Closing loops

There’s a deceptively simple idea called the PDSA loop (‘Plan-Do-Study-Act’). I currently think that the loop captures the heart of good business execution, but that for some reason we find it terribly difficult to do.

The basic idea in PDSA is that you:

• Make a plan
• Do the plan
• Study the results of the plan
• Act on what you’ve learnt and integrate your new hypotheses into the next iteration of the loop.

It is easy to come up with plans and then start executing on them. The problem is that:

1. Either you get distracted, mid-execution, by something else that’s shinier. Or you get distracted mid-execution by something that blows up (and in business there’s always something that’s blowing up).
2. Or you get distracted by something else that pops up at the end of the current execution loop,
3. Or you forget to do the ‘study’ bit at the end of a loop, which informs your next cycle.

Source: # You Aren't Learning If You Don't Close the Loops