Metacraftsmanship is a term used to tie together the many ideas shared by quality improvement, reengineering, management, leadership, and customer-driven production. Although these theories have much in common, they are often treated as separate and disparate approaches to improving a business. Metacraftsmanship focuses on overcoming the losses to society which are engendered by specialization, and suggests ways of getting complex organizations to work the way a single craftsman would.

The most frequently occurring value in a group of measurements The most common value obtained in a set of observations. For example, for a data set (3, 7, 3, 9, 9, 3, 5, 1, 8, 5), the unique mode is 3. Similarly, for a data set (2, 4, 9, 6, 4, 6, 6, 2, 8, 2), there are two modes: 2 and 6.

Technique used to encourage creative thinking and new ideas, but is more controlled than brainstorming. Each member of a group writes down his or her ideas and then contributes one to the group pool. All contributed ideas are then discussed and prioritized.

A way of thinking about a given subject that defines how one views events, relationships, ideas, etc. within the boundaries of that subject.

The idea that a few root problems are responsible for the large majority of consequences. The Pareto principle is derived from the work of Vilfredo Pareto, a turn-of-the-century Italian economist who studied the distributions of wealth in different countries. He concluded that a fairly consistent minority – about 20% – of people controlled the large majority – about 80% – of a society's wealth. This same distribution has been observed in other areas and has been termed the Pareto principle. It is defined by J.M. Juran as the idea that 80% of all effects are produced by only 20% of the