5 steps to improving performance.

 As a boy my dad used to say “everybody makes mistakes, only a fool makes the same one twice”

There are now many learned tomes written and sold that offer similar advice, boiled down, “learn from your mistakes”. You do not need a book, it is 5 easy steps:

1. Gather all relevant information
2. Form a hypothesis
3. Test the hypothesis against performance expectations based on steps 1 & 2.
4. Understand where and why the actual performance in the test differs from those expected
5. Back to step one, and repeat.

 

If you are a scientist, you will probably call it the “scientific method” if you are a reader of continuous improvement articles you will call it a “PDCA” cycle, if you come from the military, you probably know it as an “AAR”.

Seems to me, they are all synonyms for common sense.