The Strange Case of Dr. Deming and Mr. Newt

This was the title of a post in the late Great Books Cafe / Great Books of Western Civilization Cafe by an admirer of W. Edwards Deming in response to post of mine pointing out the another admirer of Dr. Deming was Newt Gingrich. His post asserted that, had Deming not died in 1993, he would have opposed Gingrich. I say "asserted" because he did not cite any specifics. Given the Cafe was just an internet board, he didn't feel compelled to research it. Fair enough, but it left me with the impression he was avoiding the possibility that he shared an opinion with Gingrich, something he seemed to regard with distaste.

It happened that he lived close enough that he and I became friends off-line. We're having dinner with him and his wife tonight. Coincidentally, Newt Gingrich is in Milwaukee today for a Taxpayer Rally. So it seemed like an appropriate time for a quick look at Deming and Gingrich.

Gingrich met Deming through Owen and Susan Roberts, who became among Gingrich's biggest financial supporters. Mother Jones reported

Owen Roberts is chairman and wife Susan is executive vice president of the consulting firm Capital Formation Counselors. They made a good first impression on Newt when they invited him to a get-together with economist W. Edwards Deming. After the meeting, Newt wrote a thank-you note humbly stating that the Roberts had "changed history."

Gingrich's Renewing American Civilization course went so far as to characterize Quality As Defined By Deming as one of the five pillars of American civilization. The Summer 1995 ASQC Public Sector Network News included a Message from the Chair by Barry Crook with

Some random notes from the Annual Quality Congress meeting in Cincinnati

These included

One of the ideas we brainstormed about was to create a forum whereby practitioners, leaders and academics might discuss the notion of whether or not a model is emerging about how government is reformulating itself and how it is going about creating high performance organizations -- might benefit from such a dialogue. I personally would love to see Vice President Gore, Speaker Gingrich and our own, Tom Mosgaller, spend some time talking about this subject. Just how does the quality movement, reinvention, and the Contract with America relate to one another?

(The ASQC is now the ASQ, American Society for Quality, and does concern itself with the government and not-for-profit sectors.) In a August 12, 1996 post on the Learning-Org list, Donald Kerr (an engineer and internal consultant for AlliedSignal at the Johnson Space Center) said,

I'm now leading a W. Edwards Deming Institute/DEN [Deming Electronic Project] project on the DEN where we are reviewing Newt Gingrich's Renewing American Civilization lecture transcripts and providing apolitical electronic feedback to the Progress and Freedom Foundation.

Discussion of Gingrich on Deming a the DEN drew a May 29, 1996 post from Matt Barkley (IBM Personal Systems Programming).

Of course, the Speaker might have made a slip of the tongue, or pen, or mind. In the light of all the difficulties enumerated, however -- no operational definitions, no consideration of systems aspects, and the direct contravention of Point 8 [Drive out fear] -- I find that unlikely. I call this a Freudian-type slip, revealing that the Speaker does not understand or does not accept Deming's philosophy.

Deming's point referred to is that persistent and pervasive quality problems are systemic; they can't be solved by putting people's jobs on the line. The organization that acknowledges and acts on this drives out fear.

So it appears there was considerable interest in the quality movement in someone of Gingrich's prominence espousing Deming's ideas. There was some question whether Gingrich fully understood those ideas

I, too, heard Gingrich advocate some approaches inconsistent with Point 8 in dealing with problems with government institutions. What I don't recall is this being the ground for any of the political opposition to him. No one opposed him by claiming that they, not he, was advocating policies correctly based on Deming's ideas. It wasn't framed in those terms because Deming's ideas would have been at least as threatening to the status quo as Gingrich's.

Update: Amy Hetzner reports in Saturday's Milwaukee Journal Sentinel Gingrich blasts 'arrogant' policies at the Taxpayer Rally.

Update 2: Gingrich drew inspiration from management theorist: Deming led Japan back after WWII, by Jim McElhatton, The Washington Times, Wednesday, December 21, 2011