Red Beads Experiment Essay

The components of the red beads experiment include a box of 4,000 wooden beads, a paddle with fifty bead size depressions, a second smaller box for mixing the beads, six willing workers, two inspectors who made independent counts, a chief inspector who verifies the counts, an accountant who records the counts and a customer who will not accept red beads. The job is to produce white beads and the standard for each worker is fifty white beads per day.
When you play the game, each player uses a special metal paddle to draw small red and white colored beads from a large bowl. Each draw of the paddle gets 50 beads. Some are white and some are red. The white beads symbolize the good things that we experience each day as we do our work and the red …show more content…
However, as I had mentioned in the discussion forum, we can see that the Red Beads Experiment is a step by step procedure whereby it was created but that doesn't mean the procedure was created to be a good one. Furthermore, to improve this procedure or system created, the management should not be the only one giving the feedback because without the employees to perform the given task there wouldn't be anyone to do it. So, management is failing to get feedback from employees. So in that case, some feedback from employees will allow the system to become a better …show more content…
They make claims that are not supported by the data. But since so few understand how to analyze data, those claims are accepted as evidence. Data very similar to that provided by the Red Bed Experiment is used every day in businesses to reward and punish people. Data is used to blame those who fall short of expectations and reward those who have good numbers. In the Red Bead Experiment we know the numbers are not a sensible measure of value provided by the employee. Then again, in our organizations we accept numbers that are just as unrelated to the value provided by the employees to rate and reward