Improve My Business

Mary is on vacation this week so the task of contributing to the blog falls squarely on my shoulders, which is great, but the topic of process improvement is so overwhelming getting started has been a bit of a challenge. At least it was until last night when I decided to change my usual work process…

Normally, I do all my work from my desk in my home office during daytime hours. This usually works great since I can shut the door and work much like anyone would from a conventional office. Every day I get up get dressed and “go” to work. But every once in a while I get up, get dressed and go to work only to find myself stuck, staring at email and not able to generate the enthusiasm I need to tackle the tasks of the day.

So, when I found myself pondering what I would write about while brushing my teeth before bed, and actually coming up with ideas, I decided to change my process. Normally it is against my personal policy to bring work to bed. This policy was decided based upon multiple articles and interviews I’ve seen with doctors and relaxation experts that say over and over again that if you bring your work, bills, and other stressful tasks with you to the bedroom, the bedroom will cease to be a place for relaxation and rest. This theory made sense to me, except I still found myself laying awake and thinking about work. Well, obviously my policy was not having the desired effect.

Instead of trying to forget all the ideas I was having, I gave in, grabbed my laptop and just let them out. Voila! I now have something to share on the blog, and it even has a message that may help others: If you find yourself stuck, try something new! Break your own rules every once in a while to see if they are serving you well or holding you back!

Please share a comment if you’ve had a similar epiphany and let us know how it worked out for you. Did you eventually go back to the old routine, or did you make a change for the better?

Technorati Tags: blogging, change, process improvement, working smarter

OK, here’s our saga to date:  In part one we talked about definition; in part two we discussed data identification and collection, and interim containment; part three discussed identifying the root cause.  Part four discussed fixing the true causes of the problem, and part five was about fixing other potential causes at the same time.

So, we’re done now, right?  We’re taking our data, verifying that our fixes work; we’re the heroes of the organization (or at least no one’s yelling at us right now), and we can go back to our other assignments… but wait!  There’s one last step (actually, it’s 1.5 more steps)…

Step 0.5:  Make sure that all the work is documented and in a repository somewhere.  No, you won’t remember in eight months what you folks did to fix this.  No, you can’t rely on memory.  Yes, it would be good to have this stuff all captured somewhere.  So do it.  Corporate knowledge - good.  Relying on memory - bad.

Step 1:  Celebrate! You’ve all done some incredible work - so take a moment (or two) to recognize and celebrate what you’ve done - who’s gone ‘above and beyond’ in the call of duty; whose crazy idea was the breakthrough you needed; and who remembered to bring the food to keep the team fueled (hey, brownies are the cornerstone of many a sugar-induced great idea…)

“Let’s all celebrate and have a good time”, as Kool and the Gang says…

Technorati Tags: celebrate, document repository

OK, quick recap:  In part one we talked about definition; in part two we discussed data identification and collection, and interim containment; part three discussed identifying the root cause.  Part four discussed fixing the true causes of the problem.

Now that we’ve  implemented our chosen fix, we want to focus on how to ensure that we don’t have the problem recur.  This is often a misunderstood step in the process.  If the prior step was “fix xyz”, I often see folks who document the step on prevent recurrence as “continue with xyz”.  Well geez, that’s brilliant!  I’m guessing that it’s a bit more complicated than that, tho…

So, what does ‘prevent recurrence’ really mean?  Let’s start by expanding our thinking - we want to prevent recurrence not only for this defect, but for additional potential causes as well.

Additional potential causes??!? Where am I supposed to get THAT info?  Ahh, that’s where the beauty of the tools we used in step three come in — we can go to our pareto diagram, our cause-and-effect (fishbone/Ishikawa) diagram, or other investigative tools.  Although we were able to eliminate the problem by focusing in on the root causes we identified, we can go back now and figure out what are probable causes of future defects - and prevent them before they occur. For all  you folks who have implemented ISO 9001 and have trouble identifying preventive actions, here’s a great place for it.

Now let’s be clear — if you find a defect on line 2 of a manufacturing plant that has three identical manufacturing lines, and you implement the fix on lines 1, 2, and 3, this is not corrective for line 2 and preventive for lines 1 and 3 - this is simply complete/comprehensive corrective action.  But, if you also implement a ‘fix’ on something that hasn’t ‘broken’ yet [since you're implementing and training anyway, you might as well do it for multiple as for one], you are doing true preventive action.    Woot!

Technorati Tags: corrective action, defect, eliminating defects, preventive action