What Deming & Ishikawa taught us that still rings true
When things go wrong, often we look for the individual responsible, which makes me return to the work of W. Edwards Deming. Deming encouraged us to ask a different question: "What is it about the system that produced this outcome?"
Another of Deming's core messages was that quality is not something we inspect into a product or service at the end of a process. Quality is something we build into the system from the start.
Amongst Deming’s 14 points he refers to driving out fear, involving everyone in the organisation to achieve transformation, improving constancy of purpose and continuously improving. All still applicable today.
His ideas transformed manufacturing and helped shape some of the world's most successful organisations. What strikes me most is how relevant his thinking remains, regardless of industry, technology, or role.
This is where another quality pioneer, Kaoru Ishikawa, offers valuable insight. His famous Fishbone Diagram helps teams move beyond symptoms to understand causes and effects.
Instead of stopping at "the customer details are incorrect" or " response time exceeded the threshold", the Fishbone approach encourages us to investigate contributing factors and get to the root causes of a problem. such as:
- People
- Processes
- Technology and tools
- Data and information
- Environment and culture
- Policies and procedures.
The goal is not to assign blame. The goal is to understand the system.
I see this often in the world of analytics and data governance. When data quality is poor, the problem is seldom the person entering the information. More often, the issue lies in unclear processes, inconsistent definitions, inadequate training, or systems that make it difficult to do the right thing.
The same can be said of quality in general.
It is not about blame. It is not about catching people out. Quality is not about perfection Quality is about learning. It is about understanding how work really happens, listening to those closest to the process, and making small improvements that accumulate over time.
This World Quality Week, perhaps the most important question we can ask is not:
"Who made the mistake?"
But rather:
"What can we learn, and how can we improve?"
One way to start is to gather your team around an Ishikawa diagram and explore the causes behind a problem before rushing to action.
Better systems create better outcomes, and better outcomes create trust.
