Question: What kind of dishes are made out of lead?

Answer: China

Many of us in U.S. industry have forgotten the principles of our dearly departed quality guru, W. Edwards Deming, since his passing in 1993. Since then our quality levels as a country have grown only slightly. At the Society of Anti-Deming (SAD), we believe that if we practice the opposite of what He preached to us, we might do better. Please evaluate your qualifications to become a member of SAD. You may also send it to your boss, or your boss’s boss, if you think either is qualified to be a SAD member.

Click on the “E-mail story” button in the upper right of this page. Type in your boss’s e-mail address, and send the story using my name (Mike Micklewright) and e-mail address (mike@mikemick.com) instead of yours.

The recipient will never know it came from you. I’ll get the blame, and you can remain humble and undetected, while your target learns our SAD ways.

Here goes.

Please evaluate yourself on each of W. Edwards Deming’s 14 points, as follows:

I don’t uphold this principle.—One point
I sometimes uphold this principle, depending on the pressure from my company’s owners.—Two points
This is great. I love this principle and abide by it all the time.—Three points

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