Aaron U. Bolin, Ph.D.

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. ...