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Green Belt Triple Crown Winners

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In the green belt course, the process simulation calls for teams of 4-6 students to manufacture 'hits' by shooting ping pong balls from a catapult onto a target. The simulation has evolved slightly over the years to emphasize specific learning objectives. In its current form, students also track yield and net profit. In a class size of 20, four teams compete with each other to improve the process. It is rare for one team to win the competition in all three categories. In fact, the first triple crown was awarded in August of 2016. Congrats to the Juan Won One team!

Running Faster by Improving the Accuracy of the Stopwatch: When the Preferred Solution is to Blame the Data for Poor Performance

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In August of 2015 (nine months from the time of this writing), I was asked to help improve to process of retiring medical treatment records when service members separate. With clear direction from senior levels of the organization, the urgency of figuring out how to retire the medical treatment records in 45 days or less was palpable. The problem of late records, at least on the surface, was very solvable. First, the record had to be located. Next, the record was shipped to a scanning facility. Finally, the scanning facility would produce a digital image of the hard-copy file and archive it electronically. Fourty-five days seemed like plenty of time to accomplish the task. The scanning facility, by contract, had 14 days to complete the scanning and archive functions, so the medical treatment facilities had 31 days to locate and ship the record. Because service members generally begin the separation process months in advance, the medical treatment facilities could actually start

Hands In

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I learn more about leadership, motivation, and training in 60-minutes by coaching a 7-8 year old basketball team than I could learn in a month on the job. The reason is a little counter-intuitive. I can make 100 leadership mistakes in a minute at practice, maybe more. I have my own little 10-person developmental laboratory where I can try out leadership strategies, write and revise training plans, and directly apply motivational techniques with the ability to get immediate feedback on their effectiveness. In this case, my DPMO (defects per million opportunities) is quite high --- but I learn something from each mistake. This picture was taken right after a 32-8 victory. During this game, I learned (1) many hands make light work, (2) most production will almost always come from a core team, and (3) all role players are star performers in the right circumstances. On the last point, one of our role players had not scored up to this point in the season. In an effort to motivate he

CMMI for Service as Process Improvement

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Capability maturity models answer the question: What are the characteristics of a high functioning organization? The defacto standard maturity model is managed by SEI ( http://www.sei.cmu.edu/ ) and provides a detailed description of what highly mature organizations do. As a process improvement tool, a CMMI model provides a standard against which the baseline organization can be compared. Any gaps between the standard and the baseline organization points the way for future improvement plans. The value of the model lies in the assessment material; it forces you to look across a broad array of processes and compare your organization to a consistent standard. Because the standard does not change, any reduction in gaps between the baseline and the standard represents progress for your organization. The summary graphic shown here is my depiction of the CMMI for Service standard. It consists of 24 must-do processes that define a highly mature organization. Each abbreviation brick rep