Category: Blogs

I do my fair share of venting. OK, sometimes I even go on a rant. I have lots of great horror stories. Unbelievable team members, the Project from You-Know-Where, and the day my computer crashed and I lost 6 hours of data entry. I love swapping these stories, and playing “Can you top this?” To […]

A while back I stumbled on a new part of the Google website called “Google Trends”. You can view this website for yourself here. In Google’s words, the website allows users to “compare the world’s interest in your favorite topics. Enter up to five topics and see how often they’ve been searched for on Google over […]

I started reading “The One Best Way: Fredrick Winslow Taylor and the Enigma of Efficiency” a week or so ago and I’m enjoying it so much I thought I’d do a quick write up for those who might be interested. Tayor is judged rather harshly in some circles today but that didn’t quell my desire […]

I have spent my entire career in IT and feel privileged to have had the opportunity to work in such a fast moving industry and to see the changes from propriety mainframe to open systems to windows and now the Internet. SoI have a tendency to want to apply IT to the projects I run. […]

As it’s put, “the airline industry doesn’t need a plane crash to learn how to crash planes.” The great majority of learning is extracted from incidents which had the potential to result in accidents, not from accidents themselves. So why does healthcare feel that it must make an error to learn from an error? For […]

Cardinal Health has been busy with Lean Six Sigma. Their second quarter earnings release highlighted their progress to date: “Initiating more than 100 operational excellence projects, bringing the total number of ongoing projects to 200. The company is on-track to train nearly 300 “black belts” during 2006 to manage company-wide lean six-sigma initiatives within manufacturing, […]

Roger Penske expects and gets – perfection, IRL-Live.com, May 23, 2006 Roger Penske talks about preparation for the Indianapolis 500 this weekend. Penske is a Six Sigma company when it comes to business, but as for racing, Six Sigma just isn’t enough: “After qualifying, Penske gave an overview of his preparation plan. “We’ll go back, […]

My favorite quote, from a Manager identified as a Six Sigma project Process Owner: “Well if I’d known that being a Process Owner involved this much work, I would have never volunteered to be one!” In healthcare, we haven’t traditionally discussed the leadership role ofprocess management. In fact, “running healthcare like a business” isn’t usually […]

Last week Michael Cyger and I attended the 7th Annual ISSSP Leadership Conference. I blogged a few of the presentations, but was unable to capture the aura of the event through regular blog entries. Call it not-enough-time-in-the-given-day syndrome or too much wonderful food to eat (which really slowed down my presentation to blog entry cycle […]

At an event where the most common number mentioned is SIX, it was really nice to hear a presentation where being ONE was more important than being SIX. Lance Secretan is inspiring. His presentation, ONE, The Art and Practice of Conscious Leadership, delivered at the ISSSP Leadership Conference in Scottsdale, Arizona, USA, was a welcome […]

The general session opened with Chad Holliday, CEO of DuPont. His presentation was titled “Six Sigma from the 9th Floor” (the ninth floor beinghis office). He spoke with confidence, wisdom, energy, and humor. I’m sure it takes all that and more to be a CEO. The main takeaways of his message (two pieces of learning […]

I’m here at the ISSSP Leadership conference in Scottsdale, Arizona, USA. Not a far trip for me as I live in Phoenix, but to beat the traffic I’m staying at the hotel. The Westin Kierland Resort and Spa is spectacular. I brought my family along with me to enjoy the pool (since I sure wasn’t […]

I’m sure most anyone reading this blog is familiar with Deming’s 14 points. I recall studying them when I first started my Six Sigma journey and though they all have their place, one keeps coming back to me over and over again: Constancy of Purpose. When I first read this one I felt a bit […]

Benchmarking results consistently identify examples of Six Sigma success. Even so, getting “naysayers” on board is a continuous challenge. What do you tell them? Nayism 26: There are so many Six Sigma projects going on that we are getting distracted from core business. This nayism is frequently heard when Six Sigma gets into full swing […]

I’m sure this never happened to any other Healthcare Black Belts: You’ve been selected as a Black Belt for a team, and you’re assigned one or two Green Belts for the project. Early in the project you notice that one of the Green Belts is pretty weak in a number of areas… basic things like […]

This week I was starting up another green belt training. As usual I kicked it off by asking the participants presenting to each other who they are, what department they come from, if and what they have heard about lean six sigma and most importantly what they expect from the training. I ask them to […]

For a year now I have been running a Six Sigma Deployment on a Rail Project in Rugby (UK). My two main problems as deployment manager are; 1. Implementation of actions 2. Proving the projected cash savings. Both problems are as you can imagine at the back end of the DMAIC process. I also run […]

I’m heading off to the ISSSP 7th Annual Six Sigma Leadership Conference next week (May 16-19) in Scottsdale, Arizona. Michael Marx, our research manager, will also be attending. (It’s not too late to attend if you live in the area or want to book a last minute ticket. Use code LCISSDISC for a $1,499 ticket. […]

I signed off on Measure & Analyse last week which, in the way only a leadership /tollgate review can, lifted the pressure involved in gathering all that data and instantaneously dumped the pressure of delivery onto the team. This project presented such clear problems we’ve been able to go almost straight to delivery. As you […]

In God We Trust, Everyone Else Bring Data This is a nine and a half minute audio excerpt of the KCPW show The Bottom Line, moderated by Lara Jones of KCPW News. Lara speaks with a panel of Army Colonels and gets to the bottom of Six Sigma at the Army Reserve’s 96th Regional Readiness […]

“It’s a people thing,” says W. Michael McBride. It’s a Dr. Pepper and Jelly Bellies thing according to Joe at Learning about Lean. I feel the need to echo (scream) the sentiments of W. Michael McBride’s post “It’s a people thing.” as I have experienced these factors all too closely. As someone who began as […]

How many healthcare processes have you measured that are 2.0 Zst or higher at the start of the project? I’ve never had one of these – most of mine have started at below 1.0 or in the negative Sigma range. In every one of my projects, I’ve had to use lean tools to get where […]

Yesterday I was contacted 4 (FOUR) times by recruiters looking for a Six Sigma Expert. To 3 of them I returned a polite “no thank you, not interested”. With the 4th one I went into a discussion. Their client, a 2 site company is going to implement a new Six Sigma deployment, headed by 2 […]

I am regularly asked what characterizes an ideal Black Belt candidate. Like most people in the field, I have a list of adjectives and descriptive phrases I can trot out at a moment’s notice. Mine comprises about 50 items under the following headings: 1) Aptitude For Change; 2) Education and Experience; 3) Intellectual Curiosity; 4) […]