LEAN principles - Six Sigma

LEAN principles - Six Sigma
http://www.sixsigmaonline.org/index.html

In lean Six Sigma, there are five principles that are used:  

•    The first of these is the law of the market.  This signifies that the customer is always to be put first.  The company must implement this immediately and make sure that all employees adhere to it.  The company wants the employees to understand that without the customers, there would be no business.

•    The second of these principles is the law of flexibility.  If a process is easily maneuverable, it is easier to work with.  A method of business that cannot be changed for any reason can cause problems.  

•    The third principle is the law of focus.  This is meant to keep the focus on the problems within the company and not the entire company itself.  Executives and employees should concentrate on just the portions of the company that are causing problems and fixing those problems, dismissing distractions by other areas of the business that are not having problems. 

•    The fourth principle is the law of velocity.  This means that if a process has many, many details that have to be performed, it may be slowing down the process.  The work put into the process should be proportional to the results the company sees.  

•    The fifth principle in lean Six Sigma is the law of complexity.  Simply put, keep it simple.  When a process is complex and difficult, it may have elements that are not necessary. More complexity does not necessarily mean more valuable or more important.  In fact, it could mean just the opposite.


http://www.sixsigmaonline.org/index.html

Martin Seligman on Authentic Happiness

In an interview with Allan Gregg, Dr. Martin Seligman discusses Positive Psychology and Authentic Happiness, including what we can do to promote our own happiness.

The Concept of "Flow"

Psychology Professor Mihalyi Csikszentmihalyi's "The Current Model of the Flow State".

The concept of "flow" is like a "complete absorption in what one does as it progresses well". As shown below, it is related to the skill level and challenge level an individual is encountering.

"Flow is experienced when perceived challenges and skills are above the actor's average levels; when they are below, apathy is experienced. Intensity of experience increases with distance from the actor's average levels of challenge and skill, as shown by the concentric rings."

Nakamura, J. and Csikszentmihalyi, M. The Concept of Flow Chapter 7 in Handbook of Positive Psychology, Eds. C.R. Snyder and S.J. Lopez (2002), pp. 89-105.

How to Profit from One's Faults - PART 3 - Joseph Tissot

How to Profit from One's Faults - PART 3 - Joseph Tissot

3. Never be discouraged with our faults
a. We should not be discouraged on seeing our faults

1. "I have forgotten to give you a very important piece of advice: Come what may, do not ever get discouraged!" 

--- Unknown Retreat Master

2. "Do not ever despair! I will say this every time I address you, in all my conversations.[...] Our salvation has two mortal enemies: presumption while innocent and despair after a fall. The second is the more terrible." ---St. John Chrysostom, Homily On Penance.

3. And if he (Satan) does manage to lead it to total despair, the least he does is to paralyze the soul on its way to virtue [...] to weaken its more powerful efforts and freeze its fervour. Thus the soul is led to melancholy and discouragement; everything is turned turtle, 'no care is now put into making reparation for faults and this leads to real lukewarmness' with its almost irreparable harm." 

---Fr. Tissot

b. Has God's mercy been abused?

1. "Despairing soul: What gives joy to the enemy are not so much your faults as the depression and the distrust of the mercy of God which they produce in you. [...] This is the greatest evil which can come over a creature." 

---St. Francis de Sales, Letters 35 and 5

c. Weakness is no great evil

1. "One should die rather than consciously and deliberately offend God. But if we do fall, we should try to be prepared to do everything before losing enthusiasm, hope and resolve." 

---St. Francis de Sales, Letter to a Lady, 771

2. "The distrust you feel toward yourself is good, provided that you use it as a basis for the confidence you ought to have in God. [...] Never permit your spirit to dialogue with or rebel in favour of a disquiet or dispirited heart to which you may be inclined... not even on the false pretext of humility." 

---St. Francis de Sales, Letter to a Superior of the Visitation, 706.

d. A paradox

1. "The sinner falls through having ignored his own weakness and through having exaggerated God's mercy. After the fall, these two sentiments are reborn, but in reverse. Weakness acquires excessive proportions in one's eyes [...] The guilty soul fears him [God] and is ashamed of itself. [...] This is discouragement..." 

---Fr. Tissot

2. "It is a real pity that simply having a desire for perfection is not sufficient to actually have it; one may have to attain it by the sweat of one's brow and the effort of work." 

---St. Francis de Sales, Sermon for the First Sunday of Lent

e. No reason to lack confidence in God

1. "Feed your soul with a filial confidence in God. In the same measure which you find yourself replete with imperfections and weaknesses, lift up your heart to regain hope." 

---St. Francis de Sales, Letter to a Lady, 814

2. "After falling, we ought to say to our heart, 'My friend, take courage in the name of God; let us tread with care; let us ask our God for help.'" 

---St. Francis de Sales, Letter to a Lady, 831

3. "There is no reason to lack confidence, for however miserable they may be, God is merciful towards those who truly want to love Him and who have placed all their hope in Him." 

---St. Francis de Sales, Letter to a Lady, 173

f. Hope and fear

1. "'Have fear--but hope!' Fear so that you do not fall into pride; but hope so as not to fall into despair or to become discouraged. For hope without fear is presumption. [...] With confidence and great fear we should fill those valleys of discouragement which were formed when we got to know our sins." 
---St. Francis de Sales, Sermon for the Fourth Sunday of Advent

g. The devil confesses

1. "The devil repeated: 'If only I had a single instant of the many you waste. Just one moment and a Mary, and I would not be a Devil.'" 
---Eyewitness Sr. E.C. of Tours, sacristan of the first convent of the Visitation of Annecy. Declaration on the miracles and favours worked at the tomb of Blessed Francis de Sales

Never be discouraged with our faults

http://www.amazon.com/Profit-Your-Faults-Joseph-Tissot/dp/1594170134/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1345269249&sr=8-1&keywords=profit+faults+tissot

How do the best teachers prepare to teach?

How do the best teachers prepare to teach?

Taken from "What the Best College Teachers Do" by Ken Bain

1. What big questions will my course help students answer, or what skills, abilities, or qualities will it help them develop, and how will I encourage my students' interest in these questions and abilities?

2. What reasoning abilities must students have or develop to answer the questions that the course raises?

3. What mental models are students likely to bring with them that I will want them to challenge? How can I help them construct that intellectual challenge?

4. What information will my students need to understand in order to answer the important questions of the course and challenge their assumptions? How will they best obtain that information?

5. How will I help students who have difficulty understanding the questions and using evidence and reason to answer them?

6. How will I confront my students with conflicting problems (maybe even conflicting claims about the truth) and encourage them to grapple (perhaps collaboratively) with the issues?

7. How will I find out what they know already and what they expect from the course, and how ill I reconcile any differences between my expectations and theirs?

8. How will I help students learn to learn, to examine and assess their own learning and thinking, and to read more effectively, analytically, and actively?

9. How will I find out how students are learning before assessing them, and how will I provide feedback before--and separate from--any assessment of them?

10. How will I communicate with students in a way that will keep them thinking?

11. How will I spell out the intellectual and professional standards I will be using in assessing students' work, and why do I use those standards? How will I help students learn to assess their own work using those standards?

12. How will the students and I best understand the nature, progress, and quality of their learning?

13. How will I create a natural critical learning environment in which I embed the skills and information I wish to teach in assignments (questions and tasks) that students will find fascinating--authentic tasks that will arouse curiosity, challenge students to rethink their assumptions and examine their mental models of reality? How will I create a safe environment in which students can try, fail, receive feedback, and try again?

http://www.amazon.ca/What-Best-College-Teachers-Do/dp/0674013255

What do great teachers know about how we learn?

What do great teachers know about how we learn?

Take from "What the Best College Teachers Do" by Ken Bain

1. Knowledge is constructed, not received

2. Mental models change slowly

a. learners must face a situation in which their mental model will not work

b. learners must care that their mental model does not work strongly enough to stop and grapple with the issue at hand

c. learners must be able to handle the emotional trauma that sometimes accompanies challenges to longstanding beliefs

3. Questions are crucial: Teachers define the questions the course will help them answer

4. Caring is crucial: A caring teacher motivates

http://www.amazon.ca/What-Best-College-Teachers-Do/dp/0674013255

Decisive Quotes from Pope Francis - March 21, 2013 to March 28, 2013

Pope Francis - Decisive Quotes - March 21, 2013 to March 28, 2013
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March 28, 2013 (Mass of the Lord's Supper)

It is the Lord’s example: he is the most important, and he washes feet, because with us what is highest must be at the service of others. This is a symbol, it is a sign, right? Washing feet means: “I am at your service”. And with us too, don’t we have to wash each other’s feet day after day? But what does this mean? That all of us must help one another. Sometimes I am angry with someone or other … but… let it go, let it go, and if he or she asks you a favour, do it.

Help one another: this is what Jesus teaches us and this what I am doing, and doing with all my heart, because it is my duty.

As a priest and a bishop, I must be at your service. But it is a duty which comes from my heart: I love it. I love this and I love to do it because that is what the Lord has taught me to do. But you too, help one another: help one another always. One another. In this way, by helping one another, we will do some good.
http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/francesco/homilies/2013/documents/papa-francesco_20130328_coena-domini_en.html
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March 28, 2013 (Chrism Mass)

 What I want to emphasize is that we need constantly to stir up God’s grace and perceive in every request, even those requests that are inconvenient and at times purely material or downright banal – but only apparently so – the desire of our people to be anointed with fragrant oil, since they know that we have it.

We need to “go out”, then, in order to experience our own anointing, its power and its redemptive efficacy: to the “outskirts” where there is suffering, bloodshed, blindness that longs for sight, and prisoners in thrall to many evil masters. It is not in soul-searching or constant introspection that we encounter the Lord: self-help courses can be useful in life, but to live our priestly life going from one course to another, from one method to another, leads us to become pelagians and to minimize the power of grace, which comes alive and flourishes to the extent that we, in faith, go out and give ourselves and the Gospel to others, giving what little ointment we have to those who have nothing, nothing at all.

Dear lay faithful, be close to your priests with affection and with your prayers, that they may always be shepherds according to God’s heart.

http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/francesco/homilies/2013/documents/papa-francesco_20130328_messa-crismale_en.html

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March 27, 2013

We should not simply remain in our own secure world, that of the ninety-nine sheep who never strayed from the fold, but we should go out, with Christ, in search of the one lost sheep, however far it may have wandered.

Holy Week is not so much a time of sorrow, but rather a time to enter into Christ’s way of thinking and acting. It is a time of grace given us by the Lord so that we can move beyond a dull or mechanical way of living our faith, and instead open the doors of our hearts, our lives, our parishes, our movements or associations, going out in search of others so as to bring them the light and the joy of our faith in Christ.

http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/francesco/audiences/2013/documents/papa-francesco_20130327_udienza-generale_en.html
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March 24, 2013 (Palm Sunday)

And here the first word that I wish to say to you: joy! Do not be men and women of sadness: a Christian can never be sad! Never give way to discouragement!

Ours is not a joy born of having many possessions, but from having encountered a Person: Jesus, in our midst; it is born from knowing that with him we are never alone, even at difficult moments, even when our life’s journey comes up against problems and obstacles that seem insurmountable, and there are so many of them! And in this moment the enemy, the devil, comes, often disguised as an angel, and slyly speaks his word to us. Do not listen to him! Let us follow Jesus!

We accompany, we follow Jesus, but above all we know that he accompanies us and carries us on his shoulders. This is our joy, this is the hope that we must bring to this world. Please do not let yourselves be robbed of hope! Do not let hope be stolen! The hope that Jesus gives us.

Let us look around: how many wounds are inflicted upon humanity by evil! Wars, violence, economic conflicts that hit the weakest, greed for money that you can’t take with you and have to leave. When we were small, our grandmother used to say: a shroud has no pocket. Love of power, corruption, divisions, crimes against human life and against creation! And – as each one of us knows and is aware - our personal sins: our failures in love and respect towards God, towards our neighbour and towards the whole of creation. Jesus on the Cross feels the whole weight of the evil, and with the force of God’s love he conquers it, he defeats it with his resurrection. This is the good that Jesus does for us on the throne of the Cross. Christ’s Cross embraced with love never leads to sadness, but to joy, to the joy of having been saved and of doing a little of what he did on the day of his death.

You (young people) have an important part in the celebration of faith!

Prepare well – prepare spiritually above all – in your communities, so that our gathering in Rio may be a sign of faith for the whole world. Young people must say to the world: to follow Christ is good; to go with Christ is good; the message of Christ is good; emerging from ourselves, to the ends of the earth and of existence, to take Jesus there, is good! Three points, then: joy, Cross, young people.
http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/francesco/homilies/2013/documents/papa-francesco_20130324_palme_en.html
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March 22, 2013

That, indeed, is what matters to the Holy See: the good of every person upon this earth!

Francis of Assisi tells us we should work to build peace. But there is no true peace without truth! There cannot be true peace if everyone is his own criterion, if everyone can always claim exclusively his own rights, without at the same time caring for the good of others, of everyone, on the basis of the nature that unites every human being on this earth.

My wish is that the dialogue between us should help to build bridges connecting all people, in such a way that everyone can see in the other not an enemy, not a rival, but a brother or sister to be welcomed and embraced!

It is not possible to build bridges between people while forgetting God. But the converse is also true: it is not possible to establish true links with God, while ignoring other people. Hence it is important to intensify dialogue among the various religions, and I am thinking particularly of dialogue with Islam.

And it is also important to intensify outreach to non-believers, so that the differences which divide and hurt us may never prevail, but rather the desire to build true links of friendship between all peoples, despite their diversity.

Fighting poverty, both material and spiritual, building peace and constructing bridges: these, as it were, are the reference points for a journey that I want to invite each of the countries here represented to take up.

http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/francesco/speeches/2013/march/documents/papa-francesco_20130322_corpo-diplomatico_en.html