I was preparing for the upcoming golf season and began to think about the value of operational definitions.
Everyone can easily agree which golf balls are white and which are yellow. But, when a golf ball is lime green -- does it fall into the yellow or green category? Some would say yellow, some might say green. So in order to create consistency across our team, we really need a clearly defined rule. It might get a little complex by using the color spectrum, but we could do it.
Now we also need to ask -- what are we really trying to achieve and what’s the value for this added classification? In this case, classifying golf balls as yellow vs green is not that important to me, so we can eliminate the category rather than spending time defining and training our team.
However, in certain business situations it can be important and valuable for complex categories. When that’s the case, it is important to build strong, concrete, measurable operational definitions, that are clear to the team which allows them to deliver repeatable, reliable, and consistent results.
That's my 8020 Framework. What's yours?
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