How PDSA Could Have Prevented the Muslim Ban Fiasco

Wow! The daily lessons served up by the current political climate
in the United States just keep coming. I’m quite certain nobody
intended to help us gain these insights, but why bypass the
opportunity! So here we go. Some people call their improvement
cycle PDCA, as outlined by Walter Shewhart, while others refer to
it as PDSA, as evolved by W. Edwards Deming. Whatever the
terminology, we often forget that this IS a cycle. We write it in a
linear fashion because that is the way our language operates. P
stands for plan, right? But stop and think about it. Is “plan” a
noun or a verb? Is it A plan, or TO plan? Understanding this
nuanced difference makes all the difference in understanding the
cycle.