Forget everything you've learned in any "statistics" courses you've ever attended. This groundbreaking book will introduce a "mind set," not a "tool set" to effectively utilize data to improve your practice. This totally revised and streamlined edition presents an everyday organizational language to understand the many guises of variation and a framework to react appropriately. A deeper understanding of variation is far more important than statistical techniques when solving quality improvement problems in a healthcare practice. While defined projects are still necessary for organizational improvement, but they must be seen in the context of cultural transformation. will catalyze this process and the use of everyday data to create the time to make effective, more strategic projects. You will learn elegantly simple - and counterintuitive - techniques that can create group consensus in seconds. As a result, you can lead deeper, more productive conversations about data and quality issues, which can be the surprising catalyst for true organizational excellence.