Improvement Insights Blog
Become a Friction Fixer
You don’t always need to do a big Lean Six Sigma project. Maybe it’s enough to make things faster and easier, but in some cases, slower and harder. Here’s why:
“Hi, I’m Jay Arthur, author of “Lean Six Sigma For Hospitals” and QI Macros [software].
“A friend of mine recommended this book called “The Friction Project,” and they talk about how in companies… Arthur’s Law [applies]: ‘The unexamined process gets even slower, [more] sluggish, more error-prone with time.’ They talk about the idea of becoming a friction fixer.
“Now, this isn’t like the deep nested stuff that we would think about in Lean Six Sigma, but it’s how we think about every day; every day when we’re working with someone. The idea here is two things: You want to find ways to make things faster and easier, so let’s get rid of the friction. But then there are [situations] where people can easily make mistakes and we want to make that harder and slower.
“What?! We want to make some things harder and slower? Yeah. Right, because we don’t want people just rushing in and blowing by the whole idea. I thought that was an interesting thing.
“And he talks about the ‘addition sickness’ where people have a tendency to add rather than subtract when you’re changing a process. That’s kind of silly. Then you have to decide that you’re accountable for friction fixing. We don’t always need full-on Lean projects or Six Sigma projects, maybe we can just simplify and streamline something just a little bit.
“You know, I think this is the option for us to start to think about [how] it’s a craft, and we can start to just learn, practice and develop. I think Quality Improvement people are always having that thought: how can I make this faster, better, cheaper, more easy for people, but I also like this other idea, which is we have to make [situations] where people can rush in and make mistakes… we have to make that a little bit harder and slower. Right? When you start your car, you have to step on the brake to make it start: that’s slowing you down, making you think.
“So that’s my Improvement Insight. Let’s go out and improve something this week. Let’s make it faster and easier… or maybe let’s make it a little harder, a little slower, to prevent those mistakes.”
