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Are you smart lazy? It might give you better results faster. Here’s how:
Download my free ebook Agile Process Innovation.
“Hi, I’m Jay Arthur, author of “Lean Six Sigma Demystified,” “Lean Six Sigma For Hospitals” and QI Macros [software].
“I will tell you that I’m basically lazy. Just like all humans, I don’t want to work any harder than I have to. The other day I ran across a phrase called ‘smart laziness’… smart laziness. Now guess what? That means that you use your smarts to figure out ways that you can do things more easily.
Continue Reading "Smart Laziness"
Posted by Jay Arthur in Improvement Insights.
Over 120 people signed up for this webinar, with Jay Arthur demonstrating some of the software’s most frequently used tools and answering questions asked by attendees.
If you saw a feature demonstrated in the webinar that might have been added to QI Macros after the version you’re using (for instance, the Improvement Project Wizard or the automated Process Change Wizard), you may need to purchase an upgrade to bring your QI Macros to the current version.
Send an email to support@qimacros.com and we can help, for instance in generating a quote to upgrade all the users at your organization or just guiding you through the purchasing process.
Continue Reading "1/9/24 QI Macros webinar"
Posted by Jay Arthur in Jay Arthur Blog.
Line charts with trend lines are fake news. Here’s why:
Download my free ebook Agile Process Innovation.
“Hi, I’m Jay Arthur, author of “Lean Six Sigma For Hospitals” and QI Macros [software].
“I was at the Institute for Healthcare Improvement conference, and I go through and I look at all the post-improvement posters that are out there. I saw “Nurse Betty” (that’s what I’m going to call her) and she was standing in front of a poster and she was studying it. She was wearing a nice blue pantsuit [and] comfortable shoes because it’s a lot of walking in these conferences, but she was staring at it like crazy.
Continue Reading "Line Charts with Trend Lines are Fake News"
Posted by Jay Arthur in Improvement Insights.
Are you admiring the problems in your company’s performance? Stop Admiring the Problem. Here’s how:
Download my free ebook Agile Process Innovation.
“Hi, I’m Jay Arthur, author of “Lean Six Sigma For Hospitals” and “Agile Process Innovation.”
“I worked with a beverage company, and one of their teams had a room and they were all set up and they were all excited about what they were doing. When I got down to it, all they were doing each week was special cause intervention / correction. Right? It was just firefighting, right? Firefighting is not quality improvement, right?
Continue Reading "Stop Admiring the Problem"
Posted by Jay Arthur in Improvement Insights.
Deming and Juran spent decades evangelizing quality improvement. Isn’t it time we all did? Here’s how:
Download my free ebook Agile Process Innovation.
“Hi, I’m Jay Arthur, author of “Lean Six Sigma Demystified” and “Agile Process Innovation” as well as QI Macros [software].
“You know, Deming and Juran spent decades trying to spread the word of Quality, right? It’s here and there and it’s in certain manufacturing industries and so on, but in general it’s not a common phrase, right? Shewhart charts were invented almost a hundred years ago. Why aren’t they in use everywhere?
Continue Reading "Become a Quality Evangelist"
Posted by Jay Arthur in Improvement Insights.
A statistician using a bar chart is like a surgeon using a butter knife. Here’s why:
Download my free ebook Agile Process Innovation.
“Hi, I’m Jay Arthur, author of “Lean Six Sigma Demystified” and QI Macros [software].
“I was recently perusing the American Statistical Association’s magazine, and they had some posters that were done by kids in K through 12. This one was an analysis of what kind of charts and graphs are used in poster presentations at statistical conferences. They found that more often than not, the winners had bar charts, and that bar charts were very popular because of their simplicity.
Continue Reading "Statisticians Using Bar Charts"
Posted by Jay Arthur in Improvement Insights.
People have to know the WHY in order to learn something more effectively.
Download my free ebook Agile Process Innovation.
“Hi, I’m Jay Arthur, author of “Lean Six Sigma Demystified” and “Agile Process Innovation” as well as QI Macros [software].
“I was working on [building] a tool called Multinomial Logistic Regression (if that doesn’t choke you up I don’t know what would), but it’s a way of starting to forecast things; people asked for it so I built it. I was telling my wife about this and she said, “Oh, and you tell me you’re not a statistician!”
Continue Reading "People Have to Know the WHY"
Posted by Jay Arthur in Improvement Insights.
Yogi Berra is often quoted. When asked how he came up with these nuggets of wisdom, he replied: “I use simplexity.” What’s simplexity and how can we use it in quality improvement?
“Hi, I’m Jay Arthur, author of “Agile Process Innovation” as well as QI Macros [software].
“A friend of mine and I went to see the Yogi Berra movie and it was all about Yogi. He won like [10] World Series rings and… what a guy, right? But he was always known for ‘Yogi-isms,’ right? One of his Yogi-isms was: “If they don’t want to come out to the park, how are you going to stop them?”
Continue Reading "Embrace Simplexity"
Posted by Jay Arthur in Improvement Insights.
If you try to learn everything about any topic, including Lean Six Sigma, you are more likely to become confused than productive. Here’s why:
“Hi, I’m Jay Arthur, author of “Lean Six Sigma Demystified” and QI Macros [software].
“You know, when I went to college I got 148 credits in systems engineering, but actually I’ve only ever used four of those credits: FORTRAN and CDC Assembler Level Programming. You know, that’s all I’ve done in my life is write code, right? So, differential equations, Laplace transforms, all that stuff. I learned all kinds of things… hey, never used that.
Continue Reading "Stop Learning Everything"
Posted by Jay Arthur in Improvement Insights.
Ever heard a word or phrase that you’ve never heard before? Might just be jargon for something you already know. Here’s how to avoid being baffled by jargon:
“Hi, I’m Jay Arthur, author of “Lean Six Sigma For Hospitals” and the QI Macros [software].
“Very often, we get calls from people and they [ask], “Do you have an XYZ chart / plot / whatever / stat?” It’s like… well, I’ve never heard of it before. Somebody called up and said, “Do you have a titration plot?” I thought, “I’ve never heard of it that way,” but I went out and did a little Googling.
Continue Reading "Don’t Be Baffled by Jargon"
Posted by Jay Arthur in Improvement Insights.
