Variation is Not the Enemy

Close your eyes and imagine a world devoid of variation; monochromatic, monotonic, unquestioned, uniform. Inspiring? Hardly. Staff and management continue to be repelled by this dystopian vision of the workplace by Powerpoint slides proclaiming "Variation is the Enemy" and "Eliminate Variation", accompanied by algebraic expressions suggesting that all valuable human output is reducible to a function of controllable variables. Why are we surprised when people "don't buy in"?

Eliminating variation can be a harmful improvement principle. Labeling variation as an "enemy" commonly leads to:

• Standards used as tools of unquestioned compliance. Deviations from a standard are viewed as an act of deliberate hostility or opposition. The results are predictable: institutional fear, misplaced blame, re-education, and the quieting of mouths and minds. Ideas are scarce and uttered in hushed tones in backrooms, while directives go publicly unquestioned.
• The impossible pursuit of omniscience. To eliminate variation in a system, one must have absolute control over all variables - an impossibility. This can lead to a long and wasteful journey of futility.

To be fair, the misplaced zeal to eliminate variation likely stems from the usual consequences of unexamined variation in the workplace. Variation, left unchecked and unquestioned, can lead to:

• Unpredictability. We detest uncertainty in the workplace, and seek control and stability, for ourselves and our customers. Unexamined variation can lead to chaos and unwanted outcomes.
• Apathy. Conversely, unexamined variation invites the lazy conclusion that there are no patterns, causes, or explanatory variables that create observable results. Many embrace the warm, fatalist feeling we get when nothing can be predicted, where every day is both different and the same. This can lead to acceptance and assurance of avoidable poor outcomes, the belief of the worker as a "helpless passenger" in the system, and the inescapability of the current state.
• Overreacting. Reacting to every fluctuation, permutation, and oscillation without examination is equally wasteful, but provides the comfort of "doing something" through self-congratulatory fire-fighting. This contributes to a steady-state whirlwind of activity without insight or progress.

A more useful improvement principle can be stated as "seek understanding by examining variation". Some predictable consequences of examining variation include:

• The promotion of curiosity and exploration. Examining variation to seek potential causes inevitably leads to hypotheses, discovery, and eventually, insight.
• The use of standards to trigger examination. In a workplace that seeks to understand variation, standards serve to easily identify variation and trigger inquiry and the pursuit of improvement. This contrasts starkly with the use of standards for compliance when one seeks to eliminate all variation - this is why people loathe poorly implemented 5S systems and standard work.

Variation makes the world interesting. Variation is a formidable teacher. Nature and humanity are variable. Variation is not an enemy to vanquish. It alerts us to phenomena worthy of examination.

I invite all improvement sloganeers wielding slides that proclaim "variation is the enemy" and "eliminate variation" to retire them, or replace them with more useful principles and words that inspire and encourage improvement. Find a more worthy enemy.