Principles for Transformation: An Introduction

In January and February, I outlined six common management myths. The point of those two posts was to help education systems leaders see what not to do. I’m now turning to a set of principles that can be used by these same leaders to guide their transformation work. I’ll kick things off this month with a brief  introduction and a bit of background information regarding the 14 Principles for Educational Systems Transformation. From there, I’ll describe each of the principles through twice monthly posts from April through November.

Both the aforementioned myths as well as the principles receive significant attention in my new book, Win-Win: W. Edwards Deming, the System of Profound Knowledge, and the Science of Improving Schools. One of the core purposes of the book is to list and describe the 14 Principles for Educational Systems Transformation. Win-Win also offers real-world strategies to education leaders of improvement, based on Demings’ System of Profound Knowledge. Having a guiding set of leadership principles is important under the best of conditions, but becomes even more imperative when considering the seismic shifts that have happened to the teaching profession over the last 30+ years.

What is the origin of the 14 principles? 

The original 14 principles, or as they are better known, the 14 Points for Management were developed by W. Edwards Deming as the basis for transformation of American industry. He described the points in detail in Out of the Crisis where he said, “Adoption and action on the 14 Points are a signal that the management intend to stay in business and aim to protect investors and jobs.” He employed the 14 Points as the basis for the lessons he taught to top management leaders in Japan beginning in 1950 and in the decades that followed. Over the course of 60 years of continual improvement work, Deming worked with Japanese industry leaders and top companies in the United States and was also a professor of statistics at New York University for decades. He not only taught the 14 Points to the leaders with which he worked, they also guided his own teaching practices as a professor. Thus, as Deming said, “the 14 Points apply anywhere, to small organizations as well as to large ones, to the service industry as well as to manufacturing.”

Continual improvement leaders such as David Langford and James Leonard have translated the 14 Points into education system-friendly language. In addition to Deming’s original version as well as Henry Neave’s analysis of the 14 Points[1], I also studied Langford’s “Modified Deming Points for Continual Improvement of Education”[2] as well as Leonard’s “14 Obligations of the School Board and Administration”[3] as I wrote my own 14 Principles for Transformation. These four sources form the basis for the principles in Win-Win, with the aim being to preserve the original intent and spirit of Deming’s 14 Points.

Blog Series: Principles for Transformation

The four components of the System of Profound Knowledge work in concert to provide us with profound insights about how our organizations operate so that we as leaders can in turn work to optimize the whole of our systems. However, there is a step beyond simply avoiding the management myths. The next step is to be able to think and make decisions using the lens provided by the System of Profound Knowledge. This is where the core set of 14 Principles come into play. In the coming months, I’ll describe the principles that will enable you to move from theory to practice with the Deming philosophy. 

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John A. Dues is the Chief Learning Officer for United Schools Network, a nonprofit charter management organization that supports four public charter schools in Columbus, Ohio. Send feedback to jdues@unitedschoolsnetwork.org. 

Notes

[1] Henry R. Neave, The Deming Dimension (Knoxville, Tennessee: SPC Press, 1990).

[2] David Langford, Quality Learning Training Manual, Version 12.0 (Langford International, 2008), Reference Awareness – 6-7.

[3] James F. Leonard, The New Philosophy for K-12 Education: A Deming Framework for Transforming America’s Schools (Milwaukee, Wisconsin: ASQ Quality Press, 1996).