My Day Job

Almost all of these BLOG postings are dedicated to my after-work activities. During the day, I live a different life. I am a Lean Six Sigma (LSS) coach.

Lean Six Sigma is a structured method for solving business problems. Using statistics, decision-making and team facilitation skills; trained leaders dig into problems and permanently solve them - often saving hundreds of thousands or millions of dollars. Once trained, these leaders are called "Black Belts" (similar to the karate hierarchy).

I am here to help these Black Belts learn how to apply their training and enable them to eventually lead the program by themselves. As a consultant, my job is to work myself out of a job. I took on this job as a temporary 6-month assignment, but it may go longer, depending on how well we do in the next couple of months. Perhaps as long as a year.

Each week that I stay, I become more familiar with the situation and as such, more valuable as a coach and adviser. Each week that I stay, I move closer to the end of our contract. The trick is to mentor the skills in others to accomplish things and not in doing the things myself.

The people I coach are civilian and Military Army leaders. We work on everything from active military war problems to office management processes. We measure our progress as "readiness" (our ability to go to war) and as financial savings. After my first 3 months, we have finally started to see results on projects. So far, we have saved the Pacific Army Command around $50 million and improved numerous processes. I can't talk about the specific stuff we're working on, but I can mention the people.

There are no $5,000 toilet seats here. We work in buildings that were built before the attack on Pearl Harbor. People are crammed into ancient offices with no elevators and often no air conditioning. The picture shows where my office is located (the taller building). Termites are eating away at the 70 year old building. I once commented on the new paint that covers the walls... the paint is 20 years newer than the wood it covers.

Many people live with their families on base in housing that can be best described as "low rent". The work long hours because their units are spread all over the Pacific. The Officers and professionals here do mighty things with very little. On top of all that, they prepare and deploy to war. They all care deeply about their work, the United States and each soldier in green.

What we do is important. The scope of our work is tremendous. The cost of failure is high. I am proud to work side by side with each of them.