Deming: 14 Principles of Management

“Often it seems that the essence of management in the West is to extract ideas from the heads of people at the top of the organisation and place them in the hands of people at the bottom.  Konosuke Matsushita believed that this was the primary reason the West would never catch up with Japan.” Peter Senge

Following the Second World War, W Edwards Deming went with General McArthur to help reconstruct the Japanese economy.  As early as the 1950s, he articulated 14 principles to guide the leaders of this transformation. Whilst you might expect an engineer to focus on process, his 14 principles are solely concerned with people: creating clarity of purpose; being consistent leaders; involving the front-line and supporting them in the work of transformation; and driving out short termism and draconian management.

In 14 principles, Deming sets out how to create a performing culture.  And in doing so makes clear that the role of modern management is not to control but to serve. These principles are as relevant to health and social care today as they were to Japanese industry in the 1950s.

1. Create constancy of purpose toward improvement of the service, with the aim to become competitive and stay in business, and to provide jobs.

2. Adopt the new philosophy. Western management must awaken to the challenge, must learn their responsibilities, and take on leadership for change.

3. Cease dependence on inspection to achieve quality. Eliminate the need for inspection on a mass basis by building quality into the product in the first place.

4. End the practice of awarding business on the basis of price tag. Instead, minimize total cost. Move toward a single supplier for any one item, on a long-term relationship of loyalty and trust.

5. Improve constantly and forever the system of production and service, to improve quality and productivity, and thus constantly decrease costs.

6. Institute training on the Job. Train workers formally and correctly, rather than by word of mouth.

7. Institute leadership. The aim of supervision should be to help people to do a better job. Supervision of management is in need of overhaul, as well as supervision of front-line staff.

8. Drive out fear, so that everyone may work effectively for the company.

9. Break down barriers between departments. People in different areas must work as a team to foresee problems that may be encountered in delivering the service.

10. Eliminate slogans, exhortations, and targets for staff.  Such exhortations only create adversarial relationships, as the bulk of the causes of low quality and low productivity belong to the system and thus lie beyond the power of the work force.

11. Remove barriers that rob the hourly worker of his right to pride of workmanship. The responsibility of supervisors must be changed from sheer numbers to quality.

12. Remove barriers that rob people in management and in engineering of their right to pride of workmanship. This means, among other things, abolishment of the annual or merit rating and of management by objective.

13. Institute a vigorous program of education and self-improvement.

14. Put everybody in the company to work to accomplish the transformation. The transformation is everybody’s job.