Plan, Do, Study, Act (PDSA), lies at the heart of Deming’s theory of human enterprise. People are often tripped up by his formulation, thinking that it is merely a shorthand for what is commonly thought of as the “scientific method”. Not so. The scientific method imagines that we can progress toward an increasingly accurate picture of the world, while PDSA asserts that we can continuously improve the efficacy of our actions in relation to our aims.
In the former, we are observers of the world. In the latter, we are creators of the world. In his “The Saviors of God”, Nikos Kazantzakis, the author of “Zorba the Greek”, put it this way.
THE SOUL OF MAN IS A FLAME, a bird of fire that leaps from bough to bough, from head to head, and that shouts: “I cannot stand still, I cannot be consumed, no one can quench. Lie in ambush behind appearances, patiently, and strive to subject them to laws. Thus may you open up roads through chaos and help the spirit on its course. Impose order, the order of your brain, on the flowing anarchy of the world. Incise your plan of battle clearly on the face of the abyss.
THE ULTIMATE MOST HOLY FORM OF THEORY IS ACTION. Not to look on passively while the spark leaps from generation to generation, but to leap and to burn with it! Action is the widest gate of deliverance. It alone can answer the questionings of the heart. Amid the labyrinthine complexities of the mind it finds the shortest route. No, it does not “find” – it CREATES its way, hewing to right and left through resistances of logic and matter.
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