Iterate to Continually Improve

Thoughts on: The Challenge of PDSA: Feeling Like You’ve Fallen Short

For me, this snowball was the understanding of the continuous improvement cycle, the iterative process towards ideal state or what many call “true north.” I have seen and explained the well-known visual many times; the person climbing up towards target state and, ultimately, ideal state through PDSA, only seeing ahead of them as far as the flashlight reaches.

The relationship of PDSA iterations and ideal state never really dawned on me while I was working through PDSA cycles in problem solving. The visual depicts the learner stair-stepping up through PDSA cycles, each step up the flashlight seeing further, learning more and getting closer to ideal.
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In absence of a clearly defined Target state, satisfaction with progress, pace, and incremental improvements may more times than not, leave you feeling as if you have fallen short.

Iteration and continual improvement are key. Understanding that "target state" is a temporary target is important. If a "ideal state" is too specific it can hamper innovation. This usually isn't so critical on fairly short term PDSA (except in those cases when we should look at innovation instead of improving the current process).

The PDSA process doesn't hamper innovation. But, when people set in their minds ideal states or targets that they move toward and don't see those as flexible based on new learning they can stunt innovation.

Related post: Resources for Using the PDSA Cycle to Improve Results - Continually Improving Using a Focus on Delighting Customers

The Problem Is Exacerbated by Fear of the Word Problem

Comments on What’s Another Word for “Problem”?

I think this is a wise recognition: "may need help in more areas than process improvement."

Fear is likely a part of the problem (yes problem). Such a desire to ignore problems and the word problem can also be greatly enhanced with performance appraisals systems that create a mindset that is focused on hiding potential issues that may reflect poorly on those appraisals...

The problem with the word problem is often not as simple as it may seem at first. Changing the word used may do a tiny bit of good but not much. The underlying issues that cause people to think problems are something to not acknowledge is not something solved by avoiding the word.

Related: If Your Staff Doesn’t Bring You Problems That is a Bad Sign - The Problem is Likely Not the Person Pointing Out The Problem - Is Using the Words Resources or Assets When Talking About People the Problem? - The Importance of Making Problems Visible

Should I be in the Check Phase of PDCA Daily?

Below is my response on closed forum about whether doing the "check" phase of PDCA daily was too often. I expanded on my comments there a bit in this post.

The check/study phase should be reviewing the results of the experiment done in the Do the experiment phase. "Checking" how things are going during the experiment makes sense but that isn't the check/study phase of PDSA .

For example, you don't want to pay no attention during the experiment and then look at the data and discover the data shows obvious signs the operational definitions were not clear, or the process is providing very bad results. So you need to have those doing the experiment paying attention daily.

Remember one key to using the PDSA cycle is to turn through the whole cycle quickly. Daily would be exceptionally quick. Moving through the whole cycle in 2-6 weeks is more normal. Organizations successful using PDSA will quickly turn the cycle 4+ times for a specific effort (often the 2nd, 3rd... times through are much faster than the first time through).

More on how to use the PDSA well:

• Resources for Using the PDSA Cycle to Improve Results
• The Improvement Guide is a book anyone using PDSA should read and consult frequently as a resource (blog post on the book)
• Keys to the Effective Use of the PDSA Improvement Cycle

Intrinsic Motivation and the Danger of Overgeneralization

Comments on Motivation by Kurt Häusler

> You have to pay enough to keep the issue of money off the table

I agree with that sentiment. And I agree we do tend to overgeneralize and discuss management practices without enough attention to local conditions (at the country level, and even smaller geographic level and even very big differences between organizations).

But I strongly disagree with "so intrinsic motivation is of limited utility."

Creating and maintaining workplaces that let people take pride in their job is hugely important. We spend a huge amount of our time and energy at work. Even if we are paid less than we should be it is still important to have work we can be proud of doing. Yes, the issue of low pay also has to be addressed but it isn't an either-or choice.

In fact, by creating systems that let people take pride in their work we take advantage of more of their potential and thus create more value which can make it easier to pay more money. If we instead, decide to reduce the importance of intrinsic motivation in our management systems that is likely to be a mistake. Granted in some places the importance of intrinsic motivation may be so well understood and incorporated that focus should go elsewhere but I question how often organizations are really doing so well on that front they need to reduce that focus in order to focus elsewhere.

Related: Motivation, Rewards, Performance Appraisals and Your Career - Motivate or Eliminate De-Motivation - Two resources, largely untapped in American organizations, are potential information and employee creativity

Most Popular Posts on the Curious Cat Management Comments Blog in 2016

The most popular posts on this blog:

• Mistake Proofing and Mistake Making Less Easy (2013)
• Profit = Market Price - Actual Cost or Price = Cost + Desired Profit (2012)
• Root Cause - Addressing Systemic Causes Not Symptoms (2015)
• How to Respond to a Request for Estimates on Software Development (2016)
• Sustaining Management Improvement Through Personnel Changes (2014)
• Performance without Appraisal (2005) - which was my 100th post
• Cease Mass Inspection for Quality (2006)
• Data Must be Understood to Intelligently Use Evidence Based Thinking (2014)
• How to Improve at Understanding Variation and Using Data to Improve (2016)
• Building a System to Reduce Interruptions for Software Developers (2015)

Breakdown of popular posts by year: 2016 - 2, 2015 - 2, 2014 - 2, 2013 - 1, 2012 - 1, 2006 - 1, 2005 - 1.

I started this blog over 10 years ago. After I figured out that I thought blogging would work for me I created a self hosted blog (the Curious Cat Management Improvement Blog) and moved the content to that blog. But I kept up the post here since web pages should live forever. For several years (about 2005 to 2011), I posted occasionally to this blog, sometimes the posts were comments made on other blogs.

In 2011 I started to use this blog a bit more consistently to collect the management and leadership related comments I made on other blogs here (when they seemed to say something useful or interesting that were worth posting on this blog - often things I wanted to be able to find later).

Related: Most Popular Posts on the Curious Cat Management Comments Blog (2015 edition) - Most Popular Posts on the Curious Cat Management Comments Blog (2014 edition)

Don't Claim Your Customer's Suffering from Your Management System Results are a "Learning Opportunity"

From, Microsoft finally admits that its malware-style Get Windows 10 upgrade campaign went too far":

It’s all well and good for a corporation to promise that its learning from mistakes, but it’s awful hard to believe such promises when the mistakes in question violate basic principles of software design and customer service

They are exactly right. This is one of the huge problems with the "learning from mistakes" excuse. Some mistakes are a sign of an extremely bad management system.

If you force the consequences of mistakes on your customers making up excuses about how this failure is a learning experience for you is only ok if you actually spell out how you are changing to assure you don't fail your customers due to this same management system failure again.

You need to design your systems to minimize consequences to customers when something goes wrong.

Acting as though a problem is due to some specific issue only with the exact circumstances that created the consequences is exactly the message you expect from businesses that have no respect for customers. It is exactly he cover your butt mentality of organizations you definitely do not want to be a customer of.

We need to stop accepting transparent excuses that indicate no acceptance of responsibility for mistreating customers. This wasn't a mistake about updating software. This was a mistake of a management system that allowed colossally customer hostile action to be taken and then continued and accepted meaningless excuses as if they were relevant. Microsoft manages to fail even the extremely low expectations we have for them over and over again.

I was foolish enough to continue to use Skype after Microsoft bought them. I added money to my account so that I would have access to Skype on my trip to China. 3 minutes into my first phone call they disconnected me. They then put up the most customer hostile form I have ever seen. I literally have over 30 questions that were required to be answered (things like what month and year did you sign up). I can't remember them all but at least 15 were insane to expect any customer to know. Needless to say they provided no way to contact them outside the ludicrous form. You can't have such repeated massive failures of basis common courtesy for decades without a horrible management system being in place.

It is so frustrating that such customer hostility is allowed to continue. Microsoft has a massive, decades long problem with treating customers horribly and making excuses for decades. This is just one more example of that pattern. Supposedly they are less horrible today than 20 years ago. Maybe that is true but they give me no reason to want to test out if that is true with their well publicized continuing of their customer hostile patterns.

Sure Apple's very poor software quality over the last 5+ years makes me frustrated with them. But Microsoft is much much worse so I have no desire to make from Macbook to any Microsoft software. Google has issues but if they would target users that don't have (or want to rely on) great internet connections to use their computer I would consider them. Ubuntu is the leading solution Apple has pushed me into strongly considering. The biggest issue I have not is the hardware for Ubuntu just isn't nearly as good as MacBooks. Granted the latest MacBook hardware choices Apple made are somewhat lame, but still it is much better hardware than others offer. Sadly it is stuck with their bad software and combine that with the sky high prices (the old MacBooks were expensive but well worth it) I just don't think I will buy another. While less than great I think one of the Dell laptops is in the lead for my next laptop.

You can't allow your business to treat customers horribly if you don't have a monopoly (or monopolistic position). Sadly for those stuck with Microsoft, they have close to that monopolistic position and rely on that. They have an extremely long way to go just to stop treating customers horribly. And treating an inexcusable failure as something they are learning from is yet another indication they are not learning at all.

Related: Practicing Mistake-Promoting Instead of Mistake-Proofing at Apple - Making Life Difficult for Customers - Incredibly Bad Customer Service from Discover Card

Will the Government Adopt Better Management Methods This Time?

Reaction to, New Administration: Real Improvement This Time?


Sadly I don’t believe the odds of appreciable success are good. I think the odds are much lower than they were for previous attempts. I wrote about President Obama’s appointment of a Chief Performance Officer in 2009

it is dangerous if they believe their propaganda and don’t learn from all the previous essentially identical efforts: a claim of “first” is trying to convince people those past efforts do not exist. This self-delusional pattern is very common in the practice of management and a significant reason why the practice of management has not improved more rapidly over time. To achieve success you need to determine why the problem still exists and exploring the very similar past efforts is critical to such study.

in which I pointed out similar ideas as you state here about past efforts that amounted to very little.

I think there were some reasons to hope Gingrich might help apply some better management methods if he were in a position that gave him authority to do so in the 1990s, today I am very skeptical that he would help.

Related: Better Management in Government (2012) - Public Sector Continuous Improvement Site - Transformation and Redesign at the White House Communications Agency - Doing More with Less in the Public Sector (1986) - The Public Sector and Deming (2005)

How to Improve at Understanding Variation and Using Data to Improve

My comments based on a question on, How to Use Data and Avoid Being Mislead by Data:

Thanks for this post John. This is the part of Deming’s teaching that I often struggle with (understanding variation). I read Wheeler’s book Understanding Variation and it helped me with the concept, but I am challenged trying to apply it where I work. I often am not sure what to measure and if I do, I’m not sure how to measure it. Folks appreciate my burn down charts showing trends, but this is about the best I’ve been able to do. Do you have any recommendations on where I can look to help me get better at this?

Getting better at using data is a bit tricky, so struggling is fairly common.
Probably the easiest thing to do is to stop reacting to normal variation (caused by the system) as if it were special. This isn’t super easy but it is the easiest step. And it does make a big difference even if it doesn’t seem very exciting.

The idea of actually using data properly provides big benefit but it much trickier. Don Wheeler’s book is a great start. Making predictions and evaluating how those predictions turn out is also valuable. And in doing so often (though not always) it will also spur you to collect data. This process of predicting, figuring out what data to use to help do so (and to evaluate the results) and considering the result of the prediction and how well the predictions overall are working can help.

You learn what data is often useful, you experiment with real data and real processes and you learn what needs to improve. If you are at least somewhat close to using data well then just doing it and learning from your experience is very useful. If you are really far off the experience might not help any 🙁
The links in the post above I think provide some useful tips (and the links within the posts they link to…).

More: Measurement and Data Collection

If you don’t have an answer for how you will use the data, once you get it, then you probably shouldn’t waste resources collecting it (and I find there is frequently no plan for using the results).

It isn’t uncommon that the measures you would like to have are just not realistically available or are hard to determine. How to get started in this is one of the tricker pieces in my experience. It is a place where consultants may be very helpful. If that isn’t an option another possibility is just to ask others at your workplace for ideas for metrics (there are issues with this and a big one is that many metrics will more likely to lead you astray than actually help).

This can also be an area where seeing what others are using can be helpful. Because it is hard to think up what are great metric seeing what others are doing may provide insight. Of course, the ideas must be evaluate for whether they would work for you (even if they are right for others they may not be right for you – and many are not really right for others it is just a thing they measure and while they have associated it with good things maybe they are wrong (correlation but not causation]).