RETHINKING DEMING''S KEY PRINCIPLES!

I have been reading some of William Deming's work. Deming was an American statistician, professor, author, lecturer and consultant. He is perhaps best known for the "Plan-Do-Check-Act" cycle popularly named after him which we know better as 'plan-do-review' and which lies at the heart of the Cutlers' 'Made in Sheffield' approach.

In Japan, from 1950 onwards, Deming taught top management how to improve design, product quality, testing, and sales. Importantly, Deming offered fourteen key principles to managers for transforming business effectiveness. The principles apply as much to schools and hospitals and care homes as to any other company, business or organisation. They were first presented in his book 'Out of the Crisis' and although Deming does not use the term in his book, he is credited with launching the Total Quality Management (TQM) movement. My revised principles are:

PRINCIPLE 1 : "Create a purpose"

PRINCIPLE 2 : "Adopt the philosophy"

PRINCIPLE 3 : "Don't depend on inspection"

PRINCIPLE 4 : "Quality matters in all things"

PRINCIPLE 5 : "Constantly improve what you do and how you do it"

PRINCIPLE 6 : "Train, train, train"

PRINCIPLE 7 : "Develop leadership"

PRINCIPLE 8 : "Develop trust"

PRINCIPLE 9 : "Develop teamwork"

PRINCIPLE 10 : "Eliminate targets'

PRINCIPLE 11 : "Eliminate quotas"

PRINCIPLE 12 : "Remove barriers"

PRINCIPLE 13 : "Develop self-review"

PRINCIPLE 14 : "Take action"

We simply need to apply those principles to how we run our schools, our hospitals, our care homes and our businesses.