Improving How We Improve: Deming's Red Bead Game & Process Behavior Charts

One of Dr. W. Edward Deming's key lessons was understanding variation when looking at performance measures. How do we separate signal from noise in our view of performance? How can we avoid overreacting to every up and down in our results? How can we stop wasting time searching for root causes and special explanations for the effect of "common cause variation" in a system?

Deming’s famed "Red Bead Experiment" is a hands-on way to understand these principles in fun and practical ways. During this session, you’ll have the chance to participate in this exercise, to learn from observing and reflecting upon some of the silly things executives and managers do in their attempts to cajole better performance out of a bad system.

You’ll learn how to create Process Behavior Charts and how to interpret them, looking to how we use these methods with real workplace performance measures.

Understand and Apply Variation Principles: Participants will learn to differentiate between common cause and special cause variation and apply this knowledge to real-world performance metrics, reducing overreaction to normal fluctuations.

Create and Interpret Process Behavior Charts: Attendees will gain hands-on experience in creating and interpreting Process Behavior Charts, enabling them to make data-driven decisions that focus on system improvements rather than individual blame.

Identify Systemic Barriers to Improvement: Through interactive discussions and the Red Bead Experiment, participants will recognize how poor system design, not individual effort, often hinders performance, and will leave with strategies to implement improvements in their own organizations.

Author

Mark Graban is the author of the award-winning book Lean Hospitals: Improving Quality, Patient Safety, and Employee Engagement. He's also written Measures of Success: React Less, Lead Better, Improve More, on the themes of today's intensive.

He serves as a consultant through his company, Constancy, Inc and is also a Senior Advisor for the technology company KaiNexus. Mark hosts podcasts including “Lean Blog Interviews” and “My Favorite Mistake” – and latest book on that topic is The Mistakes That Make Us: Cultivating a Culture of Learning and Innovation. 

Mark is a Diplomate of the Society for Health Systems.

Education: B.S. in Industrial Engineering from Northwestern University; M.S. in Mechanical Engineering and M.B.A. from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s "Leaders for Global Operations" Program.