Curious Cat Management Improvement Blog: Deming, lean thinking, innovation, customer focus, continual improvement, six sigma.
August 26, 2009
Dr. Deming Webcast on the 5 Deadly Diseases

The W. Edwards Deming Institute has posted Dr. Deming’s 1984 video on the 5 deadly diseases of western management.

  • Lack of constancy of purpose
  • Emphasis on short term profits – “creative” accounting, focus on quarterly profits
  • Annual Performance Appraisals – management by objective, management by fear
  • Mobility of management – [see Toyota for a great example of a company that operates on different principles - where the leadership has been with Toyota for decades]
  • Running a company on visible figures alone – many important factors are “unknown and unknowable.”

Dr. Deming added 2 diseases to reach his famous 7 deadly diseases: excessive medical care costs and excessive legal damage awards swelled by lawyers working on contingency fees.

Personally I believe all 7 of those diseases are still prevalent and causing damage. I do think some progress has been made on longer term thinking but far too many organizations still are extremely short term focused. And I would add two new deadly diseases of management: excessive executive compensation and an outdated intellectual property system.

Related: Deming CompaniesPurpose of an OrganizationContinual ImprovementCreating JobsNew Management Truths Sometimes Started as Heresies

3 Responses to “Dr. Deming Webcast on the 5 Deadly Diseases”

  1. Il meglio della blogosfera lean #1 | Encob Blog Says:

    [...] Dr. Deming Webcast on the 5 Deadly Diseases di Curious Cat Management Improvement Blog di John Hunter, che mette in onda un video di Dr. Edwards Deming sui 5 “peccati mortali” della leadership occidentale (traduzione automatica) [...]

  2. Chris Young Says:

    Intriguing video John – thanks for sharing! I’ve passed Dr. Demming’s message along to my readers in my weekly Rainmaker ‘Fab Five’ blog picks of the week so they too can benefit from this great webcast.

    Be well!

  3. Are We Using Poisons as Treatments? « PierG (aka Piergiorgio Grossi) Says:

    After reading an interesting post of John Hunter called Dr. Deming Webcast on the 5 Deadly Diseases, I’m wondering if in today’s company we are using poisons to treat the disease of our companies…

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