800 SUBSCRIBERS!
We've Reached a Milestone...
THE AIM for this Sunday morning post is to share with you an astounding achievement for my humble newsletter: we’ve crossed 800 subscribers! Above, you can see how The Digestible Deming has slowly and steadily grown over the past four years, a example of what Dr. Deming would call “continual improvement”.
When I began writing my thoughts here in 2021 about reinterpreting Dr. Deming’s philosophy of management I did not think that I’d ever get this many subscribers. Too niche, I thought, and besides my original intent was to develop a back-catalog of articles I could give to management coachees as a learning aide or to prime a later conversation. My aim has never been to gain subscribers for its own sake, but to write good content that might help people, and it seems that I might be on the right track.
Over 200 posts later, here we are, and I couldn’t be more pleased to know that my dent in the universe is resonating with so many curious and supportive minds. I’m humbled and deeply appreciative. And it all began with this post:
Since that beginning I’ve written short posts to help bring Deming’s “greatest hits” out of his books and into reader’s hands in a way that could make them relateable and shareable with friends and colleagues. Through them, I also began to refine my own understanding of his theory, and in many ways that was humbling. Some articles flew out of my fingers, while others took days or weeks to get right. I’ve developed a deep appreciation for what American writer, editor, and teacher, William Zinsser, said in his book On Writing Well:
Writing is hard work. A clear sentence is no accident. Very few sentences come out right the first time, or even the third time. Remember this in moments of despair. If you find writing is hard, it is because it is hard.
Zinsser, William. On Writing Well, 30th Anniversary Edition: An Informal Guide to Writing Nonfiction (p. 9). HarperCollins. Kindle Edition.
I think I landed most posts where I wanted, but you can tell there’s a huge difference from how I wrote earlier posts to today. I am continually trying to improve my skill as a writer and communicator, and Zinsser’s lessons are never far from my mind, although I still manage to push posts out with errors. Crossing this milestone tells me that I must be getting something right in the long-run! Let me know your thoughts in the comments.
With the support of paid subs, I’ve also experimented with a podcast series to turn Deming’s theory into an imagined lecture series (The New Economics Companion), and developed an application to teach new learners how to analyze data for variation signals using a Process Behaviour Chart (PBC Analyzer PRO). I even wrote about how to change a nation’s fortunes by adopting a Deming view here, here and here.
By the by, if you’re ever looking for an article on a specific topic, the search feature on Substack works quite well. Just click the magnifying glass and type a word. It will return the best matches instantaneously.
The Digestible Guide to Middle Management
So, what’s next? I’ve been working on this, and like most creative endeavours it is a slow burn depending on my time and energy. I do want to turn what we’ve built here into a book, and I’m thinking of getting the Preface and First Chapter out to paid subs soon — I just have a backlog of work to get through before that can happen. But, in the spirit of this milestone achievement, I think I can offer a small teaser here:
“It’s a dangerous business, Frodo, going out of your door,” he used to say. “You step into the Road, and if you don’t keep your feet, there is no knowing where you might be swept off to.
J.R.R. Tolkien, Fellowship of the Ring
In an office in a building there lived… a manager. Not a nasty, depressing office filled with sticky notes, faded motivational posters, and stained coffee mugs: it was a proper office, with a nice desk, blotter, bookshelves, and a MacBook Pro. From here the manager could oversee all his direct-reports… through a dashboard and Excel spreadsheets. Performance was appraised, operations were optimized, tasks divided and distributed, and yet there was a nagging unease. Despite all the technology, processes, and latest people management techniques, there were problems. Problems meeting budgets and timelines, problems with mistakes and escaped defects, problems with unhappy customers, other managers, departments, teams, and colleagues. Everyone doing their best, but still struggling just the same.
The manager didn't understand: he went to a good school, got his MBA, graduated near the top of the class, and applied what he learned almost every day. Almost. He even hired only the best people he could find who graduated at the top of their class.
He also read Harvard Business Review and the latest recommended books on management, and yet the problems persisted. Increasingly, the manager felt drawn into putting out fires rather than preventing them from starting in the first place, and privately, when alone, wondered why they had chosen this line of work at all. Not that everything was bad, just that the joy they had when they started their career had dimmed.
Was this really the way things should work?
* * *
At its heart, this is a book designed to change the way you see the world by revealing how it has been “pulled over your eyes”. Through reading and thinking on its lessons, you might come to some startling epiphanies and realizations about how you perceive and understand everyday phenomena in your business or organization. And from here, you could be swept off on an adventure of learning and understanding that won’t end with the last page, but just begin.
Ready? Great! Grab your sturdiest walking stick and backpack. Leave all your prior biases and assumptions that can be spared behind. We travel light…
My working title is “The Digestible Deming Guide to Middle Management”. It will be comprised of about eight to ten chapters that break down Deming’s theory into themes that draw upon what I’ve written here, wrapped into a story that nods ever so slightly at my favourite series of books, The Lord of the Rings Trilogy and The Hobbit. The reader is placed into the role of a manager who has become dissatisfied with their job and wants to improve, but doesn’t know how. Right at the moment of giving up to go tend his garden at home, he’s visited by a wisened sage who will offer to take him on a learning adventure by saying: “It will be very good for you… and most amusing to me.”
Look for this teaser to be fleshed out into a Preface soon, followed by Chapter 1: The Prevailing Theory of Middle Management. My aim is to gently teach Dr. Deming’s theory in a comfortable and easily approachable way. I’ll let you judge how successful I’ve been.
Thank You!
I’ll close out with a sincere thanks to everyone who has subscribed to The Digestible Deming over the years, and most especially to those who converted to paid tier. Your support has kept the proverbial lights on and kept me inspired to share my thoughts and observations, and to keep thinking about my own constancy of purpose for the future. THANK YOU!
Stay tuned for more developments, and in the meantime, as always, let me know your thoughts in the comments below.
Well deserved, CRC! Always a thoughtful read.
Congratulations!