BACKGROUND:
In February of 1988, I attended the late Dr. W. Edwards Deming's training session in Los Angeles, California and have not seen the world the same since. Deming's words had such a profound effect on me that there was a transformation in my thought patterns and they in turn affected my behavior.

Prior to attending the seminar I had viewed several video tapes of Deming and was not really looking forward to having to sit through hour after hour of his presentations. I was primarily attending to help add to my professional credentials. Since it had been rumored that his health was declining and it might be one of his last outings, I made the decision to attend.

One of the things I noticed on that first morning was that the seminar must have been a sellout. It seemed that every seat had been reserved and was occupied. I began to think that there might be something to what people said about him. I did notice that his presentation skills had not improved from the tapes. After the first couple of hours I observed that many of those attending were starting to wander out and not return. Several of those not returning were from my company and were relatively high in the corporate structure. I knew it was going to be a long week. Boy was I wrong.

Something must have happened to me during the night, because the next morning I was hearing what he was saying and not letting my preconceived perception of him get in the way. After the first hour that morning, I was hooked. His words were gradually changing how I saw things. Later that morning I discovered that when I thought he was reading from his book "Out of the Crisis" he could not have been. He had to put on his glasses to tell us what page he was reading from. He couldn't have been reading because he wasn't able to see the print. That revelation allowed me to see too.

Needless to say, that week in Los Angeles changed my life. I have never looked at the world around me in quite the same way. It was as if I had donned a new set of glasses and what I was seeing through them was different than before. A question I had for myself was "how am I going to take what I've learned this week and deliver it to my trainees and have them see the world as I now see it?" I didn't have an answer to the question immediately, but I kept mulling it around in my head. The question just would not go away.

I had one regret when I left the seminar that Friday and it was, I had not gotten Dr. Deming's signature in his book. It was my own fault because the first day when I had a chance to do so, I didn't take the opportunity. After that when I wanted it, I couldn't get close enough to him to do so. To this day I regret that my copy of his book does not bear his autograph.

On the long flight home to Kansas City, I began to piece together a project to test this great man's wisdom and my new way of looking at the world. I thought I needed some examples closer to home for use in training my organization's employees. As I leaned back in the aircraft's seat, I began to ask myself if I could make a translation of two of his main points from the work environment to the home environment. - Then it came to me, in the family environment, parents have the role of management, working on and owning the process, and it was the children that worked in the process.

MANAGERS WORK ON THE PROCESS At that time I had been dating a woman who had two young children, a son age seven and daughter age ten. I had met them a few months before when a mutual friend asked me to help move them into a larger home. The children's mother, Judy, and I found that we enjoyed each other's company so we began to date.

Reflecting back over the past few months I saw a recurring theme in the behavior of Judy's family. Like most families, it seemed the three of them got along pretty well until it was time for the kids to go to bed. At that time Judy would start to have them pick up their coats, books and clothes left on the floors in their bedrooms. The children were tired and resisted completing their duties. A battle would ensue, and I would realize it was time for me to head for home. That same process seemed to happen almost every evening I was there.

*** I tried to visualize a run chart with "hours" on the X axis and how they "didn't get along" on the Y axis. ***

In my mind's eye I thought I noted a pattern which I labeled the Disharmony and the Hour of the Day. About the time (8 P.M.) the children were told to pick up their things and start getting ready for bed the whining would start and occasionally bickering between all three. As I sat back in the plane's seat I took a visual walk through the house. What I saw were coats and books on the floor near the front door and clothes on their bedroom floors. I asked myself why the books and coats were where I saw them and where were they supposed to be? Ah! The GAP. (In the coat closet, which was near the bedroom area and on a table in their respective rooms). I knew that in my youth I'd always been required to place my dirty clothes in a dirty clothes bag which had hung in my closet. I wondered where their dirty clothes bags were?

It dawned on me, in their previous house they probably had a system that worked but things had changed when they moved (a new process that didn't allow them to be successful). If they had clothes baskets before, they probably had been used to haul items to the new house and were still holding other things. I mentally opened the coat closet and saw a small room bursting with coats. It was so full that it really took an adult to create more room to hang up one more coat (a job more difficult than it needed to be).

Then I asked myself, "how does the process work now?" The children come in the front door after school, drop their coats just inside, their books if any, not far away, and head to the kitchen. Yes, the coats and books are usually found on the floor just on the edge of the carpet in the living room. I then mentally strolled into Jake's bedroom as he prepared for bed. As he undressed he dropped his clothes on the floor. He had no place to put them that was convenient. The process called for each youngster to take their clothes into their mother's room and put them in her hamper.

It came to me that it was probably up to their mother (management) to provide the necessary materials and training for the process to improve. How was this going to happen? For the remainder of the flight I spent the time putting a plan together to explain to Judy the concept of continuous process improvement and how management works on a process.

When I returned to Kansas City, Judy was curious about my week with Deming. This was just the opportunity I hoped for, so I took full advantage of it. I explained how I was now seeing the world and the concept that all things are part of a process, as well as causes of variation in the process. I drew up a rough Disharmony Chart and what I thought I observed at bed time. She seemed to agree with the idea, so I went on to explain that management works "on" the process and employees work "in" the process. Then I made the comparison that in the family environment mom was management and the kids were sort of like "working in her process". She then asked if I had any suggestion how we might improve the process.

I suggested that if we were to buy three fancy coat hooks and a finished piece of oak about two feet long and six inches wide, I could mount the hooks on the wood and fasten the coat rack near the door. This would make the job of hanging up their coats much easier if she were willing to accept the new addition to her foyer. She was willing. That weekend we purchased the items and mounted the new coat rack. As the result of a little training and positive reinforcement, a new and easier process was put in place.

Once the change was accepted, we started on the clothes problem. We tried an experiment first to see if we were headed in the right direction. One evening as Jake was getting ready for bed, I asked him to help me with something. Through his curiosity he consented to try something new. After we retrieved his mother's clothes hamper from her room, I had him take his shirt off and give it to me. At the same time I had him open the top to the hamper and asked him to watch. I rolled up the shirt and shot it like a basketball into the hamper. Right away he wanted me to hold the lid while he tried his skill with first one sock and them the other. You could see the proud look on his face as the socks swished into the open hamper. Heather wanted to try the game also but was too modest to take any of her clothes off in front of me. Just as well.

Now Judy and I put our heads together with the kids and designed clothes baskets that looked like basketball hoops. They were made out of round plastic clothes baskets with the bottoms cut out. Judy applied her sewing skills and made clothes bags out of a mesh netting with a draw string at the top. We used shower curtain hooks to attach the bags to the bottom of the baskets, and I attached them to the inside walls of the children's closets. Instant fun and games at bed time! Additional training wasn't necessary for this change.

All four of us had a good time with the project and life became much simpler and less stressful at bed time. It was a great learning example for me and I have told and retold the experience in many of my classes and workshops. On more than one occasion I've had a mother return to class who took the example to heart and tried a similar experiment with her family. As they recounted the success with their families, I was seeing Deming still having an impact on this country's population even though he wasn't present in my class room. I couldn't ask for better learning reinforcement.

A COMMON TEAM GOAL or FOCUS
Another training tool I've developed and used on many occasions is what I call my volleyball exercise. It too was an idea that came from my L.A. experience. It seemed to me that Deming stressed the need for any group to develop a strong identity with a well defined team goal. Eventually I developed the following tool to help students understand things that frequently keep a team from performing as well as it should. I chose volleyball because most people have played the game and, for most of us is a recreational activity.

I wanted the group to become actively involved in the exercise and enjoy the experience, but primarily I wanted them to learn that one of the important ingredients for team success was each member's need to personally identify with the team goal or purpose. I generally use the Cause and Effect or Fishbone Diagram to illustrate the different ingredients of a volleyball team. First I draw the Fishbone diagram on a board or easel leaving the head of the fish unlabeled.

Then I explain the four generally accepted parts of a team or business (methods, materials, people, machines) and I ask them to help me list all the pieces under the headings. It's at this point I write the four words across the top of the board and start asking who are the people involved in a volleyball team/or match. (They normally give you the roles which people play.) Remember the idea is to have lots of fun completing the four lists. I generally put in as one of the materials BEER (humor). Someone always has to bring the beer. The lists don't have to be too long. The idea is to get them "thinking" by giving me information about something with which they are quite familiar.

Once we've had a good time completing the lists, I ask them to look at their organization and say "Couldn't a list like this be completed on your work group or business?" They generally nod their heads "yes" or verbally agree. Then I try to pull a couple of examples out of them. Next I return to the box that is vacant. I ask them what word should go in the box. Sometimes they get the right word and sometimes they don't.

Either way, I explain to them the missing ingredient in the formula is GOAL or FOCUS. I take them back to the list of PEOPLE and ask, "Why do you suppose people play volleyball?" We make a new list of "Reasons why different people play the game." The list usually looks something like this: have fun, win games, exercise, drink beer, recognition, find a date, sun tan, boyfriend wanted her to, etc.. I label these as individual goals. You can also go into short term goals (get the serve, win the point, get a date) and longer term goals (win the league, win the title, get engaged or married) if you have the time.

Then I ask "What happens when you have a coach that is there to win games and most of the players just want to have fun and drink beer?" FRUSTRATION! I usually ask if they've ever seen little league coaches get upset and yell at the kids out of sheer frustration because "he" is there to win games and the kids are there to have fun. Another question I ask is "What happens when the best player only shows up for the games and seldom shows for practice?" DISSENSION! You can probably think of some of your own examples; these are just a couple of mine.

I now ask "What kind of goal does a Winning team have?" The usual answer is "They all want to WIN". I ask, "Would you consider that a common goal for the team?" YES again. Now it's time to ask them the difference between a Group of People and a Team. The answer I'm looking for is "a group becomes a team when the members have a Common Goal or Common Focus". They must all "identify" with the same end result. I then ask them whether they are a member of a group or a team. An answer is not required but sometimes you get one or two.

Nearing the end of the discussion, I ask "Who is usually responsible for developing the common goal?" The coach is the most frequent answer. If they are slow to answer, I ask them if the coach isn't usually considered the one responsible for developing the common group goal. They agree. I ask "in the work environment who is the coach?" The most common answers are - boss, team leader, supervisor, owner, manager, and meeting chairman. Finally I ask, "In the groups you belong to, does the leader always make it clear in everyone's mind what the primary purpose or goal is?" You usually see the heads shake from left to right or no. I stress that it is a common error that many leaders of groups make. They take it for granted that everyone is there for the same reason he or she is there. Each leader of a group must make sure its members can identify with the common purpose or goal. "Buy-in" is a critical part of a team's success formula. Member buy-in comes when each identifies with the group goal.

A good time to use this example is during a QIT's first meeting. It's a natural step to go right into developing the group's statement of purpose or mission. You want them to leave that first meeting understanding fully why they are there and what they are going to accomplish.

During the past six years, I have used these two examples successfully many times in training situations. You are more than welcome to use them just as they are, modify them to fit your situation or, better yet, develop your own. It's critical for the learning process to have examples with which your students can identify.