DEMING’S SEVEN DEADLY DISEASES
Use this to diagnose the most likely disease that your organisation is suffering from.
The core of Deming’s work is what he referred to as the Deadly Diseases that had infected western industry.
DEMING’S SEVEN DEADLY DISEASES ARE:
A lack of constancy of purpose, which creates organisations that have no long-range strategy for staying in business.
An emphasis on short-term profits, which undermines quality and productivity.
Evaluating performance by using merit rating or annual review systems, which nurtures inter-organisation rivalry and destroys teamwork.
Mobility of management, which leads to a lack of understanding about the organisation and a reluctance to follow through on long-term objectives.
Running the organisation on visible figures alone, which fails to recognise the importance of unknown and unknowable figures such as the ‘multiplier’ effect of a happy customer.
Excessive medical costs for employee health care, which leads to an increase in the final cost of goods or services (he was writing about the USA).
Excessive warranty costs arising from customer dissatisfaction with goods or services.
Deming argued that the above could only be tackled by effective management that demonstrated a commitment to quality, communicated the quality message to staff and recognised the need to create a belief in total quality management throughout its workforce.
HOW TO USE IT
- To tackle the seven deadly diseases develop a plan for where you want be in 3–5 years’ time (see Section 8).
- Resist short-term thinking that might be advocated by others in the organisation. For example, reducing expenditure on training and development will boost profits in the short term. But where will that leave you 3 years down the line?
- Ask yourself, does our performance system reward outputs or outcomes? Outputs are what you produce, outcomes are how your customers feel about your product. There are many unknowable figures such as the ‘multiplier’ effect which occurs when a happy customer not only buys your product again but tells friends and family about it. Just because such figures are unknowable or can’t be calculated, doesn’t mean you can ignore them.
- As for job-hopping managers, don’t worry about them. Within every organisation there are a group of managers who are committed to the organisation. They are the middle managers who know that the grass isn’t always greener elsewhere. They can deliver the organisation’s long-term plans provided they are given the opportunity and not treated as dinosaurs by management.
- The final two diseases have been made worse by the litigious society which believes if there’s blame there’s a claim. Protect your staff, the organisation and yourself by eliminating the cause of legal claims and remove the causes of complaints by producing high-quality goods that are fit for purpose.
QUESTIONS TO ASK
- Is my organisation infected by one of the diseases?
- Do I see the cure as everyone’s responsibility or restricted to the quality control team?