Watching the Euros reminded me of a blog that Jo Dowdell wrote in 2018 about Gareth Southgate.
As Lean Six Sigma devotees know, we talk a lot about cause and effect, Xs and Ys.
The output of a process (Y measure) is caused by many different variables (the Xs). Thinking about Football…. clearly the output Gareth Southgate and the England team want to achieve is to win games. So, what are the Xs?
I could come up with my own list, (accurate passing, penalty success rate, teamwork, player skill….) but I thought it might be fun to invite you into a Fishbone WISHBONE diagram using 7 Ms (rather than PEMME) on Mural to crowdsource this list of possible Xs – if the ‘wish’ is to win the Euros, what are the critical factors – the X variables?
You can contribute right now by linking into this interactive workspace using Mural>
You can add postits with your ideas. Go on, give it a try here!
Let’s see how this goes, in a few days we can review and decide on the most likely critical factors, things that will cause this to happen, and then decide what action could be taken in this design space! Of course, we would want to collect and analyse data to do this properly…. So keeping on the football theme, here is an extract from our book Lean Six Sigma for Leaders
Data Driven Decision making is at the heart of Lean Six Sigma. But the data needs to be relevant and right, and it needs to be good data! Most organisations have plenty of data and may be suffering from overload.
Alex Ferguson has some words of wisdom on this too.
“there have always been data hounds in football, just as there are in any sport. However, everything changed after Sky started blanketing the airways with football games. Prior to that, the only information a viewer would receive would be the result, the names of the goal-scorers and the times of the goals. These days the television coverage is drenched with possession percentages, assists, shots on goal…. A manager receives all that information and a whole lot more. The statistical information was always important and I always looked at the data, but this did not determine how I picked a team. The data was more of a tool to ensure that standards were being maintained”.
Not all the Catalyst team are English but there is a big interest in sport.
We wish Gareth Southgate all the best!
