TL;DR: Words can exaggerate short-term changes and invite speculation. Charts–especially run charts–make variation, trends, and context visible, helping leaders avoid overreacting to noise and make better decisions based on how a system is actually performing. I recently saw this article…
oday's episode is the second time that friend and podcast guest Jamie Flinchbaugh has turned the tables by playing host to interview me about my new book, Measures of Success: React Less, Lead Better, Improve More, which has recently been the #1 best selling book in Amazon's Total Quality Management category.
Jamie is very knowledgeable on these topics, so he was a great person to interview me and to have more of a conversation about choosing the right metrics and then managing them the right way. I hope you enjoy the conversation and future podcasts will return to the usual format where I interview guests and try to let them do most of the talking.
I recently got to meet Prof. Donald J. Wheeler when he gave a keynote talk at the Society for Health Systems Conference. Check out his book Understanding Variation and learn more about him in this post.
My favorite book, as I've written about before, is not a "Lean book" -- it's Understanding Variation: The Key to Managing Chaos by Donald J. Wheeler, PhD. It might look like a book about statistics...
OK, so it’s not the kind of scientific research that involves lab coats and microscopes, but I’m doing some research that I’d like your help with. I’m looking to do some research and some interviews for writing projects related to…
tl;dr: Red-green charts push leaders to react to every up and down, turning normal variation into false drama. Process Behavior Charts provide the context needed to see signal vs. noise–so leaders improve the system instead of chasing each data point.…
TL;DR: Understanding Variation by Donald J. Wheeler is the most influential book in my Lean journey. It taught me how to distinguish signal from noise in data, avoid overreacting to normal variation, and focus leaders on improving systems instead of…
Two questions from a few Toyota mentors — and the Deming idea behind them. You can usually feel it before you can name it. The improvement meeting that used to feel alive is now… polite. People show up. They nod…
Mike Stoecklein recalls a story secondhand. It was, he thinks, at one of the last four-day seminars W. Edwards Deming ever gave. Deming was frail by then. Someone later told Mike that when the seminar got to the Red Bead…
Tl;DR: Leaders unintentionally create fear by overreacting to variation, waste, and mistakes. That fear quietly kills improvement. This post connects the threads across my four books to show why leadership reaction — not tools — shapes the system. You review…
TL;DR: “Lean is for speed, Six Sigma is for quality” is a false trade-off. Lean improves flow by removing obstacles like waiting and rework–and when work flows better, quality improves too. High-performing teams don’t choose between speed and execution; they…
One of the most overlooked–and most powerful–principles in Lean management is also the very first principle of the Toyota Way: “Base your management decisions on a long-term philosophy, even at the expense of short-term financial goals.” This principle is foundational.…
