Improvement Insights Blog
Joseph Juran – Let’s Get Off the Dime!
In 2004, Joseph Juran thought the U.S. was falling behind in quality. Here’s what he had to say:
“Hi, I’m Jay Arthur, author of “Lean Six Sigma For Hospitals” and the QI Macros [software].
“I was again looking at this article about Juran, and one of the things he said in here is he felt that Japan was the quality leader and they’re bringing along South Korea, China and other places. America only has the lead in a few Industries. He says:
“We need to get off the dime. Breaking the impasse is not going to happen easily. We’re not as bad as the Japanese were before and just after World War II, but we’re just adequate.”
“Juran said it 20 years ago and I think it’s still true today: we need to get off the dime, right? Especially in health care, right? If one out of every two patients suffer some sort of a preventable harm, guess what? Let’s get off the dime. Let’s start moving.
“Let’s simplify, streamline, optimize and improve until there is zero harm. To get to zero harm you’re going to need control charts to sustain the new levels of performance because otherwise it’s not going to be possible. A lot of people think we can get to zero harm with just gut feel, common sense, trial and error… nonsense! You can’t get there without tools, all right?
“So that’s my Improvement Insight. Let’s go out and improve something this week and next week, the week after that and the week after that forever until we can get to a hassle-free America, hassle-free Health Care, a hassle-free planet.
“Let’s go out and improve something this week.”
