Quotes About Deming

I believe that, the prevailing system of management is, at its core, dedicated to mediocrity. It forces people to work harder and harder to compensate for failing to tap the spirit and collective intelligence that characterizes working together at their best. Deming saw this clearly

A few years ago writer Art Kleiner interviewed the late W. Edwards Deming, founder of the "quality movement" first in Japan and then in the United States. What was the greatest pleasure he took in his work? "Learning!" the ninety-two-year-old Deming thundered, and steered the conversation to what his interviewer could tell him.

Deming argued that if there are performance problems and quality defects, one needs to understand how those problems arise almost naturally as a consequence of how a system has been designed—and then fix those design flaws. Put simply, attack the problems by fixing the system, not scapegoating the necessarily fallible human beings working in and operating that system—whether or not they deserved it.