Do you have Florida winning the NCAA tournament? Here in the U.S. we are in the middle of March Madness. Even if you’re not a college basketball fan, you can’t avoid the phenomena: stories of Cinderellas, upsets, and comebacks dominate the media. The NCAA basketball tournament has entered the national consciousness to such a degree…
With a final score of 43-8, Super Bowl XLVIII was widely considered to be not very super. To give you a sense of how non-competitive the game was, consider these two facts: The Seattle Seahawks spent a Superbowl record 59 minutes, 48 seconds in the lead. In other words, they scored 12 seconds into the game…
Early in my management career, the HR department sent out a single-question survey which asked how satisfied we were with our jobs on a scale of 0 (very unsatisfied) to 4 (highly satisfied). To my surprise, my group had the lowest average score (2.6) in the company. The HR VP predicted a mass exodus and told…
What percentage of people wash their hands after going to the restroom? This is a difficult question to answer accurately. Surveys are unreliable because people are not likely to be truthful about behavior that is considered socially unacceptable. Surveys under-report the true percentage. Even if it is difficult, estimating the percentage of people who engage…
The numerosity heuristic can ruin your diet. According to numerosity, people pay more attention to the number of units rather than the type of units which leads to faulty conclusions. Research shows we will pay more for a 7-day vacation than a one week vacation, and will complain less about a flight that is delayed for…
In my experience, most people don’t really understand how to track quality in a performance management system. Over the years, I’ve seen the strategic objectives and KPIs for dozens of organizations; large and small, commercial and public sector, US and International. I’ve previously claimed customer satisfaction is one of the most used – and least…