S4 E28 - Dr. Bill Bellows - Bridging Deming, DevOps, and the Power of Systems Thinking Part 2

In this second part of my conversation with Dr. Bill Bellows, we continue our deep dive into the profound concepts of W. Edwards Deming and their modern applications in leadership, systems thinking, and operational excellence. Dr. Bellows brings his wealth of experience and insight to tackle complex questions about embedding systems thinking within large organizations, balancing tools and strategies, and fostering meaningful collaboration.

We begin by examining the challenges of introducing Deming's principles in diverse organizational settings. Dr. Bellows shares his approach of starting small—providing a foundational vocabulary to diverse teams before scaling deeper understanding. He underscores the importance of translating concepts into actionable strategies that resonate within the unique contexts of organizations, using inspiring examples from industries like aerospace.

A significant theme in this episode is the interplay between analysis and synthesis in problem-solving. Dr. Bellows advocates for a shift from merely addressing isolated failures to improving system functions holistically—a perspective championed by Deming and Taguchi. We explore examples like defining the function of a weld or a sweater to demonstrate how function-focused improvement prevents trading one failure mode for another.

Dr. Bellows also reflects on the diminishing emphasis on human capital investment, such as the decline of leadership development facilities, and connects this to the broader need for fostering systems-level thinking in organizations. Together, we discuss how organizations can avoid reducing education to mere compliance training and instead inspire innovative thinking across all levels.

We conclude by revisiting key takeaways, including the critical role of operational definitions in achieving clarity, the importance of defining and measuring function, and the imperative to develop methods that inspire system-wide transformation.

Transcript

John Willis: [00:00:00] I actually was on a call this morning with a, a professor who teaches supply chain industrial engineering and didn't even realize that in software we were using a lot of these principles and she met a friend of mine on a plane ride and, and she, he said, you need to talk to this guy, right?

And, and I, and I was like, trying to think like, you know, she's like, what is Deming? How do I tell that Deming is important to my students? You know, I know you teach a lot of industrial, and I like, I was sort of. And I kept going back to like, we have to, like, I, I mean this is my cheap way out, but like, make everybody on the planet read Denali Meadows, Thinking and Systems.

Like, like, does it, like, I mean as simple as like, let's start with everybody having a foundation in systems thinking. And then sort of decouple that you could, I mean, again, that's a No, I nah, nah, that's not gonna work. 

Dr. Bill Bellows: No. What I, my approach, there's different ways to do this. One, one approach I've used with small organizations and, [00:01:00] and it's, it's scalable, is to provide a short, you know, introductory exposure to some basic concepts to.

A broad audience of people. So, so and the idea being that within a short period of time, there's a vocabulary of it could be a me and we organizations of basic stuff that something that's hard to refute something that people can at least be introduced to. And then the question becomes.

Who then needs a deeper understanding, but part of the approach I've used is if you can give everyone a fundamental, short, quick overview, then you don't end up with People over here using language that people over here don't understand, but just, so then you just have to say, how much [00:02:00] can we present in an hour that creates a framework for what it means to think together, work together, and then I work with a given group, and then say, okay, now I want to get them deeper.

And but so it's not because you can't get everyone through. 

John Willis: No, I mean, I won't I won't say what I said was stupid, but like, you're right. I mean, just drawn to metal metal thinking systems that everybody is like a terrible idea. But but but then I think wouldn't be the counter. Because actually, in that same conversation, this 1 professor said, and I think there's all relative to this conversation is that she's tried to read bead game, but their students say.

I could have done learn that on my own. Why did I have to do all those silly bead stuff? And I'm wondering if like, and I think you're me, we stuff and I'll point a link to your stuff in our previous conversations. Brilliant. Right? But but can you do you also run the risk is if I go into large organization, I'm trying [00:03:00] to see IOA or, you know, like, we need to have this type of thinking and I'm going to teach you me.

We, I'm like, yeah, John, you know, I don't know. 

Dr. Bill Bellows: There's many challenges. I mean, I mean, part of the challenges are. I

mean, what, what are the issues the organization is facing? 

John Willis: Most stuff they don't know that's the bigger problem too, right? Like you like You can spend weeks, months and still have just a ton of guesses of, you know, I'm, I'm talking like you know 5, 4 trillion or 10 trillion asset holding bank, right?

Like, like Fidelity or JP Morgan, HSBC, like really, I don't think anybody will ever know at some level the aggregate problems they're facing, right? They just can't, it's like fixing the state of California. Well, see, 

Dr. Bill Bellows: I. I get invited into an organization for some issue, right? And my strategy is to work with a small group, get them smart because with the organization, I [00:04:00] mean, I can bring examples from other organizations.

Right. And that helps inspire some initial group, but others require their own examples. So, so if I bring examples from Rocketdyne into an organization, they can be used to inspire some people. But to really make headway in that organization, we then have to do what we're talking about is convert that into what they do, that they can go off and do something with it.

What does that mean? And somehow it has to translate it and improve. So if they work together, think together, learn together, and ideally that group does something that others look at and say. Wow. I didn't know we could reduce the failure rate without you've given me a new way to look at, because, because the most likely [00:05:00] scenario also is that you're called in the work on something which is broken.

John Willis: Right. 

Dr. Bill Bellows: And, and, and the, and someone has an idea that may be looking at variation, looking at the components, shifting our focus from analysis to some synthesis synthesis. And, and so. Ideally, it could be someone's listening to this podcast I do for the Deming Institute or somebody I used to work with, but it's, it's It's trying to get a group within the organization to do something.

And then, my strategy is to help those inside people not only get a resolution and improvement on whatever they're still doing, But provide them the means by which to explain how the solution, you know, involve them moving from thinking in terms of analysis to synthesis and all the analysis in the world was not the, they needed to look at [00:06:00] integration, change how, you know, look at what failure rate means, convert that into something.

But my ambition is, is to get a, A group that can do that, explain it to others, and then others want to know, but I'm an outside person. I'm not the inside person. My, my strategy is how can I help you as an inside person develop the skills to explain this on a rudimentary basis to others. So when, you know, it could be, I go into the organization and do a series of webinars, but they, but the, People I'm working with come from you, who are part of that pilot, and then you become their everyday, Hey, John, can you explain Dr.

Taguchi's ideas to me? And with the idea being that I think, I think the era of mass training everyone, I think that's just a waste of time. 

John Willis: It's a double edged sword though, right? Because I mean, you know, my [00:07:00] career, like, I mean, we call it the bottom up or top down. Right. And, you know, the thing that always comes up when DevOps is like, John, this is great, you know, but how do I convince the overall leadership to buy into this?

Right. And, and so like, like, you know, And I think about, like, my career and almost everybody I know, if they were going to be honest, especially in the large scale organizations, like, which mostly what I've worked with in my whole career, right, is you can go in and you can fight the, you know, you can do, fight the, sort of the ground war and win the battles and win the battles and win the battles and you find that they win.

You never win the war, right? And like we see this with agile, we see this with lean, we see it with DevOps, DevSecOps, you know, all these sorts of things, which were very effective tools and they work brilliantly in these pockets. I think one thing that you're sort of describing that like I see missing a lot is those groups, when people say, how did you have that success?

They don't know how to, they don't really know how to explain how they got the success like they, and, and that could be a [00:08:00] way to sort of infiltrate the rest of the organization, but in general. You know, I, I, it's my firm belief that if you can't get the executive level to at least push down a common way of thinking, you know, and whether it's like, everybody must take the me, we course, or you know, I, I think we just, we, we just write these beachheads that like just constantly, you know, sort of landing, you know, conquering a territory, but like losing to, I don't know, I mean, 

Dr. Bill Bellows: well, well, there's a couple of things.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Basically, you said come to mind, you know, I'm not averse to mass training when it comes to annual reminders on how to avoid

the software, you know it breaches or safety things. There's nothing wrong with that. Nothing wrong. And so having that automated that everybody once a year has to go through and be reminded of certain things. Nothing wrong with that. And I'm not against The [00:09:00] tools, you know, tools are a garden shovel and a technique is how do we use it.

But what I think it's important is to differentiate a tool and the technique to use it, which are about what Ackoff would call efficiency. Tools allow me to do something, do something faster and cheaper. So instead of tightening the bolt by hand, I use a wrench. A wrench is a tool. I, I, I. Right. So I, I need to get a hole there.

I need to get these. That's a tool and a technique. I love tools and techniques. Our son is a garage filled with battery powered tools, you know He's got some really cool, I mean, tools are great, but what, but I, I like to differentiate a tool and a technique and how to use it from a concept.

What Dr. [00:10:00] Deming is talking about is a concept of how to manage a system. And then what I just explained about going into an organization and how do we deploy that, that's a strategy. And so tools and techniques are not concepts and strategies. 

And so mass training is a is a strategy. 

John Willis: Well, I guess 

Dr. Bill Bellows: the question is, Deming is a fundamentally Deming are talking about a concept for managing.

Which is about synthesis, these differentiation. 

John Willis: So this goes back to my sort of question. Like, I think I posed it wrong. Like everybody should read Denial and Mattos, but the, the point I'm saying is like, like we've both been in large organizations, right? I've, I've been working for a couple now and like, it seems like every other month there's some, there's some HR thing that I didn't go through where I have to mandatory hit the check boxes.

I got to take the stupid question test. I can't go any faster than the thing lets [00:11:00] me. But. And, and we have, there's a lot that we have to do, right? They have to for compliance, right? Like they, they need to box for all like business reasons that every employee knows that don't hit, you know, a URL in a, in an email that's undefined, right?

Like I have to do that, but like what we don't do, and we spend a lot of time and we have to do that. I don't think we do any type of making people think. At a macro level in an organization. 

Dr. Bill Bellows: No, no, no, no, no, again, 

John Willis: like, like, maybe like, we should think a little more about like, how do we want people to think and make that as a top down?

Like, like, we think that would be inefficient. Why would we do it? 

Dr. Bill Bellows: The challenge would be how do we.

I remember going to the Boeing Leadership Center shortly after it opened in like, you know, 99 2000 timeframe. So Boeing had a brick and mortar Leadership Center. When everyone else was looking to online [00:12:00] training, mass training, Boeing was going You know, apparently counter to a bring people together physically.

So Boeing bought a, a, an estate with several hundred acres and a big house. And they, they took the big house and, and added a wing on one end with dormitories that could, that eventually would sleep several hundred people. 

John Willis: M used to do this all the time. And then, 

Dr. Bill Bellows: and then the other direction. So off the center house they built and, and let's say going east, they built dormitories, wings of dormitories, really.

I mean, just, you know, college dormitory, single room. The other direction were classrooms, state of the art. And, I mean, a lot of money went into this, and then off the, off the south end of, of the house, let's say, this mansion, they built a giant dining area where everyone who was there that week could eat together.

[00:13:00] So they had the sleeping separately in these rooms over here, learning together over here, eating together back there. They had bike trails. I mean, it was a phenomenal facility. I didn't like the content, but I loved the concept. And and, One thing is but how you, 

John Willis: how, I still go back 

Dr. Bill Bellows: to, go ahead John.

John Willis: The problem with that is, so IBM used to have these campuses, there was one in Belgium, I used to teach at, it was called Le Hoop, and it was exactly, it was a massive campus, about like 50 minutes out of Brussels, and it had theaters, it had racquetball courts, it had swimming pools, it had classrooms, it had a dining area, they had In fact, the classrooms at the end of the hall of most of the classrooms, there was a bar, right, like, like this is a European thing, like, you could teach and meet everybody at the corner hallway, the classroom, and all of those closed down.

And, and I think maybe it goes back to something maybe Deming would be sort [00:14:00] of, we think that is overhead. We don't see the value. in human productivity, right? Like, I agree with you. I think those things were great. There was a library there. You could literally, in the middle of class, walk down the hall and get the book out of the library.

It was collaborative. The whole week, you were literally, whether it was breakfast, lunch, even the, the vans that would take you down into Brussels, you'd be having conversations. About all the stuff you were trying to learn that week, right? And that, like, unfortunately is seen as overhead. And I think human capital, even to my point, why an organization wouldn't invest in those type of HR things of teaching you how to think.

In a certain way would be seen as a human capital as a cost as opposed to an optimization like invest like we know and I think Deming would be screaming and has screamed out loud that the investment in the human capital is where you get the value and the [00:15:00] profit. 

Dr. Bill Bellows: Well, you get, well, the leadership buying leadership center closed early in the pandemic.

It was brought in by people have a different era and, and 

John Willis: But it was type of those centers. Whether it was pandemic driven or not over time Like the the ibm ones have closed because they just they seem like overhead you wait wasting too much money On this is not this isn't the kind of thing that makes money.

What are the things like again the sort of anti Ackoff stuff like looking at what is the roi as opposed to what's the aggregate value? I don't you know 

Dr. Bill Bellows: Well, I mean what what the top people at boeing were getting out of it. That was that inspired them to To hold on to this for as long as they did was getting people across Boeing to meet each other.

So every week 36 people Well, at any point of time in the seminar, that, in that, at the [00:16:00] facility, any given week were 200 people from across Boeing at entry level management, middle management, senior management, they're there for a week or two weeks, and what they were, the, when I first met, when I met the guy running it, who came out of General Electric's Crotonville, Jack Welch inspired era when these places were really, really big, what he was looking for was cross pollination.

I coming from Los Angeles, which you coming from Brussels and we never, and now we're, we're cross pollinating. That's, that's the together piece. What, what I didn't, the only thing I didn't like. About the leadership centers. The content was the antithesis of Dr Deming. I love the physical aspect. And the reason I bring that up is that what Deming's offering is a concept with which is about [00:17:00] it.

It has a psychology aspect. It has a systems aspect. It has a variation aspect. It has a knowledge. We talked knowledge aspect. But yeah, is I mean, our organization is improving how people work together and they'll say, yeah, then I say by what method and then then to look at him and say, looking at the components independently and saying they are good has got nothing to do with together.

And then, I mean, together would mean, am I paying attention to you, the recipient, of the learning, and getting a sense of how well you're receiving it, and am I using that information back to, right? But what you get in traditional management is, is, well, I presented the ideas.

And if, and if, because it sounds good to me when it went to you, and then we quiz you as the recipient, and then beat you up as to how well you [00:18:00] performed. And if you don't perform well, then John, you gotta work harder. What, what's missing in that model is, maybe I need to develop new examples. Maybe I need to Change the examples I use or change the language because short of that, it's a one way flow 

John Willis: and that's a consistent problem.

I see, you know, like when I'll talk to people, I'd go into his organization and do what I call qualitative, qualitative analysis, digital transmission, just a fancy name to get a CIO to pay me money. Right. But, but I did do qualitative analysis and, and you'd hear people's, you know, I talked to one group And then I go to another group and I'm like, you know, we gave them a class on that.

This is ridiculous that they don't understand that. You know, like, then I, like, I think I read Deming, like he, he, he, when he, like, he didn't grade his students apparently, but like, when he thought a student was failing, he took the blame personally. Right? Like, and like, to your point, a lot of organizations are like, hey, wait a minute, man.

We gave them test development training [00:19:00] last year. And if they don't know it, They're just stupid. You know, like, no, no, 

Dr. Bill Bellows: no, 

John Willis: of course they 

Dr. Bill Bellows: don't work, buddy. Which has got nothing to do with together. 

John Willis: That's right, that's right. 

Dr. Bill Bellows: It is, it is me saying to you, it is me saying something to you, and if you don't hear it, then I say, John, have your hearing checked.

But it might be that I'm speaking softly, or I'm speaking fast, or I'm across the room. Of course. But for me, I'd say, well, I know what I told John. So, so what I said was fine. And then I, we put all the burden on you, the recipient and say, John, have your hearing check. You need to go in and say, well, which is no different, John, than blaming you for the red beads.

John Willis: Same thing, you know, and you've done, you've done enough training and I've done like not formal training, but I mean, formalist, I mean, I've trained like, you know, probably at this point, Well, over 15, 20, 000 professionals in my career. But like you, you have that sort of moment when somebody comes up [00:20:00] and say, Hey, John, you know, when you talked about the thing, I don't get it.

And you think to yourself, God, I don't think I could be more clear about that. But then you realize. There was something in the way and like a good educator sort of figures out like okay I'm gonna get better at like, you know, I thought I had this thing now then like somebody just missed it So you're writing a book right?

Like you think okay, you write a book and then somebody says, you know I didn't really understand like oh my goodness, you know, but yeah I mean, but I think most people don't take that inward and and to me I think that was one of the things we love About dr. Deming is you know, he talks about being educated the way he talks about grading and and you know so well, did we solve anything this afternoon, I guess on the

Dr. Bill Bellows: Well, but, but I think the important thing is no, what, what I really got out of this is in looking at these that I didn't see earlier, but by you coming back to it, these, these, these are, you know, the, you said that the Dora metrics? Dora an acronym? 

John Willis: Yeah, it's an acronym. I [00:21:00] think it's DevOps. Oh 

Dr. Bill Bellows: oh.

DevOps. Reliable operation research 

John Willis: association or assessment. That's what it is assessment. Yeah. Yeah. 

Dr. Bill Bellows: Okay. And yeah, and when I looked at them. When you sent them to me, it didn't jump out until we got into it. Then it dawned on me is this is like. These are high level metrics that I think I didn't appreciate at the beginning is that you have to dive in to get a sense of what are these things mean, I think, and in doing so, we come up with characteristics, you know, such as timing and things like that that are, that I think could fit nicely into a presentation.

A how well do they integrate thing, which is the loss function. 

John Willis: I think we got there. And I think the two things that I would take away, which is, you know, I've always said that like, cause you know, I didn't have enough time or we didn't go deep enough to say, okay, let me tell you what I feel is wrong about these [00:22:00] metrics, which is without clear operational definitions, you get into all sorts of minefields.

But then I think one of the things you said that I, one of my favorite sort of like expressions from Deming is by what method. Like, so like, like, like, in other words, like starting with that to sort of work your way backward, right, like, you know, like, okay, we've, we've, we've kicked like 10 percent of reduced you know, failure rate.

Like, okay, then we can say, okay, you know, like the whole thing by what method, like, what was the, like, I don't care the result, I want to know what method. So I think if you sort of, in my mind, what I've sort of taken away from this conversation, which I think is a starting point for a deeper conversation, which is that, you know, when we're talking about how do we look at Dora metrics, the one we definitely have to be very crystal clear about the sort of the slicing of the operational definition of what, you know, is it a variance of latency?

Okay. You know, of like, if it's, if it's sort of a, what's the error, right, like we got to kind of zone in on the [00:23:00] operational definition, and then, and then you have to apply that, so like, but kind of why, what, what is, like, what is the method, what were you trying to achieve, what, like, what, how are you going to learn from this, you know, there's sort of like the, the Deming says, you know, like sort of bastonizing is, but like, I don't care about the results, what I want to know is the method in which you achieve the results.

Dr. Bill Bellows: Well, what you just said reminds me of a, a quote from Dr. Taguchi. He said, measuring quality does not improve quality. And, but what also came to mind and what you were just saying is, Dr. Taguchi spoke very heavily about function. What is the function of this module? What is the function of this process? So if I am joining together two pieces of material, welding them, right.

Then, then poor quality could be [00:24:00] cracks, poor quality could be porosity in the weld, poor quality could be a mismatch in the weld, poor quality could be what's known as drop through, where the, the, the melted material physically drops. That's, that's drop through. So there are, there could be a dozen or so Reasons for a bad weld.

John Willis: Right. Okay. 

Dr. Bill Bellows: Well, what Dr. Taguchi would talk about is he would say, John, what is the function of the weld? You're like, oh, what's the function of the weld? You'd say the, to join two materials to get to, to join two things together such that they could perform. under a state of, under an environment with vibration, under an environment with hot temperatures and low cold temperatures.

And, and the idea being a crack does not allow it to do that. A crack with vibration leads to a bigger [00:25:00] crack. But the, but then you'd say if the function is to join them to have a given strength, And then I can test that under, under environment, then I'm getting, then, then the idea being that if I improve that care, if that characteristic that I'm measuring the strength of the world subject to those things, if that is very strong, then that's telling me I must have done something to porosity to achieve that.

I must have done something to eliminate cracks to achieve that. I must have done that to To improve drop through the idea being what you don't want to do. Is resolve porosity and end up with cracking. 

John Willis: Right, right, right. 

Dr. Bill Bellows: That's just trading one for another. So then if you ask, what is the function then?

Because then then what's cool is then if you improve function, you're not trading one quality problem for another [00:26:00] because what you were saying is. Is that instead of focusing on failure rate ask what is the function of this and if we can improve function that the beauty of improving function is that it takes into account different failure rates and you don't try trade one failure mode for another failure mode and that would help.

John Willis: Isn't function just another way of saying operational definition? 

Dr. Bill Bellows: It's not, it's not definition. It is asking, the basic question is, what is the function of this, of this module? What is the function of this process? 

John Willis: Oh, isn't that like, so the same as the sort of question, like the operational, like what Deming has to The sweater, right?

Like it's supposed to be 50 percent cotton, 50 cent polyester, right? Like, and, you know, well, 

Dr. Bill Bellows: yeah, yeah. The 50%. Well, there, there, I would say the issue, well, there, I would say the issue, the resolution would be, what is the [00:27:00] function of a sweater? 

John Willis: Right. Well, and so that's why I'm trying to see what the differences between Taguchi's function operate because in that case, the function of sweater is not to have the front part of the sweater be cotton and the, no, but I would 

Dr. Bill Bellows: say, I would say the function of the sweater is to keep somebody warm, right?

John Willis: Right, 

Dr. Bill Bellows: right. Then the question is 

John Willis: for it to be cost effective. Again, I'm just trying to extrapolate on how an operation definition plays into the function to have a cost effective way to keep somebody warm and then therefore I need to make sure that it isn't 50 percent you know, cotton on the front side, but 

Dr. Bill Bellows: where the 50% If half what he's talking about is half, half of the material is wool and half of it is Right, right.

Something else. What? What? That then becomes the issue there that I see is if we were to do some test on warmth, you'd say one side it has better [00:28:00] warmth capacity than the other. Right? 

John Willis: Right. 

Dr. Bill Bellows: Well, now, but if we were looking for uniformity of the warmth 

John Willis: Right. 

Dr. Bill Bellows: Then we improve the uniformity of the warmth by getting around the issue you're talking about, 

John Willis: but it didn't again like in this where I get dense and somehow I break through and sometimes I'm wrong in my trying to break through.

But isn't that the same thing with Taguchi said the function is to economically keep somebody warm and there should be some evaluation of does it do that? And to me, an operation definition is it must keep somebody warm in an economic way. And let's say that and then I have a criteria, a decision, a test and a decision to 

Dr. Bill Bellows: you have.

So then then we get into how are we going to measure warmth? So then we'll have a test where we take this material and we apply heat around and we see how much of the heat comes through. That's a more. And then what we do is we do that under different [00:29:00] conditions. We, we, we take a brand new sweater. We wash it 50 times.

Right? Is it as durable? Does the warmth? I get all that. But 

John Willis: how do we, but then how, like in, in Taguchi's one, isn't there a measurement component to that? If the function is to keep a person warm, what, what 

Dr. Bill Bellows: is it? So we, so we need a measure. How are we going to measure the warming ability of this? 

John Willis: Okay. 

Dr. Bill Bellows: And then again, we can have, we can have radiant, right?

heaters on one side of the sweater, and then we put a device on the other side to see does that is that Energy getting through, and if it's a really good sweater, then that heat or that cold is not getting through the sweater. So that becomes how we, what you're getting at there, is that how are we going to measure this?

John Willis: So one is, I guess, like maybe it goes back to the analysis and the synthesis, which is, one is, how [00:30:00] are we doing? The other one, are we doing? Is that a better way to say that, Taguchi's definition is, Sort of are we doing it and the operational definition is 

Dr. Bill Bellows: Part of the synthesis thing is who's wearing this sweater?

Under what conditions are they wearing it in a windy environment? How are they wearing the sweater? 

John Willis: But do you see where I'm getting confused? I can't see the distinction between Taguchi's function. And how do we sort of measure that and an operational definition because they seem to be the same. 

I guess I'm missing and maybe 

Dr. Bill Bellows: well, part of the operational definition is how we how do we measure warmth, 

John Willis: right?

But if it's a 

Dr. Bill Bellows: uniformity of the warmth, 

John Willis: right? But all right, but yeah, okay. But so, but it's, 

Dr. Bill Bellows: but it's moving from the term failure to what is failure mean? 

John Willis: Okay. 

Dr. Bill Bellows: Because you could fail for different reasons [00:31:00] and what the role of function is to not trade one failure mode for another. What Taguchi is saying is, is lack of failure does not mean quality.

So what Taguchi is talking about is if we can improve the, The ability of the sweater to keep somebody warm. If we can improve the ability of this software, it's asking what is the function of the software? What he's saying is the function is not to fail. The question is, what is the software trying to do?

The lack of doing it is failure, right? And you can fail for different reasons, but what he's still saying is, what is the function of the software to transmit to convert something to something? 

John Willis: All right, 

Dr. Bill Bellows: I'll take the inability to do that as a failure, 

John Willis: and I guess this is where, like, all the people listening, like, they've told me at times when I have these things with you, they're yelling at me, like, John, no, [00:32:00] you know, so, so there's get them chuckle.

So what? All right, let me use the example of the that I need a clean table. So the operational definition is very clear about, like, What kind of table it is, wouldn't that be very similar to a Taguchi function? In other words, if I was saying like the whole operate, you're like, is it operating table? Is it a picnic table?

In that example, can you make a clear distinction between what Taguchi would say? What is the function of the table? And what is the operational definition of the table? And I promise I get it. 

Dr. Bill Bellows: That's right. That's right. It could well be, it could be you're asking the question. What is the function of the operating table?

And then what we're getting into is the function of the table is to hold a patient for a given period of time with weight distributed Such that we can perform surgery. 

John Willis: Functions aren't going to do surgery. Any other functions aren't going to do sort of dinner, you know. That's right. But it's In the operational [00:33:00] definition, Deming would say, I can't, you know, like, I can't tell you how to use this table.

I mean, I know you know all this, but, I can't tell you how to use this table unless you tell me the operational definition for the table.

Dr. Bill Bellows: But I say that I would first think about what is the function of the table. And then I would think of operational definitions as providing clarity on the art. All 

John Willis: right. I think so. 

Dr. Bill Bellows: Operational definitions is is is. Is first we think of what is the function of the device of the software and and then when somebody explains it to you, then you get into, are we in agreement on on that explanation of the function?

John Willis: So it's a more a definition of the function, which 

Dr. Bill Bellows: so the, I mean, you can have an operational deficit. You can improve the operational definition. It's still not explain the function. 

John Willis: Right. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, some of the examples would be, they seem the same, like the operate the table. Right, [00:34:00] but, but, but I can see how, like, the sweater example would be, there might be a lot of ways to keep person warm or to be able to have an operational definition to make an effective sweater I'm beating this 1 to death, but the you know, like, if the function is that this thing is supposed to keep somebody warm, I could have multiple operational definitions of things that I need to sort of validate that it does keep somebody warm.

I don't know. 

Dr. Bill Bellows: Yeah, I think, I don't know, it's just asking. It's moving from failure. It's, 

John Willis: I don't know that operation definition is def is always failure, right? Like it's. Right. It's just a clarity of what you're trying to get out of. It's a clarity of the functionality of the thing you're trying to measure, right?

Dr. Bill Bellows: Well, let's say I think the big thing is

the, the lack of a negative is not a positive. So the lack of failure is still not asking the question, what are we trying to [00:35:00] accomplish? 

John Willis: Yeah.

All right. I think we repeat this one to death. Yeah, I just like it was the same thing again. I think that I don't think there's any sort of failure in the terms of the operational definition of a table, right? It's just like, I don't know how I can, like, if you're measuring something about a table, like how clean it is.

That measurement is meaningless until you give me clarity of the, what I would say, the function of the table, like, you know, how clean it is just like, it's back to our sort of one millisecond on looking up sneakers. Versus 1 millisecond of like a latency arbitrage transaction in an exchange when 1 loses, like, probably 0 money.

The other 1 loses billion dollars. And and so that that 1 millisecond. I don't know. I again, I [00:36:00] think I need to read a little bit more about to give you what he how he defines a function and all that, because it just seems very sort of overlapping. 

Dr. Bill Bellows: I think they're, they're complimentary, but they're different.

John Willis: Okay. Okay. I'll take it from the expert. Okay. I've done my, I did my battle and I like, so like, okay, I'm good. All right. So I think That's what we learned today, right? All that. Yeah. 

Dr. Bill Bellows: Yeah. Let's see. Let's see what the feedback is. 

John Willis: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So good. And then I think I think one of the things I, I'd sort of you know, maybe, you know, what we'll do is, you know maybe the next one I'll invite one of the people that you already know pretty well, and maybe the three of us.

So it'll be kind of fun to have. You know, instead of me, when I'm getting lost in the mall, like, have somebody else, like, Oh, sure. And then maybe, maybe the three of us. I think that'd be a lot of fun. And like, see if we can't, because I think there is gold in getting you to sort of like, sort of see a clarity in what we're trying to accomplish.

And then, and I think we've done a good job today, but I [00:37:00] think there's like, gold in literally taking your wealth of knowledge of all these sort of industrial examples, And, and, and, and knowledge examples as well, of course, but, but to be able to explain to You know, people who listen from the DevOps community.

Yeah, it's great, but like, how would I deal with it with like test driven development or how would I, you know, and I think if we could get sort of look the deeper we can get you into those hard questions from our side, I think this is going to be fundamentally well received. So 

Dr. Bill Bellows: there. Our our ambitions for 2025.

There you go. I mean, we've we've come a long way, John, at 2024. 

John Willis: That's right. That's right. 

Dr. Bill Bellows: I'm not knowing each other to meeting at the end. Oh, no, that's great.