The Dog Poop Initiative
"Just because it's not your dog's poop, doesn't mean you can't clean it up!". --Bob Goodnough, Ace Hardware Corporation<br /><br />Anytime I open a lesson with, "today we’re gonna talk about dog poop" I instantly have everyone’s attention. --Joanna Urry, School Teacher<br /><br />The Dog Poop Initiative is a lesson for parents and business leaders alike. --Paula DePalma, Director NemoursKirk, Thank you again for your call a few weeks back. We have received everything and have already started working with all of our Managers and Supervisors. I will be running seminars in December. I have also received Purple Cow and The Big Moo. I have just started Purple Cow but am hoping to get deeper into it soon. Here is my story: Two weeks ago we had a large rain storm move through Seattle (shocking, I know!). With it being Fall, the leaves were dropping like crazy and they had clogged the drain in our parking lot. There was a huge pond in the main parking lot. I watched as one, two, three people came walking in our building with their pants wet up to their shins. I had personally walked around the pond when I came into work, assuming that maintenance would take care of it. Finally, I was walking to the bathroom when a woman came in the building, soaking wet from mid shin down. She gave me this deadly stare, pointed at me, and snarled, Can someone put up some cones in the parking lot! I just got soaking wet because I had to walk through a puddle! Inside I laughed because she could have walked around the pond but chose to continue through it without doing a thing about it. I sat at my desk and thought, This is a PERFECT pile of POOP! I went down the back stairs, grabbed a large broom, walked out to the puddle, took off my shoes and socks, rolled my pants up, and then made my way to the drain. There were so many leaves in the drain that the broom was worthless. I then reached in with my hands and proceeded to scrap the leaves out. It took me about 15 seconds and the pond was gone in about one minute. I walked back in the office, barefooted and all, and the POOP was gone. I thought you would enjoy a good old genuine POOP story! Jason Ziemann SanMar --Jason ZiemannSix Sigma Black Belt Dear Mr. Weisler, I work for SAIC and we are teamed with Boeing on the Army's Future Combat Systems program. One of my duties is as Site Lead in Vienna VA for Lean Six Sigma initiatives. In that capacity I was invited to attend the Boeing "Make Lean+ Count" conference in Seattle about a month ago. One of the presentations by Floyd Sheets and Steve Holt was "The Soft Stuff is the Hard Stuff" and included (with a used by permission statement) "The Dog Poop Initiative." Boeing has made the briefing available to me for presentation to our Six Sigma Community of Practice next week. My concern is that while you have granted Boeing permission to use your work in this briefing, that permission does not necessarilly extend to me or SAIC. Rest assured that if permission is granted the presentation will merely be for awareness and potential further inquiry by our Six Sigma practitioners. Your work would not be included in other training venues without explicit permission from you. I would appreciate your consideration in this matter and hope that you can accommodate my request. Regards, E. Gordon Hagewood Certified Six Sigma Black Belt --E. Gordon Hagewood-Certified Six Sigma Black Belt