Healthcare – Creating Value for Patients Daily safety huddles are simple, inexpensive, and effective methods to raise and escalate patient safety risks. Start your safety huddles today with some tips from the Institute for Healthcare Improvement. I get asked all the…
First, an announcement… you can enter to win one of three eBook copies of Measures of Success: React Less, Lead Better, Improve More. Unlike the previous Amazon giveaway, this contest is open to everybody, regardless of your country. Thanks for…
Apparently, we’re at the time of year when companies send you the “we’re sorry, but we’re forced to raise prices” letter or email. Nobody is forced to raise prices. It’s always a choice. Yes, it’s a choice. Case: Home Alarm…
tl;dr: Year-to-year changes in Oscars TV ratings are usually just noise, not meaningful signals. Blaming or praising the host (or lack of one) based on small fluctuations is a mistake. Looking at longer-term trends with tools like Process Behavior Charts…
Thanks to Ron Pereira and the team at Gemba Academy for having me as a guest for the sixth time on their Gemba Academy Podcast (find past episodes via Google). Here is a direct MP3 link to the episode, click…
Thanks to Catalysis for asking me to write a guest blog post… yesterday, they published this: Being Open to Learning and Using Process Behavior Charts Means Unlearning Something Else My post starts: “Why don’t people adopt best practices? I get…
TL;DR: Headlines calling College Football Playoff ratings “all-time lows” are technically true but misleading. When viewed with Process Behavior Charts, the ratings show routine variation, not a meaningful decline. Overexplaining year-to-year changes wastes time and distracts leaders from improving the…
TL;DR: This recorded webinar shows how Process Behavior Charts help leaders distinguish real signals from routine noise in performance metrics–so they stop overreacting to every up-and-down and focus instead on improving the system in meaningful, sustainable ways. As I blogged…
I take no joy in the troubles of any automaker, be it Tesla, Nissan, GM or any others over time.
Of course, Nissan and GM have been in the news most recently, with the firing (and jailing) of Nissan and Renault CEO Carlos Ghosn. And now, GM has announced major layoffs, the cancelation of some passenger car programs, and the shutdown (and possible closure) of five plants in North America.
I was talking to a friend the other day and I predicted that we'd see news headlines about something like "GM to get Leaner." These headlines would be using the word "lean" to mean "get smaller" instead of referring to "Lean" (which I capitalize as a proper noun) as a synonym for the Toyota Production System.
I was disappointed to hear GM's CEO, Mary Barra, a long-time GM employee using the word "lean" in the context of the company getting smaller.
Here is a new article that I posted on LinkedIn... don't worry, it's not political, but it does look at recent voter turnout rates through a statistical lens. And I think it's a lens that's helpful for looking at metrics in our own organizations:
"How to Tell the Difference Between ‘Signal’ and ‘Noise’ in Voter Turnout Numbers or Your Organization’s Metrics"
Eric Ries and Lean Startup Co. have been really helpful friends in spreading the message about "Process Behavior Charts" in their community. They invited me to give a talk at last year's Lean Startup Week and Eric was kind enough to endorse my book Measures of Success (paperback coming soon - get notified or pre-order)...
Recently, they invited me to be a guest for their webcast series, where Marilyn Gorman asked me questions about my book and the Process Behavior Chart methodology. It was a challenge to talk about this visual method without slides and charts, so I did my best to create air charts with finger gestures :-)
You might remember the podcasts that I did with my friend Skip Steward, the Chief Improvement Officer at Baptist Memorial Health Care in Tennessee (links below).
Skip recently created some excellent videos that explain the basics of "Process Behavior Charts," a method that I explore in my book Measures of Success: React Less, Lead Better, Improve More.
See those videos below the podcast links.
