Where did your "quality journey" start? In this first episode of a new series on quality, Bill Bellows shares his "origin story," the evolution of his thinking, and why the Deming philosophy is unique. TRANSCRIPT 0:00:02.3 Andrew Stotz: My name is Andrew Stotz, and I'll be your host as we continue our journey in the teachings of Dr. W Edwards Deming. Today, I'm continuing my discussion with Bill Bellows, who has spent 31 years helping people apply Dr. Deming's ideas to become aware of how their thinking is holding them back from their biggest opportunities. This is a new series called Misunderstanding Quality, and the topic for today is Quality Management, what century are we in? Bill, take it away. 0:00:35.7 Bill Bellows: Thank you, Andrew. [chuckle] All right. 0:00:39.5 AS: Exciting. I'm excited to hear what you've got going on in your mind about this Misunderstanding Quality. 0:00:45.6 BB: Well, first let me say that whether you're new to quality or looking for ideas on quality and quality management, quality improvement, quality management, the aim I have in mind for this podcast series is to improve your ability to manage quality through deepening your appreciation of the Deming philosophy and how to apply it. But specifically, a focus on quality, time after time, which is where most people heard about Deming, was through Quality, Productivity and Competitive Position. For example, the title of his first book. And relative to the title, what came to mind is an anecdote shared with me by two mentors that both spent a good deal of time with Dr. Deming. The first, Gipsie Ranney, who was a professor of statistics at University of Tennessee when she met Dr. Deming, went on to become a senior statistical consultant to GM and the first president of the Deming Institute, when Dr. Deming and his family, shortly before he died, formed a nonprofit called The Deming Institute. Gipsie and I used to speak literally every day, driving to work, driving home, we... "What's up, what's up?" And we always... It was so cool. I wish I had the recordings. Anyway, she once shared that she once asked Dr. Deming, "What do they learn in your seminars? What do attendees learn in your seminars?" To which she said Dr. Deming said, "I know what I said, I don't know what they heard." [laughter] 0:02:26.0 BB: And along those lines, in the same timeframe, Bill Cooper who just turned 90, he and my wife share a birthday. Not the same year. Bill turned 90 last November and he was senior civilian at the US Navy's aircraft overhaul facility in San Diego, known as North Island. So as aircraft carriers are coming into San Diego, which is like the... I think they call it... It's like the headquarters of the Pacific Fleet. So as aircraft carriers are coming back, planes for which the repair work cannot be done on the carriers fly off to North Island. And Bill was in charge of, he said, some 5,000 civilians. And his peer on the military side, Phil Monroe was in charge of all the military people, and they got exposed to Dr. Deming's work in the early '80s, went off, left there, became Deming consultants. Anyway, Bill said he once asked Dr. Demings, says, "What percent of the attendees of your seminars walk away really understanding what you said?" And he said... Bill said Dr. Deming said, "A small percentage." [laughter] 0:03:44.0 BB: And so what I had in mind in this series is... One is, what makes it hard to understand what Dr. Deming is talking about? And so for the listeners, what I'm hoping we can help you understand, what might be some invisible challenges that you're having in your organizations trying to explain this to others. So maybe you think your understanding is pretty good, but like Dr. Deming, maybe people are having a hard time understanding what you're saying. And I know what it's like to be in a room, presenting to people. And I had that same experience. I had one Rocketdyne executive... Rocketdyne was sold a few times. Every time it got sold, our Deming transformation efforts got set back a few years. So when the latest management team came in six, seven years ago, I met with one of the very top people, was explaining... Trying to explain to him for the first time what we had accomplished with some, I thought, absolutely amazing work by managing variation as a system. And he said something like, "So are people rejecting what you're saying?" And I said, "No, that's not it." He says, "So they're accepting what you're saying?" I said, "Well... " he said, "What's the problem?" I said, "What they accepted is not what I said." [laughter] 0:05:19.5 BB: I said, we're not in disagreement, but what they think they heard is... And that's when I found that I've experienced that. So anyway, so I wanted to get some background. So my first exposure to quality circles, and this is like... So I was living in this parallel universe, a heat transfer engineer working on rocket engines, and Quality comes into the ...
