You know what the third-quarter review meeting means: a packet will be handed out  with bar graphs and, no doubt, trend lines on each of about a zillion “key performance indicators” that show:

• This month vs. last month vs. 12 months ago (maybe year-to-date as well)
• The three months’ performance of the current quarter
• The first three quarters of the year
• This quarter vs. last quarter vs. third quarter a year ago

(Of course, tables are included with red, yellow, and green cells measuring performances and variances from targets, for which you are already preparing your explanations as to why you didn’t achieve them, right?)

Data insanity as a source of waste

Many of you know me as a statistician, yet I’ve been talking about organizational transformation in my last two articles and the need to take improvement to the next level—“built-in” vs. “bolt on.” And I do feel that a key catalyst to accelerate this process is my “data sanity” concept.

In case you aren’t familiar with my definition of data sanity: It’s the everyday use of data in a process-oriented context so as to react appropriately to its inherent variation and achieve improvement and better prediction.

During my recent travels, I have noticed an increasing tendency toward formalizing organizational quality improvement (QI) efforts into a separate silo. Even more disturbing is an increasing (and excruciating) formality. Expressions such as “saving dark-green dollars” are creeping into justifications for such “programs,” usually referred to as Six Sigma, lean, or lean Six Sigma. As always, Jim Clemmer pinpoints this trend perfectly:

“The quality movement [has given] rise to a new breed of techno-manager—the qualicrat. These support professionals see the world strictly through data and analysis, and their quality improvement tools and techniques. While they work hard to quantify the ‘voice of the customer,’ the face of current customers (and especially potential new customers) is often lost. Having researched, consulted, and written extensively on quality improvement, I am a big convert to, and evangelist for, the cause. But some efforts are getting badly out of balance as customers, partners, and team members are reduced to numbers, charts, and graphs.”

“Doing” QI vs. transforming an organization

Contrast Clemmer’s description with my view of how a quality focus should transform an organization:

Almost everyone celebrates something during the winter solstice—Christmas, Hanukkah, Kwanzaa, etc.—which inevitably includes gift exchanging. Following are some suggestions that run the gamut from technical to personal growth to just plain entertainment.

Videos/DVDs

There is a “quality” undercurrent in all of these—could also be useful for retreat entertainment.

• Mindwalk—A “systems’ thinking” version of My Dinner with Andre. It never fails to blow me away.

• Tampopo—A “spaghetti western” with a Japanese version of Clint Eastwood taking a noodle-soup chef on a quality journey (Honestly!). It's funny and insightful… and highly recommended. [In Japanese with subtitles]

• The Mozart Brothers—For those of you with an artsy streak: Mozart meets the Marx Brothers. A film for showing what “thinking outside the box” truly means. It’s way out there!

Statistics books/improvement references

General/service industry/health care

Remember my previous article on the quality pyramid where the very top element emphasizes the concept of “process?” One of the most powerful points to get across in any quality improvement effort is that your current processes are perfectly designed to get the results they are already getting. Most of us are familiar with the fact that 85 percent of the problems in any organization are due to bad processes (and Deming, toward the end of his life, thought it was closer to 97%).

Don’t believe me? Here is the absolute best paragraph I have ever seen to explain it. This is from Jim Clemmer’s seminal book Firing on All Cylinders, published in 1992 (Business One Irwin) and still worth a read or listening to on CD: