After reading an interesting post of John Hunter called Dr. Deming Webcast on the 5 Deadly Diseases, I’m wondering if in today’s company we are using poisons to treat the disease of our companies. In Italy, as in many countries around the world, we have sometimes the chance to access to new ideas a little bit after they have been tested in other countries (mainly in the US).

It should be wise not to use what has been proven it doesn’t give good results!

Listen to what Dr.Deming used to say years ago about the disease of our companies and look if they seem like the treatment we have been asked to use today by consultants or managers:

  • Lack of constancy of purpose
  • Emphasis on short term profits – “creative” accounting, focus on quarterly profits
  • Annual Performance Appraisals – management by objective, management by fear
  • Mobility of management – [see Toyota for a great example of a company that operates on different principles – where the leadership has been with Toyota for decades]
  • Running a company on visible figures alone – many important factors are “unknown and unknowable.”

PierG