S6 E7 - Balaji Reddy – The Theory Behind Quality Transformation

I have a conversation with Balaji Reddie in this episode. We dive deep into W. Edwards Deming’s seminal perspectives on quality, exploring how Deming’s ideas continue to shape modern management, systems thinking, and organizational transformation. Balaji shares his personal journey into quality management, including a remarkable family connection to Japan and a Deming Prize-winning company that sparked his lifelong fascination with Deming’s work. 

The discussion examines why Deming’s teachings remain both powerful and challenging. Balaji explains that, unlike many quality thinkers who provided step-by-step methods, Deming focused on helping leaders understand why systems behave the way they do. This distinction leads to a rich conversation about the relationship between Deming and Joseph Juran, with Balaji highlighting how Deming inspired transformational thinking at the leadership level while Juran provided practical management structures that helped organizations implement quality initiatives. 

A significant portion of the conversation explores the history of post-war Japan. Balaji recounts how Deming’s message resonated with Japanese leaders not only because of his statistical expertise, but because he offered hope, direction, and a compelling vision for national and industrial renewal. The discussion challenges simplistic narratives about the “Japanese miracle,” emphasizing the role of Japanese industry leaders who embraced these ideas and adapted them to their own context. 

The episode also dives into Deming’s System of Profound Knowledge. Balaji explains the interconnected nature of systems thinking, variation, theory of knowledge, and psychology, emphasizing that these concepts cannot be understood in isolation. He offers practical interpretations of control charts, variation, learning, prediction, and continuous improvement, illustrating how Deming’s philosophy extends far beyond manufacturing into any complex system. 

Toward the end of the conversation, John and Balaji connect Deming’s ideas to emerging technologies such as AI and agentic systems. They discuss how Deming’s principles around systems, responsibility, variation, and learning may become even more relevant as organizations increasingly rely on autonomous technologies. The episode concludes with reflections on education, leadership, and the enduring importance of understanding systems rather than merely managing outcomes. 

Links:
Balaji Reddie's LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/deming/

Transcript

John Willis: Good morning. Or good e- we've- namaste, I think we've agreed 

Balaji Reddie: Namaste. That works very well. So 

John Willis: great- Good to see you, John ... yeah I love having conversations with Deming people and people who are as fascinating about Deming as I am. Balaji Reddie, do you wanna go ahead and introduce yourself?

Balaji Reddie: I'm an electrical engineer by profession, and I turned my focus towards managing for quality earlier on in my career. And I don't know how I, how exactly it happened, but I can tell you this. My first job was in a manufacturing company manufacturing automotive lamps, and I was the first educated engineer in that company at the shop floor level.

And you, they, the owners, the people who ran the company did not really know how to deal with engineers, so they said, "Look, we're just playing it by the ear. So what we do is you go and familiarize yourself with just about all the different departments, and then you come and tell us what [00:01:00] you like.

Or either way, we'd watch you, and we'd say, 'I think you're good at this.'" And somehow I the quality department fascinated me. I, I don't know why. Maybe I want to... don't want to sound dramatic, but I don't think I chose quality. I think quality chose me. And the next thing I knew...

But of course, I decided to do a course in the subject. And when I was, when I got into the course it was the first kind of its kind in my country. It was called as a diploma in quality management. There was no educational body that offered any kind of a professional course, and this was for working professionals.

Contrary to what you have in the United States you call it, you, even though you had three to four hours of a day in the evening as a lecture, as lectures and, classroom stuff, we call that part-time courses. Because for us, it's the whole day that the students sit for a lecture.

That's the mentality. So I was doing what is called as a part-time course here, and that's where I heard the name, Deming, Juran. And my mind went [00:02:00] back almost 10, 15 years before that because my father was in Japan in 1964, and he worked in a Deming Prize winning company. 

And I, but I did not know of this till after he was gone. Oh, 

John Willis: wow. 

Balaji Reddie: I was rummaging through his old papers. Oh, 

John Willis: wow. 

Balaji Reddie: Wow. I was a year or so into the course, and I found these and my hair, I get goosebumps even now when I think of it- I bet ... what I saw there, managing for quality. Oh, 

John Willis: I bet. Oh, that's great.

Balaji Reddie: And I was, my God, I... You know what? You know what, John? Because what happened in the 1980s when the Japanese goods flooded the American markets, and everything went, it become a part of folklore that there's an American who... So my, since my father had been to Japan, there used to be people who used to come in the evening to our home and ask him for the Japanese secrets, and he would tell them a lot of stories.

And one thing I always remember him saying, that there were two Americans who helped the Japanese So that, that thing stuck in my head 

John Willis: Oh, wow. Oh wow. Okay. Oh, wow. 

Balaji Reddie: And so when I heard the names, [00:03:00] I said, "Oh, God, these were the two names he might have been referring to." That's interesting. And then later on when I got in touch with some of his colleagues and friends, asking them that did he meet Deming, did he meet Juran?

And they said, "We don't remember him saying anything like that, but one thing we can tell you, he was crazy about Japanese people. He was crazy about Japan." 

John Willis: Wow. "

Balaji Reddie: And he spoke very fluent Japanese. He could crack jokes in Japanese and sing songs in Japanese." Wow. 

John Willis: So- Wow. Wow. 

Balaji Reddie: So that was my connection and of course I decided to go headlong into, it was first quality, and then it became more Deming.

I was more fascinated, I think, both by Deming and Juran. I wanna make this a point. Yeah. But somehow Deming appealed to me. I don't know. That does not demean, Juran in any way. I... It's just a personal choice. 

John Willis: Yeah. 

Balaji Reddie: But brilliant. I think the two gentlemen created this great science, and we are- we owe them a [00:04:00] lot to what we see around us.

They really changed things for the better. 

John Willis: No, it's a great story. I, I actually felt the hair on the back of your head because I- ... I can imagine that, 'cause Deming connects to people, when you're willing to do the homework, there's sort of- Yes ... in, in my community it's like DevOps and things like that and we kinda, I joke and some people joke that y- it's obligatory to put a Deming slide in your deck on DevOps. But I don't... we'll either put a quote or, in God we trust, or something like that.

Balaji Reddie: Yeah. 

John Willis: But very few people even who put those slides... And in fact, I think in the early days, that's where I, one of s- a friend of mine had challenged me about Deming, 'cause, you'd see the, people use those great quotes and f- and actually a lot of quotes are not even his, but we hear- His.

Exactly ... a whole another story, right? I was 

Balaji Reddie: coming to that. 

John Willis: Yeah. Yes. But but there's a little bit of homework that you have to do with Deming, right? Yes. You have to open up this, I tried to read Out of the Crisis, [00:05:00] and I tried, it... I just didn't get fascinated right off the bat.

And then I went and I was challenged by somebody that, that literally said, you really, John, I know you. You're the kind of person that's really gonna be interested in this guy, and, I need you to do your homework." And I did my homework. I actually, the healthcare was really interesting in, as an industry that did a better job of explaining, p- particularly System of Profound Knowledge, right?

And but my point is, once you're hooked, it's I tell people beware going down this path. Because once you're hooked he... Everything about what he says makes sense, and it's like like the peeling of an onion. You think, "Okay, I got it now." Yes. And then I hear somebody else explain it.

Bill Bellows is a good example, right? I hear him explain something, I'm like, "Oh, wow, I actually didn't really understand it at that level." And j- just to circle back though, so I totally got the, once you're hooked, and I can't imagine [00:06:00] finding out that my father probably worked, definitely worked in the Deming Prize company.

L- so what is it about... I guess this is there's a lot of ways we can go, but w- why do you see... I guess this is a better question How come today a lot of people don't really get the power of his message? And I think I talked a little bit about you do have to roll up your sleeves.

Balaji Reddie: Yes. 

John Willis: His concepts are not easy, and he was very adamant about "Hey, this is your work," i, I, "Do I teach you and do your job for you?" Kind of those- Yeah ... quotes. So but why do you think people either lose it, he loses traction or, and particularly on tech- on different waves of innovation or technology shifts we tend to throw out everything.

And we'll talk about Juran too, but let's focus on Deming for a minute. Why do you think people- 

Balaji Reddie: Okay. I'll answer this in a different way. After I did that course a year later I started [00:07:00] teaching the course. Okay. And the topic given to me was the tech- evolution of quality, the techniques of the quality gurus- Okay

so to say. And obviously a list was given to me, and Deming, Juran, Crosby, Feigenbaum, and Ishikawa. These were the five names I was given. Later on they said if you want, if the students want to go deeper, they could go into Taguchi because that's higher mathematics and things like that.

Now, I started reading their works obviously, because I had to teach it, right? 

And I found that it was very easy to teach Philip Crosby. 

It was easy to teach Juran too, because he- ... he laid it out- Wow ... very methodically. And I think if there's anyone who wrote with clarity and meaning, it was him.

And even Feigenbaum for that matter. So they had the steps, they had the diagrams. But when it came down to teaching Deming you... I had to, you had to live the 14 points. 

All [00:08:00] right? 

You can't just say, "Point number one, constancy of purpose." 

And that's it.

All right? So I remember doing this and I said I have to really prepare myself for Deming, but not so much for Crosby and Juran. All right? And during one of my lectures, it suddenly, the light bulb went on that the 14 points are a system. You cannot isolate them, and that's when it started rattling in my head.

I had yet to read The New Economics by then. I had read Out of the Crisis. 

John Willis: Okay. 

Balaji Reddie: And it was a year later that I got hold of The New Economics, and I said, "Damn, this is what I should have read first." 

John Willis: So- 

Balaji Reddie: Oh, wow. Yeah ... I think with Deming, what happened was what happened with the Star Wars, saga.

He started with IV, V, and VI and went back to I, II, 

John Willis: and III. Ah. Ah, that's right. Yeah, totally. 

Balaji Reddie: So I guess that's what happened with Deming. And just to let you know, because, that, that's exactly if you read Mary Walton's book, et cetera, you'll see the same thing. So coming to your question, I think people [00:09:00] want a guideline, they want a method.

John Willis: Yeah. 

Balaji Reddie: And like you said, they don't want to roll up their sleeves and get down to thinking why there is no such thing as a fact. You don't want someone talking in riddles to you, right? You want them to give you methods, and I think that's the reason why people find it,

John Willis: That's right

Balaji Reddie: a little, I would say- they don't want to accept a challenge, they just want to take it on a platter, if I may take it. There are some people, of course, who say, "Wait a minute. Why should I do it this way?" And that's when you say, "Okay, you asked me the question why. I think you need to read Deming."

If you're telling me how, then, these guys are telling you how to do it, but you wanna know why we're gonna do it this way, then you gotta read Deming. Yeah. Because I teach this to my students, right? And we are the only college in India that has profound knowledge in their curriculum. 

John Willis: Wow.

Wow. Wow. That's amazing.

Balaji Reddie: Yeah. 

John Willis: Yeah, no, I think there is, excuse the pun, but profound here in that [00:10:00] there's, y- I think it... Change is hard. We say this all the time, change is hard, right? Yeah. And we don't really decouple why change is hard, right? Or, some of us do, but at some point we just say change is hard or...

and the reason, I think, I... If I take a look at Deming and Juran in Japan, if I wanna simplify it but a little more complex than the sort of like argument of who did what which is just nonsense, right?

Balaji Reddie: Absolutely. 

John Willis: But one of the things that you hear a lot of is Deming clearly created impact and influence on a higher level of thinking.

The summit, right? The Mount Hakane- Konie summit, right? Which that, that sort of famous speech and then his lecture, original lecture tour. And as you were going through the sort of the why and the how, I think that what happens, and I definitely wanna hear your thoughts on this the, he captures the why people really good, but [00:11:00] then when you have to sorta implement it to the how people.

So th- that's the disconnect of even our... We can get into AI a little later in this podcast, but the disconnect is there's a lot of why people running large organizations. That's why they're in- Yes ... these leadership roles, because they're pretty good. We make fun of leadership all the time, but they're usually, more often than not, the reason they're in an impactful role is because they're impactful people, and they see vision the way most of the people don't.

But then what they're terrible at is saying, "Here, take this and do it." And, and maybe part of that sorta... I've als- often read that middle managers struggled with Deming in Japan, and Juran came in and said here's how we do things." And so I'm wondering if maybe that is part of, their both success, which was, Deming captured the imagination of leadership- [00:12:00] In Japan, and Juran lassoed the the people that had to roll up their sleeves and do the hard work.

Does that make 

Balaji Reddie: sense? Okay. ... I think what, what happened with Deming was in 1940s when he taught in America, he was into how Right. He t- he taught them control charting. He taught them how to- 

... 

Balaji Reddie: Identify, to use it, and not just for control, but for improvement. But what I believe is they were so blinded by the extent of benefits they got by just controlling, they did not really leverage the power of the control chart into improvement.

Right? That did not happen. 

John Willis: Okay. 

Balaji Reddie: And then when the, ... when World War II ended, when they suddenly realized that they were in an enviable position of, no supply but a lot of demand, the focus shifted from quality to quantity. 

And that is where the American industry made a mistake.[00:13:00] 

And Deming tried his best to speak to the top people. No, sorry, not to the top people, to the people, and they wouldn't listen. They said- ... we like it. We like what you taught us, but, we got better things to do. We have to make numbers, and it's no longer this, and this takes time."

And he tried explaining very hard. And first he blamed them, and then he said, "No, I did things wrong. If they give me a- another chance, maybe I'd do it differently." 

His idea was to talk to the top people, and he was fashioning a set of lectures in his head. He did not put it down on paper.

This is what I believe happened in America. And when he landed in Japan originally, now if you s- read his diary, his first entry is October 1945. That's just two, three months after Hiroshima and Nagasaki happened, and he was called there to take a census, et cetera, et cetera. But then he had that hidden agenda, I think, in his head.

Now, I believe what happened was he started talking in an informal [00:14:00] manner to many of the people in Japan. You can read this in Nancy Mann's book. Nancy Mann. 

Nancy, rather. So she speaks about this, that they used to have meetings at his hotel room at night, and they used to love meeting him because he used to give them chocolates and things like that to eat.

John Willis: Yeah. 

Balaji Reddie: And then, and he started giving them informally, and he was speaking beyond just statistical process control. He was speaking something else to them, and that is when I believe they felt that he needed to talk to the, the top people. Besides, of course, having his eight-day program for the engineers and statisticians.

So you said Hakone. You know what, John? There were two consecutive lectures to top management. I can tell th- I can speak about this with some authority. The first one was where 40 people were invited, but just 21 turned up. Oh. That was at the industrial center in Tokyo. 

John Willis: Okay. 

Balaji Reddie: And there [00:15:00] when he spoke to them, that's when he said that, you got to do this.

I've taught your people how to make a defect-free product, but you can have a defect-free product, and it can still be the wrong product. And and that is your job. You've got to find out what is the right product because your engineers don't know what that is." And that's when he drew that arrow diagram.

John Willis: Oh. 

Balaji Reddie: And those 21 people sitting there were, they were flabbergasted. And they, they said... And he said, "If you do this, you will not just survive, you will thrive. I want you to thrive. I want you to grow." And before this, if you've read about this, Homer Sarason and Charles Goldratt- 

... And I've heard this.

You can go and see that interview of Homer Sarason if you think that I'm misquoting him. He uses this word, "I hated the Japanese. I did not like them. I was rude to them." He regretted it later But, and this was an interview with Myron Tribus, and he says that I did not like it. He said I, of course, [00:16:00] he regretted all that later.

He was a young, he was maybe in his 20s when he gave those lectures, and which turned out to be the CCS manual and all that. And there is a chapter on on control charts, but believe me, it's nothing close to what- yeah ... Walter Shewhart was trying to say. Yeah. But coming back to this, I as an Asian, I can tell you this, we Asians love anybody who gives us hope.

John Willis: Yeah. Yeah. 

Balaji Reddie: And here was a man telling them- 

John Willis: Yeah ... 

Balaji Reddie: that- 

John Willis: Yeah ... 

Balaji Reddie: y- you're gonna be world beaters one day, and you just follow this. 

John Willis: Yeah. 

Balaji Reddie: And then there was this question from, I believe, Akio Morita, founder of Sony. And if you read his autobiography, Made in Japan there's a small section where he says that, the prize in Japan is named after an American.

That's the kind of magnanimity we have in our heads. We worship anyone who gives us this kind of, direction and hope and things like that. That's what we Japanese are. And it's the, it's Akio Morita perhaps who asked him that question, that how many American [00:17:00] companies are doing what you just explained to us?

John Willis: Wow. 

Balaji Reddie: Wow. And Deming said, "None." 

John Willis: Yeah. 

Balaji Reddie: And he said ... 

John Willis: Wow ... "

Balaji Reddie: How is that even possible?" 

Yeah. And you go and read that, because Akio Morita said, "We found a group of eight, and we visited America, and and we visited around 30, 40 companies." So the joke was they were in America while Deming was in Japan. 

John Willis: Oh, wow.

Wow. Okay. Oh, my G- God. 

Balaji Reddie: And then they come back and meet him. All right? Now this is scattered stuff- Oh, my- ... which I have read in different books, so you can get all that together. 

John Willis: Oh, that's brilliant. So you can- Oh, I, I- Yeah ... I have... Boy, I wish we would've met before I wrote my 

Balaji Reddie: book. Exactly.

I wanted to talk to you about 

John Willis: your book. Oh, no, because, 'cause I've got a lot of this in surface level, but not the very specifics. I did all my homework. I, I- 

Balaji Reddie: Oh, you did ... I feel- Yeah. I have it. 

John Willis: Okay. Oh, there you go. Awesome. Yeah. Yeah, I feel proud. I, some people argue, and I try to stay away from the arguments.

Some people are pretty blatant in their arguments. And the thing I try to say is, "Yeah, you can say this and [00:18:00] this, but I have..." And my publisher at the time was very strict on citations. So I had a lot more stuff in that book that I took out because over a, a five or six-year period of my research, I'd hear something and I'd put it in a directory, and then I when I was ready to publish my publisher was like, "If, it's either your opinion or it's a citation."

And so I... There, there was so much I had to cut out because I didn't have cite- But what I... When people argue with me about something, I'm like, you have basically opinion of what happened, unless you have a citation." And everything I put in is... So the, to point out a couple of things that you hit on that, that really this is fascinating. I'm so glad we... Again, we should've done this years ago, but, and that's my fault. But the the Sorcin thing is really interesting, right? Because because- Yes ... a couple of things there. One was, people talk about the miracle in Japan, Deming created it, but the Japanese created the miracle in Japan.

Balaji Reddie: Yeah. 

John Willis: And and there's this [00:19:00] argument between Sorcin, Juran, and Deming that seems just nonsensical. But the thing I like to say is Sorcin got the lights turned on, and he was- Yes ... as far as I can tell, he was a, a matter of fact, don't bother me with the facts, I got a job to do.

He was a classic military engineer. Not military- ... but, like... and but the Japanese from my research had knew there was a lot more to control charts. 

Balaji Reddie: Yes. 

John Willis: They had gotten some information before the war of She- Shewhart's work, and they knew there was something about the quality.

If you read I f- I, I quote in the book that, there was one part where they, when they'd capture a ne- a US plane- 

Balaji Reddie: Yes ... 

John Willis: the Japanese engineers would be sickened by the difference in quality. And so they knew- Yeah ... it was there, and they kept pounding away at Sorcin about yeah.

But, and he was like, again, I don't think he really didn't l- I didn't know quotes that he hated, didn't like them. 

Balaji Reddie: Yes. 

John Willis: But I knew he took them for granted, and he said things like, "You don't need to know that," and part of that's true because he needs [00:20:00] to get the lights turned on. In other words- 

Balaji Reddie: And- 

John Willis: Yeah, go ahead.

Balaji Reddie: Yeah. He, because he said that you need to educate yourself, and that's how Walter Shewhart's two books landed there, right? And and Deming was there doing his, the census taking, and JUSE was formed in 1946, right? J-U-S-E, JUSE. Yeah. And one of them was helping in the census, and that's where the connection happened.

John Willis: Oh, wow. Wow, there's another good gem. 

Balaji Reddie: Because they were reading Walter Shewhart's works, but they understood nothing. 

John Willis: Oh yeah. And they knew he- 

Balaji Reddie: And they wanted someone. 

John Willis: Yeah. They knew he understood this, there was th- that connection, which again, we just talked about in the beginning of the... it's a little hard to make, 'cause I wanna go back to the, what a control chart really tells you or what, special and common cause really tells you, 'cause I have my own story there, but- 

Balaji Reddie: Okay

John Willis: but then the thing was that then all of a sudden this gentle giant comes in, and he has all that knowledge. He loves the culture, and he, and to your [00:21:00] point, he gives them this belief system. 

Balaji Reddie: Yes. 

John Willis: And that, a- if there is an argument to make about the man who created the miracle in Japan, you could anchor it on those three things.

That they've just been defeated- There's one more thing I wanted- Oh, okay, great. They've been defeated. 

Balaji Reddie: Yes. 

John Willis: They're being treated like, the enemy. 

Correct. 

Balaji Reddie: Correct. 

John Willis: And then, and there's this hidden gem of knowledge that they know is sitting somewhere, and all of a sudden this guy shows up, and he is literally filling all the ch- hitting all the check boxes.

Balaji Reddie: Yes. Now listen to this. When they came back from that trip to America and met Deming, and said, "We visited, 30, 40 companies, and not one of them is doing what you just explained to us." So he said, "I told you and they said, "But how do we know this works?" We need to see an example. 

John Willis: Wow. 

Balaji Reddie: And that's when Deming stopped them and said, [00:22:00] "Do you believe in the logic and the theory behind what I have told you?"

And they say, "Absolutely, it makes sense." 

And then he made the statement, "Why do you need to see an example?" Wow. "Why don't you be an example?" 

John Willis: Ah, that's so good. Oh, that's so good. 

Balaji Reddie: Now, that's where the theory and no examples establishes a theory. See, all of this, it circles back. 

John Willis: Of course. And that brings in w- I'm gonna delay the epistemological discussion for a little bit, but again- ... that brings back why my fascinating about System of Profound Knowledge and why I finally felt that was the anchor of my book. I had to figure out how did he gather this?

Where did he... you knew he didn't just wake up one morning and say- No ... "Oh, I got this great theory of, ... it it was, there was, like, tons of, of stuff in there, of a life. A life that was living. But the epistemological is that, they you... And again, it's why people would say, they'd ask questions the how questions, [00:23:00] and he'd say, he sort of- I've heard the quote that he said, "Do you want me to teach you and do your job for you," right?

That's a very sort of theory of knowledge approach, right? In other words, T- you were saying when he, when they ask him, like, how come there's no example, you are the example. Yes. That's theory of knowledge. 

Balaji Reddie: Yes. 

John Willis: Yeah. 

Balaji Reddie: You know your systems better than I do. 

John Willis: That's 

Balaji Reddie: right. And you know how my theory applies to your system, so you need to adapt and adopt.

You don't copy. Yeah. If I were to give you a blueprint- 

John Willis: That's right ... 

Balaji Reddie: then all, everything would look the same. We want variation. We want variety. 

John Willis: Yeah. 

Balaji Reddie: And everyone interpreting things differently and coming up with their solutions, I think he loved to see that, and that's why he said, "Do it your way." 

John Willis: Yeah.

Balaji Reddie: Yeah. There are some principles you need to, some things which he insisted upon, which he focused on. But by and large, he f- he, he just let them be. Just another thing John if, should have puzzled you a little. That he got the Emperor's citation, the [00:24:00] award, in 1960. 

Juran got it in 1980.

All right? Now listen to this. In ni- 1950, they established the Deming Prize. 

20 years later, they decided to have like a super Deming Prize, so to say, right? And they decided to name it after Juran. And this was in 1969 when they decided to bring this in. So they said, "We want to have this award that you can apply for this."

At that time when they began it was five, now it's become three. That means you have to win the Deming Award, and five years after you won the Deming Award you can apply for this award. 

John Willis: Oh, wow. 

Balaji Reddie: And they wanted to call it the Ju- the Juran Quality Medal. But there was a misunderstanding between Juran and the Japanese.

When they said, "We want your permission," Juran being modest said, "I leave that decision to you." They took it as a no. 

John Willis: Oh, wow. Wow. 

Balaji Reddie: So they rechristened it as the Japan Quality Medal. [00:25:00] They did not call it the Juran Quality Medal, they called it the Japan Quality Medal. 

John Willis: Wow. 

Wow. 

Balaji Reddie: Okay. The story doesn't end.

In 2010, it was 60 years of the Deming Prize, right? The Deming family, that is Diana Deming, Kevin- ... his brother Robert, and I think his father, they all traveled to Japan, and there was a big ceremony, and that's when they said, "We are renaming the Japan Quality Medal as the Grand Deming Prize." So today there are two Deming prizes in Japan.

One is the Deming Prize, and one is the Grand Deming Prize. Now, they had a chance to rename it, right? 

John Willis: Yeah. 

Balaji Reddie: Why would they still think of Deming? You can imagine the impact that man has had on them, and not just because of what he taught. Like you said, he gave them that belief system. Obviously, it's been documented [00:26:00] somewhere that this man had a huge impact on us, right?

And he's someone who we respect beyond anything else. 

John Willis: Yeah. No, I, it's funny, I I've- I came into the Deming thing later, right? So I, I- I'm one of the founders of what they call the DevOps movement and, and as I said, there were people talking about Deming.

In fact I fell in love with Goldratt first. 

Balaji Reddie: Okay. 

John Willis: Be- because what happened was my good friend Gene Kim wrote a book that is a modern-day rewrite of The Goal. Okay. Okay. And so I got consumed by it because he very much is the same. But there was something that, that Goldratt said in his audiobook, which is Beyond the Goal.

He sa- he's explaining the way a physicist thinks. And he says he says, "By the way, I was a physicist and Dr. Deming was a physicist." 

Balaji Reddie: A physicist. 

John Willis: Okay. And I was thinking, "Okay, there's gotta be a clue there that one guy is quoted all over [00:27:00] DevOps. The other guy, he's got, literally connected with me on, The Goal and a bunch of the...

And certainly Beyond the Goal as the audiobook." And so that's when I That combination of somebody challenging me to look at Deming, and I started following this thread of this how does a physicist coming in, the turn of the cen- right af- in the early, 1925-ish, getting a degree in physics in a world where everything's changing.

A- and so how does that person think about different... why do these guys think differently? And and then the, if you take that into going to Japan and melding that with a culture that is more absorbing of the counterintuitive way of thinking. And here's where I was going with it.

So Katie Anderson wrote a book called Learning to Lead, Leading to Learn. Yeah. And I did a Japan study trip with her and her mentor and the guy that she writes the book about, and I'm blanking on his name right now, I got to interview him. I need to go back and interview him on a a [00:28:00] official, because this was literally not an official interview.

But I had, one goal with him. He hired in 1966 in Toyota Production System. He worked alongside Ohno and Shingo. Okay. He was there. He was very he was a young kid. In fact, his first thing- ... he got he made a big mistake with the paint and he didn't get yelled at, and he tells that story to this day.

When I finished my book, there were a lot of Northeastern sort of quality people. And Dr. Steven Spear, great man I love him dearly, but he always says, "Oh, that Deming stuff." And he'll say Six Sigma and he'll put Six Sigma and Deming in. And so when I- ... when I first... Yeah he...

and he's really a good guy, but he's got this thing against Dr. Deming. And- Ah ... and I went to him and I said, "Hey I'm finishing up a book. Do you have anything about Deming and Toyota?" And he's "Oh, Deming had nothing to do with Toyota." And I'm like, "That cannot be true. It just can't be true."

And I did my homework. 

Balaji Reddie: Yes. 

John Willis: And [00:29:00] finally, in an email battle that we had over the years, he said maybe you're right." But then I'd see him in a presentation later. And I got to interview this guy who hired in 1966, and he couldn't believe that there were people in America who actually thought Deming had no impact on Toyota.

He couldn't comprehend that. And and he said, he s- in sort of his broken English, he said, "John, what you d- you can't imagine what Deming meant to us when I got to Toyota." He said it was part of the, like the water. And he said, "He taught us about data. He taught us to understand data."

And so I, like I have that, that conversation with him. And so a- again, the long story short is people can argue about who affected Japan. What people can't argue about is the impact of TPS [00:30:00] on American quality. And, I have definitive data that says that he was incred- and, the first...

They won the Deming Prize in, what, '65? And- '65, ... and Denso was the original, I think which was their tier one provider, one 19- Denso? Yeah. One, one... but again, th- just the surface level that Deming's impact on Japan, and to your point, was where, like why do they still remember Deming more than anybody else?

That's not an A- that's not an American culture that pushed... 'Cause the argument against Deming is there's an American culture of the miracle maker of all the books. And I can see why guys like Juran and Sursin got upset, right? But that did not influence Japan, and it didn't influence this, gentleman who worked at Toyota in 1966, right?

Because he hadn't read any of those books, right? Yeah I know there's a questionnaire, but I, it... All right, so let me, I'll pivot into a question. My [00:31:00] original... I had a hard time understanding what a control chart was really telling me. 

Balaji Reddie: Okay. 

John Willis: And I'd get into arguments with people, and it sounds like I'm always arguing, but I really don't argue as much.

But people would try to explain it in that it was either anomaly or not, right? In other words a special cause variation was, some anomalous event and everything else was normal. And I knew that wasn't right, but I could never really understand the, what was going on in a control chart.

And I would say even to this day, I keep unpeeling the onion. But it's easy from an engineering perspective to see it as it's either n- signal or noise. And again, w- we both know that's farthest from the truth. But the, what becomes really interesting is I took a Coursera class on operations management, and they did a really good job of explaining what's going on in, between the s- the Six Sigma, the [00:32:00] three sigma above, below.

And then I started seeing the, okay, this is where a lot of the sort of knowledge comes from. Understanding patterns that are happening. Again the sort of the, I say this with respect, but the easy stuff is the stuff that's outside of the special cause, right? It's either identifiable, it's it's a sort of black swan.

And but the stuff that gets really interesting is the stuff that's in the sort of, in the s- three sigma above and below in the controls chart where you actually can see patterns and all. And then over the years I see it at even more of like it identifies patterns. I think even Deming said it's not the statistician's job to identify the problem, it's the statistician's job, and I know I'm butchering this quote, but to allow the subject matter expert to see the problem.

Yeah. So again, I think that to me, what your opinion is, what your students and all, it seems like that's m- that was [00:33:00] my first hurdle is to understand really that this control chart is just way more than just a bar chart or a graph or, right? There was so much in... And you had mentioned this earlier about control 

Balaji Reddie: charts.

Yeah. I would say that it tells us the control chart is, it's just a manifestation of the mathematics and where you have data. But in the broadest sense of the term, it tells you when to stop looking or stop doing something which is wasteful. If yous, you are looking for reasons for every single thing that's happening don't do that as long as it's systemic.

But you start looking for things only when they reach a sort of a tipping point or whatever that is you may call it. I would look at it at the broadest sense as that, and I think Deming was wonderful at that. He knew where to stop. And I would say those limits are, like a metaphor Stop, stop at the limits.

When it crosses the limits, that's when you [00:34:00] start racking your brains as to what is happening. So if you see some patterns of behavior, like you said, even with people, okay, fine, this is what happens. But then wait, I have someone who's really doing something crazy, then you say, "Okay, I need to single that guy.

You, come to me." Things like this. I hope you're getting what I'm trying to say, John. 

John Willis: Yeah. Yeah, I 

Balaji Reddie: do. I 

John Willis: do. Yeah. I do. Yeah. 

Balaji Reddie: Now, and that's what when he gave profound knowledge, he said one need not be eminent in all the four sciences. Just enough. And how do you know where to stop? And that's where the understanding of variation came in.

Where to stop. And he says that it's the aim and the purpose that tells you where to stop. When you have decided that this is what I wanna do, then this is what I'm gonna study. I'm gonna stop here. When I change my... Or when I expand my boundary of my system, then I will go deeper because it would make more sense then, right?

And how do I make that out, right? And once you understand this, then you say, "Okay, there are some common [00:35:00] things happening, and there are some special things happening." Special, easy to identify because you can isolate them and- 

... 

Balaji Reddie: Okay. But common, very difficult because it's not one, it's many causes.

And they're so intertwined they're interdependent cause and effect are not closely related in time and space. There are s- synergistic relationships. And before you s- you know, to decode them, you gotta take decisions. And that is why the best way to arrive at that decision is the theory of knowledge.

He says they start, you begin with a theory. I believe that these causes are connected. Okay, conduct an experiment. It works? Okay, good. It doesn't work? Great. You know these don't do work, go to the next, and the next. You just continue. You can never have complete knowledge of a process or a system.

John Willis: Oh, my goodness. Wow. 

Balaji Reddie: And ep- the theory of knowledge tells you what is unknowable, but knowable faster, so you can go towards your [00:36:00] aim, your purpose, and when it's meeting your purpose, you say, "Okay, I'm headed in the right direction, and I'm doing the right thing." And you know you're doing it, it's not complete.

You can never have it complete, right? And everyone says optimum. There is nothing like optimum in Deming. It's a transient optimum. It keeps changing. 

You can never say you've "I've attained quality. I'm practicing." 

John Willis: That's right. 

Balaji Reddie: And so it's like an incompleteness is life, right?

There has to be some gap, and you need to push towards that. That's why you said consumer research. Go back into the market, find out what the customers want. F- and find out what the, why the non-customers have not bought it. That's one of the tips, I wanted to give you when you were writing your book, that why don't you go to, go and speak to people who hate Deming?

John Willis: Yeah. No, it's it... the, and it's almost like the sports team metaphor of politics sometimes. The people, you can have a, y- you can have an open discussion, and I think there's a lot of scar tissue with the anti-Deming people. And, and [00:37:00] again I get why the Sarson fans and the Juran fans are scarred because there was this, in America, there was just this incredible get out of the way, Deming did everything, and, oh, the miracle maker and that's good. But I got a question for you, and, and- 

Balaji Reddie: Yeah ... 

John Willis: I, I, I, when I- early on I was playing around with some ideas and as I, I s- you know, the deeper and deeper I got into s- some profound knowledge, right? And, understanding pragmatism and understanding...

'Cause my goal was to figure out where did he gather all this stuff from, right? And, and variation was reasonably easy. Knowledge was a little harder, but it still was easy to go back to Schuon's recommendation of C.I. Lewis and the pragmatism and all that.

Still a little weak on psychology and in systems thinking, I think I covered a fair amount of that in the book. But I, the two things I... One, I got hammered really quick. I thought it'd be clever to call the systems thinking the fourth discipline of system profound knowledge. And, Okay.[00:38:00] 

I got in a lot of trouble for that because it was like, "Okay, you've got to see us all." Okay, fair enough. And I still think that's not a terrible idea because I think that was Senge's fifth discipline, right? Which was- 

Balaji Reddie: Yeah ... 

John Willis: it is always s- the systems thinking is what wraps everything together.

But I wanna hold off on that, is I, as I thought about the sort of theory of knowledge as a process, I made it a point to try to explain profound knowledge in... 'Cause I've always seen it explained in different variants and never in order, and I know order is not what people real- the pref- because if you say order, people would say, "Oh John, you don't understand.

It's gotta be all four," and I totally in on that. But I think what I thought about is from theory of knowledge is how do we know what we think we know? Let me cl- I'm sorry. And how do we know what we think we know? And then so that's the whole question. Like, how do we know that, that theory of knowledge or the [00:39:00] pragmatism is, we never really know.

So what we think we know, we have to question it and we have to go through a process. And so to me, that's the first step in the process, is having your theory And playing it out, and then sort of variation that I always saw is that, like, how do we explain what we think we know?

Like your point, the correlation maybe. And then you get into sort of the we is our, any of our biases in the way and all that, and then there's the system thinking view. And I always thought that was a reasonable approach to try to explain, like how do... th- this question of the- there are people that will basically say, "I believe this."

The... I always say, we're really good in Western culture to do PD, not PDSA. And but I wonder did I, am I, maybe I'm not right about that, 'cause the way you explain variation is the first sort of... And I [00:40:00] don't, I'm not even looking for a verification that there has to be an order, but I feel very comfortable that starting with theory of knowledge was a good way to approach the knowledge flow and how everything flowed into that knowledge exercise.

Balaji Reddie: Okay. If 

John Willis: that makes 

Balaji Reddie: sense. Yeah. I'll tell you this, okay? When I teach profound knowledge, I begin with systems, and then I move on to variation, then theory- Okay ... and I end with psychology. 

John Willis: Okay. 

Balaji Reddie: The beauty about profound knowledge is although they always told you that there is no order- 

... 

Balaji Reddie: But that's the beauty. You can start anywhere. 

John Willis: Okay, 

Balaji Reddie: yeah. You can start anywhere, and I h- I go this way because I'm comfortable doing it this way. But have you read Henry Neave's book? By the way John, have you read my works on profound knowledge? 

John Willis: No, I haven't. I've gotta do that. That's that's,

Balaji Reddie: Okay.

Henry Neave, have you heard of him? 

John Willis: Yes, I have. I actually looked at I've gone through parts of his workshop, and I have read his book, it's been a while- Okay ... since I've read it, yes, but- 

Balaji Reddie: Yeah. So Henry is a personal friend. In fact he introduced me to the [00:41:00] Deming world, et cetera. I took a lot of help from him.

So he came up with this course called 12 Days to Deming. 

And there is a separate section called Contributions of... he added my contribution separately. I really don't know how to thank him. I was just kind of- Yeah ... adding on, but he calls it Contributions of Balaji Reddie Reddy, et cetera.

So you could read that. So when he explains the whole thing, he begins with variation, then he goes on to yeah, then he goes on to systems, and then theory, and then finally psychology. I asked him why did he choose that path, and he said that's exactly how it happened with Deming." He was introduced to variation first by Walter Shewhart.

The systems thinking came a little later and, that he had to speak to top management, and then of course- 

... Explain the theory, et cetera. And then people. So it's not that people were not on as a priority. It always was. 

And if you want to ask me what the four words I'd like to use for profound knowledge instead of systems, I'd like to use the word [00:42:00] connectedness, that everything is connected to everything.

John Willis: Okay. 

Balaji Reddie: And there are no events in this world. There are only eventualities, right? And then you have numbers with meaning. So you have statistical thinking. Instead of understanding variation, you say statistical thinking. Thinking beyond numbers, right? Or- If you could add something more to that.

The third bit about being aware of your, your cognitive awareness- sure ... what makes you tick. Yeah. And finally, empathy, understanding- Yeah ... and empathizing, whether it's your customers, whether it's your employees, whether it's your owners, whether it's the market, whoever, whatever, your suppliers, you gotta empathize, right?

You gotta understand. And I would say if you put these four together, you get profound knowledge, right? The way he intended us to, to learn. When you speak about theory of knowledge and psychology, theory of knowledge very simply [00:43:00] said that theory is a statement that relates some cause to some effect.

It fits without fail all the observations of the past and helps us predict the future with the risk of being wrong, right? And no number of examples establishes a theory. And then he says all of us, we have a system of learning. You begin with a theory, and you say, "Okay let's use this theory and see what happens."

And if it works, you say, "Okay. Wow. Let me try it again. It could have been a fluke." He's written about this very beautifully in Out of the Crisis, explaining point number 14. If you go through that text again I have it right here, so I can... I'll read out to you so you can go back and read it beautifully- Okay.

Okay ... because you'll get to see what he exactly meant by this. So what this be. Okay. So this is-

Where... Okay, here it is. He says [00:44:00] that the reason the Shewhart cycle will help as a procedure to follow improvement at any stage the reason to study the results of a change is to try to learn how to improve tomorrow's product or next year's crop. Planning requires prediction. The results of a change or test may enhance our degree of belief of prediction for planning.

What do we learn from the change, et cetera? If the results of the change or test are favorable, we may decide to go through the cycle again, preferably under different environmental conditions- ... to learn whether the favorable results of the first cycle were spurious or are valid over a range of environmental conditions, right?

And then he says that any step in the Shewhart cycle need guidance. He was... He said you just don't have a stop, right? And you keep doing this. He said all of us have this system of learning, but we have different styles of learning. 

John Willis: Oh, okay. All right. Fair enough. And different 

Balaji Reddie: [00:45:00] speeds of learning.

John Willis: Okay. Okay. 

Balaji Reddie: And that's psychology. 

John Willis: Yeah. And I guess I got bogged down, and again I'm still not willing to throw out the idea. I guess what, maybe that is my style, which is, I was just absorbed by the epistemology of his messaging in that this question, I went really deep on, not just C.I.

Lewis but P- Peirce, C.I., Peir- Peirce and, and,

Balaji Reddie: Okay ... 

John Willis: and some of that stuff. But I think the question I think to me that I get from Deming is, like, how do we know what we think we know? And to me that fundamentally in my brain, things starts with that's the first question.

How do we fundamentally know what we think we know, right? And that is, the s- the sort of the beauty of epistemology, which is, if we're willing to question that that is the start of knowledge. When we're not willing to question that we we fell [00:46:00] into all the other patterns.

So then the question then is, okay, all right, we think this is a truth, or we think this is a theory basically, but... And then we experiment, and I see variation then as our ability to understand how the experiment worked, and then psychology becomes this, okay, let's make sure and to your point is, maybe there was some bias in that, or maybe there was something in the experiment itself.

And then let's then in almost and I'm throwing out a lot of sort of crazy stuff, but in a Taguchi sense, let's expand out. And that's why I like this theory of knowledge but I like yours in that- So- ... whatever works for you- Yes ... it should be the entry point,

Balaji Reddie: okay, so I'll ask you this question.

How do we know what we do not know? 

If you can predict what can happen, you're on the right path. [00:47:00] When things get uncertain, that's when you wanna find out, why did this happen? I'm not able to predict this. I should be able to predict what's gonna happen next. Though, if you're studying something, if you're studying someone's behavior, even a pet, say a cat or a dog, and you say, "Oh, I know how this dog's gonna behave," and then you have the theory and it works.

But when it doesn't work, you say, "Hang on. I need to know." It's the same with a process, it's the same with a system, it's the same with a market. When it becomes predictable your theory is working. But the day the instant you cannot, and you say, when I do this, I know I should get this, whether it's good or bad, I should be prepared for the bad I'm gonna be ready for the good.

But when it does not happen either way, and you say, "Holy shit, I need to get back to my theory." 

John Willis: Okay. Okay. Yeah, okay. Fair enough. Yeah no I can see that. I can see that. It is the uncertainty that begins the- 

Balaji Reddie: That's right ... 

John Willis: the, 

Balaji Reddie: the- The [00:48:00] uncertainty leads you to questions. When you are certain, you may just maybe change a few things here and there.

But when you're uncertain about something, that's when you get- 

John Willis: But- 

Balaji Reddie: Insecure. 

John Willis: But yeah, I, Edwin, I agree, but this is fun, right? Because I think that's the question of theory of knowledge, which is why am I certain? That's the, to me, un- unbelievably the first question, because if, whenever- Yeah

you're certain on something- 

... 

John Willis: That's when you're... I have a friend of mine, this is a segue, but he always, he- for years I didn't understand that he would always argue about things with you. And over years I realized that's how he learned. 'Cause if he agreed with you, he didn't learn anything.

So he always took the counterpoint, and it's very frustrating to have a dear friend like this. But what I realized- ... over time was he would disagree with you even though he agreed with you, because what he would ha- ... what happened is if you both agree, you wind up just moving on to the next thing.[00:49:00] 

But when he disagrees- Yeah ... he gets to hear your argument, and then he gets to learn whether maybe based on your argument you're both wrong, or maybe he didn't really understand the principle behind the agreement. 

Balaji Reddie: Or there is another principle. 

John Willis: That's right. That's right. Yeah.

That's why I said you're both wrong, right? But but yeah, so I, I think that's why I think there's this always this question, and this kind of comes into my understanding of like complexity science and other thing. And again I s- I scratch the surface on way too many things. But but I love that, right?

And so when I look at the people talk about the different variants of complexity science or they're all saying the same thing, which is, how do we know what certainty is? And the truth is we don't know, so therefore we should always be questioning certainty. 

Balaji Reddie: Because even when it's right, he says that when you're right, it could have just, you could have been just lucky, 

John Willis: That's right. Could have been lucky, that's right. Or [00:50:00] it had changed, or or you weren't really right in the first place. But yeah, y- for whatever reason. I, the other thing I, there's a couple of ways I'd like to close up.

This has been great, I'll be honest with you, 'cause I love the history side. There's a lot of... You've filled in a lot of gaps on the history. But I, I do I want to understand what i- what is the difference between what Juran... I, in my surface level explanation was, I said earlier, is that Deming came in and caught the sort of the why people really hard.

And we explained why some of that happened, right? He was a gentle giant. He appreciated the culture and he ha- he filled in a lot of the gaps that they knew there were gaps in the quality. But then there was, like, five years later, there's this narrative, and I, and again, narratives are, you take them for what they're worth, that, the Juran story was people really didn't know how to implement his stuff, and then that's why Juran became so popular.

So again, my question to you is, you understand Juran pretty really well, and you obviously understand [00:51:00] Deming very well. What is the delta between what Deming did and what Juran did in Japan? 

Balaji Reddie: Okay. 

John Willis: And try to explain that in a way that sort 

Balaji Reddie: of makes 

John Willis: sense 

Balaji Reddie: to me. Yeah, sure. 1951 is when Juran came out with his handbook.

Now, everyone talks about the handbook, but his first book on quality was 1944. 

It was called Management of Inspection and Quality Control. And if you read the preface of the book, he has thanked and referred to Deming and Shewhart, and he inter- he says, "Deming," "W.E. Deming Bureau me- member of the Bureau of the Census, but a liberal contributor to quality control literature."

These are his words there. 

John Willis: Really? Wow, okay. 

Balaji Reddie: And they were very good friends, right? So that was '44. Now, when this book came out in 1951, Dr. Deming gifted the handbook to the Japanese. And in 1952, he brought two of the Japanese for, to [00:52:00] America for the American Society for Quality Control, their annual function, where they gave a presentation on what they learned from Deming in Japan.

John Willis: Okay. 

Balaji Reddie: And Juran has written this in a paper that, "I had no idea about Japan. It was Deming who introduced me to the Japanese- Yeah ... and said that you need to go over there because they need your help." He said, and Deming very clearly said, that Juran was excellent at creating management structures, all right?

And his idea about taking it and structuring measure, something which Deming never did, right? His thing was telling, he ga- he gave ideas. 

But this man gave a structure and an approach. So structure and approach came from Juran. Now, when he landed there, which was '54, actually '52 is when he was introduced.

John Willis: Okay. 

Balaji Reddie: But he had a health issue, so he went there in 1954. But his trip was a very well-planned trip. He had all of Deming's notes with him. 

John Willis: [00:53:00] Oh, 

Balaji Reddie: wow. He then said, "Okay, I know what to teach. I know where they where they need to be t- told to go." For the two things he taught them, which made a difference, was the structure they needed to create for quality.

Okay. He called it the quality council, right? 

And the other thing he did was teaching them-

Balaji Reddie: [00:00:00] About economics of quality. 

And believe me, he did that for a different reason, but the way it was implemented, again, in the Western world was quite different. He said here that if you want to grab management's attention on quality, present it in a money way. That- that's where the cost of quality came in.

Because if you tell a top management that you're having 10% rejections in your process, they'll say, "Okay put in more than 100 to get 100," right? I want 100 as the output, give me mo- because it's a 90% efficient process. 

A- and they said, "Put in more than 100, that's fine. 90% is great," right?

John Willis: Yeah. 

Balaji Reddie: And he said, "H- why don't they see that they're losing 10%?" And then after a year of contemplation, he went back. He went back to the top management and said that, "This process is 90% efficient, we need to increase it." They said, "You already told us that." He said, "No, but you are paying 100% salary to a worker to do 90% good work, then you're paying 100% salary to a second worker to remove the [00:01:00] 10% bad work."

"And then you're paying 100% salary to the third guy to correct that." "So you're actually paying three times the amount-" Wow "... where you could reduce this." So this was the idea behind cost of quality, and today I find people debating about how they're using this. I think that's ridiculous. 

John Willis: Huh. 

Balaji Reddie: He just used it as a tool just like Deming, who said, "I want top management commitment."

Juran was smart enough to say, "Speak the language of money." 

Okay. That's all he said was cost of quality. 

John Willis: But- 

So but why is this, d- why is all that bitterness from Ju- Juran? 'Cause there is clearly- 

Balaji Reddie: I, okay. I really wanna say this. It was all hunky-dory till If Japan Can, Why Can't We? was broadcast.

John Willis: Okay. Oh, okay. All right. 

Balaji Reddie: And I asked Claire Crawford-Mason this, and she did not like my question. I said, "When you were doing your research with Deming," because it's all a part of folklore how William Conway took her to meet Deming, [00:02:00] and she was flabbergasted at what she saw at his house in his basement, all the photographs, and this, that, and the other.

Yeah. 

Okay. And she decided to make him the cowboy riding into the sunset, right? I asked her this question, "When you were researching on this and when you were speaking to Deming, did he mention Juran?" Because in all the papers that he wrote in the '50s and '60s and '70s, he always mentioned Juran- Okay

and what happened in Japan. And I said, "He must have mentioned, so you should have included him." And she just decided to go ahead with only Deming. When I asked her that, she said, "Why are you asking me this now? It doesn't matter anymore." I think that was the real turning point because Dr. Juran never gave her a chance for an interview.

Bob Mason tried very oft- very m- many times to meet him, and Dr. Juran just kept avoiding him. 

John Willis: [00:03:00] Okay. 

Balaji Reddie: And,

John Willis: Wow ... 

Balaji Reddie: there was no bitterness at all. If you read their letters, there's a lot of res- mutual respect. In fact, when I went to meet Dr. Juran I, when I was leaving from India, I was told that, "Don't even utter the name Deming in front of him.

He hates it," and all that. So I was a little puzzled because when- Yeah ... I'd read all these papers- yeah ... and I said, "I don't see anything." Anyway, when I sat in front of him, and his first question was, "What brings you to United States of America?" And I had come to the Deming Institute to present a paper at the Deming Research Seminar.

So I had to tell him I came to the Deming Institute, and he just, he paused me with his hand and said Ed and I go back a long time. We were very good friends." Wow. So I didn't know what to say. I was- Oh, wow ... I just stared at him. 

John Willis: Wow. 

Balaji Reddie: And I, he said why are you looking at me like that?"

So then I told him, "Look, Dr. Juran, it's confession time. I read this article called Dueling Pioneers in Business Week, where they said Deming said this about Juran, and Juran [00:04:00] said this about Deming." He said, "Oh, you read that, did you?" And I said, "Yes." "Did you read my reply to that?" And I said, quite frankly, "No."

So I said, "May I know what you said?" He said, "Oh, it doesn't matter now. I'm quite sure you never read my reply." But then I said, "Please I try to read anything if I get hold of it." He said, "I just told them it was a bunch of poppycock." Okay. And even Joyce Orsini, who's one of Deming's students- 

John Willis: Sure

Balaji Reddie: when I told her about Juran, and she said, "Oh, they were the best of friends." I, there's a lot of mutual respect. In fact- 

John Willis: Yeah. 

Balaji Reddie: Yeah ... when Dr. Deming's wife passed away, he wrote a beautiful letter. But funnily, in his autobiography, again, you find a bit of bitterness there, here and there- Oh ... in some of the things that he...

And because Jura- Juran very conveniently skipped that section that Deming introduced me to the Japanese. Yeah.

John Willis: Yeah. 

Balaji Reddie: Yeah. He doesn't write that. But so then I had a telephone chat [00:05:00] with Dr. Juran about this, and I said, I have some questions." And then I said that you, th- this part was missing," and then you said that he was only bothered about himself.

He wanted the Baldrige Award to be named after himself. And I said, "I don't think that was the case. He wanted to be named after Walter Shewhart." And then there were other cases also. So he listened to me completely, and then at the end of it, he said, "Young man, you've done your homework very well, and I like the way you speak."

And because I spoke very respectfully to him. And he said that- There were some things I did not like that Deming did, but that does not mean I did not like him. 

John Willis: Okay. 

Balaji Reddie: I will still say he was a very good friend, and he said, he ended by saying, "If it means anything to you, when I heard about his passing, I shed tears.

I consider this topic closed." 

John Willis: There you go. Yeah. 

Balaji Reddie: And- And so for almost [00:06:00] three years after that, when I used to call him, we never spoke about this topic again. 

John Willis: Yeah. Yeah, he just seemed like a, i've done a fair amount of research. I thought about doing a book about Juran, but I, I think I'll tell you another story.

I, I've written a short version of a story on Juran, but but I will say that that's really helpful. Because again, th- there's this sort of narrative that I don't wanna just blame everything terrible on Americans, but, like a lot of terribleness comes with- ... media and the way we, even the Clark Car- Carfor mason thing, I could see that being, like, this is gonna be NBC, don't confuse me with the facts. I got a story to tell. So I could clearly s- and that's not evil. That's just, that's media, right? ... The but the one thing that did struck me am I wrong?

Am I right? And the research I've done on Juran is he is absolutely incredibly fascinating even, he has a even more fascinating youth story than- Yes ... than than Deming did, and Deming's was pretty cool, too. But the obituary he [00:07:00] wrote for Shewhart, I don't know if you've ever read that.

It is... i've got a I should s- I'll send you a PDF version of the Profound Stories, which are a bunch of stories I cut out of the Deming book. So I don't know if you have, you ever got a chance, 'cause I don't think we've ever, we only did an e-book version of it.

Balaji Reddie: Okay ... 

John Willis: and and in there I have Sh- Juran's obituary that he wrote in the Quality Magazine, and it's just, it's pathetic, really.

It, he gives him really no credit. He's literally backhanding him. And unless he didn't write it, which I'm pretty sure he did it was an indictment on his bitterness. Not about Deming, 'cause he didn't say anything about Deming, but it was a really ugly backhanded tribute to Walter Shewhart.

And and that just tells me there was some sort of bitterness in him. And I, I don't really care, because Juran, I d- I do care in that everybody deserves, my point is- [00:08:00] The real miracle in Japan was the Japanese, and they absorbed... and Juran went over and got the lights turned on, and had to do that.

They had, before even Dem- Deming could get there, they needed Jeeps to be able to get through the roads to get to the factory. Yeah. And so hi- he deserves incredible amount of credit for his matter-of-factness, let's just... don't... I got a job to do, and and then, Deming clearly there's no question of his impact.

And then Juran's, I... This was great for me to understand Juran's impact of what he did differently, so that was incredibly helpful for me. But I do I, I am still left with, there was some, bitterness. But just by reading that obituary was, is just a not a pleasurable way to talk about somebody who I can't imagin- I can understand why you would get mad or not like Deming, whether he did or didn't, but I don't think there really should be any evidence of anybody really disrespecting Walter Shewhart.[00:09:00] 

So I I, we need to do this again if you're up for it, because- Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah ... there's just, there's a lot more to cover here. Definitely. And I love your wealth. I, as, I, I will tell you right now, out of all the people I've interviewed, and I've interviewed some really interesting people speaking the hair rising on the back of my head, I, you've done that multiple times here for me because there's so mu- I could see why you wanted to get ahold of me, and-

we should have a discussion about me doing a re- maybe an anniversary or a, an updated version of Pro- System of Deming's Original- 

Balaji Reddie: Yeah ... 

John Willis: Phenomenon. And I'd be really interested if you wanted to collaborate on that, 'cause I will tell you I don't think I've met anybody who has- Okay

more historical knowledge. People have stories that they met him, and they tell me anecdotal stories, but having the widespread fill-in-the-gaps knowledge I have not met anybody who has as much knowledge as you've just given on this podcast, in my travels. I don't know 

Balaji Reddie: what to say. Thank you.[00:10:00] 

John Willis: Yeah, no it's it... again, it takes a lot for me, A, to start changing my opinion. Did I get this wrong or right? And then the, then those gaps of oh my God, that... Like when, he's "John, let me tell you this," and that it that, that stuff I couldn't really find anywhere.

This was really awesome. H- how do people find you? We'll put some links or what, I need to do a little more of my homework on your work. 

Balaji Reddie: Okay. The 12 Days to Deming, you can go to Don Wheeler's website. I have one, but I think I'm having some problem with the...

It's deming.org.in. That's my website. 

John Willis: Okay. 

Balaji Reddie: That's the Deming Forum of India. And in courses, you'll find that there, the 12 Days to Deming. 

John Willis: Okay. 

Balaji Reddie: There's also Don Wheeler's website, spcpress.com. 

And there's 12, there's a separate tab on 12 Days to Deming, and you can download. You can go there.

It's for free, by the way. 

John Willis: Yeah. 

Balaji Reddie: So my contributions are a separate section. You can download them and read them. I try just, I just try to make it simple. I wrote it for [00:11:00] a friend of mine. He was translating it into colloquial language in India, so I had to be very simple in my English.

And somehow Henry just loved the way I wrote it, and so- Oh, wow. Yeah ... he edited it and put it all together. But yeah, of course, I go beyond that when I teach at my university. I teach- So you 

John Willis: teach it as a whole, as a semester class, or do you teach it- 

Balaji Reddie: That's right.

John Willis: Yeah. Okay. Wow. Yeah. Okay. Wow. That, that, I'm sure that's fascinating.

Balaji Reddie: Yeah. Earlier on, I would teach almost 800 students every year. They were all learning Deming. It was, like, crazy. 

John Willis: Ah, that's 

Balaji Reddie: awesome. But the post-pandemic things have changed. Some curriculum changes were made, and so now I don't reach out to as many students as I used to.

But for, In fact when Bill Bellows was talking to me about this, and I said... He said, how many man-hours have you spent teaching Deming? And how many people have you reached out to?" And so I said, "Almost a million." 

John Willis: Wow. [00:12:00] Wow. Wow 

Balaji Reddie: So he said, "I don't think there's anybody who's taught Deming as much."

For around 12 years consecutively I was teaching 16 hours of Deming in multiple classes. So- So they were like... Yeah. 

John Willis: One of the things I we're, we're going over time, but if you've got a couple more minutes, I- 

Balaji Reddie: Sure. 

John Willis: I've been, I wanted... One of my sort of problems about the Deming book in general is, my publisher said, "Don't write another book."

She said, you know- ... "If you're an author, stick with your book." And I'm just not built that way. I, I see something new and I, we have this sort of idea of a dog and a squirrel, or a squirrel, I'm like, sort of- And so I wrote the book about the history of AI, that was my recent book, Rebels of Reason.

I'm actually now working on quantum computing. 

Balaji Reddie: Wow. 

John Willis: A history of quantum computing. I've got some interesting angles. But one of the things that's happening in with... L- I do a lot of my research with AI now and I, my day job is AI. I help large companies figure out how. And [00:13:00] in the early days of AI, early days meaning th- three, four years ago of this current revolution of AI the I couldn't find an angle.

People say you're the Deming guy. You should talk about Deming and AI." And it, it didn't really seem for me to find anything that really was meaty other than me just throwing up slides of Deming. I couldn't find any meaningful stuff. But now there's this idea of what they call agents and agentic processing in AI.

Balaji Reddie: Agentic, yeah. 

John Willis: And what started happening is the AI itself, while I'm doing my research, w- it said, "Would you like to see a Deming explanation of this?" I'm like, "Yeah, sure." And I started realizing that then I started digging a little deep, and I'm actually want- I'm about to sit down and produce a whole bunch of stuff about...

The thing is, when we get to agentics, all of Deming's... And now you could argue Deming's principles worked well pre-agentics, but now they have real meat on the bone with agentics, because there's a lot of things going on here. [00:14:00] Even I've got a prototype for a Red Bead game- Wow ... that is where the agents are the workers.

Okay. And it makes sense because what happens is you set up all these conditions- of scenarios, and then the agent does something, and then you blame the agent. And the agent was built on all this sort of HR's knowledge of a typo in somebody's retention period, or, like, all these things.

And we're seeing this all over the place now where people are... These stories of agent deleted the production database and the backup database and the... and the truth of the matter is it was incredible bad hygiene of how you were building stuff. It wa- the agent just took some liberties just a junior CIS admin might do, right?

And so I- ... I'm finding there's a lot more to uncover Where, in the early days of DevOps, [00:15:00] I probably introduced more young people in America to DevOps, or no, to Deming and his relationship of how it worked with TPS and lean and agile and, through the book, but through my lectures and all that.

And I, I have a feeling that there's a lot of sort of impact that can be made on even younger students now about how you need to think about before you turn on an agent to do some important work. And anyway, so I'm starting to u- unravel some of that stuff and what is... how does Deming fit squarely into this?

And it does. We both know that it does. It does. It does. Of course. And so I'm really starting to... Like I'm building a, like a directory structure of when I find things okay I'm gonna go back and I'm gonna really dive this, 'cause there's all things about what authority do you give an agent?

Even the idea of what does go to Gemba mean in, in an agentic story? It's all that. Anyway, so yeah, there's a lot to uncover [00:16:00] there. The other thing I wanna basically would love to explore with you too is one of the things I look at is the overlap of other technologies and groups that that really don't attribute anything to Deming that maybe have been directly influenced by Deming, but certainly indirectly, and some of these complexity theories.

And I was wondering if, do you cover any... 'Cause there is some incredible overlap. There's something called Cynefin, which is a Welsh name of a system thinker by Dave Snowden. There's some of the learning from incidents, and they all have these common bodies of knowledge. 

Balaji Reddie: Okay. 

John Willis: And so I think I, I'd love to see what areas that you see are, is, in your educational pattern that could be or should be overlaps.

'Cause when you hear people multiple- It's okay, these four different disciplines that don't mention any of each other all have a common denominator in terms of some of their what they're definite fundamentals. So anyway, those are two [00:17:00] areas I think it'd be fun to explore.

Balaji Reddie: Okay. 

John Willis: Other than that, I had a lot of fun. 

Balaji Reddie: Yes. A lot of fun. 

John Willis: This was great. That's good. 

Balaji Reddie: Just wanted to ask you how do you pronounce this? 

John Willis: Oh, the name Botchagaloop? Yeah 

Balaji Reddie: Botchagaloop. 

John Willis: Botchagaloop. Yeah, it's just a stupid name. I have a whole... People have come up to me over the years. It was a name that my mom used to sing a song about it, and when we were getting our internet identities I just literally thought it'd be a good name for the internet identity, which was a terrible name, but turned out to be my anchor, but- A 

Balaji Reddie: song.

That's 

John Willis: interesting ... it wa- it's not even really a song. She used to just sing. If I did something stupid, she'd be like, "You're a Botchagaloop," and

Balaji Reddie: ah. 

John Willis: I got it. And I found out there was a whole lot of folklore in Brooklyn, New York in the early the early 1930s or 1920s.

And there's all these people who've come up to me and told me glorious stories of, "Oh, where'd you get that name from?" And I'm like, "Yeah." And they'll tell "Oh, let me tell [00:18:00] you this story about my fa- grandf- great-grandfather who did this." And so I've got all these kind of great stories about Botchagaloop.

But yeah. 

Balaji Reddie: Botchagaloop. Okay. 

John Willis: Yeah. Let's definitely... i've been terrible but I should have reached out. I know you tried to reach out to me and I just get too many things on my plate, but you are a fascinating person that I should spend more time with unquestionably. So you're a wealth of knowledge, which is incredibly refreshing

Balaji Reddie: Hold then 

John Willis: All right. Let me go ahead and stop the recording