The lag
When anyone noticed
The distance between taking something out and finding out whether it mattered. On this record it ran from one week to sixty-four, and the long end is where the trouble is.
The standing slot for work with no ownerThe fastest of the five problems
week 5 · surfaced after 14 weeks
Reading supplier contracts before renewal
week 2 · surfaced after 22 weeks
The quarterly reconciliation of the project ledger
week 3 · surfaced after 31 weeks
Shadowing new starters through their first week
week 6 · surfaced after 47 weeks
Logging why a job was turned downThe slowest on the record
week 9 · surfaced after 64 weeks
Surfaced 5
Five removals were written down with the week each of them stopped. Every one of them produced an event inside the 78 weeks watched. Of these, five surfaced as a problem. All five removals whose absence surfaced as a problem, in the order they surfaced.
How long until anyone finds out
Every removal has a lag: the interval between the day it stopped and the day anybody learned anything about it.
One week to sixty-four
The distribution of lags on this record is not a bell. It is a cluster of fast events, a thin tail, and fourteen removals that have produced nothing at all.
What a six-month pilot can see
Run this transition as a standard six-month trial and the report is positive, accurate, and silent about three of the five problems.
The five that surfaced
The five removals whose absence became a problem, in the order they surfaced, with what each one cost and how the organisation found out.
Why a problem arrives through a side door
Not one of the five costly removals was reported by anybody inside the process it belonged to.
The audit, the renewal and the resignation
Three of the five problems on this record arrived through events that happen on somebody else's schedule.
Lag is not severity
The fastest event on this record cost nothing and the slowest cost a great deal, but the relationship does not hold.
What a trial is actually measuring
Output, satisfaction and retention are all measured during a trial and none of them reports on the removals.
Counting from the right day
Lag and elapsed week are different numbers and almost every statement about a transition needs one or the other.