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Latest "Improvement Insights" Posts
In Seoul, South Korea, I realized I was born during the Korean war. WWII affected my life. Having been to the sites of major attacks, there are lessons to be learned. Here are my thoughts.
“Well hi, I’m Jay Arthur, author of “Lean Six Sigma Demystified” and QI Macros [software].
“I’m here in Seoul, South Korea. We just finished up a cruise of Japan, which was very interesting. I realized my wife and I were both born in 1951, which was right in the middle of the Korean War. That was 70-plus years ago. I think because we were born 6 years after World War II, it was very impactful for me, anyway; I don’t know about my wife.
Continue Reading "Hiroshima and Nagasaki 80th Anniversary"
Posted by Jay Arthur in Improvement Insights.
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.
Continue Reading "Become a Friction Fixer"
Posted by Jay Arthur in Improvement Insights.
Arthur’s Law: The unexamined process becomes increasingly sluggish and error-prone.
Download my free ebook, Agile Process Innovation-Hacking Lean Six Sigma for Results.
“Hi, I’m Jay Arthur, author of “Lean Six Sigma For Hospitals” and QI Macros [software].
“I want to introduce you to what I call ‘Arthur’s Law.’ That’s my law, which is ‘The unexamined process becomes increasingly sluggish and error-prone.’
“Things don’t just stay [static], they just get more sluggish and more error-prone. People add more workarounds, and the workarounds cause more defects and mistakes and errors and waste and rework and lost profit and patient harm and whatever it is.
Continue Reading "Arthur’s Law of Process Improvement"
Posted by Jay Arthur in Improvement Insights.
After a hundred years, people still aren’t using control charts. Here’s why:
Download my free eBook, Agile Process Innovation-Hacking Lean Six Sigma for Results.
“Well hi, I’m Jay Arthur, author of “Lean Six Sigma Demystified” and QI Macros [software].
“Control charts just turned a hundred years old, but if you look at the adoption rate for control charts it’s been pretty flat. You see it mainly in manufacturing, you don’t see it much in healthcare.
“We attend two big healthcare quality conferences: At the Magnet conference, out of hundreds of posters, 89% use line and bar charts (which I consider to be last-century technology).
Continue Reading "Why Aren’t People Using Control Charts? A Root Cause Analysis"
Posted by Jay Arthur in Improvement Insights.
What do you need to win 80% of the time? Here’s a surprising answer from analysis of top tennis pros.
“Well hi, I’m Jay Arthur, author of “Lean Six Sigma Demystified” and QI Macros [software].
“I get the… American Statistical Association’s magazine, and they had kind of an interesting article about tennis, of all things. It turns out that people like Federer and Nadal and Djokovic and everybody else win 80% of their matches, but they only win slightly more than half of the points they played. So Federer and Nadal and Djokovic, their win percentage were 54% of the points; Andy Murray: 53%; Pete Sampras: 54% and Andre Agassi: 53%.
Continue Reading "Business Lessons from Tennis Pros"
Posted by Jay Arthur in Improvement Insights.
Sometimes you have to forget something to learn something new. Sometimes you have to try to solve a problem to be able to learn how to correctly solve problems.
Download my free eBook, Agile Process Innovation-Hacking Lean Six Sigma for Results.
“Hi, I’m Jay Arthur, author of “Lean Six Sigma For Hospitals” and QI Macros [software].
“I read kind of an interesting book recently, it’s called “Make It Stick,” which is the science of successful learning. In there, the author argues that remembering and learning and forgetting are key pieces of all that, and sometimes you have to forget things to be able to learn something new.
Continue Reading "Importance of Forgetting in Learning"
Posted by Jay Arthur in Improvement Insights.
The U.S. has a shortage of 500,000 nurses. It also has a shortage of Quality Improvement experts. Here’s what to do about it.
Download my free ebook, Agile Process Innovation-Hacking Lean Six Sigma for Results.
“Hi, I’m Jay Arthur, author of “Lean Six Sigma For Hospitals” and QI Macros [software].
“My friend LeAnn Thiemann wrote the book “Chicken Soup for the Nurse’s Soul,” and she has a whole platform which she’s been working on for a long time, because we’re short about a half a million nurses in the United States of America… a half a million.
Continue Reading "Nursing Shortage and Quality Improvement"
Posted by Jay Arthur in Improvement Insights.
Heat Maps cause wild goose chases which lead to poor decisions and bad outcomes. Control Charts are the antidote. Here’s why:
Download my free ebook, Agile Process Innovation-Hacking Lean Six Sigma for Results.
“Hi, I’m Jay Arthur, author of “Lean Six Sigma For Hospitals” “Agile Process Innovation”and QI Macros [software].
“I still find that people out there are still trying to use heat maps to notice when things are shifting. Heat maps are like a snapshot of any given space-time, monthly, weekly, whatever it is, of what may be out of whack or in whack compared to certain goals somebody set somewhere.
Continue Reading "Control Charts vs Heat Maps"
Posted by Jay Arthur in Improvement Insights.
Most people are still using line and bar charts to measure performance. Line and bar charts, especially ones with trendlines harm your customers and your company. They harm patients and hospitals. Here’s why:
Download my free ebook, Agile Process Innovation-Hacking Lean Six Sigma for Results.
“Hi, I’m Jay Arthur, author of “Lean Six Sigma For Hospitals” and QI Macros [software].
“Are line and bar charts harming your company, your hospital, your whatever (your country, even)? Line charts are really good for tracking overall trends like reduction in infant mortality, increase in world literacy rates, but [they’re] not very good for detecting what’s going on in your company.
Continue Reading "Are Line and Bar Charts Harming Your Customers and Company?"
Posted by Jay Arthur in Improvement Insights.
All too often I hear people say: “It’s just human error.” No it’s not. Here’s why:
Download my free ebook, Agile Process Innovation-Hacking Lean Six Sigma for Results.
“Hi, I’m Jay Arthur, author of “Lean Six Sigma For Hospitals” and QI Macros [software].
“I was talking to somebody the other day, and we were talking about things in general, and they said, “Well, you know, it’s just human error.” And I said, no, stop. There’s no such thing as human error.
“Now, I know that’s a limiting sort of thought, but I believe that systems let people make mistakes.
Continue Reading "Human Error and System Design"
Posted by Jay Arthur in Improvement Insights.
