Someone to Lean On
Tanya Stinson says her job as a Performance Improvement coach at Texas Health Resources combines three of her passions: health care, analysis and her love of people.
Naturally inquisitive and analytical, Tanya enjoys helping other employees use Lean Six Sigma principles to understand processes and improve them. As a coach, she is with project leaders every step of the way, and is always available even after the project has been completed. “I’m not just an associate, I’m a friend,” she said. “I love establishing new relationships with people and making great connections.”
What did you want to be as a kid, and how did you ultimately choose your career?
I always knew I wanted to help people; I come from a long line of nurses and peace officers. I decided to go into forensics because I loved watching the CSI shows where they find the clue that breaks the case wide open. Then life happened instead. In my last semester of college, I found out I was pregnant with my oldest son and decided to take a different path. I went on to work as a substitute teacher until I met my now-ex-husband, with whom I had three more sons.
When my youngest, Nate, was born 14 years ago, I had to have an emergency c-section. When he came out, the cord was wrapped around his neck twice, he wasn’t breathing and his lungs weren’t fully developed, so they had to resuscitate him and fly him to Children’s Hospital in Dallas. He was on life support for more than two weeks. It was eye-opening, and an experience I will never forget. This was the moment when I knew I wanted to work in health care someday.
In 2006, I landed a contract position as a document control manager for a power plant in East Texas. It was supposed to last a year, but I finished the project in 10 months and they gave me a permanent position with the company’s coal mine. When I was introduced to Lean Six Sigma, I was instantly attracted to the methodology. The operations manager saw my passion for performance improvement, so he paid for me to get my master black belt, along with a master certification in business analysis and ROI (return on investment) methodology. Shortly after I got my certifications, the mine was shut down.
I saw this as my chance to get into health care. The boys and I moved to Dallas-Fort Worth, and I got a job with another health system. Eventually, I found my way to Texas Health.
What’s a typical workday like?
I go to different hospitals, meeting with yellow belt and green belt candidates and their teams to help them work on projects to improve quality, safety, performance and risk, as well as cost-saving projects. I coach and mentor them to help them successfully complete those projects.
What’s your favorite part of the job, and what is the biggest challenge?
I love meeting different people and creating real relationships. But one of the harder pieces of the job is finding ways to replicate a project’s results at other entities. We’re working on a process to make that happen, so all entities can take advantage of improvements that have been made elsewhere in the system.
What innovative things are you doing to advance strategy?
Our job in Performance Improvement is all about making things work better, so we also try to always improve what we’re doing. If we see someone struggling, we’ll talk together about how best to help them. After our training classes, we survey participants to see what we could do better. We also set up KaiNexus, a cloud-based process improvement platform, where all projects and documentation are housed. People can go on and search for projects that are completed or ongoing, and leaders have a dashboard that lets them see the status of all the projects in their area.
What’s something that people would be surprised to know about you?
A lot of people know that I grew up a tomboy on a farm in East Texas, where I fished with my grandpa almost every day. I still love to fish with my boys; my family is my everything. But I also like to write poetry, and I sing and write songs. I grew up singing in the church; now I sing a lot of karaoke. I tell my boys to sing as loud and proud as they want, because one thing no one can take away is your voice.
By Robin P. Loveman • Posted July 23, 2019
