A significant proportion of the world's population is responsible for providing the means for their own survival. This can vary greatly from society to society. But regardless of the kind of effort involved, in the western world, we typically refer to making our living as our work. It's often in the work arena that we first become aware of the obstacles that prevent us from moving forward, not just in our professional lives, but in our personal lives and in our relationships. Total Package (June 1997) Here's an individual who had an enormously positive influence in the world of business. His message however, has much wider implications. Success for All (October 1997) We all wish to succeed in some personally defined area of life. Indeed some spend their entire lives trying to succeed, never to attain it. The answer to succeeding may be more obvious than can be imagined. Total Package (June 1997) Here's an individual who had an enormously positive influence in the world of business. His message however, has much wider implications. The post war Japanese treated him like a god. His teaching of management philosophy in 1950s Japan was responsible for the miraculous transformation in Japanese business that has come to be referred to as the Japanese Industrial Miracle. He told them that they could invade the markets of the world and have manufacturers screaming for protection in five years and back then, in 1950, he was the only man in Japan, if not the world, who believed it. He told them that it was always cheaper to do the job right first time rather than let defects enter the production line. He talked about quality, he talked about co-operation, he talked about leadership. He was honored by the Japanese Emperor with the Second order Medal of the Sacred Treasure and science and engineering prizes were given in his name. It was not until he was 80 years old, 30 years after he first undertook to revolutionize Japanese production methods that he was finally discovered in his country of origin, the United States of America. His name was W. Edwards Deming and few have displayed his special kind of brilliance and vision, nor executed it so artfully. He died at the age of 93 in 1993, survived by children, grandchildren and great grandchildren and his legacy lives on the world over. But the memory of Deming, the man and his methods is by no means merely sentimental. His systems made practical sense, his philosophy was sound and his teachings produced results. He formulated a methodology for the transformation of management styles called The System of Profound Knowledge and it was a system that was as much about personal transformation as it was about business. Deming believed in total quality and he recognized that if businesses were to prosper then they had to be prepared to respect their workers and to value their contributions. He advocated the elimination of fear in the workplace, leadership not supervision, teamwork and co-operation and he was a strong supporter of life-long learning. The Japanese embraced his philosophies and applied them enthusiastically. “We needed his authority,” said one Japanese industrialist. The industrial dominance enjoyed by the country today is testimony both to Deming and to the trust of the Japanese authorities of the time. For what Deming asked them to do was something that few businesses in America would have been prepared to do, at least not until very much later. Traditionally, competition was held to be the key component to success in business, not only competition in the market place between companies, but within companies. Deming proposed an alternate to this kind of internal competition. He banished the typical hierarchical structure in favor of what he called ‘breaking down barriers between departments’, introducing the concept of the team with a common purpose of producing quality every step of the way. His 14 points for management have become legendary and are adopted more and more by companies today. But not everyone who adopted Deming’s methods made a success of them. In fact many tried and failed and concluded that his methods were not the godsend they promised to be. The reason for this can be found in something Deming deemed as fundamental to the success of total quality management and is mentioned in his book The New Economics: “the various segments of the System of Profound Knowledge proposed here can not be separated. They interact with each other.” His system is such that anything less than wholehearted dedication to his business plan will not produce positive results. The system is founded on the interaction of all the components and more importantly it is founded on a commitment to the interaction of all of the components. Companies who implemented some but not all of his strategies failed in their attempts to transform business practice. Essentially they were attempting to adopt the new whilst clinging to the old. The two extremes conflicted and the whole process was doomed to failure. It is common to find the same approach in the world of self-development; people endeavoring to take responsibility for their lives, as long as they don’t have to take responsibility for their lives. It is easy to pay lip service to the notion of personal responsibility but few are prepared to commit themselves to the reality of it in daily life. For many, it’s a nice idea, but when it comes down to the facts there is a list of exceptions a mile long. We’re responsible for our lives, except for the things that our parents are responsible for. We’re responsible for the health of our bodies – ‘it’s mind over matter’, so long as we avoid a whole host of foods that are bad for us. We’re responsible for our own state of being as long as we’re careful to avoid people with ‘bad energy’ – ‘they’ll depress you’. Everybody is responsible except for the people who have accidents or get diseases. And there is a magical nebulous age, where little children who are not responsible, suddenly become responsible, although no one seems to be able to say what age this is. Personal responsibility is like total quality management. If you’re going to subscribe to it, then you have to subscribe to all of it, without exception – you can’t just do some of it and expect to get results. Those who will not commit completely to personal responsibility in their own lives are destined to become those familiar drifters who wander through the halls of self development, from crystals to chanting to re-birthing to spirit guides, forever searching for that elusive answer that lets them maintain their fears, their blames and their hatreds whilst providing the illusion of change. Taking responsibility for one’s life is the first step toward attaining the power to change it and once the knowledge of that power has been established, living a life of more becomes possible. However taking responsibility must reflect a wholehearted commitment to applying this understanding to every area of our lives without exception and allowing this knowledge to motivate our actions. The serious seeker cannot afford to retain this concept as dinner party conversation or as an intellectual non-reality. Anyone can take responsibility for their lives within the secure and peaceful confines of a darkened room perfumed with incense and soothed by the hypnotic tones of new age music. But it takes guts to acknowledge that responsibility in daily life when you’re ‘out there doing battle with the world. While it might seem to be the more difficult option and certainly sometimes, the less palatable one, as W Edwards Deming would have said, doing it right first time always pays in the long run. If you‘re one of those drifters who’d rather avoid the truth and put off the realization of it for as long as possible, have a nice life. Greatness is not for the fainthearted. It requires courage and it requires risks and it requires a preparedness to lose what you have now in favor of something more. Why waste a lifetime avoiding the truth only to recognize it when it’s too late to do anything with it? The Japanese were fortunate to be in the position of desperation; it’s a natural motivator. The real gains are to be made by those of us who are not desperate but seek to become more for what it holds for us in terms of a greater experience of the world. And that’s where the guts comes in. A total commitment to personal responsibility across the board and in every area of life is not only a prerequisite, it’s mandatory. Without this commitment progress can only ever be limited. Wayfarer International, Copyright © John & Melody Anderson, 1997 - 1999. All rights reserved. Success for All (October 1997) We all wish to succeed in some personally defined area of life. Indeed some spend their entire lives trying to succeed, never to attain it. The answer to succeeding may be more obvious than can be imagined. Recently, we wrote about W Edwards Deming the American who founded The System of Profound Knowledge, a business philosophy that was the forerunner to what has now become Total Quality Management (TQM). Deming advocated co-operation in favor of competition as the primary way to succeed in business. The reason he was so long resisted in his home country is essentially the same reason many individuals who have a desire to succeed also struggle. In order to succeed, one must love and appreciate success. Fairly straightforward. But one must love and appreciate success absolutely and this means any success - even the success of one’s competitors. Deming found that many companies who were reluctant to adopt his principles exhibited a strong resistance to doing anything that might help rivals benefit from their efforts. Furthermore and perhaps more significant was the fact that many companies were founded upon internal competition. Individuals from the shop floor to the higher echelons of management regarded their co-workers as competitors for advancement up the company ladder. This kind of attitude obviously made co-operation almost impossible. And on a personal scale if there is even one person we would not wish success upon, then we falter at the first hurdle when it comes to our own. Success is like any aspect of life enhancement. If we love abundance for example, then we are loving all abundance. Whether it’s our own or someone else’s, it makes no difference. In fact these aspects of enhancement cannot correctly be attributed ownership, given that they are products of perception anyway. The lack of a suitable measure other than by the individual’s own experience or judgment only confirms that success is an elaborate illusion of our own making. Its effects might be real and tangible, possessions for example that our success has afforded us, but they only refer to success in terms of physical wealth. One can indeed feel successful and enjoy abundance without the trappings of physical wealth and many people do. However to try to define success is not necessary in order to understand how it works and how we might better equip ourselves to be more open to it. It must be acknowledged that success is only a word used to describe an impression that is likely to differ significantly from one person to the next. Nevertheless, we all have a sense of something that represents, to us, a greater sense of enhancement in life and to label it as success at this time is a mere convenience for the purposes of this discussion. It may be reflected in the kinds of relationships we enjoy, or what we are able to do and experience. We might equate success with freedom of choice. Whatever success means to anyone, it can only be enjoyed with an open heart. The manifestation of our impression of success will lack conviction if we do not greet it thus. Physical wealth for example, is essentially worthless if we are unable to use that wealth to enhance our lives, or if we are worried that someone might take it away or if we allow it to cause a de-enhancing effect. If we are given to feel hatred or jealousy towards others then we are immediately prevented from the true enjoyment of what we have. If we seek to contain our success or to cling to it, then once again, we lose it. This loss can be actual and physical or it can be a ‘virtual loss’, where our denial of what we have, though action and perception, effectively prevents us from having it. If we determine what success is in our own lives by our perceptions and by our responses to what we have, then we also determine its loss or absence by these same responses - and because these things are absolute, by our responses to what others have. This is probably the greatest area of challenge for individuals who are endeavoring to bring more abundance into their lives, though it need not be. Commonly what occurs is that an original figure of inspiration, someone who represents the kind of person the individual perhaps aspires to be, is transformed into a figure of hatred, competition or jealousy, thus the effects of the inspiration are reversed. No one would aspire to become like such a contemptible person and because of this, the individual loses a valuable opportunity to make use of that inspiration as a way of guiding him or her toward their vision. Not only does the opportunity to be inspired vanish, but in fact the jealousy or hatred serves to prevent that individual from moving in the direction of greater abundance. Hating someone else because of their success ensures that the individual cannot enjoy true success in his or her own life – we are not motivated toward that which we hate. Alternatively, when we love success and love it purely and openly, we are directing our energies toward all success and favor ourselves with the best options for bringing it into our own lives – we are motivated toward that which we love. Essentially then, if we are not prepared to openly appreciate the success of others without reserve, even though we may not at the time be as fortunate, we can not and will not allow such success to enhance our own life. Wayfarer International, Copyright © John & Melody Anderson, 1997 - 2002. All rights reserved.