October 1, 2002
Hon. George Bush
Presidential Medal of Freedom
The White House
Washington, DC 20500
Mr. President:
It is my honor to place into nomination for the Presidential Medal of Freedom the names of three individuals whose lives and teachings have already had a giant impact on our economy, our society, and our way of life -- and whose influence will only grow stronger in the decades to come.
I nominate the three individuals most responsible for the creation and development of the discipline of quality today:
William Edwards Deming
Joseph Moses Juran
Armand Vallin Feigenbaum
This nomination is unusual in two ways. First, the nomination is for three individuals, instead of one. Second, the nominations are of statisticians -- not soldiers or statesmen or artists; statistics is not a profession people intuitively associate with the theme of freedom.
Honoring these men does more than acknowledge their unusual careers. It sends a signal to Americans everywhere that quality matters, that the United States of America stands behind businesses that try to do better, and that every action every individual takes to improve quality strengthens our country and our society for the competitive years that lie ahead.
In this letter and attached supporting statement, I hope to make clear that the award must be shared three ways, that each of the three is equally deserving of this highest recognition. I also hope to show that, while each man began his career as a statistician, each came over time to address issues of far greater breadth and significance to our society than abstract industrial statistics.
Sincerely,
Michael Finley
(for American Society for Quality)
Nearly everyone concedes that industrial quality is a good thing. But how does it relate to the concept of freedom? The two reinforce one another in a couple of ways. One involves the freedom of workers in making important decisions. The other involves the freedom of the entire country to pursue its dreams.
In the first place, quality cannot occur unless workers enjoy a high degree of freedom. In the old thinking, managers managed and employees did what they were told. In the era of quality, however, employees are trained to utilize their own insights and intelligence to improve quality on the job. This training often goes by the name empowerment. But it could just as easily be described as the freeing up of the genius of all members of an organization.
In different ways, empowerment is the linchpin of each of the three quality philosophers' programs.
Deming's famous "14 Points" stress an end to reliance on inspection to achieve quality; the need to institute training on the job, and to drive out fear, and the removal of all barriers that rob people of pride of workmanship.
Feigenbaum's concept of total quality control requires as the first step that management acknowledge that quality is too important to leave to a handful of experts, that everyone in an organization must be involved in the process: "Quality is everyone's job."
Juran preaches the importance of "identifying the customer" -- that, in a large company, one's customers are the workers in adjoining departments, and that meeting their needs is the paramount challenge for every worker.
In each system, a new balance is formed between management, whose job it is to lead employees toward consistent goals of quality improvement, and an empowered workforce, who are trained in the practices and methodologies of continuous improvement, and are given the freedom to achieve higher levels of customer satisfaction.
In the second place, no free society can long ignore the issue of quality, because competitive societies control their own destinies, and societies that can not compete do not stay free for long.
Throughout history, the decline of a given society has been paralleled by a decline in the output of its citizens. Healthy societies are societies in which the entire population is trained and motivated to do good work -- in services, in manufacturing, in the arts, in every sector. Extraordinary civilizations -- "golden ages" -- occur when every sector is aware of and working toward excellence.
The careers of Deming, Feigenbaum and Juran began with statistics, formulas, and bar charts. But as their insights and ideas developed, they quickly overflowed the discreet, esoteric world of numbers, and extended in the areas of organizational dynamics, motivation, and leadership.
The three men disagree on incidentals, and take different perspectives on important issues. But they have created a combined vision of not just a mathematics, but a politics of empowerment, and an ethics of interdependence and cooperation. This vision may eventually do as much to keep America strong, prosperous and free as all the might our military forces can muster.
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