Applying Deming's Principles to Transform Schools with John Dues

Speaker A: Welcome back to the Ed Essentials Podcast. I'm your host, Hunter Flesch. This podcast is designed for aspiring and newly established school leaders who are looking for practical strategies, inspiring conversations and resources to support your leadership journey. Today I am joined by a very special co host, Doug Stillwell, former professor at Drake University. And and we are hosting today a very, very, very special guest by the name of John Dues. John serves as the Chief Learning Officer and Chief Operating Officer at United Schools in Columbus, Ohio. He's an accomplished systems leader and improvement science scholar practitioner, and the author of Win Win W. Edwards Deming, the System of Profound Knowledge and the Science of Improving Schools. Throughout his career, John has been part of the founding teams of several school and nonprofit organizations. He holds a BA From Miami University, an M. Ed from the University of Cincinnati, and completed the Improvement Advisor program through the Institute for Healthcare Improvement. But today we are going to explore what it takes to lead systemic improvement in schools, the principles behind W. Edward Deming's work, and how leaders can apply these ideas to make a lasting impact. If you'd like to connect with me, you can visit edessentials.net you can find me on Instagram Essentials or email me directly@edessentials.networkmail ah.com now let's get started. So this morning I really wanted to bring John on to the show because of the concepts of systems thinking. And Doug, you really introduced this to me through my grad program. We dove into the work of Dr. Deming and John, you really have been the person that's carried on his work and really made it applicable to educators specifically. And so really that's become your, I'll call it your bread and butter. You know, that's been your passion project and something that has now carried you into your current position. Today I'd really be curious, just when did you first learn about who Dr. Deming was, his work, and really what made it resonate with you so?

Speaker B: Well, when people ask me this question, what I say is that I've been an educator for about, just about 25 years now. Um, and I kind of break up my career into sort of four like learning buckets, sort of those first few years as a teacher, sort of like trial by fire, you know, every day is different, trying to observe veteran teachers when I can, but it's a lot of like on the job learning. And then that second stage, few turns of fate. I ended up in a startup charter school and got exposed to some really great work happening in some high performing schools on The East Coast. And, um, I call that like subject matter knowledge. So I learned like teaching techniques and how to use data in a classroom, and a little bit about cognitive science, a little bit about leadership. It was all sort of like subject matter knowledge, super important. And then sort of the next stage. I got an email about this book called Learning to Improve How America's Schools Can Get Better at Getting Better. It was my first sort of entree into improvement science. And, um, the work happening at the Carnegie foundation for the Advancement of Teaching. This is about a decade ago. And sort of, I think about that as sort of improvement science methods and tools. And, um, that was really great. And I started applying that approach to projects here at United Schools in Columbus. And I stumbled across Dr. Deming's name a couple of times just in books. I was reading along those lines. Um, the first time, I think it was about 2018, I actually went to the Deming Institute website. So the institute that sort of has carried on his work after his death in the early 90s. And I read his System of Profound Knowledge page and I actually had two sort of negative reactions initially. One was, who calls their own knowledge profound? You know, kind of sounded like, uh, um, you know, hoity toity. And then I read the page and I read about the four components of profound knowledge, like systems, thinking, variation. I was like, I really have no idea what, what, what this stuff is. I don't understand what they're saying here. So I actually didn't come back to it for like two years. Then in early 2020, I stumbled across his name again. And, um, I don't know, not that I fully understood it, but I, I felt like, oh, wow, there's something here. There's something about this, this theory. I call it a theory or management philosophy that I could apply to my work. And, um, it just lit a fire. I just started reading books about it. Um, this was about 2020, so about five years ago. And then I started listening to the podcast on the Deming Institute website. And basically every person that they interviewed, I'd reach out to, or I would read a book and I'd reach out to that person. And the vast majority responded, which was great. And that's kind of a marker of that community that they are so helpful and responsive. And for the next, you know, six months, I just would do that. You know, I'd reach out to somebody. We would have a zoom, um, conversation or an in person conversation. A few of the people happened to be in Ohio, so I met them and they were very Helpful. About six months into that, I just sat down and started writing what became the Win Win Book. And really, it was a way to learn. And so that was really my. My entree is to, uh, sort of, you know, learning every day on the job, to learning sort of the core functions of being a teacher or a school leader, to improvement science, and then having a management philosophy. And having a philosophy. I've just grown to appreciate how important that is as a foundation for your learning. And so that's sort of what brought me to Deming's work and has kept me going in this area.

Speaker A: Yeah. So when you started considering that implementation and that moment you said, like, oh, I think something's there. I really feel like I had the same type of moment going through grad school with Doug. You. There was a time where, just for a little background, my mom was an administrator for a long time, and so I had this concept of what I thought systems improvement leadership. I had this kind of picture, um, painted already of how you approach problem solving and approach systems leadership and so digging into the work of Dr. Deming. It's kind of interesting you said that. Who says that? They're, uh, knowledge is profound, but really what you're kind of speaking to. It's an approach. Right. It's an approach that is very, very different from others. Doug, I'm wondering if you have any thoughts on this. And for you, you obviously turned this into essentially a principal prep program, a huge component of this. So for both of you, we could start with Doug and then go to John. What makes the approach of Dr. Deming so different from others in the areas of improvement?

Speaker C: I think one. And this doesn't sound all that profound. It's just different. You can read. I remember reading, uh, and I don't remember who of this quote was, but basically it's, um. We know we've studied more and understand less about leadership than any other area of social science. And leadership is such an interesting term that's thrown around. I think we've missed the point on what it. What it can mean. Um, so Deming's work is just. Is just so different. It requires a complete change of thinking. And sometimes that change. Maybe John can attest this, too. It doesn't come easily. I. I first ran across deming in 92 in my graduate work, and I read his stuff. I thought, well, that's neat. And I put it down. Never came back to it, um, until later, you know, gosh, over 10 years later. Um, but it's just so different. It requires you to rethink everything you think you know about how, in this case, schools work, how people function, how systems. You know, you have to. Have to accept this notion that mainly systems are responsible for what the results are. And then if. When we believe that, then as a systems leader, you begin to operate differently. You don't worry. Not that you don't worry about the people, but you worry about the system and the processes that exist. Um, the other thing is, it works. I keep going back to the notion that if Deming's work had transformed the entire Japanese economy following World War II, I think his work has some merit. So, um, I've been kind of like John. I had my. I think about kind of a Deming family tree. And my tree, uh, began with David Langford, um, back in 2009. And John is so correct. That community, the Deming community, is so willing to help people learn. Um, but back to the original question. Sorry for bloviating there. It's just different. I mean, until you get into it, you don't realize how different it is, and you don't realize the better results that you can get. Um, because the way that we practice leadership has been fine, but it's mainly been driven by personality. And, um, Demi's work, at the end of the day, is about results. The piece about profound knowledge, I felt the same way, John, when I first read that. Who's this guy? Well, he's been cited as one of the most brilliant thinkers of the 20th century, so there you go. But he was born in Iowa, so that gives him some great credit. But the way I understand this system of profound knowledge is that it is a system to help you develop profound knowledge in any particular area. And so that. That also holds true in education.

Speaker A: John, what about you? What makes his approach different from others? And we can even dig into the philosophy now of that system of profound knowledge that, yeah, much of really stands

Speaker B: out to you is critical, resonates with me. So I think of Deming's system of profound knowledge as a lens, and I've seen him write it that way. And I like that sort of analogy because it's a lens that actually gives you deep knowledge about your organization. And that's what he meant by profound knowledge, is he meant deep, deep knowledge. So it's like seeing your organization through a different lens, because you have the knowledge provided through this system of profound knowledge. And so for your listeners, probably some of them have heard of it, many probably have not. But the system of profound knowledge basically has four components that work together. So he said appreciation for a system which is similar to systems thinking. He said knowledge about variation, theory of knowledge and psychology. So basically, you know, appreciation for a system is like long term systems thinking with a name, guided by a name. Knowledge about variation is sort of understanding the difference between the ups and downs in your data that are inevitable, those that are meaningful and those that aren't. And he has some tools for how to make that differentiation. Theory of knowledge is sort of like, you know, it's kind of like, um, well, you know, how do you know that? And it's like, well, the guy down the street said X. And there's much more about your sort of thinking and what you think, you know, that falls into that bucket than it's actually grounded in strong theory or experimentation. So theory of knowledge is like, how do we know what we know? And then psychology is understanding how people work together, what motivates people, those types of things. And it's bringing all four of those things together that gives you the deep knowledge about the organization and there's implications. Once you understand something like variation, then you understand why something like uh, a, uh, traditional performance appraisal is the wrong thing to do and brings about the wrong behavior, you know, the wrong types of behavior. And so it's putting all four of those things together that let you be a better leader. And like Doug said, it really did revolutionize the way I saw almost everything in my organization when I started adopting this approach.

Speaker A: Yeah, uh, I feel like when I got into this role, you know, we talk about the blinders opening, you know, going from, and a lot of people listening to this. Right. They might be a teacher or an instructional coach who are looking to jump into admin, or maybe they're in their beginning years of administration like myself and those blinders, naturally open. But understanding the organization in all four of those different capacities, that takes a lot of understanding and a lot of reflection and thoughtfulness grounded in those theories. So it really does open. Um, but then I love how you said the word lens. It changes the lens in which you look at your organization. It changes the lens in which you look at the people, the players, and how they are interdependent upon one another. And it affects your day to day decision making. It affects your entire approach if you're able to successfully put those four pieces together. So I think that's where we'll go into this next question here. Where is the challenge in doing that? Obviously we understand the benefits of putting those four things together. But where do leaders, John, do you find struggle in doing that, I can

Speaker B: be in many places. I mean, I'd say that the big picture thing is it's uh, the complete opposite of the typical leadership approach. So if you've been successful as a leader, then you have to be willing to sort of undo everything that you thought, you know, thought you knew about, uh, being a leader. So that's a pretty big thing. You know, you've been successful in a particular system. And so to sort of adopt this approach, you have to sort of realize that maybe many of the things that you've been doing along the way haven't been serving you in the way that you thought they were. So that that openness probably is number one. You know, Deming said, when an organization takes this approach, there's no instant putting. And that means like, you know, this is a five or even a ten year process. So you have to have some stability and leadership and a number of other things in place to sort of move this workforce forward. And that's hard. On the flip side, there are some things that I would call sort of like low hanging fruit that you can do very quickly that have a really meaningful impact and two that come to mind so you can get some quick wins. One is just operational definitions. When I read about that, I was like, oh, uh, that's so obvious that we talk about so many things that are ill defined and someone on your team is not talking about this exact same concept as someone else and you're not measuring it in the same way. And so you're getting, you know, different results for that reason. So that's really simple. And the other thing is, with data, you don't have to fully understand something like, you know, control charts or process behavior charts to simply take your data out of a spreadsheet and just plot it over time on a simple line graph. Even just seeing those patterns, knowing nothing else will be super powerful compared to, you know, keeping stuff in a, in a table or a data on your, or a, uh, a table or uh, a spreadsheet in your computer.

Speaker A: Yeah, absolutely. That's been the thing that I've tried to work on in my first couple of years is taking our behavior data and tracking it to a T. What are the different areas of improvement? Who can I help support and coach? And you know, there's a plethora of data, right? There's the common phrase, you know, analysis by paralysis by analysis. You have so much data, uh, at your disposal that you don't know what to do. But I feel like with this approach, and obviously you can utilize some of the tools that John mentioned. But even just simply looking, like you said at that line chart of oh, I see this student is going to fly now as some risk. So I need to make sure we provide an intervention or I see that the past few months we've had this teacher who's struggling in this area. I wonder what's going on. How can I support this person first and not just jump to a conclusion that they are a subpar, um, teacher. Right. So there's definitely a lens and a tactfulness that you have to take with the data. Doug, I'm curious what you think when you think about an area of those four components of system of profound knowledge that leaders miss. Where do you see that leaders miss or struggle in taking it from theory to.

Speaker C: Well, being the elder and retired person in this group, I'm going to be a little bit more blunt. I think they miss it all. And the reason is. And Deming would say this Deming was. John can attest. Dr. Deming was very hard on, uh, managers because it really float everything that happens as a result of their work. But then he also went around and said, um, how could they do any different? They don't know any better. How could they know? I think is the quote that I recall from the New Economics. Uh, there's just a lack of understanding about Deming's work. So it's hard to say which one of those four people might struggle with or do well with. They might do well with it, um, by accident. But we haven't trained people. People haven't been trained in this way of thinking. That's my general statement. I think the one that people probably struggle with the most and John actually has a free learning session on this is variation. Understanding variation. When we look at, when people look at data and you probably heard me say this in class Hunter, uh, particularly doing fish banks, we look at one year of data. What does it mean? Well, we think it means a lot and it really means nothing. So John's strategy to make sure we plot data in charts and look at it over time is important. I think that's a big stumbling block. But by and large, unless people are exposed to this and can drop their, can bring their guard down and realize there are different ways, better ways to go about their work, I think that's where some leverage lies. Now the challenge with that, when we talk about success, honestly, some schools are successful because they're lucky. And that refers back to Doug Reeves work. He has a quadrant. I don't remember what the quadrant's called. But one of those is lucky, is that you're getting good results but you really don't know why. So if you have demographics, and I don't want to get too deep into this, but demographics, where kids are just going to be easy to teach. Now we talk about kids being on third base. Um, I had this very experience in my teaching career. I was at a very high performing school. They changed the boundaries in the district and we got a different set of kids. Not better or worse, just different set, much more financially unstable. And our results went down the tubes. So we realized, wow, we were pretty lucky to have those kids. So I think we have to be careful also to define success. Success can be. As an example, well, I've hit this point, so I'm successful. Or it can be Hunter, like you're talking about. We're making these incremental steps in process and results. So that is a success. Also, I think I heard someone say that leaders have to be careful not to take too much credit for all the results. And, uh, then don't take all the blame for the other. But I would oppose that in saying it is all about what leadership does and what leadership understands and they will work from that. Their mode of understanding about what leadership is. And I just don't think we're training people well enough to break away from our old way of thinking. So I've used the term we wash dishes in dirty water. Something looks new, but it's really not. So I'm gonna stop bloviating there. Uh, I think I've given my cranky old retired guy speech long enough here.

Speaker B: Yeah. And if I could just add just one thing that you made me think. So those four components, they all have, they, they're a system themselves. So they work together, they're interdependent. So there's some things that, like Doug just said that, you know, you have to listen really carefully because they're really profound. And he said, he said something about letting your guard down. So that's the psychology. That's one of the 14 points, is to drive out fear. So you mentioned Hunter plotting your behavior data over time. So imagine you're working with teachers to improve, I don't know, office referrals. That's a common data point that people are trying to improve. So imagine you're sitting with the teacher and you have, uh, started plotting this data over time. And then you start talking to the teacher and you're like, well, how many office referrals? And you've got it Plotted, maybe she has, you know, four for this week and two for this week and three for this week. And then you start talking to her, and she says, well, I left these two out because that wasn't really. But, uh, but I did send them out, but, you know, I didn't, you know, that's also going to be in my. My teacher evaluation. So I didn't want, like, I don't want to, you know. So you start to see how all this is t. Right. And so you're not getting the actual picture because they're protecting their corner of the system, because they're judged on it, you know, and so then it makes it much harder to improve. And so you can see how sort of the traditional management, like, actually makes the problems worse versus this method where you people are working together to improve the system. So you want people to get this system reflex instead of this blame the person reflex. I think too much we have to blame the person reflex. And not. Not that there's never a time when an individual doesn't, you know, make a mistake that needs to be corrected. That. That certainly happens. But you want the reflex to be. There's something in the system that's causing this.

Speaker C: Yeah. Uh, I. If I can add to that. While I said I think variation may be the most difficult to understand, I've come to the conclusion, I think psychology may be the most important one to start with, because we're talking about people. And, uh, as John had said, and I'll reiterate, Deming talked about that in terms of understanding how people are motivated and also how they deal with change. You know, we talk about change all the time. Um, and there's fear in that. When I did a presentation several years ago, and in my research, I came to the conclusion that one of the issues with change is that it's like death. You know, you are losing what you used to do. And so you go through the mourning process. If leaders don't understand that and nurture and help people through that, and I'm not talking about coddling people too much or holding their hands or the gnashing of teeth or anything, but if people don't understand that, there's going to be a natural resistance to it. It's not because people are bad or don't want to do it, but there is a loss. People feel like. If someone said to me right now, well, Deming is all wrong, and here's the new thing to think about, that would be a significant loss for me to think about the time and effort I've spent learning that. So psychology is hugely important. And um, and agree, uh, with John, these are all interconnected to one another.

Speaker A: Yeah, absolutely agree. That has been such a huge challenge. You have to know your people really, really well. And that's just, I think you mentioned it earlier, Doug too, that there are a lot of leaders in a lot of systems that may not see a reason to change, that have a relatively stable level of success. There's often that top down leadership where I use my role and my title as author and therefore I get compliance. And that is just, it's just a different way to look at it. Um, there are systems out there that are successful that do that. But are you truly getting the impact that you want in a district like mine where we are serving a lot of those kids that are not in the best of homes, not in the best of stable situations, have a lot of factors that are unstable in our system at school, we can't afford to afford to lead that way. And so this, this theory of profound knowledge has really been transformative for me in my approach. Because you're right. I mean we have. I want teachers to come here to feel supported and like they're life changers, not like they show up and then they have to punch in, punch out. If they're gonna be a minute late, I'm gonna be calling them. Right, that's, and that's, um, that's the psychology aspect of that is really critical for leaders who are trying to strive for improvement, especially when you're going through these, these large change efforts. So really, John, when you're leading a system, you know, you're, you're a leader of a large, large system. Um, what's, what's one of those moments where you tried implementing the Deming philosophy, but you hit that resistance, you know, what was the resistance? What did you hear from the people in your system? And then what did.

Speaker B: You know, it's interesting. I would say I haven't hit like large scale resistance, but what I've noticed is some of this stuff is so different is that, you know, even though I think, um, even senior leaders who've had repeated exposure, it's, it's, there's like a pattern of behavior where you default to that old, that old way of thinking that you constantly have to, to talk about and it's not purposeful. And even, you know, even I do it sometimes too, where you, for example, a common one, especially when you're under pressure, is overreacting to that single data point when it comes to State test data because it's, you know, there's so much attached to it. The accountability system, there's a high stakes nature to it. Sometimes those types of, there's, sometimes there's funding tied to it. And so you know, it's those times of pressure where you know, it's, it's so easy to default back. And so uh, what I see my role is, and I don't count that as resistance, I feel like it's like a reflex for people to say we improved and you know, did we improve or is that just sort of common cause data from the last 10 years or what are we going to do? Our test score in fourth grade reading went down and really maybe it ticked down a little bit from last year, but if you look at like over 10 years again, it's just sort of bouncing around an average. So there's what I see my role is to constantly keep pushing to say, remember we're looking at this over time, not just a single year. We're not going to talk about it as improvement or a decline in performance, but rather it's just common cause variation. It's not meaningful, but it's very difficult because you know, there are many stakeholders in a public school system, the board who hasn't been brought along as far as much as senior leaders who've been repeatedly exposed to this, the general public, politicians, you know, and so you have all these audiences that you have to attend to. So it's very challenging and I, you know, that makes it very difficult. The other thing I would say is takes repeated exposure and you know, sometimes when people are first, like I'll give you an example. So we, when we first started running plan do study ACT cycles, I was working with a math teacher who I had, I'd been the principal of his school so I had a long standing relationship with him. We had worked together for like maybe a dozen years at least. So there's a lot of trust there. So we ran the PDSA cycle and um, it didn't go as planned and um, he said oh man, we failed. You know, and he was the type of guy that was always going to be hard on himself. He had very high standards. And what I said was like, no, we didn't fail. We learned and in two weeks time we figured out we shouldn't do more of that thing. Rather than putting a whole plan in place to do that for an entire school year and then finding out at the end of the school year we put this very small test in place and said oh, that's not the way to go. We got to just adapt it a little bit. So there's just lots of stuff like that that's um, you know, again, not, I wouldn't uh, classify it as resistance, but it's sort of bringing people along, repeated repeatedly making the points, repeatedly steering back to the philosophy talk about continual learning and sort of like a growth mindset versus that fixed mindset or overreacting the single data points. So you just, it takes a lot to undo that because that's the reflex most people have.

Speaker A: It takes a lot. Like you said, it takes a lot of repetition. And as you're sharing that, I'm just thinking, man, that sounds exactly like what we do for cluster. Right? So the true emphasis of cluster is uh, that you have mentor teachers that go out, they field tested strategy, whether good or bad, the data, they bring that back and then they share and reflect. Why was this super successful and why should we all try to implement this strategy? Or what did I learn from it and reflect from it. So now that we can do this strategy better or completely scrap it and try something different, being willing to go first is critical. And obviously as leaders too, we have to be willing to do that as well. Doug, I'm curious, you know, how does that apply to you? Have you, you know, when you think about resistance, is there anything that resonated

Speaker C: with back to psychology again, I think there's, it's not uncommon that there's typically resistance to any change that occurs. When I was in Urbandale and we were, this was a five year plan. But at one point after we'd had, um, we had invited David Langford to come in, he did three summer sessions with us. And I had a few people saying, well, you're trying to Langfordize us. I said, well we're not trying to make anything, we're trying to expand your learnings. And my initial reaction as I recall was some anger, like why can't you see how great this is? But understanding change and change takes time. You know, you back to Deming, how could they know any different? Um, you know, we've experienced, all of us probably have typically experienced a similar 13 year experience going through K12. Our undergraduate probably hasn't changed that much since I was there 40 some years ago. So why would we expect people to act any differently? The system, Professor Drake once told me, systems are meant to perpetuate themselves. They're built not to change. So you know, those are very common reactions. And I think as John said, you just continue to work through It. You don't try to slam it down anyone's throat. You try to highlight when successes have occurred. Um, and you also have to remember that, as an example, with the PDSA process, Deming did not call that the improvement cycle. He called it the learning cycle. At the end of something, have we learned something that we can either continue with, change a little bit and improve, or do we have to abandon it? I'm working with a student now, doctoral student, on his capstone, and he is working on something with attendance in this building. And he put together this really nice plan. He goes, wow, it just didn't have the impact that I thought it would have. It's failed. I said, no, no. What have you learned? If you didn't learn anything, that's the failure. And so I think there's a mindset with that. Yep. We need to be accountable for improved results. Absolutely. But as leaders, if we can set a foundation that we're learning together, I think that goes a long way to help people to move, um, along. And a friend of mine, Mark Lane, um, once said, you know, everybody has to have their own entry point. So helping people find their own entry points is pretty important as well as. But it's, you know, human nature. It's really challenging to deal with sometimes, my own included. Sometimes I find that I'm my own worst enemy. So I try to give grace to people when I work with them. And at times, I've become very frustrated that people can't see how great this new learning can be for them.

Speaker A: I feel like we. We are hitting on this concept of psychology. And, uh, uh, you know, I had a conversation with Todd Whitaker a long time ago, and something he said that stuck with me was that teachers are doing the best they know how. Whatever strategy it is, they are doing the best that they know. So if you have that sage on the stage who's lecturing up for 45 minutes in front of kindergarteners, which would never happen, but if you had that going on, they are doing it because it's the best strategy they have. They don't know any better. So how can I lead them in the right direction without, like you said, Doug, shoving strategies down their throat, without creating this sense of fear? And that is this. That's the tactful nature of this whole approach. Is it the systems issue? Is it something that I've asked all of our system to do? And maybe there's, like John mentioned earlier, uh, maybe there's a misunderstanding of an operational definition when we talk about presenting instructional content right Maybe there's a definition we can clarify. So this whole theory of, uh, this system, theory of profound knowledge, it just opens your eyes to how you look at each individual, each component, how they work together. And then it gives you, if you're looking at it the right way and you're reflective and vulnerable enough, I feel like it gives you a better roadmap towards success. Now, it doesn't mean it's perfect. Certainly not. But you're going to learn something in the end.

Speaker C: I want to make one comment, if I might, before I forget, because I'm finding it out. Age 67.

Speaker A: Things go ahead, Doug.

Speaker C: Ideas are fleeting sometimes, but when we did our work in Urbandale and our final two years, we saw a significant growth in student learning. I ran into a board Member Probably 4 or 5 years after I retired, and he said he was out running and, uh, I was out walking the dog. And he said, you know, I've been talking to the people at the high school and, you know, that stuff that you were bringing to us, you know, when you were superintendent? And I said, yeah. He goes, well, it really works. And I thought, this is the actual word. I thought. But I thought, no kidding. I knew it would work. But to have him finally recognized after that period of time, which also speaks to the fact of, you know, what we know about change research. It's not going to happen tomorrow. It's going to happen in years. And sometimes people aren't patient enough. That's one of the pieces that Dr. Senge writes about. A key attribute of effective leaders is having patience to watch things go through, yet knowing at the same time. Sometimes there are really great pressures that come upon leaders. But I appreciate that anecdote so much, and I'm like, well, duh, of course it worked. What do you think?

Speaker A: Absolutely. So I want to understand, John. We talk about customers, right? In Deming's work, he brings up this concept of the customer, right? The customer of a system. So when we think about applying that to schools, what does that word customer mean to you? And how can school systems continue to adapt their system to better mean?

Speaker B: I mean, I think probably many people that are Deming, students of Deming, have seen his, like, system sort of flow diagram and sort of customers on the left. And then, uh, there's processes that happen, and then there's a product or outcome on the right, and then there's a feedback loop. I'd say one challenge with education systems is just how many customers there are to attend to, you know, depending on how you frame it. I mean, students could be customers. Families certainly are customers. The community itself is a customer of, uh, the education system. But I think the best frame, the thing that, you know, and I, you know, I was fortunate to work with David Langford sort of one on one, as I was about 612 months into this. And I hired him basically as a one on one executive coach to help me sort of unpack some of the most challenging, um, questions I had about the Deming philosophy. The things that really made me think, the things that I was, you know, if I was, you know, 80% or 90% there on Deming, the ones I was like that, I don't know, that is a little too radical. And David sort of helped me understand, like, why Deming had the philosophy that he did in different areas. But one of the things that David helped me with is like, what's the role of the student in a school system? You know, he posed that question and I thought about it and we talked through it and he said that the student is the worker in the system because what you want to be produced is high quality learning. And that's produced by the student in their brain. And so that was a very helpful framing to me. The student is the worker. I guess you could sort of look at them as a customer in one way, but I think a better frame is the student is the worker and the teacher is the supervisor. And then administrators and school board are sort of like the primarily responsible for removing obstacles to the work, basically making it a good work environment, providing resources, those types of things. So that's how I think of the system. The student is the worker. Um, and again, what's being produced is high quality learning, hopefully.

Speaker A: Yeah, it's so interesting you mentioned that, um, and in your book you explain that flow diagram really, really well. So if you're looking for the visual, it's right there in the book. But I, um, think we always think about students as the customer. And I like that shift of paradigm of now the students are the workers. So how can I essentially set up the system to help those workers essentially do their job work as successfully as possible?

Speaker B: There's all these things that attach. Then when you sort of adopt this way of thinking, then there's all these things that sort of flow from that. So I think back again to your idea about improving behavior. And if students are the workers, you know, and we, we can get caught up with like, things like fancy dashboards and stuff like that, you know, and there's a place for having, you know, fancy dashboards, but I just think of a piece of chart paper and charting with a single teacher what, you know, behavior looks like in their classroom. And you're starting to make progress already because you're working with the teacher to sort of problem solve, improve things in his or her classroom. And you're doing it simply, you're doing it over time. You can just put that on a piece of sticky chart paper in her classroom or his classroom and chart that data. But even better. And this is what David would stress all the time. And he actually became a coach for uh, a continual improvement fellowship that we were running internally to teach this to people. He said, that's great that you're doing that with the teacher, but you need to put that up in the classroom where these office referrals are happening. And students need to see this and they need to become a part of the problem solving process. How are we going to reduce the number of office referrals in our class? What's the aim of our class? You are a part of this system, so you have to be a part of the problem solving process. He started every time a teacher or whoever was in that fellowship started talking about what they were doing, he'd be like, what did you do to put this in front of students? That was his first question every time. And that was very powerful. Um, and it finally became a pattern. So we started having that question at the ready. But at the start it was like we would forget, oh yeah, how are we going to improve this thing if we don't put it in front of students? And you know, you obviously have to consider the age of the kids and those types of things. But there's, to me, in a K12 system, there's no kids that are too young to sort of be a part of the problem solving process. At least at some, um, at least at some level that was very powerful.

Speaker A: Yeah, you're bringing me back to my time in the classroom. And that was actually the shift from, you know, I had a lot of luck as far as, uh, flexibility. Right. I could teach kind of how I wanted to with the resources that I, that I want. There's, it's a double edged sword. Right. You get the flexibility but you lose the structure. And so for, for me, that's what I did. I had to talk to the kids and I asked them, how do you want to learn? And it was seventh grade science. So how do you want to learn seventh grade science? What would be the best approach for you? What's going to be the most meaningful for you? And so we did. I forget what the specific, uh, term is called. Langford will kill me on this one. But, uh, we set up whiteboards all around the room. I had different topics for them to kind of give their feedback on. And then essentially I spent two days worth of having them provide me feedback and then me presenting it to them and then what the result was going to be. And that result ended up being self paced learning. And so we did kind of what's called the grid method. We pre did all the levels, we had all the work ready to go. And so then students could just work and not have me sitting in front of the classroom just talking at them. And that, that, I don't know would have happened had I not got their feedback initially to lead that effort. So that's so critical. Uh, and I think that is a real challenge. I forget which interview you were doing. I think it was with Andrew Staats on his podcast. But this concept of fear, when we share data and information where we kind of tend to hold onto it or make, try and make it look better, we don't give it the, we don't just speak to it truthfully. And I think we're afraid to do that with kids. Right? Like if we share this behavior data with kids, will they make fun of it? Will they really take it seriously? Will it affect their motivation? And so there is a little bit of vulnerability that the leader has to have and the teacher has to have in order for the kids to then absorb it well. So how could we support teachers in doing that?

Speaker B: And David lived it, so that's why he's such a good coach in this area. I remember him saying, um, when he first started, I think he was a high school business teacher when he, when he first came across the Deming stuff. You know, I forget what the exact problem was that he was working on. It was in his high school classroom. But he ran a PSA and said, you know, how are we going to improve X, whatever that thing was. And you know, the idea that rose to the surface was, well, we should be able to wear hats in class. And so the interesting thing is like, you know, if it was me, I'd probably be like, no, that's, you know, we're not doing that. You know, but he said, fine, um, let's do that. But we're going to, we're going to test this, we're going to run a psa, we're going to look at the data that's important to us. Whatever that thing was that they were trying to improve. And so he let the kids wear hats. And again, I'm, um, not suggesting that everybody do this, but he did that and the data came back. And when they saw the data, they're like, oh, that didn't work. And then they saw the data and the kids started seeing that he was taking their ideas seriously, even though, you know, that first idea wasn't the best. What he said was, over time, the ideas got better and better and more serious from the kids. And he got a lot less of that. Sort of like, you know, ha, uh, ha, he's going to let us do whatever we want type of thing. And then instead what happened was they started actually improving the classroom because they saw that the input was actually being taken into account. So I think, you know, that's a, that's a pretty interesting approach. And actually, when we've run PDSAs and involve the kids, especially, you know, you're working with sixth, seventh, eighth graders, especially those seventh and eighth graders. Like, honestly, like some of those early brainstorms, you get a lot of like, you know, stuff that you, you know, you laugh at or whatever. But once the kids start seeing that you're actually taking it serious, the, the ideas get better and better over time because you got to remember they're not used to, like, someone taking their input and putting it actually into practice like that. So it's new to them, too.

Speaker C: I think that's a case where. I said that's a case where leadership

Speaker A: needs to not give up.

Speaker C: Then. No, we got these ridiculous ideas from these middle schoolers. Well, of course we did. They're middle schoolers. But we need to be persistent with that and have the patience, uh, to help them move through that. A couple of things that came to my mind on the whole customer and worker piece, um, relates back to Baldrige. You know, there's a category about customers and there's a category about the workforce. And I've had conversations, disagreements with people about that whole concept. And, uh, the conclusion I've come to is that depending on the situation, students can be both the customer and sometimes they're the workers. When people say that schools aren't businesses and that we don't produce anything, that's absolutely wrong. We produce learning. Ultimately. Who produces the learning? Not the adults. The students do. So in that case, they certainly are the workers. They are the recipients of what happens, the reason we exist. So in that way, they are our customers too. And I will tell you, people in higher education do not like to call students customers, although very directly, since they're paying the bills. They are. Um, you know, this was alluded to the least asked, the group of people who are least asked their opinions in schools or students. And I would say that's not because we. My hunch is that we just didn't. We've not been taught that way. So now I'm going back to teacher preparation for how we work with kids. Um, of course, my work was, you know, 45 years ago when I graduated. We never talked about asking students for input. It's like, here's your pedagogy you need to work on. But this idea of asking students is really significant because they have profound knowledge about themselves that we don't have. None of us. I don't think, consider and say, I can still think like an eighth grader. I can think that I remember what it's like, but I can't. So it's almost silly that we don't ask people. It's like going to a doctor's office and having them just tell us what's wrong without talking to us. Um, one example we had in Urbandale that I can recall is we had a second grade class and two teachers that taught in this building had gone to the Langford workshop and they were excited about it. And they had some. I don't remember exactly what the behavior issue was, but they told the kids about it and they defined what the problem was. They had kids, they had goals that they set. They had, uh, kids start collecting data about what the behavior was. They kept a whole class chart of the behavior, not by student name, but just in totality. And they asked kids, what could we do to fix this? And they put that into place. They talked about, how will we celebrate this? You know, they were expecting that kids would want pizza parties and all these kinds of rewards. And kids said, can we just dance to some music when we hit the goal? Yeah. And so what the teachers found by engaging students, second grade students, we're talking about seven and eight year olds, they can do that work if they are taught that work. But the first time you ask kids, they're gonna go, what are you asking me for? I don't know. Of course they don't know. We haven't taught them how. So that's incumbent upon us to teach kids how to be engaged in their own learning. And I've often wondered IF in a K12 system, as an example, if we started from kindergarten, having kids starting to think like that, what will they look like as 12th graders? And it's exciting and almost sometimes Frightening to think of what that could look like. And that would be a very, um, very great amount of change. I'm reminded of the video from Quality Learning Australasia of a middle school math teacher. And things were not going well in his classroom. And he'd been through the Langford training and he took the kids through the PDSA process and after they'd applied multiple tools, they found out that the problem was him. Well, he didn't think that. So he said, we need to redo this. And the kids said, no, we don't need to redo this. The problem is you. That was a tough pill to swallow for him. That would be a tough pill for any of us to swallow. But he took their feedback and revamped the whole system. And results were much better in terms of performance, overall performance and results, but also student satisfaction. So listening to that student, whether we think of them as a customer or workforce. And in Baldrige, you talk about the workforce in terms of their engagement, not about being draconian with them, but getting them engaged, um, very much speaks to. And that, that's a fundamental piece if we follow that in any system, right? So the teacher, the leader of the classroom system should follow that with their students. The principal should follow that same idea with their teachers, and the superintendent should follow that with everyone that they work with. But sometimes, and this has happened to me, my ego gets in the way. So that's psychology for me. Right. Somehow I think that because I am the superintendent, with this, whatever degree I do or don't have, I should have the answers. And that humility in knowing that I don't know at all, but there are methods to help me know, I think is really important. But that too is a tough pill to swallow because when we are in leadership roles, whether it's the principalship or the superintendency, sometimes an initial thought is I should know all the answers. And that is, uh, a horrible place to be because you will do, I think, as um, our good friend Dr. Acoff would say, you will continue to do the wrong things. Right. Because you don't know. But as my wife has told me many times, sometimes the problem really is me. And I have to admit that quite often. Yeah.

Speaker A: Oh, my goodness. Doug, I appreciate the analogies. And you're. Yeah, that's too good. Oh, my gosh. Well, John, I want to ask you just a, uh, off the wall question. I know it's not on the show notes, but. But you've been able to interact with, I'm sure, leaders from all over, whether it's across the country, I'm sure, even internationally. But you've. In your work, you're able to experience and see a lot of others in their respective systems. What is something that has just been on your mind lately as far as Dr. Deming's work and where it kind of lands with leaders of today? What's just been on your mind?

Speaker B: What I found, generally speaking, is that once people sort of hear about the philosophy, they're very open, open to it. In fact, I think teachers among the people that are most sort of open and sort of naturally inclined to think like this, even though they haven't heard of it necessarily. I think one thing I've been thinking about is, um, because I, you know, I just did a leadership institute training internally, we had about, you know, 30 of our leaders together to close out the school year. And I train them in some of the philosophical parts of the book. But I always put this light up where I tell the story of Chesterton's Fence, which is basically like there's two people walking in a field. They come to a fence. One says, why is this here? I'm going to tear it down. And the second person basically says, well, I'm not going to let you tear it down until we know why the fence is there. And so, uh, what I have is our school sort of logo on one side of the fence, and I have the ideas in the book on the other side of the fence. And I say, there's going to be things you read that we don't do. They're on the other side of this fence. And the reason is that what I think is the most effective change is what emerges from careful consideration of the current system. So you don't, you don't. You can't just throw stuff out with having a thoughtful replacement and understanding why you're doing that. But what I have been thinking about is, like, what would a school system look like that has fully adopted all of the Deming philosophy? I mean, I don't even know if that's possible, because even Deming says, like, you're always working towards this, even as close, you know, even, you know, even as you get closer, you're still. There's still more to do. But I. But I wonder if what it would look like to sort of start and. Or transform a school that has fully been built on these ideas. So, like, even us, you know, we're working in this direction. We've been working in this direction for five years or so, but there are still many Things that are sort of on the other side of that fence from where the Deming philosophy is. So that's one thing that I've been thinking about lately, what that would look like.

Speaker A: Yeah. And that's the question I was kind of thinking about as well, to kind of put a period on the show is how can leaders start to move towards that aim? Right. If we could implement a school or implement a prep program, one or the other. Right. A, uh, system that produces to the highest levels an organization that is truly reflective of Deming's work. Right. And maybe we just have that conversation now of what would you first start with? Maybe it doesn't have to be the whole 10 year strategic plan, but what would be step one in that direction, whether you're designing that school or that principal program or that system? Right.

Speaker B: Yeah. First step you would take sort of asking like, what, what should the leadership competencies be of a principal or superintendent, like a school leader or systems leader in education? I mean, I think, I mean, I think what would be very powerful is if we can reframe those programs so that people do start to understand what it is to just sort of have this reflex towards systems thinking versus blaming individual people. I mean, I think that's probably one of the most powerful steps. And then sort of as an extension of that, I think you can reframe the system of profound knowledge, which can be a little bit esoteric, a little bit hard to understand if you can reframe that each of those components as one or more leadership competencies. So how do you think in terms of systems? You can train people how to do that? How do you understand variability and work and problem solving? How do you make sure you understand how people learn and develop and improve? You can teach people how to understand why people behave as they do. You can understand, you can teach people how the interactions between those four things have an impact on your organization. You can teach people how to sort of give vision and meaning and direction to their organization. And so I kind of think of it as like, you know, if I was designing like a school leader program, you know, those five or six competencies, but all geared toward that long term systems thinking, that would probably be where I would lean towards.

Speaker A: Absolutely. Doug, what about you? What are your thoughts on this?

Speaker C: I'm thinking about deming's point number one. There's 14 points, which is adopt a new philosophy. I think there's one of two ways you can go about that. One is to adopt a new philosophy and work it out. The other is as you're working, you begin to see, uh, new things, and you gain insights, and you adopt a new philosophy. My sense is that traditional leader preparation programs have not adopted a new philosophy. As an example, four or five years ago, the Iowa School Standards for Leadership. School Leadership Standards changed. What have we seen as a result, in terms of results in the state of Iowa? Nothing. We just rewashed those dishes and dirty water and called them something else. If they were embedded. And, uh, we've done the crosswalk. I do that with students. I don't know if we did it with you. We do a crosswalk between Deming's work and the Iowa standards. Where do they fit? Rather than saying they're totally opposed to each other, we can find where they currently fit. And that's probably a more palatable approach than to just pull the rug out from everybody, which is in my cranky old age now, is what I want to do. But really the best approach is to bring it in gradually. The other thing is John kind of alluded to is we don't have to call it everything that we're calling it. We don't have to mention Deming when we do Baldrige. We don't have to call it Baldrige. We just do the stuff that it asks us to do. Um, the other thing is I would have people do some reading. Um, I think, honestly, Dr. Deming, while he was brilliant, um, his writing is a little difficult to follow. So I'll give another plug to this book. John's book does a wonderful job of taking Deming's ideas and making them very understandable and palatable for educators. Deming's. I don't know, John, if you found this. Deming's hard to read. He reads like he speaks.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker C: And that's part of his charm. But I think getting materials like this into people's hands, you know, David had his book Orchestrating Leadership with Quality. Um, Lee Jenkins had a book or two that was out. So there's books out there that people can be reading that begin to move into, that help, um, support that kind of thinking. But people leading programs need to adopt a new philosophy. And I guess the question is always, are you satisfied with our current results? If you are, keep doing the same stuff. My sense is, from what I hear, at least politically and even across the state, is people aren't satisfied. They just don't know what to do. They just try to revamp some old idea. So having people move into this work, understand it. Reading John's work, and, boy, he's Just done a ton. I am just so impressed by his work. He's the next David Lankford in my mind, to help this happen in education. And so I hope that he's very successful with his work, not only in his own district, but also in broader perspectives. People just need to hear this stuff new. Because what I find in our classes at Drake, and I'm now retired, is like, anybody ever heard of this stuff? Nope. Anybody ever heard of Deming? Nope. If someone had asked me 30 years ago if I'd heard of Deming, the answer would have been nope. So we need people like John and Hunter, actually. People you know, you. You're a great example of this. Starting to spread the word and plant the seeds. I use the metaphor in Urbandell since my wife is a farm kid. I said, okay, here's what we're going to do. We're going to plant the seeds and then we're going to nurture the seeds and they're going to grow and we're going to harvest. And my wife says to, as usual, Doug, you're wrong. I said, what is it this time? She goes, you don't plant the seeds first? Uh, what do you do? You cultivate the ground. You get the ground ready and then you plant the seeds. And I think that's an important piece is we just need to start cultivating the ground by having the conversations.

Speaker B: Yeah, that's a good analogy.

Speaker A: I love that in the next edition of John's book, he's going to put a graphic in there that's got, I

Speaker C: can't believe in John's book. And after I bought the book, I hadn't read all the way through, someone said, hey, you're mentioned in the book. I said, I am I mentioned in the book? So I have my name highlighted. So thanks, John. I appreciate that.

Speaker B: Yeah, of course. Well deserved, for sure.

Speaker A: Awesome. You guys have been so wonderful. John, I want to give people a chance to connect with you. Where are they? Where can they find you? Where can they best place your work

Speaker B: to find all the things that you're doing on LinkedIn. I'm, um, fairly active on LinkedIn. Just John a deuce. I have a website of sorts called Stan Store johnaduce. And then, um, my email is improveanaduce me. And anybody can email if they have questions or are interested in learning more about Deming or how to apply it to education.

Speaker A: Yeah, I'm pretty sure my algorithm on LinkedIn is pretty much you. I try to like all the stuff that you share because you're always sharing, even just tidbits of Deming or the work that you're doing in your district. And it always resonates with me. And, um, Doug really said it well that your book Win Win, really does a good job making Deming's work more palatable. You know, I'm sure listeners who are tuning in, they're realizing that, wow, there. It sounds like there's a lot to this theory of profound knowledge and all the work that Deming has done. Where do I start? I would say the best place to start is to head over to John Dew's LinkedIn profile and just start taking it bit by bit. I want to give you a chance, John, to leave our audience with some lasting thoughts. But I guess my lasting thought is that all of this doesn't have to happen at once. Right. I think the best approach you can take is bit by bit, whether you're a teacher in the classroom and you have 10 minutes of time that you are able to be flexible, start there. If it's, uh, more of a personal thing that you want to transform an aspect of how you operate and think, start there. It doesn't have to be an entire system change all at once. So, John, I want to give you a chance. You know, what are some lasting thoughts that you would leave our audience, especially those principals, APs, that are hearing this work for the first time or are thinking, now, man, it's summer planning now. This gets me thinking about moving into the next school year.

Speaker B: Yeah, I mean, I think some lasting

Speaker A: thoughts that you would give them.

Speaker B: One of the things is, we're swimming in ideas, swimming in fads, you know, swimming in, you know, people claiming to have the next best thing. Um, you know, and I've waded through many of those ideas, those books, people trying to sell me stuff. Um, this is the most powerful thing I've ever come across. Um, I've never, you know, you know, I'm, I guess, fairly studious, but never dedicated myself to the study of anything like this before. And when I say it's transformed my approach, I mean, like, it's literally transformed, revolutionized my approach as a. A school, uh, system leader. And it's even revolutionized how I think about my own kids and their education and parenting as well, because the ideas and the principles apply just as much to the students in our schools as they do to my own kids. And in fact, during the pandemic, when I first was getting heavily into this, my wife said, I think you say Deming more than you say our own Kids names. Because she was hearing me on these zoom, um, calls where I was learning this stuff, and I said, okay, maybe that's maybe a slight exaggeration, but I take your point. But. But it lit a fire that intense to learn this stuff. Because I do believe, like Doug said, I think at the start that Deming was identified as one of the greatest thinkers of the. One, um, of the most revolutionary thinkers of the 20th century. And I think that is just how powerful his. His philosophy is. So check it out. Yeah.

Speaker A: Doug, any comments from you, Any final thoughts? And I will respect if it's cranky, you know, with.

Speaker C: With the aches and pains of age do come some privileges. And cranky is. But it's crankiness with the best of all intent. I would just encourage people to follow John. Um, I think of this notion of the voice in the wilderness. He's the voice that's out there right now. And I would encourage you, Hunter, as you continue your work, to start to be one of those voices. I know you do that through the podcast and you have a wide variety of things through your podcast, but I would really encourage you to focus in because I saw you in class, I saw you adapt to this, to make this a passion of yours. We just need people like you and John to be leading the charge so we can make significant improvements. And what's it all for? As a friend of mine I work with sometimes, it's always about the kids. Period. End of story. It is about children. And, um, you guys are going to help lead the way to make that happen.

Speaker A: Thanks for listening to the Ed Essentials podcast. I hope this conversation gave you practical insights and inspiration for your leadership journey. If you found today's episode valuable, I would love for you to share it with a colleague and leave a rating or review. It helps more aspiring and new school leaders find this show. To connect with me again, visit eTesentials.net, you can follow me on Instagram Essentials or email me any of your questions or your story. I would love to hear your thoughts, your questions, your ideas for any future episodes, or hear what work you're doing in your school and community. Until next time, keep leading, keep learning, and we'll see you on the next episode of the Ed Essentials podcast.

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