"Systems"

Dr. W. Edwards Deming taught that the first question a quality consultant should ask of any client is "Is there a system?" In the 1950s he created the first quality focused system for the transformation of American management with his "Profound Knowledge" theory based on his 14 Points and Seven Diseases that stand in the way of the transformation. Although the original Deming package is rarely taught as a unit now (in 2002) the essence of those 14 points and seven diseases can found in Quality Management theories and tools which have emerged since then.

A system is a complex set of interacting elements. The Systems Approach is a scientific paradigm embracing concepts of wholeness, interdependence, organized complexity and learning through feedback and crossfeed. The basic parts of any complex system in business and management are: environment, boundaries, inputs, people, process, outputs, feedback (i.e. learning from the system) and crossfeed (learning by comparing with other systems). Because of those characteristics, systems thinking became formalized in the 20^th Century as fundamental to achieving quality products, services and/or policy. While global traveling in the 1950s and 1960s I surveyed phone books in major cities for the word "Systems." It was rare to find it listed. Now you will not find a phone book anywhere in the world, in any language, which does not have multiple systems business and organizations listings. We live in a world of natural and human-designed systems.

Not all quality problems require the systems approach for their solution. But, the significance to Quality Managers in the 21^st Century is that attacking problems without considering the alternative of systems thinking can plant the seeds of failure. One of the pioneer philosophers, scholars and writers about the systems approach, C. West Churchman at the University of California in Berkeley, ended his 1968 book with the final statement: "The systems approach is not a bad idea." That now stands as one of the classic understatements in scholarly literature.
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This essay first published in INLAND EMPIRE QUALITY, Vol. 9, #4 (Apr-May-Jun 2002), the Newsletter of the Inland Empire Section of the America Society for Quality (ASQ). For the complete Quality Classics series see: http://www..asq711.org.
² W. Edwards Deming, OUT OF THE CRISIS (Cambridge, MA: Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Center for Advanced Engineering, 1982).
³ Robert M. Krone, SYSTEMS ANALYSIS AND POLICY SCIENCES: THEORY AND PRACTICE (New York: John Wiley & Sons, 1980).
⁴ C. West Churchman, THE SYSTEMS APPROACH (New York: Dell Publishing Co., Inc., 1968), p. 232.

"Quality Thinking"

Have you thought about what began the quality movement? It was quality thinking. Philosopher Socrates (470 - 399 .B.C.) received the order from the Athenian Forum to end his life by drinking hemlock because his quality thinking exposed false logic in their thinking which they considered heretical. His student Plato (428 - 347 B.C.) preserved his thinking for all posterity. Aristotle (384 - 322 B.C.), Plato’s student, identified quality as one of his highest genera (categories) and distinguished it absolutely from substance, quantity, and relation, as well as from place, time, action, passion, habit, and posture. He further identified quality as something which has a contrary, which admits of degree, and which is an important variable in comparing and guessing the differences among people and things.

Dr. W. Edwards Deming and Dr. Joseph Juran changed post-World War II Japanese industry leadership thinking to formally begin the Quality Movement. Phillip Crosby, in the 1960s, challenged American business with the radical thinking that Zero Defects should be the goal. By the 1990s 6 Sigma had been the quality tool that allowed Motorola to essentially achieve zero defects.

In 1999 Juran predicted that the 21st Century would be "The Century of Quality." As that century now begins we see global evidence that Juran was right.
GE sustained double-digit growth through a recession and the aftermath of 11 September 2001 because of Quality Management. In Thailand huge banners proudly announce "ISO CertiƒOed." Quality methods and tools employed for the largest construction project in history – Hong Kong’s 10-year creation of the Chep Lok Kok Airport – has convinced Chinese Civil Aviation leadership that they can build a similarly complex new Beijing airport in three years. Two recent events, China’s joining the World Trade Organization (WTO) and winning the hosting of the 2008 Olympics, were strong catalysts for that goal.

Thinking has, throughout history, been the capability of humans that made them distinct from all other living things on our earth. In 2002, Charles W. McCoy, Jr., Judge on the Los Angeles Superior Court and Adjunct Professor at the Pepperdine University School of Law, published a milestone book on quality thinking (1) in which his career of legal decision making has produced critical questions and thinking skills for problem solving. My own hope is that the quality thinking that produced the global Quality Movement, and improved products and services over the past 50 years, can, in the 21st Century, be focused additionally on the clear need for improving the quality of policymaking (2). The American Society for Quality (ASQ), which has been the consistent professional catalyst for the quality movement, would be a logical leader for increasing quality thinking to solve problems negatively impacting global people and societies.

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"Quality Classics" is a project of the American Society for Quality (ASQ) Inland Empire Section 0711. This Quality Classic was published in the Inland Empire Quality Newsletter, Vol 10, Issue 1 (July-Aug-Sep 2002). Quality Classics meet the criterion of documenting a concept, model, tool, formula or algorithm that has 50 years or more validated utility in the Quality Movement begun in the 1950s. Queen Elizabeth II stated in her 30 April 2002 "Golden Jubilee Address" that "Only the passing of time makes the distinction between the ephemeral and the permanent." 

1. Charles W. McCoy, Jr., Why Didn’t I Think of That: Think the Unthinkable and Achieve Creative Greatness (Prentice Hall Press, 2002).

2. For a brilliant analysis of the need to improve policymaking by the scholar widely regarded as the world’s foremost pioneer of modern public policy studies, see Yehezkel Dror, Capacity to Govern (Frank Cass Publishers, 2001). 

"Quality Policymaking"

Over the past fifty years ASQC/ASQ (the American Society for Quality) developed into the preeminent catalyst for the improvement of processes, products and services. It has been a remarkable success story of growth from the first consulting and teaching by quality pioneers in the 1950s to a professional society recognized as the global authority and resource for quality control, assurance, auditing, certification and management.

When Dr. W. Edwards Deming was asked during one of his seminars: "What shall we do when leadership will not listen?", he answered with a smile, "Fire them." It has been known throughout the Quality Movement that an emphasis on leadership is essential for businesses, government agencies, schools, hospitals, multi-national entities or non-profit organizations to successfully implement quality programs. Resources are required. Leadership controls resources and policy. The number one category of the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award is Leadership. And leadership creates the policymaking system.

In spite of this leadership-to-quality link throughout the history of the Quality Movement there is still no formal focus on Quality Policymaking within ASQ. Products and Services are the two major categories. It is not that policy issues have been ignored by professionals – quite the contrary. Deming’s 14 Points, the writings of Juran, Crosby, Feigenbaum, Taguchi and most other quality professionals all consider the policy implications of their quality improvement recommendations. Organizational culture cannot be changed without the work of decision makers. The message of this essay is that it is time now, in the year 2002, for ASQ to formally create a Quality Policymaking research, writing and consulting entity.

Why do it? The gap between needed quality of policymaking and existing quality has been increasing for centuries. In spite of important exceptions to that assertion – mostly in business and the military – reality testing will show that Yehezkel Dror’s "Second Dror Law," published in 1971, remains valid. Dror is the scholar widely regarded as the world’s foremost pioneer of modern public policy studies (1). His "Second Dror Law" is:

"While human capacities to shape their environment, society, and human beings are rapidly increasing, policymaking capabilities to use those capacities remain the same."

Our 21^st Millennium is beginning with so many policymaking failures captured daily by global media that I need not try to itemize them here. Policy choices will impact ever larger numbers of people as corporations continue to grow to be mega-groups, as national systems intertwine increasingly with regional and global systems, as global problems like terrorism emerge, as populations grow, pollution increases and finite resources are consumed. As complexity increases more policy decisions will be irreversible once made. We cannot reverse the historical legacies of huge costs of poor quality, of wasteful competition and catastrophic conflict throughout the 20^th Century and already now in the 21^st , and of public and private systems failures resulting from poor policymaking. "Pushing quality up the organization," is an idea now spreading by necessity.

Both the Quality Sciences and the Policy Sciences began formally in the 1950s and have developed with too little interaction. It’s time to accelerate the merger for increasing quality thinking to solve policymaking system problems negatively impacting people and societies globally.
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"Quality Classics" is a project of the American Society for Quality (ASQ) Inland Empire Section 0711. This Quality Classic was published in the Inland Empire Quality Newsletter, Vol 10, Issue 2 (Oct-Nov-Dec, 2002). Quality Classics meet the criterion of documenting a concept, model, tool, formula or algorithm that has 50 years or more validated utility in the Quality Movement begun in the 1950s. Readers can access the entire series of Quality Classics at: http://www.asq711.org.