Improvement Insights Blog

Learning Lean Six Sigma is slow and often confusing. How do you overcome the frustration barrier?

“Hi, I’m Jay Arthur, author of “Lean Six Sigma Demystified,” “Agile Process Innovation” and QI Macros [software].

“In the book “The First 20 Hours” Josh Kaufman talks about how in any learning thing there’s a frustration barrier, and it can take 20 hours to break through that frustration barrier.

“I see that very often in Lean and Six Sigma where you’re learning this stuff and then starting to apply it. There’s a frustration, right? Learning how to use some tools, there’s a frustration barrier. How can we help people break through that in a more timely fashion?

“QI Macros’ Control Chart Wizards and Stat Wizards and other things help people break through that barrier of selecting a tool and getting a result and starting to do some analysis. That’s why I came up with Agile Process Innovation, right? Hacking Lean and Six Sigma for results. There are ways to go about this that will get us to the outcome we want in a much more timely fashion.

“So what can we do to help people break through that barrier – their frustration barrier – to get to the point where they start to feel competent and can start to do improvements? I’ve done it in a matter of hours with teams.

“I can tell you when there’s a guy sitting in the room and he’s got a John Deere hat on, he’s got a plug of chewing tobacco in his [cheek], and he’s got his laptop out and he’s starting to use QI Macros to analyze the data from the plant they work in, I [think] “All right! Through the frustration barrier!” Here was a guy I thought might not get through there and he did. Then he helped everybody else who was struggling.

“This is the thing: people help other people who struggle and help them get through the frustration barrier once THEY’VE been through it. What can you do to help people get through the frustration barrier about Quality Improvement?

“That’s my Improvement Insight. Let’s go out and improve something this week.”