S5 E9 Lonnie Wilson – Carrying On the Deming Torch

I have a fantastic conversation with Lonnie Wilson in this episode, diving deep into W. Edwards Deming’s seminal perspectives on quality, systems thinking, and the enduring challenges of operationalizing his philosophy in the real world. Lonnie also shares how his initial admiration for Chevron's management practices began to unravel after encountering Deming's writings in the mid-1980s.

The episode opens with Lonnie recounting his experience attending one of Deming's four-day seminars. His anecdote about Deming’s instantaneous answer to a deceptively simple question. Lonnie reflects on Deming's often enigmatic style, particularly his refusal to provide concrete answers to complex management questions, such as what to replace performance appraisals with.

We explore the tension between Deming’s abstract guidance and the practical application of his ideas in corporate environments. Lonnie shares his journey of attempting to implement cultural change through Deming’s 14 Points, only to face organizational resistance and surface-level interest. This led him to develop pragmatic systems that bridged the gap between Deming's theory and the day-to-day realities of business operations.

Lonnie and I delve into critical questions: Was Deming’s refusal to provide prescriptive answers a form of intellectual elitism or a deliberate nudge toward self-discovery? How did his lack of direct management experience influence his worldview? Lonnie argues that while Deming's concepts were revolutionary, they were often delivered without a “method for method,” leaving followers to forge their paths.

The conversation concludes on a reflective note, with both of us acknowledging that, despite the depth and accuracy of Deming’s ideas, much of the corporate world has either misunderstood or ignored them. If Deming were alive today, Lonnie believes he would be dismayed by the lack of progress in management thinking and would challenge his disciples to evolve and iterate on his foundational work.

Transcript

John Willis: Hey, this is John Willis again. Got another podcast. Profound. As you've probably noticed, we do kind of a lot of different things. We do AI stuff, we do Deming stuff. We do just general thinking, thinking stuff. But, it's always fun. And it has been fun since I, , came out with my book, profound Deming's Journey, profound Knowledge.

To meet people who had been working with Deming for a long time and, you know, just, especially in different industries. And, this guest today, Lonnie has been, he's now a regular on the, what we originally called the original Deming Book Club. So they've done a couple of books and now they're reviewing my latest book to, , we don't really need to talk about that.

We didn't say that for another podcast. , Lonnie great to have you on the show. I know we've been trying to schedule this. Why don't you introduce yourself? 

Lonnie Wilson: Well, thanks for having me, John, and, and thanks for including me on kind of one of my favorite topics, which is Dr. [00:01:00] Deming. I, I got introduced to Dr.

Demi while I was working for Chevron. I graduate chemical engineer outta college. I went to work for Chevron, spent, an apprenticeship in engineering and that type of stuff, and quickly got into to management and, and spent my last 10 years with Chevron, what you'd call senior management. You know, creating the strategic plan and implementing it or trying to, along the way. I ran across his book and I don't know when it was, it was maybe 84, 85, somewhere in there. And I read his book and I said, holy mackerel, you know, this is this. There's some great stuff in here. And up until that time, I mean, I was a, a Chevron sycophant. I, I was treated so nicely by Chevron and so well, that I kind of figured Chevron hung the moon, and, and they knew all that needed to be done, and if they didn't know it, it probably wasn't necessary and, and I couldn't see any of the weaknesses.

Until, well, I started seeing him [00:02:00] before I picked up Deming's book, but Deming's book clarified some things. I was surrounded by people who could not see the weaknesses. When I talked to 'em, they'd say, well, you know, you're, you're crazy or something. But then when I read Deming's book, I started to, to look at it differently.

And I started to, I've always read a lot and, and then I started a really intensive reading campaign, and since that time I probably read 40 or 50 books a year. 

John Willis: Wow. 

Lonnie Wilson: And, and all about Deming, and I think I've written, read just about everything that's written about him. I read your book actually, I'm, I'm on the fourth reading of your book, to be honest.

Oh, wow. 

John Willis: Wow. Okay. 

Lonnie Wilson: So but I, I was really intrigued by him, and then I had the luxury of going to his four day workshop. 

, That was in San Francisco. There's like 700 people in the audience. I had the, the pleasure of being one of the people who got to ask a question, and, , the way he answered it was just really impressive.

I asked him, Dr. Deming, if you could teach managers just two things, what would they be? And, His answer was clear as could be, but more [00:03:00] impressive was the way he delivered his answer. He didn't think for a second, he didn't take a breath, he didn't pause. He just said for them to learn the difference between common cause and special cause variation and the use of operational de definitions, next question.

You know? And so it was right there on in his, in his frontal lobes, you know, just memorized. That's 

John Willis: sure. 

Lonnie Wilson: It came across like some people can come across with their kid's birthdate, you know? But what intrigued me was that in, in the webinar he was, , he was irascible. He was ornery. And I went with 70 people from Chevron.

I. There were 700 people on the webinar and by the fourth day, excuse me, by the third day there were only 13 of PE people from Chevron desk. We all kind of set in the group, and every day this group would shrink. And I, I, it irritated the heck outta me. But 

John Willis: that's, they didn't they Trump because see, they just were, didn't think they were getting the answers they want, or he was.

Yes, exactly. Okay. I think 

Lonnie Wilson: that was [00:04:00] what it was. 

John Willis: Okay. 

Lonnie Wilson: And I know the Chevron group went with, with one big question. They wanted to get the answer to, okay, if we're not gonna do appraisals, what are we gonna do? Right, right, right. That's the hard one. And and , so one of 'em asked, you know, you say to throw away appraisals, what should we do?

And he didn't answer it, he just ignored it. He just went, next question, you know, and he did that several times during the, the, the workshop. Usually after he spoke, there would be a brief period for q and a with him, right? And he had two sessions in the morning and two in the afternoon. And he'd take about a 20 minute break in between.

And of course the people could then, you know, take a bio break or whatever they needed. But, , they would fill in that 20 minutes with some of his helpers who would take the stage and say, okay, do you have a question that maybe we could field? You know? And so it was, it was really, it was a, it was a fun time and informative time.

But that question got asked, [00:05:00] I don't know, at least three times, maybe four. And finally on the fourth day, Dr. Deming said, do whatever Peters Schultes tells you to do. Oh, really? That was his answer on what do you do to replace appraisals? And the the other thing that came up several times was. He used the term profound knowledge right in this workshop.

And somebody said, somebody asked me the first day, well, what's profound knowledge? And just like appraisals, he just ignored it. And finally somebody, they kept asking it and I don't know, the second or third time he said, it's what you're learning in this workshop. Well, I, I later came to understand, as I studied his system of profound knowledge, , it really wasn't clear in his mind at all.

Until much, much later. What year was this? So I think that I, I think I went to the workshop in 85. 

John Willis: 85. Yeah. I think, you know, from the historical record at least the one that I don't think he, he really [00:06:00] had clarified. I. You know, it was sort of this evolving, you know, there's been a couple of good write-ups about the evolution of profound knowledge and, you know but I, I've asked you this before.

We've had a couple of great conversations, , that we probably should have recorded, but like I asked you, so like, why do you think he didn't answer those questions? Like, you know, I mean, on the profound knowledge I could see this, you know, trying to get, you know, I've been, I spent. Many years trying to get in his head and then spent two intense years trying to get in his head whenever it was, you know, trying to really pen the book.

You know, I'd been writing the story for 10 years, but the real work started in two years before, , and the profound knowledge, I could see that sense there. There's a, there's something in my book, and I've heard this, I think from, Dennis surgeon, but, , like they, that his son. His grandson had asked him a question about like something, and he said, like, he just said like 1 74 or something like that.

And it walked away. And [00:07:00] then, and then after a little bit of time, the grandson figured out that it was page 1 74 about the crisis. So I, I could see that he could, maybe the brown knowledge is, I'm not gonna waste, you know, like, I'm not gonna waste any oxygen on this if you don't get that. That's what we're teaching.

But the appraisal one, like he kind of owes, I think. You know, like he, he owed the audience an answer and certainly four times and just ignoring it. I don't know. Like that's that I don't remember what your answer was, but I'd like to hear it again. Is, is it that he just didn't want to answer it?

He didn't believe he had an answer? Or was it sort of that intellectual , you know, I don't want to use this in the right way 'cause we're both Demming fans, but that intellectual elitism. That he was sometimes like, you know, again, telling his grandson, you know, whatever the number. Yeah. I, 

Lonnie Wilson: I don't know.

I, I've thought about it a lot, John, and I, I guess my best answer is when you figure it out, gimme a call. I don't know. he, he at times could be [00:08:00] incredibly arrogant. And, and he was, when I met him, of course, he was 85 or 86 years old. He was blessed. But when I called him and talked to him on the phone.

He was like, as humble as humble pie could be. Good. That's crazy. Yeah, he was just, just incredible. I, I called and talked to his nurse, I mean his, his assistant Cecilia. And, I called him because, I had taken a class from a good friend of his named David Chambers. And, David was a statistician, came outta University of Tennessee and he and Donald Wheeler started a business together and wrote a book on statistics.

Kind of industrial applications of statistical process control. , And so I took this class from David, and David was just a wealth of knowledge and, before the class and after the class and at lunch and on the breaks, I was, I was peppering David with, with questions. And, and, somewhere along the line he said, well, well, you should give Dr.

Deming a call. Ask him for his contract. 

John Willis: Oh yeah. I love this story. Yeah, 

Lonnie Wilson: why is that? And he said, he said, [00:09:00] because when you read it, he said, you'll, you'll not be sure whether the company's working for Dr. Deming or Dr. Deming's working for the company. That's hilarious. Yeah. Yeah. And, and he did, he sent me a copy of his contract.

And to my chagrin, I've lost it. Oh no. Oh no. It's somewhere in my system, but I, I can't find it. So that's the operational definition of loss, I guess., So I've got my good friend then, then a surgeon trying to find one. 'cause he said he had one too. Oh, really? Okay. Yeah. but getting back to how I got connected to Dr.

Deming, I was, I was working at Chevron and, and I, I was starting to become a little bit disenchanted with Chevron. I could see some of the weak things and. , And we'd done some really stupid things that because I was in management, I could see in a different way. And, I had decided about that time that I probably wasn't gonna retire with Chevron.

I, I knew I was gonna do something else, and then, then some other things happened. And ultimately they wanted to transfer me to a place I didn't want to go in, a refinery I didn't wanna work in. And, , my choices were to travel or, [00:10:00] or retire. So I retired. At the time it was a, I think it was a stupid decision that I, not, it was a good decision, but the way I made it was stupid

but at any rate I had toyed with starting a consultancy based on cultural change using Deming's 14 point obligations of management as the change to position. I had talked to some people before I, I left Chevron and man, there were, there were dozens of people lined up. And so I, I had notes and I thought this was gonna be like shooting fish in a barrel.

And then I got out and started talking to these companies, high level executives, and that's all they wanted to do was talk. Yeah. They were intrigued by Deming. 

John Willis: Yeah. 

Lonnie Wilson: But they, they didn't want to do what he wanted to do. And, and so after about six months of trying this, I said, well, I better do something else.

So I came up with this insidious plan that I would find a way to get into a company and then, and then expand that until finally we could get to the point of talking [00:11:00] about Dr. Deming's 14 points, because they're far more abstract than solving a problem on the floor, you know? Right. , And it worked well.

And so I've, I've taught and preached a lot of his stuff, but because of this early experience, I, I went through kind of a, a. I don't know what you'd call it, but I, I had this epiphany and, and, and I'm, I so admire his brilliance and, and the way he was thinking and is willing to take on people that I decided one of the things I was gonna do was carry his message forward.

And I said, how do you carry Dr. Deming's message forward? You know, I mean, he, he came with all these Pilates of Japan and Right, right. He has more degrees than, than a, than a Fahrenheit thermometer and I thought, well, and I thought back to the, the discussions I've had with people why they didn't do it, and most of the discussions centered on something that they didn't understand about what Dr.

Deming said. Sometimes I could explain, [00:12:00] but other times I couldn't. I. And they'd say, well, you know, what do you, what do you do to replace appraisals? You know, you can't, we can't quit doing 'em, they're a legal requirement, you know? Right. And so I, I developed a system on how to do that and, and how to go to the low bidder and some of these things that he really gave people clear directions to what the purpose was, but not a pathway to get there.

Right. And, and to me that's my biggest criticism of Dr. Deming is he is hugely critical of everybody else who, who does that. And, and that's his criticism of management by objectives. You know, he says, buy what method. Buy what method. Buy what method. 

John Willis: I, you know, I think, you know, I'd like, we've, I think we and everybody who's, you know, willing to be.

You know, apply a critical thinking mindset to Deming's ideas, right? Like, you know is like, so like these are things that come up often. In fact, a lot of the arguments of quote unquote, what people would call Deming failures, I. [00:13:00] You know, are, are this like, you know, you get everybody riled up. You, you, so the ideas make all the sense, and then everybody struggles to find their implementation path, right?

Like, you know and, you know, and even to this day, I still I mean, I get it. I'm certain it works, but like, I've done a ton of startups and I, you know, selling a start, being a startup and trying to get, you know, bring in, you know, half a million, million dollar deals with, You know, the five largest banks in the world takes a special type of salesperson, and if you're not paying them commissions, they're not working for you.

You know, so I, I, you know, like, I don't know, like, I ho I don't think I'm gonna have another startup in my business, but I'm of the, I've always been of the, and then, you know, I, I struggle with Demings. Thoughts about this is that I want the highest paid people in my organization to be sales reps, you know, because that means they're making the most amount of money for my company.

But, but anyway, long-winded. I, I wonder if a lot [00:14:00] of this idea is it again, in, in the sort of nicest way, this intellectual arrogance. That he feels that, you know, because the, the one I remember, the one joke I think that I always think about here, it wasn't even a joke, but you know, he, somebody was asking Deming a bunch of questions and you know, well, how do you know what did this?

And he's answering. And then they're like, well, how do I do it? And he's like, so you want me to teach you and do your job for you? You know, so I wonder if a lot of that was, he just felt that, you know, one that was your journey, you know, you like, and, and you know, probably, maybe, maybe there's some pure.

Intellect here in that like he knows if he tries to tell you your journey, it ain't gonna work anyway. Yeah. So you have to get the concept like what you did and then create the journey. But at least you have the bounding concept and the concepts are correct. And I think what most people fail to recognize with Deming or any other is, you know, you gotta do the hard work.

I mean, it's great to, you [00:15:00] know, to have conversations all day long about how we could do this and oh, if we only did that, if we change that. But you know, you have to, you know, you gotta roll up your sleeve and, and you know, and, and we know it's part of the experimental process that, you know, the, the scientific method of it is, you know, it's just a 

Lonnie Wilson: theory.

Yeah. I've always thought a, a part of that was kind of like his, his very nature. . He was curious and inquisitive like nobody's business. Right? , He had no background in statistics per se, in mathematics, but, certainly not in industrial statistics. And he met, met Shewart and he got fired up. He met Agon Pearson and all of those people that they invited to the Department of Agriculture.

And, and I think, I think everything he did, he considered to be an unfinished work.

I think he, he always thought, there's more to this. There's more to this. There's more to this. And, and the best I can come up with is those questions [00:16:00] kind of aggravated him.

Because I, I think. I think part of it is like, you want me to do my job for you, or you want me to do all the thinking for you, or, why don't you help me out in this process and, and think a little bit as well.

And, and if you look at his work, that's how his work's developed. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. You're right. If you look at like the, the, the, the system or his is out of the crisis, you know, it started out as a speech, right. To Hewlett Packard. I don't know, 500 some odd people in, in Silicon Valley and, and some honcho for, I, 

John Willis: I wish you would've told me that before I wrote my book.

That would've been a good story for my book. Okay. Know that. Well, I'll, 

Lonnie Wilson: I'll send you that stuff. I got all this stuff. Yeah, no, no, 

John Willis: it's good. Good.

Lonnie Wilson: But, but at any rate, so, so it came out and, and, and he wrote these things down. At his early seminars after that interaction with, I think his name was Bill Moore.[00:17:00]

Okay. He, he handed out kind of a flyer and it was a couple pages and then, yeah. 

John Willis: Yeah, I remember that. I remember hearing a little later. 

Lonnie Wilson: It's a little bit more, and pretty soon it's a pamphlet with, with tabs and then it's the book so. He, well, pardon me, that's the new economics. I'm kind of getting it too.

Yeah, no, 

John Willis: I know what you're talking about about that, but we're talking about how that that was the evolution of SOPK basically, right? Yeah, 

Lonnie Wilson: yeah, exactly 

John Willis: right. 

Lonnie Wilson: Yeah. Yeah. And, and the, the 14 obligations to management kind of evolved similarly, but, but yeah. But he was always modifying it, and, and I read it, I was reading his, his book, the New Economics, and I had a 1992 version.

And, and it suddenly dawned on me that there was a newer one and, and in it, his daughter talks about, you know, literally making modifications on his deathbed. 

John Willis: Yeah. Yeah. No, I, I, I think you're onto something here. I mean, if you think [00:18:00] about the nature of, you know, if we go back to even sort of epistemology and even pragmatism, it, it's sort of a never done.

Conversation in general, a scientific method isn't never done. It, it's a, it's a, mm-hmm. It's a cycle, right? It's, you know, you're just constantly experiment. So what, you know, and, and, you know, and if you, so I, I think I, I like this because I think if you sort of ask the question, like, , I've always, I think I've gotten in trouble for this, but I think there's an order to SOPK.

Right. And I think the order is, you know, theory of knowledge first, right? And then sort of the analytical statistics and the psychology and the system thinking, right? And And the reason I like that is because I think it's the first question. First question is how do I know what I think I know? Which is always a point in time.

So I think maybe, you know, maybe you're right. Maybe his frustration was that, you know, what I say to you here right now kind of doesn't matter 'cause you gotta go experiment. [00:19:00] Find out what it will be. Because like, even like there's the other sort of, it's not, these aren't really jokes, but these are sort of Deming humors, right.

Which is, you know, somebody had asked, I think you, you've told this, I've heard this in a couple of places. You know, somebody had taken one of Deming seminars at one point. And then they were seeing him a couple years later and they're like, Dr. Deming, I saw you two years ago and you said X and now you're saying Y.

And he sort of, I'll never apologize for learning. You know, like, yeah. You know, like in other words, yeah. Like, no, there, there, there's no straight there. There's no, I mean, if you go back to Percy Bridgeman in operational definitions and you think about the physicist view, there is no correct answer. Yeah.

So I think maybe, you know, I think there's something, one thing that was sort of annoying though, I guess with going back to the appraisals is that's such a glaring question to at least not give an opinion on. I mean, that's a, that's a level of sort of, again, I say this in all loving [00:20:00] respect of both of us.

I think the world of Dr. Deming in his con in, in his contributions, but that's a sort of a level of sort of intellectual arrogance that would annoy me that I think everybody has the right. To least have, like, you know, even if the answer is okay, I'm, this time I'm gonna give the answer. I don't like this question, but it's because there is no point in time answer right now.

End of story, move on. But like, not even doing that I think is, you know, anyway, he is in his eighties, you know, I mean, I don't even, I'm a grumpy here in my sixties, so I have no idea what, what I'll be like when I'm, 

Lonnie Wilson: yeah, when I saw him. I mean, it's just amazing. He was, he was 85 at the time. Uhhuh, how many people were even working when they're 85?

Yeah. No, no, no. Yeah. But the, the, the best insight I saw to Dr. Deming was in a presentation that, that Priscilla Petti made. And, Dr. Deming had a lot more patience and a lot more interest in women than men. And, and if [00:21:00] you notice a lot of the people who follow him now, you know, I mean, gypsy Rainey and,, all of them, there's a bunch of women that that do it.

And he, he was just a lot more patient with them. But the thing about the interview with Priscilla Petty is she just followed him around. 

John Willis: Yeah, yeah. And it 

Lonnie Wilson: wasn't orchestrated, like most of the Deming videotapes were, were choreographed, literally, you know? Right, right, right, right. And, and they were cut and spliced and that sort of stuff.

And I'm sure Priscilla did that too. But there's this one part of it where she goes down to his b his office and his office is in the basement. 

John Willis: Yeah, yeah. You can 

Lonnie Wilson: see the washing machine. Yeah. Yeah. In the background. Yeah, sure. And, they went down there because Dr. Deming wanted to show her the medal that the Japanese had given him that Right, right.

The second order of the sacred treasure. I, I can't, I'm not sure what it, or something like that. And she asked him, she said, when you got this. How did you feel? And there's just a short little pause and he said I was humbled. [00:22:00]

John Willis: Yeah, yeah. 

Lonnie Wilson: And later she asked him about it and he said I was lucky. Ah, ah, yeah.

But, but they, they go on, they have this interview and, and then she, she says, Dr. Deming, look at your desk. And his desk was just a mess. Yeah, sure. Yeah. Projects three and four layers high and stuff like that. And she says, she says, Dr. Deming, you know. Why do you, why do you have all of these things going? What are you, what are you trying to do?

And, and he just looked at her and she said, he said, I'm desperate. I thought that was the most revealing thing I had ever heard from Dr. Deming. I'm desperate, and I think that's what the new economics was. 

John Willis: Yeah, 

Lonnie Wilson: I I think he, he believed firmly that his, his book out of the crisis wasn't being understood and why wasn't it being understood.

So he wrote that. Well, and I think if he, if he were alive today, he would've revised the new economic again.. Oh, 

John Willis: yeah. Well, I, I got a lot to say about that, but I think it was Claire Hartford Mason or [00:23:00] one of those where they. They literally, I mean, he is 92 and he, he is doing seminars down to like, you know, I mean you have to rush him to the hospital.

I think after his last seminar he was scheduled to leave the next, you know, the, I had the, you know, I got to sort of interview Doris Quinn for my book and you know, she spent the last year, she's a nurse, you know, she's. And she traveled him last year of his life. And like, but somebody had said, I think it was something written by Clark Carna or somebody that maybe it's the Mary Watson or whatever the, the where they, they, they literally were like Dr.

Deming, like, we, you cannot teach today. You know, he was like, sick, ill sick. And, and he is like, no, no. He, I've got to, they, they haven't been listening to me for like 50 years and now they're listening. I cannot waste any time. So they, yeah. And that would, that could come off about as an arrogant, but No, but I mean, I think, you know, the, like, even like there's a, there's an interview question.

I talk about this in my book too, where, you know, somebody asked him like, oh, you know what you did in [00:24:00] Japan? And he says, there's only one person in Japan, and I might be maning in this little, who understood profound knowledge. Now the, you can look at that one or two ways. You say, oh man, this guy's most egotistically, like nobody in Japan was as profound as he was, or.

Profound knowledge is a thing that seemed to nobody really put together, you know, epistemology and system thinking and cri, you know, all that stuff. And I, that I'm, you know, I think I'm certain that's what he meant. But the you know, the he, you know, he, he det definitely, it sounded like by the time he was getting into his late eighties, early nineties, he felt that, you know, like, wow, they're finally listening, so I'm not gonna wait.

You know, I'm desperate. I could see his. His sort of notion of, of being desperate about like he knew this stuff was right. And that's the beauty of intellectually arrogant people is they usually are. Right. And brilliant, you know? Yeah. So, yeah. 

Lonnie Wilson: Well, he was, he was for sure.

John Willis: The so I've been, 

Lonnie Wilson: I've [00:25:00] been teaching and practicing and, and one of the questions I kept asking myself was, if we want to carry forth his messy, right, right.

How do we avoid the pitfalls, right. That he had. And one of those pitfalls I, I think he had was that no matter how bright he was, he was never a line manager. 

John Willis: Yeah, yeah. That's another, and I think 

Lonnie Wilson: that gave him some blind spots. Yeah. And it, it, it shows up in spades in a video where he's, he's doing a workshop at, in the evening at one of his.

One of his he's doing an evening workshop. And they called it round table discussions. And bill Cooper is, is there asking him questions and he says they had a bunch of written questions. He said, well, Dr. De mean a lot of people are, are asking about, you know, how do you attack change?

How do you, how do you do that easier? And then he looked at him and he said. I don't understand. There's difficulty in change if you wanna change, change. So I think the rest is [00:26:00] nonsense. And, and yet, I mean, that's not gonna be helpful to anybody. And I, I think it has to be that he's willing to change and he can change.

But saying that that difficulty in change is nonsense, just isn't attached to reality. And so I, I. 

John Willis: Well, I think, again, I don't think 

Lonnie Wilson: a guy who's on a frontline and trying to get people to, to change would've said anything like that. 

John Willis: There's so many ways to dissect that one too. Right. Because there is, you know, like again, we've both done our stints of trying to help organizational change.

Right? And, and you know, and, and I think we both believe like, in just pure simplicity. Is the sort of the direction, right? It's, it's sometimes it is the sort of the most simple, you know, and not to go Occam's razor, but like, it, it is the, it is the simple, all the complexities of what we try to build with organizational frameworks and all this stuff, right?

And not always, it really is that [00:27:00] simple. So, you know, like I have this like weird reflection on that, that story because in one way he's right. Oh yeah. You know, just, you know, like we, we have the whole is a little bit different, but like when people are saying in sort of DevOps, which I'm sure saying in other areas, like, you know, if you can't change your job, change your job.

You know you know, and so, you know, and like, yeah, like, oh yeah. It's simple for you to say, well, but that's, you know, the reality. So like the reality is, you know, the more oxygen we spend on how hard it is to change, but I, but I totally agree that you've gotta be really cautious about arrogance because then your message gets diluted.

You know, I see this, when I first got into startups and software companies, these young kids would walk in like large corporations, you know, fif, you know, companies like, like Fidelity and stuff that people had built the IT infrastructure over 25, 30 years. [00:28:00] And these young, brilliant kids would go, oh, you're doing it wrong.

They have 15 minutes. You're doing it wrong. Like, guys, I better pull out in the hallway. Okay. You can't do that. Like you, first off, you have no idea how they're doing it. You've been here 15 minutes, they've been here 30 years, you know, second, even if you're right, you can't do it that way. So yeah. So I have like, I don't know, boy, I just, these would be like really interesting questions to dissect.

Is, was it just like, Hey, I've gotta be pure, simple. Not waste any other time on anything other that isn't sort of like an operational definitionally. True. But did he question or did he care that it hurt the ultimate message by like, we know how hard it's to change a larger organization, you know, 30, 40, a hundred thousand people.

It's, you know, up to date. Oh yeah, for sure. To this date, it's impossible. Like, I've never seen it. I've seen ones that did. Pretty good job. Got reasonably close, but I don't, I can't, I've [00:29:00] never seen a large Fortune 500 company fully be successful in a complete, you know, transformation, adoption of organizational behavior.

Lonnie Wilson: Well, yeah, I think all these, all these great thinkers, whether it's Demming or a Ackoff or Drucker or McGregor or any of those people, I, I think. There's kind of two perspectives that they can look at it. You know, they can look at it from the academic perspective and, and very purist and, and the benefit of that is they're not blinded by the, the window that they're looking through.

The world is pure, so to speak. Right. But, but they don't have some of the practical knowhow applied. On the other hand, you can look at it from, you know, you can take somebody who worked their way up through General Motors and wrote a book, and they can tell you all of the, the pitfalls and that type of stuff, but sometimes they can't see the pure things that are there because they've been blinded by what they see.

And so I think anybody who writes about this is somewhere on [00:30:00] that spectrum. 

John Willis: I agree. And, 

Lonnie Wilson: and to, to be excellent at both is, is what a guy like. Maybe Deming and Ackoff are right, right. But but that doesn't mean they don't have some soft spots. Yeah, and I, I get in frequent arguments with my, my Deming buddies, and I'll ask him, I say, well, do you think Deming knew everything and everything he knew was absolutely correct?

Of course the answer to that is no. You know, of course there might be something in there that we should, we should talk about. 

John Willis: Yeah. 

Lonnie Wilson: But it's almost sacrosanct to, to, 

John Willis: no, I, I think that's one of my, I mean, this is why, you know, when I first started getting into Deming, I couldn't, I. I felt, I was like back in grammar school when people would scream at me about like, you know, I don't know why you're talking about Deming Jar did all the hard work.

And then, you know, and then if you ever get into the, the people that the really bitter folk about the Sarah, Sean Guy, right? The guy went in first under MacArthur in Japan. You know, I mean, these guys all did tremendous [00:31:00] work, but like, this seems a battle, like Game of Thrones for, who owns the Miracle in Japan and, and, and what their argument is.

If you sort of, I've had a couple of like, Deante with a couple of 'em. Were like, okay, let's, let's get on a call. Let's, let's have this out. Right? I'll give you my facts. You gimme your facts, right? But one of the things that they'll, they'll claim is you know, like if I look at my book shift, the, the, you know, the Miracle Maker, the Miracle in Japan, I mean the name, even the names of the books are like, kinda ridiculous, you know?

Yeah. So I, you know, I, I don't think Deming believed all that hype. The, but the sort of the ISTs and the shower, I can never pronounce his name, but the first guy that went in and they claimed he didn't get any credit and he, he claimed that, you know, we didn't want Deming in the first place we wanted.

It's just a lot of nonsense. Right. But, but you know, they'll, they'll say that like Deming never sort of pushed down all those accolades. Right. That's another complaint. It's like he didn't say, oh, no, no guys, guys. I mean, I never [00:32:00] heard him say Badmouth Juran or Charles. But, and I hear those guys bad mouth the hell out of outta Deming.

In fact, I did a in my profound stories on you. So we, me and my co-author, we found a an obituary written by Duran on CHUs Inequality Journal. It's comical how rude he was in an obituary. Oh, really? Oh, sure. Yeah. I'll send you a copy. It's, it's like, I mean, you look at it and say, how bitter could this guy have been to write an obituary about Shewart, where he literally says stuff like, he never really did anything anyway.

Like it was, it's just, but anyway, the, the, the, the, so I think the point I wanted to get back to is that they, you know, that I don't think. I think Deming may have let, and again, hell again, if I get the whole world writing books about me saying I'm a miracle worker, and I'm like, I'm not gonna let hey guy, knock it off.

Knock it off. Right? Like, I'm probably gonna sit there and let him do it as well. But, but I, I don't think he [00:33:00] ever believed, and I don't think there's any evidence where he literally said things that were like, took the credit that a lot of his, the written about him has given him. 

Lonnie Wilson: No, I, I I have the luxury of working with.

A dozen or 15 people that worked with him directly? Yeah. David Chambers, Donald Wheeler joiner, schul. And, and the list is long. Lynn Beck, a good friend of mine and, and they, they will in, in that discussion, most of them will tell you. As, as long as you don't try to tell him something that he knows is wrong, he'll pretty much listen to you.

But he doesn't, they, they say he doesn't suffer fools at all. Yeah, of course. I, and so with people who are kind of telling, well, Dr. De mean you're wrong or whatever he would get impatient. Sure. That was the message that I got from those people. Now with me, he was incredibly patient. I mean, I, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Talked to him a couple of times and it was like, you know, he was like a puppy dog, 

John Willis: you know, he [00:34:00] just, he was just great. I get the sense if you are, if he could, in his radar detector, if he detected that you really just wanted to learn, he just laid it out for you. But if he had even a sense that you were showboating and maybe sometimes even not you know, maybe you weren't, but like I get the feeling that if he thought you were showboating.

You know, he was gonna crush you. 

Lonnie Wilson: Yeah. Yeah. Probably that's, that's maybe as good a, a, a summary as I could come up with. I, I tell you, when I, the first time I talked to him I, I got SEAL and I talked to her and I said, seal this. My name's Lonnie Wilson. You probably don't know me from anybody, but I took a course from David Chambers and said, oh, how's David doing?

And he said, well, how is David doing? And so we carry on a discussion for the next five minutes about David, you know, and it's just, and, then he says, well, how can I help you? You know, he's very, very blunt to the point. And I said, okay. He said, well he said, I'll, I'll get a copy of that and I'll give it to Seal and I'll give you the phone back [00:35:00] to her, and you give him her your, your address and we'll get it off to you.

And so, so they did. And but it was, I approached it with a little apprehension, you know, little Alani from El Paso, Texas. He probably doesn't know where El Paso Texas is, but, but he was more than gracious. Yeah. 

John Willis: Doris Quinn, I, I don't know if I get this right, but she said that she, they, they, somebody was sending checks to a kid to go to college or something, like, you know, like, like he sounded like he definitely.

You know, I mean there, you know, there's a lot of great qualities. I think I, I had a little Diddy about the office, like I think you were talking about there was a washing machine, but you know, the, the, the Japanese, when they were started of coming over to, like, they, they'd get invited to go to GM and they'd go to Detroit and they'd go all these wooden, you know, art deco, you know, a hundred thousand dollars.

Oak desks and oak cabinets, and they'd do the whole, and they'd supposedly, on the way back, I dunno why they went the wrong direction, but on the way back, they'd always stop or they'd stop on the way [00:36:00] into to, to meet with Dr. Deming. And they couldn't understand the, the, like, how. You know, like the way Americans thought were these, what they thought were not that bright of people who were getting crushed by them with these million dollar offices on the top floor with, you know, just ridiculous, lavish, you know, Amani suits.

And, and then they would stop at Deming's place and they'd have to sit in this crammed office and share like the washing machine and dryer going off. And it'd be like, these Americans are idiots. But the one, the other thing I wanted to talk about, which I think. I think that, and I did this, I wrote a thing about the Red Bead game and I thought, I think Deming, all the Deming, I and the Deming Strongs and the Deming sycophants, I think if he came back, he'd set 'em all in a room and he'd be screaming, hollering at 'em that they haven't moved a needle on anything that they're still doing the red bead game exactly the way he did it when he died.

They're, you know, like, like, [00:37:00] they'd be like, you're kidding me. You literally are still just talking about 14 points. It should have been 30 points by now, or it should have been, you know, like, in other words, I, I, I honestly believe in all my heart that, you know, back to our previous conversation, whether there was an intellectual arrogance or not, he would just be livid right now.

He would, he wouldn't, he couldn't comprehend that we're still basically. Talking about his stuff at a point in time from 1993. 

Lonnie Wilson: Yeah, I wholeheartedly agree with you. There's two interviews on the Deming website by Andrew Stoltz, I think is interviewing bill Cooper and Phil Monroe. Okay. And those were, those were two people that attended his very early seminars and they became helpers in his seminars. Right. And I think Cooper attended something like 70 of 'em or something. I mean, it's just astronom. [00:38:00] And Phil, Phil Monroe was in a dozen or so, and, and stilts asked them that same question.

Oh, really? Like, you know, do you think we're making any progress? And Cooper's answer was one word, no. Wow. Wow. And, and Phil Monroe said, no, I think we're probably going backwards. 

John Willis: Oh, wow. Wow. Oh my God. And, and 

Lonnie Wilson: those are people that knew Deming personally. Yeah. Interacted with him like multiple times. And , both of them attribute Deming's philosophy as, as making a huge change in their life.

John Willis: Yeah, yeah, yeah. And their work life. And 

Lonnie Wilson: I, I think if Deming came back, you know, and, and, and he'd probably go to Cooper and, and Phil and he said, why didn't you do more?

I think one of the big problems is that to, to implement Deming's philosophy requires a lot of both hard work and introspection. You gotta get, you gotta change the mental models that you have. And, and, and, and changing them is, is the [00:39:00] second step first, recognizing that they're not good and then challenging them.

John Willis: Right. 

Lonnie Wilson: Right. I don't know very many people that are very good at reflection and, and, and challenging their mental models. 

John Willis: I agree.

Lonnie Wilson: Most of the leaders I, in, in one of my books, I wrote a, an article about, you know, do you want you know, I. Advocacy and submission, or do you want challenge and, and dialogue.

John Willis: Right. 

Lonnie Wilson: And most managers want the people around them to say, Hey, great job boss. I like that. That's a good plan. Let's do it. And the systems are designed to make that happen. Yeah. And so, so they, they, they don't and they're, they're not willing to do it. And, and I think their lies just a huge, massive problem.

And, and yeah. 

John Willis: So they,

Lonnie Wilson: you know. There's a guy who's on the, the internet a lot, and he, and I don't see eye to eye on an awful lot of things, but one of the things we do see eye to eye on is that with, with most of management Deming, is really irrelevant. [00:40:00] It's not his thoughts that are irrelevant, but they, they make him irrelevant because they don't want to do what he wants to do.

And so, so I mean, the thoughts that he has, you know, that he put together in the. In the early eighties. I mean, it's just pure gold. Yeah, yeah. 

John Willis: Yeah. There's, 

Lonnie Wilson: there's, I don't think there's anything that Deming said that was wrong. I think there's things he said that were not complete. 

John Willis: Right. 

Lonnie Wilson: And I think if he'd have kept working, he would've done just what he did with everything else.

I mean, kept making it better and better and better. 

John Willis: Most people, if you think about system profound knowledge, most people have a 10, you know, they write a book about some sort of excuse pun, profound idea, right? And they usually have, you know, a fair amount of runway in their life, you know, in their promotion of it.

Like, I mean, he literally publishes his manifesto the year he dies, right? And there's, you know, so again, I think everybody's sort of stuck with the, I think, you know, if Deming could have had one last final word is like. [00:41:00] Keep iterating. Right?

I think, you know, the you know, I, I think if de Deming had one like last chance to do a final already, like please keep iterating on my ideas.

'cause like he. You know, I think we took the, the baton of profound knowledge in 93 and we're all stuck with it and like, Hey, it is great. Okay, good. Let's just try to explain it to everybody, but we didn't really sort of dive in or, or, or dare somebody try to change it into five points