Kevin Cahill on His Grandfather W. Edwards Deming, Lessons, and Legacy

Episode #238 is a conversation with somebody I've wanted to talk with for a long time, Kevin Cahill. He is the executive director of the W. Edwards Deming Institute.

He's also a grandson of Dr. Deming!

Kevin played an instrumental role in getting NBC to publicly release the 1980 documentary, “If Japan Can, Why Can't We?” that featured Dr. Deming (see my blog posts about it).  We talk about that in the podcast, along with his other recollections of Dr. Deming and how he watched the original NBC airing with him.

The conversation explores Kevin's own career journey and how he gradually came to appreciate and apply Deming's philosophy of systems thinking and quality. He reflects on both the challenges of working against prevailing business culture and the importance of recognizing one's own “sphere of influence,” even without a leadership title. Kevin also candidly discusses his early struggles with conventional management practices, such as performance appraisals, and how attending one of Dr. Deming's seminars changed his perspective.

Mark and Kevin also talk about the work of The Deming Institute today, including its efforts to make Deming's teachings more widely available through digital archives, seminars, and education initiatives. Kevin describes the effort to secure perpetual rights to the NBC documentary so that it could be shared publicly and explains how the Institute is re-energizing its outreach to help organizations and individuals improve quality of life through Deming's timeless principles.

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For a link to this episode, refer people to www.leanblog.org/238.

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Videos of Kevin Cahill

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Transcript

Of course. Here is the improved transcript.

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Introduction

Announcer:

Welcome to the Lean Blog Podcast. Visit our website at www.leanblog.org. Now, here's your host, Mark Graban.

Mark Graban:

Hi, this is Mark Graban. Welcome to episode 238 of the podcast for January 11, 2016. My guest today is someone I've wanted to talk to for a long time, Kevin Cahill. He is the Executive Director of The W. Edwards Deming Institute, and he's also a grandson of Dr. Deming himself.

Kevin played a very instrumental role in getting NBC to publicly release online the 1980 documentary If Japan Can, Why Can't We?–the broadcast that helped introduce Dr. Deming to the Western world. So we talk about that in the podcast, along with his recollections of watching the show when it originally aired, sitting there next to Dr. Deming. We'll also discuss Kevin's reflections on learning the Deming philosophy and his attempts to utilize the ideas in his career, and how challenging that can be when it flies in the face of the prevailing business culture.

It's a really fun discussion. I hope you enjoy it. If you have follow-up questions for Kevin, please go to the blog and post a comment at leanblog.org/238. And if you haven't seen the video yet and want to explore some other links about Dr. Deming and the Institute, please go to the website again, leanblog.org/238.

Well, Kevin, it's a pleasure to talk to you again, and thank you so much for joining us here on the podcast today.

Kevin Cahill:

My pleasure, Mark. Looking forward to it.

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Early Career and the Sphere of Influence

Mark Graban:

So we're going to be talking a lot about your grandfather and his work and his philosophy. But I think it'd be really interesting for the listeners if you could introduce yourself. What have you done professionally? And I'm curious if any of that work was influenced by your grandfather.

Kevin Cahill:

Sure. As I was growing up, I didn't really know much about my grandfather's work. I knew that he was involved in statistics and that he had a PhD. My grandfather worked out of a small office in his basement, and he had a big chalkboard, and we'd see all the mathematical figures. One of the things my brother and I always said was, “Man, that's something we never wanted to do in our life. Working in math and working with numbers, that's got to be one of the most boring things you could ever do.” That didn't change for a very long time until I was actually exposed to what he did.

When I started out in business, I was able to look at some of his ideas and think initially, “Well, I'm not in a management role, I'm not in a leadership role. I'm starting out at the bottom, so there's nothing I can really do.” I remember being kind of frustrated about that. As I read a little bit more about my grandfather, I realized, “Well, wait a second, I actually do have a small sphere of influence that maybe I can impact by looking at things differently.” I could do these bare-bones flowcharts and understand the process and see if I could bring some of these ideas, without even mentioning my grandfather, into the organization and see where I could make the biggest contribution.

Mark Graban:

And what field or what types of business were you starting your career in?

Kevin Cahill:

It was a media rep firm business, a terrific company, Katz Communications. What they did was they represented local TV stations around the country and sold their advertising time on a national basis. It was a pure sales organization. One of the things that I saw was that you had sales assistants, which was what I was, and executives and managers. But oftentimes they had such specific roles that there was a lack of understanding between the salespeople and the assistants on what actual role the sales assistants could play. And so that's where I said, “Wait a second, maybe I can be of assistance in there if I can learn how these sales systems work and how this can be better integrated throughout the organization and make myself as useful and valuable as I possibly could.”

Mark Graban:

It sounds like you were trying to figure out how to understand processes and systems to do what you could within your sphere of influence at that early stage.

Kevin Cahill:

Right, exactly. That was one of the things that was frustrating: do I even bother because I'm not a leader? As you know, Mark, if you can get the people from the top actually doing it and being behind the ideas, then change can be a lot faster and more powerful. But not having that in place, I definitely believe that somebody at any level has some sphere of influence that they can impact in an organization or in a community, even at a low level like I was.

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Moving Up and Falling Back

Mark Graban:

So, as Dr. Deming would have said, “Quality starts in the boardroom,” and senior management is most responsible for the system. How did your career progress in terms of getting into management or leadership roles? Were you able to apply some of these ideas differently as you moved along?

Kevin Cahill:

I was. If you use some of these ideas and if you start to think systemically early on in your career, it's going to give you visibility and a different lens through which to look at the organization. From my standpoint, it helped me move up faster in the organization than I would ever have been able to do. It gave me the confidence to come up with ideas and proposals. So I moved very quickly from being an assistant to being a sales trainee and then into the account executive position.

Those types of ideas and that type of thinking really helped me move up, and not only me personally, but more importantly, the people around me and the organization as a whole to look at some things very differently. That led me, fortunately, very quickly to have the opportunity to move up to Seattle to run the regional office up there. So now all of a sudden, I actually had a management role. And that was when I thought, “Okay, now I can really start to use my grandfather's philosophy to a greater extent.” But it didn't work out that way, which is really interesting, Mark. I actually fell back into what was the prevailing style of management.

Mark Graban:

Well, we're all a part of a system, though, right? There are expectations of our leaders or norms in an industry. It can be hard to buck the trends of that predominant management system. If you said, “We shouldn't rely on annual performance appraisals,” well, someone working at GE 20 years ago would have found themselves very unpopular. It's funny today, here in 2016, that GE is moving away from those practices.

Kevin Cahill:

Well, you hit it right on the head. The performance appraisal was one of the things that I was really challenged with. When I went up to that Seattle office, we started growing tremendously. We started adding people, the money was pouring in. And what was happening was I started to have this false belief that it was because of me. My performance appraisals were terrific. I loved performance appraisals. They were good not because I had done anything special, but because the money had come in. In a sales organization, what are you going to be appraised on? How are your sales? So if I'm growing 20-30% a quarter, boy, I'm looked at as this guy's doing a great job.

The first time I went to one of my grandfather's seminars was when I was a manager. My mother had been pushing me to go, and I said, “No, no, I don't need to go to that stuff. I don't really need it anymore because we're doing so well.” And thank God she did, because I went, and it's really funny. I remember thinking, “Okay, I'm going to bone up on my grandfather's philosophy before I go to this seminar because I believe that he is wrong, and I'm going to prove it to him.”

So I went down there, I had a boatload of numbers, and I was showing him how our numbers had gone up. I could show that in this case, when all of a sudden our sales dipped, I had a sales meeting and said, “Okay, you guys, it's not working out right now. I need everybody working harder. I need you guys in on the weekend.” And guess what would happen? They'd come in, they'd work on the weekend, they'd mumble and grumble, and then all of a sudden, the next month, the sales would go up. So I was reinforcing to myself that because I was giving them a hard time and pushing them, that's why the numbers were going up.

I went down to that seminar, ready to challenge my grandfather that he was wrong. I remember walking into that room, and fortunately, I kept my big mouth shut because there were about 600 other people in the room. I was kind of in awe of all the people. I kept quiet for that first day and was really chafing, listening to him talking, thinking, “He's wrong on this, he's wrong on this.”

Mark Graban:

Well, a lot of people in the room were probably thinking the same thing. A lot of the people attending were sent there, as opposed to it being their own personal choice, and they were skeptics.

Kevin Cahill:

Yep. And I remember when we got into some of the first groups, talking to some of them, and I was kind of in the same boat. By the second day, they kind of figured out who I was because my grandfather had called me up and wanted to say hello. They're saying, “How did you get to the front of the line?” I said, “He's my grandfather.” “Your grandfather? Why do you not believe some of this stuff?” By the end of that second day, I'm telling you, Mark, I remember going back to the room that night, and it just really shook me up because I thought I was wrong.

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Watching “If Japan Can, Why Can't We?” with Dr. Deming

Mark Graban:

So you talk about your relationship with your grandfather. Can you tell the story about watching the NBC documentary If Japan Can, Why Can't We?–that you got to watch it with him?

Kevin Cahill:

Sure. Between my freshman and sophomore year in college, I wanted to come back to D.C. for the summer. I had a job lined up and wanted to see my high school friends. My grandparents had an extra room in their little house, and they were very nice about it. So I get there, and my mother gives me a call about a week later and says, “Your grandfather's going to be featured on a program called If Japan Can, Why Can't We? I want to make sure your grandfather has the opportunity to watch this program.”

You can imagine, you're a 20-year-old kid and your grandfather is going to be mentioned on television. I mean, that was pretty exciting. That night of June 24, 1980, I went downstairs to my grandfather's little office in the basement and said, “You know, it's time to come up, watch the program.” We went upstairs, sat down on the sofa, and started watching.

You can imagine my excitement when the program opens and my grandfather has a line: “What can we do to work smarter, not harder?” I just remember turning to him and being excited as heck that he was on TV. And then nothing. So for the next quarter hour, there was no mention of him, and you could tell he was getting really fidgety.

Then this Japanese man gets up on the program, and he's in front of an audience and talks about how Americans are responsible for the Japanese economic miracle. It was at that time I opened my mouth for the first time, and I looked at my grandfather because I knew he'd been to Japan, and I asked him, “Do you know any of those Americans?” And then it was clear with my grandfather coming on that he was one of those Americans. And it just, to this day, it shook me up because I remember looking at him saying, “You are responsible for a lot of this.” I had no idea. It was earth-shattering to me. I just remember watching in stunned silence for the next four or five minutes while they talked about these ideas. It was just stunning.

Mark Graban:

It really strikes me that you sort of had to drag him out of his office to come watch the show. From what you're describing, it doesn't sound like he's the type of grandfather who would sit around and tell stories about how important he is.

Kevin Cahill:

Never once did I hear him do that unless it was asked. And there were a couple of times in my business career where I was at an impasse on how to handle a situation, and I would call him and ask him. It was always fascinating what his responses were. I always figured out the answer, but he would never tell me directly what the answer was. He would ask me a couple of questions and then he would point me to some areas.

I remember one time he mentioned two numbers. I said, “Well, what do those numbers mean?” He said, “Those are page numbers in my books.” And so I went to the page numbers, and I'm reading it and thinking, “Wow, that's my answer right there.” And he didn't tell it to me. He let me figure that answer out.

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The Deming Institute and the Release of the Documentary

Mark Graban:

I want to ask you one other thing about the NBC program, If Japan Can, Why Can't We? Can you talk a little bit about the story and what was involved in getting that out on YouTube and having that be available?

Kevin Cahill:

Well, I think part of it is NBCUniversal was such a big company and they had so many programs that they had archived. I know Claire Crawford Mason, who was the producer behind it, had tried to get the rights to it over time and had never been able to make much headway. I was very fortunate that my father had some connections at NBC and put me in contact with some people who were pretty high up. I asked for their help, and they were very accommodating.

I ended up working with a woman at NBCUniversal in their archive department. Over a period of time, we worked out an arrangement because I explained that we were not a for-profit organization. I think that was one of their concerns at first. Once I explained who we were–The Deming Institute, the background, all of that–it was just a matter of working out the negotiations to secure the rights. I explained to them that I really didn't want to just have the rights to show it once. This was too valuable.

Ultimately, we worked out an arrangement where they would grant us the perpetual rights to show the program on our YouTube channel and our website so that people would have that opportunity. Fortunately, they were gracious enough to work it out, and we had a donor who stepped up to cover the rights fee cost for the Institute. So once we settled that, we were able to put it up. We're just absolutely thrilled that we've had that opportunity to make that available because it's too valuable to sit in a vault and never be shown to the public.

Mark Graban:

And again, thank you for making that available.

Kevin Cahill:

They're very, very nice comments.

Mark Graban:

Yeah, lots of thank yous. I watched this with my father over Thanksgiving. So okay, you're right, this did creep into holiday family time. My dad attended one of his four-day seminars in the late '80s when he worked for Cadillac within General Motors.

Kevin Cahill:

I remember you had told me that. Isn't that great?

Mark Graban:

Yeah. It was during a break from school. My dad had the book Out of the Crisis there at home, and I was glad to be introduced to that.

Kevin Cahill:

I was always really fortunate, even though I tried, like I mentioned earlier, with the sphere of influence. I always had bosses above me who gave me enough rope. When I would bring up an idea to them that was unique to the organization, having my grandfather's philosophy influence me allowed me to lay it out in a manner that may have made them more receptive. But they had to have a lot of courage to give me some of the rope that they gave me.

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The Deming Institute Today

Mark Graban:

As we start to wrap up here, I was wondering if you could talk a little bit about The Deming Institute and your role and what the Institute has been doing. It seems like there's been a lot more happening in recent years.

Kevin Cahill:

Sure. Once I left, after I sold my company, I remember talking to my wife Judy and saying, “Well, what do we want to do now?” We decided there's nothing better than to give back to what my grandfather gave to me. So for me, it's one of these tremendous labors of love. I have the opportunity, after talking with my mother, who is Dr. Deming's daughter and the chairman of the institute, and the rest of the board, that, look, I have a background in business, and I'd love the opportunity to actually run the organization. And I'll volunteer to do it.

I kind of looked at it as a bit of a startup. The Institute for so many years had done a terrific job of getting the assets of my grandfather, whether it was videos or letters or things like that. But now it was my chance to say, “Okay, now we can take this in a different direction. We can expand it out. We can have a social network presence.” John Hunter does our blog and our Twitter, and my wife, Judy, handles the social media. Let's start to expand out. Let's look at this the way my grandfather would have, not just in the short term, but look at it from a Deming organization and expand out and rebrand it, refresh it. Let's reinvigorate this message and get it out there and let people know that it is alive and well.

Working with people like Kelly Allen has been fantastically instrumental in my learning and then helping to take the two-and-a-half-day seminar that he had helped design and redesign that so it was more relevant to what people want today–that it's not just a stand-up lecture, it's interactive. With that, we've seen interest growing in it, and so we've expanded our programs and our conferences and started some new initiatives, including a big push into education with the help of David Langford. That's our opportunity as an organization to make people's lives better, improve that quality of life.

Mark Graban:

Yeah, and it's great to see all of the activity. John Hunter has been a guest on the podcast before. Claire Crawford Mason has been a guest here before. Kevin, I really appreciate you sharing some of your stories and recollections.

Kevin Cahill:

Sure. I would love to do that in the future. That would be terrific.

Mark Graban:

Well, thank you, Kevin. I appreciate that. I'd encourage everyone to go to The Deming Institute website, which is just deming.org. And go find that video on YouTube. Again, my guest has been Kevin Cahill. Kevin, thank you so much for taking the time to talk today.

Kevin Cahill:

My pleasure, Mark. I appreciate the opportunity.

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