THE AIM for this really brief post is to let you in on a project I’ve been working on for a while to further the aim and mission of this humble newsletter to make Dr. Deming’s teachings more accessible to a modern audience. Long-time subscribers will recall that I began writing here in response to the difficulty a younger senior manager I was coaching was having in reading The New Economics. They found the language and concepts difficult to penetrate and became frustrated with themselves, and me, for the slow pace of learning.
I started writing with the hypothesis that this manager was probably not alone: there are probably legion who have started in earnest to read The New Economics and given up part-way through. Not everyone is a Deming nerd, after all.
This got me thinking about how I approach reading the book (now several times over); if you look at how Deming wrote, which was largely by dictation, it flows like a university lecture he is delivering directly to you. When I read, I sometimes imagine myself in a university lecture hall taking in Dr. Deming’s lecture about the faulty practices of management or the Taguchi Loss Function or variation. It puts my mind in a frame for learning.
And so a hypothesis was born: What if I turned the ten chapters of The New Economics into a lecture series Dr. Deming might have delivered at his old academic haunt, NYU’s Stern Graduate School of Business? It would take place around the time in the late 1980s when he was pulling together the material for the book, and you’ve landed a Wonka-esque golden ticket to this once-in-a-lifetime event. The idea intrigued me enough that I immediately started writing the script’s pilot episode based on the Preface, and over the next week set about refining the text and recording it with AI-generated voiceovers and some music and sound effects for interest.
The result is Pilot Episode #1 of The New Economics Companion, now available for your listening pleasure:
I’m envisioning making 1-2 episodes like this per month which will be exclusively available to paid tier subscribers starting with the next episode, How Are We Doing?
The intent is not to replace the book, but provide a “Cliff’s Notes” summary to accompany it, along with post-lecture reflection questions and material from some of Dr. Deming’s colleagues and companions of the time, and maybe some light homework. Think of it as your own personal study group, delivered in short audio format.
What do you think? Let me know your thoughts in the comments below:
I find The New Economics to be a challenging read, so I'd definitely appreciate your interpretation of it!
I’m looking forward to the next episode already!