Let’s Go On a Thinking Expedition

3 Sigma thinking in a 1 sigma world

Climbing Guide: Duke Rohe, BS, FHIMSS

Small print: Volunteers needed. All will go up, but some never return unchanged. Many who suffer from ‘normal’ will learn to live with different. Those who don’t will be stuck with the same.

Take a Blue Slip

Little Idea Catchers (A thought not caught is a thought that’s lost. Ideas are like

dreams: many are ha, but few are remembered)

Key Word, then subject and verb (Write like you think. In

insights)

Why do I have to write? (You can write without thinking but you can’t write

without thinking)

Personal Challenge: (How many insights can you walk away with)

Differentiators of UnusualUnusual Thinkers

Notice diffferentOpenness (zip judgment)

PlayfulnessConnecting (idea to idea connections)

Healthy Tension (Between Convergent and Divergent thinking)

Quantity (Ideas flow, and a percentage are keepers. The more ideas, the more keepers)

Headline (Good organizing)

Where Do You Think ?

Normal

(auto pilot)

Interesting

1-sigma 2-sigma 3-sigma

Breakthrough

Level 1 – Doing the right things

Start new habits (Try writing blue slips. More ideas faster means more keepers)

Journal (Thought flow must be unobstructed)

Think about thinking (Think on the side of your brain. Become a spectator of

your thinking. Take notes about yourself)

Think Me Inc. (Become the CEO of your thinking. What do you want to do with you?)

“The significant problems

we face cannot be solved at the same level we were at when we

created them.”- Albert Einstein

Level 2 – Doing the right things right

Standard operating procedures

Just in time thinking

Notice change, think about change

Optimizing the whole over the parts

Dieing on the right hill

Visual Control

Level 3 – Doing things better

Collect some good question (Which ones bring great answers)

B+ is good enoughTo ID errors, do choice mapping. (shut down the wrong one)

5 minute meeting (issues, challenges, opportunities. actions)

Pair and share (the power of two)

Me Inc. (101 Goals)

Level 4 – Doing away with things

Finding hidden waste Get rid of old habits, old gear (Insight – Do away with – when)

Red Tag things (Surgery equipment is the worst)

Me Inc. (negative self talk)

Level 5 – Do what others are doing (2nd order thinking)

Benchmark (in school you called it copying)

Seek mentorsAdopt variety, adopt the best (Exxon and Mr. Lube)

Little idea day (adopt a lobby)

Level 6 – Do things no one else is doing

Be different, change your underwear drawerThink more about your thinking (what are your discoveries)

Force connections no one is seeing(causal loop diagrams,

evaporating cloud technique)

Mindmapping, KAI, Myers Brigg

Different is relative

AQP, CPSI

Level 7 – Do what can’t be done

Go for the impossible - breakthrough

You can’t do what you haven’t done until you be what you haven’t become

Rethink yourself, redecide regularly, shift

Write one more thought

Change change, ootching