How the Ideas of a 1950s Statistician Taught me more about Management than Business School

While he may have a highly coveted award named after him in Japan (the Deming Prize), W. Edwards Deming is largely unknown in US management circles. As a statistician with a PhD from Yale, Deming focused on using statistics to not only provide metrics on which to measure performance but to create a culture of quality in an organization. His key principles, called the 14 Points of Management are at once deceptively simple and yet so elusive to many businesses.

In this session, we will perform Deming’s Red Bead Experiment where he shows that in most cases, employees have little to no control to improve upon the metrics on which they are graded. This will be followed by an overview of each of the 14 Points, examples of them in real-world action, and a discussion of how they can be implemented in any organization.

This session is great for managers, C-suite executives, or anyone who is interested in learning leadership skills that aren’t covered (and often contradict what is taught) in business school.

About the presenter - She is the co-founder and principal of CASK Communications, marketing director for Drupal GovCon, and media creation and technology instructor at Columbus State Community College. In her free-time, she likes to take naps.