An Introduction to me, what you will need to do to maximize your investment in this course, and what you can expect from me.

A review of the free course, precursor to this course on the basics of turning Income Statements and other reports created to count, into easy to understand, actionable tools in real time to help produce and sell the things counted more effectively. Includes a review of the most important financial statements as governed by the GAAP, and covers some of the most troubling mistakes that are made in interpreting the report.

Why limited comparisons and single datapoints muddle understanding, with lots of examples.

Parlaying the baseball presentation in the precursor course, Income Statement Secrets, you will join me as I dig into the controversy over who was the best goal scorer in their first 8 years in football, what in the US is called Soccer. Both Pelé and Messi are monster players, and what will be learned goes so much deeper than just who is number 1, showing just how much context and understanding can be revealed in a visual representation of data.

What science explains about how we are not that logical after all, and why we so easily find connections in data that may not be there in the real world, and other suprising truths. Human beings like a sure thing, Nature likes complexity;we humans want a single answer that works, Nature provides webs of influence. The workfloor is where Human Nature and Nature meet, where we try and forge our ideas, opinons and theories where the rubber meets the road. To help you manage better, this module introduces a learning opportunity at the cutting edge of cognitive science, in preparation for the next module on an essential Natural Law, that controls the results of everything we do, goes against our intuition and our desires, and undermines our best efforts to reach our objectives and goals.

All work is done in processes, and involves material things. (even electricy is material). The behavior of processes is limited by natural law, which conflicts with human nature, and our aims. The little known but essential law of nature they didn't teach you in school is variation. It profoundly effects everything we do and makes our best efforts at making and achieving objectives difficult. Knowing it can provide a competitive advantage; mastering it lead to almost magical success. "For those who enter the same stream, ever different waters flow."

A short sweet to the point pdf presenting Dr. Shewharts rules for the visual presentation of data. Great stuff, really useful. Too many Data presentations fall in love with what the technology can do, and confuse the heck out of anyone trying to understand the meaning in the data.

From a doctor's office, a deli, a hospital, a hotel and more... even how to use to greatly enhance the use of a treatment of a girl with allergies. Nothing speaks more than real examples from people just like you!

A short but sweet call to action.

"All you need is 30 minutes and a pencil and paper to get what you need from the data..." W.E. Deming

We begin DOING, using the UNcomputer...

In the olde apprenticeships, you learned by standing side by side and working with a journeyman to learn. Repetition and the chance to observe, helped the learning sink in deeper. The Khan Academy created something simiar with their way of teaching, mimic'd in this module. It is one thing to know something theoretically, another entirely to take it in, digest and master it. The more powerful the tool the more damage you can do with it if you used it half well, or poorly. Better to not use it at all, at least then you have a 50/50 chance of making a good outcome. Here you have a chance to work along side me, as it were, step by step, copying what I do. it may save you from going off the deep end one day!

An Uncomputer vs Computer smack down!

Which is faster, which goes deeper, which do you prefer?

Management is Prediction. Without a theory you learn nothing, and the best you can do is 50/50, right today, wrong tomorrow: but armed with an understanding of the process behavior, once you get it running smoothly, you can reliably predict and thereby make the best possbile managment decisions.

What makes a household thermometer useful is it tells you if you have temperature and need to call the doctor, or not. It is a very simple tool, hardly precise, but good enough to do the job and save you a lot of money in Doctor's bills, or save your life if you really are sick. It can't tell you what you have, for that you go to the doctor and he probes deeper to find the root cause and treat it. In work, the Process Behavior Chart is a similar tool.

A look at more advanced work using a simple, affordable program from the Deming Collaboration Website, allowing you to look at seasonal and other effects without having to create a new chart every time. A great tool for understanding businesses like retail, agriculture, or any other business that has seasonal or periodic changes.

What a true Operational Report Looks like:

Creating the charts needed for a more or less universal report that measures how well your whole business is running, and lets you get a clear picture, in real time, of the health of your business operationally, and how well you are managing your TRUE costs, the overall costs of the system.

Taking the charts and formatting them into the complete report.

The application of the report created in the last two modules, to create instant, relevant, effective understanding in a way you could never dream of doing when seeing only in two dimensions as in the common financial reports.

What to do with your newly found time from your newly acquired knowledge: build a better system... in this case an ordering system as an example.

The importance of how things inter-relate.

An inspirational slap on the back... just for you...