Improvement Insights Blog
What do we do? Do what you do.
These are uncertain times. What’s the best way (both psychologically and as a group) to get though this? By you continuing to do what you do, whether it’s writing, coding, or continuing to improve the quality of the processes around you.
(And just to be clear, when I say, “Go out and do what you do,” I don’t mean to literally “go out” if you don’t have to… it’s just an expression. Please continue to take whatever steps are necessary to keep yourself and the people around you safe.)
“Hi, I’m Jay Arthur, author “Lean Six Sigma for Hospitals” and the QI Macros [software].
“I don’t know where you were on 9/11, but I was at a management retreat at a dude ranch in southern Utah. We were there in the morning when we saw the second plane fly into the towers and we were all kind of freaking out, but we gathered with our facilitator and our facilitator said something very interesting.
“He said, “What terrorists want is to paralyze us into inaction.” He said, “We’re going to spend the morning, we’re going to light a fire and keep that burning for the victims, but what we’re going to do is after lunch, we’re going to get going.” For the next four and a half days, we just went on like the world was normal (even though there were no planes in the sky).
“I want you to think about the Coronavirus as being like a terrorist; it’s paralyzed us into inaction, right? We can’t go anywhere, we’ve shut down all of our games, we’ve shut down way more things than we did during 9/11. I think his advice was very good, which is: “We’re going to set that aside and we’re going to get on with our lives and do the things that we’re supposed to do.”
“I’m going to encourage you, that in this time that seems uncertain and paralyzing, the thing to do is to just go out and start doing what you do, whatever that might be. For me, it might be coding or writing, for somebody else it might be cooking, for somebody else it might be something else.
“Go out and do what you do… and do it well. That’s my Improvement Insight for this week. Let’s go out and improve something.”
