I really wish I could, but unfortunately I read it all back-to-back, along with related material from Shewhart and authors writing about Deming's writing, and it all kind of blends together in my head.
I do plan on re-reading Out of the Crisis to begin with, though, so maybe there's some (good? bad?) subconscious reason I want to start with that.
Can you summarize at a high level, specifically, his philosophy against individual rankings/bonuses? If I, a hypothetical high achiever, knew that my average co-worker was to receive the same bonus as me, sure I may be more collaborative and work towards the overall success of the team, but I personally sure would be demotivated to work as hard as I may have otherwise.
First off, individual rankings often do not measure actual performance, but rather statistical noise. Awarding Alex with a bonus because Alex happened to be the luckiest in what was essentially a lottery (that's what the maximum of statistical noise is) tends to breed frustration, first in everyone else for not getting the bonus despite doing almost everything the same as Alex. But the next year, some people will start doing things like Alex did them, and they'll still not get the bonus because they didn't also have the luck of the draw. Alex will also get frustrated because Alex might have continued to do things exactly the same as before, except now ranked much worse!
When you're rewarding statistical noise, you're effectively holding a lottery. That's weird, but probably not so bad. When you tell your employees that it's based on performance, you're flinging your company into a cycle of despair and confusion -- or, at best, indifference.
But wait, there's more!
Let's pretend that you work for a company that is careful to ensure that performance is statistically significant before awarding any bonuses or ranking people. Companies don't do this, but we're free to imagine them to.
Even in this case, Kim's outperformance is often possible only because Kim's team propped them up and assisted them. Rewarding only Kim and not their team breeds discontent in their team. You might argue that "if Kim wants to continue outperforming, obviously it is Kim who should share the bonus with the team." Sure, but do you ever think that happens? What happens is that the team will start hiding information from Kim.
And then people start to game the system. They go for the easy sells to customers who are bad fits. They ship things that shouldn't be shipped. They cherry-pick metrics to support their performance. When you make a ranking or a bonus a goal, that's what you're telling people to aim for, not quality of work.
There are more arguments here like how bonuses are not as motivating as you think -- unless you pay people too little to begin with in the first place, but I think Deming's arguments end with the above.
I can see how having the team rewarded for "your" performance can suck. In a healthy team, "your" performance wouldn't be possible without your team anyway, so it's not so odd as it may sound. In an unhealthy team, the work of improvement maybe has to start somewhere else.
- individual rankings and bonuses,
- barriers between teams,
- fear as a motivator,
- empty goals and slogans without processes to support them, and
- perhaps worst of all, short-termism and lack of continuity.
There's much more in his books, which really did change (I want to say improved) my understanding of how good work happens.