Why Deming: Interview with Keith Sparkjoy Cofounder of Pluralsight

Image may be NSFW.
Clik here to view. kieth sparkjoy, pluralsight interview on deming I first heard of Pluralsight when I saw a tweet from Techcrunch on the massive $135 Million Funding it received in August 2014. I thought to myself, “what is pluralsight?”. So I looked them up. It turns out they are a local Utah company – go figure; small world since I live in Utah now. I checked out their site to see what they were about and one thing immediately stuck out to me: there was a blog post written by Keith Sparkjoy entitled “Why Deming?”. I thought, hmmm, there’s something you don’t see everyday. So, I asked him to be part of my Leadership Insights Series.

So today, I’m pleased to present Keith Sparkjoy, a co-founder of Pluralsight and has held roles of CTO and is currently the Culture Coach. In this interview you’ll learn:

Why Deming? And, what can we still learn from him?
What’s wrong with modern management and what Deming has to teach us.
What the Red Bead game can teach us about working in a system we’re entrusted to improve, but have very little control in actually improving.

Enjoy the article and check out Pluralsight also. You can learn more about Keith after the interview. Enjoy.

Hi Keith, and thanks for taking the time to speak to my audience. Could you please introduce yourself and your work to my readers?

I’m a cofounder of pluralsight.com, where our vision is to democratize professional training. We offer high quality video training at a very affordable price (subscriptions start at $29/mo). We currently offer training for software developers, IT professionals, and creatives.

What’s your role at Pluralsight and how does Deming’s influence play into it?

For many years I was the CTO, leading the development of our content delivery system, which included the public-facing as well as internal websites and other tools. I gave my teams a great deal of autonomy and eventually they became self-supportive and I was able to focus more on company culture, which is something I learned a great deal about while working as CTO. I discovered Deming while reading Dan Pink’s book Drive, as well as Erik Reis’s book The Lean Startup. Both seemed to be influenced by a guy named W. Edwards Deming, so I picked up a copy of Deming’s epic book Out of the Crisis. I also purchased a set of DVDs from the Deming Institute and watched the entire “Deming Library” over a weekend. It was a very emotional moment for me as I realized that we could maintain a healthy culture at Pluralsight even as we experienced tremendous growth (we grew from 20 to 200 employees in the span of 18 months). Prior to this I was starting to see sickness creep in and I was honestly worried that we were going to become just another typical “grown up” company that Scott Adams regularly mocks in his comic strip Dilbert.

Suppose you had a chance to have dinner with Dr. Deming. What advice would he have for you and for Pluralsight? What do you think he’d say about modern management?

I think he would ask our senior leadership team to spend more time where the work happens. See for yourself what is going on and try to break out of the bubble that naturally forms around you. Our leadership team has made great strides towards adopting Dr. Deming’s lens as a guide for cultivating a healthy company culture, but this is one place we still need to do a better job, I think.

Deming had a lot of complaints about modern management techniques. He pointed out how a lot of seemingly “obvious” management techniques have unintended consequences that lead to a distorted view of the company. It’s hard enough to run a profitable company in a depressed economy when you know the real numbers. But when you have a distorted view you’re relying purely on luck. Deming helps us unhook from practices that introduce distortion (annual merit reviews, stack ranking, commissions, employee of the month programs, incentive pay, and so on).

Have you conducted the Red Bead Experiment at your company? If so, what were some of the ah-ha moments?

Yes, we’ve actually done this twice. Once with top leadership and once with the entire company. It’s especially effective to put top leadership to work as willing workers so they can feel what it’s like to work in a broken system that they are not trusted to improve

PDCA is the accepted improvement loop at Toyota. But, Deming encourages PDSA. What’s your feeling? Does it matter? Why or why not?

I’ve not studied the differences between the two loops, but my understanding is that Deming wanted us to “study” the results, not merely “check” them.

In addition to being strongly influenced by Deming, as the Culture Coach do you also encourage improvement by teaching PDCA? If so, how is that being received?

We call it PDSA, following Deming’s lead. Yes we do encourage teams to use the PDSA loop to improve our systems. It’s generally been received well when the intent of PDSA is understood by all on the team. It tends to remove a lot of fear because the entire team (including the leader) works together to come up with a theory and a way to test that theory. So if the test fails, nobody is worried about losing their job. The failure becomes a learning: we come up with a new theory and test again. By spinning that flywheel we are able to innovate and produce better results for our customers.

Not everyone understands PDSA. I recently heard about an employee who was afraid to share her idea for a PDSA with her leader. This is the type of thing that culture coaches can help with – rooting out sources of fear within the company and working with teams to drive it out.

Let’s discuss the concept of fear. Deming had a lot to say about fear. Is fear in the workplace still an issue for modern management? How do you address fear in the workplace?

Definitely it’s an issue. And one of the hardest things about it is that it’s often not discussed. Nobody wants to talk about what they are afraid of. This is one of the hardest jobs of management. They must develop a strong rapport with their teams so that team members are able to open up and talk about what they fear. It’s tough to work at your best in a creative endeavor like ours when you’re afraid all the time. But before any of this can happen, the traditional manager has to have a serious change of heart and learn that managing by fear isn’t an effective long term strategy. Managers must transform into leaders. Leadership is very different than management, as Deming points out.

Viewing the organization as a system was one of Dr. Deming’s main contributions. What are the negative consequences when we don’t? How have you addressed the natural tendency to silo? Is more meetings the answer?

When we fail to lead a company as a system, we tend to suboptimize (for example, by giving incentives to VPs for optimizing their individual departments, which causes all sorts of problems). When we start to see the company as a system we start to think about suppliers and customers at all levels. If we all want the system to function optimally, we start to break down walls between departments and encourage direct communication. More meetings isn’t necessarily the answer, but having meetings where the right people are there becomes critical. Instead of working to please your boss, why not work to please your customer? That could be someone in a different department.

Deming’s 14 points can be viewed as a framework for cultural transformation. Do you disagree with any of them? If so, which ones and why?

I think all of Deming’s 14 points are important, and I agree with all of them. They reinforce one another.

Back to the 14 points. Why is it so difficult for companies to adopt all of them?

Many of the points, if adopted in isolation, could fail spectacularly. For example, if you have a typical unhealthy western culture and you dropped incentive pay, you’ll likely lose some of your workforce if you don’t also adopt the other points and create a healthy culture where people are intrinsically motivated and love coming to work each day. Adopting Deming’s model of management is not a piecemeal thing – you have to drastically change the hearts and minds of management so they start to lead and start to develop trust within their teams. As Simon Sinek points out in his book Leaders Eat Last, the leader is the one who sacrifices first, and it’s often hard to convince managers that this is a solid long term strategy for success.

Pluralsight is a young company, with about 100 or so employees and is early in its cultural transformation. What advice would you have for others that are just beginning their journey in becoming less command and control and more in line with Deming’s teachings?

We’re over 200 employees and growing Image may be NSFW.
Clik here to view.

You’ve got to experiment with it to really get it. I remember the visceral sense of enthusiasm and ownership that my development team showed when I experimented with dropping command and control in favor of consensus-based decision making. When it’s their idea, they are going to own it, feel tremendous responsibility for it, and feel tremendous pride when they succeed. So much more than if they were simply implementing your idea – then they are more likely to want your job Image may be NSFW.
Clik here to view.

A couple weeks after the experiment with my development team, I shared my experience during a one-on-one with my leader, the CEO. That one-on-one was in the morning, and later that afternoon during a leadership team meeting, he tried the same thing on us. Suddenly instead of being the “decider” he wanted to hear what we thought, and he wanted us to vote on stuff. I remember feeling a huge weight lift off my chest during that meeting.

So I got a chance to experience leadership without command and control both as a leader myself and as a team member, all within one month. This forever changed my attitude.

Is there anything else you’d like to share with my audience?

I’ve learned over the last year that in so many things, focusing directly on what it is you want is not often the most effective long-term strategy.

You want to be happy? Focusing directly on your own happiness will often lead you into short-term strategies that will (ironically) make you less happy in the long term. There’s usually something else that’s more important to focus on in order to get what you want. Want to really be happy in the long term? Spend less time thinking about yourself and more time thinking about others. Give more. Love more. You’ll find a much more meaningful happiness that lasts by focusing on the right things.

You want a profitable company? Focusing directly on the numbers and incenting people to make them better may work in the short term, but you won’t get the big gains that you could get if you instead focused on creating a work environment where employees love to be.

Want happy employees? A pool table might give some immediate gratification, but changing the hearts and minds of managers and helping them become leaders, unhooking from command and control, removing demotivators like “employee of the month” would have a much better long term impact.

Image may be NSFW.
Clik here to view.About Keith Sparkjoy

Keith is a cofounder and Culture Coach of Pluralsight, the leader in hardcore developer training. With Keith’s help, Pluralsight launched in 2004 with a small team of world-renowned software development authorities to provide professional training for developers throughout the world. The company launched a proprietary process whereby it publishes high-quality training videos through an unmatched online learning experience.

As Culture Coach, Keith is constantly challenging the leadership at Pluralsight to improve its culture. Leaning heavily on Deming’s teachings, we want to build a company where people find joy in their work and are intrinsically motivated to help us democratize professional tech training, making a great tech education available to anyone in the world who wants it, at an affordable price.

With a bachelor’s degree in Electrical Engineering from the University of California, Irvine, Keith quickly migrated into the world of programming once graduating. After a few years in the industry, and after mastering a particularly daunting software technology called “COM”, Keith wanted to share his learnings and started teaching a course at the UCI extension. This quickly grew into a passion for research and teaching that led to Keith joining DevelopMentor for a 7 year stint of teaching and researching, where his focus was on security. During that time, Keith became the security columnist for MSJ and MSDN magazines, a column he wrote for 8 years. Keith was also a Microsoft MVP for many years.

In 2004, along with cofounders Aaron Skonnard and Fritz Onion, Keith helped form Pluralsight, where he’s refocused his efforts on software craftsmanship and quality. Keith helped build a team of incredibly capable craftsmen to build the next generation of online learning platform: pluralsight.com

Other Leadership Interviews You Might Enjoy:

Lean Leadership Interviews
Image may be NSFW. Clik here to view. Jeffrey Liker, NYT Best Selling Author, Professor, and Author of the Toyota Way	Jeffrey Liker, author of The Toyota Way, shares his thoughts on Toyota Kata, why sometimes root cause analysis isn't necessary, and what else he is excited to learn - even after 30 years of being a student of the Toyota Production System.
Image may be NSFW. Clik here to view. Eric Ries, Author of the Leanstartup	In this Podcast interview with Eric Ries, the author of The Leanstartup, we learn about the how he's applied Lean principles to starting companies. He also tells us about his consulting work with GE and how GE, worldwide, has applied Leanstartup throughout all its divisions and is considering Leanstartup as its new Operating System for the company.
Image may be NSFW. Clik here to view. Michael Balle, Author and Respected Lean Thinker	Michael Balle is a leading voice in Lean. In this interview, he shares with us his thoughts on Lean, tells us about his book, and spends a good amount of time discussing Respect for People.
Image may be NSFW. Clik here to view. Bob Emiliani, Author and Professor of Management	This interview with Dr. Bob Emiliani covers several aspects of Fake Lean versus Real Lean. There are real insights here from the "Lean Professor".
Image may be NSFW. Clik here to view. Laura Busche, Author of Lean Branding	Lean Branding is an application of Lean principles to branding. Read her provocative and practical approach to brand branding using the principles of Lean.
Image may be NSFW. Clik here to view.	Robert Martichenko is the Founder and CEO of LeanCor - a lean logistics and supply chain company. He is also the author of the book "A Lean Fulfillment Stream", published by the Lean Enterprise Institute. In this interview, he shares with us how Lean can be applied effectively beyond the 4 walls of manufacturing and outside the office, but infused into the entire supply chain.
Image may be NSFW. Clik here to view. Peter Armstrong, CEO of Leanpub (Lean Publishing)	Leanpub is an innovative approach to book publishing, where Peter believes that lean principles apply. He claims that writing a book is essentially a startup. And, the worst waste of all is writing a book that nobody wants. Read more to learn how to apply lean to the world of book publishing.
Image may be NSFW. Clik here to view. Keith Sparkjoy, Chief Culture Officer at Pluralsight	Keith Sparkjoy is the Culture Officer at Pluralsight, a Utah company that raised $135 Million in 2014 - an unprecedented amount of venture capital. And, here's the really cool part, as the culture officer, he's trying to transform his company using Dr. W. Edward Deming's teachings.
Image may be NSFW. Clik here to view. David J. Anderson, Author of many books on Agile, and inventor of Kanban for Creative and Knowledge work	David J. Anderson is the pioneer of the application of Kanban for creative knowledge work. His methodology and approach has had widespread acceptance and adoption and in this interview he shares results from companies that have tried his approach and other lessons learned.
Image may be NSFW. Clik here to view. Dimitar Karaivanov, CEO of Kanbanize	Dimitar Karaivanov is the CEO of Kanbanize, a visual kanban system designed for creative and knowledge workers. In this interview, we discuss the product and its many uses and how it embodies the principles of Lean.
Image may be NSFW. Clik here to view. Chris Hefley, CEO LeanKit	Chris Hefley is the CEO of LeanKit, a company that provides Virtual Kanban software for software development teams and knowledge workers. Reah his interview and learn what led to the development of LeanKit and the role Lean and the Toyota Production System plays.
Image may be NSFW. Clik here to view. Dan Markovitz, Noted consultant and expert on Lean for Office	In this interview with Dan Markovitz, we learn why he believes that everything is connected to the customer through the office. Based on this belief, he feels that Lean for Office makes the most sense. Read and learn how he's implemented Lean for the Office.
Image may be NSFW. Clik here to view. Jason Yip, Consultant to software development organzations	Jason Yip is a noted thoughtleader in software engineering. As a consultant, he helps software engineering organizations get better. In this interview, we learn the state of software engineering and the role of Agile, Lean for Software and Kanban.
Image may be NSFW. Clik here to view. Matthew May, NYT Best Selling author, consultant, and expert on Toyota Production System	Matthew May is an author and influential voice in Lean and also Design Thinking. He worked close to a decade at University of Toyota to help codify the Toyota Production System. In this interview, he shares with us his thoughts on his experience and what we can learn from it.
Image may be NSFW. Clik here to view. Mark Graban, Best Selling Author and expert on Lean for Healthcare	Lean Healthcare expert Mark Graban stops by and share his thoughts with Shmula readers on how Lean can be applied to arguably the most important industry in the world, healthcare.
Image may be NSFW. Clik here to view. Art Smalley, 15 Year Toyota Veteran and authority on Toyota Production System	Art Smalley is one of the most honest and influential voices in Lean. He was the first American to work in Japan's Kamigo plant, the plant where Taiichi Ohno began the Toyota Production System. He shares with us his thoughts on the Lean Movement and where it is going wrong.
Image may be NSFW. Clik here to view. Jeff Gothelf, Author of Lean UX, applying Lean for User Experience	Lean is being applied to every facet of business. Jeff Gothelf shares with us his thoughts on applying Lean for user experience, or Lean UX.
Image may be NSFW. Clik here to view. Cecil Dijoux, Expert Consultant on applying Lean for IT	Cecil Dijoux shares with us his thoughts on applying Lean to IT, definitely a must-read if you are in the information technology space.
Image may be NSFW. Clik here to view. Brent Wahba, Author and Expert on applying Lean for Sales and Marketing	Brent Wahba is a fellow at the Lean Enterprise Institute and shares with us his thoughts on Lean for Sales and Marketing.

Interview with Tony Hsieh, CEO of Zappos

Image may be NSFW.
Clik here to view. tony-hsieh-shmula-pete-abilla

Tony Hsieh, CEO of Zappos

In December 2008, I was fortunate enough to interview Tony Hsieh, CEO of Zappos. In a 5 part series of interviews, we discuss the Zappos strategy and Tony answers questions on why he chooses to focus on the customer and how he sees that as strategic.

Interviews with Customer Experience Experts
Image may be NSFW. Clik here to view.Mark Roenigk, COO of Rackspace and Board Member at the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation	Rackspace Interview on Customer Experience: We interviewed Mark Roenigk on June 10, 2013. We discussed the Net Promoter Score and also topics around process improvement and how Rackspace places the customer first.
Image may be NSFW. Clik here to view. Shep Hyken, Author and expert on Customer Experience Strategy	Shep Hyken Customer Service Interview: We interviewed Shep Hyken on June 3, 2013 and discussed topics close to his heart - the customer. We focused our discussion on customer service and how focusing on the customer is strategic, not just tactical.
Image may be NSFW. Clik here to view. Annette Franz, Customer Experience Strategist and Survey Design Expert	Annette Franz Gleneicki on Customer Experience Strategy: Annette Gleneicki is a customer experience thought leader and Director at Confirmit, a voice of the customer platform. We discuss her thoughts on customer experience and the direction of the overall field.
Image may be NSFW. Clik here to view. Michel Falcon, Customer Experience Strategist and Author	Michel Falcon on Improving the Customer Experience: Michel Falcon is a former executive at 1800GOTJUNK and was the person who propelled 1800GOTJUNK to become a customer service powerhouse. In this interview, we discuss what he did and the lessons he learned.
Image may be NSFW. Clik here to view. Adam Ramshaw, Consultant to fortune 500 companies on Customer Experience	Adam Ramshaw, a customer experience consultant with Genroe, explains the relationship between continuous improvement and customer experience.

Leadership Interviews
Image may be NSFW. Clik here to view. Aza Raskin, Author, Startup Founder, and Son of Mac Inventor Jef Raskin	This is a multi-part Interview with Aza Raskin, on the Humane Interface. He discusses Agile Software Engineering. Then, in a later interview Aza Raskin discusses the "infinite scroll" approach to Google search results. In part 3, Aza Raskin shares his thoughts on Feature Bloat (aka, "Featuritis") and how to overcome it. In part 4, Aza Raskin describes the concept of Quasimodal Design and how to implement it in our software projects. Finally, Aza Raskin explains the role of Poka Yoke in the User Experience and why Lean should be applied to software engineering and knowledge work in general.
Image may be NSFW. Clik here to view. Mary Poppendieck, Author and codifier of Lean for Software Engineering	In this multi-part interview with Mary Poppendieck, the pre-eminent evangelist and teacher for Lean for Software, explains Lean Software Engineering. Then, Shmula.com readers were able to ask her questions of their own - read them here as Mary Poppendieck’s Answers to ALL Readers’ Questions, which includes questions such as Should Lean be Top-down or Bottom-up?. Then, another Interview with Mary Poppendieck. Then, Another interview with Mary Poppendieck where she explains Lean Software Engineering to a Lean Six Sigma audience. Plus, here's the Original Article to Ask Mary Poppendieck Anything. Finally, Mary considers the idea of "handoff" and how that's such a big problem in software projects - Mary Poppendieck on the Handoff and Waste
Image may be NSFW. Clik here to view. Gauri Nanda, Entrepreneur and inventor of Clocky	The inventor of Clocky, Gauri Nanda, shares with us her thoughts on innovation and the birth of Clocky
Image may be NSFW. Clik here to view. Gretchen Rubin, Author and evangelist of Happiness	In March 2010, I held a 2 part series of interview with Gretchen Rubin, the author of the Happiness Project. Her answers to reader's questions on a variety of topics centering on happiness will enlighten you. Gretchen Rubin, the author of The Happiness Project, shares with us here thoughts on how to be happy and what our part is in choosing to be happy. Gretchen Rubin, the author of The Happiness Project, answers questions on happiness. This is Part 1 of 2. And, In part 2 of 2, Gretchen Rubin, the author of the Happiness project answers more questions on how to be happy.
Image may be NSFW. Clik here to view. Spencer Rascoff, CEO of Zillow	Spencer Rascoff, the CEO of Zillow, shares with us his thoughts on this interview with Zillow back in June 2006.
Image may be NSFW. Clik here to view. Josh Coates, Entrepreneur and Startup Guy	Josh Coates, the founder of Mozy, shares with us jokes and the innovation behind Mozy.
Image may be NSFW. Clik here to view. Lloyd Hildebrand, Physician, Entrepreneur, and Enemy of Preventable Diseases that cause Blindness	Lloyd Hildebrand describes Diabetic Retinopathy and how his company, Inoveon, a Telemedicine Company, aims to eradicate diabetic retinopathy.
Image may be NSFW. Clik here to view. Ryan Kiskis, Gamer, Product Director, World of Warcraft	Ryan Kiskis of xFire, the developer of World of Warcraft, explains his thoughts on innovation.
Image may be NSFW. Clik here to view. Brian Hansen, Product Director, Kaboodle, the first pinterest	Kaboodle, was clearly the predecessor to Pinterest. We learn about Kaboodle and the innovation behind it.
Image may be NSFW. Clik here to view. Mark Jen, Product Manager, Guy who was fired from Google	Mark Jen, VP of Product Management at Plaxo, a Contact management company, the predecessor to Linkedin speaks to us about innovation and the business of business networking.
Image may be NSFW. Clik here to view. Samuel Adams, Community Director and expert on all things word of mouth	Bzzagent, the word of mouth marketing company, explains the power of the buzz.