ABSTRACT
The 3Ms (measure, manage to the measure, make it easier) are not worth anything if no one sees the measures. Imagine walking into a sports stadium after the event has started and hearing the crowd cheering. What is the first thing you look for? The score. What is one of the biggest pieces of equipment in even the largest stadiums? The scoreboard. If you want to see what just happened on the field, what do you look at? The scoreboard.
Why do we make it so difficult in our organizations to see the score? Where is your score posted? When was it posted? Yesterday? Last month? Last quarter? Would you value seeing the score in the sports stadium three periods later than the one you are watching live? Gosh, before we get too down on how poorly our scoring systems are, realize that in our intensive care units (ICUs) we have scores showing a patient’s vital signs, which everyone who needs to see the “score” can see; some such scoreboards even have alarms in case a vital sign is varying, and they are in real time. So, maybe the question is how do we scale up from our ICUs where we have been keeping score for years? I share some tips that you can use right away, especially now that you have made your first SPC (statistical process control) chart.
