Ok, really Richard Feynman Explains the scientific method. But his thoughts make the similarity between the PDSA cycle and the scientific method obvious.

1) Plan, hypothesis.
You make a guess about a theory (in using the PDSA cycle this step is often missed, while in the scientific method this is of the highest priority). You make a prediction based on that theory.

2) Do the experiment

3) Study the results

If the results disprove the theory you were wrong. If they results don’t disprove the theory you may have a useful theory (it can also be that your theory is still wrong, but this experiment happened not to provide results that disprove it).

Step 4, Act, only exists for PDSA. In science the aim is to learn and confirm laws. While the PDSA cycle has an aim to learn and adopt methods that achieve the desired results.

Richard Feynman: “If it disagrees with experiment it is wrong, in that simple statement is the key to science, it doesn’t make any difference how beautiful your guess is, it doesn’t make a difference how smart you are (who made the guess), or what his name is, if it disagrees with experiment it is wrong.”

Actually far to often “PDSA” fails to adopt this understanding. Instead it become PA: no study of the results, just implement and we all already agree it is going to work so don’t bother wasting time testing that it actually does. Some organization do remember to study results of the pilot experiments but then forget to study the results when the new ideas are adopted on a broader scale.

Related: Does the Data Deluge Make the Scientific Method Obsolete? – Video of Young Richard Feynman Talking About Scientific Thinking – How to Use of the PDSA Improvement Cycle Most Effectively – Using Design of Experiments

Tim McMahon is hosting the Management Improvement Blog Carnival #166, highlights include:

• Performance Organizations – Art Smalley answers why is there such a resistance to creating learning organizations and why are leaders letting the future deteriorate without doing anything about it.
• Trust – Cornerstone of Performance – George Rathburn explains that teams lose trust in their leaders when they fail to show trust and respect in their teams.
• Lean Snake Oil Cures What Ails Ya – Mike Wroblewski takes some creative license to explain Lean and it benefits but warns against secrets to implementation as Lean takes hard work and personal commitment.

Take a look at the entire post on Tim’s blog: A Lean Journey

The management sub-Reddit is a social network for those interested in management improvement to post useful online resources and recommend those they found most worthwhile.

Toyota nearly went bankrupt near 1950 and had to lay off a third of their employees. A huge focus of the Toyota Production System as envisioned by Taiichi Ohno was to secure the long term success of the company. The priority of doing so is easier to see when you respect people and are in danger of witnessing the destruction of their careers.

I can’t find the quote (maybe Jon Miller, or someone else, can provide one), but I recall one along the lines of the first priority of management is providing long term viability of the company (my sense is this is first due to the respect of the workers and also for all the other stakeholders). The respect for people principle requires executive put the long term success of employees at the top of their thinking when making decisions for the company. I don’t believe it is a ranked list I believe there are several things right at the top that can’t be compromised (respect for people, safety of society, support for customers…).

This means innovating (Toyota Management System, Toyota Prius, Toyota Robots, Lexus brand, etc.) and seeking growth and profit with long term safety that does not risk the failure of the company. And it means planning for the worst case and making sure survivability (without layoffs etc.) is nearly assured. Only when that requirement is met are risks allowed. You do not leverage your company to put it at risk of failure in dire economic conditions even if that would allow you to be more profitable by various measures today. And you certainly don’t leverage just to take out big paychecks for a few short term thinkers.

The economic situation today is extremely uncertain. The whole eurozone financial situation is very questionable. The government debt burden in the USA and Japan is far too high (and of course Europe). China is still far from being a strong economy (they are huge, fast growing and powerful but it is still fairly fragile and risky).

The failures in the current financial system have not been addressed. Band-aids were applied to provide welfare to the largest 30 financial institutions in the form of hundreds of billions or trillions in aid. The system was left largely untouched. It is hard to imagine a more textbook example of failing to fix the causes and just treating the symptoms. This leaves a huge financial risk poised to cause havoc.

There are also plenty of positive signs. The performance of companies continues to be quite strong. Economies have been weak and at risk, but if you look at many companies and didn’t know about economic worries you wouldn’t see much risk. Long term investors like Warren Buffett, John Templeton, Jim Rodgers often speak about the great returns achieved historically in the face of many many worrying signs.

But if your organization seeks to be one based on lean management principles, you need be thinking of how the organization will fair if things get as bad as they could. This is more important than it was 10 or 20 years ago as the risks seem much greater today. You need to be taking actions today to assure that the company will survive (without layoffs), if things do get much worse. If the executives and board is mainly focused on how to optimize gains in the event things are reasonably good you are not practicing lean management, in my opinion. You also are not following Deming’s management ideas.

Related: Practical Ways to Respect Employees – Honda has Never had Layoffs and has been Profitable Every Year – Workplace Management by Taiichi Ohno – Bad Management Results in Layoffs

In this post I explore my thought about what lean (lean manufacturing, lean thinking…) means. The way I think about it is that lean manufacturing sprung from Toyota. It seems to me the lean manufacturing name was meant to capture the entire Toyota Way. Capturing the whole of what that encompasses isn’t possible in 1 or 2 or even 10 books so it wasn’t done completely.

To me the difference between lean manufacturing described early on by Womack and Jones and the Toyota Way was more about what can be captured and conveyed than about an intentional creation of “lean” ways that are different than Toyota ways.

The question is further complicated by what happens with any management idea of any popularity: the using of the name with all sorts of watered down and even just plain not-lean implementations. So much of what is called “lean” is not the Toyota Production System (TPS), it isn’t even lean.

It seems to me today there is no real accepted authority for what is lean. LEI is good. Some people might say they should be the arbiter but they are not in any way I know of.

Then too, over time any organization of people changes. So what Toyota does today isn’t exactly what Taiichi Ohno would say they should be doing. Even the Toyota Way can be ignored by Toyota. And Ohno certainly wouldn’t think standing still was the answer. Just like Deming; Kiichiro, Sakichi and Shoichiro Toyoda; Ohno expected the management system itself to continually improve. And just like Deming, they would expect the implementation in a different organization (different system) to be different.

The way I think about it lean thinking (manufacturing/heathcare…) is essentially the Toyota Way. If you are implementing lean ideas and run into a challenge you can’t figure out. Looking to the Toyota Way is a very smart idea. I also see the Toyota Way as a instance of the application of Deming’s management ideas (and then Toyota, as expected, made some great innovations with new management tools and ways to think about managing processes and systems). So, looking to Deming is also wise.

Lean software methods developed outside Toyota. To me those new ways of viewing the production of software is very tied to the Toyota Way. Toyota happened not to be the first to lead in seeing how to apply lean concepts to software. But those concepts are in harmony with the Toyota Way it seems to me.

And it makes lean thinking stronger if we have a strong believe that it spring from the Toyota Way and Deming when we are applying lean thinking. It makes it easier to notice shortcuts being taken. There is also the option to just say “lean” is so polluted it is almost meaningless. But I think it is useful to have unifying terms that make it easier for us to learn from each other. So as confusing It is hard to know what is meant if you just see the words “lean manufacturing.” You need more context to understand what the author means (something I would call lean or some crazy version that has little evidence of respect for people or managers actually spending there time a the gemba).

I see lean as the general principles (kind of like one of Plato’s forms). Toyota is one example of a working lean system, but it is also the parent (so it is a very special example). And to me if lets say you fail to see an appreciation for long term thinking in all the lean material if you study the Toyota Way and see it, I would then say the lean material is missing something, rather than see it as an intentional created difference in lean.

The problem of “lean” not having any agreed to keeper of the body of knowledge does make it difficult to know what “lean” means.

I don’t know of an instance where “lean” was designed to specifically say, you know what, Toyota hasn’t gotten completely rid of all performance appraisals as Deming suggested. This is a failure by the Toyota Way to live up to the principle we now intentionally choose for lean.

I do think as many organizations have really put into place some very well designed and implemented lean management systems, new ideas that Toyota didn’t pioneer are becoming more common (for example, much of the work in service, software development, healthcare…).

Please, let me know your thoughts on the ideas I discussed in this post.

Related: Womack’s Lean versus Ohno’s TPS – Toyota Development Process

Matt May is hosting the 165th Management Improvement Carnival. He takes a look at the wonderful manifestos posted at ChangeThis. ChangeThis really is wonderful, if you haven’t already been looking at what they offer you are in for a treat (and have quite a bit to keep you busy for awhile). Highlights from this management carnival edition include:

• How Habits Work (and How They Change) by Charles Duhigg. His point: “Most of the choices we make each day may feel like the products of well-considered decision making, but they’re not. They’re habits. Countless people, from Aristotle to Oprah, have tried to understand why habits exist…”
• Changing the Way We Change by Eric Haseltine. He writes: “As a senior executive in fields as diverse as Aerospace, Entertainment and Intelligence, I’ve learned a hard lesson about people and organizations everywhere: they seldom learn from previous failures. To make matters worse, most people not only repeat past mistakes, but fail to learn that they’ve failed to learn from the past so they go on making the same mistakes over and over again.”
• Grow by Jim Stengel. This manifesto is based on his book Grow. “It’s time to change the narrative of business,” Jim writes. “From a winner-take-all tale, no-holds-barred, no matter what the cost to individual firms, investors, the economy, and society, to doing business on the basis of what I call brand ideals, shared ideals of improving people’s lives. Maximum business growth and high ideals are not incompatible. They’re inseparable.”

In addition to great ideas the ChangeThis manifestos actually look great. Sadly so much of what you find is distracting to read due to the presentation. ChangeThis puts you in the mood to enjoy the manifesto as soon as you see it.

Related: When new ideas have become habits you have changed

I have selected a few great posts from the Curious Cat Management Blog back in November 2006.

• What Could we do Better? – There are many important ideas to improve management. This is one of the most important tips to aid improvement that I know of: it is easy to do, brings huge benefits and most organizations fail to do it. Ask your customers: “What one thing could we do to improve?”
• Ackoff’s F-laws: Common Sins of Management presents 13 common sins of management, such as: Managers who don’t know how to measure what they want settle for wanting what they can measure
• Common Cause Variation – “Every system has variation. Common cause variation is the variation due to the current system. Dr. Deming increased his estimate of variation due to the system (common cause variation) to 97% (earlier in his life he cited figures as low as 80%). Special cause variation is that due to some special (not part of the system) cause.”
• Sub-Optimize by Interrupting Knowledge Workers – “The general consensus is that the loss from interrupting [software] developers is much greater than for interrupting most other forms of work and therefor a great deal of effort is placed on improving the system to allow developers to focus.”
• Amazon Innovation – “I believe Amazon uses technology very well. They have done many innovative things. They have been less successful at turning their technology into big profits. But I continue to believe they have a good shot at doing so going forward (and their core business is doing very well I think).” [Amazon announced great sales numbers today, continuing their long term tread. They are also continuing to be very slow to grow profits (CEO, Jeff Bezos remains willing to challenge common practices - such as his willingness to build business and sacrifice current profits)].

Webcast with Eric Ries at PARC, author of Lean Startups, July 2011.

Related: Why Lean is Different – An Introduction to Deming’s Management Ideas by Peter Scholtes (webcast) – Dr. Russell Ackoff Webcast on Systems Thinking

Paul Borawski is hosting 164th Management Improvement Carnival on ASQ’s View from the Q blog. Highlights from this edition include:

• Designing Experiments with Gummi Bears. Yes, Gummi bears. What a way to make statistics and quality fun, creative, and topical!
• “I am surprised at how many organizations don’t recognize the importance of sharing with others their success,” writes Quality Doc, the blogger behind Making Medical Lab Quality Relevant.
• Kevin Meyer of the Evolving Excellence blog writes about the purpose of knowledge in the 21st century.

Remember to add new blogs that you discover through the carnival to your RSS feed so you enjoy their new posts.

As I mentioned previously, I will be posting on a topics raised by Paul Borawski, CEO, ASQ as part of ASQ Influential Voices. This month Paul’s post, Are Quality Professionals Happy On the Job? looks at job happiness in the quality improvement field.

Paul stated he “wasn’t surprised that Forbes Magazine named software quality assurance engineer as the ‘happiest job’ in the U.S.” I was. Frankly looking at the results I question the methodology used – I just find their claims questionable. Whether any ranking could be sensible is also a reasonable question. I do believe certain careers make people happier than others, I question whether you can sensibly differentiate the top 20.

Still, looking at the happiness of those in the quality field is an interesting topic. My father created a challenge for me. He loved what he did: professor (statistics, chemical engineer, industrial engineer, business) and consultant (same things, with focus on quality and management improvement). Helping achieve better results was important to him. And helping create joy in work was also. It took me a while to see how much of an outlier he was – finding people who love what they do is much rarer than those that complain a great deal I have found.

That software development ranks toward the top doesn’t surprise me. Software programmers are some of the people happiest in their jobs in my experience. My experience is biased toward those given more freedom than those working in large bureaucracies (I can imagine those programmers are less happy overall). In addition to being happier with their jobs they also are demanding. They are not the least challenging of authority (some managers seem to equate docility with happiness, but that isn’t accurate, in my opinion).

To me the quality field allows for a great deal of joy in work. That doesn’t mean it is without frustration. I think the field does have a fairly high level of frustration as many are stuck in systems that are moving much to slowly to improve management practices. This is the biggest concern I find from most in the quality improvement field. So in order to be happy one has to learn to cope with some frustration while making good progress and finding happiness in all the achievements even while knowing more could be done.

Related: The Importance of Management Improvement – Respect People by Creating a Climate for Joy in Work – Respect for People: Optimize for Developer Happiness at Etsy – Create a System That Lets People Take Pride in Their Work – Signs You Have a Great Job … or Not

Carved door, Ibadan, Nigeria by Bill Hunter

Those efforts that put primary importance on respect for people (lean manufacturing) and joy in work (Deming) I think provide the most happiness. Making other people happy is great source of happiness. And such success can overcome the frustration of not achieving as much systemic improvement as quickly as one would like. To achieve great results and increase your happiness make creating joy in work an important part of your management improvement system.

Across numerous job happiness ratings over the years I have seen mathematician, actuaries, accountants and software engineers rated very highly.

Among those in the quality (lean, six sigma, Deming…) field that I know they are much happier with their career than most people (software developers and professors are also quite happy). My sample is extremely biased, however.

I think a quality improvement career is a great one for those that want to make a difference and are willing to accept many setback as long as they also have many successes. Those who are unhappy I think most often fall into one of two categories: have become frustrated by the difficulty of creating and sustaining improvement efforts and have given up and are staying in an organization that has beaten them down. I think to counter this perseverance, continual improvement of yourself and knowing when is the right time to move on, are the keys to happiness in the field.

In my view to be successful in this field you need to push for improvement you have to be willing to accept those that are not interested in changing the status quo will attempt to slow you down and stop you. But the benefits of improvement will reward those that are willing to do the hard work to move their organization forward.

Triva: I once had a job that was considered one of the 10 worst jobs in Washington DC.

Marketplace looks at the Apple economy in China. Marketplace is an excellent source of actual journalism; rare in the post Bill Moyers days, sadly.

A look inside a Foxconn factory

From a management perspective there is a great deal to be desired in Apple’s manufacturing practices. The economic perspective however, for me, provides a much different picture than those in rich countries (USA, Europe, Singapore, Japan…) often feel.

The jobs provide workers a chance to earn what for them is a great deal of money. Yes the conditions are harsh – I wouldn’t want to have to work there. But I am pretty sure I would not be happier, if I lived in China, and everything else remained the same in China except now all the Apple products were made in Singapore, USA and Spain.

It is good that Apple has pressure to improve conditions at their plants. I also wish they would adopt more lean thinking in their management system. Doing so would likely include moving production to at least 2 or 3 locations (probably adding the Americas and Europe while remaining in China). Apple pays a great deal of attention to customer focus (though they still have plenty to do here too); they really need to pay much more attention to respect for employees (I include their sub-contractors in this statement).

The market is also working. Chinese salaries are rising rapidly. From a very low wage, but still rapidly which is a great thing for tens of millions of people. And there are huge economic spillover affects as those people spend and invest their money (as one of the workers was quoted as saying he is saving up money while working at Foxconn to open his own construction business).

Related: Apple’s Impossibly Good Quarter – You’ve Got to Find What You Love to Do, Steve Jobs – Sometimes Micro-managing Works – China Becomes World’s Largest Manufacturer in 2010