We settled in southern New Hampshire, which has always been a great place to raise kids.  An hour to the east, and we’re sitting on great, sandy, summer beaches.  An hours to the north, we get a large, fresh water lake that’s great for boating.  An hour to the west, we can go skiing and hour to the south we get all the entertainment and culture you can imagine in a great, large, metropolitan city of Boston.

The city has always been a place to go when we need a break from the comforting slowness of New Hampshire life.  The ability to get a taste of the city is great for both my wife and I as adults, and the exposure to everything the city has to offer, good and bad, is important and necessary for raising kids.  Unfortunately, the events of yesterday afternoon have changed what visiting Boston means to us.

While teaching children how to navigate a subway system, or to appreciate the plight of the homeless, or to respect people who decorate their own bodies with tattoos and piercings, or other things that you encounter when visiting the city that you don’t normally get here in the semi-rural landscape of New Hampshire is great for expanding your children’s minds, having to fear going to the place where you do those things isn’t the kind of education any parent has in mind.

Boston is the hub and heart of New England.  It will remain an icon of wealth, culture, and lifestyle that we look to for that taste of what the big city can offer.  That taste, however, has forever been spoiled.  Trips to Boston will no longer be about just visiting the Garden, the Museums, the Aquarium, the Duck Boats or Quincy Market and the Freedom Trail.  It will remain about doing all those things, but it is now tinged with fear.  Fear for our children’s safety and a constant worry that something on what would have been an otherwise find day, will now, just possibly, go horribly, horribly wrong.

That is the real shame of terrorism, that for all the pain it causes in the moment when it happens, that it also prevent happiness and a worry-free esistence among an even greater population forever.

All of that is, of course, intuitive.

Nonetheless, individuals and organizations still struggle with being proactive and preventing problems.  My explanation comes by way of a saying I once wrote on a whiteboard in a co-worker’s cubicle when the powers-that-be in that organization were touting the virtues of responsiveness:

Responsiveness is required only by those who have failed to anticipate.

It’s easy to instruct others to be proactive, mostly because the virtues of being proactive are so intuitive.  If you have a keen enough understanding of your environment, however, it becomes possible to predict what might happen and prevent the problem for arising.  That, of course, necessitates that you actually have an understanding of your environment.

I followed up that gem with the following:

Anticipation is required by those who have failed to dictate the terms of the engagement.

My inspiration for this was NFL football, where dominant teams dictate to the opposition how the game will be played.  Teams with superior running games, for example, will run the ball when and where they want until another team proves that the running game can be stopped consistently.

That scenario translates to other situations, however.  Dictating the terms of the engagement is as simple as knowing what your organization actually does, not what you think it does, so that you can go after business that aligns with your capability.  It means developing people such that they can grow into management roles, not thrusting technical experts into managerial positions based on longevity or their technical acumen.  If not, then you end up with a poor understanding of what your organization can do, and what the people within that organization are capable of, which leads to poor business decisions that, inevitably, yield difficult situations no one could anticipate and everyone must react to.

Of course, the intrinsic value of the toy has nothing to do with the importance of that toy to the child.  Through the years of watching my kids play with, discard, or completely ignore their toys, I have come to realize their toys fall into just a few categories:

1. Meaningless junk:  This is the stuff that comes from goodie bags and Happy Meals.  The kids get them on the way out the door, and they never even leave the bag.  It’s junk.  They know it.
2. Meaningful junk:  The same cheap trinkets that, usually, should be thrown away even before they come in the house will, once in a while, be deemed cherished treasures.  These are held on to forever – usually in a bedroom drawer full of more stuff than it was ever designed to hold.
3. Iron warriors:  These guys are used all day, every day, until they wear out and then, with glue, tape, needle, thread, and sheer parental will, they are patched, repaired and resurrected to live on a little while longer.  These things are around forever and simply never die.
4. Comforters:  These are the toys you never see, but they are somewhere.  They can spend 6 months collecting dust bunnies under the bed but, if you should ever dare to suggest that they be given away or thrown out, you will very nearly thrown your child into complete and utter hysteria.  They will never be used, but they will be missed.
5. Flops:  We’ve all been there.  You save up to get your kid that one, great, awesome gift.  Or you hunt high and low for it.  Or you spend many late hours putting it together only to unveil it and see the look of “Meh” coming from your kid.  And so it sits, a giant monument to childhood fickleness and your own misjudgment.

Of course, this categorization isn’t limited just to toys.  Look at your business – do you have products, processes, or people that you just can’t let go of – for reasons that don’t necessarily make sense?  How about outdated things that ought to be turned over, but still perform reasonably well, and that you just can’t bring yourself to upgrade?  What about the things and people that you give up on too quickly?

Children, fortunately, will grow up and relinquish their attachments to things, even if they do so reluctantly.  For adults, however, we must decide what to keep and what to throw away, and when, and we also have to live with the results of our decisions.  We must live with the knowledge that just because something is familiar isn’t a reason to hang on to it, just as something that isn’t interesting isn’t reason enough to get rid of it.

Why must the glass be on its way to gaining or losing?  Perhaps the only correct response is, “It’s just a half glass of water.”  That statement demonstrates that you can see things for the way they are, not the way you believe they will be at some point in the future.

Only when you see things for what they are, right now, can you begin to improve.  You have to suspend judgment, avoid introducing bias and seeing only those things that lead to your preferred outcomes.  You have to see that, when someone presents you with half a glass of water, that it’s only a containing that currently holds 50% of its liquid capacity.

That’s all it is, and to make it something else – like empty or full – will require some action.  Whether you believe the glass will, eventually, be completely empty or full – it won’t get that way by itself and the only way to move in the right direction is to first see things for what they are.

Once we decide on what we wish to learn, we need to decide on what level of knowledge and competency we wish to possess at the conclusion of our being taught and, most importantly, we need to ensure that the method we select for conveying of that knowledge and competency to us will yield those expected results.  Therefore, during this evaluation process, we must always remember the following corollary; the level of effort required is directly proportional to the depth of the knowledge and competency acquired.

We must also evaluate the “Comparative Value” of the efforts and results, with Comparative Value being defined as; “the investment requirements associated with gaining the knowledge versus the benefit gained to oneself and one’s company.”

When considering “investment requirements”, it’s inadequate to just calculate the hard-costs associated with acquiring the knowledge such as; curriculum costs, tuitions, delegate fees, travel, room and board, materials and supplies, etc…  We must also consider all of the soft costs associated such as; the time of the employee learning, the time of the employee(s) teaching, the development and maintaining of internal curriculum, delivery medium and infrastructure, etc…

In the chart below, I grade “Comparative Value” as “Low”, “Moderate”, and “High” where:

• Low: Is “Logistical” content.  The participant should expect to learn the terminology used, the value derived from proper use of the content, and perhaps some basis applications.
• Moderate: Is “Tactical” content.  At this level, the participant should expect to learn how to plan the use of the content, when to deploy, and how to manage.
• High: Is “Strategic” content.  At this highest level, the participant should expect to learn how to define objectives in the discipline and be able to communicate how these objectives will be realized.

In addition to “Comparative Value”, one must also keep in mind the credibility of the origin of the content being learned.  What are the credentials of the conveyor of knowledge?  Do they have the proper experience and success in the field and can they stand as a sufficiently qualified authority on the subject?  Here, the student must always keep in mind “Caveat Emptor”, or more commonly known as “let the buyer beware” – especially when it comes to “Certifications”.

There is no universally recognized governing body for “Certifications” in the disciplines of Lean Six-Sigma, or every other dimension of Continuous Improvement – nor is there a recognized standard for curriculum or other metrics.  And unfortunately, there are many people out there who just want to “pad their resume” and who feel any certification is better than no certification.  I have witnessed first-hand some students who don’t even show-up for class, but receive their “Certification” at the end of the class simply because they paid to attend the session.  Because of this, those who would hire should also remember “caveat emptor” during the interview and vetting process to ensure the candidate is properly credentialed from a reputable conveyor of knowledge – and has the proper level of practical experience that the position requires.  Make sure the “Certification” is worth the paper upon which it is printed.

A simple way to qualify the quality of a “Certification” is simply to listen to how the person announces their certification – are they consciously or subconsciously embarrassed?  For instance, I would become immediately suspicious if someone were to simply say to me, “I am a Black Belt” (or whatever) – as opposed to “I am a GE Black-Belt”.  In any case, I am going to ask them about their projects and practical experience in great detail to determine the true level of knowledge – since the application of knowledge is where the value is realized.

All this being said; there are organizations that devote themselves solely to training and education of Lean Six-Sigma and related subjects such as the American Society for Quality (ASQ) and the Institute of Industrial Engineers (IIE) – to name just a couple.  And there are many companies who have their own internal, and robust, programs such asGeneral Electric, Motorola, and International Paper – again, just to name a few of a great many.

The rest of this article is devoted to the various methods of learning, the investment requirements, their Pros and Cons, and the Comparative Value that should be expected.

Webinars:  Learning by attending a webinar is the least-cost and most convenient method of learning, but what you will learn is greatly limited.  As such, a webinar is a great way of gaining exposure to a topic (or as a refresher-course for updates to knowledge) – but you should not expect to become proficient in any topic.  Would you trust your surgery or the filing of your taxes to someone who learned only by attending a webinar?  An additional risk to webinars is that (since they are so inexpensive to produce) those who might charge to attend might not be credible conveyors of the knowledge – and if they are “free”, I can almost guarantee you that (in almost every case) they are merely sales-pitches disguised as learning experiences.

• Expected Investment Requirements: Free to $250 plus minimal “soft-costs”
• Expected Duration:  30 minutes to a half-week
• Pros: Low-cost, short-duration, convenient
• Cons:  Don’t expect to learn too much
• Comparative Value: Low

Seminars (and Conferences):  Attending Seminars and Conferences is a good way to get a deeper-dive into a subject in a more collegiate setting.  One of the most significant benefits of attending a Seminar (or Conference), and one which should not be dismissed, is the ability to interface with peers one-on-one.  This interaction and the exchange of practical experiences (if pursued), will enable the participant to better understand the material as it is applied in context, help to build invaluable interpersonal and communication skills, and expand one’s professional network to facilitate problem-solving in the future.  One should expect that “Free” seminars will be “sales-pitches” (think along the lines of a pitch for “Timeshares”).

• Expected Investment Requirements: $1,000 to $5,000 including considerable “soft-costs” associated mostly with travel expenses and time-lost.
• Expected Duration:  1-5 days
• Pros:  Deeper dive into a subject matter, usually from several perspectives.  The ability to network with peers to compare experiences and learn – build relationships and “Social-IQ”
• Cons:  Takes considerable time and costs to attend.  There is a risk that the speakers will be paying to deliver the content and you are actually sitting in an “infomercial”.
• Comparative Value: Low to Low-Moderate

On-the-Job (OJT):  Assuming the OJT program is well developed and structured (which is not to be taken as a given), the successful student should have an understanding of the tools and skillsets necessary to satisfactorily perform the tasks related to carrying-out the responsibilities associated with their position.  However, this training will be limited to the performance of tasks and processes.  As such, it would be misguided to expect the successful student to apply what they have learned strategically.

• Expected Investment Requirements:  $2,500 to $15,000 – mostly internal “soft-costs”
• Expected Duration:  Half-week to one month
• Pros:  Rapid ramp-up to get you generating value for the company.
• Cons:  Usually very vertical content.  You learn the job, but not the context.
• Comparative Value: Low-Moderate to Moderate

Classroom Training:  Learning by attending a formal class (even if delivered via webcast) will result in the student receiving a much broader and deeper understanding of a subject.  Since there is much more “heavy lifting” involved in producing a classroom-delivered curriculum, there is almost always an investment requirement on the part of the student involved and the instances of non-credible conveyors of knowledge greatly diminishes.  Even so, you will want to ensure the organization (whether a University, an Institute, a Learning Company, or other entity) has a track-record for success and clearly details the level of effort and the expected take-away for the student.

• Expected Investment Requirements: $5,000 to $20,000 – including internal “soft-costs”
• Expected Duration:  1 to 12 weeks
• Pros:  Focused content delivery and ability to work with “outsiders”.
• Cons:  Subject matter not taught in the context of the employer.
• Comparative Value: Low Moderate to High Moderate

Integrated Learning:  Sometimes referred to as “Blended Learning”, an Integrated Learning program melds several content delivery methods including; webinars, self-study, classroom training, and one-on-one mentoring and coaching.  Low-level activity is taken off-line (where the attendance value of the instructor is de minimis), but with a corresponding increased emphasis on individualized mentoring for high-level activity.

• Expected Investment Requirements: $5,000 to $20,000 including internal “soft costs”
• Expected Duration:  4 to 16 weeks
• Pros:  A combination of general education and practical experience applied at your place of employment – with greater scheduling flexibility and delivered at a pace that is more compatible with the demands of your work responsibilities.
• Cons: Considerable commitment (on the part of student and employer) to complete.
• Comparative Value: Moderate to High Moderate

Company-Specific Education Programs:  Best-in-class companies do not follow the “best-practices” documents created by consulting companies and analysts – they create them themselves.  They realize that published “best-practices” are always in the past-tense and, if achieved, would mean they are still years behind the industry leaders.  Best-in-class companies create their own education programs by teaching the known tools and methodologies as they are applied, in the context of the company, within the company.  These programs merge the delivery platforms and approach associated with Integrated Learning with the company-specific content associated with OJT.  If properly and fully developed, this approach and resultant program will yield the highest comparative value for a company by enabling the company to 1) identify what actually needs improving and go about improving it; and also 2) identify, quantify, capture the company’s own best practices and make this content part of the curriculum that the knowledge might be leveraged.

• Expected Investment Requirements: $10,000 to $40,000 (or more) including “soft costs”
• Expected Duration:  8 to 26 weeks
• Pros: Successful completion of the program creates strategic leadership for the company.
• Cons: Immense amount of effort.  Program candidates need to be properly vetted to ensure they can complete the program and will remain with the company so that the investment on the part of the company in the individual is recouped.
• Comparative Value: High Moderate to High

However, even within these content and delivery options there are factors which must be considered in creating a Company-Specific Education Program such as, “Who is responsible for the development and delivery program?”, including; the curriculum, education, training, coaching, and mentorship.

The development and deployment options can be defined in one of four ways:

1)      Internal:  is when the program is developed and deployed by resources owned by, and mostly within the company.  The challenge here, and why almost all of these initiatives fail to realize their potential, is that the efforts, energy, and talent required to successfully develop and deploy such a program are “non-core to” the company.  The result is usually a program which: lacks commitment from the company, is not aligned and coordinated with the company’s strategies, has an inbred view of the company (killing innovation and inhibiting transformational change) and whose critical components (resources, content, and delivery mechanism) are a hodge-podge – certainly not a “be all you can be” commercial.

2)      External:  is when the company subcontracts-out the development and deployment of the program to resources external to the company.  The weakness in this approach is that the program is almost always “canned” and not relevant to the business.  The students are exposed to mostly generic content and must imagine how what they are learning is relevant to the needs and challenges of their business.  The teachers have a very difficult time acting as facilitators because of their fixation on the curriculum (i.e. the tools), and not how they are applied in any given circumstance.  The end result is usually greater than the under-funded, under-respected, efforts in #1 above, but still lack the impact expected of a program (after the low-hanging fruit is consumed).

3)      Hybrid:  is when there exists a partnership between the internal resources (who have intimate knowledge of the business strategy and their industry) and external resources (who have a command of the tools, have developed professional curriculum which they keep current, have “fresh eyes”, and are expert educators and mentors).  This approach allows a company to maintain concentration on its core value-proposition, but leveraging its business and industry knowledge into a program framework and delivery mechanism which pre-exists and does not have to be invented.

My experience has been that this is the most successful approach in the development and deployment of a program and yields the greatest net benefit to the company.  By embracing this approach, each and every party brings to the program their core competencies with the result being: rapid design and launch, low and flexible on-going investment requirements, clearer metrics which are easier to monitor, a focus on the company strategy and not the nostalgia or relationships, a vested interest realizing (and reporting) results, and in maintaining the momentum.

4)      External-Internal:  is when the company is determined to build its own consultancy practice internally.  The challenge here is bandwidth and diversity.

A company needs bandwidth because developing, deploying, and maintaining an internal business unit dedicated solely to improving one’s company takes a lot of energy.  If the initiative only half-starts because of a lack of resources or focus, it will be seen for what it is – a failure which won’t be given a second chance.  And a company needs diversity otherwise the program will be inbred and will never learn to challenge the status-quo, transformational change will never be allowed, and the program will fail.

However, if the company has enough bandwidth and diversity, then there is a strong chance that the program can be as successful, or even marginally more successful, than the Hybrid (above).  The risk is that the new internal consulting group becomes so great that the company decides to spin it off as its own business unit – like Tata Consulting – leaving the company close to where it started.

It is important to note that Continuing Education is critical to any professional (and their company) who wants to remain on top of their game – but, as Continuous Improvement Professionals, you already know that.

For all of us with children, we understand that each of our kids understand things in their own way and, to complicate things, the way they absorb information tends to change slightly as they develop.

As business professionals, however, we tend to ignore learning styles and simply dump information into emails, shared workspaces, and whiteboards expecting everyone else to understand our words and our intent.  The worst of us will then proclaim that anyone who doesn’t understand simply isn’t qualified for their position.  Sometimes this goes all the way to the point of  exercising hiring/firing authority to simply dismiss people who don’t see the world according to the same point of view, or not hiring them in the first place.

When you feel like you just can’t work with people, perhaps the right way (as well as more humble and humanistic) way to approach the situation is to say, “I can’t learn with these people.”  The combination of learning styles and subsequent world view may be what is at odds, and not the inability of others to be compliant or professional.  If that’s the case, the real lesson when things appear to be stuck is that it’s not the traits of the people that are at fault, but the perspectives of the person that put them all together and expected things to work out no matter what.

It’s very strange that in business, a world dedicated to getting things done, there’s very little tendency to actually lay the foundation according to the way things work naturally, and a great deal of focus on pushing things into place that aren’t ever designed to fit together. That leads to dictating short term outcomes, rather than building long-term capabilities.

Interestingly enough, developing long-term capabilities is the goal of anyone trying to develop anything – teacher, parent or business pro.

Getting through these times can lead to just plain giving up in a fit of disillusionment.  From my own personal experience, however, I can say that there are just two things required to get through the tough times:

• Perseverance
• Humility

Achieving a goal is often just about working through the grind.  There will be disappointments and more than enough rejection, and dejection to go around at times, however, that’s when determination comes in to play.

Humility is necessary, because when you fail, you have to recognize that it’s not everyone else who is wrong, short-sighted, stupid, ignorant or lazy.  They simply have a point of view and a set of preferences, as well as maybe a few bad habits, that you haven’t yet figured out a way to overcome.  The problem might not be with your message, but with your ability to deliver that message.  Understand that there’s something in your ability that’s lacking, which is why you’re unable to penetrate theirs.

Disillusionment sucks.  There’s nothing worse than feeling lost, or that your efforts are pointless.  Nonetheless, achieving goals are not about giving up, obviously.  Reaching the destination is often about finding the grit to carry on and accepting that the chosen vehicle might not be the one to get you there.

Delegating is supposed to be about understanding the work flowing through your organization and then assigning that work based on skill sets and availability of the resources within your control.  What I’ve experienced in far too many situations, however, is where delegating work takes place via a mechanism of “I am going to horde as much work for myself as I can and when I simply can’t do it all any more, I’ll leak out small bits of tasking for you to take care of.”

That dynamic has led to situations where workers are left to “try and look busy” rather that making valuable contributions, learning and growing in their role, exploring opportunities within the organization or, heaven forbid, working on process improvements.  When under-utilized employees gather some initiative and attempt to do those last two things on their own, they are usually admonished for making someone else look bad.

While we could criticize the managers who are hording information rather than sharing the load, in most cases these folks are just reacting to their environment – they need to look extra busy to their bosses in order to give the appearance of value to the organization.  This is the natural result of organizations focused on effort and not accomplishment and, at an even deeper root, more concerned with short-term appearances than long-term performance.

The way around this is to align expectations around building future capability everywhere in the organization, having each layer of management keenly aware of who does what, and how, and why – to make sure effort is applied towards those long-term objectives and not the upkeep of short-term metrics, most of which are easily gamed anyway.

As I waited for my three-year-old son’s turn to go running through a snow-covered field (yes, it’s still snowy up here) and pick up his eggs, which he treated like treasure, I observed the following things:

• The PA system had about one-tenth the Oomph! necessary for the crowd to hear the instructions.
• All of the children ignored the instructions the instant the hunt started.
• A megaphone was the tool of choice to corral the children who were running amok.
• The carnival games and bounce houses that were arranged inside the small gym were too close together and the line for any of them was obscured by the crowds of people standing around wondering what line they were in

Of course, no one was particularly bothered by the scene.  The organizers of the event scurried to and fro to make amends for oversights and, since they were clearly working very hard to make the event enjoyable, no one was pointing a finger.

The thing that I saw, that was truly bothersome to me, was the indifference and acceptance of such near-pandemonium as normal.  It is that acceptance of disorganization as normal, or the lack of awareness of what good organization really is, that is at the core of what anyone with a grasp of operational excellence struggles with.

What if, instead of an Easter egg hunt filled with scurrying about to make up for an oversight, the organizers had considered what could go wrong?  Project Management pros will recognize this as creating a risk register, and development of associated mitigations.  OpEx pros will recognize this as a sort of poke-a-yoke exercise:  preventing the problem rather than determining how to respond to one.

For example:

• Excited children hunting for candy usually don’t follow instructions.
  • Have designated areas clearly marked with boundaries. Station adults at the boundaries to prevent children from running off.
  • The PA system might not be loud enough.
    • Test it before the event
    • Print instructions and hand them out.
  • There might not be enough room for all the games.
    • Have fewer games.  Establish clear areas for games, concessions, and a clear area for just standing around.
    • Establish a traffic pattern for people to walk from game to game, and mark it clearly.

Getting people to sit down ahead of time and organize these things is difficult, of course.  For whatever reason, it’s always seen as better to react to a problem than to prevent one.  This usually goes to the point of pushing the burden onto someone else.  I’ve no doubt that the organizers of the event, implicitly or explicitly, were entirely dependent upon the parents to “control their kids.”

Of course, we see the same things in the professional world, too.  Senior managers expect their junior counterparts to “get things done” or “keep a lid on problems.”  That sentiment gets flowed down to line workers, who are also expected to “just do their jobs.” Eventually, everyone in the organization ends up just trying to accommodate the last request, and success is dependent upon a few good souls who will work harder to fill in the gaps.

Like the parents at the Easter egg hunt, these hard workers usually don’t receive much reward.  And all because someone who should have done more to prevent the problem was really just depending on someone else to take care of the details all along.

His questions clearly caused him some strain as he tried to determine what path he should take.  “Should I tell people on interviews about why I am leaving, or not?”  and “Should I use my manager as a reference?” and so on.

Rather than advice, I made a simple observation: “You seem to already know what you want and, rather than accept there are limits to what you can deal with, you’re busy overburdening yourself with trying to find a way to make yourself fit into a situation that is quite far from your personality.”

He looked a bit stunned, but only for a moment, and then he smiled and his face portrayed a sense of relief.

“You seem to know the type of person you can work for.  Unfortunately, you have not found much of that yet so you are trying to find ways to twist yourself into being what someone else wants rather than finding people you can work with.”

This resonated with him and, perhaps, gave him a new direction in his job search.

Here’s the thing we should all remember:  We aren’t here to demonstrate how much difficulty we can absorb.  We all feel pride in overcoming weaknesses, so much so that we tend to ignore leveraging strengths, and that is a shame.

You have to go towards whatever your core tells you is the right way to go…for yourself.  If you are sensitive to your environment, you have to go to an environment that stimulates you, not to a harsh one that withers you.  If, on the other hand, you are indifferent to your environment then you can ignore the interpersonal goings-on and focus on just the job.

Whatever it is you decide to do with yourself, and for yourself, you have to remember to be who you are and to believe in what you believe in.