Improvement Insights Blog
Agile Process Improvement Discovery at ASQ Lean Six Sigma Conference
I gave away copies of my Agile Process Innovation book at ASQ’s 2023 Lean Six Sigma conference. One recipient was a man from Norway who told me he “scoffed” at the idea of training people and getting results in a day or two. I was surprised when I saw him again at ASQ LSS 2024. I was even more surprised when he told me what he’d learned!
“I’m Jay Arthur, author of “Lean Six Sigma Demystified” and QI Macros [software]. I also wrote a book called “Agile Process Innovation.”
“I went to the American Society for Quality Lean Six Sigma conference back in February of 23 (so, over a year ago). I was standing around handing out free copies of my book and a guy came up and I read his badge; he was from Norway. I said, “Oh, you’ve come a long way to this conference!” He said yes… and so anyway, I said “Would you like a free copy of my new book?” and I gave it to him. I said, “We can train people in a day or less (maybe two) and start getting results. He looked at me sort of askance, but anyway, he went off.
“A year later, I’m exhibiting at the conference and the same guy from Norway walks up to me. He said, “Last year when you gave me that book I scoffed; there was no way that that could possibly work.” He said, “But I read your book on the flight back and started to do that.” He says, “It works. It works.” I said, “So… that book was probably worth the price of your trip out there?” He looked at me for a second and gave kind of a simple nod, right? I don’t think the Norwegians are terribly expressive about this kind of stuff.
“I want you to get this idea that you can use what I’ve learned about getting results in a hurry: training people in one day getting some results… you know, two days at the outside. Lots of companies are doing this: Novaris, Underwriters Laboratories and Crayola. I’ve seen presentations by people that rediscovered this recently, [such as] Christus Health.
“It is entirely possible to train people in one day and get results. If you want to learn how, I’ll give you the link where you can download the e-copy of this book for free. I don’t have time to train everybody on the planet. Also, I have a free Agile Lean Six Sigma Trainer Training online so you can go learn how I do what I do and why it works. There is some magic to it, which I learned years ago from master trainers in Neuro-Linguistic Programming.
“So that’s my Improvement Insight for this week: We can do things much more quickly than we’ve done in the past. We don’t have to cling to the last century’s nonsense or jargons or beliefs or… you know… I’m sorry, I think that’s unnecessary.
“So that’s my Improvement Insight for this week: Improve how you train people. Start getting results. That’s what it’s all about. Let’s go out and improve something this week… maybe even how we train people.”
