The circle of life, management style

I have been using an image in some of my board training that looks like this:

I tell boards that they should be most active in the planning and evaluation stages, leaving implementation, operations and measurement to library staff.  Governance in action!  Where a good board should be!

I also use this image as the leadup to a joke.  If you don't want to put in the work that this "virtuous cycle of management" involves, I say, there is an alternative....

And then comes the punchline:

Heh ha har de har ha

I saw another version of  this Management Circle of Life or whatever-you-want-to-call-it and I began to wonder, where did it come from?  A bit of Googling revealed it is known as the Deming Cycle, or the Shewhart Cycle, or the PDCA Cycle.  It is said to be originated by Walter Shewhart and thereafter developed by W. Arthur Deming.  

The common-sense basis of this management cycle goes back to Moses but its modern origin is with Walter Shewhart.  Shewhart developed the Plan-Do-Check-Act (PDCA) Cycle in the 1920s as part of his management theories that also included data-driven process control.  His student Deming popularized and fine tuned the cycle, renaming it Plan-Do-Study-Act to emphasize the analysis that is part of evaluation.

My version of the cycle splits their "check" (or "study") step into two steps ("measure" and "evaluate") and eliminates their "act" step.  

I actually think my version is better, at least for libraries:

• I see measurement and evaluation as being quite separate, with staff being responsible for measurement (counting program attendance, circulation etc.) and boards responsible (partially at least) for evaluation. 
• I don't think you should "act" immediately after checking/studying/evaluating; you need to decide how to act first!  In other words, planning must happen in the middle there.