The new knowledge in managing variation was classified during WWII, declassified after the war, and shared worldwide. It is still a relatively well-kept secret. Test your knowledge? Can you handle the Truth?
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“All truth passes through three stages: first, it is ridiculed. Second, it is violently opposed. Third, it is accepted as self-evident.” — Arthur Schopenhauer
“One of the greatest pains to human nature is the pain of a new idea… Naturally, therefore, common men hate a new idea, and are disposed more or less to ill-treat the original man who brings it.” – Walter Bagehot
“The person who fights for a dying cause is admired, supported and honoured. The person who fights for a new cause struggling to be born is misunderstood, reviled and attacked. Nothing is more difficult than taking the lead in a new order of things.” — Dee Hock, Founder & CEO, Visa
Throughout history, people have been punished for saying something an institution or society could not allow to be true or could not even see.
Different centuries, different contexts, same human reflex.
The pattern continues in our organisations today
Galileo Galilei (astronomer & physicist)
His act: Demonstrated that the Earth orbits the sun, contradicting Church doctrine.
Outcome: Tried by the Inquisition (1633), forced to recant and lived the rest of his life under house arrest. The Church took over 300 years to formally admit he was right.
Ignaz Semmelweis (physician, early pioneer of antiseptic practice)
His act: Showed that handwashing with chlorinated water stopped doctors transmitting deadly infections from autopsies to maternity wards.
Outcome: Ridiculed, removed from his post, suffered a breakdown, committed to an asylum and died there from an infected wound. His insight was only accepted after his death.
General Billy Mitchell (U.S. Army aviation pioneer)
His act: Warned that air power would define future warfare and criticised military leaders for neglecting aviation readiness.
Outcome: Court-martialled for insubordination, suspended without pay and forced out. Decades later, WWII proved him correct and he was posthumously honoured.
Roger Boisjoly (NASA engineer)
His act: Warned that the Challenger O-rings would fail in cold weather and urged NASA to delay the launch.
Outcome: After the disaster proved his warning correct, he was shunned and sidelined within his company. Later honoured in ethics circles, but his career there never recovered.
Sinéad O’Connor (musician & activist)
Her act: Protested sexual abuse in the Catholic Church on live television in 1992.
Outcome: Ridiculed, boycotted and condemned for years. Later reinterpreted as someone who named a truth long before society recognised it.
Stanislav Petrov (Soviet lieutenant colonel & air-defence officer)
His act: In 1983, he judged a Soviet nuclear warning to be a false alarm and refused to escalate — preventing a likely nuclear exchange.
Outcome: Reassigned to a lower-level post, denied the commendation he was promised and quietly moved into early retirement. Only after the USSR collapsed was his decision publicly honoured.
The truth-teller becomes the problem long before the truth becomes accepted.
Quality Leadership 
The Discovery of the Prophet of Quality, by Clare Crawford-Mason