Book Review: The Decalogue – Deming and Goldratt

Book Review

The Decalogue – Deming and Goldratt

- Domenico Lepore and Oded Cohen

Dr. Deming and Dr. Goldratt are considered as the ‘gurus’ or geniuses in modern management literature. Their theories have had a profound impact on the understanding and improvement of management systems across a wide variety of organizations in the world. ‘The Decalogue’ – is the work of two disciples of Dr Deming and Dr. Goldratt who discovered the overlap and complementary aspects of their theories.

Domenico Lepore, a Deming Scholar found that TOC offered a methodology and thinking tools to implement Dr. Deming’s theory. While Oded Cohen, a partner of Dr. Goldratt, realized that the core aspects of Deming’ theory such as appreciation of the system, understanding variation and process improvement provide the background for a better understanding and implementation of the TOC.

By combining the theories and approach presented by Dr. Deming (The System of Profound Knowledge) and Dr. Goldratt (The Theory of Constraints), ‘The Decalogue’ presents a very simple yet powerful framework for organizational improvement.

The book presents a ten step process for bringing about continuous improvement in an organization. The ten steps deal with understanding and managing a system, identifying and eliminating constraints and developing the management style, discipline and culture to achieve a program for continuous organizational learning and improvement.

To quote from the preface of the book, ‘The Decalogue is a ten-step map that brings together all the necessary elements to sustain knowledge-based improvement. By knowledge we mean the knowledge created by understanding our system and the variation that affects it, together with the analysis of cause-effect relations that form the basis of Goldratt’s Theory of Constraints.’

On the face of it, the ten steps appear too general and simple that one wonders about their value and impact. However as each step is described in lucid languages along with various logical arguments and examples, moving back and forth between the Deming’s theory and the TOC, one realizes the ‘inter-connectedness’ of organizational elements and resultant challenges and contradictions. The ten steps provide the frameworks, tools and approaches to address the challenges of dealing with a variable and complex system.

Again at times, the tools described in ‘the ten-steps’ may appear simple, trivial and difficult to replicate in various contexts; yet the logical description and demonstration of the approach is difficult to question and aids the understanding and learning of the reader.

The book contains well articulated observations of reality and profound wisdom which can be easily related within the context of one’s personal experience and reality.

The book ends with a description of the life and work of Dr. Deming and Dr. Goldratt, their background, the challenges they faced and how they came around to discover and describe their respective theories. The last section is a pleasure to read as it summarizes the two theories and excites the reader to adopt the approach and tools presented in the ten-step approach.

Both the authors of this book have shown tremendous wisdom by understanding the areas for improvement in their chosen filed of study and seeking answers in alternate theories. It is such courage and wisdom of the authors which make ‘The Decalogue’ a very interesting and important read for all students and practitioners of modern management.