All the Quotes That are Fit to Print

Looking for a fun, low-tech, cost-effective, and easy way to improve team engagement and increase camaraderie? I have just the answer for you…Quotes.

That’s right, you heard me…Quotes. Let me tell you more about a simple little technique my mentor showed me.

In the early 2000’s the Air Force was revitalizing their Process Improvement Program. After a disastrous “Quality Air Force” initiative in the 1990’s, they were having trouble getting folks bought into a new and improved “Smart Operations” program that used Lean. I was in the Air National Guard at the time, and the Colonel running our program had a few tricks up his sleeve, and one of them has stuck with me to this very day.

Colonel “Billy” Asbell, was a mentor to me at the time. He ran the entire Air Guard’s Continuous Process Improvement (CPI) program, and I was a Logistics Squadron Commander at a unit in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. We’d met when I’d gone through the Air Force’s CPI training at the Guard Bureau in Washington, D.C.

The new program was focused on the Rapid Improvement Event (RIE). An RIE takes a cross-functional team of process owners and puts them into a room for a week to work the 8 Steps of A3 Structured Problem Solving. Billy had a variety of tips and tricks he was using to promote RIE’s and the CPI program as a whole: from getting quick wins to build credibility to ensuring any savings realized from RIE’s would not be used to cut jobs. But of all his tricks, my favorite was using quotes.

Events started with an in-brief with Senior Leaders, so the improvement teams knew they had support. Events ended with an out-brief, with the teams telling the Senior Leaders:

• The problem they tackled
• The ideas they came up with to solve it
• The action plan to improve it.

While I observed an out-brief of an event facilitated by Billy, he had a slide at the end. It was a list of various notable quotes the team said during the week.

The quotes were a bit silly, and some were inside jokes that required explanation. The slide took less than a minute to present. It was brief and perhaps didn’t add a lot of value to the Leaders. But I noticed the faces of the team while the slide was shown. They smile, giggled a bit, and beamed with pride. The quotes captured their hard work, dedication, and innovation.

The quote slide also consolidated the week. Something somebody said early in the week would show how na?ve they were. Quotes later in the week demonstrated their insightfulness. It brought me back to my 6th grade English teacher who taught me how to “tie things up” by referring back to the beginning as you write your conclusion. The quotes served this purpose.

Collecting quotes is very easy. As a facilitator, just keep your ears open. Inevitably somebody will say something worthy to be captured. Good Indicators of a quotable quote include:

• Causing loud laughter
• People scratching their heads in bewilderment
• The team begins using it repeatedly as an inside joke
• Sparking intense discussion
• Used to summarize or end an intense discussion

Whenever one of these events happens; capture the quote. They will compile quicker than you realize. Use a notebook and write them down. Or have a PowerPoint slide dedicated to quotes open and ready to edit. By the end of the event, you’ll have a list that will likely have to be trimmed down.

While developing the out brief, have the team review and discuss the quotes. Decide which they’d like to keep, any they’d like to highlight, and those that should be cut. As these will be presented to Senior Leaders, the team should keep a few things in mind:

• No disparaging remarks: Nothing derogatory or demeaning.
• Nothing Offensive: No obscenities. Nothing racist or sexist.
• Nothing that could be perceived as Offensive: No innuendos or double-entendres.
• Watch the nicknames. Nicknames are big in the military, but often can be crude or lewd.

Quotes can also be leveraged as a marketing tool for your CPI program. Often team members hang the Quote slide in their cubicle (especially if it includes a group photo). As others see it, a buzz about events will start. (I told you Billy was smart!). It will get others asking and talking about Process Improvement. I’ve seen it happen again and again. It’s why I continue to collect quotes.

Gathering quotes, and sharing them at presentations, is a little thing. It won’t make or break a project. But it can help build up your teams and your program. Try it on your next event.

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