While Einstein was working on his theories of relativity he still found time to philosophise and came up with this neat definition:

“Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results”

From a business perspective this resonates in two ways:

If a business wants to achieve different outcomes then it needs to change something about the way it does things – if you want change you have to change.  It’s simple enough but too many businesses still produce business plans that anticipate miracles but then fail to put the effort and resources in to a properly focussed change project!

However, that ‘obvious’ interpretation of the quotation is not the only one.  As a scientist (well actually I’m an Engineer) lets just re-order the equation.

Once you’ve redesigned your business and implemented new processes they need be capable of producing repeatable outcomes. So our definition becomes:

“If you want a process to produce the same results then it would be insane to do anything other than the same things over and over again”

Repeatable outputs come from capable processes driven by consistent inputs.

It’s easy really but too many businesses still expect consistent quality from incapable processes or fail to define, document and implement the process conditions that they want to create on a repeatable basis.

So next time you need to change something or need to justify process control just tell the boss it’s one of Einstein’s theories.