Out of the Crisis

Posted on May 5, 2007 by John Hunter

Entrepreneur.com has named their 9 best classic business books of the past 30 years including Out of the Crisis by W. Edwards Deming:

Deming’s teachings challenged American business practice at almost every point. Among his most revolutionary ideas were the notions that poor management–not slacker workers–was responsible for most quality problems, and the way to boost quality was to carefully measure defects and the effects of changing processes.

The article includes a section on what to ignore from each book, including for Out of the Crisis – “he was strenuously opposed to incentive pay plans of all types.” Incentive pay plays havoc with teamwork, systems improvement (encouraging sub-optimization), long term thinking, sales volumes (commissions increase variation in sales creating problems for production), shedding light on problems… Ignoring that is not a good idea. Other books they mention include: Innovation and Entrepreneurship by Peter Drucker and The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People by Stephen Covey.

Related: Deming’s ideas on Management – Curious Cat Management Books – Drum-buffer-rope

via: MIT Press Log

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