Author Archive for robertgerst
Full House: Understanding and expanding capacity in health care
Why is the Canadian health care system struggling with long wait times for everything for emergencies, seniors care and surgeries? The answer–mismanagement. Specifically, a fundamental flaw in the way we think about and manage capacity. Read the article that has kicked the health care industry “on its butt” courtesy of Six Sigma Forum, a peer
CIPECC
Converge recently presented to the CIPECC members (Continuous Improvement Practitioners in the Oil and Gas Industry in Calgary) on Culture clash between Hierarchical Command & Control and Systems Thinking & Leadership. People, including those leading organizations, have a hard wired tendency to think fast, yielding hierarchical enumerative thinking. This limits understanding to descriptions of surface conditions. Continuous Improvement practitioners are in
Systems Thinking in I.T. and Service
John Seddon is one of our favorite people and a leader in applying systems thinking to Service, Project Management and especially in I.T. Below are parts of a speech from John on Systems Thinking–as entertaining as it gets. Part 1 Video Part 2 Video Part 3 Video
Statistical Significance–what do statisticians think?
Many practitioners have trouble getting over the hurdle of statistical significance testing. We’ve used it for so long, it seems like a trusted friend. Do we really want to toss an old friend aside? No, but then again, statistical significance hasn’t been a friend. In the words of Ziliak and McCloskey, it has cost us
Why products get better and service gets worse
Service standards are really a means of avoiding accountability CALGARY, AB, Jul 17, 2012/Troy Media/ – Remember when getting a 100,000 miles of your car was considered a miracle of sorts? Those invited to bear witness performed the ritual of peering into the driver side window to confirm all those zeros on the odometer. The
Are You Satisfied?
How your voice is corrupted in citizen satisfaction surveys CALGARY, AB, Jun 18, 2012/ Troy Media/ Some years ago, the City of Calgary conducted a multi-million dollar effort to engage citizen’s in the development of a new transportation strategy. The Go Plan used consultations, focus groups, workshops and polls to engage citizens and gather feedback.
science matters
There is a difference between BS and a BSc. People are beginning to say so. CALGARY, AB, May 18, 2012/ Troy Media/ “All life is an experiment. The more experiments you make the better.” wrote Ralph Waldo Emerson. That’s because learning only happens through experiment, through trial and error and the testing of ideas and
Political con-munications
In war, the first casualty is truth. In politics, it never sees life. CALGARY, AB, Apr. 17, 2012/ Troy Media/ In the midst of the robocall scandal Post-media columnist Andrew Coyne tweeted that “everyone in politics is trying to con you one way or another.” Response from Canadians was supportive. Disagreements come, not surprisingly, from
Never trust a statistical ranking
Measuring education system performance CALGARY, AB, Mar. 13, 2012, Troy Media/ – It’s that time of year when across North America we begin reporting on the performance of the educational system. In Canada, the Fraser Institute’s rankings of schools was released recently to much fanfare in the media. This hasn’t gone over well with everyone.
Alberta health review gets one small piece of the puzzle right
The review will now go through the political wringer CALGARY, AB, Mar. 6, 2012, Troy Media/ – A year ago, I authored The Decline of Health Services in Alberta, an analysis of the issues plaguing Canadian health care, drawing heavily on examples from Alberta. That report concluded nothing will improve in the health care system
Converge goes to New York
Converge Consulting Group Inc, partner Robert Gerst was invited to the Fordham University in New York to present his paper on The Decline of Health Services of Alberta to the Deming Institutes 18th Annual International Deming Research Seminar. The paper details how the command & control management model and its faulty economic assumptions have diminished access to
Curing health care
Our health care issues won’t be solved by yesterdays thinking CALGARY, AB, Feb. 15, 2012/ Troy Media/ – With all the talk of healthcare recently, people can be forgiven for thinking something is being done to address issues plaguing the system. There is some good news. The Federal governments’ new laissez-faire approach to funding, and
Expert calls out Alberta Health
Alberta may be trumpeting the efficiency of our centralized health-care superboard but a keynote speaker plans to tell a national conference this month that Alberta’s experiment has been disastrous. The bigger-is-better, command-and-control model has failed in Alberta and other provinces shouldn’t replicate it, warns management consultant Robert Gerst. “Alberta is an ideal case study of
Decline of Health Services in Alberta Paper a Keynote Presentation at Healthcare Efficiency Conference
The Decline of Health Services in Alberta, The Triumph of Professional over Real Management is gaining considerable attention. John Seddon highlighted the paper in Vanguard Consulting Group’s newsletter providing both a link and a recommendation. Downloads from Europe nearly crashed our server. The paper will form the basis of a keynote presentation by Robert Gerst
The Cult of Statistical Significance – Simplified
Converge Consulting Group clients have heard us talk about the misuse of statistical significance testing, specifically, using statistical significance as a test for practical importance or material significance. This is the reason why so much employee, customer and operational research gets the answers so wrong, so often, amounting to little more, and often less, than junk
