Improvement Science is all about making some-thing better in some-way by some-means.<\/p>\n
There are lots of things<\/strong> that might be improved – almost everything in fact.<\/p>\n There are lots of ways<\/strong> that those things might be improved. If it was a process we might improve safety, quality, delivery, and productivity. If it was a product we might improve reliability, usability, durability and affordability.<\/p>\n There are lots of means<\/strong> by which those desirable improvements might be achieved – lots of different designs.<\/p>\n Multiply that lot together and you get a very big number of options – so it is no wonder we get stuck in the “what to do first?” decision process.<\/p>\n So how do we approach this problem currently?<\/strong><\/p>\n We use our intuition.<\/em><\/p>\n Intuition steers us to the obvious – hence the phrase intuitively obvious<\/em>. Which means what looks to our minds-eye to be a good option.And that is OK. It is usually a lot better than guessing (but not always).<\/p>\n However, the problem using “intuitively obvious” is that we end up with mediocrity. We get “about average”. We get “OKish”.\u00a0 We get “satisfactory”. We get “what we expected”. We get “same as always”. We do not get “significantly better-than-average’. We do not get “reliably good”. We do not get improvement. And we do not because anyone and everyone can do the “intuitively obvious” stuff.<\/p>\n To improve we need a better-than-average functional design. We need a Reliably Good Design. And that is invisible.<\/p>\n By “invisible” I mean not immediately obvious to our conscious awareness<\/em>.\u00a0 We do not notice good functional design because it does not get in the way of achieving our intention.\u00a0 It does not trip us up.<\/p>\n We notice poor functional design because it trips us up. It traps us into making mistakes. It wastes out time. It fails to meet our expectation. And we are left feeling disappointed, irritated, and anxious. We feel Niggled.<\/p>\n We also notice exceptional design – because it works far better than we expected. We are surprised and we are delighted.<\/p>\n We do not notice Good Design because it just works. But there is a trap here. And that is we habitually link expectation to price.\u00a0 We get what we paid for.\u00a0 Higher cost => Better design => Higher expectation.<\/p>\n So we take good enough design for granted. And when we take stuff for granted we are on the slippery slope to losing it. As soon as something becomes invisible it is at risk of being discounted and deleted.<\/p>\n If we combine these two aspects of “invisible design” we arrive at an interesting conclusion.<\/p>\n To get from Poor Design to OK Design and then Good Design we have to think “counter-intuitively”.\u00a0 We have to think “outside the box”. We have to “think laterally”.<\/em><\/p>\n And that is not<\/strong> a natural way for us to think. Not for individuals and not for teams. To get improvement we need to learn a method of how to counter our habit of thinking intuitively and we need to practice the method so that we can do it when we need to. When we want to need to improve.<\/p>\n To illustrate what I mean let us consider an real example.<\/p>\n Suppose we have 26 cards laid out in a row on a table; each card has a number on it; and our task is to sort the cards into ascending order. The constraint is that we can only move cards by swapping them.\u00a0 How do we go about doing it?<\/p>\n There are many sorting designs that could achieve the intended purpose – so how do we choose one?<\/p>\n One criteria might be the time it takes to achieve the result. The quicker the better.<\/p>\n One criteria might be the difficulty of the method we use to achieve the result. The easier the better.<\/p>\n When individuals are given this task they usually do something like “scan the cards for the smallest and swap it with the first from the left, then repeat for the second from the left, and so on until we have sorted all the cards<\/em>“.<\/p>\n This card-sorting-design is fit for purpose.\u00a0 It is intuitively obvious, it is easy to explain, it is easy to teach and it is easy to do. But is it the quickest?<\/p>\n The answer is NO. Not by a long chalk.\u00a0 For 26 randomly mixed up cards it will take about 3 minutes if we scan at a rate of 2 per second. If we have 52 cards it will take us about 12 minutes. Four times as long. Using this intuitively obvious design the time taken grows with the square of the number of cards that need sorting.<\/p>\n