tl;dr: Bryce Harper’s so-called “bust” seasons weren’t busts at all–they were normal variation. When you plot his monthly OPS on a Process Behavior Chart, the data show consistent performance with a few true signals, not a decline. The problem isn’t…
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...
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…
Yesterday, my blog post featured a YouTube video that Everett Clinic was kind enough to share with the world, showing their Daily Huddle process (“Video of a Daily Huddle at Everett Clinic“). In that post, I alluded to there being…
To borrow a theme from Kevin Meyer, here’s some “fun with statistics,” or at least this kind of thing is fun to me, being a big proponent of Statistical Process Control (SPC) and the methods taught by Deming and Wheeler…
tl;dr: The “two consecutive reds” rule persists because reacting feels like leadership — but it generates wasted investigations, false success stories, and eroded trust. Process Behavior Charts tell you when variation actually means something changed. I’m writing about something that…
tl;dr summary: Early adoption of Process Behavior Charts would have changed how organizations approached Lean–reducing noise-driven reactions, improving root cause analysis, and helping leaders focus on true signals. Lean would have had a clearer path, and many transformations might have…
TODAY marks the centennial of one of the most significant innovations in quality management: the control chart. “A ‘special cause’ for celebration.” Brian Buck, on LinkedIn LOL. Shewhart’s Breakthrough: Understanding Variation In the early 1920s, Walter A. Shewhart, working at…
Scroll down for how to subscribe, transcript, and more My guest for Episode #491 of the Lean Blog Interviews Podcast is Sarah Tilkens, an experienced Lean Leader with a demonstrated history of working in construction and manufacturing. She is a…
