Uncommon Sense - Tools to Improve your Work Forever

When Visual Management is done well, it has a simple elegance about it that helps you to understand how to best manage your work.

PMI Director Consultant, Sean Buckland, talks about taking the time to work out what really matters, and how you can use Visual Management to see performance at a glance, enabling you to focus on making the day-to-day work well.

Feeling inspired?  Here are some helpful resources to get you started:

• Implementing & Planning Visual Management & Performance Huddles Infographic 
• Learning to See Using Visual Management & Process Confirmation On Demand Webinar
• What is Visual Management video
• Visual Management: Process Improvement Toolbox

More from PMI:

• Dive into our Knowledge Hub for more tools, videos, and infographics
• Join us for a PMI LIVE Webinar
• Follow us on LinkedIn

Take your improvement career to the next level with PMI's Lean Six Sigma Certifications - now available in two new and accessible formats, built around you. 

• Explore On Demand >>
• Explore Distance Learning >>

Join Dennis Crommentuijn-Marsh, Director Consultant and enthusiastic innovator, as he talks about the joy and the fun of using Idea Generation to find solutions to challenges when the answer doesn’t present itself naturally. 

Listen now to discover how a structured approach to Idea Generation can often result in a better outcome than you ever thought possible, with enormous benefits for your organisation.

Ready to get creative?  Here are some free resources for inspiration:

• Out of the Box Thinking to Drive Process Innovation:  On-Demand Webinar
• Idea Generation:  Process Improvement Toolbox
• The Joy of Problems:  On-Demand Webinar

More from PMI:

• Dive into our Knowledge Hub for more tools, videos, and infographics
• Join us for a PMI LIVE Webinar
• Follow us on LinkedIn

Take your improvement career to the next level with PMI's Lean Six Sigma Certifications - now available in two new and accessible formats, built around you. 

• Explore On Demand >>
• Explore Distance Learning >>

We all love Quick Wins.  And in the world of Process Improvement, they help you maintain motivation to get the maximum benefit and return for the work you do.  But how do we define a Quick Win, and how are they different from fixing the overall process?

Join PMI Senior Consultant Damion Albinson as he talks about identifying the small changes that can make significant impacts, and how to make sure you don’t miss out on your Quick Wins in pursuit of the Big Wins!

More from PMI:

• Dive into our Knowledge Hub for more tools, videos, and infographics
• Join us for a PMI LIVE Webinar
• Follow us on LinkedIn

Take your improvement career to the next level with PMI's Lean Six Sigma Certifications - now available in two new and accessible formats, built around you. 

• Explore On Demand >>
• Explore Distance Learning >>

A SIPOC can reveal what you don’t know about your process, as well as gather together what you do.  It’s very much about setting the context for the improvement work you’ll be undertaking, says PMI Director Consultant, Barry Byrne.  So why is creating a SIPOC a step that’s so often skipped?

Join us as we take a deep dive into this valuable tool, and discuss why your process needs a SIPOC.

Create your SIPOC today.  Here are some free PMI resources to help you get started:

• SIPOC Template Download
• Essential Green Belt Tools Video Series:  SIPOC

More from PMI:

• Dive into our Knowledge Hub for more tools, videos, and infographics
• Join us for a PMI LIVE Webinar
• Follow us on LinkedIn

Take your improvement career to the next level with PMI's Lean Six Sigma Certifications - now available in two new and accessible formats, built around you. 

• Explore On Demand >>
• Explore Distance Learning >>

See for yourself how a process is operated by going to Gemba – ‘the real place’ where the work happens.

PMI Director Consultant Dennis Crommentuijn-Marsh has certified scores of Lean Six Sigma projects and can easily recognise those which started with a Gemba Walk.  To the improvement practitioner, it’s a positive enquiry to learn from the experts that run the process, but how do you handle the concerns of Process Operators who may fear repercussions or ulterior motives?

Find the answer to this and many other tips and tricks for getting the most from your Gemba walk in this episode of Uncommon Sense. 

Are you preparing to go to Gemba?  Here are more resources to help you do it effectively:

• Gemba Walks – Going to See In A Virtual World On-Demand Webinar  
• Blog: The Prizes and Perils of Designing Processes for Your Customers  
• Essential Green Belt Tools Video Series:  Gemba Walk  
• Blog: I Didn’t Tell You Because You Didn’t Ask!  

More from PMI:

• Dive into our Knowledge Hub for more tools, videos, and infographics
• Join us for a PMI LIVE Webinar
• Follow us on LinkedIn

Take your improvement career to the next level with PMI's Lean Six Sigma Certifications - now available in two new and accessible formats, built around you. 

• Explore On Demand >>
• Explore Distance Learning >>

The starting point for any project-based improvement effort, your Problem Statement should be a concise description of the issue to be solved.  Sounds simple, right?  But using this fundamental tool correctly is a common stumbling block amongst practitioners, PMI Senior Consultant Damion Albinson tells us.  

So set your project up for success from the very start; join us as Damion shares real examples of what a problem statement is and isn’t, and how to make sure you get it right.

Ready to kick off a new improvement project?  Check out these helpful guides to get you started:

• What is a Green Belt Project? Blog 
• Essential Green Belt Tools video series:  Pareto Chart 
• What makes a Good Black Belt Project?  On Demand Webinar  

More from PMI:

• Dive into our Knowledge Hub for more tools, videos, and infographics
• Join us for a PMI LIVE Webinar
• Follow us on LinkedIn

Take your improvement career to the next level with PMI's Lean Six Sigma Certifications - now available in two new and accessible formats, built around you. 

• Explore On Demand >>
• Explore Distance Learning >>

Waste identification and elimination is a life’s work, but collate where your customer sees the value into a single visualisation of your end-to-end process, and you’ll have an extremely powerful tool to help you get started.

Join PMI Director Consultant Barry Byrne, self-confessed super fan of the Value Stream Map, as he talks about the benefits of being able to see how your work works across functions to deliver exactly what your customer is looking for.  But, he asks, where in our business system is the health of those cross-functional relationships nurtured - who's the guardian of those interdependencies?

Ready to find the waste in your system?  Here are more helpful resources on Value Stream Mapping.

• The Opportunities Hidden in Your Value Stream: On-Demand Webinar
• Value Stream Mapping - from our Lean Six Sigma Green Belt training
• 5 Uncommon Attributes of Effective Strategic Leaders

More from PMI:

• Dive into our Knowledge Hub for more tools, videos, and infographics
• Join us for a PMI LIVE Webinar
• Follow us on LinkedIn

Take your improvement career to the next level with PMI's Lean Six Sigma Certifications - now available in two new and accessible formats, built around you. 

• Explore On Demand >>
• Explore Distance Learning >>

PDSA – Plan, Do, Study, Act – the iterative four-stage thinking model for delivering change.

Contrary to common sense, this robust framework actually begins with ‘Study’, PMI Senior Consultant Damion Albinson reminds us.  Study the situation and involve the people who operate the process to generate hypotheses with the potential for improvement.  However, the sometimes uncomfortable truth is that disproving what we thought sounded perfectly plausible is when the real learning happens…

Join Damion as he reveals the subtleties of the PDSA model, and how you may already have the disconfirming evidence you need. 

Hungry for more on PDSA?  Check out these related resources: 

• PDSA your Work, your Project, your Programme: On-Demand Webinar
• Agile Improvement: Myth or Magic?  On-Demand Webinar
• Blinded by Blame, Restricted from Wisdom: using PDSA to move beyond a blame culture
• Tools and Models Useful for Change

More from PMI:

• Dive into our Knowledge Hub for more tools, videos, and infographics
• Join us for a PMI LIVE Webinar
• Follow us on LinkedIn

Take your improvement career to the next level with PMI's Lean Six Sigma Certifications - now available in two new and accessible formats, built around you. 

• Explore On Demand >>
• Explore Distance Learning >>

The dogged pursuit of finding and eliminating the eight deadly wastes from your processes – it’s the classic Lean theory, with a proven track record for success.

So the statement posed by PMI Senior Consultant Damion Albinson – “taking out waste may not make you Lean” is contentious at best.  But consider this:  where do your activities fit within the overall program of improvement, and how do you know that the changes you’ve worked hard to achieve haven’t caused a bottleneck in another part of the system?

Join Damion as he thinks about Lean in the context of the entire value stream, and how the biggest gains to be found in Lean improvement might not be in the most obvious places.

Is Lean improvement the approach for you?  Here are some helpful Lean resources:

•  8 Wastes Toolbox: a quick and easy guide to help you identify waste in your processes
•  Value Stream Mapping - from our Lean Six Sigma Green Belt training
•  Rework – The Hidden Factory:  a recording of our webinar

More from PMI:

• Dive into our Knowledge Hub for more tools, videos, and infographics
• Join us for a PMI LIVE Webinar
• Follow us on LinkedIn

Take your improvement career to the next level with PMI's Lean Six Sigma Certifications - now available in two new and accessible formats, built around you. 

• Explore On Demand >>
• Explore Distance Learning >>

Are you seeing so many opportunities for improvement that you just don’t know where to start?

Don’t fall into the trap of prioritising projects where people are shouting loudest, or wasting time with complex cost-benefit analysis, PMI Director Consultant Sean Buckland tells us - you need the help of the humble Pareto Chart.  Undervalued by many, this straightforward tool will help you to identify the vital few issues that you need to focus your improvement efforts on to generate the biggest wins.

The benefits are wide and deep, so listen now to hear why you should master this important tool today.

Already convinced that this is the tool for you?  Learn more about how to use it to make an impact here:

• Essential Green Belt Tools video series:  Pareto Chart

More from PMI:

• Dive into our Knowledge Hub for more tools, videos, and infographics
• Join us for a PMI LIVE Webinar
• Follow us on LinkedIn

Take your improvement career to the next level with PMI's Lean Six Sigma Certifications - now available in two new and accessible formats, built around you. 

• Explore On Demand >>
• Explore Distance Learning >>