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Comment by 0xbadcafebee | Hacker News Reader

He would say to trust the workers, but also all the other things you need to do in addition to trusting the workers. Look at his 14 points. You need to do all the things to get all the benefits.

This is why Deming never landed here. He espouses a complex view, and most people just aren't that smart or skilled. He also espoused pride in craftsmanship, quality, and analysis, things most American workers don't value as much as the Japanese, which is another reason Toyota took them up so quickly while it took us 50 years.

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> He also espoused pride in craftsmanship, quality, and analysis, things most American workers don't value as much as the Japanese

Is that American workers or American managers? Because in my experience, it's usually managers pushing against those values. It seems like American business culture sees quality and craftsmanship as money left on the table that should be sent to the shareholders, so there's always pressure on workers to cut corners. Also American managers are too quantitative, and quality and craftsmanship are hard to quantify (unlike dollars).

Workers like "craftsmanship, quality, and analysis," not the least because they make their job more satisfying (no one enjoys pushing out low quality junk), but most aren't stubborn enough to keep pushing for them against management resistance.

The biggest impediment to the 14 points for most companies is *shareholders*

Famously it's workers too. Look at NUMMI. Before the NUMMI initiative, GM's workers [at their worst plant] were atrocious. Not only did they not care, they sometimes intentionally sabotaged cars. They brought prostitutes to the plant, drank on the job. It was crazy. Management made it worse, but the workers chose to stop giving a shit.

Then Toyota came in, taught them TPS, and the transformation was night and day. Read the interviews and stories. Workers reported they gained more pride in their work, it made them want to do better, and they did do better. So we can have pride in our work, but it's not ingrained culturally like it is in Japan.

To loosely paraphase George Carlin: "Where do you think Managers come from? They don't fall out of the sky. They don't pass through a membrane from another reality. They come from the same place Workers do: American parents and American families, American homes, American schools, American churches, American businesses and American universities. This is the best we can do folks. It's what our system produces: Garbage in, garbage out."

What's the fastest way to get promoted to a manager at a fast food chain -- show up on time and do your job. If anything, the managers are workers who cared enough to do a decent job.

American managers don’t espouse pride in craftsmanship, quality, etc. The actual worker cares.

Not all workers, not all managers. It's more messy than that

Let’s just say c suite and one level below over the years have been mba hack jobs without any domain expertise or experience. Their only claim to “success” is financial engineering. Those guys.

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