Last week in a Black Belt class we were discussing project management techniques to help belts keep their projects on track.  The Issue and Action Item list, an oldy but a goody, was covered and one of the BB’s brought up how her MBB calls it an Opportunities List.  Let’s just call it what it is…a list of issues that must be resolved in order for the project to move forward. Well, we used to call it a Problem and Action list (P&A list - catchy, isn’t it?), but not every issue is a problem, thus the name change.  But the “Opportunity” thing really bugs me. Not every problem (or issue) is an opportunity to excel or an opportunity for improvement. Sometimes you just have to get an answer to a question, get the right resources to address a problem, or ensure that a commitment is followed through upon. (Think ISSUE.)  In general, I think too much political correctness is a problem for business. Of course, communicating with colleagues in a respectful way is an absolute necessity. You just aren’t as effective a leader, team member, or employee if you can’t build relationships, and respect is essential in good relationships. But being direct and focused on the issue or behavior is absolutely necessary as well. So let’s be objective and issue-focused and work together to solve problems for the betterment of our organizations. Can’t we do that without everything being an “opportunity”?

This week Rob and I went to Orlando to a WCBF Lean Six Sigma conference.  We heard some great speakers, met some cool people and had the opportunity to hang out with one of our Green Belts from ECOT in Columbus, who presented her team’s project on a story board.  (Good job Brittny!)The subject of this BLOG is not the great stuff we learned from other practitioners, but observations we made while leaving Orlando.  Picture 5:30 AM on a Friday at the Orlando International Airport.  The shops are still closed and the open security lanes are limited.  From observing the schedule of operations, you’d think that very few flights would be departing before 7:00 AM.  Instead, when you try to book flights out of Orlando, there’s very little that departs in the evening and the bulk of flights leave in the early morning through early afternoon.  That would account for the lines.Not only were the lines long, but it seemed that the TSA staff was surprised by it.  OK - it could have been that we were there on the only Friday when lines are long at 5:30 AM, but do you really think so?  The Orlando airport uses the new security lane designations, a lane for Casual Travelers, a separate lane for Frequent Travelers and a special Expert Traveler lane.  At 5:30 AM everyone was being funneled through the same lane.  Then the TSA began opening lanes about 6:00 AM (no doubt when the morning shift started).  Because of the long lines, there was no effort made to use the special lane designations, it was merely an exercise in crowd control.  Like 4-H’ers directing their swine around the show ring, we were steered in groups to the next lane to be opened, then the next.  All special routing was abandoned in favor of spreading the herd out as quickly as possible.So, would I do anything differently?  Have the years of Lean and Six Sigma training paid off?  Here are the questions I would like to ask the TSA management:  How do you schedule your TSA agents?  Is it the same every day, or does it vary by volume of flights?  What procedures are used to start the day?  What passenger behaviors would you like to encourage / discourage?  How does your current system support the desired behaviors?How about measurement systems?  How do you measure your performance?  What characteristics does a “good” start-up have that a “bad” one does not?  How would you qualify last Friday morning - was that a “good” day?I guess the most frustrating thing about being herded in the lines was the apparent lack of  a system to accommodate traveler volume at the beginning of the day.  I suspect that TSA agent shifts are scheduled for convenience of management rather than to match customer travel patterns.  I also imagined arriving at the security lanes at 7:00 or 7:30 when the lanes are switching over to the special queues by traveler type.  How would you like to be the last family moving through the expert traveler lane being glared at by business people with laptop in hand and loafers neatly tucked in the gray bin?  (Or in our case being the traveler waiting for the mom with several children.)  Really - we’re nice people and we love kids - but there are some loafer-sliding expert travelers out there who aren’t so nice.Remind me to take a stop watch next time I go to the airport.  I think a little queuing simulation is in order!  And how great would it be to make the TSA agents wonder what I was up to???