Recording of My “Measures of Success” Webinar
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?"
Tag Process Behavior Charts
Process Behavior Charts, Variation, and Better Leadership Decisions
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.
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Is the Drop in MLB Attendance a Real Signal or Just Noise?
Here is my latest article that I published on LinkedIn:
Is the Reported Drop in Major League Baseball Attendance a "Signal" or "Noise" in the Data?
Attend With Me: Come Learn Statistical Process Control From Don Wheeler
For a long time, I've wanted to attend a "Statistical Process Control" (SPC) class taught by Donald J. Wheeler, Ph.D.
I'm finally doing this in September and I'd like to invite you to join me.
My Book “Measures of Success” and a Free Webinar Recording
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).
Is a Drop in Kaizen Submissions a Real Signal or Just Noise?
Last week, I wrote Part 1 of this piece about TQM and "Small Kaizen" at a Japanese Hospital pharmacy.
The hospital was happy that employees were participating in their "Small Kaizen" process, but there was a month in which they saw the number of submitted Kaizens drop, from about 138 to 58 or so.
As I write about in Measures of Success, two data points usually don't make a trend.
Stop Overreacting to Metrics: Lessons from Lean Startup Week
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.
Overreact Less, Improve More: Leadership Lessons from Statistics and Psychology
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.
Are Minor League Baseball Games Really Getting Slower? Signal vs Noise in the Data
Are minor league games taking longer? Well, yes and no, depending on the league.
My next book, Measures of Success, is about the use of this Process Behavior Chart methodology in the workplace, as applied to our performance measures.
This post explores some data, how asking for more data can be more helpful, and how to use charts to evaluate a metric over time.
Ratings for “The Oscars” Were Lower in 2018? Should We Ask Why or Look for Longer-Term Trends?
As I blogged about yesterday, things went well at the Oscars... or, at least, no errors were made in the announcements. But that thing that didn't go well was the TV ratings.
Two Data Points Are Not a Trend
The headlines I saw had a lot of two-data-point comparisons. Headlines sometimes gave the percentage decrease in viewers or how many million fewer viewers there were. Many talked about "record low" but if you're tracking a metric "record low" or "all-time high" doesn't mean there's a "special cause." That "record low" could still be noise in the system.
Every Metric Has Variation – What Can We Learn from NCAA Football Attendance?
Last week, I saw a headline about a drop in NCAA college football attendance.
I wasn't satisfied with the two data point comparisons or other written descriptions of the metrics. I wanted to see data. SHOW ME THE DATA, JERRY! (with apologies to "Jerry Maguire"). I wanted to see a chart. So, I found the data on to NCAA website and created "process behavior charts" that tell you much more about the data than text numbers ever could.
Two Data Points Don’t Make a Trend: Why Headlines Mislead Us
When looking at data, whether it's the number of homicides in San Antonio or some of our workplace metrics, it's tempting to overreact to a "headline" that says a measure went down in 2017 compared to 2016. But do two data points really help us understand what the real trend is? This blog post explores an approach we can use to make better decisions about our data.
How Champagne Corks Reveal Restaurant Dining Trends: A Simple Data Visualization Example
Last month, my wife and I had a chance for a week's vacation in Europe. As I've blogged about before, we enjoy doing some form of "gemba walk," if you will, at wineries and distilleries. At one restaurant, I was surprised to find a "chart" of sorts in the form of champagne and wine corks...
