423: Kelly Allan, part 2: Restoring joy to work through Deming and stewardship

December 17, 2020 by Joshua
in Podcast

We correct two big misunderstandings.

First, most people associate acting on the environment with obligation, chore, deprivation, and sacrifice. We lead them to feel that way when we tell them what to do. We may think we’re right because the science says so, but leadership depends not on how right you are but how the person you want to motivate feels.

Second, people don’t know Deming, or associate him, to the extent they know him, with statistics and how they felt about math problems in school. When you get Deming, you see understanding patterns reveals effective leadership, which is liberating, even fun.

Kelly shares how digging dirt and planting plants became fun when led effectively. Since everyone cares about the environment in some way—after all we all breathe, eat, and drink—we can all feel this way.

As I speak to more people in the Deming community, I sense we are forming a strategy to apply Deming’s work to sustainability. As he turned around Japan in a few years to lead the world, so can we lead our communities.


Kelly being on the Deming Institute board, before and after recording this conversation, we talked about involving people who practiced and mastered Deming’s approach. Something is going to happen with this community. We are going to contribute to lead people, companies, and industries to embrace sustainability with passion and joy, stopping wrongly expecting burden, chore, deprivation, and sacrifice. Our culture has disconnected us from what brings reward and joy. Great leadership will restore it.

If you’re into improving your leadership, especially in the style of Deming, you sense we’re on the ground floor of a change on the scale of Japan’s transformation in 1950, and you want in, contact me.

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