Monday, February 27, 2006

The Red Beads of New York

So, the Apprentice is back on TV (now on Mondays). I’m sitting watching it now and thinking, “What would Deming have made of all this?” The scores were 40 versus 43. On the team that scored only 40 someone is about to be fired. They are now investigating the assignable cause variation (the root cause) of their failure so that they can finger the loser who will be fired. And yet, I can’t help feeling if only they had held the same game the next day that the result may well have been reversed. What’s missing from this picture is an understanding of variation. It’s the red beads all over again. Next day the other team might have paddled 43 red beads while the previous winners only managed 40. Without an understanding of variation lots of management energy is wasted looking for a cause that might be falsely identified. Changes are made but they may not make a difference. The process is repeated again and again, looking for a root cause that doesn’t exist. In the end, there is a winner but the losers are all great people who got unlucky. They just didn’t paddle enough beads.Technorati tag: Agile, David+Anderson, Apprentice