7 Deadly Diseases of Management, by Deming

30 years ago, the Quality guru W. Edwards Deming published the best-seller Out of the Crisis. In it, he offers a theory of management based on his famous 14 Points for Management. The 14 Points can be said to express Dr. Deming’s philosophy of transformational management. Additionally, this 7 Deadly Diseases of Management describe the most serious barriers that management faces to improving effectiveness and continual improvement:

1. Lack of constancy of purpose to plan product and service that will have a market and keep the company in business, and provide jobs. Without good long term planning, worker efforts will be irrelevant
2. Emphasis on short-term profits: short-term thinking (just the opposite from constancy of purpose to stay in business), fed by fear of unfriendly takeover, and by push from bankers and owners for dividends.
3. Evaluation of performance, merit rating, or annual review.
4. Mobility of management; job hopping.
5. Management by use only of visible figures, with little or no consideration of figures that are unknown or unknowable.
6. Excessive medical costs.
7. Excessive costs of liability, swelled by lawyers that work on contingency fees.

Do they still apply in today's World?

Suggested Reading & Bibliography

Out of the Crisis - W. Edwards Deming (1986)