Mansfield

Mansfield

Today and tomorrow Tom and I are exhibiting at an ASQ conference in Mansfield, MA. These conferences are always kind of a crap shoot - sometimes they pay off and usually they don't. This morning soon after we got everything unpacked and were mostly set up a woman walked up and started a conversation. It became evident that she had more than idle curiosity. When I prodded further she told me that she had come all the way from Florida because she wanted to meet us and hear my presentation! That almost never happens, so I'm thrilled.

My paper was well received. Some of my faithful readers (Ok, maybe its more like click and clack - 'my faithful reader' singular) may find this surprising, but I get pretty animated in a presentation like this. I have some passion for the topic (which my reader will see as downright wierd since the topic is data systems and quality...) and that comes through in the presentation.

My basic thesis is that we're all in the business of changing corporate culture so that decisions are made based on objective data (data driven) instead of opinion or hierarchy-driven (he's the boss so whether he is right or not, he's right). But we pay almost no attention to making it easy to get data to make decisions. Instead we train people till we're blue in the face and hold them accountable (read 'fire them if they don't meet expectations'). In fact if you make it easy to get data and then actually start to use it, the culture changes itself.

All of a sudden I'm getting some invitations to get on the road. In the next six weeks I'm looking at 2 trips to Texas and a multi-day trip to Florida, criss-crossing the state. Should be a wild ride.