IHI Quality Improvement Games: The Red Bead Experiment

© 2021 Institute for Healthcare Improvement.
Don Berwick, President Emeritus and Senior Fellow, IHI
W. Edwards Deming, one of the founders of modern quality improvement, invented the famous Red Bead Experiment to illustrate how typical managers try - and fail - to improve quality.
In this video, Dr. Don Berwick leads the demonstration in a class at the Harvard School of Public Health, showing what happens when a manager tries to improve quality by rewarding and punishing workers for organizational performance.

[@tomgattiker1674]

This is the best red bead video I have found on you tube. Thanks.

[@battenburgs]

Well done! As usual, Dr. Berwick makes an awesome presentation!

[@AhJodie]

This is like work in a way, how they are filling that thing with beads is messed up, and I am sure the staff could come up with better ideas, if they were allowed to talk.

[@newbernbears]

Great work! I Was just reading "Controlling Variation in Health Care: A Consultation from Walter Shewhart " Author: Donald M. Berwick . I will be using Dr. Berwick's excellent paper in part of my next presentation.

[@goldseraph79]

Takeaways: Workers need to know the mission of the organization, the expected quality level, and correct work procedures. Their performance should also be measured, as should all variable parts of the work process itself. Where organizations go wrong is in failing to measure and continuously improve their work processes. They must invest in PI/QI and, in this example, perhaps bring in some industrial engineering consultants with subject matter expertise. Blame, pressure, and unrealistic expectations can't be heaped upon workers who are limited by a suboptimal system.

[@lexalexandrov6383]

I don't want to be rude, but it seems you misunderstood the point. All this was to show that it does not matter how you train your workers, how they perform their activities, how motivated they are, if the process itself is flawed. There is a certain ammount of blue and red beads, so the probability will always bring the average to unsatisfactory levels and other variables can't change that. I'am not saying that what you wrote is wrong, but the experiments aim is to show the opposite of what you got from it.

[@tomstearns7904]

I would like to use this video in some training material I am putting together, If I include all of the credits as listed in the description is that acceptable? The training is not being sold or marketed.

[@IHIvideo]

Hi - Please email [e-mail] and they can help you with your request. Thanks!

[@tubetop123]

Wrong tools for the job, what's the point?

[@jerometaperman7102]

That is the point. Deming argued that it is management’s responsibility to provide their workers with the right tools and right processes to do the job well. Too many of them instead simply blame the workers. He said it was futile to just exhort the workers to do better with things that are not within their control.