Worse Than a Thief: Misunderstanding Quality (Part 9)

Join Bill Bellows and Andrew Stotz as they discuss what actions (or inactions) make us worse than thieves and how that relates to expiration dates, and acceptability vs desirability. Plus, stories about job swapping, Achieving Competitive Excellence, and birthdays.

TRANSCRIPT

0:00:02.3 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 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. Today is Episode 9, and it's entitled "Worse Than a Thief." Bill, take it away.

 

0:00:27.2 Bill Bellows: Welcome, Andrew. I haven't seen you in a while, and great to be back.

 

0:00:29.1 AS: It's been a while.

 

0:00:32.0 BB: Here we are. Episode 9 already. Gosh, [chuckle] time flies when we're having fun. First, let me say a shout out to people who are reaching out to me on LinkedIn. I spoke with another one of them this afternoon. It's always exciting to connect with them. And then I ideally connect in a regular basis and help them as best I can, and learn from them as best I can.

 

0:01:03.0 AS: Yep.

 

0:01:03.2 BB: So, for those who are thinking about it, they keep hearing you say, "Hey, you know how to reach Bill? Find him on LinkedIn." So, a reminder for those who are waiting for a nudge, here's a nudge. So, "Worse than a thief" is an expression that Dr. Taguchi used when he say, Andrew, "Don't be worse than a thief." And we'll get to that, but let me just give our audience some context on that.

 

0:01:37.8 AS: Yep.

 

0:01:39.0 BB: Dr. Taguchi would say... And actually, I don't know if Dr. Taguchi explained it. Someone explained it to me this way. He said a thief could be someone who steals your wallet, finds $20; which means they're up 20, you're down 20; which people refer to as "zero sum gain." Right? So, the thief's gain is my loss, zero sum. What could be worse than that? Well, "worse than a thief" would be a situation where what someone gains is nothing compared to what I lose. A simple example is, [chuckle] I'm not the only one who does this, but if I'm going to the supermarket and I get out of the car and I see a nail in the parking lot or a piece of glass in the parking lot on my way in. So, I'm not talking about walking all around the parking lot. I'm talking about if on my way into the store I see a nail, something that could puncture a foot, a tire, and I spend a few seconds to pick it up, throw it in the trash can right by the door, then my theory is the reason I do that, the reason others do that, is the belief that that little bit of time that I am spending doing that could potentially save someone far more than the few seconds it took me.

 

0:03:20.9 BB: Well, "worse than a thief" would be, I see that broken bottle, let's say a bunch of shards of glass. And having worked at my father's gas station, I've seen... A nail on a tire is one thing. Nail creates a puncture. A piece of glass in a tire creates a fracture. A piece of glass can destroy a tire 'cause you get a crack and it spreads, and that's hard to repair. A puncture with a nail, yeah, it's inconvenient, but that doesn't destroy the tire. So, I'm overly sensitive when I see pieces of glass in a parking lot, that that could ruin a tire.

 

0:04:04.8 AS: And ruin a day.

 

0:04:06.2 BB: Ruin a day, oh yeah. And so the idea is that for someone to not take the time, and the time they save cost you more than they saved, that's worse than a thief.

 

0:04:19.8 AS: Right.

 

0:04:20.0 BB: So, if I meet a set of requirements, leave the bowling ball in the doorway, deliver minimally, but in the world of acceptability, what do we call that, Andrew? It's good.

 

0:04:35.3 AS: It's good.

 

0:04:36.0 BB: Right? It's good. It's just within requirements, but good.

 

0:04:41.8 AS: It's not beyond looking good.

 

0:04:43.9 BB: And forget about beyond looking good; this is looking good. So, I leave the bowling ball in the doorway. I deliver to you the absolute minimum, which is still good. So, your response to that, Andrew, is, "Thank you, Bill." [chuckle]

 

0:05:00.0 AS: Yeah.

 

0:05:00.1 BB: And I'm not saying you know what I did, but let's say the situation where I am unaware of the loss function. I'm unaware that what I'm doing is make making your life worse.

 

0:05:12.2 AS: Right.

 

0:05:13.3 BB: But the idea is that my shortcut to deliver the D minus; D minus, minus, minus, minus, minus. 'Cause that's still not an F. What Taguchi is talking about is that the amount of resources I save, may be a fraction of what it cost you in terms of extra effort to use it. So, my savings of an hour, a minute, a second causing you far more than I saved, is worse than a thief. But in the world of acceptability, there is no such thing. In the world of acceptability, a little bit within requirements on the low side, a little bit within requirements on the high side, it's all the same. Again, there may be a situation where if you're putting a shelf on a piece of wood on a wall as a shelf and it's a little bit longer, a little bit long on either side, that may not have an impact; may not be touching anything on either side. It doesn't have to fit in.

 

0:06:25.9 BB: Now, this past weekend, our son and I were installing a new floor at our daughter's condo, and we wanted the pieces to fit in-between other pieces and this laminate floor which is a [chuckle] lot of work. Our son is turning into quite the artist when it comes to woodworking and things. But it's very precise getting things just right, just right, just right. And that attention to detail, that attention to making sure the gaps are just right, minding the gap and not the part. And there were pieces of this floor that he was trying to install. And it was driving him nuts, and finally... He's trying to figure it out and he finally figured it out what was going on. 'Cause he wanted that floor and the spacing between not just to meet requirements [chuckle] not that our daughter gave him and set the requirement, but he wanted the floor in those gaps to be invisible. He wanted things to... Right? He had a higher level, a higher standard.

 

0:07:25.3 BB: Now, this is the same kid who when he was 13 left the bowling ball in the doorway. But I would've done that. You would've done that. So, anyway, that's the difference between... Another reminder of, one, the difference between acceptability and desirability. But to add to this idea of "worse than a thief," embedded in the concept of desirability is not to be worse than a thief, is to understand the consequences of your action on others, and the amount of time and your decision on how you deliver it and how you meet the requirements. The idea is that, the less time you take in order to save at your end might be causing the person downstream in your organization more than you're saving.

 

0:08:22.8 AS: In other words, something small, you could adjust something small that would have a huge impact down the line, and you just didn't... You don't know about it.

 

0:08:32.2 BB: Again, that's why I go back to the nail in the parking lot. To not pick up the nail could cause someone so much more than the few seconds you didn't spend. But again, that could be...

 

[overlapping conversation]

 

0:08:44.0 AS: And one of the things that makes it easier or better for a working environment is you know your downstream.

 

0:08:51.8 BB: Yes.

 

0:08:51.8 AS: When you're walking in the parking lot, you don't know your downstream; it's just anybody generally, and hopefully I've stopped something from happening here, but you're never gonna know and all that. But with a business, you know your downstream, you know your upstream, and that communication can produce a really, really exciting result because you can see it and feel it.

 

0:09:11.8 BB: Well, and thank you for bringing that up, because I've got notes from... Since the last time we met, I keep a file for the next sessions we're gonna do. And so as things, ideas come up from people that I'm meeting on LinkedIn or elsewhere, then I, "Oh, let me throw that in." And so I throw it into a Word file for the next time. And so somewhere, I can't remember who, but since the last time we spoke, someone shared with me... Hold on, let me find it here. Okay. In their organization, they do staff rotation. They move people around in their organization. And the question had to do with, "Isn't that what Dr. Deming would promote? Is having people move around the organization?" And I said... Hold on, I gotta sneeze. I said, "Well, if I am the person that makes the parts that you have to assemble, and I make them just within requirements unaware of the downstream impact... " I don't know where they are within the requirements, let's say.

 

0:10:30.0 BB: All I know is that they're acceptable. I machine it, I measure it, the inspection says it's good, I don't know where within it's good. I don't know. So, I'm unaware. All I know is that it met the requirements. And I hand off to you on a regular basis, and then the boss comes along and says, "Bill, I wanna have you go do Andrew's job." So, now, I'm on the receiving end. And maybe you are upstream doing what I used to do. And you are likewise unaware that... You don't know that you're delivering acceptability. All you know is all the parts you deliver are good. You're trained the same way I'm trained, I'm doing your job. Does that change anything? [chuckle] If I take on your job and let's say, banging it together, whereas the week before you were banging it together, does that rotation create the conversation?

 

0:11:27.2 AS: So, you're saying rotation for the sake of rotation is not necessarily valuable if in fact, what could be more value is just the two of us sitting down and saying, "So what is it that you're doing with yours and what do you need?" and maybe visiting the other side or something like that.

 

0:11:44.9 BB: My point is, until the thought occurs to either one of us on the distinction between acceptable and desirable, neither one of us is the wiser as to why we do what we do. So, having people move around the organization and take on different roles, absent an understanding of this contrast, absent an understanding of what Dr. Deming is talking about, which includes these distinctions, that's not gonna do anything.

 

0:12:16.0 AS: Right.

 

0:12:16.8 BB: I would say it's a nice idea, and you hear about that all the time about oh the CEO's gonna go work at the front desk. But if the CEO goes to the front desk, again, unless he or she has a sense of what could be, that things could be smoother than what they are because of where they've worked before and it's so much smoother over there, that could lead to why at the Atlanta office does it take so much longer than the LA office. Now I'm beginning to wonder what might be causing that difference. But if I just take on your job for the first time, or if you and I every other week change jobs. So, I'm doing your job, we are both doing assembly, we're both making the parts. Absent an understanding of the contrast between a Deming environment or a non-Deming environment, which would include an appreciation of what Dr. Deming would call the System of Profound Knowledge and the elements of psychology and systems and variation, the theory of knowledge, just not enough. Insufficient. Nice idea. But it's when at Rocketdyne we would call "reforming."

 

0:13:39.0 BB: And we started 'cause Russ... Dr. Deming talks about transformation, and Russ talks about reforming. And so I started thinking, "How would I explain what... " I just thought it was too... My interpretation of what Dr. Deming is saying of the individual transform will begin to see things differently, okay. My interpretation is, I begin to hear things differently, I begin to hear the contrast between somebody referring to their son as "their son" versus "our son," my idea versus our idea; I start paying attention to pronouns, so I start hearing things differently; I start to think about, see things as a system a little... I become more aware, visually more aware.

 

0:14:43.9 BB: And to me, another aspect I think about relative to transformation is that, if I'm the professor and you're the student in a class, or in any situation, I don't see... I think about how I've contributed to whatever it is you're doing. I have somehow created the headache that you're experiencing. If I'm upstream of you in the organization, whether that's me delivering a report or a tool, or I'm the professor delivering the lecture, I began to realize that your issues I've created, and I begin to see things as a... I begin to see that I am part of the issue, Part of the solution, part of the problem. When I explained to students this, I began to realize as a professor that I am not an observer of your learning, asking "How did you do on the exam?" I am a participant in your learning, saying "How did we do in the lecture?" And to me, that's all part of this transformation.

 

0:15:53.0 BB: Now, the other word, "reform," which is associated with things I've heard from Russ. He talks about... Yeah, I'll just pause there. But I started thinking, well, Deming's talking about how I see the world, how I begin to see relationships differently, think about variation differently. That's a personal transformation. Reforming, and others began to explain to people at Rocketdyne and I do with clients and students is, reforming is when you and I swap jobs. Reforming is when I look at the process and get rid of a few steps. Reforming is changing titles. Reforming is painting something, [chuckle] changing the color. I think I shared, maybe in the first podcast series, I was doing a multi-day, one-on-one seminar with a pediatrician in Kazakhstan, who came to London to meet me and a bunch of other friends to learn more about Dr. Deming's work. And the entire thing was done through a translator.

 

0:17:07.1 BB: And so I would ask a question in English, it would be translated to Russian then back to me in English. And so at some point, I said to Ivan Klimenko, a wonderful, wonderful guy. I said, "Ivan," I said [chuckle] to Yuri, the translator, I said, "Ask Ivan, what's the fastest way for a Red Pen Company, a non-Deming company, a "Me" organization, to become a Blue Pen Company, otherwise known as a Deming company or "We" organization." And these are terms that we talked about in the first series; I don't think in this series. But, anyway, I said, "So what's the fastest way for a non-Deming company to become a Deming company? A Red Pen Company to become a Blue Pen Company?"

 

0:17:44.9 BB: And so he asked, and I'm listening to the translation. And he says, "Okay, I give up." I said, "Spray paint." [chuckle] And that's what reforming is: Getting out the red spray paint, having things become neat, clean, and organized, and you're just going through the motions. There's no change of state. And so, "I do your job, you do my job," that's not sufficient. But get us to think about the contrast of a Deming and a non-Deming organization, then you and I changing roles could be enormously beneficial as I begin to understand what it's like to be on the receiving end. Now, we're talking. And I think I mentioned in a previous podcast, I had a woman attend one of the classes I did at Rocketdyne, and she said, "Bill, in our organization, we have compassion for one another." It's the same thing. It's not sufficient. And that's me saying, "Andrew, I feel really bad. I lost a lot of sleep last night thinking about how much time you spend banging together all those parts that I give you. And if there was anything I could do to make things better, I would love to help you. But at the end of the day, Andrew, all the parts I gave you are good, right? I don't give you bad stuff, right? Have I ever given you a defective part, Andrew?"

 

0:19:12.0 AS: Nope.

 

0:19:13.1 BB: "So, everything's good, right? Everything's good that I give you? Well, then, if I could help you, but I don't know what else to do. Everything I give you is good. So, it must be on your end." [laughter]

 

[overlapping conversation]

 

0:19:24.1 AS: And I'm busy. Yeah.

 

0:19:26.6 BB: Must be on you. And that's what I'm talking about. Now, if I understand that I'm contributing to your headache, I'm contributing to the trouble you're having with an example, now I'm inspired; now I understand there's something on me. [chuckle] But, short of that, nice idea, it's not helping.

 

0:19:50.0 BB: [laughter] So, the story I wanted to share before we're talking about this role-changing. Again, role-changing by itself, nah, not sufficient. So, see if this sounds familiar. It has to do with acceptability. I'm pretty certain it's part of the first series. I wanna make sure it's part of the second series. So, I was in a seminar at Rocketdyne on something to do with quality. And I think United Technologies had purchased Rocketdyne. They were bringing to us their new quality management system. Not just any quality management system, Andrew. This was called ACE, A-C-E. And, when we first learned about this, I remember being in a room when their United Technologies, ACE experts started to explain it. And some of my colleagues said, "Well, what is ACE?" They said, "Well, it's Achieving Competitive Excellence." "Well, what is it? What is it, 'competitive... '"

 

0:20:52.2 AS: It sounds like you wanna put that up on the wall as a slogan.

 

0:20:56.0 BB: It was a slogan, "Achieving Competitive Excellence." And people says, "Well, what is it?" I said, "Well, it's Lean Six Sigma." Well, so why do you call it ACE? Well, our arch rivals, General Electric. they call it Lean Six Sigma. We ain't gonna call it Lean Six Sigma. So, we're calling it ACE, A-C-E, Achieving Competitive Excellence. But it's the same thing as Lean Six Sigma. [chuckle] And so we had all this mandatory ACE training that we would all sit through and pray that the rosters were never lost, were never lost so we wouldn't have to take the training again. So, in the training, there was a discussion of, how does the environment impact quality? And I don't know how it came up, but similar, there's a conversation about the environment could affect quality. And, so when that was raised, I think it was a question that came up.

 

0:21:56.9 BB: How does the environment affect quality? The physical environment: How hot it is, how cold it is. So, one of the attendees says, "I've got an example." He says, "I worked for a Boeing supplier," and it might have been, "I worked for Boeing in Australia." I know he said he worked in Australia. They made parts, big parts, very tall parts like a 15, 20... Very long section. And I think he said it had to do with the tails, part of the tail for Boeing airplane. [chuckle] He says, "When we would measure it," he said, "we knew that if we took the measurement first thing in the morning before the sun came up and it started to get hot, then there's a good chance that the length would meet requirements. And, we knew that once that part saw the heat of the sun and expanded, then it wouldn't meet requirements. So, we measured it first thing in the morning, [laughter] and that's an example of how the environment affects quality." And, my first thought when I heard that was, "You can't make that story up, that I will keep measuring it until it meets requirements." That, Andrew, is me shipping acceptability. Do I care at all about how that part is used, Andrew? [chuckle]

 

0:23:18.7 AS: Nope.

 

0:23:19.9 BB: Do I know how that part is installed? Am I watching you install it and go through all, you know, hammer it? Nope. No. Again, even if I did, would I think twice that I measured it before the sun came up and that might be causing the issue? No, that still would not occur to me. But the other thing I wanted to bring up on this, on the topic of ACE, remember what ACE stands for?

 

0:23:46.0 AS: Achieving Competitive...

 

0:23:50.0 BB: Excellence.

 

0:23:50.3 AS: Excellence.

 

0:23:51.8 BB: So, Rocketdyne was owned by United Technologies of Pratt and Whitney, division of West Palm Beach, for 10 years or so? 10 long years. ACE, ACE, ACE, ACE, ACE. So, I kept thinking, [chuckle] I said to some of my Deming colleagues, "There's gotta be another acronym which is A-C-E." Achieving Competitive... What? What might be another E word? 'Cause it's not... Instead of ACE, Achieving Competitive Excellence, I kept thinking of this, what might be another way of what this is really all about? And it dawned me. The embarrassment is how long it took me to come up with what ACE translated to. And it was "Achieving Compliance Excellence." [chuckle]

 

0:24:42.9 AS: Excellent.

 

0:24:45.0 BB: Does it meet requirements? Yes. And so what is compliance excellence? It gets us back to acceptability. So, traditional quality compliance. But then while I was on the thought of Achieving Compliance Excellence, and then, well, there's a place for meeting requirements. There's a place for compliance excellence. I'm not throwing it out the window. I would say, if I ask you, Andrew, how far it is to the closest airport and you say 42 miles, 42 kilometers, or you say it takes an hour, then embedded in that model is "A minute is a minute, an hour is an hour, a mile is a mile, and all the miles are the same." Well, maybe they aren't. Maybe they aren't. Maybe I'm walking that distance, and I'm going uphill and downhill. Maybe I'm driving that distance. And those changes in elevation don't matter as much. So, then, what I thought was, there's Achieving Compliance Excellence that's acceptability, and then there's Achieving Contextual Excellence, which is my understanding of the context.

 

0:25:56.7 BB: And given my understanding of the context, if you say to me, "How far is it to the nearest airport?" I say, "Well, tell me more about the context of your question. Are you driving there? Are you riding your bike there? Are you walking there?" 'Cause then I'm realizing that every mile with Compliance Excellence, I just treat it as "a mile is a mile is a mile." They're all interchangeable, they're all the same. With Contextual Excellence, the context matters. And I say to you, "That's a... I mean, 42 miles, but boy, every mile is... They're brutal." And so then just the idea that context matters, that the understanding of a system matters. All right. So, next thing I wanna get to, and we've talked about this before but we never got it in, but I wanna provide, I really... Well, what I think is a neat example. [laughter] Okay. Calm down, Bill. [laughter]

 

0:26:54.8 AS: Yeah. You're excited about it.

 

0:26:57.0 BB: All right.

 

0:26:57.1 AS: So, about your idea... [chuckle]

 

0:27:00.2 BB: All right. So, again, in this spirit, my aim in conversation with you is to provide insights to people trying to bring these ideas to their organization. They're either trying to improve their own understanding, looking for better ways to explain it to others. And towards that end, here is a keeper. And for those who try this, if you have trouble, get back to me. Let me know how it goes. Here's the scenario I give people, and I've done this many, many times. What I used to do is give everyone in the room a clear transparency. That's when you had overhead projectors. [chuckle] 'Cause people say, "What is a transparency? What is an overhead projector?"

 

[overlapping conversation]

 

0:27:45.0 AS: Yeah exactly.

 

0:27:46.8 BB: It's a clear piece of plastic, like the size of a sheet of paper. And on that sheet, on that piece of plastic was a vertical line and a horizontal line. I could call it set a set of axes, X-Y axis. And the vertical axis I called "flavor." And the horizontal axis, I called "time." And, so everyone, when they would walk into a seminar, would get a clear transparency. I give them a pen to write on this transparency. And I'd say to them, "Here's what I want you to imagine. The horizontal axis is time. The vertical axis is flavor." And I would hold up a can of soda and I'd say, "Imagine. Imagine, inside this can, imagine before the lid is put on, soda is added to this can," any kind of soda. Right? "Imagine soda's in the can. Imagine in the can is a probe, a flavor meter. And the flavor meter is connected to the pen in your hand." And what that... Wirelessly, Andrew. So, there's this probe that goes into the soda, into the can. It is, let's say, with Bluetooth technology connected to the pen in your hand, such that you have the ability with this magic pen to trace out what the flavor of the soda in the can is at any point in time.

 

0:29:31.0 BB: And so I would put on the vertical axis, right, the Y axis, I would put a little tick mark, maybe three quarters of the way up the vertical axis. And so everyone started at that tick mark. And I would say, "Okay, get your pen ready, get it on the tick mark. This flavor meter is inside the can. It's transmitting to your hand and the pen the flavor of Pepsi. If I was to seal this can, put the lid on it, and I say, 'Now the device is activated.' As soon as I put the lid on the can, the pen is activated and your hand starts to trace out what is the flavor of the soda doing over time." And I would say, "If you think the flavor gets better, then you have a curve going up. If you think the flavor of the soda's getting worse, then it goes down. If you think it stays the same, it just goes across."

 

0:30:37.1 BB: And I would just say, "What I want each of you to do, as soon as that can is sealed, I want you to imagine what the flavor of Pepsi, Coke, whatever it is, I want you to... " The question is, "What do you think the flavor of soda is doing in a sealed can over time?" And I would say, "Don't ask any questions. Just do that." Now, most of the people just take that and they just draw something. They might draw something flat going across. [chuckle] Now and then somebody would say, [chuckle] "Is the can in a refrigerator?" [chuckle] And my response is, "Don't complicate this."

 

[laughter]

 

0:31:26.1 BB: So, I just throw that out. Most people just take that and just trace something out. And for the one who says, "Is it refrigerated? What's the timescale? Is the horizontal axis years or minutes?" I'd say, "Don't complicate it." [chuckle]

 

0:31:46.8 AS: "And don't ask questions."

 

0:31:48.9 BB: "And don't ask... " But you can bring me over and I'll ask you a question. You can ask your questions, I would just say, "Don't complicate it." So, what do we do? Everyone gets a few minutes, they draw it. I take all those transparencies that you can see through, and I put them on top of one another. And I can now hold them up to the room and people can see what I'm holding up. They can see all the different curves.

 

0:32:17.0 AS: Right.

 

0:32:18.0 BB: 'Cause they all start at the same point. And then I would say to the audience, "What do they all have in common?" Well, they all start at the same point. "What else do they have in common? What do they all have in common?" And people are like, "I don't know." Some of them are flat. They go across, the flavor doesn't change. Most of them think it goes down at some rate.

 

0:32:43.4 AS: Yep.

 

0:32:45.0 BB: Either concave down or convex down. Now and then, somebody will say it goes up and up and up; might go up and then down. But most people think it goes down over time. That's the leading answer. The second leading answer is it's constant. Up and down, rarely. So, I've done that. I've had people do that. I used to have a stack of 500 of transparencies. I used to save them and just go through them. I've done it, let's say in round numbers, 1,500 to 2,000 people. So, all the curves start at that tick mark in the 99.9999% of them either go down or go across. What's cool is, all those curves are smooth. Meaning, very smoothly up, very smoothly across, very smoothly down. Mathematically, that's called a "continuous function." And what I explained to them is, if I draw a vertical line halfway across the horizontal axis, and I look at every one of those curves, because the curves are smooth, if I draw a vertical line and how each curve, your profile and all the others go across that line, immediately to the left and immediately to the right, it's the same value because the curve is smooth.

 

0:34:28.3 BB: But I don't ask them to draw a smooth curve. I just say, "What do you think the flavor does over time?" They always, with three exceptions, draw a smooth curve. And so when I ask them what do they have in common, you get, "They start at the same point." Nope, that's not it. I don't know if anyone's ever articulated, "They're all continuous functions." Very rarely. So, then I explained, "They're all continuous functions. But I didn't ask you to draw a continuous function." Well, when I point out to them that three times, three times, Andrew, out of nearly 2,000, somebody drew a curve that goes starting at the tick mark, zero time, and it goes straight across halfway across the page at the same level, and then drops down to zero instantly, it's what's known mathematically as a "step function."

 

0:35:26.9 BB: So, it goes across, goes across, and then in zero time drops down to zero and then continues. So, three out of nearly 2,000 people drew a curve that wasn't smooth. Again, mathematically known as a step function. And each time I went up to that person and I said, and I comment on it, and each of them said, there's a point at which it goes bad. And each of them had a job in a quality organization. [chuckle] And so why is this important? Because in industry, there's this thing known as an "expiration date." What is an expiration date? It's the date past which you cannot use the chemical, the thing. And what's the assumption? The assumption is, a second before midnight on that date, Andrew, you could use that chemical, that acid, that glue, whatever it is in our product; a second before midnight, before the expiration date, you can use that. But a second after midnight, we put this tape and we call it "defective." And so I've worked with companies that are in the chemical business, and they literally have this tape. At the expiration date, we don't use it. A second before midnight, we do. And so what you have is a sense that it goes from good to bad, you know how fast, Andrew?

 

0:37:15.0 AS: Tick of a clock.

 

0:37:17.0 BB: Faster than that, Andrew. Zero time.

 

0:37:21.0 AS: Yeah.

 

0:37:22.0 BB: Zero time. And so what I ask people is, "Can you think of any phenomenon that happens in zero time?" And people call that's... "Well, the driver was killed instantly." No, it wasn't zero time. "Well, someone is shot." It's not zero time. And so what's cool is, when I ask people to describe a phenomenon, describe any physical phenomenon that happens in zero time, that we go from one location to another, from one state to another in zero time, I've not been stumped on that. Although actually, [chuckle] there are some situations where that happens. Well, the reason that's important for our audience is, that's a demonstration that expiration-date thinking is an organizational construct. It's not a physical construct. Milk goes bad fast. [chuckle] I'll admit, the expiration date on the half gallon of milk, it goes bad fast.

 

0:38:27.2 BB: But a second before midnight and a second after midnight, it's still the same. So, expiration-date thinking is what acceptability is about; that everything is good, equally good, but once we go across that expiration date, Andrew, then the flavor changes suddenly. And so what I used to kid people is, imagine if that really happened, right? Then we'd have this contest. I'd say, "Andrew, I had a can of Pepsi recently. And have you ever done this, Andrew? You get the can of Pepsi that has the expiration date on it. And if you listen to it at midnight, on the expiration date, you listen closely, you can hear it go from good to bad, Andrew." [chuckle] Would that be awesome? [chuckle] So, I was sharing some of this recently with our good friend, Christina, at The Deming Institute office.

 

0:39:31.0 AS: Yep.

 

0:39:32.7 BB: And it happened to be her birthday. And, so I sent her a note and I said, "Happy birthday." And I said, "So, did you change age immediately on the second you were born?" 'Cause she said, 'cause I think she said something like, "My mom reached out to me and she reminded me exactly what time I was born." And I said, "Oh," I said, "so did you feel the change in age as you crossed that?" And she said, she said, "Hi, Bill. Of course, I felt instantly different on my birthday. My mom even told me what time, so I'd know exactly when to feel different." [chuckle] Now, so here's a question for you, Andrew. Can you think of a situation where something changes from one value to another in zero time? In zero time. Again, we don't go from living to dying in zero time. The change of Pepsi doesn't go from one value to another in zero time. The quality of any product is not changing, you go from one side to the other. But can you think of anything that actually happens in zero time: Across that line, it goes from one value to another?

 

0:41:05.0 AS: Nope, I can't.

 

0:41:08.8 BB: Oh, come on, Andrew. You ready?

 

0:41:16.2 AS: Go for it.

 

0:41:20.0 BB: Did you ever hear of the German novelist, Thomas Mann, M-A-N-N?

 

0:41:24.0 AS: No.

 

0:41:25.7 BB: All right. I wrote this down as a closing thought; it may not be the closing thought. We'll just throw it in right now. So, this in an article [chuckle] I wrote for the Lean Management Journal.

 

0:41:38.0 AS: By the way, it's gotta be the closing thought because we're running out of time. So, perfect.

 

0:41:43.7 BB: Fantastic! Well, then here's my closing thought, Andrew. You want my closing thought?

 

0:41:47.1 AS: Do it.

 

0:41:48.1 BB: All right. So, from an article I wrote for the Lean Management Journal, so here's the quote. "I have witnessed industrial chemicals in full use right up to the expiration date, and then banned from use and tagged for immediate disposal with a passing of the expiration date only seconds before the chemicals were freely used. While they may rapidly sour, it is unlikely that they expire with a big bang, all in keeping with a sentiment of German novelist Thomas Mann's observation about New Year's Eve," Andrew. What he said was, "Time has no divisions to market's passage. There's never a thunderstorm or a blare of trumpets to announce the beginning of a new month or year. Even when the century begins, it is only we mere mortals who ring bells and fire off pistols." So, at midnight on December 31st, a fraction of a second before midnight, we're in 2024 and we go to 2025 in zero time, Andrew. So, legally things change as you go across a line. You go from the United States to Mexico across a line of zero thickness. So, legally things across a line change instantly.

 

0:43:17.0 AS: Well.

 

0:43:18.0 BB: A coupon, Andrew, expires at midnight. [laughter]

 

0:43:22.7 AS: Yep. All right. Well, on behalf of everyone at The Deming Institute, I want to thank you again for this discussion. And for listeners, remember to go to deming.org to continue your journey. And if you wanna keep in touch with Bill, as he mentioned at the beginning, just reach out to him on LinkedIn. This is your host, Andrew Stotz, and I'll leave you with one of my favorite quotes from Dr. Deming. "People are entitled to joy in work."