Let Quality be the yard-stick of your work!
See below the Quality Chain reaction : by Edward Deming : Out of the Crisis
Quality Improves => Rework reduced =>
Rework reduced => Cost reduced
Cost reduced => Better use of People, Machine, Material
Better use of People, Machine, Material => Productivity improves
Productivity improves => Stay in the Business Improves
In summary,
Schedule , Cost , Revenues , Productivity are all dependent on One Thing : Quality
The One Thing That Fixes Everything Else
How W. Edwards Deming’s 40-Year-Old Chain Reaction Still Runs the Best Companies in the World
You’ve seen the scene a thousand times in boardrooms:“Costs are too high!”
“We’re behind schedule!”
“Productivity is terrible!”
“Revenue is flat!”Everyone scrambles. People get laid off. Suppliers get squeezed. Corners get cut. Bonuses are tied to hitting arbitrary numbers this quarter.
And somehow, next quarter, everything is worse.There’s a quieter voice that has been saying the same thing since 1982: You’re treating symptoms, not the disease.
That voice belonged to W. Edwards Deming, and he drew a simple diagram on a flip chart that should be tattooed on every CEO’s forearm.
Deming’s Chain Reaction (in his own handwriting, more or less)
Improve Quality
↓
Costs decrease (less rework, fewer mistakes, less waste, fewer returns)
↓
Productivity improves (you make more with the same people, machines, and material)
↓
You capture the market with better quality and lower price
↓
You stay in business
↓
You provide jobs and more jobs
That’s it.
Six arrows. One direction.
Most managers spend their lives pulling on the wrong end of those arrows—trying to force costs down, force productivity up, force schedules to compress—while actively damaging the only thing that makes all the others possible: quality.
The Opposite Chain Reaction (the one most companies actually live)
Cut corners to reduce costs → Quality drops → Rework and defects explode → Costs actually rise → More pressure to cut corners → Quality drops further → Customers leave → Revenue falls → Layoffs → Morale collapses → Quality drops even more.
It’s a death spiral disguised as “running lean.”
Real-world proof it works the right wayIn the early 1950s, Japanese products were literally jokes in the West—“Made in Japan” meant cheap and shoddy.
Deming was invited to teach Japanese executives his methods. They listened. They applied the chain reaction religiously.
By the 1980s the joke was on everyone else. Toyota, Sony, Canon weren’t just cheaper; they were dramatically better.
The chain reaction had run forward for three decades.Toyota still runs it today. They famously stop entire assembly lines when a single defect is found—not because they love losing money, but because they love the chain reaction more than short-term output numbers.
The uncomfortable truth for 2025
In the age of private-equity roll-ups, 10x growth decks, and “move fast and break things,” Deming feels almost subversive.He is telling you:
Your OKRs built on top of buggy code are theater.
Your “efficiency sprint” that removed testing is digging debt.
Your “80% is good enough to ship” culture is a polite way of announcing future bankruptcy.
Quality isn’t the opposite of speed. It’s the only thing that delivers sustainable speed.So what should you do Monday morning?
Stop asking “How can we cut costs 10%?”
Start asking “Where is variation killing us and how do we remove it?”
Stop measuring people by hours logged or story points closed.
Start measuring the system: defect rates, rework percentage, customer-reported issues.
Give your teams the one gift
Deming said matters most: pride of workmanship. Remove the obstacles that prevent good work. Trust them to improve the process.
Put the chain reaction on the wall—literally.
Make it the first slide of every quarterly review.
Because Deming already proved the punchline:Schedule, cost, revenue, productivity, even job security—none of them are the starting point.They are all consequences.
And they all kneel to one master: Quality.
Improve quality, relentlessly and systematically, and everything else you’re losing sleep over will take care of itself.
The chain reaction never lies.
The only question is which direction you’re going to run it.