Deming wasn't wrong LO14754 -Perf Management

Rol Fessenden (76234.3636@CompuServe.COM)
26 Aug 97 16:17:56 EDT

Replying to LO14747 --

hello, Terri, nice to hear from you again. You make a good point:

"I would not support the use of "data and facts" as an end-all, be-all
standard. Neither anecdotal evidence nor someone's conception of "data
and facts" is enough by itself. Rather, it is the place where each of
these meets that provides insight and meaning to my work. I fear that
leaving out anecdotes leaves out a wealth of knowing--perhaps these are
simply the "facts" that no one has yet to document."

I was not actually endorsing the idea that we only discuss data and facts,
but that we make room for data and facts. I once made the suggestion here
that one anecdote was a data point, two anecdotes was a straight line, and
three anecdotes was a hypothesis. Anecdotes are the rich beginnings, but
we too often treat them as the end instead. Let's treat them as the
beginning of the quest for insight.

-- 

Rol Fessenden LL Bean, Inc 76234,3636@compuserve.com

Learning-org -- An Internet Dialog on Learning Organizations For info: <rkarash@karash.com> -or- <http://world.std.com/~lo/>