One hypothesis-driven improvement per week — state…
Run one complete PDCA improvement iteration per week on a single operational system: state a hypothesis predicting how a specific change will improve a specific measurable outcome by an estimated amount, implement for one cycle, measure the result, then adopt, adjust, or abandon based on whether the prediction held.
When This Fires
- During weekly operational reviews when choosing what to improve
- When a process feels suboptimal but you're not sure what change would help
- As a standing practice in any continuous improvement program
- Whenever you want to improve a system without relying on intuition alone
Common Failure Mode
Making the change without stating the hypothesis: "Let's try batch-processing emails twice a day instead of continuously." Without a prediction ("This will reduce email time by 30% and increase deep work blocks by 1 hour"), you can't evaluate whether the change worked. You might feel better, but feeling is not measurement.
The Protocol
Weekly: (1) Plan: Choose one operational system. State hypothesis: "Changing [specific thing] will improve [specific metric] by [estimated amount]." (2) Do: Implement the change for one week. (3) Check: Measure the result. Did the metric change as predicted? (4) Act: If prediction held → adopt the change permanently. If partially → adjust and run another cycle. If wrong → abandon and choose a different hypothesis next week. One system, one change, one week, one measurement.