Why Things Go Wrong: Deming Philosophy in a Dozen Ten-Minute Sessions

By Gary Fellers

Easily learn complex business management practices and how to implement them with this concise, painless, and effective text.

Featuring W. Edwards Deming’s “14 Points for Managers” and “7 Deadly Diseases of Management”

Among the principles Gary Fellers teaches are those pertaining to manager-employee relationships, interdepartmental coordination, and, above all, quality management. He explains how to remove the stumps of outdated, poorly tested management styles from practice and get back to the business of frontline management.

W. Edwards Deming was a key consultant in management circles, his clients including Ford, GM, and Dow Chemicals. The Deming system was the secret to Japan’s economic miracle after World War II. His principles are taught regularly in business schools but rarely reach practical application because of their complexity. Now Fellers transcends these obstacles, putting Deming in a compact volume that speaks to anyone trying to understand why things go wrong.

Praise for Why Things Go Wrong

“Motivating, easy to read, and fast paced.” —Ken Blanchard

“Delivers what it promises, bringing back to the basics W. Edwards Deming’s forward thinking and far-reaching principles into a format that anyone can apply.” —Charles J. Givens, author, SuperSelf

• Language: English
• Publisher: Open Road Integrated Media
• Release date: Jul 3, 1905
• ISBN: 9781455614240

Book preview

Chapter 1

What Are We Up to Here?

Deming and his influence emerged in this country at a desperate time when most American companies suffered pervasive quality problems. Other experts bombarded us from all sides with varied advice. As John Naisbitt stated, We were drowning in information but starved for knowledge. Dr. Deming almost got lost in the crowd because we originally viewed him only as a person who wanted to sermonize about making extreme sacrifices to improve quality. Viewing him as the idealistic high priest of quality improvement, many production-oriented managers initiallv distanced themselves from Deming's philosophy. At the time, they thought quality was incompatible with production quantity, and their employers judged them by

Reviews for Why Things Go Wrong

[AJ · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

This book has a lot of potential unfortunately, it is difficult to read because of the amount of typographical errors. I don’t know if these errors were due to the mode of publication or also apparent in a print copy. To make matters worse, the book uses the case study of typographical error’s in a system to describe the methods to improve but it is hard to understand because of the typos. Additionally, in a section where a diagram or visual aid would have provided a world of difference; the author specifically denoted that the diagram would be unnecessary to follow the visualization that was written. The publication date for this book is also incorrect as Edward Demings works are a major reference point his most prominent lectures occurred in Japan in the 1950s.
With some editing and visual improvements, this book could be beneficial.