Measurement

March 5, 2026

How Leaders Should Use Data to Decide How to Act

One of the toughest jobs for organizational leaders is deciding how to act. You have complex systems to lead and improve—a mix

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January 1, 2026

QOS: Activity 2 – Organization Viewed as a System

This is part of a series on Quality as an Organizational Strategy (QOS). Read the introduction or explore other activities: Activity 1

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January 2, 2023

Operational Definition of Improvement

By David M. Williams, Ph.D. “What is YOUR definition of ‘improvement’?” she asked. The leadership team just finished reviewing the improvement efforts

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February 7, 2021

Using Your Vector of Measures to Guide Action

By David M. Williams, Ph.D. Figure. Vector of Measures Displayed in Shewhart Charts (Source: QOS) One of the toughest struggles for leaders

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October 4, 2020

Drilling Down into Aggregate Data

By David M. Williams, Ph.D. Every organization tracks a family of measures with data from various moments of time. The list of

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August 6, 2020

Benchmarking – How do we compare?

By David M. Williams, Ph.D.   No one likes to talk about dying. Sudden death due to heart disease occurs 250,000 times

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April 30, 2020

Control Charts – What’s in a name?

by David M. Williams, Ph.D. Provost & Murray. (2010). Health Care Data Guide. Figure 14.18. P. 127 Have you taken one of

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January 2, 2020

Tracking Project Progress

By David M. Williams, Ph.D. Improvement projects follow a trajectory from forming a team and chartering through achieving sustainable results. Whether leading

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November 1, 2019

Is the I Chart the only Shewhart SPC chart I really need?

by David M. Williams, Ph.D. This is part of a series of blog posts on measurement for improvement. You can read them

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What about qualitative data?

by David M. Williams, Ph.D. This is part of a series of blog posts on measurement for improvement. You can read them

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