Davis Balestracci

Consultant, teacher, and author

Davis Balestracci is a past chair of ASQ’s statistics division. He has synthesized W. Edwards Deming’s philosophy as Deming intended—as an approach to leadership—in the second edition of Data Sanity (Medical Group Management Association, 2015), with a foreword by Donald Berwick, M.D. Shipped free or as an ebook, Data Sanity offers a new way of thinking using a common organizational language based in process and understanding variation (data sanity), applied to everyday data and management. It also integrates Balestracci’s 20 years of studying organizational psychology into an “improvement as built in” approach as opposed to most current “quality as bolt-on” programs. Balestracci would love to wake up your conferences with his dynamic style and entertaining insights into the places where process, statistics, organizational culture, and quality meet.

Tue, 07/14/2020 - 12:03
The ‘Actual’ vs. ‘Should’ Variation Gap Nonquantifiable human variation plays a large role in this gap
Mon, 03/10/2014 - 17:44
My last column, “Can We Please Stop the Guru Wars?” made the case that the various improvement approaches are all pretty much the same. To recap, there are seven sources of problems with a process. The first three sources help frame the situation…
Can We Please Stop the Guru Wars? The universal road map for improvement
Tue, 02/11/2014 - 09:19
The various improvement approaches are, in essence, all pretty much the same. Any competent practitioner would neither want to be called a “guru” nor have any problems dealing with another competent practitioner of another improvement philosophy.…
‘Just Do It!’ Still Won’t Do It Even good ideas must be subject to critical thinking
Wed, 01/29/2014 - 16:58
I remember all too well the “quality circles will solve everything” craze during the 1980s, which died a miserable death. During this time I was exposed to Joseph Juran’s wisdom about quality circles from his outstanding Juran on Quality…
Improvement: As Simple as ABC... D? Avoiding the unconscious business mindset
Mon, 01/20/2014 - 11:18
Twenty-five years ago, I learned a wonderfully simple model summarizing the four stages of a change process, whether personal or organizational. • Awareness
• Breakthrough in knowledge
• Choosing a breakthrough in thinking
•…
Control Charts: Simple Elegance or Legalized Torture? Once again, I’m beginning to understand Deming’s hatred of statistical ‘hacks’
Mon, 01/06/2014 - 09:26
For all the talk about the power of control charts, I can empathize when audiences taking mandated courses on quality tools are left puzzled. When I look at training materials or books, their tendency is to bog down heavily in the mechanics of…
Given a Set of Numbers, 25% Will Be the Bottom Quartile... or Top Quartile Time to get out the Ouija boards
Thu, 10/17/2013 - 12:06
As many of you know, I hate bar graphs. They are ubiquitous, and most of them are worthless. I'll make maybe two exceptions: 1) a Pareto analysis; 2) a comparative set of stratified histograms disaggregating a stable period of performance (a Pareto…
There Is No Such Thing As ‘Improvement in General’ Matching customers’ expectations to their perceptions
Fri, 10/04/2013 - 15:53
I just got through looking at an expensive 186-page quarterly summary of (alleged) customer satisfaction data for a hospital. My head was spinning by page 28. There were lots of bar graphs, “trending,” correlation analysis, and “top box” and…
Activity Is Not Necessarily Impact Focus!
Tue, 09/24/2013 - 16:41
As improvement professionals, part of our learning curve is the experience of facilitating project teams that fail miserably. Then, despite the necessary lessons learned, there still remain some very real dangers lurking in any project, but it goes…
Some Days, If We Couldn’t Laugh, We’d Cry Five-minute humor therapy
Wed, 07/24/2013 - 11:23
I’m in the middle of a hot, humid stretch of weather, as are many of the U.S. readers. I can hardly think straight, so I’ve decided to lighten things up a bit today. Many of you have seen me present and know that I try to inject healthy doses of…
Another Deeply Hidden, Lurking Cost These 21 demotivators create slowdowns, mistakes, and inefficient work habits
Mon, 06/03/2013 - 16:22

When improvement initiatives don’t yield the results promised, it’s very tempting to have the knee-jerk reaction of blaming the workers for their poor attitudes and lack of work ethic. But what if one took a counterintuitive approach: looking…