TL;DR: Headlines and two-point comparisons can’t prove a “sick out.” This post shows how Process Behavior Charts (PBCs) help distinguish real signals from normal variation–and why data alone can’t confirm intent or blame. As a frequent flyer on American Airlines…
Some of the best lessons I have ever learned for my career are from Donald Wheeler’s brilliant book Understanding Variation: The Key to Managing Chaos. One idea is that data without context is meaningless. The other is the application of…
TL;DR: The NHS backlog gets narrated one month at a time, and millions in bonus money ride on the moves. A Process Behavior Chart shows most movement is noise — and the trusts that stay on top are running structurally…
Headlines say Bourbon is in crisis: Yeah, this looks bad. Look at that decline! This chart supports headlines like: And it’s not just Bourbon, it’s wine and alcohol in general. There were plenty more like this. These headlines are written…
This edition of Ryan McCormack’s Operational Excellence Mixtape focuses on disciplined thinking, ethical use of data, and people-centered improvement in an AI-enabled world. From reminders that data have no meaning without context and the risks of p-hacking, to human-centered approaches…
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…
Thanks, as always, to Ryan McCormack for this. He always shares so much good reading, listening, and viewing here! Subscribe to get these directly from Ryan via email. News, articles, books, podcasts, and videos about how to make the workplace…
Scroll down for how to subscribe, transcript, and more My guest for Episode #501 of the Lean Blog Interviews Podcast is Marcia Daszko, a speaker, workshop facilitator, and consultant. For more than 25 years, she has passionately been speaking, consulting,…
tl;dr: Bowling charts encourage red-green reactions that hide real trends. Process Behavior Charts help leaders distinguish signal from noise and manage systems more effectively. Here is a LinkedIn Live event I did on Thursday at 11 am ET, with my…
My guest for Episode #462 of the Lean Blog Interviews Podcast is Professor John Grout, the former dean of the Campbell School of Business at Berry College in Rome, Georgia. He was recently a guest on “My Favorite Mistake” — Episode 186, so I…
Scroll down for how to subscribe, transcript, and more My guest for Episode #441 of the Lean Blog Interviews Podcast is John Dues, an accomplished education systems leader and improvement science scholar-practitioner with more than two decades of experience in…
The Taguchi Loss Function says that variation from target has a cost — and that cost grows non-linearly as you drift further from center. It’s a manufacturing concept. But Steph Curry’s shooting data illustrates it better than most textbook examples.…