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Improvement Insights Blog
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I love people who fight the good fight of quality improvement. Problem solving isn’t sexy, but it’s vital to corporate health. Hugs!
“Hi, I’m Jay Arthur. If you’ve been watching my Improvement Insight videos, you’re probably going, “Gee, Jay, you’re sharing all this stuff… What’s that all about?”
“Well, it turns out if you don’t know it by now… I love people who do Quality Improvement. They’re out chasing the big ugly things that are causing too much hassle in America and trying to eliminate them and eliminate waste and eliminate all the stuff that goes into landfills and into sewers and all kinds of stuff like this.
Continue Reading "I Love Improvers"
Posted by Jay Arthur in Improvement Insights, Lean, Six Sigma.
There are a number of fears that make people hesitant to share data and or let you make improvements. Here’s why.
“Not everybody is in love with this whole idea of improvement. There are people who, when you come to them and say, “I need your data about such-and-such,” they don’t want you looking at their data because they don’t want to look stupid. If they’re the manager of that organization and they’ve had all this data and they can’t find what I call the “invisible low-hanging fruit,” they think that they’re stupid or something. No, they just don’t know how to analyze the data.
Continue Reading "Not Everyone Likes Quality Improvement"
Posted by Jay Arthur in Improvement Insights, Lean, Six Sigma.
While some European cities were devastated by fire, Holland has had to deal with flooding. What have they done to mistake-proof flooding since 1953?
“Hi, this is Jay Arthur, author of “Lean Six Sigma for Hospitals” and the QI Macros [software]. “I recently had an Improvement Insight video about how they were burning down the capitals of Scandinavia repeatedly until the king said “Thou shalt build thy buildings out of stone” and so that stopped the fire problem. I discovered there was a 60 Minutes article on a recent Sunday, and they were talking about Holland.
“Back in the 50s there was a massive flood and it tore down a lot of barriers because a lot of Holland is below sea level.
Continue Reading "Flood-Proofing in Holland"
Posted by Jay Arthur in Improvement Insights, Lean, Six Sigma.
Spending too much time fighting fires in your business? Maybe it’s time to fireproof your business. Here’s how:
“Hi, this is Jay Arthur, author of “Lean Six Sigma for Hospitals” and the QI Macros [software].
“My wife and I recently cruised Scandinavia, and in almost every city where the tour guides took us around they told us the same story: “So Oslo (Stockholm, Copenhagen, St. Petersburg) back in the 1700s, the city had built up but they were all built out of wood, and of course they heated everything with wood or coal or something, and…” You know: Boom.
Continue Reading "Fireproof Your Business"
Posted by Jay Arthur in Improvement Insights, Lean, Six Sigma.
I was on a cruise and almost everyone had an explanation for why things weren’t going as planned. Almost everyone said or implied: “It’s not my fault!” Isn’t it time to take responsibility for reporting all faults whether it’s yours or not?
“Hi, this is Jay Arthur, author of “Lean Six Sigma Demystified” and the QI Macros [software].
“I was on this Cruise in Scandinavia and we were in Oslo and we had to take a train over to Bergen to get to the cruise ship, and they said, “Well, unfortunately they’re working on the tracks and so we have to take a two hour bus ride to get to the remaining four hours of train ride.”
Continue Reading "It’s Not My Fault!"
Posted by Jay Arthur in Improvement Insights, Lean, Six Sigma.
To create a Quality Culture you will first need to be out of sync, then become the “cool kid” that everyone wants to sync with. Here’s how:
“Hi, this is Jay Arthur, author of “Lean Six Sigma Demystified” and the QI Macros [software].
“Seth Godin had a blog recently that I think applies to us. Here’s what he said: He said, “Culture, by its very definition, isn’t the work of being right. It’s the work of being in sync.”
“When I was growing up, all the hippies gathered in Haight Ashbury; they weren’t wrong, they were just being in sync.
Continue Reading "Cultures Want To Stay In Sync"
Posted by Jay Arthur in Agile Lean Six Sigma, Improvement Insights, Lean, Six Sigma.
21st Century Quality is changing how companies implement Lean Six Sigma. Here’s how:
“Hi, I’m Jay Arthur, author of “Lean Six Sigma Demystified” and the QI Macros [software].
“Over the last couple of years I’ve been going all of the Quality conferences, and I’ve seen some presentations that I think point us in a useful direction in terms of how to go about implementing Quality and getting results more quickly, and to accelerate, to develop some exponential growth in terms of how we achieve these results.
“About a year and a half ago I was at the Lean Six Sigma conference in Phoenix , and I saw Christus Health, and they talked about how they started out trying to do the traditional “Big Sigma Black Belt / Green Belt” whole thing, but they weren’t getting any results.
Continue Reading "Agile Lean Six Sigma Yellow Belt Training for Results"
Posted by Jay Arthur in Agile Lean Six Sigma, Improvement Insights, Lean, QI Macros, Six Sigma.
The keynote speaker at ASQ World Conference on Quality Improvement reiterated the exponential change challenge. It’s critical to quality professionals everywhere. Here’s what he said:
“Hi, I’m Jay Arthur, author of “Lean Six Sigma for Hospitals” and the QI Macros [software].
“I was at the ASQ World Conference in scenic Fort Worth, and oddly enough they had the same keynote speaker they had at the Lean Six Sigma conference in February in Phoenix. Now, I don’t know if ASQ is trying to save money by getting a bulk deal or if they’re trying to send out this message. This guy was talking about how business is changing exponentially, right – not glacially, exponentially.
Continue Reading "Exponential Quality 2.0"
Posted by Jay Arthur in Agile Lean Six Sigma, Improvement Insights, Lean, Six Sigma.
How you look at things can make all the difference in the results you achieve in the world. Here’s why:
“Hi, I’m Jay Arthur, author of “Lean Six Sigma Demystified” and the QI Macros [software].
“I just got back from a whirlwind cruise of Scandinavia: Norway, Finland, Sweden, Copenhagen, Germany, St. Petersburg in Russia, Estonia… and one of the things that struck me about this is as you go around, how similar we all are. We all want to make a good living doing meaningful work, we want to raise successful children, we want to have our own home, all of these things we’re similar, right?
Continue Reading "Sameness or Difference?"
Posted by Jay Arthur in Improvement Insights, Lean, Six Sigma.
What’s the easiest way to get management support for Lean Six Sigma?
“Hi, this is Jay Arthur, author of “Lean Six Sigma Demystified” and the QI Macros [software.]
“If you’ve been around Six Sigma or TQM and all these other things, you often hear it said (and you know it’s one of Deming’s 14 points) that you need management commitment and support… to get results – to get anything going.
“I’m going to disagree. I’m going to suggest to you that if you start getting results and start improving things and saving time, saving money, saving lives using the tools of quality, you will get management support.
Continue Reading "Which Came First, Management Support or Results?"
Posted by Jay Arthur in Agile Lean Six Sigma, Improvement Insights, Lean, Six Sigma.
