Deming Devotional #6: Beware Common Sense
The Road to Perdition Starts Here
Beware of common sense. Common sense tells us to rank children in school (grade them), rank people on the job, rank teams, divisions, dealers, costs in hospitals. Reward ward the best, punish the worst. Punish with a day off without out pay the ticket seller with the highest discrepancy for the month.
Common sense tells us to have quotas for people-or for groups-produce so many items per day, iron so many shirts in every hour or every day, the maids in a hotel allowed lowed 20 minutes per room. An engineer must turn out a prescribed number of designs every month. Result: costs doubled, people robbed of pride of workmanship, no improvement provement possible.
Common sense tells us to speak to the operator about it when a customer reports something wrong with a product or with a service. “We have spoken to the operator about it, it won’t happen again.”
Common sense tells us that if an item or service fails to meet requirements, take action, do something about it, and do it now. Do what?
Action taken today may only produce more mistakes tomorrow. It may be important to work on the process that produced the fault, not on him that delivered it.
Common sense tells us to reward the salesman of the month (the one that sold the most). Actually, he may be doing great harm to the company.
Dr. W. Edwards Deming. The New Economics for Industry, Government, Education (2nd Ed. pp. 38-39, 3rd Ed. pp. 27-28)
THE AIM for today’s Devotional is to contemplate the meaning of “common sense” or the prevailing wisdom that is the shorthand we refer back to for making judgements or decisions. It could be thought of as the prevailing theory of management just about everyone uses without even thinking twice — but for today, we will do just that.
In this curate passage I’ve selected, Dr. Deming calls on us to slow down and inspect this often-overlooked shortcut in order to reveal the path toward transformation he wants to show us. It’s a crutch for the mind we use to ascribe almost any explanation for why we behave the way we do. Recall that Dr. Deming is trying to free us from the prison we’ve built for ourselves through how we’ve chosen to interact with each other: unconsidered common sense is what keeps us safely locked inside.
Here we see examples of just how pervasive common sense is in our world and how it counterintuitively gives us precisely what we don’t want for the effort: discouragement, disappointment, disillusionment, dissatisfaction, destruction. The Rx? Go in the opposite direction to learn new theory about what to do differently. Challenging common sense, we will see, unlocks all the prison doors.
Start Here
As with all the Devotionals, this is a thinking exercise that begins with slowing down and reading the passage carefully, aloud if necessary because sometimes when you do surprising things emerge. What strikes you most about what Deming is saying here?
What other “common sense” rules that we use every day can you think of?
How are you using “common sense” in a way that Deming describes right now? Are you constrained to do this, or is it a free choice? Can you do anything differently?
Do you agree with Deming’s observations? Why are rewards potentially destructive? Quotas? Rating and ranking kids? Punishments for failing to make the numbers?
Why do you think “common sense” like this is so powerful? Why do we give it such authority?
How do you begin to challenge “common sense” solutions ? What do you need to do first?
After considering these questions, develop some of your own then share this passage with a friend or colleague. Discuss your thinking about “common sense” — did you arrive at the same ideas, or did you differ in interesting ways?
People mistakenly carry the 'I work more hours = I get more money' believe without understanding leverage, and I don't mean that in the abstract finance sense.
•When you're working an hourly wage your only leverage is your hourly rate so it makes sense that if you want double money you work double hours. This makes sense here because your leverage is very tiny and you have no responsibility for anything except how long you work. This mentality leads to meddling later on.
•When you are actually in charge of a system your maximum leverage is changing the process, not working more hours. You fix one step in an hour and suddenly save the company hundreds of hours, you work hundreds of hours and lose the company thousands of hours.