A Leadership Playbook: An Insider's View of Deming's World (Part 3)

Great leaders know there’s no one-size-fits-all formula. In this episode, Bill Scherkenbach and Andrew Stotz discuss practical lessons on how to connect with people on physical, logical, and emotional levels to truly get things done. Discover why balancing “me” and “we” is the secret to lasting results—and why empathy might be your most powerful leadership tool. Tune in now and start rewriting your own leadership playbook. (You can view the slides from the podcast here.) TRANSCRIPT 0:00:02.1 Andrew Stotz: My name is Andrew Stotz, and I'll be your host as we dive deeper into the teachings of Dr. W. Edwards Deming. Today, I'm continuing my discussion with Bill Scherkenbach, a dedicated protégé of Dr. Deming since 1972. Bill met with Dr. Deming more than a thousand times and later led statistical methods and process improvements at Ford and GM at Deming's recommendation. He authored The Deming Route to Quality and Productivity at Deming's behest, and at 79, still champions his mentor's message, "learn, have fun, and make a difference." And the episode today is Getting Things Done. Bill, take it away. 0:00:41.5 Bill Scherkenbach: Okay, Andrew. We will get 'er done today. The reason I put that on there is that in many of his seminars, Deming said that, "I am not a businessman and not trying to be one." But you need to think about these things. And his approach really was to improving organizations was to put people who he thought were masters of his teachings into organizations, and they would be there full time to facilitate the transformation when he wasn't there, such as Ford and GM and a few other companies. There were a few of us who he trusted to be able to be there to get things done. And I'm reminded of the philosopher, the Asian, Chinese philosopher, Mencius, and I'll read it there. It says, "Don't suspect that the king lacks wisdom. Even in the cases of things that grow most easily in the world, they would never grow up if they were exposed to sunshine for one day and then to cold for 10 days. And it's seldom that I have an audience with the king. And when I leave others who exposed him to cold arrive, even if what I say to him is taking root, what good does it do?" 0:02:35.7 Bill Scherkenbach: And quite honestly, that's the lament of every consultant trying to get stuff done in today's world, in Western style management. And so one of the things in this slide, the framework for getting things done, for having fun learning and making a difference, is one of the two, I think, major contributions I do say that I've made to the profession of quality. And that is using this Venn diagram to be able to show that even though other people have used other terms for physical, logical, and emotional, that there usually have been holy wars being fought by people who say, "Well, emotional is better. That's how you get stuff done." And other people saying logic and other people saying physical. And in fact, I think in the last time we spoke, the three major gurus of quality were those ships sailing in the night. Dr. Deming was the epitome of logical thinking, whereas Phil Crosby was looking for the wine and cheese parties and the emotional sell part of it. And Joe Duran was looking at physical, how are you going to organize to get stuff done? Now, they all had their followers who were pretty much on those frequencies, and they reached people in other frequencies. I came up with this idea for the Venn diagram to show no hierarchy, I guess back in 1987, something like that. 0:04:49.3 Andrew Stotz: And for the listeners out there, we're looking at a diagram that shows one circle that says physical, that's interlocked with another one that says logical, and then there's a third, a Venn diagram, that third is emotional. And so those are the three pillars that Bill's talking about. All right, keep going, because you got stuff in the middle too, which is interesting. 0:05:16.1 Bill Scherkenbach: And the thing is that I based it primarily at the time in the mid-60s, there was a theory of brain structure called the triune brain. Now, and it was the limbic system, the neocortex, and the R-complex. And pretty much followed the logical, emotional, physical words that I'm using. Now, our understanding of the brain in the decades up through now, it's a little bit more complicated than that. But physical, logical, and emotional is in all of us. In our body, I mean, the latest looks at neural connections extend to your gut. And nerves are just about everywhere and connected, and that the way the brain works is still not even fully, not begun to be fully understood. Having said that, in order to get stuff done, this Venn diagram shows very, very simply that the intersection of physical and logical, I put as science. It's the logical explanation of physical phenomenon. And the intersection of logical and emotional is psychology, logic of the soul. And the intersection of emotional and physical is art....