If you want water, you need a bucket.
If you want improvement, you need PDSA.
That’s Plan-Do-Study-Act (PDSA). Sometimes you’ll hear it called Plan-Do-Check-Act (PDCA). Same thing; the distinction is a story for another time.
Conceptually, PDSA seems simple. In practice, it’s super difficult, especially as groups increase in size and work gets complicated.
PDSA is easy
This is the whole thing:
- Zero: Begin with sensemaking and understanding the problem.
- One: Plan a small, reversible change to test things out.
- Two: Do what’s in the plan.
- Three: Study—how did it go? What did we learn anything?
- Four: Act on what we learned—standardizing on good ideas, spreading what works based on the evidence and narratives we produced above.
- Infinity: Begin again.
PDSA is hard
We act without planning. We plan but then don’t do any god damn thing. We plan but do something different from the plan. We plan and will not deviate from plan even when the world changes. We overlearn. We underlearn. We do just fine, but flub the reflection and decision-making. We find awesome ideas but can’t find energy for transformation. Systems revert to mean, people fall back on old ways of doing things. We skip a step. Someone laments, “we already tried that and it didn’t work!” or “we’re already running behind!” We get distracted. We are managed by crisis and punished for experimentation.
PDSA is hard because you have to do 4 steps, in order, at scale, with attention, in community.
Have bucket, carry water
Take good care of that bucket.
Run PDSA and you can improve. Take good care of that PDSA system.
I am reminded of Chiyono’s lament on a cold night 900 years ago:
With this and that I tried to keep the bucket together,
and then the bottom fell out.
Where water does not collect,
the moon does not dwell.