If you’re confused by the alphabet soup of quality fads over the last 20 years: Quality Assurance (QA), Total Quality Management (TQM), Continuous Quality Improvement (CQI), Quality Function Deployment (QFD), Statistical Process Control (SPC) coupled with Baldrige criteria, Reengineering, Balanced scorecards, and, currently, Six Sigma… and LEAN Six Sigma… and TOYOTA Lean Six Sigma than you need to get a copy of Davis Balestracci’s new book, Data Sanity: A Quantum Leap to Unprecedented Results.

Davis has written a highly useful and very rare book. Highly useful in the way it’s jammed full of practical tips, tools, and techniques drawn from his extensive study, hands-on applications, and global experience. Data Sanity is very rare because it balances the analytical elements of improvement tools with the key catalysts of leadership and culture change. This extensive guide book can be a handbook for revolutionary breakthrough.

Davis and I first met in 1995 when he attended a workshop I presented at an Institute for Healthcare Improvement conference in San Diego. He was then using my second book, Firing on All Cylinders: The Service/Quality System for High-Powered Corporate Performance with his current organization to help in their quality improvement efforts. Since that workshop, we’ve stayed in touch with each other’s work as Davis moved out on his own as an independent consultant to provide his depth of research, experience, and leadership insights to many other organizations.

Davis has been a frequent contributor to The Leader Letter in the past few years. I love the passion and broad perspective he brings to pulling together statistical methods, process management, measurement, and survey methodologies with leadership and culture. After years of extensive effort, his new work is a comprehensive resource book synthesizing so much of what’s needed to drive dramatic organization improvement. Focused especially on healthcare management, its lessons, advice, and experiences are very applicable to most other industries.

Visit his web site at http://www.dbharmony.com to see how his approaches are designed to “think with both sides of the brain.” We’re right in step with each other on this. I’ve long found that The High Performance Balance is critical to success of any organization improvement efforts.