The Transformation is Everybody's Job. Classic Jack from W. Edwards Deming

W. Edwards Deming is considered the father of quality management. His Theory for Management, published originally in the 1950s, is required reading for all executives who are struggling to manage a business today. I originally published Deming's 14-Point Theory in my 1993 book, Adbashing: Surviving the Attacks on Advertising. I publish them again and urge all readers to consider applying them to their own management practices. Since Deming designed his techniques for manufacturing management, and primarily for the automotive industry, revisions and a change of context are required to adapt them to the advertising and media businesses, but their relevance remains intact. It's disappointing the auto industry ignored Deming after the 1980s, and we can only hope the advertising and media business doesn't continue to make the same mistakes.

The 14-Point Theory for Management
W. Edwards Deming

1. Create constancy of purpose toward improvement of product and service, with the aim to become competitive and to stay in business, and to provide jobs.
2. Adopt a new philosophy. We are in a new economic age. Western management must awaken to the challenge, must learn their responsibilities, and take on leadership for change.
3. Cease dependence on inspection to achieve quality. Eliminate the need for inspection on a mass basis by building quality into the product in the first place.
4. End the practice of awarding business solely on the basis of price. Instead, minimize total cost. Move toward a single supplier for any one item, on a long-term relationship of trust and loyalty.
5. Improve constantly and forever the system of production and service, to improve quality and productivity, and this constantly decrease costs.
6. Institute training on the job to make better use of all employees.
7. Institute leadership (see Point 12). The aim of leadership should be to help people and machines and gadgets do a better job. Leadership of management is in need of an overhaul, as well as leadership of production workers.
8. Drive out fear, so that everyone may work effectively for the company.
9. Break down the barriers between departments. People in research, design, sales and production must work as a team to foresee problems of production, and in use, that may be encountered with the product or service.
10. Eliminate slogans, exhortations and targets for the work force that ask for zero defects or ask for new levels of productivity without providing methods.
11.
a. Eliminate work standards (quotas) on the factory floor. Substitute leadership.
b. Eliminate management by objective. Eliminate management by numbers, numerical goals. Substitute leadership.
12.
a. Remove barriers that rob the hourly worker of his right to pride of workmanship. The responsibility of supervisors must be changed from sheer numbers to quality.
b. Remove barriers that rob people in management and in engineering of their right to pride of workmanship. This means, inter alia, abolishment of the annual merit rating and of management by objective, management by the numbers.
13. Institute a vigorous program of education and self-improvement.
14. Clearly define top management's permanent commitment to quality and productivity and its obligation to implement these principles. Put everybody in the company to work to accomplish the transformation. THE TRANSFORMATION IS EVERYBODY'S JOB.

Read more about W. Edwards Deming at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/W._Edwards_Deming and order your copy of Jack Myers' Adbashing at https://www.myersreport.com/research.asp?group=8.