Fix Problems, Not Blame When something is going wrong with a project or a product, it is tempting to find out who is at fault and blame them. There is even a holiday (the first Friday the 13th of the year) called Blame-Someone-Else Day. As you grew older and more mature, you learned that blaming …
Looking for Trends Looking for trends is part of data analysis. If you look at your data and see something seriously harming your bottom line or an opportunity that needs to be grabbed immediately—you take action. Trends are subtler than data points you jump on right away. Trends are slight directional changes over time or …
Fact Based Decision Making – Focus on the Vital Few If you collect data on many variables over any length of time, you may find yourself in the position of drowning in data and starving for information. As a manager and leader, you need to focus on the key data elements that will most directly affect …
In order to make informed decisions and assess the impact of your actions, you must collect meaningful data. You collect benchmarking information in the beginning, and then you collect the same metrics later as the process is being executed. This comparison allows you to measure if you are making a difference and if that difference …