Episode Details

In part 5 of this series, David and Andrew discuss the pitfalls of managers acting as judges versus the benefits of acting as a coach. They explore the history of traditional management practices, and how Dr. Deming's philosophy creates happier, healthier, and more productive workplaces.

TRANSCRIPT

0:00:02.2 Andrew Stotz: My name is Andrew Stotz, and I'll be your host as we continue our journey into the teachings of Dr. W. Edwards Deming. Today, I'm continuing my discussion with David P. Langford, who has devoted his life to applying Dr. Deming's philosophy to education and he offers us his practical advice for implementation. The topic for today is: management through coaching and counseling. And as a reminder, we are reviewing the role of a manager of people in The New Economics that Dr. Deming wrote. And if you are in the third edition, this is on page 86, if you're in the second edition, this is on page 125. Now we've been through steps or the list, let's say, all the way up to number four was our last one, and now we're into number five. And what Dr. Deming says pretty short to the point, and that is the new manager, a transformed manager is a coach. He is coach and counsel, not a judge. David, take it away.

0:01:07.7 David Langford: Okay, thank you, Andrew. Yeah, so this seems like a pretty short point and pretty obvious on the surface, but the more you get into it, the more you start to really think about, Well, how do you do that on a daily basis? And once again, I'm applying all this to the field of education, so when we're talking about the management of people, we're talking about teachers, we're talking about principles, professors, we're talking about administrators, so we're not... It's not just corporate thinking that we're after here. So what does that mean managing through your, somebody's a coach and counselor? Well, why, I had to always think about Why did Deming say this? Why did he make that as a point? Well, through his lifetime, 80 years in applied management, he constantly saw people that were, sometimes is called Boss management. It's: either my way or the highway management. There were the years during World War II where there's military management, and if you didn't follow orders, you could be court marshaled, or shot or whatever. And so really after World War II, all those people in the military came back, and people who had been in the service went right back into management positions in corporations, and so what philosophy are they bringing back with them. Well, they're bringing back military management.

0:02:54.1 DL: It's my way or the highway kind of thinking. And all these phrases that have bounced around for the last 50, 60 years, you're not getting paid to think, you're getting paid to do. Well, Deming was just the opposite. He was always trying to get people to think. In the previous point, we spent quite a bit of time talking about creating training and learning for people, and on the job, all kinds of training and learning, not just things that are gonna help you with your job because you wanted people to think. And why. Why would he want people to think? Because that's where creativity comes from. You get everybody in an organization and you have a Thinking Organization going on, you've really got something fantastic happening.

0:03:48.8 DL: If you don't have that and you got boss management and everybody's just waiting around for the boss to tell them what to do, you're not gonna get creativity, you're not gonna get new thoughts. In fact, creativity gets shut down in a situation like that. I'll never forget, a friend of mine talked about working in an auto plant in California during the 1960s, and his job was to put in screws. And as the cars came by, he'd put in these screws and he kept noticing tha