Establish the standard.
Measure every major process that affects the customer. Agree on the best work process you know today, and ensure every employee follows that standard. Those measurements establish your baseline.
Human experience. Proven methods. AI assistance.
Mobilize your company to keep pace with a changing world.
Turn changing needs into clear priorities, coordinated action, and verified results—with Lean Six Sigma and AI.
Listen continuously. Act together. Demonstrate the results.
Set the direction. Help every employee understand what it means for their work. Equip teams to improve processes and train people. See evidence of completed action and verified results—and adjust as needs change while pursuing your long-term goals.
A BETTER WAY STARTS WITH YOU
A good idea should have somewhere to go.
The person doing the work sees opportunities others miss. One Bite’s app is being developed to help employees capture those ideas, develop them with AI, and follow them through a fair review.
- 01 / CAPTURE
Speak it while it’s fresh.
Have an idea for a better way? Speak it into the app on your phone, then get back to work.
- 02 / DEVELOP
Make it implementable.
Later, work with AI to describe the problem, examine the causes, define a measure, and develop a solid solution proposal.
- 03 / IMPLEMENT
Give it a fair path.
Submit it to your supervisor. If the cause is clear and the change is low risk, you can implement it together and report the measured results to the quality lead team.
A rejection isn’t the end.
The lead team reviews rejected suggestions each month, looking for adjustments that could make them workable or opportunities to apply them elsewhere. You keep credit for your idea and can track its progress and see the decision.
Implemented? You’re in the hat.
Every implemented suggestion earns the employee an entry into the hat. Supervisors receive separate recognition for encouraging ideas and helping them succeed.
Are you good, or are you lucky?
You’re good if it’s measurable and repeatable.
Find a better way.
Invite problem-solving teams and individual employees to propose improvements. AI helps them analyze problems and develop complete solution proposals for management review.
Prove it—and repeat.
Implement approved solutions, measure the results, and verify that improvements in quality, safety, or service hold over time. Make the improved process the new standard, report the results, and repeat.
Repeatable means both consistent daily work and a consistent method for making it better.
As improvements accumulate, customer and employee satisfaction rise. Removing wasted activity and rework reduces costs.
Then you’re good, not lucky.
Management by fact: Show me, don’t tell me.
The four values built into the One Bite system
Customer satisfaction
Continuously monitor and listen for the changing needs of employees and external customers. Each year, develop key corporate measures and deploy them throughout the organization to achieve breakthrough improvements in each.
Continuous improvement
Establish today’s best method, then find and prove better ways through improvement and innovation.
Management by fact
Measure performance and verify results. Show me, don’t tell me.
Respect for people
Listen to employees’ ideas, develop their capabilities, and give them the tools and a fair path to turn good ideas into implemented improvements. Reward them when they succeed.
THE PROOF / FP&L
Point the organization at the right problem—and the indicators move.
FP&L’s lead teams listened to customers and employees and translated their needs into key improvement indicators. They divided the problems into manageable parts and assigned each part to the team best positioned to analyze its causes and recommend solutions—its “One Bite.” Together, the teams brought hundreds of proposed solutions back to the lead teams for evaluation.
The lead teams selected feasible solutions and assigned implementation back to the teams. Those teams scheduled the work, followed through, and ensured everyone understood the improved process. The dramatic results demonstrated that the system worked—with pencils, checksheets, and hand-drawn charts.
The charts below show how focused problem solving can turn a company around. One Bite brings that approach to your company, with AI assistance to help teams analyze problems, develop solutions, and track measurable improvements.
11 fossil plants. One $300 million result.
From 1983 through 1986, fossil forced outages were moving sharply in the wrong direction while Florida’s population was growing by nearly one-third. FP&L began planning another generating facility. The approach behind One Bite (Hoshin Planning) connected company priorities to focused team assignments across all 11 fossil plants, addressing hundreds of separate causes. By 1989, those combined improvements recovered enough capacity to avoid building new generating units—saving customers $300 million (about $810 million in today’s dollars, using August 2026 prices).
Trust revealed the real work.
Reducing distribution outages began by earning enough trust for linemen to speak honestly about grounding practices. Teams improved how grounding rods were installed, built protective cages that kept birds away from transformers, and completed hundreds of other focused improvements. Every work order carried a suggestion form on the back, so each lineman knew the vision and could improve the system while doing the job. Together, those one-bite improvements moved the indicator.
Two nuclear indicators. One focused response.
Nuclear performance became a strategic priority in 1987. FP&L focused its teams on the problems—and the dramatic results followed.
THE SYSTEM-LEVEL RESULT
No teams were assigned to move these two indicators.
Lower cost and higher customer satisfaction were the byproducts of all the focused improvement work above—proving the value equation.
THE VALUE EQUATION
Lower cost.
Waste, failures, and rework came out of the system. Costs changed direction.
THE CUSTOMER RESULT
Higher satisfaction.
Customers experienced the accumulated result of thousands of improvements.
Each chart shows the published FP&L quality indicator and its favorable direction. Together they show a managed system—not one isolated project. The inflation comparison uses the 1989 annual-average and August 2026 BLS Consumer Price Index. Team participation and avoided generating costs reported in the Congressional Record, November 1989.
600suggestions · 1987
→9,000suggestions · 1988
→25,000suggestions · 1989
1,800+active teams · 1989
At FP&L, implementable solutions grew from 600 per year to 25,000 two years later, helping drive down the corporate indicators. One Bite brings that same opportunity to every employee’s pocket.
Have an idea for a better way? Capture it while it’s fresh.
Speak your idea into the One Bite app on your phone, then get back to work. Later, work with AI to develop it into a solid solution proposal for your supervisor and quality lead team.
Submit it, follow its progress, and watch your good ideas turn into actionable improvements—and, if implemented, earn an entry into the hat.
01 / A LIVING VOICE OF THE CUSTOMER
Know when needs change—and what that means for your business.
Customer conversations recorded with permission, post-sales notes, service evaluations, complaints, and surveys keep the picture current. Bring those needs together with stakeholder requirements, business risks, and obligations in one living record—the Table of Tables.
- 01Listen continuously→
- 02Verify changing needs→
- 03Rank requirements→
- 04Set key priorities→
- 05Benchmark targets→
- 06Review and respond
Leadership focuses the organization on a small set of indicators—seven at FP&L—and benchmarks comparable performance to establish the targets. New or unmet needs flag the affected priorities and processes for human review; strategy does not wait for the next annual planning session.
02 / CONNECT STRATEGY TO DAILY WORK
Build the ability to act before you pass the ball.
Executives own the core processes. Managers own the subprocesses. Employees learn scientific problem solving. One Bite connects company priorities to team assignments (Hoshin planning). Leaders and teams agree on targets, resources, and what each team can deliver.
- 01Own core processes→
- 02Manage subprocesses→
- 03Train problem solvers→
- 04Agree commitments→
- 05Investigate and act→
- 06Verify and sustain
AI asks questions appropriate to the stage, helps make actual work visible, and supports analysis using approved evidence. People confirm the need, verify causes, approve changes, and check results. Lead teams connect executives with supervisors, commission task teams for specific issues, and coordinate cross-functional teams when a problem spans departments. Small groups of functional supervisors can develop an A3 proposal for lead-team review. Every team member earns an entry into the hat when the team’s solution is implemented. Those results return to the executive indicators, so leaders can see the remaining gap and adjust the plan.
03 / IMPROVE, INNOVATE, AND GROW
Use the time you recover to build what comes next.
Hold the gains, share solutions across the organization, and reinvest in learning. Quick suggestions are one way to contribute. Larger problems need trained teams; new products and services move through a separate innovation pipeline, with customer testing and leadership review.
- 01Remove recurring waste→
- 02Share proven solutions→
- 03Develop your people→
- 04Release capacity→
- 05Test new ideas→
- 06Serve new needs
Close the loop: what customers experience after a change becomes evidence for the next decision. Track cost, safety, quality, and service—not savings alone. Released capacity and stronger skills create room for new products, new markets, and better service.
THE BOOK / MICHAEL CARSON
Final edits underway
The Last Human Skill
Human Creativity and Proven Improvement Methods Powered by AI
One Bite continuously listens for the changing needs of customers, employees, owners, shareholders, and regulators.
Give your teams the authority to recommend improvements and AI assistance to turn what they know—and what the data reveals—into implementable solutions that lead to more efficient ways of working, higher profits, better products and services, and measurable improvements in customer and employee satisfaction.
The person doing the work sees things management never sees. This book makes the case for developing that human creativity and judgment—with stories from FP&L and Michael’s work across 33 organizations. Use AI to help people investigate, improve, and create, while keeping them responsible for the decisions.
Remove the work, not the worker.
Remove unnecessary work, develop people’s skills, and put the capacity you recover into better service, new products, and growth.
Invite Michael to a podcast or interviewJUST IN TIME LEARNING
Build capability without rebuilding an entire training department.
FP&L created its quality curriculum from scratch. One Bite’s software design brings tools, examples, and AI-assisted coaching into the work, alongside the training people need to participate. A share of verified improvement savings supports further employee development.
Historical training figures reported in John J. Hudiburg’s Winning with Quality: The FPL Story.
BUILT ON EXPERIENCE
Learned inside the transformation. Applied for three decades.
Michael Carson learned the system while FP&L pursued the Deming Prize, then carried those principles into service, manufacturing, and government organizations. In the Deming Prize year, the team he led was selected as one of FP&L’s top four and recognized in the President’s Cup.
IS IT A FIT?
Start where you are. Build the connected system.
- You hear from customers, but changing needs do not reliably reach strategy and daily work.
- Your priorities are clear, but process owners and trained teams need a way to act together.
- Your people know the work, but recurring problems consume the time they could use to improve and innovate.
What could your organization create if it spent less time fighting the same fires?
Keep the systems that already work. One Bite’s integration approach connects existing CRM, operating, and quality systems, with company-controlled data and human approval. The starting point differs for a new company, an established enterprise, or a public-service organization; the discipline stays connected.
Implementation comes first. Work with Michael to apply the management system. One Bite’s software is being developed to support that work and will be refined through implementation results—not presented as a finished, off-the-shelf platform.
Request a conversationLET’S TALK ABOUT YOUR ORGANIZATION
What would you point your people toward?
Start with your customers, your priorities, and the work that keeps getting in the way. The assessment helps Michael prepare for that conversation.
For podcasts, interviews, or questions about The Last Human Skill, email Michael directly. No company assessment is needed.
Implementation and media inquiries welcome