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…
I wanted to let you know about an upcoming web radio show (tomorrow) and webinar (next week) that I’ll be participating in. Results-Only Radio: ROWE, Lean, and Six Sigma Gemba Academy Webinar on Managing with SPC
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…
Are We 84.7% Certain We’re in the 90th Percentile? Of course, hospitals should focus on patient satisfaction. That’s important but is often a vague and uncertain thing to measure. But, as Dr. Deming said: “The most important figures that one…
One of the books that’s had the biggest impact on my work is Donald Wheeler’s Understanding Variation: The Key to Managing Chaos. It’s the best guide for applying simple and powerful “statistical process control” (or SPC) practices to management data…
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…
As I’ve been re-reading Dr. Deming’s Out of the Crisis, stuff like this jumps out at me more and more. I saw similar signs at Heathrow Airport last month bragging about the airport exceeding targets for customer service. This is,…
Note: Welcome LEI visitors… you can check out my main blog page at www.leanblog.org, as I hope you’ll come back. Here are some other recent posts: Where Did I Start With Lean? One Purple Audacious Goal Caution! Warning Signs in…
Baylor Rewards Freshmen Who Retake SAT – NYTimes.com Baylor Newspaper Article Show me a ranking system and I’ll show you a way to “game the system” to manipulate the apparent results. You see this with sales quotas, annual bonus plans,…
TL;DR: When leaders impose arbitrary targets without improving the underlying system, people will find ways to hit the number without helping the patient. The problem isn’t the people — it’s the design. I’m here in the UK for work, and…
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…
Freedom from Command & Control: Rethinking Management for Lean Service Here is a fascinating post from John Seddon at his website www.lean-service.com (link is dead) about ambulances “making their numbers”: The stupidity of measuring the eight-minute response time has been…