Improvement Insights Blog
Ask for the Tools You Need to Do Quality Improvement
Employees often try to make do with whatever they have instead of asking for the tools the need. Here’s what to do about it.
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“Hi, I’m Jay Arthur, author of “Lean Six Sigma Demystified” and QI Macros [software].
” One of my employees was having trouble with her computer, but for some reason she was afraid to ask, and she kept trying to fiddle with it, to figure out whatever was going wrong. And she drug one of our other employees who’s more technical in on it… and I said, ‘What are you guys doing?’ ‘We’re afraid to ask for another computer.’ What? Why are you afraid to ask for another computer? You know, they’re probably 700 bucks and we can just buy one and plug it in tomorrow. WHAT?
“One of the things I’ve noticed is people are afraid (almost) to ask for hardware and software (like QI Macros) to automate your job. Don’t be afraid. If it’ll make you 10 times faster at whatever you’re doing, and very often the people we talk to say it saves them 75% of their documentation time, well, in a very short period of time, that’s going to pay off. And then when you make improvements, it’s going to pay off even more.
“So if you’re afraid to ask for improvements, then what you need to do is go ask your boss and come up with a business case. We’ve written business cases that are out on our website, and we can connect you with one of those that says, ‘if you spend this, I can give you that, It’ll save me time, and I can get more stuff done, and I can actually make more improvements,’ and all kinds of stuff like that.
“So stop trying to make do… stop trying to make do. Go buy a new something or other, right? Get rid of the old, and in with the new.
“That’s my improvement insight for this. Let’s improve something this very week.”
