New Chair">New Chair
Last year, my company had an outstanding year and rewarded employees with a 19% contribution to their retirement fund. The benefits of their performance keep coming though.
Last week, they replaced all the soap dispensers with the foaming soap, and improved the hot water power in the sinks so that washing your hands after taking a pee or poo was now an enjoyable experience. Also, I must say that now that I’m washing one handed, the foaming soap is a far more accessible alternative to searching crappy soap dispensers for crappy soap that you have to foam up yourself.
But that’s not all. They just replaced my perfectly nice task chair with a Herman Miller Aeron — everybody got one! Oh, how I immediately tweaked the lumbar support all the way. It’s so light — the mesh back so cooling and relaxing. The NASA-memory-foam seat so comfy on my ass.
I’m even getting our stupid LMS to work today. I think it’s like a holiday or something.
If they install the jet-engine hand dryers in the bathrooms, it won’t be long until the Cherry ICEE machines are installed and the Guiness Tap in the breakroom. That’s when we’re moving in as a family.
We had these at the NASA research center. Damn, I miss my chair.
Suzy’s boss has had an office filled with Aerons for years. It always pained me (literally) sitting in shitty chairs at Learning Insights, NogginLabs. CTC had passable chairs by comparison.
When I got to the Grange, I was excited to have a somewhat comfortable and ergonomic task chair. But today is truly a gift.
I even got Saba to work for the first time evah.
RC, Aeron chairs… when are you applying for that BA gig?
RE: Six Sigma
Aaron, are you still contemplating Six Sigma training? I was reading your Flash for Learning site and about a month ago you were asking about this. About four years ago I was working on a Six Sigma project. But, I don’t know what information you are seeking.
Actually, I *am* contemplating Six Sigma training. Villanova has a program that will get me a Master Certificate (and make me a Black Belt) in about 32 weeks for about $6K. I’m going to look into what work will do for me (I have tuition reimbursement, and maybe they’ll pick up part or all of the tab, anyway).
If not, it’s so worth it for immediate work and the resume that I’d be hard pressed not to look into it.
Their program takes me through the Green Belt, the Six Sigma LEAN and then the Black Belt.
Does Grainger have SixSigma within the company? Are you in a track for such management training?
How would you do the cooperative part when enrolled at a remote university? My experience was black belts sheparding green belts through their projects, which were relevant to their departments.
The Grange has a plethora of Green and Black Belts. None in my department, but enough throughout the company to say that they’ve bought into it.
I’m not an obvious candidate for their internal programs, but largely that’s because of where my organization falls, which is off the radar for most every other part of the company. The Learning Center is more of a shared service internal to the company than a unit they would think of as in need of business refinement.
Now, if I would do the Villanova program, it’s all online. All. So the Green Belt and the Six Sigma-Lean are pretty easy to do. That’s mostly just learning the stuff and taking the tests. The Black Belt program through the university would have me bring a project that I’m implementing at the Grange into the working group for the class under the supervision of the Black Belt/LEAN Sensei for my group. They would be the Black Belt overseeing my work on the project.
We don’t have a Black Belt within the Learning Center, which is why me being a Black Belt as their strategist and implementor might be a good fit.
I dunno. I’ve seen BlackBelt projects go on without ever seeming to end. It’s a political thing. Oh! You’ll do the project all right, but a Black Belt will tweak it and have you re-do it and then tweak it, again. My experience is that you will have to have a Black Belt that will save your project without confronting your Black Belt.
Is your boss on with this?
I don’t doubt it’s very political.
My boss is all for a formalized process, which is one of the reasons I was brought on-board. If I make a strong enough business case for it, I might get them to pop for some.
If I take it on myself, they’ll certainly support me, even if they don’t quite know what they’re wishing for. I was brought on to provide vision and direction. They’re happy to execute if I show them how. I’m involved in the E-learning stuff, but I’m also heavily involved in content management, knowledge management, quality assurance… my fingers are in a lot of pies (well, my right fingers, anyway).
I don’t think you should give them an option of you doing it on your own or being reimbursed for the program. They aren’t short of funds. And, you can’t complete the program without some cooperation from the company. So, if it doesn’t have any value to them, you won’t get the cooperation of the Six Sigma people in house. I think they have to support the entire thing. I think that you going outside and coming back in on your own is not going to get the recognition you deserve for doing the program.
I’m not presenting it as an option. I’m presenting it when I can come up with business reasons why it makes sense.
Excellent! Best time and reason of all