Process Behavior Charts help leaders distinguish real signals from routine noise in performance data. Instead of reacting to every up or down, these charts—rooted in the work of Shewhart and Deming—show when a system has truly changed and when variation is simply part of normal performance.
These posts explore Process Behavior Charts in practical, leadership-focused ways: avoiding overreaction to red metrics, improving decision-making, building trust in data, and shifting conversations from blame to system improvement. Examples span healthcare, manufacturing, sports, and executive dashboards—where misunderstanding variation often leads to wasted effort and worse outcomes.
Many of the ideas in this archive align with the themes of my book Measures of Success: reacting less to routine variation, leading better through better questions, and improving more by focusing on system change instead of noise.
This content originally appeared in a post about my Halloween metrics webinar, but I decided to carve it out (not like a pumpkin) into its own post.
A reader asked: "Should we be using financial statements in that way or is there a better approach given our knowledge about different types of variation? Or am I completely off track?"
I'll be presenting a free webinar on Wednesday, October 31st at 1 pm ET... as you might notice, that's Halloween day!
Here's the description from the KaiNexus website:
Metrics & Statistics Don't Have to be Scary
Why do we have to be skeptical or careful when we see a chart with just four data points? Does such limited data help prove that our consulting work or our Lean Sigma project has made a difference?
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).
Here's the latest cartoon collaboration with a skilled artist and medical assistant, Carrie Schurman (see past cartoons). You can find her on Twitter as @carrieschurman.
The idea for this cartoon came from Maggie Millard, the director of marketing at KaiNexus. Maggie has learned about Process Behavior Charts from me and some of the stories are incorporated into my book Measures of Success.
What does this "out of control chart" look like and why did it make me chuckle?
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:
I recently saw this headline:
Baseball on pace for lowest batting average since 1972
Just because it's the lowest average in 48 years... it doesn't mean that this year's MLB-wide batting average is low in a way that's statistically meaningful.
I presented a 30-minute webinar on Monday, August 27 at 1 pm EDT. This one was hosted by Lean Frontiers as part of their summer webinar series.
Here are a few items and thoughts related to "Process Behavior Charts" and my book Measures of Success.
I'll share some charts related to sales of my book about charts and management.
I'll also share an updated article of mine and two podcasts that had me on to talk about the book.
Hosted by Catalysis, I shared some key concepts from my new book Measures of Success (now available in the Apple Books store among other places).
This webinar was geared toward a healthcare audience that is also, likely, interested in or practicing elements of Lean Daily Management.
This was held Monday, August 20 at noon EDT.
Here is a recorded webinar...
I played host (along with KaiNexus) for this webinar that was held Tuesday, August 14 at 1 pm ET.
Here is a chart from a team in San Antonio, where I teach a class on Lean for quality and patient safety twice a year. This team was basically using the “A3” improvement methodology to look at a problem that really impacted patients. My understanding is that a contaminated blood culture bottle leads to false positive results that indicate that a patient has a bloodstream infection when they really don't.