I was talking recently with a trusted friend in the Lean community. He told me a story. It’s certainly believable, even if it’s second or third-hand to me. He had no reason to make up a story like this. A…
tl;dr: This blog post analyzes the unusual incentive clause in the contract of Iowa football’s offensive coordinator, Brian Ferentz, which mandates a minimum average of 25 points per game for his contract to be extended. It questions the efficacy and…
TL;DR: Dolphins gaming rewards illustrate a core Lean lesson: behavior follows system design. In organizations, quotas and incentives combined with fear lead to gaming the numbers–not real improvement. Leaders must fix systems, not blame people. Oh, how I enjoyed this…
If you don't care about sports or statistical process analysis, this isn't the post for you... but it was interesting for me to try to wrap my head around the data behind a headline ("Blazers player secures $500,000 bonus by not taking 3-pointer in final game of the season") that I'll write about here in this post.
In this post, I look at the impact (or lack thereof) of targets, rankings, and incentives, when it comes to safe driving or PCI (angioplasty) procedures in a hospital cath lab. Are we improving? How do we know? How do we improve?
Dr. W. Edwards Deming used to warn against replacing intrinsic motivation with extrinsic rewards and incentives. Brian Joiner (author of Fourth Generation Management), who worked with Deming, warned that setting targets and quotas can lead to three things: improving the…
