Continuum of Improvement ... data in a system that improves performance

The basic module

The management cycle has the following form:

1. (1) Collect data, do analysis;
2. (2) plan and organize;
3. (3) implement; and
4. (4) measure and analyze again.

A system … a continuum

High performance programs integrate data collection, analysis, planning, action, more data collection, more planning, more action in a perpetual process. These are reflected in the following schematic. Everything has a data component. The basic construct is not done once but is repeated over and over again ... data are collected and used for decision making all the time.

In corporate accountancy there is both balance sheet and operating statement as an integrated whole ... similarly TVM has the state of the community and the economic activities of the community. Corporate accountancy has focus on money transactions and financial profit ... TVM takes into account the broader idea of social value creation and destruction

The ultimate measure of success is whether the change between the initial status and the post activity status has a value that (substantially) exceeds the costs. The following schematic shows this as a box “Metric of Improvement”.

Over multiple cycles the aim is for the scale of the interventions to diminish and for the impact on community to get better and better, and the bad things to get smaller. The following graphic depicts this over a four year cycle. The interventions start big and get smaller while the net socio-economic state starts poor and gets better.

The global economy functions as a continuous process … it never stops .. production and consumption keep on going … value is consumed and value is created. How well it works has to be assessed “on the fly”.

At some level this is what markets do … they also keep on going without waiting for deep analysis to show what is “right” or “wrong”. People have to make market decisions with the data that are available.