Science Quote by W. Edwards Deming

A lot is smuggled into that plain, almost utopian “we.” Deming isn’t talking about private self-improvement or feel-good optimism; he’s issuing a systems-level dare. “We are here” reads like a statement of purpose, but it’s also an indictment: if you’re merely maintaining what already exists, you’ve missed the job. Coming from a statistician-turned-management prophet who helped rewire postwar Japanese industry and later scolded American executives for short-term thinking, the line is less mantra than marching order.

The phrase “make another world” is doing two things at once. First, it reframes work from a transaction (labor for wages, output for profit) into an act of design. Deming’s core argument was that outcomes are mostly produced by systems, not individual heroics. So “another world” implies new processes, new incentives, new definitions of quality, and the courage to stop blaming workers for results that management designed into the system. Second, it quietly elevates ethics: quality isn’t only efficiency; it’s respect for people, reduced waste, fewer errors passed downstream as someone else’s problem.

The intent, then, is provocatively anti-complacent. Deming is insisting that organizations are not neutral. Every factory floor, hospital ward, classroom, and agency is already making a world through what it measures, rewards, and tolerates. His subtext: if you don’t deliberately build a better one, you’re still building one - just by accident, and usually in service of the wrong goals.