Deming Lens #40 - My Top 5 Favorite Deming Institute Podcast Episodes - a podcast by The W. Edwards Deming Institute

In our 40th "Deming Lens" episode, host Tripp Babbitt shares his interpretation of wide-ranging aspects and implications of Dr. Deming's theory of management. This month he looks at the book, The Reckoning" and some of the implications of it.

Podcasts mentioned in this episode:

1. Paula Marshall

2. Kevin Cahill

3. Ed Baker

4. Monta Akin

5. Clare-Crawford and Bob Mason

 

SHOW NOTES

[00:00:14] Deming Institute Podcast - Episode 40
[00:00:27] Episode 40 - My Top 5 Favorite Episodes
[00:02:06] 1. Paula Marshall
[00:04:20] 2. Kevin Cahill
[00:05:17] 3. Ed Baker
[00:08:52] 4. Monta Akin
[00:10:09] 5. Clare-Crawford and Bob Mason

TRANSCRIPT

Tripp Babbitt: [00:00:14] In the fortieth episode of The Deming Lens, I will go through my top five favorite podcast episodes.

Tripp Babbitt: [00:00:27] Hi, I'm Tripp Babbitt, host of the Deming Institute podcast and the Deming Lens, and this is Episode 40. I thought I would switch things up a little bit. I was doing a lot of reflecting over the past week or so, thinking about all the people I've had the pleasure of interviewing for the Deming Institute podcast. So I kind of came up with lack of a better term, my five favorite podcast episodes. And there are a ton of people that merfolk every interview I've done. I've either learned something or just had great enjoyment.

Tripp Babbitt: [00:01:08] And talking to folks that admired the work of W. Edwards Deming, people like Alfie Kohn and David Langford and Dick Steele and Ron Moen and Cliff Norman and Dan Robertson and I could go on and on and on. There are a ton of good interviews, some better than others, as I got better at doing podcasting. But it was it has been a real enjoyment for me to learn from different people and not just gaining knowledge, but but the. History of how different people came into contact with Dr. Deming's work or him or himself. And so my top five, I'll just first name them, go through him a little bit, and I hope that you'll take an opportunity to listen to some of these folks.

Tripp Babbitt: [00:02:06] But my number one is Paula Marshall. Second is my inaugural interview with Kevin Cahill. My third was Ed Baker and my fourth was Monáe Aiken from Leander School District, and my fifth was Claire Crawford and Bob Mason that I had the opportunity to talk to. So let me just talk about starting with Paula Marshall. I, I love that episode so much because not only did you get a little history, but Paula Marshall is a dynamic person. She has a lot of personality. She's fun to talk to. And she owns a company called Bamma Companies, and they make the apple pies for McDonalds all over the world and still do. And so she runs this family, basically family initiated and family owned business. And we got into a conversation about performance appraisals. And I wish I would have known about better audio quality back in those days because is one of the early interviews. But my interview with her is a little bit sketchy on the audio.

Tripp Babbitt: [00:03:19] But overall, it was one of those interviews that just I got a lot of energy from it, like a lot of energy from Paula Marshall and talking about her experience in having poor quality at Bamma companies and how she was kind of nudged towards going to one of Dr. Deming's four day seminars, her interactions with them, but also just how he interacted with her and going and moving away from performance appraisals and what she had done up to that point. I'll let you listen to the episode itself. But and I later had the opportunity to meet Paula at a couple of Deming Institute events. But I think you will enjoy it if you haven't if you've not listened to some of the early interviews. Again, I apologize about some of the quality of it. I was the no, really what I was doing at the beginning. Now we're six years later. Seven years later.

Tripp Babbitt: [00:04:20] The second one is Kevin Cahill, the inaugural. Now, obviously, even when I interviewed Kevin, I did not have my own equipment. I hadn't purchased any equipment because I wasn't sure how this would go. And the equipment for podcast can be very expensive once you start getting mixers and digital recorders and things of that sort. So I actually had a friend that had podcasting equipment and so I use that for my interview with Kevin. But I really enjoyed that interview because of the stories he told about Dr. Deming, including how what happened the night that he watched the NBC White Paper. If Japan can, why can't we? And just the the storytelling there and the history of it isn't lost with me.

Tripp Babbitt: [00:05:17] Third, Ed Baker, now Ed Baker.He his interview was interesting to me. He he traveled along with Dr. Deming, with Ford. And it kind of goes through the Ford story, talks about Taylorism. He talks about the improvement methods of today.

Tripp Babbitt: [00:05:37] But the reason I probably enjoyed the Ed Baker interview is because I had to prep so much for that. Not only did I read his book, but I read about it. Baker looked for previous references and other books, but I just remember it from a lot of preparation standpoint. I read the book twice, but I think before we did the interview and there's a lot of good things in there. He'll tell basically the message that I that I think I got out of that interview was, you know, whether it's Lean or Six Sigma or TQM or any other improvement methodology that most of the people that are enjoying those methodologies are missing the system of profound knowledge.

Tripp Babbitt: [00:06:21] So, again, that would be appreciation for system theory and knowledge, theory, variation and psychology and and those four things that were being emphasized as opposed to just the statistical process control types of things that a lot of people focus in on, on Six Sigma and Lean. I think this is quite a.

Tripp Babbitt: [00:06:47] Quite a bit of this, but he also talks about in there about Jim McConville, our mattress Mac, as he's known at gallery furniture in the story of what happened there.

Tripp Babbitt: [00:06:58] And that was one of the Jim McIngvale is a person that has been mentioned a number of times in Dr. Deming's books as someone who changed from very sales type of attitude to understanding a system. And he's he's well known in the Houston area for a lot of things that he's done, like when they had the hurricane, how he opened his stores and just let people in during that time period and kind of not only paying it forward, but that, you know, these are it's funny you think about if people are selfish enough, they'd be altruistic as kind of the thing because you treat everybody really well. And I think that that when I think of Jim McIngvale, I think of that quote, not that he said it, but just what applies to to him. But Ed Baker talking about that story was good. Excuse me. Good for me. He also was very influential in that interview. Got me thinking about thinking and how we need to change thinking the way we think about things. And I developed this model I call the ninety five method, but it involves looking through a customer lens but looking through a thinking lens. And and Ed Baker talks quite a bit about thinking and influence the udemy training that I put it put out there based off of a lot of the things out of that interview and what kept getting deeper and deeper in understanding, thinking that was going on, mental models and things of that sort.

Tripp Babbitt: [00:08:52] The fourth interview that I really enjoyed was with Monta Akin, and Monacan is a, first of all, just a sweetheart of a person, but she shared the story. She worked at the Leander School District. I believe she's retired now.

Tripp Babbitt: [00:09:09] But how she had listened to things that were happening with David Langford and Sitka, Alaska, and about how education was being applying the Deming method with some of the things that David Langford was doing.

Tripp Babbitt: [00:09:28] And she was really the first person to really talk about education. As someone from a school district, I'd listen to the story of David Langford and had interviewed them, but just her grasping some concepts and, you know, waking up in the middle of the night while watching, you know, if Japan can, why can't we? And our interactions with David Langford all were really relevant to me. And I'm kind of a, I don't know, amateur history buff, not only about Dr. Deming, but but a number of other things and really enjoyed that history.

Tripp Babbitt: [00:10:09] And the fifth person that I really became one of my favorite episodes is with Claire Crawford Mason and Bob Mason, her husband, and just a number of things that really stand out in my mind. I go back to all five of these quite often, actually. And Claire Crawford, Mason talks about how she first met Dr. Deming and and some of the things that were happening that led up to the white paper of Japan can why can't we, which you can watch at the Deming Institute website. I think it's also on YouTube, if I remember correctly.

Tripp Babbitt: [00:10:45] But kind of the the what launched Dr. Deming back in this country, even though he was already famous over in Japan and just the history of how everything kind of degenerated into this white paper. And, you know, we didn't have a like today for some of you, we don't have a thousand.We didn't have a thousand channels back in 1980, basically ABC, NBC and CBS.

Tripp Babbitt: [00:11:15] And that was it. I mean, really that that you would listen to. So they almost had those three stations had a virtual monopoly on as far as television goes or communication goes. But the history of that is really relevant to me. I enjoyed that type of history, again, the same type of thing with mine again. And, you know, there were different quotes out of there. You listen to how Dr. Deming loved the fact that Bob Mason went to Harvard. We went to the business school and how Dr. Deming thought they were teaching the wrong things in Harvard Business School.

Tripp Babbitt: [00:11:56] And every time he would meet with Bob or see Bob, you would ask him about all the bad stuff that Harvard was teaching about business, which is not only funny, but it was interesting to me. So anyway, those are my top five.

Tripp Babbitt: [00:12:12] I didn't mean to slight anybody. I've learned so much from working with all of these or interviewing all of these different people and some of the conversations that I've had with them and certainly the post conversations that I've had with a lot of these folks about things that maybe were more relevant to me or thought were relevant to me and not necessarily relevant to the broader audience.

Tripp Babbitt: [00:12:35] But anyway, those are my top five. I will put links to those and this episode so people can can go and listen to them on their own. But that's what I wanted to cover this week. I hope this change would be a little bit different for you and learning about some other episodes and some of the things we've I don't know what the number is now of episodes that we've done, but it's a lot. So thank you for listening and we'll talk again in a month or so.

Tripp Babbitt: [00:13:10] Thank you for listening to the Deming Institute podcast, stay updated on the latest blogs, podcasts, programs and other activities at Deming dot org.

 

 

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