19 April, 1995
Rod Welch
440 Davis Court #1602
San Francisco, CA
94111-2496
Dear Rod.
Thanks for your follow-up on my E-mail. Unfortunately I have misplaced your E-mail address otherwise I would have responded electronically.
Anyway I concur with your reasoning that Universities should be on the cutting edge of new productive technology. On the other hand, our Program is currently fighting for fiscal survival. The $144 million dollars we've grossed for the GWU in the past 25 years ($25 million net) seems to have bought us precious little good will. We have been fighting the economic slump for much too long now and the administration is "appalled" that we might, for the first time in our long history, end up with a negative balance this year. I can sum it up in a nutshell when I say that when IBM lays off 60,000 engineers, training catches pneumonia. The same is being repeated throughout the country, and those still with jobs are often staying close to their desks, not traveling to Washington for training.
There are a lot of areas we would like to explore right now, but have made a corporate decision to go only with those we feel reasonably sure will produce an immediate return on investment. In the good old days we used to say "we'll try anything twice". Not so now. It's a tough time to experiment.
For this reason I believe that an entire course on communication metrics is too ambitious at present. We are taking a very hard look at all of our quality and management related courses right now so the possibility of including POIMS in one of the survivors remains viable. We'll have to wait and see. Things are a bit tight here right now.
New subject. In page 2 of your Apr. 13, memo you mentioned W. Edwards Deming and TQM. Just for your info, anecdotal but first hand.
Deming hated the term TQM. He taught for us from 1976 until he died, and I knew him from 1979 when I first came here. I have seen him absolutely eat a Washington television reporter alive when, following one of his seminars, he was asked "how do you feel about being the father of TQM"? Deming's reply was "TQM what does that mean, it has no meaning, if that's what you think quality is all about the interview is finished!" Deming got up and walked away. I have seen him repeat this a number of times in other situations, so although he might have been bitter that it took 40 years for us to adopt the Deming method, he sure wasn't talking about TQM.
He was a real curmudgeon and never practiced what he preached about making your customer a part of the team. He treated his students like scum, including the Presidents of the fortune 500 companies. Yep, he changed the attitude of the country, but absolutely hated TQM. I never really understood why he was so visceral about it.
In the final analysis, I sincerely hope that my final legacy to the Continuing Engineering Education Program here at the GWU is its survival. I'm working hard on that right now.
If you are ever in the DC area (between now and 30 June anyway) give me a heads-up and we can have lunch at the faculty club.
All the best,
Chip Blouin