First Things First
Early in my career, I reported to a newly-promoted manager. We would meet weekly to go over all the things he wanted me to accomplish. I would write everything down and leave the meeting with a list that covered the front and back of a sheet of paper, perhaps 50 items. One day, frustrated that I could never complete all the tasks on the list, I asked him to help me assign the appropriate percentage of my time I should spend on each project. He said "This is pretty important, spend 20% on this, 30% on this, 5% on this, this one is not critical, so 1% on this, etc...". I left the office with about 275%. Hmm, I thought, that really backfired.
The following week I tried a different tactic. Writing out the list as usual, I then spun the paper around, slid it across the table, and said, "There are 50 things on this list. You cross out 47 of them, and I will hit a home run on each of the other 3." From that moment on we maintained a clear understanding of what was "must do" [had to be 'A+' and on time], and what was "nice to do" [‘C+’ work will suffice and no one would be too upset if it’s late]. The impact on my productivity of knowing (and agreeing upon) what was really important and focusing attention and effort on those few things, without getting distracted by less valuable tasks was profound. I have used that lesson in prioritization throughout my own career and whenever I mentor others.
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Over the years we’ve been exposed to Six Sigma, Juran, Deming PDCA, 8D, Dale Carnegie, A3, Shainin, and more. Each technique works pretty well, and has been demonstrated many times in a wide variety of industries and circumstances. At the core they are all essentially the same!
Each approach relies on an underlying logical flow that goes like this: [a] make sure the problem is clearly defined; [b] be open to all sources of information; [c] vet the information for relevance and accuracy; [d] use the process of elimination to narrow down all possible causes to the most likely few; [e] prove which of the suspects is really the cause of the issue; [f] generate a number of potential solutions; [g] evaluate the effectiveness, feasibility and risk of the potential solutions; [h] implement the winning solution(s); and [i] take steps to make sure your solution(s) don’t unravel in the future.
The differences between the paradigms resides in supplementary steps and toolkits. For example, 8D contains the important “In
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