The Deming Library

This is the complete and authoritative presentation of the Deming philosophy of continual improvement and cooperation in video with teaching guides. Dr. Deming collaborated with producer Clare Crawford-Mason and writer/narrator Lloyd Dobyns for more than eight years to produce an account of his system of managing for continual improvement, including the 14 Points, his beliefs about the value of cooperation—all of areintegrated in his system of profound knowledge. Dr. Deming developed these ideas, firmly believing that managers and leaders must understand something of each of the following components of profound knowledge:

o a theory of a system

o the principle of variation

o the theory of knowledge and

o the psychology of people in organizations undergoing change

Managers and leaders don’t have to become expert in these subjects but they need to understand that the elements of profound knowledge interact and that their task is to bear this in mind while learning to manage the organization as a system.

Your organization may employ any system of management. Your understanding of the organization and how to improve both your performance and what you produce as an end product or service can only be improved by putting the Deming Management Library to use. The procedure is simple: Regularly re-visit source ideas and ask questions.

These source ideas are found in The Deming Management Library and Understanding Systems with Russell Ackoff plus a good reading list.

The practice? Schedule a "Brown Bag" session periodically at which a department, office group, or team meet, view one video and then ask, "What is he saying? How does this apply to us?" Do this weekly and you will be pleased after a few months at the positive changes in thinking and outlook that take place among the participants. And you may begin to explore particular management issues or topics by referring to the Deming Management Library index and using it to find particular discussions in the videos.