The standard deviation (Sigma, σ for the population, or S for a sample within the population) of a data serie

To choose which statistical test you can use in a certain step of the project, you need to know the type of data that is available in the project. The first question we must therefore answer is: WHAT TYPE OF DATA does the project team have available and what are we looking at?

In their book Influencer, Joseph Grenny, Kerry Patterson and co discuss a wonderful model to increase your influence as a manager when you want to make a change.

The fifth and final S in the 5S model stands for SUSTAIN, and this is the most difficult of the stages to implement in practice. It is difficult because this stage circles back on all the prior stages to ensure that they are being appropriately maintained and updated as necessary. The sustain stage therefore has two main objectives: sustaining the current standard as they were agreed upon by the team and identifying improvements when the standards are no longer relevant or complete.

In the first article in this series, I introduced 5S as the tool to improve productivity in your process.

There are many different tools that you can use  within the different phases of 5S. One imortant aspect of using 5S in an efficient way is to follow the stages one by one. First we Sort, than we Straighten, shine, standardize and sustain. This article will focus on the first two stages of 5S: Sorting and Straightening. it is also part of a chapter in the book: Sustainable 5S (Panneman, 2019).

In his book Bullshit Jobs - A Theory, David Graeber describes the interesting phenomenon that should not exist in a capitalist society: useless jobs. In 2013, Graeber wrote an article about these so-called bullshit jobs, which received so much attention that many people wrote their stories to him and investigated the phenomenon. Even in the Netherlands, surveys were conducted and 40% of the Dutch people found their own job to be useless.

In their book Mastering Leadership, R.J.Anderson and W.A. Adams describe in the Leadership Circle Profile (LCP) [see Figure 1] how successful leadership leads to success in the organization. The authors compared the leadership results of more than 500,000 surveys with the organization results of the companies of the respondents. Their conclusion? Within the best 10% of the organizations, managers scored 80% on the LCP. On the other hand, the managers at 10% of the least performing companies scored only 30% in the same framework.

In The Culture Code, Daniel Coyle describes the importance of company culture within successful organizations. In a series of experiments in which groups of people have to build the highest possible tower with spaghetti, tape and 1 marshmallow within a certain time, small children beat the CEOs, lawyers and students of a university time and time again. The reason? Where adults are concerned with politics, hierarchy and discussing strategy and options, the children simply get to work. Together. Side by side.