Guilt by Association

                    David and Sarah Kerridge

Dr Deming never allowed the term "TQM" to go unchallenged. At a
meeting in Scotland, he saw a TQM poster on the wall. "Is this a
TQM meeting?" he said. "I wouldn't have come if I'd known. There
is such a thing as guilt by association".

   This startled many people, because the parts of the Deming
Philosophy that have an obvious and immediate appeal deal with
the continual improvement of products and processes. These are
often described as TQM. But they are just the things that Dr
Deming dismissed as "Essential but unimportant".

   He meant that these things that must certainly be done, just
as we should reduce costs, if there is a harmless way to do it.
But they will not bring about transformation, or even ensure
survival. This depends above all on innovation, and on applying
the principles of the Deming Philosophy to the systems and
strategy of the organisation.

   The difference is most clearly shown in the table on page 38
of "The New Economics". There Dr Deming says that working on
"visible processes which produce figures" will produce only 3% of
the potential improvement. The other 97% is just waiting for the
enterprising manager to grasp.

   This suggests the following comparison of management systems.


               <-Old Style->

             <------ TQM ------>

             <------------------- Deming Philosophy ----------------->

Reduce:      Cost           Chaos          Complexity        Conflict

Increase:    Compliance     Craftsmanship  Confidence        Creativity

Work on:     Results        Processes      Administration    Strategy

Aim:         Efficiency     Improvement    Effectiveness     Innovation

Motivation:  Incentives     Pride in Work  Cooperativeness   Fulfilment

Managers:    Control        Support        Enable            Lead

Knowledge:   Technical      "7 Tools"      14 Points         Profound
                                                               Knowledge
Benefit:     Immediate      Short term     Medium Term       Long term

The correspondence between the columns is not exact. And there
are many more lines which we could add to the table. No doubt
many of those who use the term TQM do include more than just the
first two columns. But many do not, and broadly speaking, this
gives a true picture. And most TQM programs fail: so there is a
real risk of guilt by association.

   Why is it so important to concentrate on the right hand
columns? One major reason is that influence spreads far more
easily across the table from that direction than the other.
Cutting costs does nothing but save money: and often causes
hidden losses elsewhere. The same effort put into removing causes
of conflict produces benefits which spread across the table, and
the effect grows as it spreads. So the last columns give the
points of maximum leverage, and the key to effective management.
But another reason is that these columns provide the foundation
on which the rest is built. Without them we sink into the sand.