At our facilities, we are surrounded by windows. A couple of years ago it was decided by the owner of the company that we should have all of our window blinds set to the same spot (he had come back from a visit to our New York office and was distracted by the variability of the window blinds across the street).

I got to be the messenger to the staff. We explained to them that our organization is focused on reducing variability in ALL aspects of the organization. This includes window blinds. Plus it looks nicer. This announcement was greeted with eye-rolls and snickers as you would expect. Someone even brought in a yard stick to measure the blind height!

But a few weeks later, people started reporting that they were doing the same thing at their homes because they could not stand the “messy” look of having their blinds set to different heights.

This is one of those unknowable areas Dr. Deming talks about — I cannot provide a number that says this has given us X dollars on the bottomline. But when you here people talk about a mindset change that is going on in their personal lives as well — that is priceless.

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