A genius who understood learning through action as key to leading ...

I love to read contemporary history as it clears your myth that you are making brand new original mistakes :-)

I was reading the history of rise of Japanese industry post world war II and the genius of Deming. While today Deming award is one of the most coveted awards, during his prime, Deming as a genius was largely ignored by American industry that was thriving on a a fast rising middle class and demand explosion just after World War II! Nobody really had time to listen carefully to a professorial understated guy who emphasized on quality as a core of everything one does and not something restricted to 'external inspection' of an output!! Completely ignored by the corporate leaders, a frustrated Deming quietly worked as a statistician with US bureau of the Census! The bureau sent him to a war-devastated Japan to help them with their census so that they can better utilize their limited resources for feeding and taking care of the population. Through a series of events Deming came in contact with an influential Japanese scholar, Ichiro Ichikawa, who knew his background and requested him for guest lectures. Based on his experience back home, Deming was wary that he would be talking to some engineers who wouldn't have any impact on the way ultimately the work is done. He insisted that he is willing to give a lecture only if senior people in the business attended it! Ichikawa wrote a note to 45 prominent business heads in Japan, who all turned up. To his surprise Deming found an audience that was eager despite language barrier! He promised them that if they follow, what he asked them to do, they can give tough competition to American Industry by mid-fifties - a thought that looked so far fetched to business leaders devastated by war and always embarrassed with the ridicule they faced due the sub-standard quality of Japanese products! They none-the-less started following Deming, who became a god in Japan and rest as they say is History!!

At the risk of oversimplifying the Deming mantra, let me pick up a few themes from Deming philosophy that are amazingly relevant to leadership in today's turbulent world across all Industry domains:

1. Deming talked about creating a constant purpose towards improvement which was perhaps readily available for business leaders in Japan, the nation defeated in war. There was a strong desire to restore the pride of the nation through quality! Proud victors of the war back home found 'quality' too trivial a subject to be dealt by leadership!
2. Deming insisted that leaders and engineers should be integral part of manufacturing process and what is being produced and not just supervisors or leaders driven by numbers! This helps leaders to understand how to unlock the potential of people and processes much better than sitting in their sanitized cabins! Not surprisingly, the 'Agile methodology' aggressively adopted by the Technology industry today also talks about redundancy of 'pure supervisors'
3. Deming talked about removing cross-functional barriers and fear of speaking so that communication is easy and improvements happen as a way of life. He also talked about restoring pride in a workman about the work that is being done as well as taking training & development closer to the actual shop-floor. He argued that on-the-job training is far more effective than any other form - not very different from 70:20:10 that we talk about today for personal development (70 % on the job learning, 20% through mentoring/coaching support and 10% in classroom)

While we keep inventing and re-inventing lot of leadership concepts, Deming managed to change the fate of an entire nation by defining simple principles over seven decades back. Those principles are fundamental and absolutely relevant even today! The key is to check health of your organization on three key parameters mentioned above. It is not as complicated as it may first look if the guiding light is a well defined purpose! The phenomenal success is almost guaranteed if you do not intellectualize what you do and keep it very simple for all stakeholders across the board ! It was not a coincidence that Deming as a person was a simple man who could easily relate to anybody crossing all the barriers! To quote a genius of another era, Leonardo da Vinci, "Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication!!"