What Should Teenagers Learn?

It’s Never Too Early for Professional Development

At a Lean Six Sigma course I teach twice a year for high school students, the capstone event is to create and present a personal process improvement project.  My challenge is to translate business best practices into useful information for teenagers – and get used to being called “Mr. Wall.”   The students eagerly accept their challenge to use the DMAIC process to make their lives simpler, faster, better and less costly.

At every presentation a panel of Black Belts provide feedback and are always impressed.  Projects reduce time, waste and costs at the student’s part-time jobs, and even national chains have implemented their improvements.  Young entrepreneurs increase likes, stars, and orders by improving on-line customer service.  Others increase profits for their personal initiatives such as car detailing, racket stringing, and coaching.

One student reduced the number of times he was late for school.

Not all were as impressed with that achievement. You may laugh, but I rise to defend the honor of the unappreciated student who reduced his tardies from 21 occasions the previous semester to “only” 4.

To reach students you have to provide challenge, meet them where they are, and answer the “what’s in it for me?” questions.  While some may simply enjoy the intellectual pursuit of improving a generic process, achieving results that make YOUR life better is infectious.  Reducing issues that cause frustrations may not seem as important to us as making money, but I think it is more than a worthy use of Lean Six Sigma.

First, I was impressed the high school student had the self-awareness to understand a significant defect in his process for getting to school on time.  Second, he was willing to self-disclose a glaring personal flaw in a safe setting.  Third, he committed to publicly learn and practice strategies to improve.  That says something about the school’s culture.

Next, he mapped out his process and identified waste, non-value activities, and flaws in his process – something many workers and managers are unable or unwilling to do.  Then he used a fishbone diagram and 5-Whys tool to identify the root causes of his inefficiency.  He collected baseline data and measured his cycle time and lead time for getting to school.  A checklist and Pareto Diagram pinpointed the primary causes of delays, and lead to targeted countermeasures.  They included using 5-S on his room to make commonly missing items easier to find, and redesigning his morning routine (based on a spaghetti diagram) to eliminate bottlenecks.  He then implemented and monitored his new process, and achieved measurable results.  I also hope he learned the PROCESS he practiced and presented could be used the rest of his life to improve the RESULTS of almost anything.

Oh, less-late-to-school teenager – I salute you!

–Steve Wall

*Thanks to Olmsted Falls High School in Ohio for providing students these life-long skills.

This post was originally published on LinkedIn.