Tag: Measures of Success

Here's a reprieve from posts about my new book Measures of Success: React Less, Lead Better, Improve More. Although I will mention that the book should be available very soon in the Apple iBooks store. And today's post is on themes from the book. Unfortunately, I've had two trips to the emergency room within the past year, due to stomach flu problems. Or, it was possible food poisoning. In cases like these, the doctors aren't really worried about the exact root cause, because the treatment is the same either way. They're treating symptoms. Last Wednesday morning, I woke up early and I was sick. Stomach issues. Fever. I noticed on my Fitbit that my heart rate was elevated above normal levels. I was working from home that day, so I stayed in bed, slept, and rested. I wasn't really able to eat anything and it was hard to get liquids down...

Today's episode (#313) of the podcast is a bit of a departure from the norm. Instead of interviewing a guest about their book or other work, I'm reading what's basically an audiobook-style excerpt of the first part of my new book Measures of Success: React Less, Lead Better, Improve More. I say "audiobook-style" because it's not professionally produced and my voice has been bad after being sick last week... but I thought this would be one way to share some of this material and promote the book. I won't be doing a full-blown audiobook because the book is so full of charts, I don't think it all translates well to the audiobook format. But, here I'm reading the foreword, the preface, the introduction, and part of Chapter 1.

I'm happy to announce that my latest book, Measures of Success: React Less, Lead Better, Improve More, is completed! That means I was able to release...

Today's post is some material that I wrote for my book Measures of Success but cut due to length. I've modified the material a bit to hopefully be fine as a standalone post. There's a somewhat humorous, if not scary, story from a book (This is Going to Hurt) written by a former "junior doctor" in the British National Health Services (NHS) -- the equivalent of a "resident" in the American medical education system.

My next book, Measures of Success: React Less, Lead Better, Improve More, is in the final editing stages. I previously had just a single page about the book on MarkGraban.com, but I've now created the early version of a more complete website for the book:

Here is the recording of the webinar I told you about recently, with themes from my book Measures of Success. What is "management by emoji?"

I'm still working on my book Measures of Success, as I've mentioned here a few times.  The partial "in-progress" book is available through LeanPub.com. Or, when it's done, it will also be available through the Amazon Kindle bookstore and I will probably also produce a paperback version. My goal is to have the book done by the Lean Healthcare Transformation Summit in mid-June (hope to see you there at the Summit and/or my workshop on these topics).  Here is a recorded webinar that I did for my friend Mike Stoecklein and his organization, the Institute for Excellence (IEX).

I'll be teaching my "Better Metrics" workshop (aka "Measures of Success," ala my book) twice in June: Cambridge Investments - Open for Public Registration (Fairfield, Iowa) -- June 5 Lean Healthcare Transformation Summit (Chicago) -- June 13 After facilitating the Red Bead Experiment in the workshop, one other way I've found to simulate variation is an online simulation that's available, of all places, on the BBC website: "Can chance make you a killer?"

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.

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.

Measures matter. The proper analysis of data and performance metrics allow us to separate good changes from bad, progress from stagnation. The methods in my book, Measures of Success, help us determine if our performance is getting better, getting worse, or essentially remains unchanged. Having the right set of balanced scorecard metrics is important. But the role of leaders is important, too. How do leaders interpret measures? How do they respond to changes in metrics? How do they know if a change is worth reacting to?