Our guest today for Episode 347 is Brad Parsons, the CEO of NEA Baptist, in Jonesboro, Arkansas. NEA Baptist is a 228-bed hospital and 140-provider medical group serving northeast Arkansas — part of Baptist Memorial Health Care Corporation. Brad is…
Each time I teach my “Measures of Success” workshop for Catalysis at one of their events, they give me feedback scores from the attendees. I try to practice what I preach — around reflection, the voice of the customer, continuous…
TL;DR: Home runs in MLB haven’t just “gone up”–the data shows a real system shift, not random year-to-year variation. Process Behavior Charts help separate signal from noise, revealing when it’s worth investigating what truly changed instead of overreacting to single-season…
TL;DR: Red-amber-green (RAG) dashboards mislead leaders by turning random variation into “red” crises that trigger overreaction and explanation-seeking. The BMJ shows that most performance data reflects normal system behavior, not meaningful change. Process Behavior Charts (control charts) help leaders distinguish…
TL;DR: Numbers don’t make decisions–people do. Metrics that look “good” or “bad” can be dangerously misleading when leaders ignore context, system limits, and natural variation. The Chernobyl disaster shows what happens when incomplete data, fear of speaking up, and rigid…
Jamie Flinchbaugh and I got a great response to the first episode of our new “Lean Whiskey” podcast. We’ve had a great time with this, and I’m happy that anybody is willing to listen :-) We’ve done our second episode,…
tl;dr: Two data points aren’t a trend. NCAA Final Four TV ratings swing up and down every year, but Process Behavior Charts show this variation is predictable noise–not something to explain or overreact to. Metrics only become meaningful when viewed…
I’m going to think out loud here about book pricing for the paperback version of Measures of Success: React Less, Lead Better, Improve More — in the name of transparency and getting input, I’ll share some thoughts below. As for timing, the…
TL;DR:Process behavior charts help leaders compare hospitals (or any organizations) without overreacting to rankings or small differences. By separating signal from noise, they show when performance differences are meaningful — and when they are simply the predictable result of a…
I first met Davis Balestracci at a conference a few years back, where I heard him give a very spirited and insightful presentation. That's why I'm happy to have him as my guest for Episode #323 of the podcast.
We'll talk about a range of topics, including some of the key lessons that you'll find in his book (as a much deeper dive than we can get into here) Data Sanity: A Quantum Leap to Unprecedented Results (2nd edition). Davis has been a long-time columnist for Quality Digest, and you'll hear his thoughts on Process Behavior Charts, W. Edwards Deming, Lean Six Sigma, and more.
Here's the latest cartoon collaboration with a skilled artist and medical assistant, Carrie Schurman (see past cartoons). You can find her on Twitter as @carrieschurman.
The idea for this cartoon came from Maggie Millard, the director of marketing at KaiNexus. Maggie has learned about Process Behavior Charts from me and some of the stories are incorporated into my book Measures of Success.
What does this "out of control chart" look like and why did it make me chuckle?
Last week, I wrote about the influence of Total Quality Management (TQM) on Toyota -- in the past and the present, in Japan and beyond. Today, to follow up on that, I'm going to share some excerpts from some material that was shared by a Toyota leader who presented at a hospital I visited earlier this year as part of the Kaizen Institute-organized Japan trip.
