Free field guide – Mark Graban
The Red Beads in Your KPI Review
Leadership lessons from Deming’s Red Bead Experiment
In many monthly operating reviews, leaders ask people to explain changes in numbers when nothing in the system changed. Deming’s Red Bead Experiment shows why that wastes time and teaches people to stay quiet.
This free 20-page guide covers what the game teaches leaders and how to tell signal from noise in your own metrics.
Here’s one rule from the guide: if a single point falls outside the natural process limits, something probably changed. If no rule fires, every point is noise, and nobody needs to be asked to explain any of the data points. We can still try to improve performance, systematically, not by reacting to any data point or two.
About 20 minutes to read, with a one-page cut-out: “Reading a Metric Without Reacting to Noise.”
Get the free guide (PDF)
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What’s inside
- The Red Bead Game in brief: six willing workers, one paddle, and a manager who tries everything except fixing the system
- What the game teaches leaders about blame, targets, incentives, and why nobody spoke up
- A short primer on reading a Process Behavior Chart, using real red bead data
- What 1,008 paddles from 42 live workshops revealed about the “same” system
- Red beads in healthcare, manufacturing, and knowledge work, with questions for your leadership team
- One experiment to try at your next monthly operating review
Play the Red Bead Game online
The free simulator runs the full game in about ten minutes and draws a Process Behavior Chart of your results.
Bring the Red Bead Game to your leaders
Keynotes, workshops, and leadership team coaching that combine the live game with your own metrics, in person or virtually.
More free guides
- What Your Scorecard Isn’t Telling You: the companion guide, on red-and-green scorecards and what to use instead
- Accountability Without Blame: what to say when someone brings you a mistake, so they bring you the next one too
Why do people stop speaking up in reviews like these? My next book, The Silence Tax (February 2027), is about why people go quiet and what leaders do differently. Read the free sample: the Introduction and Chapter 1.
About Mark Graban
Mark Graban is a consultant, author, professional speaker, and podcaster who helps organizations improve through Lean management, better use of metrics, and psychological safety. He’s the author of Measures of Success, a three-time recipient of the Shingo Publication Award, and has facilitated the Red Bead Game for leaders for about 20 years.