The Law of Averages

The law of averages for temperature tells me that "average" is somewhat misleading.

In recent days, I'd begun to notice during the weather segment of our local nightly newscasts that we were consistently "below average" on our daily temperatures. This has been a very cold winter in Knoxville. I knew it certainly seemed that way but watching a meteorologist show the stats made me wonder what "average" was.

So much so that I recently checked weather.com to see what the average temperatures were for January and February. Outside of a few days where we reached a high of about 50 degrees, we have been well below average (10-20 degrees below average) for quite some time.

The interesting thing, though, is that basically at no time over the past month and a half have we been at the average. The "average" temperature is somewhat irrelevant. Certainly an ineffective stat for predicting future temperatures.

The same principle applies to organizations as well. The average is so, well, average, that it takes something very substantial to effect the average. For an organization to improve it's "average", it takes a concerted, directed effort of the many, not the few.