Sue Kozlowski

The time has come for me to bid you adieu. I have really enjoyed the opportunity to share my thoughts and get feedback from you, so I thank you for allowing me to discuss my opinions about lean, six sigma, change management, leadership, and healthcare. It’s been almost 5 years to the day since Michael […]

I received a very nice comment today from a team member of a lean project. She said, “You know, I didn’t want to be on this team. My boss made me attend. I didn’t think anyone was going to care about my opinion, and I wasn’t sure what I could contribute. Also I was very […]

I have a new saying for the new year: There’s an “L” before lean, and it’s Leadership. I’ve been saying this because I want to emphasize that lean is not the magic bullet that will cure disgruntled employees, overwhelmed staff, and broken processes… without effort from leaders. Over the years, as I have given lean […]

My son played football in high school, and one of the things that “football parents” were asked to do was to work at the stadium concession stand a few times during the season. Lucky me, I got to work at the cash register. This included filling orders for candy, gum, and drinks as well as […]

When I teach lean concepts, it’s easy to talk about the concepts of timing the process steps. Most people nod their heads and say, yes, they get it. The idea is easy – each step has a start and a stop. But when I work with teams, it doesn’t seem to be so easy to work […]

OK, we’ve got our kaizen team going full speed ahead, and one of the improvements will be to replace the central printer with individual desk printers to avoid interruptions and transportation waste. Workers won’t have to get up and walk to get their forms. Hooray! “But,” one of the workers says, “we like getting up […]

I’ve used the phrase “closest to the customer” when explaining some aspects of lean – for example, starting improvements with the process closest to the customer outcome then working backwards in the process. Lately, I’ve been using the phrase “closest to the worker” to get people to think about removing non-value-added effort from out processes. […]

Ina recent blog post, I mentioned a Waste Walk – and got a few queries about what that is. I see that I have assumed that everyone’s lean toolkit has the same tools, so I apologize for my assumption! Here’s some more information. Most lean approaches use a list of7 or 8 wastes to describe […]

I teach a full-day workshop called “Lean Boot Camp.” It’s an introduction to small-scope projects and tools, the kind you can do as a beginner like 5S and a Waste Walk. I use a phrase that I picked up somewhere: “The lean approach is simply having the ability to see waste, and the courage to […]

I’ve participated in a lot of projects where one of the first questions is: How are our competitors doing it? Are there any benchmarks or nationally-recognized “best practices?” While this may give a team a sense of security, or help to push stretch goals, sometimes I think it stifles creativity. If we are developing, or […]

It’s common for me to have conversations about how to motivate people to accept change. For those of us who are early adopters, it’s not a problem; we kinda like doing something new. But, from those whose favorite radio station isWII-FM*, I hear this song: “This new process looks harder, not easier. In fact, you’re […]

If you are engaged in teaching, whether formally in classes or informally as you facilitate projects, you probably have a few favorite sayings that you like to use toremind people of important points. I take my blog title today from the ancient teacher Aesop, who liked to close his fables (usually stories with animal characters) […]

I never cease to be amazed at the amount of information that’s “out there” on the web. I searched on “Lean Six Sigma” and got about a million hits. “Process Improvement” – 3.6 million.”Change Management” – 6.2 million. “Project Management” – 32 million. But lately I’ve been using an additional source of information-the ever-growing on-line […]

When I teach lean tools, I naturally reference the Toyota Production System and talk about their journey (which they don’t call lean!) as an introduction to the topic. Naturally, in the healthcare setting, I don’t dwell on the assembly-line function too much, but I have always felt that it’s helpful to put the approach in […]

“All or nothin’ at all… Half a love never appealed to me If your heart, it never would yield to me Then I’d rather, rather have nothin’ at all.” (Song composed in 1939 by Arther Altman, lyrics by Jack Lawrence – a big hit for Frank Sinatra) I was thinking of these lyrics the other […]

I have the good fortune to sit in an office right next to a hallway speaker, which has been loudly proclaiming the festive season since the day after Thanksgiving, in about a 4-hour loop. Naturally, I can’t help but think of work-related words as the songs repeat… and repeat… and repeat… Here are some of […]

Lately I have been bombarded with well-meaning, intelligent, conscientious, motivated people asking me how they can get Black Belt certified. They’re not in a Six-Sigma environment; they just want to be able to learn how to improve their processes more effectively. So do they need to be a Black Belt? Here’s what I usually tell […]

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about resistance to change. The RogersAdoption / Innovation curve (innovators, early adopters, early majority, late majority, laggards) is referenced in some form by most people involved in change management. Now, I’m not an innovator myself. My special form of creativity doesn’t manifest itself by coming up with new ideas […]

I had a very nice phone call today, from a colleague who had chatted with me earlier about a current project. She called to say thanks for allowing her to bounce ideas around, which helped her clarify some things about herapproach to the process. Naturally I felt good to receive this feedback, and it made […]

“One of all and all for one!” Or, in the original French, “Tous pour un, un pour tous!” In the story by Alexandre Dumas (1844), the three musketeers, Athos, Porthos, and Aramis, were joined by the musketeer-wannabee D’Artagnan, without whom the first three would have led very boring lives. I was reminded of this the […]

I used to be really annoyed with people who took a wait-and-see approach to change. They’re not resistant, exactly, and they might be classified as “late adopters.” But I could understand active resistance better than passive indifference. Now, however, I have a little different take on things. Because I have realized that if you wait […]

A quote from Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll (Charles Lutwidge Dodgson), 1865: “The White Rabbit put on his spectacles. ‘Where shall I begin, please your Majesty?’ he asked. ‘Begin at the beginning,’ the King said gravely, ’and go on till you come to the end: then stop.’” I am sure I’m not the […]

When I was leading a department, I never thought of myself as a process owner. It wasn’t in my job description, and I never heard anyone used the term. It’s one of those useful concepts that I wish I had known, prior to my Six Sigma and Lean education. Here’s my working definition: The process […]

Well, maybe I have more than one favorite tool – but there are 2 that arefun to use with a group. One is sticky-note brainstorming. It avoids the perils of the regular “everybody call out their ideas” brainstorming, because (a) you get 100% participation; (b) you can get LOTS of ideas in just a few minutes; […]