The Devil is in the Details – Not!
As I watch developments in the battle over healthcare in America, those against taking action argue to the effect that the overall aim of the purposed initiative is well and good, but that the devil is in the details. Dr. W. E. Deming, the masterful theoretician of human enterprise, understood full well that this bit of common sense is nothing more than common nonsense. This is why the first of his famous 14-Points states that leadership must act with (and instill in followers) what he called, “constancy of purpose”.
We must not be deterred from action in which we intend to do that which we have determined to be good, useful, and wise. We are limited in our ability to predict and we cannot perfect the details before the fact or before the act. As the King in Wonderland advised Alice, we must “Begin at the beginning”.
The ruse used by those unwilling to pursue change, whatever it might be, is to plunge everyone into an imponderable complexity of detail that produces a paralysis of analysis. In this manner, purpose is ground down under the heel of an infinitely long list of “what ifs” and all is lost.
Alice at the mad tea oarty
The devil is not in the details, but the mad tea party of imponderable details is hosted by the devil who seeks to mire us in inaction so that we will remain firmly in his embrace. If we resolve to wrench ourselves from him, we need only agree on what needs to be done and set forth to do it. The details can only be understood and surmounted as we move forward. It’s really quite simple. “Just begin at the beginning”.
Dr. Deming called this process PDSA.
