Curious Cat Management Improvement Blog

Pull Consulting: Immediate Management Consulting As You Need It

John Hunter — Thu, 02 Feb 2012 11:30:26 +0000

I think the potential for consulting as you need it is great. I actually was looking into creating an application to support the ability to provide this service with someone else; but we just had too many other things going on. I have now made myself available for consulting you pull as you need it through MinuteBox. You can get consulting when you need it for as little time as you need.

So if you are trying to apply the ideas I discuss on this blog and run into issues you would like to get some help with connect with me and you can get some immediate coaching on whatever you are struggling with. I am offering a special rate of $1.99 a minute, for now. The graphic on the right of this post (any post on this blog, actually) will show if I am available right now (as does johnhunter.com). If so, you can connect and get started. If not, you can leave a message and we can arrange a time.

I am featured on MinuteBox with this cool graphic, isn’t it nice

John Hunter feature on Minute Box homepage

One advantage of this model is that those of you following this blog have a good idea of what topics you would like to delve into more deeply with me. If you have any questions on a particular topic you would like answered today or arranging coaching on specific topics over a period of time or help planning a project or someone to bounce your ideas off give this consulting as you need it model a try.

For those of you management consultants reading this blog (I know there are many) you can create your own Minute Box account easily and provide this service also. And even if you are not a consultant if you have advice worth sharing (and I know there are many of you also) you can also set up an account.

Management Improvement Blog Carnival #156

John Hunter — Wed, 01 Feb 2012 13:24:03 +0000

The Curious Cat Management blog carnival highlights recent management blog posts 3 times each month. The posts generally focus on the areas I have focused on in the Curious Cat Management Guide since 1996 (Deming, evidence based management, lean manufacturing, agile software development, systems thinking…)

The Key Questions for a Minimum Viable Product Project by Anthony Panozzo – “What are you trying to learn with this particular MVP?
What data are you collecting about your experiment?
What determines the success or failure of the experiment?” [bold added - John]
Less Process, More Discipline by Charlie Martin – “Without it, you lose everything agile methods promise. The key to agile methods is this: You may have less process, but you must have more discipline.”

Sunset over Andaman, Khao Lak, Thailand. By John Hunter

Evaluating Executive Performance by Art Smalley – “One interesting thing that I will note that was considered in Toyota in Japan by the HR department when evaluating executives was how their previous departments fared after they had left. If the department continued to improve then this was generally a good sign.”
The evolution of design to amplify flow by John Hagel – “If we want to remain successful and reap the enormous rewards that can be generated from flows, we must continually seek to refine the designs of the systems that we spend time in to ensure that they are ever more effective in sustaining and amplifying flows.”

Beyond Just Words – What Apple Could Do by Kevin Meyer – “How about immediately hiring and sending an Apple observer into every plant, perhaps every line in every plant, full time… Difficult? Sure. Ethical business often is.”
Changing the game by Gabriel Weinberg – “For example, one tactic is to look at customer acquisition channels too small for your competitors to care about. I did reddit ads when they first came out and since there was no one there you could get a huge ROI. The saturation point was so small that for any major competitor it is a complete waste of time (now that Reddit is bigger, that may have changed).”
We are Being Ruined by the Best Efforts of People Who are Doing the Wrong Thing by John Hunter – “Best efforts can often cause damage to the organization when people give their best efforts but are not guided by knowledge of what is useful and what is harmful.”

We are Being Ruined by the Best Efforts of People Who are Doing the Wrong Thing

John Hunter — Mon, 30 Jan 2012 13:32:00 +0000

Deming’s Second Theorem: “We are being ruined by best efforts.”

What did Dr. Deming mean by this?

Another quote by Dr. Deming might give you a clue? “Best efforts will not substitute for knowledge.”

Irwin, the porcupine at the Animal Rescue League Wildlife Center has to work a little harder for his breakfast in this clip. The wildlife center likes to provide animals in captivity puzzles and challenges to keep them interested in their environment so they stuck his breakfast to the bottom of the mug.

Thankfully the baby porcupine in the video doesn’t ruin anything and instead just gives us an enjoyable video. He does spends a great deal of energy putting forth his best efforts, but without a theory Best efforts can often cause damage to the organization when people give their best efforts but are not guided by knowledge of what is useful and what is harmful.

Another Deming Quote: “We are being ruined by the best efforts of people who are doing the wrong thing.” Please share your comments on how organizations are ruined by best efforts.

And I will wrap up the post with another quote from Dr. Deming: “We want best efforts guided by theory.”

ASQ Influential Voices

John Hunter — Thu, 26 Jan 2012 12:50:22 +0000

I am joining the ASQ Influential Voices project for 2012. The effort started last year when ASQ chose a few people to participate in a group effort to share their thoughts on various topics in quality improvement. I have been asked to join for 2012, along with a couple lean bloggers (Mark Graban and Tim McMahon) and others. Each month the ASQ executive director will post on a topic and I, and the other influential voices participants, will share out thoughts on that topic.

My history with ASQ extends back into my childhood. My father, William Hunter, was the founding chair of the ASQ Statistics division. They now administer the Hunter Award, which recognizes substantial contributions to statistical consulting, education for practitioners, and integration of statistics with other disciplines as well as demonstrated excellence in communication and implementing innovative applied statistical methods.

I joined with a group of people to lead the Public Sector Quality Improvement Network shortly after it was formed. The network aimed to help those in the public sector use quality management principles to improve performance. That group of people was one of the most impressive I have worked with; including Tom Mosgaller, Michael Williamson, Barry Crook, Nathan Strong and others. We decided to join with ASQ: that effort has become the ASQ Government Division. Another outgrowth of those efforts was my Public Sector Continuous Improvement Site, which I continue to run.

The Public Sector Network also connects back to my father; Tom Mosgaller and Michael Williamson worked on the quality efforts in the Madison, Wisconsin (at the City of Madison and the University of Wisconsin – Madison). Michael worked in for Joe Sensenbrenner, and then brought the new management ideas to his roles with university. My father approached the mayor, Joe Sensenbrenner, about applying management improvement ideas at the city. The mayor agreed and my father documented that effort in Dr. Deming’s classic, Out of the Crisis as the first government application of Deming’s management principles. See pages 245-247 of Out of the Crisis and also Joe Sensenbrenner’s classic article in the Harvard Business Review: Quality Comes to City Hall. Peter Scholtes was also part of that initial project at the First Street Garage in Madison, Wisconsin.

Terry Holmes (president of the local labor union), Joe Turner (division foreman) and Bill Hunter (consultant), working on the First Street Garage project. They went and presented to executives at Ford (where Dr. Deming was working) on the cooperation between union and management in the City of Madison project.

You can read a bit more about the work in Madison in George Box’s (an ASQ fellow) article – William Hunter: An Innovator and Catalyst for Quality Improvement. And also in: Doing More With Less in the Public Sector: A Progress Report from Madison, Wisconsin by William G. Hunter, Jan O’Neill, and Carol Wallen and Quality in the Community: One City’s Experience by George Box, Laurel Joiner, Sue Rohan and Joseph Sensenbrenner (1989). These documents are all made available by the Center for Quality and Productivity Improvement at the University of Wisconsin – Madison that was founded by George Box and my father.

When I think of Madison, I think of how a few influential voices created a climate where quality flourished. George Box started things rolling when he moved to Madison to found the Statistics Department. My father followed him from Princeton to become the first graduate of the PhD program. Brian Joiner soon followed (drawn by Box). Peter Scholtes moved over to Joiner Associates (from the city) to pursue quality improvement full time and when on wrote the Team Handbook (with others at Joiner Associates) and then the Leader’s Handbook (that I consider the best management book there is, biased as I am) after he started his own firm.

What I see in this pattern is the profound impact one influential voice can have. George Box chose to go to Madison. His presence drew many others and together that group focused a bunch of great people on quality improvement. A system was created in which positive reinforcing loops supported and encouraged the advancement of quality ideas.

I am making guesses, from my memory about many of these people, I may be assigning influence incorrectly in this post (even if I mix up a few of the details I think the overall point is still valid).

It is my opinion that people like Joe Sensenbrenner, Peter Scholtes, Tom Mosgaller (who in addition to his work with the City of Madison and the government division at ASQ, went on to serve as ASQ President), Michael Williamson, Maury Cotter, Barb Hummel, David Couper, Sue Rohan, Mary Zimmerman would have done great things no matter what. But it was the climate created by one influential voice (George Box) and then built upon by others that lead them to running with Deming based management ideas. They built on what each other did, they learned from each other, the supported each other. And as a result great things happened.

Me in my father's office, I think I was trying to create a spaghetti diagram photo by Bill Hunter

That strong community then attracted others, many through Joiner Associate (Heero Hacquboard, John Dowd) and others through the work at the University with George Box and William Hunter (Soren Bisgard, Bill Hill, Conrad Fung, Ian Hau) and some I am not sure whether Joiner Associates or the University were the major draw (Lynda Finn, Kevin Little). And then those that shared similar ideas in the community (for example, Kent Lesandrini) were able to connect to this network of like minded people. Each of them added to the dynamic in Madison and together they created a community where the management ideas were nurtured and flourished. Allowing each of them to accomplish much more than they every could have alone. They also each were able to learn from the others and build and grow their own knowledge and abilities though this collection of people.

The impact a few influential voices can have is powerful. Much of systems thinking and statistical thinking come naturally to me. The profound impact on people’s lives is something I realized as people came up to me and expressed how much a a difference my father made in their lives. That combination of forces drove me to make management improvement my focus and do things like create this blog to try and have a small measure of the impact my father did. This is a great challenge. Hopefully the ASQ Influential Voice will help create an impact.

If the ASQ Influential Voices Group can approach a small portion of the success the group in Madison achieved I think it will be a great success. The internet allows the potential for a even greater success. But Madison really was a special situation, I am skeptical it can be repeated. But achieving some of what was achieved in Madison would be wonderful.

I didn’t intend to get into all that about Madison when I started writing this, it just happened. I have thought about it over the years as I have marveled at what a collection of management expertise and practice was built in Madison.

While I receive an honorarium from ASQ for my participation in the Influential Voices project, the thoughts and opinions expressed on my blog are my own.

Web Seminar with Gerald Suarez: Better Thinking About Leadership

John Hunter — Mon, 23 Jan 2012 18:26:29 +0000

In2In offers some great opportunities for those interested in management improvement. Their conference is excellent. They also offer various conference calls with speakers knowledgeable about Deming and Ackoff’s ideas. These normally take the form of conference call presentations (similar to a podcast) followed by some question and answers. The consistently get remarkable people like, Gerald Suarez, and earlier: Peter Scholtes and Brian Joiner.

Gerald Suarez is kicking off the new InThinking Network monthly webinar series. I worked for Gerald at the White House Military Office. He is one of the best presenters and most knowledgeable experts on Deming and Ackoff’s ideas working today.

Gerald Suarez will present on February 9th on the topic of “Better Thinking About Leadership.” This is a great opportunity and there is no cost to participate. If you participate from outside the USA you can connect via Skype (from the USA you will be given a toll-free number to connect with – or Skpye, if you wish). If you can’t join the call, audio downloads will be available at some later date. Register here. If you can’t make the live event, I strongly recommend listening to the audio download once it is made available.

The format of these sessions is a 90-minute session, each month – from February through November. They are held the second Thursday of the month, from 11:30 AM to 1 PM Pacific Time.

Future sessions that we have to look forward to include:

Paul Hollingworth will present in March: An Introduction to Systems Thinking
Graham Rawlinson, in May to explore “Thinking About Thinking”
Gipsie Ranney, in September: “Cause(s) of Concern,” a session designed to present and advance the understanding of common causes and special causes of variation.

Gerald is currently a professor on the faculty of the University of Maryland’s Robert H. Smith business school and works as a consultant and keynote speaker. Look for him to share his expertise in leadership, which includes 8 years of service in the White House under Presidents Clinton and Bush, as the Director of Presidential Quality — the first such post in the institution’s history.

Management Improvement Blog Carnival #155

John Hunter — Sun, 22 Jan 2012 05:47:03 +0000

The Curious Cat management blog carnival is published 3 times a month with hand picked recent management blog posts. I also collect select management improvement articles and blog posts in the Curious Cat management article library. The annual management blog roundup event covered #151 – #154, so this is #155.

We Don’t Know quote by David York, via Mike Wroblewski-
We don’t know what the problems are…..that’s why we make them visible.
We don’t know what the root causes of the problems are….that’s why we ask 5 Whys?
We don’t know what the evidence is….that’s why we collect data.
We don’t know what is actually happening….that’s why we observe.
We don’t know what solutions will succeed….that’s why we experiment.
Why do we pay sales commissions? by Dan Ostlund, Fog Creek Software – “For us, it’s been a great success, and at least from that perspective it might be time we punch the Theory X, commissions-based sales culture right in the nose. Real redemption might lie in removing the source of the derangement and treating sales people like we treat programmers and other workers that we implicitly trust.”

Axes in Nigeria by William Hunter

The C-Suite Double Standard by Dan Markovitz – “I started noticing what I call the C-suite double standard: leaders and executives who are ferocious about improving manufacturing processes and eliminating waste, but who passively accept waste in their office operations and individual work.”
Standard Work Is Like Food – Taste before Seasoning by Mark Hamel – “No doubt, we have heard the Taichii Ohno quote, “Where there is no standard, there can be no kaizen.” Standard work implies that there must be adherence. Without it, it’s more like a standard wish…as fickle as the wind. We can’t sustain improvements and we have little foundation for the next.”
How to trick yourself into thinking you’re doing lean (and trick others at the same time) by Jamie Flinchbaugh – “Don’t believe you are doing lean just because you’re filling out a template or following an agenda. It’s the thinking that counts.”
Defying Time: Dr. W. Edwards Deming by John Persico – “the more difficult part of our consulting at PMI was not in teaching statistics or process analysis but in helping to change management attitudes from the old thinking of meeting goals and quotas to the new thinking that went beyond goals and quotas to never ending improvement and innovation.”

Google: “A place where it simply isn’t efficient to act like an asshole.” by Bob Sutton – ” If you watch how people interact there — receptionists and executives, young engineers and senior executives, and people from less prestigious versus more prestigious parts of the company — the more powerful people treat the less powerful people with an unusually large amount of respect, even deference, and the less powerful people don’t cower or kiss-up nearly as much as I see in most places.”
The Antithesis of Lean by Bill Waddell – “So I have to question just how a company – the fact that the company in question is Toyota notwithstanding – claim to be lean and focused on customer value and send 34 people into a resort town to take film of cars in snow that create no value at all for its customers?”
Taking What You Don’t Deserve, CEO Style by John Hunter – “Whatever nice words they use to try and give an illusion that they respect those they work with (or their stockholders, suppliers, customers, communities…) doesn’t change their disrespectful actions.”

USA Spent $2.6 Trillion, $8,402 per person,17.9% of GDP on Medical Expenses in 2010

John Hunter — Thu, 19 Jan 2012 14:19:56 +0000

Total health expenditures in the USA in 2010 reached $2.6 trillion, $8,402 per person or 17.9% percent of GDP. All these are all time highs. Every year, for decades, health care costs have taken a larger and larger portion of the economic value created in the USA.

In 2009 the USA Spent Record $2.5 Trillion, $8,086 per person 17.6% of GDP on Medical Care.

USA health care spending grew 3.9% in 2010 following an increase of 3.8% in 2009. While those are the two slowest rates of growth in the 51 year history of the National Health Expenditure Accounts, they still outpaced both inflation and GDP growth. So yet again the health system expenses are taking a bigger portion of overall spending. This has been going on so long that the USA spends double what many other rich countries do on healthcare with no better results.

As a result of failing to address this issue for decades the problem is huge and will likely take decades to bring back just to a level where the burden on those in the USA, due to their broken health care system, is equal to the burden of other rich countries. Over 2 decades ago the failure in the health care system reached epidemic proportions but little has been done to deal with the systemic failures. Dr. Deming pointed to excessive health care cost, back then, as one of 7 deadly diseases facing American business. The fact that every year costs have increased more than GDP growth and outcome measures are no better than other rich countries shows the performance has been very poor. The disease is doing even more harm today.

Some good things have been done over the years, most notably by Don Berwick while at the Institute for Healthcare Improvement. He was effectively thrown out of office by the politicians recently. The same politicians that have through decades of such foolish acts contributed more than any other group to the broken health care system that burdens the USA today. In the last 10 years a significant amount of good work has also been done in “lean healthcare”: applying lean thinking to healthcare. But it is similar to the quote that a “bad system will beat a good person.” With all the bad systemic issues the efforts, good as they are, in lean healthcare are mainly improving around the edges. Of course, “around the edges” of a $2.6 Trillion dollar system can still be extremely valuable and important.

Failing to deal with the obviously broken system for decades puts the USA in a very difficult situation now. The aging baby boomers are likely to make decreasing health care spending much more difficult than it would have been 20 or 30 years ago. And the cost of paying exorbitant prices that the broken health care system imposes increases every year for American business.

Spending data

Hospital spending increased 4.9% to $814.0 billion in 2010 (in 2009 growth was 6.4%). Average annual growth in hospital spending between 2007 and 2010 was 5.5 %. From 2003 to 2006 spending increased an average of 7.4% per year.
Spending on physician and clinical services increased 2.5 % in 2010 to $515.5 billion (3.3% growth in 2009).
Spending for other professional services, which includes providers of services such as physical therapy, chiropractic medicine, and mental health, decelerated slightly in 2010, increasing 3.6% to $68.4 billion after growth of 3.8% in 2009.
Spending for dental services increased 2.3% in 2010 to $104.8 billion (up 0.1% in 2009). Out-of-pocket spending for dental services accounts for over 40% of dental spending.
Spending for other health, residential,
and personal care services grew 5.3 percent in 2010 to $128.5 billion, a deceleration from growth
of 7.7 percent in 2009. This category includes expenditures for medical services delivered in
non-traditional settings (such as schools or community centers), ambulance providers, and
residential mental health and substance abuse facilities.
Spending growth for freestanding home health care services increasing 6.2% to $70.2 billion following growth of 7.5% in 2009.
Spending for freestanding nursing care facilities and continuing care retirement communities increased 3.2% in 2010 to $143.1 billion (increased 4.5% in 2009).
Retail prescription drug spending grew 1.2% to $259.1 billion in 2010 (5.1% growth in 2009). The decrease in the rate of increasing costs was driven by slower growth in the volume of drugs consumed, a continued increase in the use of generic medications, loss of patent protection for certain brand name drugs, fewer new drug introductions, and a substantial increase in Medicaid prescription drug rebates.
Spending for durable medical equipment, which includes items such as eyeglasses, contacts and hearing aids, increased 7.3% to $37.7 billion in 2010.
Spending for other non-durable medical products, such as over-the-counter medicines, reached $44.8 billion, an increase of 2.6% in 2010.

Who are writing the checks to pay for these huge costs?

The federal government financed 29% of total health spending in 2010, a substantial increase from its share of 23% in 2007. Meanwhile, the shares of the total health care bill financed by state and local governments (16%), private businesses (21%), and households (28%) declined during the same time period.

Medicare spending grew 5.0% in 2010 to $524.6 billion (on top of 7.0% growth in 2009).
Total Medicaid spending grew 7.2% in 2010 to $401.4 billion (on top of 8.9% growth in 2009). Federal Medicaid expenditures increased 8.9%, while state Medicaid expenditures grew 3.9%. Basically, the reason state expenditures “only” grew by 3.9% is $41 billion is aid from the federal government (as part of the attempts to recover from the credit crisis [another crisis greatly enhanced federal by the politicians making very bad policy decisions]).
Growth in total spending for private health insurance premiums increased to 2.4% after gains of 2.6% in 2009, continuing a deceleration in the rate of growth that began in 2003. The decrease in the rate of growth reflects a decline in private health insurance enrollment, increases in cost sharing, and a shift by some consumers to plans with lower premiums (those reductions in benefits obviously more than overcome by increases in the costs of the benefits that remained).
Out-of-Pocket: Out-of-pocket spending grew 1.8% in 2010. Faster growth in 2010 partially reflects higher cost-sharing requirements for some employers, consumers’ switching to plans with lower premiums and higher deductibles and/or copayments, and the continued loss of health insurance coverage.

Read more on the National Health Expenditure Data report.

Good consultants and blogs engaged in Deming and lean based healthcare improvement: Mark Graban’s Lean Blog, Associates in Process Improvement, Lee Fried – Daily Kaizen, Paul Levy’s Not Running a Hospital and this blog’s health care related posts.

Trust But Verify

John Hunter — Mon, 16 Jan 2012 14:16:37 +0000

The following are my comments, which were sparked by question “Trust, but verify. Is this a good example of Profound Knowledge in action?” on the Linked In Deming Institute group.

Trust but verify makes sense to me. I think of verify as process measures to verify the process is producing as it should. By verifying you know when the process is failing and when to look for special causes (when using control chart thinking with an understanding of variation). There are many ways to verify that would be bad. But the idea of trust (respect for people) is not just a feel-good, “be nice to everyone and good things happen”, in Deming’s System of Profound Knowledge.

I see the PDSA improvement cycle as another example of a trust-but-verify idea. You trust the people at the gemba to do the improvement. They predict what will happen. But they verify what does actually happen before they run off standardizing and implementing. I think many of us have seen what happens when the idea of letting those who do the work, improve the process, is adopted without a sensible support system (PDSA, training, systems thinking…). It may actually be better than what was in place, but it isn’t consistent with Deming’s management system to just trust the people without providing methods to improve (and education to help people be most effective). Systems must be in place to provide the best opportunity to succeed. Trusting the people that do the work, is part of it.

I understand there are ways to verify that would be destructive. But I do believe you need process measures to verify systems are working. Just trusting people to do the right thing isn’t wise.

A checklist is another way of “not-trusting.” I think checklists are great. It isn’t that I don’t trust people to try and do the right thing. I just don’t trust people alone, when systems can be designed with verification that improves performance. I hear people complaign that checklists “don’t respect my expertise” or have the attitude that they are “insulting to me as a professional” – you should just trust me.

Sorry, driving out fear (and building trust – one of Deming’s 14 points) is not about catering to every person’s desire. For Deming’s System of Profound Knowledge: respect for people is part of a system that requires understand variation and systems thinking and an understanding of psychology and theory of knowledge. Checklists (and other forms of verification) are not an indication of a lack of trust. They are a a form of process measure (in a way) that has been proven to improve results.

Comment: Linked In has horrible urls. Urls should be human readable and obvious what is the correct url to share

2011 Management Blog Roundup Completed

John Hunter — Wed, 11 Jan 2012 12:21:12 +0000

The 2011 Management Blog Roundup has been completed. I hope you enjoyed it and learned from the great posts highlighted by all the participants in this effort. The final group of posts to be added are:

Mark Hamel at Gemba Tales added his 2nd and 3rd reviews of: A Lean Journey and Steven Spear.
Hank Anderson, at Stats Made Easy, offered up some great posts by Jurgen Appelo at the oddly named NOOP.NL, but nevertheless excellent, blog on managing software development. Jurgen Appelo has had 2 guest posts on this blog (Curious Cat Management Improvement Blog, of course), the last one was: The Achilles’ Heel of Agile.
Tim McMahon, posted his 3rd and 4th reviews on A Lean Journey, reviewing: Lean Leadership and Lean Pathways.
And I posted my 3rd review in this roundup here (on the Curious Cat Management Blog) looking at the previously mentioned Stats Made Easy.

I offer my thanks to all the bloggers who took the time to participate.

I hope you found many concepts and ideas to adopt at your organization in 2012. And lets hope that those companies we have to deal with in 2012 are adopting these ideas so we can have much more rewarding and enjoyable experiences as customers.

2011 Management Blog Roundup: Stats Made Easy

John Hunter — Sun, 08 Jan 2012 06:22:24 +0000

The 4th Annual Management blog roundup is coming to a close soon. This is my 3rd and final review post looking back at 2001, the previous two posts looked at: Gemba Panta Rei and the Lean Six Sigma Blog.

I have special affinity for the use of statistics to understand and improve. I imaging it is both genetic and psychological. My father was a statistician and I have found memories of applying statistical thinking to understand a result or system. I also am comfortable with numbers, and like most people enjoy working with things I have an affinity for.

Mark Anderson

Mark Anderson’s Stats Made Easy blog brings statistical thinking to managers. And this is not an easy thing to do, as one of his posts shows, we have an ability to ignore data we don’t want to know. Wrong more often than right but never in doubt: “Kahneman examined the illusion of skill in a group of investment advisors who competed for annual performance bonuses. He found zero correlation on year-to-year rankings, thus the firm was simply rewarding luck. What I find most interesting is his observation that even when confronted with irrefutable evidence of misplaced confidence in one’s own ability to prognosticate, most people just carry on with the same level of self-assurance.”

That actually practice of experimentation (PDSA…) needs improvement. Too often the iteration component is entirely missing (only one experiment is done). That is likely partially a result another big problem: the experiments are not nearly short enough. Mark offered very wise advice on the Strategy of experimentation: Break it into a series of smaller stages. “The rule-of-thumb I worked from as a process development engineer is not to put more than 25% of your budget into the first experiment, thus allowing the chance to adapt as you work through the project (or abandon it altogether).” And note that, abandon it altogether option. Don’t just proceed with a plan if what you learn makes that option unwise: too often we act based on expectations rather than evidence.

In Why coaches regress to be mean, Mark explained the problem with reacting to common cause variation and “learning” that it helped to do so. “A case in point is the flight instructor who lavishes praise on a training-pilot who makes a lucky landing. Naturally the next result is not so good. Later the pilot bounces in very badly — again purely by chance (a gust of wind). The instructor roars disapproval. That seems to do the trick — the next landing is much smoother.” When you ascribe special causation to common cause variation you often confirm your own biases.

Mark’s blog doesn’t mention six sigma by name in his 2011 posts but the statistical thinking expressed throughout the year make this a must for those working in six sigma programs.