Improvement Insights Blog
Learn to Ask for Help!
Even with QI Macros, people sometimes try to do things the hard way without thinking there might be an easier way. One user waited until the ASQ WCQI convention to ask for help. We could have saved her a lot of time if she had emailed or chatted months ago.
“Hi, I’m Jay Arthur, author of “Lean Six Sigma Demystified” and QI Macros [software].
“I was out at the American Society for Quality conference this last week and one of our groups of users came up and one of the women said, “Well, I update these 91 control charts every week and it takes me like a day and a half, and isn’t there an easier way?” I said, “Well, have you seen the QI Macros Control Chart Dashboards where you just put in all your numbers and then create a dashboard with all your charts?”
“She was looking at me like I was talking a foreign language but then I demonstrated to her how it could work and how she could put all 91 charts into a dashboard, just update the numbers, hit refresh and she’d be done. She was amazed.
“Now, this is one of the things that I keep seeing: people hesitate. Right? Why did this woman wait until the conference to ask me this question? Why didn’t she send us an email, talk to the support team, get on the chat line, right? Don’t stay stuck. Don’t wait. Don’t hesitate.
“Guess what? If you send us an email or get on a chat with us, we’re more than happy to help you try and figure out what to do with your data or how to make things easier. I have a bad case of “let’s make things super easy” and “it used to be hard and it’s not hard anymore.” Get over it. The nuts and bolts of process Improvement are not hard.
“So that’s my Improvement Insight: Let’s go out and ask for help, ask for a mentor, ask for somebody. Talk to us. I don’t care, right? But don’t say stuck. Don’t wait. Waiting is just not useful.
“Let’s go out and improve something this week.”
