of his life. You see the lady who was actually looking into the publication, the second edition of The New Economics, Elizabeth DiLorenzo. I was in touch with her because in my early days of my introduction to the Deming world, because I was quoting a lot from Out of the Crisis and The New Economics, and she was working for MIT Center for Advanced Engineering Study that used to originally publish his books. And she told me a very funny tale of how she was expecting her twins and at the same time she had to release this book. So the joke at MIT was, "What's gonna come out first, the twins or the book?" And since Deming was no more, she had to release that very quickly. So March '94 is when she released the book, and she said her twins were born some weeks later. So they are as old as this book. Now, she was telling me that till the end, the one aspect of what he was working on was, if you see the notes in the appendix and purchase of supplies and service. So continuing purchase of supplies and services, World 1, World 2, World 3 and World 4. He made this so clear. I think nobody has made it clearer. Okay, World 3, sorry, there's no World 4. So he talks about this and he talks about how practical you need to be about this, right?   0:42:18.7 Andrew Stotz: Yeah, and I underlined something in there from a long time ago that said, "Sudden jump to a single supplier is inadvisable."   0:42:28.8 Balaji Reddie: Right. He says there's a method of doing that.   0:42:32.5 Andrew Stotz: Yep.   0:42:33.2 Balaji Reddie: And I teach that method, by the way, where you start with the product, then go on to the process, and then go on to the system. And that takes time. You just can't get up one fine morning and say, "You're my sole supplier." It doesn't happen that way. It takes a lot of effort and a lot of doing, right? The next faulty practice is delegate quality to someone else or some group. And this is, I remember my interaction with Dr. Juran on this, right? I had just received my certificate for ISO 9000, I became a lead assessor, and I quite liked the new standard that had come out at that time in the year 2000 because it had a lot of Deming flavor to it. Plan-Do-Study-Act had come in and things like that. I was quite happy, the definitions and this. I said, "It's better than what it was." It's not, they had a long way to go, no doubt about it, but I said at least they've broken away from the defense mode where they copied the whole document from, right? And when he asked me the question that, "What's the status of quality in India?" and I said, "Well, earlier on it was a lot of standards-oriented and ISO 9000 played a huge role in that," and he just raised his hand as to tell me to stop and he said, "I am very disappointed with the ISO." And then he made this statement, "The ISO 9000 is a standard for mediocrity splendidly marketed by the ISO." And I just stared at him. I said, "What?" because I had just received my certificate, so obviously I was very touchy about it. And I said, "Dr. Juran, a little harsh." He said, "I've just begun."   0:44:26.4 Andrew Stotz: Yeah. And the problem is, is there's a lot of money to be made from it and it's an ingrained system.   0:44:30.5 Balaji Reddie: Yeah. So I just asked him, why would you say that? They made a lot of changes. He said, "Yes, but two things are missing." And one of them, he said, is something about leadership. Go back and read it. And then I went and read the standard again, and I realized what he was trying to say here. There was a lot of work that they were delegating to a person called the management representative, and he says, "Sorry, you can't delegate this to someone else. It begins at the top." Ed Deming also said that. He said, "It begins at the top. Only they can do this."   0:45:10.5 Andrew Stotz: I have a little story on that.   0:45:13.5 Balaji Reddie: Sure, sure, sure.   0:45:14.8 Andrew Stotz: In my coffee business, maybe 15 or 20 years ago, we got a big, big customer, and overall, they were a very good customer. But they picked us over all of our competitors. And then they told us, "Okay, in a month we're gonna come and inspect your factory, and if you get below 80%, then you're not gonna be our supplier." And so we said, "Well, I study with Deming, and I know quality, and we've never had a problem with quality ever." And my business partner, Dale, is very focused on the principles of quality. So they came, we were quite proud, and then by the end of the day, they had 600 questions they went through. And by the end of the day, we were like, "Yeah, what's our score?" And they said, "65. You're fired." They said, "You have 10 weeks or five weeks to fix these top 10 things." And then at that moment, we had a revelation, which is, oh, to them, paper is quality. And what I've always said, what I learned from that, was that it wasn't a big deal. We did the paperwork that they asked for, and then we got the job. And they were a customer for 16 years and a very good customer. But what we learned, one of the things I say, is that we had the heart of quality. They asked us for the paperwork that they thought represented quality. That's not such a big deal. But could you imagine having been trained that paperwork is quality, and then you have to try to develop the heart of quality? Very difficult.   0:47:01.9 Balaji Reddie: Very difficult. And now I come to this picture that he's drawn on page 37 of The New Economics, the old edition. I think the new one, let me just see what that is. Okay, that's on page 27. So he says here that unique processes that produce figures, all these principles have been applied to just 3%. Now, I have my own version of this particular picture that he's put here. Imagine an X and a Y axis, all right? And on the X axis, you can put down measures that are known. Close to the origin, you can write "known", and then as it goes away from that, "unknown", right? And then you have on the Y axis "measurable", and as you go up, "unmeasurable". So because he said that most of the things are unknown and unknowable, and among the known, you have only some fraction of those which are measurable. So the 3% deal with those factors or those parameters which are known and measurable. There are many parameters, he says 97%, which are unknown and unmeasurable, but you still need to manage them.   0:48:26.5 Balaji Reddie: And that's where he gives us a lot of advice that comes after this. Okay, when after this diagram, beautiful paragraphs in his book. "Beware of common sense," he says. And of course, he gives the example of Gallery Furniture, salary instead of commissions. Also goals, aims, hopes, facts of life, futility of a numerical goal. And a picture may help, where he talks about the goal being beyond the capability of a system. And will the goal be achieved? And he says redefinition of terms and distortion, et cetera. Gives a lot of examples there. And then he goes on to give even more examples. Okay, if you say merit pay, et cetera. Need to manage by results, wrong. And the last bit, the note where he says America 2000 was originally put together in December 1989 at the educational summit between the President and the governors of the 50 states. These goals were published in February 1990 by the White House, later incorporated into America 2000. This job may be an example of an enlargement of a committee. We shall learn in chapter four, he says, that the enlargement of a committee is not a way to acquire profound knowledge. How could they know?   0:49:57.7 Andrew Stotz: Yeah, and so what's happened to education since then in America?   0:50:00.6 Balaji Reddie: Oh, no comments. And we in India are almost going the same way. Of course, in some cases they've gone back to the roots saying that, no, we need to get back to our original way of educating people, right? We had this thing of exposing a child to all the different kinds of subjects, right? Like you have history, geography, languages, mathematics, science, just about everything. But the idea was to very quickly identify which child is resonating with what, because we need these different kind of people to work together. Some people are good at memorizing, some people are good at analyzing, some people are good at imagination. And so you throw all this out and then you cast the net and then you say the job of the teacher is to identify, okay, you're good at this, you're good at this. The problem is when you start saying if you're good at this, you are intelligent, and if you're not good at this, you're not. There are different kinds of intelligence. I would say the problem is more with the teachers and not with the system.   0:51:16.5 Andrew Stotz: We should wrap up at this point.   0:51:18.9 Balaji Reddie: Absolutely.   0:51:19.6 Andrew Stotz: How would you summarize what you want people to take away from this discussion?   0:51:24.0 Balaji Reddie: Sure. Go back and read chapter two in The New Economics. Dr. Deming has very clearly shown us why we need to do what we need to do. You're gonna be seeing things differently. As he used to say towards the end of his life, "I'm not here to teach you anything new. I'm here to make you see things that you normally would not see." And now he's just shown us what we thought was normal in the working of a company is actually detrimental to the running of a company over the long term. So my advice is go back, read this. You could watch some of the videos of the Deming Institute, especially on the 14 Points. We will be covering the 14 points later, but I would say that this is a real elaboration of his Diseases and he's given us what needs to be done. Not just pointing out what was wrong, but he tells us what needs to be done. That's why the heavy losses form an integral part of the preamble to actually what is the next step that you're taking your foot off the brake, so to say, trying to identify things that are pulling your company back.   0:52:37.8 Andrew Stotz: Well, Balaji, I want to thank you for this discussion. And recently I have been reading chapter two and I saw a lot of new stuff. It's funny how you just keep rereading. And then today you've just made me realize I gotta go back and read that chapter two because he does really the way he did the tables. I kind of forgot all about that. When I went back to it about three or four weeks ago, I was like, oh, this is really great. I kind of forgot about it. And now as you go through it, it's the tables was what I was focused on, but now I'm also seeing the text in between that you're highlighting that's valuable. So for everyone out there, grab your book, go to New Economics, go to chapter two. It's just gold. It's gold.   0:53:30.7 Balaji Reddie: It's gold.   0:53:31.0 Andrew Stotz: So, and for listeners out there, remember to go to deming.org and jump into DemingNEXT to continue your journey.   0:53:37.7 Balaji Reddie: Absolutely. Absolutely.   0:53:39.9 Andrew Stotz: Yep. 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."   0:53:52.2 Balaji Reddie: Absolutely.

In a perfect world, you'd be able to address potential obstacles proactively. In the real world, many obstacles can't be predicted. The only option for moving past them is reacting in the moment and figuring out a solution. Love the show? Check out the support page for ways you can help keep the Diz Runs Radio going strong! dizruns.com/support Become a Patron of the Show! Visit Patreon.com/DizRuns to find out how. Subscribe to the Diz Runs Radio Find Me on an Apple Device dizruns.com/itunes
Find Me on an Android dizruns.com/stitcher
Find Me on SoundCloud dizruns.com/soundcloud Please Take the Diz Runs Radio Listener Survey dizruns.com/survey Win a Free 16-Week Training Plan Enter at dizruns.com/giveaway Join The Tribe If you'd like to stay up to date with everything going on in the Diz Runs world, become a member of the tribe! The tribe gets a weekly email where I share running tips and stories about running and/or things going on in my life. To get the emails, just sign up at dizruns.com/join-the-tribe The tribe also has an open group on Facebook, where tribe members can join each other to talk about running, life, and anything in between. Check out the group and join the tribe at www.facebook.com/groups/thedizrunstribe/

Prince Harry and Meghan Markle are discovering that bringing Archie and Lilibet back to the UK for the first time in years is proving far more complicated than expected. At the same time, Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce’s rumored July 3 wedding at Madison Square Garden is shaping up to be the biggest celebrity event of the year. Meanwhile, Jelly Roll is recovering after being hospitalized with a severe sinus infection that disrupted his tour with Post Malone—just days before his divorce filing from wife Bunnie Xo became public. Rob’s latest exclusives and insider reporting can be found at robshuter.substack.com My novel, It Started With A Whisper, is available nowSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

There is a kind of person you have met, perhaps only a few times in your life, who operates by a different set of rules. Obstacles that stop most people don't slow them down (they speed them up, actually). They do not wait for permission, for better conditions, or for someone else to solve the problem. They think and they dream and they create. Then they move. [Because leadership is mostly about getting big things done].My latest book “The Wealth Money Can't Buy” is full of fresh ideas and original tools that I'm absolutely certain will cause quantum leaps in your positivity, productivity, wellness, and happiness. You can order it now by clicking here.FOLLOW ROBIN SHARMA:InstagramFacebookYouTube

Episode 286 – 3 Obstacles to Spiritual AdvanceWhat if the greatest obstacle to our spiritual growth isn't demonic resistance, external persecution, or dramatic trials, but rather the subtle pull of comfort, convenience, and competing loyalties? This powerful exploration of Luke 9:57-62 confronts us with three critical hindrances that can stall our journey with Christ. First, we face the seduction of ease and comfort—that instinctive desire to follow Jesus only when it doesn't cost us too much. The enthusiastic disciple who pledged to follow Jesus anywhere was met with a sobering reality check: even foxes have holes and birds have nests, but the Son of Man had nowhere to lay His head. Second, we encounter the obstacle of present duties and responsibilities. When Jesus called someone to follow Him immediately, the response was 'let me first bury my father'—a reasonable request that Jesus rejected with startling intensity. Finally, we wrestle with lesser loyalties, those good things that become obstacles when they compete with our wholehearted devotion to Christ. The challenge isn't to abandon all responsibilities, but to recognize that authentic discipleship means Jesus holds the supreme position in our lives. This isn't about earning salvation through works, but about living out the reality of what it means to deny ourselves, take up our cross daily, and follow Him without looking back. Are we truly advancing in our faith, or have we settled for a comfortable Christianity that demands little and transforms even less?

Every couple hits obstacles in the bedroom — but they don't have to stay stuck. In Part 3 of our Summer Sex Series, Dave and Ashley Willis tackle the most common roadblocks to a healthy sex life: mismatched drives, stress, mental health, passionless routines, and physical limitations. Plus, a real talk on counterfeit solutions and how to reconnect in even the hardest seasons. 9 Days to Great Sex eBook: https://www.daveandashley.com/9-days-... 21 Day Inner Healing Journey: https://store.xomarriage.com/collecti... https://www.xonow.com Download our FREE 31 Day Marriage Devotional: https://bit.ly/3ZxsLZd Video on Christian Sex Positions (Part 1): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pRwuVGKDM_E Video on Christian Sex Positions (Part 2): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Od-mFJ1SZ8 __________ Submit your questions to Dave & Ashley: http://nakedmarriagepodcast.com Download our FREE 31 Day Marriage Devotional: https://bit.ly/3ZxsLZd We want your marriage to thrive! Learn more at http://xomarriage.com Dave and Ashley Willis spent thirteen years in full-time church ministry before devoting their work entirely toward the global mission of building stronger, Christ-centered marriages. Their marriage-related books, blogs, podcast, speaking events and media resources have reached millions of couples around the world making Dave and Ashley one of the most recognized and trusted couples in marriage ministry. Dave and Ashley partnered with XO Marriage in 2018. XO Marriage is the nation's largest marriage-focused ministry. The Willis family includes four sons and a rescue dog named "Chi Chi." When Dave and Ashley aren't writing and speaking, they love hanging out with their family, watching movies and going on long walks which is also where they develop many of their marriage ministry content ideas. Learn more about Dave & Ashley at daveandashley.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This is the audio podcast of our weekly Sunday message, recorded live during our church service in San Francisco.This podcast is designed for those who prefer a simple, audio-only experience of the message as it was shared in the room—no edits, no commentary, just the teaching from Sunday.New episodes are released weekly following our Sunday services._When spiritual resistance tries to weaken your hands and steal your courage, God gives you the power, love, and sound mind to keep building until breakthrough comes.Invite and share this message with your family and friends and bless them with this great message. If you're new to Cornerstone and this is your first time watching us, we'd love to say “hello!” Just click on this url ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠http://cornerstonesf.org/welcome⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ to fill out our Welcome Card and one of our community members will follow up with you. Also if you are in need of prayer, don't hesitate to put in a prayer request at ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠http://cornerstonesf.org/prayer

What does great leadership actually look like? Can you make a difference even if you're in the middle of the hierarchy? "If you think you're too small, you've not spent the night under a bedsheet with a mosquito." In this episode, educator and Deming practitioner Balaji Reddie explains why W. Edwards Deming was far more practical about leadership than many people realize. Drawing on both The New Economics and Out of the Crisis, Balaji shares stories and examples that bring Deming's 17 principles of leadership to life. From creating trust and joy in work to understanding variation, coaching people, and improving systems, this conversation challenges conventional management thinking and offers a clear path toward transformation. TRANSCRIPT 0:00:02.2 Andrew Stotz: My name is Andrew Stotz and I'll be your host as we continue our journey into the teachings of Dr. W. Edwards Deming. Today I'm continuing my discussion with Balaji Reddie, who is an educator and trainer in the teachings of Dr. Deming and quality management generally. And the topic for today is Principles of Leadership. Balaji, take it away.   0:00:27.9 Balaji Reddie: Good morning. Thank you so much, Andrew. We had left our last session with that, we'd be dealing with this. And of course, Dr. Deming gave us the outline of Profound Knowledge and he gave us 14 points. He also gave us the deadly diseases and the 16 Obstacles. So people often talk about the diseases, but very often they forget the obstacles. And there are 16 of them which he highlighted for us. And if you think that they're outdated, they're as relevant as they ever were. So you need to keep revisiting those. I think if you start working on removing the obstacles, it's like you're taking your foot off the brake rather than pressing on the accelerator.   0:01:11.3 Balaji Reddie: So you're removing the things that actually stop you before you actually take things forward. But nevertheless, we start with point number 14 where he says, take action to complete, to make the transformation. And he says that there should be a critical mass of people that you need to educate and train and get them on the same page as you are. I'm gonna quote Hazel Cannon here, who is current president of the British Deming Forum. And she talks about the time when she was very young and she attended the Deming four-day seminar, I think in Birmingham. And at the end of those four days, she was overwhelmed as you normally are when you hear how the man speak. And he spoke... He wanted you to make drastic changes. It's not just tinkering here and there.   0:02:08.2 Balaji Reddie: And so she went up to him and she said, "I'm really taken up by what you just said." And then she made a statement, "I'm too small to make these changes in my organization." I believe she worked as a lab assistant in a chemical manufacturing company. They used to make chemicals for cosmetics. So she said, "I'm too small." And Deming just interrupted her and said, "Never think you're too small. If you think you're too small, you've not spent the night under a bedsheet with a mosquito." So make a change where you are and take it from there. So I would like to now quote Dr. Deming from Out of the Crisis. This is Plan for Action: Take action to accomplish the transformation. So he writes there, there are three points and then I'll come to what he writes below that.   0:03:01.8 Balaji Reddie: So he says, "Management in authority will struggle over every one of the above 13 points, the deadly diseases, and the obstacles. They will agree on their meaning and on the direction to take. They will agree to carry out the new philosophy. Management in authority will take pride in their adoption of the new philosophy and in their new responsibilities. They will have courage to break with tradition, even to the point of exile among their peers." So he talks about courage. He talks about courage of conviction. And then he says, "Management in authority will explain by seminars and other means." So I think he leaves it to people of the ways and means. And now today there are a lot of means of doing that. DemingNEXT is one of them. And he says, "To the critical mass of people in the company why change is necessary and that the change will involve everybody."   0:04:00.9 Balaji Reddie: Now he writes something very interesting. He says, "This whole movement may be instituted and carried out by middle management speaking with one voice." So he gave instructions. Why are people saying that he did not tell us what to do? It is just that he expected maybe a lot. And now let's get to that middle management and what he expected. He says here... Let's see here. I'm coming to chapter four now in The New Economics where he says, "A System of Profound Knowledge. The aim of this chapter: the prevailing style of management must undergo transformation." So we just heard that, that what we need to do. And he says, "A system cannot understand itself. The transformation requires a view from the outside. The aim of this chapter is to provide an outside view, a lens that I call a System of Profound Knowledge.   0:04:59.7 Balaji Reddie: It provides a map of theory by which to understand the organizations that we work in." Then he says, "The first step is transformation of the individual. This transformation is discontinuous. It comes from understanding the System of Profound Knowledge." Then he says that "the individual, once transformed, will set an example." So setting an example, I believe, is doing the right thing under adverse circumstances, when you stick to your principles despite the fact that there is an easier way out. As they say, choosing a path between good and bad is easy, you choose good. But good and better, you need to make the right choice. And that needs profound knowledge. "So be a good listener," he says, "but will not compromise. Continually teach other people and help people pull away from their current practice and beliefs and move to the new philosophy without a feeling of guilt about the past."   0:06:02.7 Balaji Reddie: So he explains to us what was needed here, right? And he says this is what we actually need to do. Now I'd like to, I mean, I'll be referring to a document. I don't know how we're gonna get this to people, but for the Principles of Leadership. All right, I think I'll have to send this over to you later, but we will do that. So in the Principles of Leadership, just come to them. I am quoting again from both Out of the Crisis and The New Economics. So you will find this there when he speaks about what needs to be done. Modern Principles of Leadership. And he says, "The modern principles of leadership will replace the annual performance review. The first step in a company will be to provide education in leadership." So that would be introducing people to profound knowledge from what we just heard. Then he said, "The annual performance review may then be abolished." Of course, that will take time. "Leadership will take its place, and this is what Western management should have been doing all along."   0:07:12.6 Balaji Reddie: So he says, "The annual performance review sneaked in and became popular because it does not require anyone to face the problems of people. It is easier to rate them, focus on the outcome. What Western industry needs is methods that will improve the outcome." And he says, "Suggestions follow." So first, institute... The first principle. "Institute education in leadership: the obligations, the principles, and methods." And so I think introduction to the System of Profound Knowledge will help. And then after profound knowledge has been sort of brought to the notice of... Of bringing to the notice of the people then you get into perhaps teaching them about 14 Points, et cetera.   0:07:57.8 Balaji Reddie: Comes the second principle. He says, "Ensure more careful selection of people in the first place." So choosing the people, he says again, now here's where it requires you to understand the purpose of what you're doing, purpose of your organization, purpose of the people you're looking out for and making this change. Because when you know your purpose, you know the aim, then you can choose people in the right way. And I believe he said this somewhere, it's a combination of education, training, skills, and experience. So we need to combine these four factors in choosing the right people. Then he says, after selection of the people, ensure better training and education. So we fine-tune all of their... He says a complete background. He said their aspirations, their goals.   0:08:54.2 Balaji Reddie: I kind of borrowed this idea from a company here in India where they had this thing called roles, responsibilities, and objectives. And they used to meet once in a month, but once in a year they used to decide. So the top management, the HR, would sit down with each and every employee and say that, "In this calendar year, this is what we intend to do and this is what we expect from you." And in turn, they used to ask the employee, "What do you expect from us? Because this is what we want from you." And then the employee had a chance of putting forth what he or she wanted, the management, what help they needed. And I think this is where we have to be... It's a give and take. And they didn't just meet once a year; every month they would meet and the question was, "How are we doing?" not "What have you done?"   0:09:51.1 Balaji Reddie: So I think it wasn't a traditional appraisal. If there was any appraisal, it was appraising what top management were doing or intended to do and not so much the employee. I thought that was a good move. So that's what we need to do here: better training and education. Principle number four states: "A manager understands and conveys to his people the meaning of a system. He explains the aims of the system. He teaches his people to understand how the work of the group supports these aims." Now, here's where, you know, when you talk about, say, hiring people in the first place, when you bring in new employees, I believe that there should be a special session by people inside the company who have stayed the longest, who served the company the longest, especially during their bad days. Because the employees need to know what really happened and how the company survived and how we were resilient, we came back despite all the problems that we had.   0:11:00.7 Balaji Reddie: And the historical perspective, especially if there's someone who's in touch with the founding members, that would be a great boon. I know nowadays we talk about the older companies, obviously none of the founders are there, but if there is such a person, exchanging those ideas with the young employees would definitely make a difference. So they would then understand the purpose, the aims, and how your work supports these aims. I think it's the best way to do that. But what I see right now in companies and I'm being very specific about this, because today when new employees join the company, they have an orientation, they have onboarding, as they call it, but that's done by a rookie, someone who's just joined the company and is just making...   0:11:46.8 Andrew Stotz: [0:11:46.8] Following a checklist?   0:11:48.1 Balaji Reddie: Exactly. Like a PowerPoint presentation. They don't talk about the history of the company. And I think there has to be an emotional connect before there is a logical or an intellectual connect. That emotional connect, I think, then makes you feel that pride and you feel good about coming to work and you say, "Oh, I did not know." So I believe this fourth principle is important in that sense, in the way to do that. Now, he says that... Principle five says he helps...   0:12:19.7 Andrew Stotz: By the way, do you know what chapter are you in?   0:12:23.9 Balaji Reddie: Oh, I have combined.   0:12:27.9 Andrew Stotz: Okay.   0:12:29.4 Balaji Reddie: I took some of the text... Okay. If you want to see here, this is management of people, all right? In that chapter. So I've taken... There are 14 principles there, management of people. In the new edition of The New Economics. It appears...   0:12:48.2 Andrew Stotz: So chapter six.   0:12:50.2 Balaji Reddie: Chapter six, yeah. That's chapter six...   0:12:51.8 Andrew Stotz: Yep.   0:12:52.6 Balaji Reddie: All right. And he talks about pictorial effect of transformation, and then he talks about management of people, role of a manager of people. So there were 14 there, but in Out of the Crisis, the first three which were there, he did not include here.   0:13:10.0 Andrew Stotz: Okay. I just just asked...   0:13:11.0 Balaji Reddie: So I just included those. Yeah. No, so that when people read the book, they could read it clearly, right? So, yeah. So he says now principle number five, which in Economics is principle number two or three, right? He says "he helps his people to see themselves as components in a system, to work in cooperation with preceding stages and following stages toward optimization of the efforts of all stages towards achievement of the aim." So we want optimization, not compromise. So you need to sit together. Just if I were to ask a simple question to you, Andrew, and without thinking, if I were to try to answer this question... Okay. I presume you know how to make a cup of tea.   0:13:58.7 Andrew Stotz: Yes.   0:14:00.1 Balaji Reddie: So what is the first step?   0:14:02.7 Andrew Stotz: For me, boil water.   0:14:04.6 Balaji Reddie: Boil water. And what if I say that's not the first step?   0:14:12.0 Andrew Stotz: Well, first of all, I think you probably have more experience with tea than I do, but I have more experience with espresso, probably. But anyways, go ahead and tell me.   0:14:20.9 Balaji Reddie: Okay. The first question is, whom am I making a cup of tea for? So what I just tried to convey is it's not natural to think about the customer. And so the first step is, for whom is the cup of tea? If it's the person...   0:14:30.8 Andrew Stotz: Grandma.   0:14:40.7 Balaji Reddie: That's right. If she's diabetic, then you would not need sugar. So you gather the ingredients accordingly. If he wants black tea, you don't take milk, right? And that's the point he's trying to say here. When you look at different stages, every every person has a customer. So the first question is, who is my customer?   0:15:07.1 Andrew Stotz: Right.   0:15:07.4 Balaji Reddie: And that part of profound knowledge, understanding psychology, I mentioned this last time, is empathy. The word empathy captures this. So you go to the next process as, "Whom am I doing this work for?" and sit down with that person and say, "What do you expect from me? How may I help you?" And that's what decides what you're gonna do. So this this fifth principle here, that he helps his people see themselves as components, I think this is important. The next process is your immediate customer, and the rest of them are customers in a very oblique sense. But what you do is critical to the next person in line, right? So you always spend extra time with that person and of course the other people down the line who your work is gonna be impacting over a period of time, right? But these are the... This is the first step you find out. So who's my customer? So that's principle five.   0:16:09.0 Balaji Reddie: Principle number six: now this comes under psychology again, that a manager of people understands that people are different from each other. He tries to create for everybody interest and challenge and joy in work. Now, if you look at the theory of knowledge, what exactly did he give us when he brought that component of profound knowledge into play? He says that theory is a statement that conveys knowledge by relating cause to effect. So I repeat, theory is a statement which conveys knowledge by relating some cause to some effect. It fits without fail all the observations of the past and helps us predict the future with the risk of being wrong.   0:17:04.7 Balaji Reddie: So I'm gonna repeat this whole statement again. Theory is a statement which conveys knowledge. How? By relating some cause to some effect. It fits without fail all the observations of the past and helps us predict the future with the risk of being wrong. So no amount of examples can establish a theory, and even one example can lead to either abandonment of the theory or modification of the theory. That's what he kept saying. Now, how does this work? So he says it's a system of learning, and all of us have this built in, right? Now, he came from the school of Clarence Irving Lewis, Mind and the World-Order. And if you read that book, Lewis says all knowledge is a priori, it's based on what you already know.   0:18:00.9 Balaji Reddie: For example, let me take this example here. Now, suppose I were to start describing the road to my house. Now, you've not been here, but if I start saying that the road bends towards the left and then there is a command you get to see, now you start constructing a picture in your head based on what you have already seen. It's not the same. That's your theory, right? And then when you actually visit, you say, "Oh, it's the difference between theory and what I actually saw," and then you change your theory. So theory is... It's natural. All of us think naturally like this. And that's why he says here that people are different from one another and we need to celebrate those differences. All of us are born with the system of learning, but not all of us learn the same way.   0:18:49.8 Balaji Reddie: There are some who learn by watching, there are some who learn by doing, there's some who learn by reading, there's some who learn by writing. For some people, one word is enough. You utter a word and they say, "I got it." And for some people, you have to repeat the statement maybe 10 times, 11 times, and then the 12th time you repeat it, they say, "Okay, I got it." Now, is that wrong? We're just different, right? And that's why he says here that we need to understand the learning process of people. And when you understand the learning process of a person and then put that person in the right job, you'll have to stop that person from working. That was his definition of joy in work. People enjoy their work when they realize it resonates with them.   0:19:40.4 Balaji Reddie: And how does that resonance come in? When you under... And because this is so difficult to do, we just throw the responsibility on them by saying, "Here's the target." So the target actually distracts them when actually you should be working on understanding their learning process. So it's a lot of hard work. And sometimes people are motivated enough to discover it themselves, which is great, but we need to create that atmosphere for them to enjoy their work. So interest, challenge, et cetera, he tries to optimize. Now, here's the key. This is beautiful. He tries to optimize family background, education, skills, hopes, and abilities of everyone.   0:20:21.7 Balaji Reddie: So this is not ranking people, very clear. It is instead recognition of differences between people and an attempt to put everybody in a position for development. I think this is one of the most important principles in getting things done. When I teach this to the HR students in my college, I keep saying that I don't think you should call this science as human resource management, because the definition of a resource is obtain it, shape it, use it, and throw it away. We don't wanna do that. I think we should change the title of that department to Department of Learning, because that's what exactly this is all about, and it's learning in both ways where you are trying to understand their process of learning and in effect, you're trying to understand how the company is going to be learning.   0:21:17.0 Balaji Reddie: So you put this in... So this principle, he says, combine all of these things: family background, education, hopes, I love that word. Because if you see one of the things that people talk about, customer satisfaction, I think Deming was the only person who said customers should be happy. Not just satisfied, happier, right? Now comes the next principle. "He is an unceasing learner." So you can never say, "I know it all." Unceasing learner, he encourages his people to study. And I think this fits Dr. Deming himself. He made no excuses to learn. "May I not learn," he would keep repeating that. And I remember Bill Cooper getting irritated and said, "The last time I met you, you said this, and now you're saying this. I got that on tape." He said, "Well, you got this on tape now." He said that, "I do, I learn. And as I learn," he said, "that could have been under different circumstances that I said that, but I'm saying this."   0:22:22.4 Balaji Reddie: And so you keep learning. And he encourages his people to study. The word is study. And he provides, when possible and feasible, seminars and courses for advancement of learning, encourages continued education in college or university for people that are so inclined. So I think this bit is in many places getting to be a part of the systems in most companies. I've seen that happen now, which is a good sign. But it doesn't end there, there are a lot of other things to do. This was the Principle 7 in the list of 17. Now comes Principle 8, and this is so difficult to look at. He says "he's a coach and a counsel, not a judge." You judge people, they shut up.   0:23:15.4 Balaji Reddie: So he says coach and counsel. When they need help, guide them, show them the path. Sometimes maybe you need some help in doing that, well, go ahead. So that was principle number eight. Principle number nine says "he understands a stable system. He understands the interaction between people and the circumstances that they work in. He understands that the performance of anyone that can learn a skill will come to a stable state." Now, this is amazing. He said this way back in the 1950s when he was in Japan teaching them the control chart, where he took one example where he says that further training to the worker and the process was still in control. And he says, "I think he's reached the limit of his learning. He perhaps needs to be taken to another process or maybe given something more challenging so that we can develop the learning process."   0:24:17.6 Balaji Reddie: So he was speaking about this way back in the 1950s, which today you can say comes under understanding psychology through variation. And he says, upon which furthest the lessons will not bring improvement of performance, and a manager of people knows that in this stable state, it is distracting to tell the worker about a mistake, because he says you'll actually then demotivate someone. So these three principles...   0:24:44.1 Andrew Stotz: Because a mistake may be just normal variation, or are you saying... Okay. Yep. Okay.   0:24:51.0 Balaji Reddie: Yeah. I mean, it could be anything, right? But if you are highlighting that when he's already reached a stable state, it could just work in a detrimental way, the opposite direction.   0:25:05.4 Andrew Stotz: Ultimately you've reached your goal. A steady state is fantastic.   0:25:07.4 Balaji Reddie: A steady state. And then now you say if you want him to... Anything better here, I think you need to move him out from there, since maybe he needs to be given something either more challenging or whatever it is. But use of psychology and variation together. If people are saying that he spoke about this in the 1990s, he actually spoke about this in the 1950s in Japan. And I have proof. If you go and check Elementary Principles of the Statistical Control of Quality, the series of lectures that he gave in Japan, you will see this in one of the chapters, very clearly stating what needs to be done.   0:25:47.9 Balaji Reddie: Now we come to the next principle, which is... I don't know how to explain this, but it's amazing. He says that "the leader has three sources of power: authority of office, knowledge, and personality and persuasive power, tact." So authority, that's your title, knowledge, and personality. Now, personality, persuasive power, and tact is more of a personal thing. It is something that is an attribute. Authority is the title you're given. I think the only thing that you can really work on is your knowledge. And he says that a successful manager of people develops knowledge and personality and persuasive power, does not rely on authority of office. He nevertheless has obligation to use his authority, a source of power, for him to bring changes. He says that maybe some drastic changes to equipment, to materials, to methods, and to reduce variation.   0:26:55.0 Balaji Reddie: So he attributes this to a gentleman, Dr. Robert Klekamp, or Klekamp, I don't know how to pronounce that. So he says, "He in authority, but lacking knowledge or personality, must depend on his formal power. He unconsciously fills a void in his qualifications by making it clear to everybody that he's in position of authority, his will be done." So I think he said if things needed to be done and if he's being guided the right way, then he has to bring his authority into power. I think this brings me to one of the interactions he had with... Was it James McDonald at Ford? When he made him stand up and asked him, "What is your job?" And he said, "I'm vice president, manufacturing," and he sat down. Deming said, "Stand up. That's your title, not your job." And then for the next half an hour, he grilled him on what his job was. And after half an hour, he still didn't get an answer. He said, "You don't know what your job is. Do you think other people in the company know what their jobs are? I think you're running a mess here."   0:28:02.2 Balaji Reddie: So Jim McDonald, instead of feeling insulted, took it in a very different way. Though he said, "I did feel that I wanted to resign and just walk out of there," but he said, "I knew this man was onto something." And that kind of thing of authority of office, I think he did not like if people used it for the wrong reason, but he wanted them to develop knowledge, personality. Personality, well, I think again, on the soft side, persuasive power tact. Not all of us have that, but I think we are living in a knowledge economy, so knowledge would be the key here. And he also says that if you're in a position of authority, use this to get the right work done.   0:28:47.3 Balaji Reddie: Then next he says "he will study the results with the aim to improve his performance as a manager of people." So when the system is not getting what it's supposed to do, then he does not put the blame on the people. He says, "I have... I may be going wrong somewhere." I'd like to share an example of my father in Japan. My father was in Japan in 1964, I said this last time. And he was on this Asian Overseas Technical Scholarship, AOTS. And they run these courses even today. They have three-month, six-month, nine-month, and one-year courses. And from what I remember my father telling me, it's integrated in the sense, I think he was there for six months. So during the morning sessions, they used to have classroom training, sitting in a classroom. And in the afternoon, post-lunch, they would go and work in a company, and that was like their intern. And so it was a combination of theory and practice taking place almost every day.   0:30:02.4 Balaji Reddie: Now, what happened there was on the first day... And that's where he started working with Showa Electric, and said they were called the interns. So on the first day, he was taken to the company and was introduced to his supervisor. The supervisor took him on the shop floor and introduced him to the team that he would be working with. And then, while he was leaving, that supervisor said, "I just need to tell you this, that we also form what is called as a quality circle." And this was... The quality circle movement started in 1962, so '64, the quality circle. And so my father said, "I don't know what you're talking about." And he said, "Well, this is something new. So would you like to be a part of it?" Because quality circle is voluntary, not mandatory. They make you a part of the quality, so if you want to be a part of the quality circle. It's not imposed on you.   0:31:05.0 Balaji Reddie: So my father said, "I need to talk to my teacher, my sensei, at the class." He said, "Yeah. You can talk to him." So he went back to the class the next day in the morning, he asked the teacher, the sensei, that this is what they said. He said, "Oh, it's a very good system. You can become a member of the quality circle." So on the second day, he said, "Yes, I'll be a member of the quality circle." "Great," he said. Now, on the third day, his actual work started. Now, they used to make television screens, CRO, et cetera. And one of the steps there was soldering. They had to solder. And the soldering was the dip soldering. You had to take the printed circuit board and dip it into the solder bath and take it out. Of course you were to... There was a technique.   0:31:52.8 Balaji Reddie: And so his job was that. His first job that he was assigned is to do soldering on these PCBs. And so the supervisor himself sat with my father and demonstrated 10 to 15 times how to do it. Then he told my father, "Now you do it." And then he was guiding him, and he made him make around 10 pieces until he said, "Okay. Now you're getting it right." Okay. Now he said the ground rules. If by any chance you press it down too hard or you keep it too long because of the extreme heat, there will be a superficial crack on the PCB. And that would not be something that affects the customer right away, but over a period of time, it can result in the board cracking and the radio not working. So when you see a superficial crack, you're supposed to pull the cord. There was a cord there. And when you pull the cord, the supervisor will come and help you. Fine.   0:32:56.1 Balaji Reddie: Now my father started doing his work, and his fifth or sixth piece developed a crack. Now, he said, I don't want to sound derogatory, but the Indian in me caught up. Should I report this? What would he think? I hardly left this man alone, and his fifth piece is a rejected piece. And he said, I did not want to pull that cord. But then... He said that, he told me, "Please pull the cord," I decided, let me go ahead and pull it. So when he pulled the cord, a red lamp went on there, and there's a big siren that went on. And the supervisor came running and turned off the siren and turned off that lamp and said, "What happened?" My father showed him the crack. So he said, "Okay, no problem." He put it aside. He demonstrated to my father 10 times again how to do it. And then he made him do it 10 times till he said, "Ah, see, you did this." And he got it right. Now he said, "Let's continue production."   0:33:58.8 Balaji Reddie: Now they went away and now my father got it right. After an hour or so, or maybe two hours, they had their tea break. And they were sitting around a table. Now, this was the quality circle. So the supervisor got up and started speaking in Japanese. Now, this was my father's third day there, so obviously he did not understand what was going on. The only thing he knew that they were referring to him because they could not pronounce his name properly. So instead of Reddie, he was being called Leddie. So Leddie-san, Leddie-san, Leddie-san. So my father said, "I knew he was talking about me." And he said, "I felt so ashamed, I was looking down at my cup of tea rather than looking up." And then when I looked up, he said, all of them were looking at him in admiration and the thumbs up sign. And he was wondering what the hell just happened.   0:34:51.0 Balaji Reddie: And at the end of it, when that supervisor stopped speaking, they all clapped. They clapped. And as they dispersed, each one came and held his hand and they went away. And now my father told the supervisor, "What did you tell them? Did you tell them I made a mistake?" He says, "Yes, yes, I did tell them that." He said, "Then why are they complimenting me? Why are they... Why did they clap? Why did they clap for me? Why are they shaking my hands?" He says, "They're shaking your hand, they're clapping, and they're complimenting because you pulled the cord." So he said, "What do you mean?" He says, "Well, we have a saying here, here in Japan, if after explaining to a person 10 times how to do something, if the person still makes a mistake, then there's something wrong in the way I explained it." So this bit over here is he will study results with the aim to improve his performance as a manager. Don't blame the other guy. What am I doing wrong?   0:35:54.0 Andrew Stotz: You hired him, you train him.   0:35:56.4 Balaji Reddie: Yep. So when Jack Welch used to say, "Sack the bottom 10% of the people every year," and he called them dead wood, well, I would say when you hired them, they weren't dead. You killed them. So that was principle number 11. Now principle number 12 is where he combined both variation and psychology together. He said "he will try to discover who, if anybody, is outside the system, in need of special help." So he draws a normal curve. I'll pass on this document to you so you could share it along with the podcast. And he says here that people belong to the system. These are people who need not be ranked. But a person outside the system on the lower side needs special help. People outside the system on the higher side, well, we need to take the system to that level to improve the system.   0:37:08.4 Balaji Reddie: So he talks about that. He says this can be accomplished with some simple calculations. If there be an individual with figures on production or on failures, special help may be only simple rearrangement of work. It might be more complicated. He in need of special help is not in the bottom 5%. He's clean outside that distribution. So he's trying to use the understanding of variation in a very different sense to understanding people. And he says that we try to reduce that variation in performance between people. That's the job of the system. So this is principle 11 and 12.   0:37:51.0 Balaji Reddie: Now you come to principle 13: "he creates trust." And that creates trust, I would believe, it's a two-way process. And he creates an environment that encourages freedom and innovation. That is the environment where people are unafraid to make mistakes. Because we learned that theory is not the opposite of practice; it's a guide to better practice. And we need all of us working together. And that trust, I think, has got a very funny meaning in my country. I keep joking about this. In India, trust is we will lie a little less to each other. But that's not what this is. We need to be straight honest with each other. And honest is you can only do that by example. Like what happened in my case. I remember when we had installed the ERP system in our company, and there are interlocks. And I remember there was a backlogged order. And I knew that because when we did not deliver the order on time, I negotiated with the customer and I got the delivery date postponed.   0:39:08.0 Balaji Reddie: Now I was trying to test the ERP that month. So I said, let me see if the ERP can capture this because it should show it as a backlogged order. But it showed it as an order that was to be delivered on the new adjusted date. And I said, "How did that happen?" Because that should not have changed. And so I called my assistant. I said, "This should be in backlog. Why is it showing me as a spillover order?" And he said, "No, I changed the date." I said, "Why did you do that?" And he said, "No, because the finance guy will get angry with me." And I said, "That is my problem." I said, "When I told you you're not supposed to change that date..." And I removed his administrative powers in changing the date so that he could not change the date in the system.   0:40:01.7 Balaji Reddie: I removed his powers. And he apologized profusely and said, "Please let me." I said, "No." So till the day I resigned, I kept it. I said, "You're not gonna be doing this because it's not a question..." I said... If I had succumbed to that Andrew, they would have lost my trust. They would have thought that, "Oh, Balaji just talks. He doesn't walk the talk." I said, "No, you're not supposed to do this. We are trying to go by a system. Let's go by the system." So I think you can only create trust through example, through demonstration, if I may say so, and especially under adverse circumstances that you need to demonstrate this.   0:40:46.1 Balaji Reddie: Principle number 14: he says "he does not expect perfection." I think that even he said it in principle of variation. Principle 15: he says "he listens and learns without passing judgment on him that he listens to." This is an extension of the previous points. Principle number 16: he will hold an informal, unhurried conversation with every one of his people at least once a year, not for judgment, merely to listen. The purpose would be development of understanding of his people, their aims, their hopes, and their fears. This meeting will be spontaneous and not planned ahead. So there should be no bias, like an audit.   0:41:41.5 Andrew Stotz: Right.   0:41:42.2 Balaji Reddie: And lastly, principle number 17: "he understands the benefits of cooperation and the losses from competition between people and between groups." So these were the 17 principles of leadership, the beginning of transformation. I think there can be nothing more to do than this. He was so clear in what he wanted us to do. I wonder why people say that there was no method.   0:42:16.5 Andrew Stotz: Yeah. He definitely outlined a lot of stuff there. One of the questions I had for you on that list is, what do you say to people that say that he's kind of a dreamer? The idea that you can sit down with your employees and have this time and everybody's so busy and just talk about your fears and your goals and all that stuff where we live in this age of, we've gotta get the result, we've gotta be focused. How do you respond to that?   0:42:51.1 Balaji Reddie: Well, I say give this a try. All right? You've done it your way, right? You've done it... Let's just forget about it, and you're seeing what's happening. You want a change, you gotta do something different. So why don't you go by what this man is saying? And if you say that, you know, a dreamer or whatever, well, I'd like to quote John Lennon here: "You may say I'm a dreamer, but I'm not the only one."   0:43:16.8 Andrew Stotz: Yep. Yep. Yep. And what do you say for people that feel that you gotta have these targets and goals and KPIs to get the most out of people? And when we think about what Deming's talking about, we're talking about this intrinsic motivation. But it's scary for people to think. It's a lot more comfortable to have these goals and structures than what you could argue is a little bit more unstructured. And how do we balance that? And obviously Deming wasn't saying don't have goals.   0:44:02.1 Balaji Reddie: Yeah, yeah. I think Henry addresses this very well in his 12-day course where he has a specific section on goals, et cetera. And he talks about how Deming said that there are some things called facts of life. Facts of life is, okay, we need to turn out, we need to generate so much of revenue this year because we need to pay for all our salaries and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, and then we need to have some money for the future. So we need to make so much of money this year. Now that's not a goal, that's a fact of life. But when you are bringing that number out and showing that to everyone, please also indicate to them how we intend to achieve that. Don't just leave it to them and say we need to do this.   0:44:54.4 Balaji Reddie: Okay. I'll give an example here. I don't want to sound... It may sound a little self-serving, but okay, take it in the right spirit. I remember when we had our first strategic meeting at my company, and my boss... Okay, was... He said... I think 20 of us sitting in the room and he said, "Last year, our target was 30 million and we're getting there and we're doing a great job. So this year we're gonna aim for 45 million." Now when he said that, I just put my hand up and he said, "Yes." So I said, "Why 45 million?" And he just stared me down and he looked up at everyone and said, "That's it. Meeting dismissed." He just walked out. These are those days when you had... You know the OHP? You know the overhead transparencies, the projector?   0:45:56.9 Andrew Stotz: Oh, yeah. Overhead transparencies, yep.   0:45:58.8 Balaji Reddie: Yeah. So he had the transparencies, and he just took them and walked out. And all the guys came to me, "Are you mad? You're questioning the owner of the company? Are you nuts?" And I was thinking, "God, what did I say wrong?" And then we started going back to our cabins, and when I sat down at my desk, the phone rang, and it was boss. And he just uttered one word, "Come." So when I was walking towards his cabin, I was thinking to myself, "Nice company, nice friends." And then I knocked on the door, and he said, "Yeah, yeah. Come in." He said, "Sit down." And then he said, "Shut the door." He said, "What the hell were you trying to do today? Are you trying to mock me?" I said, "Please, why would I want to mock you, boss? I wouldn't want to mock you. I just wanted to know why 45 million."   0:46:52.9 Balaji Reddie: He says, "All right." And so he took out what is called the blue book, where we have the yearbook, what happened in our country in the last one year. We have these books that get written, right? So he said, "Look, this is growth in our country in industry. This is our... Sector that we are in, and we are in the organized sector in this industry. And the year-on-year growth for the last five years has been this, and this year the expected growth is so much. And can I expect at least 3 or 4% of that growth?" I said, "Of course, why not?" He said, "That, son, is 45 million." So I said, "Why didn't you tell me this? That's all I wanted to know." He said, "You think these asses..." He was referring to my other colleagues... "Would understand?" I said, "Boss, if I can understand, they can understand. It's one and the same." "Okay. Let's meet tomorrow."   0:47:52.1 Balaji Reddie: So the next day we met again. And he said, "Yesterday, when I uttered 45 million, this genius asked me why, and so I'm gonna tell you why." And he went on to explain. After he finished explaining, my sales guy... Sorry, my marketing guy got up and he said, "I have something to share." "Okay, please come forward." He put the transparency. And he had listed there the top 10 selling items in my company based on revenue, based on profits, and based on quantities. Top 10 for each. There were three products that were common to all the three. So obviously he was sending a message to us, that we had to attain our targets, at least by focusing.   0:48:44.8 Balaji Reddie: The moment he showed that, he underlined these three, the sales guy put his hand up and said, "Yes." "That second product you underlined, our competitor is selling it as a package with another product, but we don't seem to have that on our list." So the R&D guy got up and said, "Could you tell me what the part number..." And he says, "It's part number so-and-so." He said, "Hang on, I've already developed that." You know what was happening, Andrew? We were talking to each other. And that meeting went on for three and a half hours. And at the end of the three and a half hours, all of us knew how to attain 45 million.   0:49:23.8 Andrew Stotz: I thought you were gonna ask a question on the second day, "Hey, boss, so 45 million, why is there no market share gain of our business that we're growing faster than the industry?"   [laughter]   0:49:41.4 Balaji Reddie: So anyway, but this was... This is what I think goals should be transparent in this sense, that why are we giving you this number? And more importantly is the discussion that happens is how are we gonna do this? It just doesn't happen by itself, right? And if you leave it to people, they start distorting numbers, right?   0:50:03.8 Andrew Stotz: Yeah.   0:50:04.2 Balaji Reddie: As Brian Joiner said, "Distort the data, distort the system, or distort both."   0:50:12.2 Andrew Stotz: Yeah. And we're working on a growth plan for my coffee business.   0:50:19.0 Balaji Reddie: A growth.   0:50:19.6 Andrew Stotz: And really what it comes down to is three things. Number one, are we as the owners gonna hire more salespeople? Because salespeople bring in revenue.   0:50:36.3 Balaji Reddie: Right.   0:50:37.0 Andrew Stotz: Number two, are we as the owners going to develop together with the rest of the team a higher value-added offering...   0:50:50.6 Balaji Reddie: Wow.   0:50:50.8 Andrew Stotz: That we can bring more value than what we're bringing right now, which would bring potential customers to us and allow us to sell more easily. Or are we as the owners going to buy another company?   0:51:07.8 Balaji Reddie: Oh, okay.   0:51:09.2 Andrew Stotz: So those are the three things. And Dale and I have been discussing each one of those in a lot of detail, testing out and debating and discussing. But those are the type that... When it comes to growth, that's just... We know the growth we can produce with no change. And that's in line with the inflation rate or whatever the economic growth, for sure. But as long as we don't lose people on our team or something like that. But to go to our team and say, "How are we gonna grow faster?" Well, that whole point is we can see. Also the other thing is that we can see bigger about the industry sometimes. Sometimes they see something at a small level that they bring back to us and think, "Whoa, wait a minute, that's something valuable." And yeah, so we're getting ready for our final decisions on where we're gonna go with that. But yeah, without that type of change, we're not gonna reach the type of growth that we want to get. And really our idea is 5x growth in five years.   0:52:19.9 Balaji Reddie: Okay.   0:52:20.5 Andrew Stotz: And in order to do that, we have to have a completely different level of quality, service, product, thinking. And so, yeah, it's fun... It's challenging. Anyways...   0:52:32.9 Balaji Reddie: Right.   0:52:33.2 Andrew Stotz: So how do we wrap this up? What is it you want people to take away? You've shared a lot of different stuff. What would you like them to take away from it?   0:52:42.0 Balaji Reddie: Yeah. One, I'm trying to shatter that myth that Deming did not tell us what was to be done. I think he was very clear and we need to reread and reread. And we have to take these as guidelines. You may come up with your own method, but see these as a guideline by and large to put you on the right path. And once you do that, you may develop something which works for you, and that's what he wanted. But let us not just say that he only philosophized about things. I think he was very clear in his head. He just wanted us to do things our own way because nobody understood our problems better than we ourselves. And he was just showing us how to understand things around.   0:53:32.6 Balaji Reddie: He wanted us to know, to understand what we do not know. Through these principles, we can address some of the gaps. Perhaps we were getting a few things wrong. So point number 14, take action to accomplish the transformation. I think it begins with leadership. So point number seven comes into the picture. It begins with training and education. Point number six comes into the picture and it also brings in point number 13, which is learning and development. And education and training is different from learning and development. Training can be very company specific and you can measure the outcomes of training, but you cannot measure the outcomes of development because that takes time.   0:54:19.8 Balaji Reddie: So you need to have some things going in your favor. And for that you need to choose, and he told us how to do that. And yes, he wanted top management to be a part of this because he said those in authority need to do this. But that one sentence that middle management can commence, it can commence there, is a telling statement. So he knew it was possible.   0:54:45.0 Andrew Stotz: That's great. And I like that. Commence. That there's... It's not necessarily gonna be completed by middle management, but middle management can start right now, right where you are. So that's a great way, that's a great way to end with the start. So, Balaji, I want to thank you on behalf of everyone at the Deming Institute. And it's an interesting discussion and I'm enjoying it very much. And for listeners out there, remember to go to deming.org and also there, jump on DemingNEXT to continue your journey. 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."   0:55:32.1 Balaji Reddie: Oh, yeah. Andrew, I think saying thank you on behalf of the institute, I am also a part of the institute.   0:55:38.5 Andrew Stotz: Of course. Of course. You are. I appreciate it. Okay.

Tocqueville saw America's faith in its own democracy as a vital force. But these days the majority of Americans think the country is headed in the wrong direction. Can a group of maximum security prisoners in Sing Sing offer a vision of how to get back on track?Guests and HostsJohn Prideaux, The Economist's US EditorSean Pica, executive director of Hudson Link for Higher Education in Prison Jean Frantz, prisoner at Sing Sing Correctional Facility Topics Alexis de Tocqueville's views on voluntary associationsSing Sing prison education programmePrisoners' views on the American dream To listen to the full series, subscribe to Economist Podcasts+If you're already a subscriber to The Economist, you have full access to all our shows as part of your subscription. For more information about how to access Economist Podcasts+, please visit our FAQs page or watch our video explaining how to link your account. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Tocqueville saw America's faith in its own democracy as a vital force. But these days the majority of Americans think the country is headed in the wrong direction. Can a group of maximum security prisoners in Sing Sing offer a vision of how to get back on track?Guests and HostsJohn Prideaux, The Economist's US EditorSean Pica, executive director of Hudson Link for Higher Education in Prison Jean Frantz, prisoner at Sing Sing Correctional Facility Topics Alexis de Tocqueville's views on voluntary associationsSing Sing prison education programmePrisoners' views on the American dream To listen to the full series, subscribe to Economist Podcasts+If you're already a subscriber to The Economist, you have full access to all our shows as part of your subscription. For more information about how to access Economist Podcasts+, please visit our FAQs page or watch our video explaining how to link your account. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

What do you do in those difficult moments when you feel ramped-up? Laurie and Kayla discuss strategies to back away and not go with the emotion of the moment.The support group that Kayla facilitates is now offered on a sliding scale.(Cost should not be a barrier—please reach out if you're interested)Allies in Recovery's member site is currently "on pause". ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Learn more here⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠. During this time, we have taken our entire eLearning program out from behind the paywall—the entire library of learning videos is currently available on our ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠youtube channel⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠.

Tocqueville saw America's faith in its own democracy as a vital force. But these days the majority of Americans think the country is headed in the wrong direction. Can a group of maximum security prisoners in Sing Sing offer a vision of how to get back on track?Guests and HostsJohn Prideaux, The Economist's US EditorSean Pica, executive director of Hudson Link for Higher Education in Prison Jean Frantz, prisoner at Sing Sing Correctional Facility Topics Alexis de Tocqueville's views on voluntary associationsSing Sing prison education programmePrisoners' views on the American dream To listen to the full series, subscribe to Economist Podcasts+. If you're already a subscriber to The Economist, you have full access to all our shows as part of your subscription. For more information about how to access Economist Podcasts+, please visit our FAQs page or watch our video explaining how to link your account. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

What are the obstacles between knowing what to do and putting that knowledge into real practice? In part 1, our hosts focus on  avoiding a "crisis" response, and slowing events down to avoid being reactive.The support group that Kayla facilitates is now offered on a sliding scale.(Cost should not be a barrier—please reach out if you're interested)Allies in Recovery's member site is currently "on pause". ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Learn more here⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠. During this time, we have taken our entire eLearning program out from behind the paywall—the entire library of learning videos is currently available on our ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠youtube channel⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠.