Inactionable

Fast Company has a fascinating operational management article in their latest issue (http://www.fastcompany.com/magazine/143/made-to-stick-the-telltale-brown-mampm.html).  The basic premise that the author looks to explore is how to use data that you have to predict when a system isn’t functioning as it should.

For example, he says, what already collected data can be used to better predict which students will drop out of high school (it turns out that absenteeism and failing grades in Math/English will predict the vast majority of drop outs).  He then looks at designing systems such that they give a warning when they’re not working correctly.  The ingenious example that he uses to prove his point comes, ironically, from Van Halen.  Their policy for how stages/concert halls needed to be set up was an intricate and complicated procedure that, if not done right, would throw everything off.  Given that their procedure needed to be followed to a T, they wrote all the detailed instructions into the contract.  Hidden in plain view within the contract was a policy they had that there always needed to be  bowl of M&Ms backstage that contained NO BROWN M&Ms.  It sounds like a prima donna move at first, but a more detailed look shows it as clever operational monitoring.  The story goes that if they found brown M&Ms in the bowl, they immediately knew that the rest of their procedures hadn’t been followed without having to check every single piece.  Brilliant!

So what other spheres could something like this work?  I suppose whenever there’s an overly complicated procedure that needs to be done exactly right, creating a ‘canary in the coal mine’ to look at will help improve the operational effectiveness.  I’ll have to do some thinking to find other areas that this will work.