Tag: Red Bead
A Free Red Bead Game Simulator: Try Dr. Deming’s Experiment Online
A hospital VP I worked with once told her board the number of infections had dropped from 4 to 3. She got a small...
Red Bead Game Reflections: Leadership Lessons from Atlanta to Australia
TL;DR: The Red Bead Game shows--everywhere in the world--that blaming people for random variation is ineffective. Only system change drives improvement.
So far in 2025,...
From Noise to Knowledge: Embracing Data-Driven Leadership – Christopher R. Chapman
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My guest for Episode #525 of the Lean Blog Interviews Podcast is Christopher R. Chapman. He's...
Join Me at HSPI 2025: Red Beads, Lean Leadership, and Smarter...
I'm thrilled to announce that I'll be presenting a 90-minute "intensive" session at the 2025 Health Systems Process Improvement (HSPI) conference, organized by the...
Lessons in Lean, Culture, and Metrics from My First Trip to...
tl;dr: I recently returned from my first visit to Brazil, where I spoke at a Lean Six Sigma conference, led a workshop on Process...
When Red Beads and Bad Metrics Lead to Unfair Firings at...
tl;dr: The Red Bead Experiment demonstrates how firing "low performers" based on arbitrary targets or rankings punishes people for system-driven variation, not individual effort....
Using Process Behavior Charts to Compare Red Bead Game “Willing Workers”...
TL;DR: Process behavior charts show when apparent performance differences are driven by the system rather than individual skill. Comparing individuals without this context often...
Any Four Data Points Might Make Things Look Good, But…
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?
When Hospital Rankings Punish Luck Instead of Performance
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?"
Why “Quality Posters” Don’t Improve Quality (and Never Did)
TL;DR: Quality posters and slogans don't improve performance--they signal that management expects people to "try harder" instead of fixing broken systems. As Deming taught,...
Stop Wasting People’s Time (in a Lean Startup or any Organization)...
As Eric wrote about in The Lean Startup (and as many others say), time is the most precious commodity anybody has. I think that's true in startups and it's true in other organizations. Everybody says they don't have enough time. So, we have to use it wisely.
John Dyer on Dr. Deming’s Red Bead Experiment, Word by Word...
A returning guest today for episode #280 is John Dyer, president of his consulting firm, JD&A, Inc., and a contributor for IndustryWeek.com. Today, our focus is the famed "Red Bead Experiment." We'll talk about it, he'll share memories of Dr. Deming facilitating this, and we'll both share and discuss our reflections and our experiences with this, and the lessons learned.
