Morbidity, mortality

Every week the medical establishment reports on their incidents of morbidity & mortality (ah, we ought to love the M&M) to the CDC. The former relates to what has been seen in terms of illness; the latter relates deaths and probable causes.

But, too, every good medical organization does reviews for their own benefit. Here is an interesting collection that we'll go through looking for parallels with business reviews.

That we see errors in the medical community is not a problem; oops happen when we have 'oops and loops. It's the reporting and analysis that we ought to find commendable (as many of us do); business seems to want to hide oops, though they ought to know that oops are more probable than not when involved with 'oops and loops.

In business, does only the good news flows up? Actually, the process, from the top to the down, ought to ask every subordinate at a particular level to talk one problem in more detail than may be usual; that would be a regular 'oop; then the loop would be to push this down the spiral (helix as organization structure); could we identify oops earlier in their evolution?

Now morbidity has to do with the health of the organization and its resources (and processes). It may be that health is too much assumed; perhaps, too, that is where the quasi-empirical tie comes in; that is, health would be indicated somehow, quantitatively and not, in reports, such as a dashboard; how well-founded, or strong, are those indicators would be one question to always consider; after all, business can (perhaps, ought to) learn to use scientific methods.

Yet, assuming health, then there is the function of the organization; if it is product design and development, then the product would be evaluated; it may be that product deficiencies point to process illness (bringing up, then , morbidity); even if it turns out that some material issue is the culprit, still the healthy process ought to cause identification of the problem, perhaps prior to things getting too awry.

Modified: 11/27/2007