Overcome blindness with metacognition

Ten days of slowdown - Day #8

Apr 10, 2021

Credit: https://deming.org/quotes/10084/

We are all blind to what we don’t know. I am a fan of Deming’s work. Not his 14 principles for organizations. Not PDCA or PDSA - it was only a tool that he actually borrowed from Shewhart and propagated its usage. The only thing I mostly borrow is the single quote from him, that covers it all.

It is not enough to do your best; you must know what to do, and then do your best.
- W. Edwards Deming.

Before we do anything one could ask whether we know what best is. If we apply metacognitive skills to find the answer to that, then it is possible to intelligently work towards it. The word “must” is very loaded and how far one goes with it determines what “best” would be in that context.

To apply the above, one needs to look at the four lenses that Deming used in parallel simultaneously. The perspectives being:

Appreciating a system
Understanding variation
Psychology
Epistemology, the theory of knowledge.

Though Deming’s work is in the manufacturing industry and several of the tools and techniques applied to that industry varies for the cognitive knowledge work that today’s knowledge worker does, the underlying principles can be used, extended, and applied soundly.