Clever Geek Handbook
15 December 2025

Reinventing Medicine

Recommendation

Lampooning a book that steps beyond science and into the realm of spiritual healing would be easy. Many readers won’t have much trouble accepting the notion that your mind can heal your body, but it probably will be harder to accept Dr. Larry Dossey’s assertion that your mind can heal other bodies just as well. In fact, many readers will scoff at the idea that all minds are linked in a global consciousness that can be harnessed to accomplish tasks like curing AIDS. However, as the good doctor notes, trying to influence reality with the power of thought amounts to... well, prayer. And millions of Americans who would roll their eyes at a New-Agey term like "nonlocal mind" pray for each other every day. So if you’re put off by the book’s preachy tone or its inevitable omission of factual evidence to back up its conclusions, lighten up, or be ready to take a good hard look at some of your own cherished beliefs. BooksInShort recommends this book to anyone willing to suspend his or her skepticism for just a few hours.

Take-Aways

  • We are entering a third era of medicine, in which society will accept the mind’s ability to heal.
  • The key to this new era is the "nonlocal" mind - a common link between human consciousness and the external world.
  • The nonlocal mind’s activities may include precognition, remote healing and after-death experiences.
  • An element of resistance exists toward Era III medical practices.
  • Some healthcare providers use Era III medicine in remote healing for AIDS.
  • Of the 700,000 Americans older than 49 who lose their spouses each year, 35,000 die within a year; 7,000 of these deaths may be due directly to grief.
  • Some complain that Era III medicine creates false hope.
  • In a study of recovered cancer patients, 68% prayed, 65% meditated and 61% said faith was key to their recovery.
  • People may be able to inhibit the spread of bacteria by using their minds.
  • The medical establishment is beginning to notice the potential of the nonlocal mind.

Summary

Medical Eras One through Three

As the demise of the family doctor would suggest, medical thought has evolved substantially in recent decades, but perhaps the greatest changes are yet to come. Modern medicine has three distinct eras:

Era I dates back to the mid-1800s, when the practice of medicine first became scientific. During this first medical era, scientific thought was heavily influenced by the notion that the entire world - as well as the human body - operated as a mindless machine. People viewed consciousness as material and mechanistic, not as a spiritual phenomenon.

“The mind is infinite. This means that my mind touches and is touched by those of everyone else, and that all minds are linked together.”

Era II began a century later, as the grip of this mechanistic medical viewpoint began to loosen. By the mid-1900s, doctors had come back around to believing that one’s mind could affect the recovery of one’s body - sometimes dramatically. During Era II, medicine began to acknowledge that stress, for example, was a contributing factor to some types of disease, such as ulcers. Mind-body medicine began its ascendancy.

Enter Era Three

Now a new era is upon us. The hallmark of Era III is the nonlocal mind. Consciousness does not solely reside within the individual. Instead, it has the potential to act not only on the self, but also on distant things and people who may remain unaware of its action. Era III accepts nonmaterial properties. Just as medical authorities have accepted the influence of the mind on the body, so will the nonlocal mind become critical to our understanding of healing and ourselves.

“In a sense, medicine is burning, as old ideas and methods are fading on every hand. But medicine’s fires are purifying: new life is emerging from the ashes, as it always does.”

What is the nonlocal mind? How can you be sure it exists? Evidence for the nonlocal mind comes in two forms, scientific findings and the everyday experiences of millions of people. Buddha Mind, Christ consciousness, cosmic consciousness, collective consciousness and unconsciousness - all are examples of the nonlocal mind. Many of these ideas carry the weight of religious opinion. You probably have had experiences that do not fit into the commonly accepted picture of material reality, such as precognition, visions, prophetic dreams, or just knowing who it is when the phone rings. You might have unexplained technological or intellectual breakthroughs during dream periods. Or you might have shared physical symptoms across distances, or experienced intercessory prayer and distant healing. Researchers call such experiences "anomalous cognition."

The Three Signs of Nonlocal Occurrences

Nonlocal means unlimited - infinite space and time. The three indications of nonlocal events are:

“The aspect of Greek thought that came to dominate Western medicine was the earlier Hippocratic version - that the mind is a local event happening solely in the brain, in the here and now.”

Nonlocal events are unmediated - Generally, something else mediates most of our experiences. Something exists between the phenomenon and the experience of that phenomenon (for example, a television screen or the participation of another person). In reality, all sensory experiences are mediated, if only through the senses. This is not the case with nonlocal experiences, which are direct and without sensory input.

“Many laypeople, I’ve discovered, are often puzzled about why research studies such as these continue. They assume that scientists by now must surely have figured out the basic relationship between the mind and the brain.”

Distance does not mitigate nonlocal events - It doesn’t matter whether you are one mile away or a thousand miles away. The power of the experience is unaffected. The location of the person praying doesn’t matter. The prayer is what matters, not where it is said.

Nonlocal phenomena occur immediately - These events are outside of time as well as space. You experience them without regard to hour, duration or distance.

The Golden Rule of Era Three

The Golden Rule ("Do unto others as you would have them do unto you") takes a very local point of view. This philosophy is based upon a definite distinction between the individual and the collective human consciousness. Era three consciousness states: "Do good unto others because they are you!" This does not mean that you should abandon individual uniqueness or rights. It does posit that people are more than individuals.

Apollo 14 and the Nonlocal Mind

Apollo 14 astronaut Edgar Mitchell tested the nonlocal mind when he was in space. Only four people on Earth were aware of his experiment. Each night, he pulled out a clipboard and arranged a square, circle, star, cross and wavy line. Tens of thousands of miles away, his collaborators in Florida tried to jot down the same symbols in the same order. The results were different from those mere chance could have caused. In response, Mitchell founded the Institute of Noetic Sciences.

“We cannot make sense of our lives unless we acknowledge that our mind operates nonlocally.”

Bernard Grad of Montreal’s McGill University also researched the nonlocal mind. Grad hypothesized that depressed people’s plants would grow more slowly than plants which belonged to optimists. The results of his experiments appeared to indicate that emotions could affect plants indirectly or nonlocally. Grad conducted similar experiments on mice.

Nonlocal Healing for AIDS

Doctors at the California Pacific Medical Center in San Francisco tested whether distant healing, including prayer, had a therapeutic effect on the health of AIDS patients who were kept unaware of this nonlocal spiritual intercession. The doctors recruited 40 patients with advanced AIDS from the San Francisco Bay Area. The patients, who came from various ethnic and cultural groups, all received traditional medical care for their illness. However, 20 of them also received distant healing intentions. This double-blind study indicated that those patients had fewer new illnesses, less serious illnesses and fewer days of hospitalization. They seemed to be in a better mood. Other such examples exist in medical literature.

The Emerging Picture of Consciousness

Researchers Dean I. Radin, Janine M. Rebman and Maikwe P. Cross suggest that the new model of the mind will almost certainly show us that consciousness:

  • Is blind to location. It extends beyond the individual and cannot be limited to specific points in space.
  • Is a principle that brings order. It can insert information and bring order to existential chaos.
  • Does not equal awareness. In dreams there may be no awareness, but consciousness still exists.
  • Can expand its ordering potential through coherence among individuals (love, empathy, caring, unity or oneness).
  • Can affect objects and animals, not just humans.

Finding the Zone: Experiencing Nonlocality

Athletes commonly experience nonlocality. They call it "being in the zone," the sublime moments when they suddenly are able to achieve the impossible. Basketball star Bill Russell tells of a mystical experience that he had at age 16, when a "warm feeling (that) fell out of nowhere" suddenly possessed him. Russell had been hostile and angry following his mother’s death when he was 12. "Looking back," he recalled, "I can see moments when new skills seemed to drop down out of the sky, and I felt as if I had a new eye or had tapped a new compartment of my brain." While Era I and Era II medicine would be at a loss to explain this, it clearly is an example of the Era III concept of nonlocality.

Nonhuman Relationships

Nonlocality is obvious in nonhuman relationships. Animals do not intellectualize in the same way that humans do and therefore may be more open to nonlocal experiences. Indeed, you may have experienced an occasion where your pet enabled you to recover your nonlocal mind. Pets provide you with the opportunity to bond unconditionally with another living being. They allow you to express your nonlocal bond with another creature, and they do so without threatening your sense of individuality.

Dreams of Illness

One practical application of the nonlocal mind to healthcare is in dreaming, where intuition of illness may occur. Heavy smokers may dream of being shot, only to later learn that they have lung cancer. Tubercular patients may dream that they are being suffocated. But dreams are not only diagnostic; healing dreams can hasten recovery after traditional treatments fail. Other examples of nonlocal experience include:

  • Dreams of intuition and revelation;
  • Anticipation of danger;
  • Prophecy;
  • Sympathetic response - where you share the pain or joy of a loved one;
  • Telesomatic connection - where you share physical sensations with a distant person;
  • Synchronicity - where experience is shared at the same time over distance.
“Nor am I alone in my suspicion that we have stopped our investigation of healing well short of its potential.”

The nonlocal mind can do harm as well as good. A 1994 Gallup poll found that 5% of Americans admit to praying for harm to befall others. That means 10 million Americans use the nonlocal mind in destructive ways. Perhaps just as we evolved the nonlocal mind, we evolved the capacity to defend ourselves, using the "psychospiritual immune system."

Eras in Balance

What is the best way for people to use the nonlocal mind in healthcare? Two pillars of modern medicine are diagnosis and treatment. Nonlocal diagnosis is experiencing a renaissance. Patients often "just seem to know" what is going on in their bodies. The mother instinctively seems to sense her child’s state of health. Era I and Era II still have their place in medicine. The key to using them effectively is achieving a balance among era one, two and three approaches. Other implications of this include:

  • An organ donor’s mental state could affect an organ transplant.
  • Doctors in emergency rooms may use their intuitive gifts to supplement physical diagnoses.
  • Healthcare workers may use intentions and prayer to accelerate healing.
  • Healthcare workers may use intentions to help sterilize wounds.

Conclusion

Society already has come to accept the power of therapeutic touch and the actuality that many people have near-death experiences. Is it such a stretch, then, to believe the mind can heal? Medical thought has become more scientific in its approach. The danger: that we will overlook other opportunities to promote healing. Almost half of adults in the U.S. visit a practitioner of alternative medical treatment each year. Is it possible that they are on to something? We are just beginning to understand the power of the nonlocal mind.

About the Author

Larry Dossey  , M.D., is an authority on the subject of spiritual healing. He lectures on the topic throughout the country, and wrote the bestsellers Healing Words and Prayer is Good Medicine. His other books include Be Careful What You Pray For...You Just Might Get It, Meaning and Medicine, Recovering the Soul and Beyond Illness.

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Reinventing Medicine

Book Reinventing Medicine

Beyond Mind-Body To A New Era Of Healing

Element Books,
 


15 December 2025

Adam Smith and the Virtues of Enlightenment

Recommendation

Put on your scuba gear - we’re diving down deep. Even though Charles L. Griswold, Jr. writes in a dense, academic style, it is worth swimming through his prose to learn about the remarkable work of 18th-century Enlightenment philosopher Adam Smith. Regarded as one of the fathers of modern economic thought, Smith has been misunderstood for the last century because his ethical philosophy has been overlooked. Instead, economists have drawn attention only to his thumbs-up for free enterprise and free trade. Smith believed neither was worthwhile without ethics, a point some modern economists might profitably revisit. BooksInShort highly recommends this richly detailed, insightful book to anyone interested in economic, political, or social philosophy.

Take-Aways

  • Adam Smith (1723-1790) was a Scottish philosopher and economist widely regarded as the founder of political economy.
  • He wrote The Theory of Moral Sentiments (1759) and The Wealth of Nations (1776).
  • He was a key figure in the Enlightenment period, but his economic theory unfortunately overshadows his equally important work in ethics, morality, intellectual history, and other areas.
  • He advocated free enterprise and free trade, but did not support imperialism, colonialism, or slavery.
  • Smith defined morality as total justice, freedom, and equality for all people.
  • Sympathy is the basis of his moral vision.
  • He also believed: Virtue is not founded upon philosophical knowledge, but on sentiment, passion and emotion.
  • The world we inhabit can be enlightened if we make the necessary changes.
  • Imagination is fundamental to understanding the world.
  • The pursuit of wealth and, ironically, wealth itself, do not lead to happiness.

Summary

Adam Smith: Economist and Philosopher

Adam Smith (1723-1790) was a Scottish philosopher and economist widely regarded as the founder of political economy. In his book, The Wealth of Nations, published in 1776, he defined the wealth of a nation in terms of its labor. He said wealth comes from a division of labor in which a production process is divided into many repetitive segments, each performed by different workers. He advocated individual free enterprise and free trade.

“Perhaps no philosopher, with the possible exception of Marx, has described these human costs of the division of labor more bluntly and harshly than has Adam Smith.”

Due to his first book, The Theory of Moral Sentiments, published in 1759, Smith was a key figure in the Scottish Enlightenment, and had ties to both the French and the American Enlightenments. The book, translated into both German and French, was so popular it went through six English editions in Smith’s lifetime. It brought him the utmost respect and praise from fellow philosophers David Hume, Edmund Burke, Immanuel Kant, and scores of others.

“In Adam Smith’s terms, morality requires that we be able to see things from the other person’s point of view. Sympathy is crucial to his moral system, just as it is a key term in our moral vocabulary.”

Unfortunately, modern scholars are so caught up in Smith’s considerable contribution to economic and political thought as presented in The Wealth of Nations, that they overlook the importance of his contributions in ethics, moral psychology, jurisprudence, rhetoric, and belles lettres, as well as political, economic, and intellectual history. Today Smith’s name is widely known and cited in support of certain economic and political programs, but his teachings are rarely studied with care by those enlisting him in their cause. He is seen solely as an economist, even as only an economist of a particular ideological bent. This all but ignores the totality of his economic and political philosophy. In short, he tends now to be known just as an advocate of crude laissez-faire capitalism and, to add insult to injury, of a capitalism inseparable from imperialism and colonialism.

“Misinterpretations of Adam Smith are striking.”

Given the scope of his work, his focus on political economy, not just economics alone, his insistent moral reservations about the unfettered operation of the free market, and his critique of various forms of oppression - including slavery - these misinterpretations of Smith are striking. Just as importantly, these misinterpretations cloud the fact that Smith was first and foremost a philosopher, educated in philosophy by a great philosopher (Francis Hutcheson), close friend of one of the best philosophers in the history of Western thought (David Hume), and widely read and admired by philosophers. Modern-day economists have put a spin on Adam Smith’s work and co-opted it to suit their own purposes.

Smith’s Basic Themes

Smith promulgated many of the Enlightenment’s great themes, which inspire the modern age. He "seeks to free us from war and faction," a key feature of his more enlightened philosophies. We in the modern age have much to learn from his work in this area: the 20th-century was filled with catastrophic collapses of moral sensibility and the corresponding butchery. [And, so far, the twenty-first century isn’t looking all that enlightened, either.]

“Adam Smith tackles head on this ancient problem of the relation between wealth and virtue.”

Smith’s focus on moral sensibility is very valuable today. But, don’t misinterpret his views based solely on his use of the word "moral." He used it without the puritanical spin found in U.S. political usage - in particular, the religious right’s appropriation of the term to serve its own political agenda. One of Adam Smith’s major focal points, in fact, is to free us from repressive institutions, especially religious institutions. He thought that religious institutions control people via the use of superstition, and viewed religious strife and oppression as a political problem. Smith’s moral, political, and economic doctrines are geared toward explaining how individuals as well as nations can live together harmoniously in spite of the ever-present potential for conflict. Adam Smith was an advocate of the freedom to believe in and practice any faith or religion one chose, but he also had a disdain for theology and some of its associated disciplines that addressed the soul or spirit. He believed that people could understand everything, including human nature, by relying on enlightened intelligence and science, not spirituality or "the poison of enthusiasm and superstition."

“It is Adam Smith’s legacy, in part, that we now enjoy as well as question. He was a key figure in the Scottish Enlightenment and tied to the French Enlightenment. These Enlightenments are crucial chapters in the story of modernity. Smith’s standing and influence were established early on.”

Smith and other Enlightenment philosophers believed that mastering nature was life’s goal. Science and human reason were thought to be all one needed to do anything and everything, including understanding and controlling nature and the universe. All metaphysical, spiritual, or religious beliefs concerning nature were deemed suspect at best and superstitious at worst.

“Today Smith’s name is widely known and ceremonially cited in support of certain economic and political programs, but his teachings are rarely studied with care by those enlisting him in their cause.”

The core of Enlightenment rhetoric was a deep ethical commitment to independence, self-sufficiency, and courage, and to freedom from the shackles of custom, nature, and fortune. This desire for freedom led these philosophers to believe that they could even be free of the effects of nature if only they could reason well enough and use science to control natural forces. Kant believed that people are not truly "mature" until they are autonomous, self-directed, and self-legislating. Only through thorough self-examination could one achieve enlightenment. Hume believed that this self-examination would be done by means of a "science of man," that is, based on experience. Kant thought it would come through "transcendental critiques of the possibility of knowledge and morality." Hegel believed it relied on an "elaborately dialectical account of the social and historical conditions that make human activity possible." All of the philosophers of this era, Smith included, believed that nothing is to be accepted simply because it has been accepted.

“With the support of proper moral education, rearing, and institutions, Smith argues, we form the habit of understanding other people’s situations accurately and of seeing things from their point of view.”

In short, nothing could be taken at face value; everything should be examined thoroughly. Because of this strong underpinning, this period was also called "The Age of Philosophy," and Thomas Paine entitled one of his books The Age of Reason.

Freedom and Morality

Total freedom for absolutely everyone was the goal, the ultimate moral and political ideal carried by the Enlightenment philosophers. This view is intertwined with a commitment to a doctrine of the basic moral equality of human beings. Smith was a proponent of what he called "the obvious and simple system of natural liberty." He believed that part of his task was to give voice to the principles of the "establishment of perfect justice, of perfect liberty, and of perfect equality." That is how he defined morality: justice, liberty, and equality. Conscience must rule the emotions. Without that rule, how could there be freedom and equality for all? Here, Smith was adamant.

“Because of his own keen awareness of the ironies and shadows of the Enlightenment, Smith is in a position to offer us valuable insights into the reasons why liberal Enlightenment social and institutional arrangements and ideals are not altogether at odds with the tradition of the virtues and of the communities based on virtues.”

In The Wealth of Nations, Smith shows that commerce can liberate workers by "developing a distinction between labor and service, work and subservience." Smith’s focus on sympathy, central to all his beliefs, reflects his moral vision. In The Theory of Moral Sentiments, Smith seeks to show that the sentiments (which he also calls "passions" or "emotions") can "suffice for morality, virtue, liberty, and in general for a harmonious social order."

“From early on, Smith evinced a deep interest in the evolution, typology, and classification of language, as well as the processes by which words come to be detached from their natural context and so acquire a ’technical’ philosophical or ’metaphysical’ meaning.”

Acknowledging that humans are creatures of their passions, Smith tries to understand and justify the passions as a basis for decent ethical life. He doesn’t write that the passions exclude reason, but says they can "displace theoretical pursuits," including philosophy itself. This split between theory and practice can be found throughout Smith’s work and the work of other Enlightenment philosophers. They do not believe that virtue is founded upon philosophical knowledge, but rather on sentiment/passion/emotion. These emotions create everything people must deal with. Theory is just theory: but, emotion creates the events and feelings that we react to each day and that we use as the basis for our decisions and actions. That’s what practice is, after all, the taking of action.

“Smith draws us in partly by means of his remarkable use of examples. We are asked over and over again to consider this or that situation and this or that reaction to a situation and to draw the appropriate moral.”

"The architects of the modern Enlightenment inferred that what has been made can be unmade, if only we gather the necessary courage," Smith argued. He stressed that enlightenment does not have to come from the outside. The world we inhabit can itself be enlightened, if we make the necessary changes. The imagination is fundamental to understanding the world and to practical reasoning. In Smith’s work, morality requires that we be able to see things from the other person’s point of view. That forms the basis of the sympathy crucial to Smith’s moral system. Emotions are shaped by imagination and sympathy is one act of imagination. The idea of the desirable and praiseworthy, and hence this or that particular sentiment is derived from sympathy. Imagination, then, is essential to morality and reason. Therefore, we are driven by imagination as much as by passion, said Smith, and other Enlightenment philosophers concurred.

Counter-Enlightenment

As much as Adam Smith was a creature of the Enlightenment, he also took on issues associated with the denouement of the Enlightenment. While Enlightenment philosophy stresses self-control as the path to freedom, Smith is also acutely aware of the phenomenon of unintended consequences, of the importance of ’moral luck,’ and of the roles that contingency and finitude play in human life. The "invisible hand" is the phrase most commonly associated with Smith. To put it in today’s vernacular, Smith knew and accepted that "stuff happens." He believed that people "are like actors in a play whose plot we do not understand and whose ending is not yet revealed to us, but whose propensity for irony is well established." The paradoxes and ironies of life are just part of life. Smith doesn’t dismiss them; he embraces them.

The Wealth of Nations facilitates and promotes the pursuit of wealth, and that book is undoubtedly the most famous and enduring Enlightenment contribution on the subject. Yet, Smith also believes that the wealth we pursue has little to do with satisfying any of our basic needs, and that we are driven in large measure by fears and wants that are fed by the imagination. This has been the complaint of moralists of every age, Smith among them. One of his key teachings says that the pursuit of wealth is actually made possible by what he calls the "deception" or "prejudices" of the imagination. Thanks to our self-deception, we associate wealth (as well as power) with happiness or tranquility.

Of course, neither the pursuit nor the possession of wealth ever produces tranquility. On the contrary, both highly jeopardize it. Smith digs into this irony with gusto, leaving everyone to wonder: "How can we affirm a social arrangement devoted to maximizing the ’wealth of nations’ when the pursuit of wealth is so deeply misguided?" Smith argues that our material prosperity is directly tied to our spiritual poverty and that the pursuit of wealth is often achieved at the cost of our virtue. Smith refers to this as "the corruption of the moral sentiments," and sees it as a natural danger inherent in the very commercial society he advocates. Among the vices Smith associates with the promotion of material well being are greed, dishonesty, a willingness to exploit others, and vanity. People will do some pretty bad things in order to "better" their condition. He tackles head-on the ancient problem of the unsettling relation between wealth and virtue.

Conclusion

This problem is still with us. In modern times, Adam Smith has greater influence as a political economist than as a moral and social philosopher. Ironically, he has been very poorly understood as a political economist, though that is the source of his current renown. This signals well-known difficulties concerning the possible role of philosophy in public life. Any group of people with an agenda can point to parts of a philosopher’s work, take those parts out of context, and make them a rallying cry for their agenda. This has happened with Smith’s work, although it deserves closer attention in this modern age, to instruct today’s society and to dispel the myths about who he was and what he believed.

About the Author

Charles L. Griswold, Jr.  is a professor of philosophy at Boston University. He has published in a variety of fields, including ancient philosophy, the Scottish Enlightenment, and German idealism.

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Adam Smith and the Virtues of Enlightenment

Book Adam Smith and the Virtues of Enlightenment

Cambridge UP,
 


15 December 2025

The New Economics

Recommendation

Critique W. Edwards Deming’s work at your peril. After all, he probably set whatever standard you’re using. This volume – revised by the author before his death in 1993 and partially based on his 1950s work with the Japanese – may strike the contemporary reader as a curious mixture of seminal process thinking and idiosyncratic ruminations on education. Portions read like an artifact of the early 1990s, but in this regard, however, his volume offers a unique perspective on a turning point in American economic history: the shift to the knowledge-based economy. Deming’s volume is suited to any serious student of management thought, and all human resources professionals should familiarize themselves with his work, which set the foundations for many of the transformations now underway in the corporate world.

Take-Aways

  • The U.S. economy declined for decades after the introduction of Japanese goods in 1955.
  • Accepting that North America was no longer competitive in the mass manufacture of low-cost items was the key to overcoming this decline.
  • Economic success depends upon using knowledge to offer specialized products and services.
  • Most quality initiatives fail because top management delegates its responsibility for setting standards.
  • The plan-do-study-act (PDSA) cycle is critical to process improvements.
  • A company that is completely free of defects can fail if it can’t anticipate the needs of its customers.
  • The knowledge needed to transform a system must come from outside the system.
  • Managers should coach and counsel, not judge.
  • A good manager understands how to motivate each employee.
  • Managers should abolish all employee rankings and focus on cooperation, not competition.
  • Schools in the U.S. will not improve until the grading system is abolished.

Summary

Is America a Lousy Trader?

If you were grading the United States on its balance of trade, the grade would be closer to “F” than “A.” In 1910, the United States made fully one-half of the entire manufactured products in the world. North America emerged into the post-World War II era as the only part of the industrialized world whose manufacturing capacity was intact. Now it has been in an economic decline for three decades. Japanese goods started to enter around 1955 and the domestic preference for imported goods gradually grew. Imports of agricultural products have outpaced our exports. What is the cure for this slide in manufacturing? North America must accept that it no longer excels in large volume, low-cost manufacturing. It must elevate its economy based on knowledge, which will translate into specialized products and services. The challenge is educational; it must develop a culture that values learning.

What Business Are You In?

To succeed in your business, you must be able to define it. Are you in the customer-satisfaction business? Certainly, it is good to have loyal, satisfied customers. It is important to keep in mind, however, that the customer expects only what the producer has led him to expect. The customer is a quick learner, comparing one product with another. Try to anticipate the needs of your customers, innovate and exceed their expectations.

“Most people imagine that the present style of management has always existed, and is a fixture. Actually, it is a modern invention - a prison created by the way in which people interact.”

Actually, it is not enough to ask, “What business are you in?” Today, you must constantly ask, “What new product or service would give greater benefit to the customers?” It is important to understand that having zero defects does not insure a company’s success. The litany of efforts to improve quality is virtually endless - automation, merit awards, accountability, management by objective, management by results, statistical quality control, quality control offices, incentive pay programs and so forth. However, these panaceas duck the essential responsibility of management. The company president who gives plant managers authority, only to see quality dip, and the plant managers who have no input into product design, demonstrate that quality programs don’t work when management delegates responsibility to people who are helpless to define quality and push for innovation.

The Genius of Systems

A system is simply a network of interdependent parts that works to accomplish a common aim. Without an objective, there can be no system - and the goal must be clear to everyone involved. Management’s job is to direct the components of the system so it can attain its aim. The leader’s role is to sponsor and encourage the promulgation of the shared objective. Management must recognize and manage the interdependence among the different parts of a company. Anyone who studied the operational effectiveness of the U.S. air transportation system, or the public education system, or the traffic system understands the havoc wreaked when the system breaks down and no longer functions as a whole.

Profound Knowledge

The U.S.’s prevailing style of management must undergo a radical transformation, which must begin with an understanding of profound knowledge. It is called “profound” because the understanding will transform the individuals’ perceptions and the meaning of their lives. Once transformed, managers will become effective role models for others, will be good listeners and teachers and will help people evolve toward more effective working relationships. Profound knowledge must always come from outside the system itself. Transformation requires an outside view of the organization’s activities. Profound knowledge has four parts:

  1. Appreciation for system - To understand the system you must understand the nature of interdependence: the greater the interdependence, the greater the need for communication and cooperation. Management’s failure to comprehend interdependence is why management by objective (MBO) has failed in so many cases. One division will achieve its goals at the cost of another division. Consider the example of an orchestra, for example. If the horn section were to maximize its performance at the expense of the percussion team, the symphony would suffer as a result.
  2. Knowledge of variation - Variation is an inevitable part of life. Performance will vary up and down over time. A process can be accepted as stable once its output has been brought into a state of statistical control, which is to say the output over time can be reasonably predicted, despite variations. The variation becomes predictable; otherwise, the performance is unpredictable. Management makes two classic errors in its attempts to improve results - overreacting to an outcome as if it came from a special cause (market changes, new technologies) when it actually stemmed from normal variation; and reacting to an outcome as if it came from common variation (seasonal variation, efficiency variation) when actually it came from a special cause, such as a shift in the market.
  3. Knowledge theory - Management is actually prediction. The simplest plan (”Let’s drive to work after breakfast”) requires prediction (the engine will start, the roads will be useable). Any prediction you make could be in error. The theory simply extends the application of knowledge to a new arena. If the theory does not continue to hold, it is time to revise the theory. It is important to note that knowledge comes from theory, and information is not knowledge.
  4. Psychology - Through the science of psychology, you can learn to understand people and their interactions, including the interactions between customer and supplier, teacher and pupil, manager and employees. Knowledge of psychology, for example, will help you carry out a manager’s most important task: understanding what matters to subordinates.
“Unnecessary paperwork is a serious loss. A lot of it originates in management’s supposition that the cure for repetition of a mistake or fraud is more audit, more inspection.”

A leader’s job is to transform his or her organization. To achieve this, leaders must inspire others to share and execute their visions. Transformational management, which is based on profound knowledge, is necessary to combat the forces that are destroying our institutions, including the merit system, incentive pay and numerical goals that are not attached to productive methods of achieving them. Today’s leaders must guide people to transform the system that pits individual against individual. Leaders must emphasize cooperation rather than competition, which is the root of humiliation, fear and defensiveness.

On the Management of People

People in the workforce live in a prison created by the prevailing style of managing human interactions. These interactions are analyzed and graded, creating winners and losers. Instead, managers should focus on the overall system and how people can work together to maximize performance. Throw old theories and practices overboard. Exorcise the idea that competition is necessary. Once you understand that the goal of each interaction should be cooperation, not competition, how do you imbue your organization with this new philosophy?

“All the qualities that have been traditionally and erroneously applied to competition actually apply better to cooperation. Cooperation builds character, is basic to human nature, and makes learning more enjoyable and productive.”

The reward system now in broad use squeezes the intrinsic motivation, self-esteem and dignity out of people. It creates fear and makes people seek extrinsic motivation rather than internal satisfaction. Management today is stable, but stuck in old ruts. The path to its transformation requires the application of profound knowledge from outside of the system.

“The present style of management is the biggest producer of waste, causing huge losses whose magnitudes cannot be evaluated, cannot be measured.”

Learning about today’s management style will not suffice. For example, a company had two goals: 1) Design reward systems that recognize superior performance; and 2) Create a stimulating and enjoyable work environment that would attract talented people. The company’s management seemed completely unaware that these two goals are mutually exclusive. Rather than judging and ranking people, and putting them into slots marked “outstanding” or “unsatisfactory,” your company should focus on optimizing the productivity of the system, so that everyone is a winner.

The Post-Transformation Manager

What will the new post-transformation manager be like? The new manager will:

  • Understand and teach the meaning and goals of the system.
  • Help people see themselves as important components within the system, and will emphasize working cooperatively to optimize the organization.
  • Understand that people differ.
  • Create interest and challenge for each worker to make the most of each employee’s education, skills and background, rather than ranking people against each other.
  • Continue to learn and encourage ongoing training and education for others.
  • Serve as a counsel and coach, rather than a judge.
  • Ceaselessly study results to improve his or her personal performance as a manager.
  • Look for help outside the system.
  • Nurture trust and build an environment that encourages innovation and freedom.
  • Listen carefully.
  • Understand the benefits of cooperation and the costs of competition.
  • Hold an informal, unhurried, spontaneous annual conversation with each employee.

The Plan-Do-Study-Act Cycle

The Plan-Do-Study-Act (PDSA) approach provides a flow diagram for learning. You can use this method to improve any product or process. The PDSA cycle gives you a roadmap for moving forward and methodically introducing improvements and modifications to any system. The steps involved are:

  • P is for plan - Begin with an idea that you believe might improve a process. You plan to test the concept in order to achieve an improvement.
  • D is for do - Carry out the change or test, preferably on a small scale first.
  • S is for study - Examine the results. Do they correspond with your expectations? If not, try to analyze what went wrong. Decide whether your plan merits further investigation, or whether it’s time to test a new hypothesis altogether.
  • A is for act - Either adopt the change, abandon the change or run through the PDSA cycle again, possibly under different conditions.

What Should A Business School Teach?

If you accept the premise that current business schools perpetuate short-term thinking and over-emphasize competition at the expense of systemic improvements based on human interaction and cooperation, the question naturally arises how to change all of that? Theoretically, a business school should prepare students to lead the transformation toward more enlightened management by using profound knowledge.

“Everyone must understand the danger and loss to the whole organization from a team that seeks to become a selfish, independent, profit center.”

Students in a school of business should also study economics, statistical theory and at least two years each of science and language. Unfortunately, no notable improvement in U.S. education will come about until our schools abolish the grading system. Similarly, merit ratings for teachers also should be abolished, schools should not be compared on the basis of test scores and special rewards for athletic and other achievements should be abolished.

“The greater the interdependence between components, the greater will be the need for communication and cooperation between them.”

As the U.S. economy moves more toward providing specialty products and services, and away from mass production and automation, improvement in our educational system becomes more vital than ever. Just as joy stems from learning rather than from what is learned, job satisfaction comes not from the finished product, but from each person’s contribution to the optimization of a system in which every participant is a winner.

About the Author

W. Edwards Deming’s consulting practice spanned more than 40 years, including major corporations in virtually every industry. Deming is particularly well known for his work in Japan, where he preached the gospel of improving process and quality. The Japanese proved apt students, much to Detroit’s regret. Deming led the sweeping revolution in quality that helped the U.S. stave off competition abroad and, in 1987, was awarded the National Medal of Technology by President Ronald Reagan.

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