Rick Melnyck |

A little about me…I grew up in Southern Ontario – which is in Canada, aka that big land mass north of the U.S. for those among you who are geographically challenged. And no, I don’t say ‘eh’ and ‘aboot’ all the time, well that is unless I am drunk, then it comes out. Ok, so I guess I do say ‘eh’ and ‘aboot’ sometimes. I came to Miami to attend grad school at ‘the U’, fell in love with South Florida and am still here. It’s funny, I constantly hear people who live here complain about Miami, but at the end of the day, you live where other people vacation, so how bad can it be? Go enjoy yourself a lovely, frigid Canadian winter where the snot in your nose freezes, where you need to shovel three feet of snow off your driveway, where you need to scrape the ice off your car and where you have to chop down big trees for firewood to heat your igloo – then come talk to me ‘aboot’ how bad Miami is.

I’m an extremely handsome guy, or so I’ve been told (thanks Mom). I go to the gym almost every day, so I am in pretty good shape, hope you are too. By the way, I hate mirror selfies, like how self-important and narcissistic are you? As for hobbies, I am an avid reader and like to hang out with good friends.

What am I looking for in a girl? Well, the usual – young, hot, smart, a butt you can bounce nickels off who is also a Michelin star chef. Ok, before all you feminists go bananas, I am just kidding (well except for the nickels part, a great set of buttocks is hard to find these days). You know, just an All-American girl who gives as much as she takes, someone who laughs and loves to have fun is all I am looking for. Oh yeah, and this is important since it’s what this book is all ‘aboot’ – someone who is constantly trying to improve in every facet of her life. Now Miami isn’t exactly a hotbed for these types of girls, no doubt there are a lot of beautiful girls in South Florida, but most are shallow, materialistic and all about themselves. I guarantee every Miami girl who is reading this is saying to herself ‘He’s so right, but I’m not one of those girls, I’m a unicorn’. Well, odds are you ARE one of those girls, but in the slight chance that you are the proverbial Miss Unicorn, then please hit me up.

Ok, ok, I’ll be totally serious, but just for a minute!  As for the blog and why I am writing it with Howie.  I am a self-improvement junkie at heart and believe there is an opportunity to apply business tools, philosophies, and principles to bettering ourselves – but in an entertaining way as people don’t want to read boring self-improvement stuff. I have been a process improvement and healthcare executive for the past 15 years and have successfully applied many of the principles and tools you will read about in this blog to improve myself. Sharing is caring, so hopefully, you can use some of them too. The best way to contact me is via email or any of the social media platforms I am on, both for questions ‘aboot’ the blog or if you would like to engage in some friendly nickel bouncing.

Hope you enjoy the blog and PYMFP!
Rick

Howie Gitlow |

I turned 70 years old in 2017. I am healthy; although I just had hemorrhoid surgery which was no fun. Actually, there were a few days where I thought I would be in adult diapers for the rest of my life. Thankfully, that passed. This is the only surgery I have ever had, except for my tonsils when I was very young. I remember that after the surgery I was given a fold-on pin that read: “The 3 Bears Club.” So, I wore it on my pajamas and clothes and it meant that I could eat as much ice cream as I wanted with no interference from my mother. Then, I recall pulling a tall kitchen chair next to the refrigerator while my mother was on the telephone right beside me. I got on the chair and took out a gallon of ice cream. Then, I pulled the chair back to the table and without asking I ate most of the gallon of ice cream. That was a great moment in my life; I was totally free from parental control.

The next thing I remember was chopping down my neighbor’s bush with an ax because I thought it would make a great Christmas tree. He was a very religious Jew. We had all types of dangerous things around the house in those days; everybody did. I guess the parental point of view was to leave dangerous stuff around the house to weed out the idiot stock of humanity; I persevered. Anyway, I took the tree into my house and set it up in the TV room; then I decorated it. It really looked great. My grandfather came over to the house just as I was finishing and threw it out the TV room window. I forgot I was Jewish. Life goes on.

I also remember being in the 7th grade at the school gym for a dance. All the girls were on one side and all the boys were on the other side of the gym. I “girded up my loins” (as my father used to say when he was in a tough spot) and walked to the other side of the gym and asked Linda Sales if she wanted to dance. She said yes. And we started to dance. Unfortunately, I only knew the first step of the Lindy and kept doing it over and over. It was very embarrassing for me. It is amazing that I forgot I didn’t know how to dance. I guess the primitive animal in my 12-year-old body pushed me toward the opposite sex. Biology!!!

In high school, I was a typical guy; only interested in sex and cars. I remember taking my dad’s car into the woods near my house with my girlfriend to make out. It was very exciting until a bunch of smaller kids came by and started yelling at us as a goof. It wasn’t funny to my girlfriend, so that encounter ended in a fizzle. I also scratched the side of the car on a branch and had to explain it to my dad. It was very difficult to come up with a plausible excuse other than the truth. So, I told him the truth and I could see he was so proud of me, he forgot about the scratch. My dad always believed that whatever I did wrong was due to my 17-year-old spirit and he never wanted to crush that spirit. I learned that much later in life. It was a very unusual way to grow up.

I was a very poor student and graduated high school by the skin of my teeth. I applied to 7 colleges and was rejected from all of them. Since my dad was Dean of the School of Commerce in 1965 (before it was the Stern School) at NYU (it was a lot different then – on the weak side), he snuck me in. I didn’t do well until I discovered Statistics, then I became a good student. I was a frat boy with all the misogyny and idiocy that came with the territory.  In 1965, I became Pledge Master and learned about responsibility. You really had to watch for the brothers who came back after they graduated to torture the pledges during Hell Weekend – some real sadists. In my last semester, I took an Operations Management course with Professor David Alberts. He taught me that I had a brain. How he treated me was outrageous, but that is a story for another time. He made me learn GPSS; a new simulation language that no one else at NYU knew and I became the resident expert in GPSS. I was asked to teach it but didn’t want to because it was the first time in my life I knew something nobody else did and I didn’t want to share it. Eventually, I taught the class (one session) and found the experience to be orgasmic. I NEEDED to be a professor.

I was President of the Statistics Club at NYU; very nerdy at the time. Now, of course, being a statistician is hot (5 chili peppers). In 1969, Dr. W. Edwards Deming called me to his office to give an anonymous check for $50.00 for a Japanese student; and I had no idea why? I never heard about his work in Japan – I just thought he was famous for sampling theory. So, I got all dressed up in my polyester powder blue suit with wide lapels, a wide tie, and my high heeled powder blue and grey suede sole shoes. I combed my hair back into a neat ponytail; it came to the bottom of my shoulders. I walked into Dr. Deming’s office and he took one look at me and said with great disgust: “Why don’t you get a haircut.” I didn’t see him for many years after. More on that later.

I applied for two jobs as a tenure track Assistant Professor, and one came through. I was in the Marketing Department at Baruch College of the City University of New York (CUNY). They needed a statistician to help their doctoral students with the statistics parts of their dissertations. It was during Mayor Linsey’s time as mayor. He created open enrollment to help students get a college education. All our classes were huge; you could teach anything, and 50 students would sign up for it. The chairman was a tough cookie; he once came in my office and looked at the statistics book I was reading and said, “Don’t read that, read this marketing book.” I think the book was by Philip Kotler (a big deal in quantitative marketing). At Baruch, either you published or perished. I published and made a move to the Management Science department at the University of Miami.

Three years after I arrived at the University of Miami, NBC played a program on T.V. called “If Japan Can, Why Can’t We?”, it featured Dr. W. Edwards Deming. The Miami Business School Dean called Dr. Deming and invited him to give a four-day seminar. The Dean said I have one of your former students here. Dr. Deming said who? The Dean said Howard Gitlow. Dr. Deming said to the Dean: “Tell me, do you pay him enough to get a haircut.” That was 8 years later after meeting him one time. That was the kind of memory he had. I was his assistant at the seminar and it changed my life. This was the moment that I began to study Deming’s work in process improvement.

I became a tenured Full Professor at the University of Miami when I was 32 years old. Boy was I excited!!! I got the final promotion in my life and a 30% pay raise. I was flying on adrenaline.

In 1987, I went to Japan and learned about Japanese Total Quality Control; again, it changed my life.

Then, in the early 1990s, I was introduced to Six Sigma, (which is a process improvement methodology) by some friends. I studied all the Motorola and GE Six Sigma manuals, which I wasn’t supposed to have, but my former students who worked at both companies shared them with me anyway. I have been teaching process improvement in the Management Science Department at “the U” ever since.

When I teach, I try to use real-life examples and stories to teach the theory, so I am excited to collaborate with my mentee, Rick, on this blog.

It seems like I have a great part of my life ahead of me. I have a great wife, daughter, and son-in-law. My career is really taking off at age 70. Life is good!

Wait, was this supposed to be written in the form of an online dating profile instead of a novel? Oops, oh well, I’m happily married anyways.

Behave!
Howie