Tata Steel, India, has been awarded the 2008 Deming Prize. They were the only organization to receive the prize this year.
Mr. B. Muthuraman, Managing Director, Tata Steel, while expressing satisfaction over this accomplishment said, “No other activity made us think so deeply about our business and relationships than the process of applying for the Deming Prize. Total Quality Management (TQM) is a fundamental way of managing business and every organization can gain from institutionalizing the culture necessary to win this prize.” He dedicated this recognition to the employees of Tata Steel, its customers and business partners who have consistently embraced the culture of continuous improvement and demonstrated a great teamwork leading to several recognitions in the last 20 years since the TQM journey started at the Steel Company in 1988.
India continues to do very well, collecting more Deming Prizes than all other countries combined since 2000. Countries of organizations receiving the Deming Prize since 2000 (prior to that almost all winners were from Japan):
| Country | Prizes |
| India | 15 |
| Thailand | 8 |
| Japan | 4 |
| USA | 1 |
| Singapore | 1 |
The 2007 Deming Prize for Individuals went to Mr. Masahiro Sakane, Chairman, Komatsu Limited, Japan. Previous recipients include: Kaoru Ishikawa, Genichi Taguchi, Shoichiro Toyoda, Hitoshi Kume and Noriaki Kano.
Related: 2008 the Deming Prize Winners Announced – Tata Steel India wins Deming Application Prize-2008 – Deming Prize 2007 – 2005 Deming Prize – Dr. Deming’s Thoughts on Management
Motivate or Eliminate De-Motivation
To Motivate or Not to Demotivate
Note: Frederick Herzberg also tells us that motivation is an intrinsic thing, which means that you actually cannot directly motivate a person. You can only try to influence their motivation. That’s true. But it also applies to people’s demotivation. And therefore I only consider it just a semantical issue, that bears no relationship to the motivation-vs-demotivation issue.
I still think eliminating de-motivation is the better way to look at it.
I still see far too many managers thinking in a theory x way – 50 years after McGregor’s The Human Side of Enterprise. If there was not such a systemic failure to apply effective management practices and such a desire to substitute motivation for management I wouldn’t see this as a big deal. The issue is important to me because there is a huge amount of poor management based on how people view the need to fix how people are motivated instead of fixing what management really needs to fix (see all the links in the related section at the bottom of this post).
“eliminating demotivation” is a too simplistic view
I would say a party doesn’t really motivate people. But it can (taking psychology into account) gain advantages by helping bond people to each other, letting people feel good as they form social relationships, build trust with others… They can be good things that can build a stronger work environment. And by building social ties we can create an environment where people are more interested in working toward common goals.
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