Improvement Insights Blog

Do you remember the first time you used the tools of quality to get that first jolt of satisfaction from solving a problem? Here’s how to get newcomers to that first jolt a lot more quickly.

“Hi, I’m Jay Arthur, author of “Lean Six Sigma Demystified” and QI Macros [software].

“When I first got into Quality Improvement I had some great training, and then started trying to do some projects. Man, I don’t know… I struggled for probably… it was almost 18 months before I actually… One day there was an issue that we were having around false fire alarms (which were being caused by cell phones; we didn’t know that). Anyway, I sat down with the building manager and in about 45 minutes we walked through her data, looked at what’s going on, figured out that cell phones must be causing these false fire alarms, and I got that jolt of satisfaction. Man, just that, “Ooo la la! Oh, man! We figured out something that was unknown!” Right? Even in the rest of the telephony and the industry at the time, it was like WOW.

“I don’t know when your jolt of satisfaction started (“Hey, I’ve got to do more of this!”), but that’s a great thing. If you think about it, how do we… the way we do it now, it’s like, “Well, you have to go to two weeks or four weeks of training,” and it takes a long time to get to the point where you might actually work on your own data and solve your own problem and get that jolt of satisfaction.

“Unfortunately, humans are a lot like animals, right? We want that jolt now. All right? We just… now and so, that’s why I created the Agile Process Innovation system, which is how we take Lean and Six Sigma and teach it in a half a day, apply it in half a day, and get results in one day. One day, right? So that’s where we get those people to that jolt of satisfaction. The sooner you can get them to that jolt of satisfaction, the more excited they’re going to be about Quality Improvement. The longer it takes to get to that jolt of satisfaction, they’re going to say, “It takes too long to get that little cookie…” or something you’re supposed to get.

“All right? So that’s my Improvement Insight for this week. Let’s get people to that jolt of satisfaction much more quickly, and we can do it by radically changing how we approach the implementation of Quality Improvement. Let’s create a hassle-free America; hassle-free healthcare. Let’s go out and improve something this week.”