Process Behavior Charts help leaders distinguish real signals from routine noise in performance data. Instead of reacting to every up or down, these charts—rooted in the work of Shewhart and Deming—show when a system has truly changed and when variation is simply part of normal performance.
These posts explore Process Behavior Charts in practical, leadership-focused ways: avoiding overreaction to red metrics, improving decision-making, building trust in data, and shifting conversations from blame to system improvement. Examples span healthcare, manufacturing, sports, and executive dashboards—where misunderstanding variation often leads to wasted effort and worse outcomes.
Many of the ideas in this archive align with the themes of my book Measures of Success: reacting less to routine variation, leading better through better questions, and improving more by focusing on system change instead of noise.
TL;DR: Daily weight changes are mostly noise, not signals. By understanding normal variation–using Process Behavior Charts–you can weigh yourself regularly without overreacting, panicking, or making unnecessary changes. The same thinking helps leaders react less and improve more at work, too.…
It’s always a fun day of learning when I get a chance to teach and facilitate my day-long workshop that will teach you the core concepts from my book Measures of Success. Why take a workshop? Well, you’ll get a…
tl;dr: Year-to-year changes in Oscars TV ratings are usually just noise, not meaningful signals. Blaming or praising the host (or lack of one) based on small fluctuations is a mistake. Looking at longer-term trends with tools like Process Behavior Charts…
I published this over on LinkedIn yesterday… you can also read it on Medium.com: How Authors Can Stress Less Over Their Metrics When I started writing my latest book Measures of Success: React Less, Lead Better, Improve More, I engaged the…
TL;DR: Headlines calling College Football Playoff ratings “all-time lows” are technically true but misleading. When viewed with Process Behavior Charts, the ratings show routine variation, not a meaningful decline. Overexplaining year-to-year changes wastes time and distracts leaders from improving the…
TL;DR: Process behavior charts show when apparent performance differences are driven by the system rather than individual skill. Comparing individuals without this context often leads to unfair judgments and poor leadership decisions. This post is Part Three of a series…
Process behavior charts can be used for more than tracking performance over time. In this post, I apply PBCs to compare knee surgeons’ complication rates–and show why many apparent differences are just noise, not meaningful signals. This post is a…
TL;DR:Process behavior charts help leaders compare hospitals (or any organizations) without overreacting to rankings or small differences. By separating signal from noise, they show when performance differences are meaningful — and when they are simply the predictable result of a…
I'm presenting a webinar on December 18th at 1 pm ET.
You can register here:
How to Use Process Behavior Charts to Improve: Case Studies
Learn more about how to register in this post.
Here is a new article that I posted on LinkedIn... don't worry, it's not political, but it does look at recent voter turnout rates through a statistical lens. And I think it's a lens that's helpful for looking at metrics in our own organizations:
"How to Tell the Difference Between ‘Signal’ and ‘Noise’ in Voter Turnout Numbers or Your Organization’s Metrics"
Eric Ries and Lean Startup Co. have been really helpful friends in spreading the message about "Process Behavior Charts" in their community. They invited me to give a talk at last year's Lean Startup Week and Eric was kind enough to endorse my book Measures of Success (paperback coming soon - get notified or pre-order)...
Recently, they invited me to be a guest for their webcast series, where Marilyn Gorman asked me questions about my book and the Process Behavior Chart methodology. It was a challenge to talk about this visual method without slides and charts, so I did my best to create air charts with finger gestures :-)
You might remember the podcasts that I did with my friend Skip Steward, the Chief Improvement Officer at Baptist Memorial Health Care in Tennessee (links below).
Skip recently created some excellent videos that explain the basics of "Process Behavior Charts," a method that I explore in my book Measures of Success: React Less, Lead Better, Improve More.
See those videos below the podcast links.
