Search Results for two data points not a trend

Lean Daily Management Boards: Moving Beyond Red-Green Metrics to Process Behavior Charts

The other day, I saw a post on Twitter that included a few photos related to what's often called Lean Daily Management practices in a hospital.

The spirit of my post is not meant to come across as "they're doing it wrong" but more in the spirit of "they're doing a lot of great things, but it would be better if..."

If Lean Daily Management is supposed to be, at its core, about identifying opportunities for improvement, I'd hope they wouldn't be offended by my recommendations, but I also don't want to link to the Twitter post or call them out by name. I will pass along private feedback through a channel I have. But, I'm writing a post because what I see here is VERY common in different organizations (not just healthcare).

How Process Behavior Charts Explain Baseball Home Run Outliers

Swinging a baseball bat at dusk against a stadium background with a Lean Blog logo.

If you're not a baseball fan, I apologize for a second baseball-themed post this week. Baseball has a lot of historical time-series data to work with and analyze. If you're not interested in "Process Behavior Charts" or similar methods, I guess I will apologize for this post again too. Next, I'll be apologizing for apologizing.

But, I am at Dr. Wheeler's four-day workshop on "Understanding Statistical Process Control" as I blogged about on Monday.

It's great to learn from Dr. Wheeler in person and I'll be sharing reflections on the class in a later post (and I'm posting a few things on LinkedIn along the way).

In Chapter 1 of Understanding Variation, Dr. Wheeler points out how charts or graphs are far superior to tables or lists of numbers. He uses a baseball example:

Mark Graban on Measures of Success: Understanding Variation, Reacting Less, and Leading Better

Jamie Flinchbaugh and Mark Graban

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.

Is a Drop in Kaizen Submissions a Real Signal or Just Noise?

Last week, I wrote Part 1 of this piece about TQM and "Small Kaizen" at a Japanese Hospital pharmacy.

The hospital was happy that employees were participating in their "Small Kaizen" process, but there was a month in which they saw the number of submitted Kaizens drop, from about 138 to 58 or so.

As I write about in Measures of Success, two data points usually don't make a trend.

Stop Overreacting to Metrics: Lessons from Lean Startup Week

Thanks to Eric Ries and the organizers for Lean Startup Week for allowing me to share video of my 15-minute talk from last year's event.

One reason for sharing this today is to celebrate yesterday's initial release of the in-progress version of my book Measures of Success. If you buy the book now, you'll get a PDF of the first three chapters, or about 40% of the book's expected content.

Overreact Less, Improve More: Leadership Lessons from Statistics and Psychology

Happy and sad emoji faces on a fluctuating line graph.

Today, I’m giving a keynote talk at the Lean & Six Sigma World Conference being held in Las Vegas. I don’t normally attend or speak at “Lean Sigma” events, but I had an opportunity to give a new talk that touches on two of my favorite themes in recent years – the need to apply statistics and psychology to our “Lean Management” practices or Six Sigma or whatever.

Every Metric Has Variation – What Can We Learn from NCAA Football Attendance?

football attendance analysis chart

Last week, I saw a headline about a drop in NCAA college football attendance.

I wasn't satisfied with the two data point comparisons or other written descriptions of the metrics. I wanted to see data. SHOW ME THE DATA, JERRY! (with apologies to "Jerry Maguire"). I wanted to see a chart. So, I found the data on to NCAA website and created "process behavior charts" that tell you much more about the data than text numbers ever could.

Why Toyota’s Rotating Shifts Raise Questions About Safety, Health, and Respect for People

Prolonged worker resting at car assembly plant, with cars in progress and assembly workers in background.

There's much to admire about Toyota and even regular readers of this blog might throw the "fanboy" label at me. Toyota employees in San Antonio have a lot of positive things ("pros") to say online about working there. But, the overwhelming "con" is the rotating work schedules - being on days for two weeks then switching to nights for two weeks. Where do a priority on safety and "respect for people" enter into the discussion about which shift pattern is safest, most effective, and most fair?