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Deming's Journey to Profound Knowledge

How Deming Helped Win a War, Altered the Face of Industry, and Holds the Key to Our Future

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Deming's Journey to Profound Knowledge

By: John Willis
Narrated by: Josh Bloomberg
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About this listen

From the birth of modern industry, to winning WWII, to Japan’s Economic Miracle, W. Edwards Deming helped shape some of the most profound moments in modern history. Deming, an American engineer and statistician, is widely recognized for his contributions to the field of quality management. But his teachings go beyond quality management; they influence not only how we work today, but also how we can continue to succeed into the future.

Part business history, part biography, part journey into deep business sense, author John Willis captures the full picture of Deming’s life and influence. Most importantly, it reveals the experiences that led to Deming’s greatest discovery: the System of Profound Knowledge, a collection of fundamental truths that show how any system or process can be transformed into something greater.

From the real-life Rosie the Riveter to a hacker writing US cybersecurity law, Deming’s ingenuity and system of thinking changed how we think in the modern world. This book shows how we can take that influence and continue to apply it our own future.

©2023 John Willis (P)2023 John Willis Business Career Success Motivation & Self-Improvement Professionals & Academics Career Management Cybersecurity Leadership

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Most relevant
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This is an important publication describing two things - Deming's life story, his achivements and other interesting points as well as how Deming's Profound Knowledge can help with cybersecurity issues that are prevalent in modern times. Actually that part about cybersecurity is a weird tie-in to the story about Deming, yet it somehow fits although it should be expanded in a separate book, where a reader/listener would be able to delve deeper into those IT topics through the lenses of Profound Knowledge. All in all I recommend giving this one a read/listen as it is an important piece of work and literally EVERY manager out there should at least know a bit about Deming's work - that how profound and important it is.

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An important publication that describes the life of Deming as well as Profound Knowledge can be used in cybersecurity

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While the author puts in a heroic effort amassing insightful details about Deming’s life that help the reader to understand how he developed his profound system of knowledge (which I appreciated), I find the constant self contradictions mildly annoying though these may be the author’s tongue in cheek style. But I find two things unsettling about this book: 1) some sections read like a who’s who list of inventors with no obvious goal eg ch 8, which lists more than 30 prominent scientists each with differing contributions loosely connected to systems science; 2) some ideas are present with little critical judgement and treated as self evidently true - for example, the chapter on agile is assumed to follow from Deming’s ideas which is relatively easy to disprove otherwise. In Ch 6 of the New Economics, Deming writes: “ The secret for reduction in time of development is to put more effort into the early stages, and to study the interaction between stages. Each stage should have the benefit of more effort than the next stage.” which contradicts the opening principle of the Agile Manifesto which states: “Our highest priority is to satisfy the customer through early and continuous delivery of valuable software.” Therefore, while I value the deep historic content exposed by the author, I would invite inquiry into his conclusions. This books should be treated more like a historical narrative rather than an apology for Deming’s system of profound knowledge, which I personally ascribe to.

Insightful but meandering and uncritical

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