12 thoughts on “Little Things For Which I’m Thankful”

1. Green belt training in ’05. They actually flew me to Seattle for that.

2. I can not comment about L6S, other than to say that I have not been assimilated.

3. I was holding out for seven sigma, but I had a goal to meet.

4. MoN, for moment there I thought you said that they sent you for Grain Belt training. Now that would be something to get behind: the ability to drink cheap bad beer and enjoy it would be a great budget help.

   My own green belt training occurred in a dojo long, long ago. It was useful for deflecting that usual faddish management buzzword idiocy that blindly applies the 6-sigma methodology. Our newly converted management drone came back from one of those sessions and tried to apply it to our chip development effort until I pointed out that getting to 6-sigma would only increase our costs by a factor of 12x and put us out of business. At least the 6-sigma cult hadn’t totally shorted out his brain and he left us alone.

5. I wouldn’t fly to Seattle to drink Grain Belt. That would be very very wrong.

6. I always thought that a lot of managers used Six Sigma in the same way MLA types use Derrida – as a way to make something that might otherwise be intelligible completely impenetrable, all while claiming to make things easier to understand. It’s a good way to turn finance people into a priesthood.

7. How about Diversity Training, Mitch? A big place like that’s got to have a diversity manager/director who wrapped you up for a half day’s mind-numbing.

8. Ah yes, diversity training. Dangerous to give to engineers.

   The last time we actually _went_ to diversity training the perky little HR rep showed us a movie, then went into her spiel about reporting all instances of gender or racial stereotyping or discrimination in the workplace. An engineer instantly and enthusiastically responded that he’d seen racial stereotyping in the workplace this very day. She asked about it and he said that he’d just been forced to watch a video where every racist and sexist was a while male. You know, it’s strange we never did hear how that complaint turned out and she never did come back to our department.

   They make us take the training on-line now. We have contests to see who can finish it the quickest.

9. Ever have to suffer through TQM? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Total_Quality_Management

   The sheer joy of it all.

   That quickly gave way to an actual standard that measurable.

   I got much more out of obtaining an ISO 9002 certification back in 1997. There was a goal defined, a framework to obtain it. Verifiable evidence that you met you goals. AN actual process that you could own, instead of a bunch of feel good ideals.

   Thanks for the trip down memory lane!

10. TQM, CQI, “Enabling Change”, “Seven Habits”. I’m sure LSS is around the corner. It’s been nice while it lasted.

    No, haven’t had diversity training, not here (I did at a previous employer). Also had Sexual Harassment Training at a previous employer.

    And I pointed out to the breathtakingly gorgeous HR hottie in the hypersaturated red dress that I had a problem with all the “perps” in the videos being male.

    Not much came of that, either.

11. We learned in Sexual Harassment Training, that you could do it ONCE. After that it became an “hostile environment”. That’s good to know.

12. Little things for which Kermit is thankful: his shriveled froghood.

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