Tag Archives: change

Walt’s Incomplete Guidelines to Success in Life

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Can you remember when you graduated from high school or college? The feeling that you could change the world and that you could be and do anything you choose? Can you also remember the day you realized that maybe you were not going to change the world and that you were limited to what you could be?

I can. I can also remember feeling disappointed in myself when my dreams for success did not immediately come true. Fortunately, I had a wise advisor in my life that helped me put things into perspective.

My dad would always tell me to keep the faith and keep moving forward in my life. Dreams are what they are because they are not easy to achieve. They require hard work. He was right.

He told me a story once about his first job out of high school. It was a manufacturer with seven assembly steps.  When hired, he was trained to work one of the assembly steps. What he did next was the difference maker. On his breaks and weekends he would have the other operators train him to operate every piece of machinery and every assembly step. His goal was to become the most knowledgeable and most valuable employee at the plant.

The result was that two years later he was the highest paid non-management employee in the facility. This was due to the fact that he out worked everyone. He became the MVP to plant management by paying a higher personal price than others in the facility.

I have had to re-invent myself three times during my career. One was by choice and two were forced on me. In all three cases I had to take a step back in pay and prestige in order to keep forward momentum in my career. Also in all three cases, I worked to learn and grow in the new field and eventually found myself with better pay and position than the earlier jobs.

Challenge is not to be feared and neither is change.  These “C” words should be embraced because they are opportunity in disguise. If you are not facing challenge or change in your life, you are not moving forward. Consider them blessings.

Here are Walt’s Incomplete Guidelines to Success in Life:

  • Do not seek money as a goal. It has no staying power. When you spend it, it’s gone and so is its value.
  • Set goals around things that have lasting value no matter what happens to you or the economy. Knowledge, reputation, and character are good choices.
  • If you don’t ask for it you won’t get it. Not asking for help when you need it is one of the biggest failures you can have. We always stand on the shoulders of those who have gone before us. If you don’t know something, ask.
  • Seek to be the “go to” person in your organization.
  • You will reap what you sow. Invest in your growth.  Learn everything you can, seek opportunity and challenge, become the person you dreamed of being.
  • If success is where preparation meets opportunity, then you better focus on being prepared. You cannot always control opportunity, but you are totally in control of being prepared. Don’t be the person who just saw the best opportunity flash by them, but were not prepared to seize it.
  • Big successes are made up of small successes. Pay attention to detail and the “small stuff” so that the “big” stuff is cut down to size.
  • Know your tools and use them. When I exercise on my treadmill, I will watch YouTube videos to expand my knowledge.  Recently I needed to help a client with a software development problem.  I found several videos that specifically covered how others had dealt with the same issue. The following week, when talking with my client, he stated that he didn’t know I had that level expertise in software development.
  • You cannot claim greatness. Greatness is attained by accepting the challenges life gives you.

There is more to this discussion, but I will leave to the reader to continue the discussion.  The list is incomplete because your life is different than mine. What we have in common are the true north principles of life. These are the things that do not change with the ebb and flow of our lives.

Don’t be discouraged with where you are now. Instead have a vision of what you want to be and what you want to do. Then set out to make it happen.

Change Leadership

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All management strategies and paradigms, from old school to Lean, have one element that is the same. That element is people. People are not pawns on a game board, they are not machines and they don’t always follow management’s vision.

In fact, the people side of management is never clear cut, and is nearly always messy. Everyone has their motives for doing the the things they do. Not everyone has the same goals in mind.
Failure to address the human element will undermine any effort that management may take to change the culture in a business. The reason is that culture is all about the human element. You can’t dictate attitudes and motives, nor can you just ask for change.
Here is the secret. All change, all improvement, Lean or otherwise, must be lead. It is experienced together with others. Let me give you an example. Years ago, when hurricane Hugo came through South Carolina, I was managerially responsible for an industrial waste treatment facility. All retention ponds were filling and the plant could not keep up.  The state had given me permission to by-pass the rain water directly to the river in order to keep other contaminated water contained.  This required the re-routing of a 12 inch fiber cast pipe while the hurricane was in full swing. I had a staff of 5 technicians on duty that night. All had families in the storm’s path and all were worried.
This was a time for action, so I  said what needed to be done, grabbed my tool bag, and headed out the door into the weather. I didn’t ask anyone else to go, but everyone followed me into the storm. We fought the weather for more than two hours and got the job done.
After that night, I had a minimum of 15 to 20 workers from around the company volunteering to work with me on a daily basis. We had a reputation for action and a “can do” attitude. In this case strong leadership resulted in strong follow ship. The culture began to change because the employees saw the management team change.
My point is this. If you want to change the culture in your work space, let the change begin with you. If you want to implement a Lean movement, let the change begin with you. Exercise strong leadership and you will get strong follow ship.
Strong follow ship leads to a shared vision. A shared vision leads to less resistance to change.

Making a Point or a Difference

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Telling someone they are wrong does not inspire them to do right. Instead, it usually creates an atmosphere of conflict. The problem has two faces. First, conflict tends to entrench people into their positions, even if they realize that they are probably wrong. Nothing constructive can come from a conflictive environment because people quit trying to find solutions and start trying to save face. Second, it is quit possible, and maybe even probable, that the person accused of being wrong may actually be right.

The point is that making a point is not the same as making a difference. If the truth be told, most of us would rather win the argument than make a difference. This is the sad truth within our culture. We vote and behave as if the processes of our lives were a game where the point was to score points and win, even if no progress is being made.

You might ask how this applies to Lean Six Sigma process improvement teams. Let me explain. When working in a team environment, the team leader must always be focused on keeping a constructive dialog that is not based upon scoring points. The hardest part of process improvement is to “lead” change. To make a difference. When team members are committed to making a difference, they are not keeping score. When they are keeping score they are not making a difference.

I have had to remove individuals from process improvement teams because their “point making” attitude was distractive to the team’s mission to make a difference. This will obviously not make everyone happy, but that is OK. Being a change agent is not easy, nor is it for the faint of heart. When teaching Six Sigma Black Belts, I always instruct them to ” Leave them mad or leave them glad, but never leave them indifferent.”

Voice of the Heart

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Change the world? Yes.

Where to start? Your own heart. Change always has a beginning. Let it begin there.

What is the basis of the change? Truth. It is not political or opinion based. Truth does not require your belief to be true, but it does require your belief to be acted upon.

Hard to find? Yes, but worth the struggle.

Sorry. Feeling philosophical tonight.