Comments for Better, Faster, Cheaper

Comment on Change Anyway: The 10 Paradoxical Commandments of Government by BryanB

BryanB — Wed, 09 Dec 2009 21:24:00 +0000

Your customers won’t always understand why you’re pushing the change. Push anyway.

These are excellent, by the way.

Comment on Change Anyway: The 10 Paradoxical Commandments of Government by Rob Jacobs

Rob Jacobs — Sun, 06 Dec 2009 00:20:40 +0000

This post should be read by every school principal, director, coordinator, and superintendent. Subject as we are to so many forces from outside of our control, we must nevertheless, do what is right, what is needed, and what must be done for our students. What a valuable and timely set of commandments.

Comment on Stop Complaining and Do It! The Three Phases of Any Transformation by Ken K

Ken K — Fri, 23 Oct 2009 19:59:50 +0000

I don’t want to complain, but…

Ken, it’s a good message and I’ve seen you live it. The best part was when you stopped complaining about my weak backhand!

KK – Tennis partner!

Comment on Stop Complaining and Do It! The Three Phases of Any Transformation by Ken

Ken — Mon, 07 Sep 2009 04:16:01 +0000

Niria, thanks for your feedback and your questions. As to six sigma in government my feeling is that it is probably not the first option. The primary goal of Six Sigma is to reduce variation in processes. While this is an important goal and the Six Sigma methods and tools are quite effective and driving out variance, I don't think variation is the big problem we are facing in government. Most parts of government are not mass producing widgets and needing to find a way to reduce defects. Rather, the major challenge we face in government is we simply don't have the capacity to meet the demand. Government has to find a way to do what it needs to do faster so it can increase its capacity to do more good. This is why I advocate lean. The goal of lean is to streamline systems so we can find this much needed capacity. Once we have done that we can worry about variation/defects, etc. Having said that, Six Sigma is highly applicable to the engineering-heavy parts of government: NASA, Defense, Transportation, etc. In addition, the rigorous project methods of Six Sigma are great resource for anyone who wants to systematically run improvement teams. Thanks again for the interest Niria.

Comment on Stop Complaining and Do It! The Three Phases of Any Transformation by Niria

Niria — Sat, 05 Sep 2009 20:17:58 +0000

Hi Ken!
I was reading your articles, i found them very interesting… but what´s about six sigma in government?… can it be applied?… does it works with lean?… how can be do it succesful?… i would like to hear your oppinion about it. I´ll wait your answer, thank you so much!… have a nice day (=

Comment on The Promise of Going ‘Lean’: Increasing Government’s Capacity to Do More Good by Jamie Flinchbaugh

Jamie Flinchbaugh — Sun, 19 Jul 2009 15:18:44 +0000

Great post Ken. I shared it with my twitter network (@flinchbaugh) and already had some response to reading it.

On your barriers, I believe #1 and #3 are also barriers in the rest of the lean world. Jargon is useful when a community is so much on the same page that they can use shorthand to communicate. But if you are trying to drive change, jargon is almost always a barrier.

And I think the focus of lean never should have been on waste elimination. Is that important? Yes. Is it the whole ball of wax? No. First we should think about providing value before thinking about eliminating waste.

Thanks,

Jamie Flinchbaugh

Comment on The Promise of Going ‘Lean’: Increasing Government’s Capacity to Do More Good by Tom Robinson

Tom Robinson — Mon, 29 Jun 2009 21:05:01 +0000

My experience in consulting to government with intense 5-day “rapid process improvement” workshops is that this kind of quick but deep work reaps all kinds of rewards. Most of all, as you suggest, rapid improvement reduces the extra work on people’s plates.

Comment on The Promise of Going ‘Lean’: Increasing Government’s Capacity to Do More Good by BryanB

BryanB — Mon, 22 Jun 2009 21:42:18 +0000

Amen, great way of looking at things.