Aaron U. Bolin, Ph.D.

What the Best College Teachers Do by Ken Bain My rating: 4 of 5 stars I thought Bain's "What the Best College Teachers Do" was excellent. It is well-written and packed with useful insight throughout. In terms of criticism, two things come to mind. First, the book seems to be an academic paper expanded to book form. As such, there is plenty of fluff. Some of the fluff is useful and adds embellishment to Bain's main points, but some of the fluff is just fluff. Second, Bain's tone throughout the book is one of objective reporter. The tone is a perfect fit for the subject matter and helps the book feel like a discussion. I loved it. In the last few chapters, the tone switches abruptly to preaching. I did not like the preachy tone; it was a big turnoff to me. Overall, I thought the book was useful and very well done. I recommend it to anyone (college profs, high school teacher, trainers, etc.) who ever tried to connect with students. The insights offered here will b

We just finished up another round of Lean Six Sigma Yellow Belt training. The process simulation we use requires the students to manufacture Lego (c) pyramids. The goal for the final round is to deliver 60 pyramids in five minutes. It is possible to complete the order, but I've never had a student team deliver the final order. However, I did have one team break the previous record. The new world record is 59 pyramids in 5 minutes with 5 people.

I met my friend, Jay, in college. I didn't realize it at the time, but Jay taught me some very valuable life lessons. He often pushed the boundaries of ethics, but time has shown that Jay's approach to getting things done wasn't all wrong; it was just incomplete. He had style, but lacked substance. He had flair, but lacked polish. He drive and ambition, but lacked a moral compass and work ethic. To really capitalize on Jay's strategy, you have to cherry pick his good points and throw out the bad. Jay's Tip #1: "Models Don't Do Math." Always focus your effort in areas of strength. When it came to studying, Jay and I were polar opposites. I studied in a very traditional way. I took copious notes in class, completed all assigned reading, worked the exercises in the back of the book, and joined a study group. Jay, on the other hand, took a more relaxed approach to studying. He listened very carefully in class, but photo-copied a classmate's notes.

I have a lot of fun coaching youth sports (4 seasons of soccer, 2 of basketball so far), but I never really planned to coach. When my oldest daughter first joined a soccer team, I offered to help the coach -- my idea was to be like the team gopher, because I didn't know very much about soccer. I discovered two things very quickly: (1) the coach knew even less about soccer than I did and (2) her temperament made her unfit to coach young children. In fact, she was removed from the league after chasing her own daughter across the practice field with a belt. I very unexpectedly was promoted from gopher to head coach. Every season, I see two very different approaches to coaching young children. On one hand, there is the Cobra Kai method with lots of yelling, punishment for poor performance, and the explicit belief that winning is all that matters. On the other hand, there is the Mr. Miyagi approach of learning the game, trying to have fun, and the explicit belief that we like to win

What happens when you alter a generic process simulation normally used only for training to mirror the steps used in a real-life process you would like to change? In a recent Lean Six Sigma Champion course, I knew that I would be training folks who would later work on improving a kit-making process. Because I had access to a current-state process map of the kit-making process, I changed all of the labels on my training simulation to match those from the current-state map. Then, I altered the flow of materials in the training simulation to mirror the flow of materials in the real-life kit-making process. I was a bit surprised with the result. The students would not stay "in" the simulation. Every conversation would begin in how we could improve the simulated process, but it always ended in how we could improve the actual process. The simulated process gave them permission to make previously impossible changes to the kit-making process, pilot test them, and refine them.

A deliveryman carrying a bouquet of flowers walks up and knocks on the door of a small home. When the lady of the house answers he says, "Are you the Widow Jones?" The lady says, "Well, my name's Jones, but I'm no widow." The deliveryman says, "Oh Yeah, just wait till you read the card!" Ba dum dum crash! As a business consultant, sometimes I feel like the guy delivering the flowers. I know the bad news (and the good) well before the intended recipient. And like the deliveryman, sometimes I have to repeat the bad news several times with ever decreasing levels of subtlety. I used to think the need for repetition was a communication issue -- perhaps I was unclear in my description of the root causes of the organization's problems. My views are evolving though. I'm starting to think that the inability to process information that threatens the status quo is a root cause of root causes. Chris Argyris (1985) covered the topic of defe

I've been working on adapting our yellow belt curriculum for presentation via the web. The long-pole in the tent for this curriculum conversion is the process simulation. When I teach the class in-person, we always do a hands-on production simulation that the students "fix" over the course of several rounds. To replace the hands-on production simulation, I need to come up with about six hours worth of meaningful activities to simulate aspects of a process improvement project. The catch is that I have to be able to facilitate the activities with a large group of remote students. One idea I'm kicking around is to develop a standard work instruction for writing English sonnets. On the surface, writing a sonnet might seem difficult. However, most people can produce a sonnet in about 25 minutes when you break down the process into a series of steps. Notice that I didn't say most people could produce a good sonnet -- only that they could produce a sonnet that mee