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The Knowledge System Podcast

The Knowledge System Podcast

De : Michael Carr
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 The Knowledge System Podcast explores how leaders can use systems thinking to create lasting organizational improvement. It translates the ideas of W. Edwards Deming and other thought-leaders into practical strategies for building smarter, more effective systems.

posts.knowledgesystem.comMichael Carr
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    • Five-minute Deming: Blaming the worker

      Five-minute Deming: Blaming the worker
      Feb 11 2026
      When leaders hear that most problems belong to the system, it can sound like an accusation—or worse, an invitation to lower standards. So nobody’s lazy? Nobody incompetent? That reaction is understandable. It’s also costly. The real question isn’t whether individuals ever contribute to problems. It’s whether leaders are aiming their time and energy at the place where improvement actually lives. Today we’ll explore why blaming workers feels decisive, why it so often misses the mark, and how a clearer way of thinking leads to better results.Why blaming the worker feels obviousW. Edwards Deming never asked leaders to take anything on faith. He asked them to study evidence. Yet his ideas are frequently dismissed as naïve because they seem to collide with lived experience. Leaders have seen missed deadlines, chronic rework, and visible disengagement. They’ve had hard conversations. They’ve replaced people—and sometimes things really did improve.So when Deming says that most problems belong to the system, it can sound like an absolutist claim that denies reality. It isn’t. What Deming challenged was a habit of mind: explaining outcomes by pointing at people instead of understanding the conditions that shape their work. When the same problems repeat across teams and across individuals, he argued, we are not observing human failure. We are observing a system doing exactly what it was built—and allowed—to do.To see how this misunderstanding plays out, consider a familiar manufacturing setting.Reconsidering where problems come fromMidwest Components manufactures precision parts for heavy equipment. Late orders have become routine. Scrap rates swing from week to week. Supervisors are worn down by constant firefighting.At the center of it are two leaders. Jack, the plant manager, came up through operations. He prides himself on knowing the floor and holding people accountable. Maria, the operations director, was brought in to stabilize performance and reduce chronic volatility.Jack is blunt about his frustration. “Look,” he says, “I don’t buy this idea that it’s all the system. I’ve been here twenty years. I know when someone just doesn’t care.”Maria doesn’t dispute that people matter. “I’m not saying people don’t matter,” she says. “I’m asking a different question. If we swap operators between lines and the problems stay with the line, what are we really seeing?”They review six months of data together. Late orders spike predictably at month end when schedules compress. Scrap jumps whenever a specific alloy lot is introduced. Training records show three operators rushed onto a new machine with minimal setup instruction.Jack pushes back. “So what,” he asks, “nobody’s accountable?”Maria draws a distinction. Accountability isn’t the same as blame. The patterns they’re seeing don’t belong to one person. They belong to how work is planned, supplied, and taught.This is the pivot Deming insisted on. In Out of the Crisis, he wrote, “The supposition is prevalent the world over that there would be no problems in production or in service if only our production workers would do their jobs in the way that they were taught. Pleasant dreams. The workers are handicapped by the system, and the system belongs to management.”The supposition is prevalent the world over that there would be no problems in production or in service if only our production workers would do their jobs in the way that they were taught. Pleasant dreams. The workers are handicapped by the system, and the system belongs to management.— W. Edwards DemingThat statement isn’t a moral judgment. It’s a diagnostic one.Maria reframes the discussion in plain language. “First,” she says, “are things running the way they usually do? If they are, blaming the worker for random ups and downs doesn’t fix anything. Second, if something truly unusual happened—something you don’t normally see—then we treat it as a special cause and deal with it directly.”They chart downtime and defects. Most of what they see sits inside predictable limits. One incident stands out clearly: a machine was deliberately bypassed after a safety interlock failed.Jack agrees immediately. “That one’s on the person,” he says.Maria agrees too. “Yes,” she says. “And because it’s clearly unusual, we can handle it firmly and directly—without pretending it explains everything else that’s been happening.”Deming was explicit about this balance. “I should estimate that in my experience most troubles and most possibilities for improvement add up to proportions something like this: 94% belong to the system (responsibility of management) 6% special.” That six percent matters. It includes negligence, misconduct, and genuine inability. But treating ninety-four percent as if it were six is expensive.I should estimate that in my experience most troubles and most possibilities for improvement add up...
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      8 min
    • Five-minute Deming: Pay vs. performance

      Five-minute Deming: Pay vs. performance
      Feb 4 2026
      Most leaders believe pay is the lever that keeps people accountable. Tie raises to individual performance, and people will work harder. Untie them, and standards will slip. That belief feels especially strong in operations where timing matters—where a late start cascades into lost output, overtime, and frustration. But what if the very tools meant to enforce accountability are quietly making the system worse?W. Edwards Deming spent much of his career challenging a deeply held management assumption: that individual performance can be measured, ranked, and rewarded in a way that reliably improves results. His critique was not philosophical. It was grounded in how real work actually happens.Deming was blunt about the damage caused by this assumption. He wrote that “evaluation of performance, merit rating, or annual review” is a management disease—one that builds fear and undermines cooperation instead of improving results.A deadly disease: evaluation of performance, merit rating, or annual review— W. Edwards DemingIn most organizations, especially those that operate in shifts, results are produced by systems—by schedules, handoffs, training, equipment readiness, and staffing decisions. When leaders focus compensation on judging individuals instead of improving systems, fear replaces learning, and supervisors become referees instead of leaders.This tension is often dismissed as a white‑collar concern. But the opposite is true. The more tightly coupled the work, the less individual performance explains outcomes—and the more management decisions shape results.That reality plays out clearly at Sunrise Acres, a large egg farm running multiple barns across three shifts.When measurement isn’t enoughSunrise Acres depends on precision. Every shift change affects feeding schedules, sanitation routines, and downstream quality. When crews start late, the consequences ripple through the day.Miguel, the operations manager, is exhausted by the problem. “We track everything,” he says. “Names. Minutes late. Warnings. We even tie raises to attendance—and it still doesn’t stick.”Late starts keep happening.Sarah, the farm’s general manager, doesn’t argue with him. “What if the problem isn’t the people?” she asks. “What if it’s the way the day starts?”Together, they walk the process from parking lot to first task. The issues surface quickly. The time clock is deep inside the barn. Protective equipment is stored in multiple locations. New hires aren’t clear on relief coverage. Buses arrive with built‑in variability. And supervisors are stretched thin at shift change.No one would blame a single hen for a flock problem. Seeing the system end to end makes it clear that punctuality has been treated like a character trait, even though the system makes being on time unnecessarily hard.They make practical changes: moving the clock closer to the entrance, pre‑staging PPE kits, adding a short overlap for handoffs, and using visual start‑time cues. A bilingual lead helps direct arrivals. Attendance improves almost immediately.One employee, Rosa, is still late. Instead of issuing another warning, Miguel follows Sarah’s lead and starts a conversation. Rosa explains that her childcare opens at the same time her shift begins. A small schedule adjustment and cross‑training resolve the issue completely.What becomes clear is that most lateness was common‑cause—built into the system. A few cases required individual action, but only after the system barriers were removed.When raises come due, Miguel hesitates. “So… no merit scores?”Sarah is explicit. Base pay is set by role and market. Raises come through skill blocks—what people are trained and qualified to do. Any shared upside is tied to farm‑level performance. Attendance expectations remain firm, and willful noncompliance is addressed directly. What they abandon is the fiction that a yearly rating caused punctuality.Deming warned that “evaluation of performance, merit rating, or annual review” builds fear and rivalry while demolishing teamwork. He also cautioned that it is “unfair, as it ascribes to the people in a group differences that may be caused totally by the system that they work in.” At Sunrise Acres, supervisors stop keeping secret tallies and start removing barriers in the work. Training accelerates. Turnover slows. Late starts drop—and so do the hidden costs that came with them.[Performance-based pay] is unfair, as it ascribes to the people in a group differences that may be caused totally by the system that they work in.— W. Edwards DemingWhere managers go wrongMost leaders don’t rely on merit pay because they enjoy ranking people. They do it because it feels like control—especially when schedules slip or output falters.Deming warned that this instinct leads managers to confuse numbers with knowledge. When results vary, rating people feels decisive, even when the variation comes from the ...
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      9 min
    • Five-minute Deming: Awards & public recognition

      Five-minute Deming: Awards & public recognition
      Jan 28 2026
      Public recognition is one of the most familiar tools leaders use to motivate people. It feels generous. It feels human. It feels like an easy way to say, “This matters here.”But recognition is never just a moment of appreciation. It is a signal that lingers. Over time, it teaches people what the organization truly values, what kind of work is safest to pursue, and what quietly carries risk.In interdependent work—where outcomes are shaped by systems, not individuals—that lesson compounds. Recognition keeps teaching long after the applause fades.Recognition is a system choiceMost leaders don’t design awards because they enjoy competition. They do it to build energy, reinforce values, and show that effort is noticed. Public recognition feels like a low-cost, low-risk way to encourage performance.What often goes unexamined is how recognition behaves inside a system. When awards are scarce and visible, they begin to function like ranking—even when leaders explicitly reject that intent. People adapt quickly. They gravitate toward work that gets attention. They protect credit. They deprioritize work that is essential but less visible, such as mentoring, prevention, and improving methods.W. Edwards Deming urged leaders to look past intentions and examine effects. His concern was not appreciation itself, but the habit of confusing outcomes with merit in environments where outcomes are shaped largely by the system. When leaders reward results without studying the conditions that produced them, they unintentionally teach people to manage visibility instead of improving the work.To see how this dynamic unfolds—and how it can be redirected—consider what happened inside one professional services firm.When recognition becomes rankingBrightline Advisory is a mid-sized professional services firm whose work depends on collaboration, shared methods, and careful coordination across teams. After a demanding year marked by heavy workload and rising attrition, leadership introduced a monthly public recognition program called Bright Star. Each month, one individual would be publicly celebrated for strong performance.At first, the program landed exactly as intended. People appreciated the acknowledgment. Leaders felt they were reinforcing the right behaviors. Over time, however, the meaning of the recognition began to change—not because anyone altered the rules, but because the system itself was teaching a lesson. Sarah, who led one of the delivery groups, noticed the shift before it showed up in reports or metrics. She brought her concerns to Tom, a managing partner.“At first people seemed energized,” she said. “But after a while, something shifted—and not in a good way.”She wasn’t describing morale problems. She was describing how work was unfolding. Knowledge sharing slowed. Junior consultants hesitated to ask for help. Conversations about who would present results grew tense. Work that attracted attention felt safer than work that prevented future problems.Tom kept returning to intent. “We weren’t trying to rank anyone,” he said. “We just wanted to acknowledge great work.”“I know,” Sarah replied. “That’s what makes this tricky. It lifted up a few—and it changed what everyone else feels they have to do to be seen.”Nothing in Bright Star instructed people to compete. But recognition was scarce and highly visible. In an interdependent system, that combination quietly invites comparison. People adjust their behavior to the signal, not the slogan.Deming warned leaders about this pattern. “Abolish ranking and the merit system,” he wrote. In its place, he urged leaders to “manage the whole company as a system.” What follows from ranking is not better performance, but predictable distortion.Abolish ranking and the merit system.Manage the whole company as a system.— W. Edwards DemingAs months passed, leaders began to see what Sarah had been describing. Certain projects drew disproportionate attention. Riskier work was avoided. Helping another team felt like a tradeoff against personal visibility.The conversation changed when leadership stopped debating whether Bright Star was motivating and asked a different question: What is this recognition teaching people to do? That question slowed things down. Instead of choosing winners more carefully, leaders began studying variation—project mix, timing, staffing, and handoffs. They began to see that Bright Star rewarded outcomes without improving the system that produced those outcomes.Only then did the solution emerge. The monthly award was retired. In its place, teams began sharing what they were learning: improvements to methods, prevention practices, and collaboration. Recognition shifted away from status and toward understanding how good work was produced.Over time, the effects became visible. Knowledge moved more freely. Cooperation increased. Results stabilized—not through competition or heroics, but through better ...
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      8 min
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