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.