Career Transitions - Ball State University, Six Sigma Speakers Series

Career Transitions
Presented to BSU Six Sigma Student Organization Speaker Series 2/16/2010

You
Process improvement minor?
Name
Major
What year? fresh, soph, jr, sr
Plan to be a six sigma practitioner?

Me
1993 (5 year plan)
Hurst Hall 3rd floor, wife 6th floor Mysch Hall
10th place in Bike-a-thon 1991; the year of the mud
6 Sigma Black Belt
Training 2001
Certification 2003
LSSB student mentor 2010-2011

Career Transitions
Student to work
Role to role
Company to Company
New Career

That’s you, why should I care?
Studies show ~20-55% people plan to change careers when the economy recovers. 7 primary reasons employees leave:
The job or workplace was not as expected
Mismatch between job and person
Too little coaching and feedback
Too few growth and advancement opportunities
Feeling devalued and unrecognized
Stress from overwork and work-life imbalance
Loss of trust and confidence in senior leaders
“The 7 Hidden Reasons Employees Leave” (2005), Leigh Branham

Types of transitions
Your plan
Their plan

Keys to success
Technical – DMAIC, Subject Matter Expert
Specialty (SME), generality, blend
Strive to be the expert
Process driven
Management
Exude confidence; practice humility
Genuine sincerity, respect for people
Quality

Quality Perspective
Definition of quality
Adhere to spec
Minimize variation
Achieve expected outcome
Applied to everything
Technical (specs)
Customer, operator, stakeholder
Deadlines
Usability
Why that introduces stress – unmet self expectations
Why it reduces stress

1. student to engineer
Pre-work
Co-op, intern
At work
Build rapport: sincerity, respect
Be positive, helpful, open to learn from their experience (leaders and front line)
Improve continuously
Be flexible
Share knowledge openly (abundance mentality)
Look for what’s right about resistance – develop countermeasures
Know it all? NOT!

1. Co-op value
Dip toes in the water, make relationships
Get some experience
Networking – networking – networking
Receive job offers from someone at every organization I worked – even after they moved to a different org

1. Newbie example
Angry supervisor – respect for what’s working and how it got that way
Mold makers and maintenance people -both can fix your mistakes.
No respect - they will do exactly what you ask them to (right or wrong)
Show respect - they will help make you right

2. Plastics to everything else
Experienced people recognize your true capability (often before you do)
Be open to change
Be prepared to work hard (90 hrs/wk)
Be process-oriented (fwPASS, NYE party)
Small increments of learning and implementation
Train/mentor someone to replace you (leverage)
Black Belts – use DMAIC

2. Plastics to everything else
mentor replacement
Shannon, my shadow
Process oriented
fwPASS
NYE party
Machine quoting
SEO
CRM process

3. Plastics to Value Stream mgr
Improve collaboration
Equip people for self-service
Push decisions to the lowest level
Delay decisions until adequate info available
Don’t be afraid to fail, but fix quickly

3. Improve collaboration, self serve
Web-based pacing chart
Productivity tracking
Process yield
Process journalism
Dashboard, graphs, charts

4. Career change
Plan ahead
Prepare
Independent study
Back to school
Dabble at work, if related
Verify
Volunteer
Moonlight
Subcontract

Other Examples
Kitchen Nightmares: people on the verge of losing their restaurant business and they hadn’t even been to the kitchen (lean principles)
Undercover Boss: GTE Sylvania – work in each department for a day: molding, coating, aluminizing, assembly

Keys to success
Process driven – DMAIC, lean, PDCA
People centered
Trust yourself*
Utilize others - Everyone has something to contribute

Two types of problems
Science problems
DMAIC
OFAT (one factor at a time)
Business problems
DMAIC
Go to the activity
Collaborate

Questions?
Blogs
dean-o.blogspot.com
practicalhoshin.blogspot.com
Twitter
@deanwillson
Email
dean@systemental.com
LinkedIn
linkedin.com/in/deanwillson

Career Transitions - Ball State University, Six Sigma Speakers Series

by Dean Willson on Apr 14, 2011

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