From Teacher to The Deming Institute Leader: Jake Rodgers' Story

"Once you see it, you can't unsee it."

What starts as a teacher's search to reduce conflict can become a lifelong journey in leadership and transformation.

In this episode, Jake Rodgers shares how discovering Dr. Deming's philosophy changed the way he thinks about teaching, leadership, parenting, and work. From fifth-grade classrooms to leading The W. Edwards Deming Institute, Jake reflects on the lessons, challenges, and breakthroughs that shaped his path.

Along the way, he explores why Deming's ideas still matter, how leaders can create more joy in work, and why understanding systems helps us make better decisions for people and organizations alike.

A thoughtful conversation about learning, leadership, and what happens when you see the world through a different lens.

TRANSCRIPT

0:00:02.4 Andrew Stotz: My name is Andrew Stotz, and I'll be your host as we continue our journey into the teachings of Dr. W. Edwards Deming. Today, I'm here with featured guest Jake Rodgers. Jake, are you ready to explain your Deming journey?

0:00:18.0 Jake Rodgers: Absolutely. Yeah. I'm so glad to be here.

0:00:20.8 Andrew Stotz: See, I already made a mistake right from the beginning, Jake, so you don't have to worry at all. [laughter] Let me introduce you to the audience. Jake Rodgers is the executive director of The W. Edwards Deming Institute. He's an educator, leader, and consultant with more than 20 years of experience as a teacher, principal, superintendent, and leadership coach. Jake, really, this has been long overdue to get you on the podcast. I think, everybody wants to understand your Deming journey, so take it away.

0:00:53.6 Jake Rodgers: Sure. Thanks, Andrew. It's so good to be here. This is actually my first podcast and first podcast with the Institute. And like you mentioned, long overdue. So I'm excited to be on here with you, and hopefully it's the first of many.

0:01:10.1 Andrew Stotz: Agree.

0:01:11.1 Jake Rodgers: Yeah. Okay. So how did I encounter Dr. Deming's philosophy? I've told this story a couple times, actually. Once at a Deming in Education conference back in 2015. But I was a fifth grade teacher back in 2008, I think it was. And we had just started, we had redesigned our system for how we support kids, who needed additional intervention, math and reading. And we had all the pieces in place. But once we got things going, the whole psychology piece was tough. We struggled with direction in meetings. There was quite a bit of conflict, even among people that were very good friends. We just couldn't get much done in the times that we were trying to figure out what do we do when kids need extra support?

0:02:23.9 Jake Rodgers: So I reached out to our principal, who said, "Hey, if you can find something, we'll pay for it," which is rare in education, increasingly rare. And I came across David Langford. Someone had referenced him, so I didn't know much about what he did, but we needed help. So I just called his office and he returned my call, and I told him a little bit about what was going on, and he said, "Oh, well, I can help you with that and a whole lot more, too." And I wasn't really interested in the whole lot more. I just wanted to stop the arguments and the conflict.

0:03:11.7 Andrew Stotz: That sounds like the alcoholic going to an AA meeting. "Look, I don't need all of that. I just want to stop drinking."

0:03:18.3 Jake Rodgers: Yes. That's all. Yeah. So, gosh, it wasn't too long after that a small team went out to Montana, and went to one of David's four-day conferences. And it totally transformed the way I thought about teaching, learning, leadership. It was a very memorable trip, because of the conference that David ran, but also with the four of us, we stayed up until 1, 2 o'clock in the morning every single night just talking about what we heard that day and what the implications were for the work we were doing. The things that stood out to me the most were bringing joy and meaning back to learning, getting kids more involved in designing, redesigning the classroom system, their learning. One of the great things that David does, he has, along with in his seminar going through the System of Profound Knowledge, he has a lot of tools that he teaches you to actually do the work, right? And so we went back and we started trying stuff, messed up a lot. I called David a lot, got some what he calls quality therapy, and eventually got a couple other team members involved. So our entire fifth grade team started doing this work. And after, I don't know, probably after two or three years, we started to see some good results. And during that time, I had gone back to school to get my principal accreditation.

0:05:17.2 Jake Rodgers: And I remember people telling me, "Jake, you need to, right after you're done with this program, you need to get a job as a principal, because if you wait too long, people will think you're unhireable." But I couldn't stop doing the work with my team, because we were having fun, and I think the kids were having fun. We were seeing some results, and it was something I wanted to get better at. Around maybe a couple years after that first conference, well, during that time, we had David out, and he did a couple more seminars with our school and then with a couple other schools in the school district. And then I got connected with the Seattle Area Deming Study Group, which was co-facilitated by Dave Nave, who I'm sure some of our listeners know, and also Al Viswanathan, two great mentors. Darlene Suyematsu, who used to work at the Institute, was also a part of that. That was a fantastic learning experience. That's the first time I read The New Economics.

0:06:40.0 Jake Rodgers: And I think, I had a fun time learning about how this applies outside of education. And I think the folks there at the study group also enjoyed trying to think about how does this apply in a fifth grade classroom or from a school leadership perspective. And then, I ended up moving to a new district, got a job as a principal, thought, "This worked so well with kids, adults are just going to eat this up." And they didn't. We had some definite bumps along the road, got some harsh feedback my first year.

0:07:28.4 Andrew Stotz: And when you say adults, what... Describe those who it was that you're talking about. What type of adults?

0:07:35.4 Jake Rodgers: Yeah, it was the teachers, the staff, support staff. It was a hard first year, for sure. When you're a teacher, you always think, "Oh, I could do that job as a principal better than they're doing it." But once I stepped into that role, I just had tremendous respect for the pressure, managing and leading change with a lot, you know in the public education system, there's a lot of required inputs, and so managing those in a way that, and a lot of them are antithetical to Deming's teachings. And so trying to protect staff and kids from some of the things that he would say do harm. Performance evaluations were one of those things that were a requirement. We had school-level evaluations from the state on how you're doing, and you get a report card and you basically get graded. And then your superintendent...

0:08:55.6 Andrew Stotz: Ranked.

0:08:56.9 Jake Rodgers: Ranked, absolutely. Yep. And then your superintendent comes in and says, based on the last data point, you need to do this, you need to change. So trying to navigate that constant pressure was tough. And yeah, like I said, I ended up having a lot more respect for people in that role. I remember, the first day of school, a parent walked into the office who did not speak English. They were Spanish-speaking and they were extremely upset, crying. And I had to find somebody to interpret. And turns out somehow their kid had gotten lost at the end of the day and we didn't know where they were either. I mean, long story short, the student went to the wrong place. We found them, all was fine, right. But I remember in the middle of that walking, I had to walk out of my office to, I think, use the restroom or something, and I just looked in the mirror and thought, "What have I gotten myself into here?"

[laughter]

0:10:07.1 Andrew Stotz: It's like you're responsible for everything. Like the buck stops here.

0:10:11.4 Jake Rodgers: Yeah, exactly. But that, as kind of a side note, that actually ended up being a tremendous opportunity. We used some tools with a number of the Spanish-speaking families, learned that, and they were a significant part of our population, 20%, 25%, and had grown quite a bit quickly over the last couple years before I got there. And we had learned that they just didn't feel like a part of the community. And so the system hadn't adapted yet to that change in the community. And so it was a cool opportunity to showcase how the use of some of these tools that we had learned from David and that are common in the quality world, how it raised the voice for people who weren't feeling heard in the community, gave them a lot of agency and autonomy to create some programs that helped the rest of the community understand who they were, what they valued, some of their traditions. So that was kind of a first big success from a situation that was pretty difficult. It turned into a definite win. So anyway, we kind of kept working at things for a couple years. And then in my third year, some of the team members were starting to kind of pick up on the use of some of the tools. We were improving some pretty critical processes at the school. People joked a lot about how much I used flowcharts.

0:12:13.4 Jake Rodgers: That was a good sign that people were starting to approach it with humor as opposed to just avoiding it. And then I had that opportunity to present at the Deming in Education conference in 2015 and brought a couple staff members along. One of them who co-presented with me did a great job. And I think that might have been one of the first couple times I had met Kevin. And we stayed in touch over the years. And then later that year, I got a phone call, it was actually in the spring of 2016. My youngest daughter was four weeks old. And David called and said, "Hey, I just got this job as a superintendent down in Los Angeles for a network of charter schools. I'd like you to come down and work with me, and help train principals, and I think, it'll be a lot of fun." And I said, "Absolutely." And then I got off the phone and I thought, "I probably need to run this by my wife."

[laughter]

0:13:34.4 Jake Rodgers: And it was funny, she had just come home from... She was from Spokane originally, which is on the east side of Washington state, and had early in our marriage always wanted to be back there, and had come home and just said, "You know what? Seattle finally feels like home. This is where I want to be." Right? Like a week before that. And then I drop on her, "Hey, let's move to LA." [laughter] So anyway, we end up going down to LA, got to work with David, which was the chance of a lifetime. We had a lot of fun together. I learned a ton, made some mistakes, learned from those, did some cool stuff down there, worked with some fantastic people, got to know the charter world really well. It's, despite it being an alternative for traditional public education, it's not without its challenges. There's still quite a bit of compliance and still quite a few inputs. You have a little bit more autonomy than in a traditional public setting, but that was a good experience.

0:14:48.2 Jake Rodgers: During that time, I had another opportunity to present at a Deming conference, the conference in 2018 that was down in Manhattan Beach. I did, and a couple of my colleagues at Ingenium also presented there on some of the work that we were doing in education. And then kind of fast-forward a couple years. David had left the organization. I took over as the superintendent. And then, we actually ended up moving to Spokane during that time. And so I was flying down to LA a couple times a month, meeting with our central office staff and visiting schools. And we had schools in Compton, and up in the San Fernando Valley. And with the distance and my kids being the ages that they were, and kind of assessing the needs of the charter system or our charter schools, it felt like they need somebody who could be down there more often. It was having an impact on my family. And so we kind of took a leap of faith, and I finished out the year in 2023, and then I started doing some consulting work. So had a large contract with the state.

0:16:17.1 Jake Rodgers: I did some work with a private school here in Spokane, and yeah did that for a couple years. And then it was actually my birthday in 2024 in December, Kevin reached out and proposed the idea to see, if I was interested in being the next executive director. And again, like when I got the call from David, I was just ecstatic and said, "Yeah, absolutely, I'd love to explore."

0:16:51.6 Andrew Stotz: Did you have any hint that that's what he was thinking, or was that out of the blue?

0:16:56.2 Jake Rodgers: No. I had no idea. Yeah, I think occasionally Kevin and I would text, we would stay in touch, maybe by email, but I hadn't talked to him in a little while. And so I thought maybe he wanted to catch up. So, very pleasantly surprised that that was the direction the call went. And I was wrapping up a consulting contract with a school district here just outside of Spokane. And so kind of had a slow start with the Institute around March, and then started full-time in May. And so I've been here for just a little over a year and learned some things, like how amazing of a job Kevin's done and Darlene had done and the staff to steward the Institute to this point. Dissimilar to a lot of other organizations I've joined, a lot of processes were documented, people really knew what they were doing. So for me, it was really just about spending the first year understanding what's going on with operations, how does the Institute work, and learning to trust our amazing team that they know how to get the work done and keep things moving. And so now...

0:18:32.4 Andrew Stotz: I'm curious before we go on to that...

0:18:34.1 Jake Rodgers: Yeah.

0:18:36.1 Andrew Stotz: You got a chance to really understand the history and you see what's in place now. How do you see the history of The Deming Institute? Did it go through phases or did it shift in its purpose? What are your observations about the history of the Institute?

0:19:01.1 Jake Rodgers: Yeah, good question. I think, well, I know that, there have been some iterations on the aim of the Institute. I know, the board has shifted over time. I'm very grateful for the board that we have now. I think, all of them are very passionate about Dr. Deming's work in the sense that, I think they're all progressive in the sense that they want to figure out how can we make sure that Dr. Deming's legacy continues far into the future. They're very supportive, willing to figure out and try new things. And several of them are, I would say, our mentors, folks I connect with frequently. One of the ones that I talk to most often is Kelly Allan. He's been a tremendous mentor for me. Very thankful for the time that he gives. All of our board members are very, very generous with their time and donations and so very, very appreciative of the leadership that we have in place. And then I also want to mention Kevin's, while he stepped away from the role of executive director, he is very much involved, especially on a strategy level. And there's no way I would have made it this far without his guidance. He just has so much institutional knowledge, obviously, very learned in terms of Dr. Deming's, his grandfather's teachings, and still very much involved in directionally where we're headed and a great thought partner.

0:21:07.2 Andrew Stotz: And when you arrived and you've now understood where the organization, where the Institute's been, what would you say has been the objective of the organization, of the Institute? And if that's changed over time. And then I think, obviously, we also want to hear, and maybe we'll do it in another podcast, maybe we'll do it in this one. But the idea of kind of where is it going?

0:21:36.9 Jake Rodgers: Yeah. I think there's a tension in that maybe has... It's hard for me to say because I've only been here for a year, but I definitely know there's a tension to navigate of how do we honor Dr. Deming's legacy and stay true to that, but also how do we connect it and make it relevant and meaningful to people in a new age? Right? I would argue Dr. Deming's philosophy is probably even more relevant now. I wasn't alive when he first started teaching, but it feels very relevant to me at this point. And so I think initially the Institute did a great job trying to figure out how do we preserve Dr. Deming's legacy. We have a tremendous number of his articles, videos, content from Dr. Deming, his papers. We have a lot of contributions from other folks that knew him and that were part of the community at that time.

0:23:02.1 Jake Rodgers: And I think with the development of DemingNEXT, our online learning management program or online learning program, it's starting to create new opportunities. I think the biggest opportunity right now, and maybe some of the shift or next direction, maybe is a better word, is how do we get that out to more people? And where are people? And that's where we need to be, trying to identify and understand what are the common pain points that folks are feeling, I think is one of the things we're thinking about. And then kind of taking the existing programs and assets that we have and translating them, if you will, to those kind of some of the modern expression of those pain points. And I say modern because I think a lot of the pain points now are probably similar to what they've always been.

0:24:21.3 Andrew Stotz: Pain always hurts in almost the same way. It's just unique ways of arriving at it.

0:24:27.0 Jake Rodgers: Yeah, we're finding newer and faster ways to experience pain.

[laughter]

0:24:34.1 Andrew Stotz: And I guess, one of the things in obviously in the world of business, we're always talking about target market, who's our ideal client, who are we trying to reach? And then later we talk about market size. Is this a big market, a small market? Who are we trying to reach, do you think, from your perspective, or who has the Institute been trying to reach? Who do you think we should be reaching?

0:25:00.6 Jake Rodgers: Yeah, I think there's a couple groups. There's a group of folks that know who Dr. Deming was, know his teachings, and how do we support them with continued learning and maybe even support in implementing his philosophy in their organization or their system. I think there's another group that lives in the quality world that maybe doesn't know Dr. Deming as well and maybe has heard of him. And so then how do we help them understand how his philosophy can amplify some of the work that they're already doing? And then the third group, I would say, is people who, probably younger generations, who are or are not in traditional quality fields or in some of the industries that have typically been most associated with Dr. Deming. And how do we help them understand that this is a better way?

0:26:23.9 Andrew Stotz: And that group seems like it's huge.

0:26:28.5 Jake Rodgers: It's the whole world.

0:26:29.7 Andrew Stotz: Exactly. And I think they're searching, plenty of them are searching for help.

0:26:39.3 Jake Rodgers: Yeah.

0:26:40.5 Andrew Stotz: And that's one of the things that's unique about that group. Maybe the quality people are searching for help, but maybe they feel like, "I got it pretty much covered." The people who know Deming are searching, as you've mentioned, support with learning, support with implementation and stuff. But for the people that have never heard of Deming, is that a market for us? Is there a message that The Deming Institute should be or is or has been getting out? Maybe you can explain a little bit about what are your thoughts on connecting with those people?

0:27:17.1 Jake Rodgers: Yeah, I mean, that's actually part of our forward-looking strategy is there's some learning that needs to be done there. I think there's some challenges with even the folks that know about Dr. Deming. Obviously, the challenge with the latter group is they don't know anything about Dr. Deming, and not only do we need to reach them, but we need to do it in a way that makes sense to them. We need to talk in their language. But with the folks that maybe are familiar with Dr. Deming or in the quality world or in industries that have been more associated with Dr. Deming's teachings in the past is, what is this and how can it help me? I think there's a lot of mis... I've learned there's a lot of misconceptions about Dr. Deming. It's, you know, I mean, you've been studying it. Before the call, you said you met Dr. Deming when you were 24 years old. I mean, I've been learning about his philosophy for 20 years and I can see down, it goes deeper.

[laughter]

0:28:53.6 Andrew Stotz: I just feel so... And sometimes I feel kind of like, oh my God, like I'm rereading New Economics and thinking, "I didn't understand this when I read it."

0:29:04.1 Jake Rodgers: Yeah. Yeah, and it's so cool too. I love the humility of the people in the Deming community, talking with board members, former board members, people that have been at this even longer than you and me, and they still consider themselves learners. But there's got to be a willingness to start and to dig in a little bit.

0:29:34.5 Andrew Stotz: And what has been your perspective of the... There's a lot of different angles that Dr. Deming's message comes at you at. One angle can be just understanding variation opens up a whole new way of the way you think about, let's say, compensation.

0:29:53.1 Jake Rodgers: Right.

0:29:53.7 Andrew Stotz: Or understanding systems thinking and thinking, "Oh, now I understand why this is all messed up." Then understanding intrinsic motivation. There's all these different things, but what do you think is where the biggest need is or the biggest connection that The Deming Institute can make to people with the problems that they're facing?

0:30:25.9 Jake Rodgers: Gosh, I don't know where to start. Let me say this. My... The people in my circle, my friends, family, when they ask what I do, actually, my wife often complains.

0:30:55.3 Andrew Stotz: When my wife asks what I do. [laughter]

0:30:57.4 Jake Rodgers: Yeah. Well, she'll say, "So-and-so asked me, 'What does Jake do?'" And she kind of tries to explain it and she's like, "I'm not really always sure how to help them understand what it is that you do." And so one of the things I try to do is connect with folks on things that are right in front of them. At this stage in my life, a lot of the people that I spend time with have kids in elementary, middle school, high school. And so if it comes up, those are the places I go for examples because that makes sense to them, right? A family is a system, right? There's variation in the way that your kids act. How you respond to that and how you interpret that data will either cause harm or help move things forward.

0:32:03.0 Andrew Stotz: That's a great way of doing it, because everybody understands that. Because...

0:32:08.6 Jake Rodgers: Yeah.

0:32:10.0 Andrew Stotz: And I have sometimes said, "Do you incentivize one against the other?" You don't do that in a healthy family. We generally are saying, "How do we all work together as a unit?"

0:32:25.6 Jake Rodgers: Absolutely. Yeah. And you don't have to use systems, process type language. You just figure out how do you translate that into something that a mom or a dad cares about. And if we're, I think, I might have mentioned, we're doing some, we're doing a, we have a partnership with a school district here just outside of Spokane. We're doing some direct support there and that's about talking about classrooms and how kids feel and what happens, how do staff feel when you make a decision this way versus that way? How do we use that Deming's lens of the System of Profound Knowledge and those four elements to run decisions through before we make them? How do we look at data a little bit differently, understanding that we haven't seen movement in student learning for a certain period of time? So let's talk about how we might look at the data differently, put it in a control chart to see if we can see what the system's actually capable of before making a move, or maybe it's okay, actually, and we should focus on something else. So I think that, just kind of going back to your question, I think that translation piece is really important.

0:33:55.1 Jake Rodgers: And I've been fortunate to, one of the things that I really enjoy about this job is I get to talk to different people all the time. If you ask my kids what I did, they'd probably just say he talks to people on Zoom all day. But I love that, because people are in different industries from IT, tech, manufacturing, education, healthcare, you name it. And so each one of those conversations I'm thankful for because I get to learn a little bit more about them, their industry, and how they're thinking about Dr. Deming's work and how it applies. And I've noticed a number of the people my age and even younger that are expressing a real dissatisfaction with the amount of joy that they have in work. A lot of pressure and move fast, a lack of systemic thinking, lots of incentives, goals, goal-driven management, and not the type of leadership that we would want to see if Dr. Deming were a part of their, his teachings were a part of that organization. So we're still kind of trying to work through how do we translate his teachings for the next generation. And that's part of our strategy, which will also include more and different types of content on social media. We're looking at running some PDSAs on our website to learn from that. Fast, low risk, low cost.

0:35:50.1 Andrew Stotz: Yeah. I was thinking that a good way to wrap this up, because I think it's been a good discussion on your Deming journey, which you've now described really well. And your Deming journey, your personal Deming journey, ends as the executive director of the Deming Institute. And the next phase of your shared journey with the members of the community is exciting. And I think that's where we want to spend some time in the next episode talking about that. But I think what I would just love to hear, maybe in your wrapping up, anything else you want to share, feel free. But I was just thinking, what would you describe as your core takeaways from your Deming journey, the teachings of Dr. Deming? What is it that resonates most with you?

0:36:58.0 Jake Rodgers: I've felt this and I've heard it from a number of people I've spoken with in the Deming community is once you see it, you can't unsee it. Like you're forever changed. So I'm thankful for that. It's definitely reduced my stress and anxiety as I've encountered different leadership roles. I've become less reactionary. I really see it all the time raising my girls. Not a perfect parent by any means, but I do stop a lot and think before I make a decision, or even reflecting on a bad one that I made, running it through those four elements of SOPK. Without it, I don't know that I would come up with the insights and the next directions as quickly and as thoughtfully. And one of the other big things is oftentimes when people first encounter Dr. Deming's teachings, or at least in my experiences, it maybe feels a little, I don't know, if mechanical is the right word, but very process and system oriented.

0:38:31.4 Jake Rodgers: And one of the things that I've learned is how humane Dr. Deming's teachings were. He cared so much about people. And that definitely influences me. And I think initially that's what stuck out to me the very first time I heard about it from David is realizing the cost of kids' motivation and their enjoyment in school. I mean, it's somewhere they have to spend 12 plus years, if they go to college, doing. And the other thing that I found interesting is that learning is intrinsically motivating. If it weren't, I'm not sure that we would have made it as far as we have as a species, right?

0:39:24.3 Andrew Stotz: All those books wouldn't be there.

0:39:26.8 Jake Rodgers: Right. So what are we doing to education that makes it so kids don't want to go to school? Right. And that thinking just hit me hard, and that I was responsible, I was playing a part in that. And so I went back on a mission. I got to get the kids more involved, they got to have more fun while we're learning. And that's carried over into working with adults, now that I have two girls, working with them, raising them. Yeah. So I often ask people, which part of the System of Profound Knowledge did you connect with most at first? And some people are appreciation for a system, real big systems thinkers, some variation, less theory of knowledge at first. But a lot of people say, and especially that I found in education, a lot of people say psychology, because of how we lead and the decisions we make and the information we use and how we view it has a tremendous impact on how someone feels about their work, and then they go home and carry that with them, right.

0:40:47.5 Jake Rodgers: I love our aim "to enrich society through the Deming philosophy." It's more than just helping a business generate more revenue or improve quality. It's those things plus, if people are having fun at work and making a difference, they go home happier parents, happier spouses, partners, friends, family members. It has a, the ripples go far.

0:41:17.2 Andrew Stotz: That's maybe I'll add a couple little things and then we'll wrap up. Let's go back to you talked about the Hispanic lady who was crying that she had lost her child...

0:41:31.3 Jake Rodgers: Yeah.

0:41:31.9 Andrew Stotz: And wasn't sure. And that started to reveal the Deming by using the Deming philosophy and all that, you started to give voice to people and maybe it's voice to the voiceless. And I think, I'll tie that into my kind of big takeaway. I want to go back in time to when I was 24. I was an ambitious young guy, but also was I really was wanted to do good. And I got thrown into a factory as a supervisor and you're just trapped in a system. You only have so much resources. People are exhausted. People have been asked to they've been asked to produce more than the system can produce with less and less tools to do it.

0:42:24.9 Jake Rodgers: Yeah.

0:42:25.1 Andrew Stotz: And when I went to the Deming seminar, the first one in 1989 or 1990, maybe 1990, the first thing I did was I he gave voice to the voiceless because he and it was through theory of understanding variation and that the, you can't expect a different result out of the system unless you change the system.

0:42:54.1 Jake Rodgers: Yeah, absolutely.

0:42:55.3 Andrew Stotz: And that was such a revelation. And I think that's that really brought voice to factory workers and a lot of people that he admired and respected. And so when you talked about being humane, when I was working on my book about Deming and about the 14 Points, Transform Your Business, the guy that was working with me never heard of Deming before and he was helping me edit and structure. And after he finished the whole thing, he says, "I finally figured out Dr. Deming is a humanist." Like, he cares about humans is almost exactly what you just said. And so it just that's kind of what I would connect with with what you said.

0:43:41.9 Jake Rodgers: Yeah, it's true.

0:43:44.6 Andrew Stotz: Well, I think we got, we got a lot more things to talk about in the next episode to hear more about the future of the Institute, what's your assessment of where things are at, what are the resources that you see, where you see things are going. But I think we're going to leave that for our next episode.

0:44:01.2 Jake Rodgers: Yeah, I'm super, yeah, super excited for the next conversation, Andrew. Yeah, thank you so much.

0:44:06.1 Andrew Stotz: Yep. And normally, I end this by saying on behalf of everyone at The Deming Institute, but since you are the leader of The Deming Institute, I'm going to say on behalf of the Deming community, I want to thank you again for this discussion. And for listeners out there, remember to go to deming.org and jump into DemingNEXT, as Jake has mentioned, to continue your journey. This is your host, Andrew Stotz, and I'll leave you with one of my favorite quotes from Dr. Deming, and I think it's pretty much a favorite probably of Jake: "People are entitled to joy in work."

0:44:41.2 Jake Rodgers: Amen.