Improvement Insights Blog

Some people want the data to confirm their gut feelings. Others want the data to tell them something they don’t know. Analytical Honesty wins. Here’s why:

“Hi, I’m Jay Arthur, author of “Lean Six Sigma Demystified” and QI Macros [software].

“I want to talk to you about analytical honesty. I’ve found all too often, people want the data to prove what they want to believe, not what’s actually true.

“So what do we want to do? We want to take the data and let the data lead us to clarity, then we can take action to make improvements, right? As opposed to trying to find the data that supports our hallucination about everything.

“Very often if you see somebody trying to design a survey, the survey is designed to get the answers I want, not the answers I need. Even within data that you look at, I can look at the good stuff and not the bad stuff, or I want to look at the bad stuff so I can make improvements. Nobody wants to look bad, but that’s the Breakfast of Champions, right there: Looking at the data and letting it tell you what needs doing, what needs fixing, what needs Improvement, what needs to be left alone.

“That’s my Improvement Insight for this week. Let’s go out and improve something.”