If you’re heading into a Lean meeting and want to win “Corporate Bingo” while staring at the SQDCC board, here is your definitive Bullshit Bingo Card.
This is designed to capture all the buzzwords, jargon, and “management-speak” that tend to fly around when people are looking at red and green metrics.
The SQDCC Bullshit Bingo Card
| S (Safety) | Q (Quality) | D (Delivery) | C (Cost) | C (People/Culture) |
| Near-miss event | Root cause analysis | Bottleneck | OEE Optimization | Silo-thinking |
| Safety first | Ishikawa / Fishbone | Just-in-Time | Low-hanging fruit | Empowerment |
| Zero-harm | Poka-Yoke | FREE SPACE: “Let’s take this offline” | The Bottom Line | Ownership |
| 5S Standard | Deviation report | Lead time | Resource allocation | Culture journey |
| PPE Compliance | Zero-defect mindset | Backlog | Cost-benefit ratio | Synergy |
How to play:
- Listen closely: Every time a manager, consultant, or “Lean Champion” drops one of these terms, mark the square.
- Winning: Once you get five in a row (vertical, horizontal, or diagonal), you’ve reached “Operational Excellence.”
- The “Kaizen” Moment: If you get a full house, you are legally obligated to stand up and shout “CONTINUOUS IMPROVEMENT!” and then walk out of the room.
The “Big Three” to listen for:
- “Let’s take this offline”: Translation: “This conversation is actually productive, so let’s stop it immediately so we can get back to reading the PowerPoint.”
- “Low-hanging fruit”: The easy wins that somehow haven’t been won in the last three years.
- “Deep dive”: We’re going to spend 20 minutes talking about a minor detail while ignoring the fact that the entire factory is on fire.
Pro-Tip: If the board is full of red magnets and someone says we need a “mindset shift,” mark two squares.
The SQDCC Board is a place of high drama and even higher jargon. To help you navigate the gap between “Corporate Speak” and “The Real World,” here is your translation guide.
The SQDCC “Real Talk” Translation Guide
| What they say at the board | What it actually means |
| “We need a Root Cause Analysis.” | “Stop guessing why it broke and find the guy who actually knows how to fix it.” |
| “Let’s take this offline.” | “You’re making a good point that makes me look bad. Stop talking now.” |
| “We’re looking into the Lead Time.” | “We have no idea why the truck is late, but we’ve sent an email to someone who isn’t answering.” |
| “Low-hanging fruit.” | “A problem so incredibly obvious that it’s embarrassing we haven’t fixed it since 2019.” |
| “Mindset shift.” | “I need you to work harder for the same pay and pretend to be excited about it.” |
| “Poka-Yoke.” | “We need to make this so simple that even someone who hasn’t had their morning coffee can’t mess it up.” |
| “Continuous Improvement.” | “This process will never be finished, and you will never be ‘done’ with your work.” |
| “Silo-thinking.” | “Maintenance and Production are currently in a cold war and refuse to speak to each other.” |
| “Operational Excellence.” | “We finally cleaned the floor and the machines aren’t smoking today.” |
| “Deep Dive.” | “We are going to spend 45 minutes arguing about a $100 spare part while the $1M production line is standing still.” |
The “Red Square” Defense
When the board is Red (and everyone is looking at you), use these phrases to buy time:
- “The data is lagging.” (Translation: I forgot to update the board this morning.)
- “We have a countermeasure in place.” (Translation: We put some duct tape on it and hoped for the best.)
- “It’s a systemic issue.” (Translation: It’s not my fault, it’s the company’s fault.)
Expert Move: If you’re ever caught off guard, just point at a red magnet and say, “I’m currently facilitating a Kaizen event to address the bottleneck in our value stream.” It means absolutely nothing, but it sounds so Lean that nobody will ask a follow-up question.