Some reflections on #ZeroCovid and the parallels in ‘Quality Management’ which saw the transformation of Japan during 1980s from supplier of cheap & nasty imitations to leading industrial powerhouse.

Until then, “Quality” was seen as synonymous with “”Expensive”.
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The transformative insight was that by interpreting “Quality” as “Zero Defect”, the pursuit of quality would reduce costs, not increase them.

The same transformation is now needed in political thinking. There is no trade off between “the economy” and controlling infections.
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Control infections & you liberate the economy. Both move in the same direction.

A commonly heard objection “You can never have zero defects” is exactly paralleled by “You can never have zero infections”.

Both objections were true and both completely misunderstood the point.
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It’s simply a question of approach. When you aim for, say 95% of X performed within Y days, you tolerate a 5% failure rate. It becomes institutionalised - you risk people gaming the system by NEVER atttending to the cases which failed, because only then do they get counted.
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If instead you regard every failure as not to be tolerated, it changes the dynamic within the organisation - even though everyone knows zero is an impossible goal.

The Japanese call this Kai Zen which I think means chasing every last grain of rice in the bowl.
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Over here we call this approach “failure intolerant”. Unhelpful scope for further misunderstanding, perhaps - I once called for this to be adopted only to be rebuked by my CEO who said we already were and he would fire anyone who failed, while looking rather hard at me.
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#ZeroCovid means not “tolerating” any infection and chasing it down to cut off its transmission chain. It’s the cheapest, simplest and most effective way of restarting the economy and resuming normal life. It requires a clear, strategic commitment to accomplish it. /7

But our ability to do that is compromised by any delay.

The virus can and does grow exponentially, given half a chance. It means a speed of response that can only come from local communities working together. /8

It means delegating Find Test Trace Isolate Support to local authorities & GP surgeries. It means sharing data with trusted parties, not being held back by distrusted corporate entities.
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Winston Churchill would annotate papers with ATD.

He did not mean All Too Difficult.

He meant ACTION THIS DAY.

#ZeroCovid
/ENDS