Improve Your Approach - Improve Your Life!

If "Life is a Process", then it is capable of continuous improvement. This is the first blog in a three part series that describes how the methodologies used in business to support continuous improvement can also be used to improve our personal lives.

DMAIC is a five-step approach for driving costly variation from manufacturing and business processes: Define, Measure, Analyze, Improve, Control. In this blog I'll cover "Define" and "Measure" the other three components will be discussed in a future post.

As the backbone of the Six Sigma methodology, DMAIC delivers sustained defect-free performance and highly competitive quality costs over the long run. Business leaders use it as a structure for improving performance in areas such as customer satisfaction, operational costs, service quality, and countless other possibilities – each business has its own performance metrics that are critical for success. Each of us as individuals also have our own unique set of performance measurements - depending on what we want to achieve in our lives.

Define:

Define is the first step in the process. In this step, it is important to define specific goals towards achieving the results you want from the process.

For example:

The desired result is weight loss
Specific goals would be:
- Lose 5 lbs before Mary’s birthday party.

You want to lower your credit card debt
Specific goals would be:
- Lower your debt by 10K by New Years.

Measure:

You need a starting point and a baseline measurement.

In the examples above
- What is your starting weight?
- What is your current amount of debt?

In this step, accurate measurements must be made and relevant information must be collected so that future comparisons can be measured to determine whether or not improvements have been made.

Now that you know what you want to measure, you need to set goals or milestones towards achieving your goal. Break down into reasonable chunks

- How much time do you have?
- What is the maximum commitment I can make each week?
- How much can I reasonably achieve?

Once you have defined your goals, performed a baseline, and determined milestones and measurements, you will be able to utilize the "Analyze", "Improve", and "Control" phases of the DMAIC approach to aid you in achieving them.

Think about some areas of your life your would like to see improved. Define exactly what it is that you want to achieve, determine where you are currently at relative to the goal, break into small steps.. LiTtLe cHuNks.. mini-SucceSSes.. and have SUPER CELEBRATIONS!!