Instructor Q&A: Omid Aslani, Lean Six Sigma

Why did you decide to become an instructor?

My career journey offered me the opportunity to learn a great deal about Lean Six Sigma, including process simplification, business transformation, and digital workflow automation. I’ve always loved sharing my knowledge and growing my team’s skills. For me, there’s something very gratifying to see the positive impact I can have in another person’s life — it gives me a purpose.

About 10 years ago, I brought several UCI MBA students into my company to solve some of the top strategic challenges we were facing. I coached them on various methods and approaches. The consistent feedback I got from these talented individuals was how satisfied they were with their growth in a short amount of time. From there, some of these students spoke with UCI leadership and asked if I could bring my knowledge, experience, and love for teaching to UCI. And the rest is history.

What’s your favorite lesson to teach and why?

My career has always been about driving business growth, efficiency, and improving employee/customer experience. As a result, I have been teaching at UCI for the past 8 years. Lean Six Sigma has some key tools that can quickly have an impact on businesses — no matter if the goal is to drive down costs, simplify processes, or improve experiences, quality, and automation.

What’s unique about your teaching style?

I consider myself a student of life and continue to pick up new skills and ways to pass that knowledge on in a simple way to others. Additionally, I enjoy making the classes fun and relevant by sharing my 25 years of global work experience. When I first started teaching the course, we used a huge textbook. As I audited other classes, I found them more focused on memorization vs. comprehension. Frankly, that’s not how I learn, nor what I’ve experienced in the industry. I am a visual learner and learn through applied knowledge and stories.

So, I changed the textbook, added more real-life examples, and created more hands-on experience/projects. Ultimately, I want my students to walk away with tangible skills to hit the ground running vs. just learning theory. Connecting the dots from theory to practice and making sense of complex concepts via real-life examples is my unique teaching style.

What do you find most rewarding about being an instructor?

This is simple: Having an impact on people’s lives and enabling them to be better versions of themselves. I love seeing incremental improvement toward achieving their career objectives. It’s a great feeling to stay in touch with my former students and see them move up and improve their quality of life.

What advice would you give to anyone interested in pursuing a career using the Lean Six Sigma process?

Disruption has reached new heights due to the pandemic. Customers demand frictionless experiences while their digital buying options have increased. Executives are looking for ways to drive down costs and improve productivity through digital business transformation while delighting their customers and employees.

Achieving such a high bar requires combining process optimization skills with automation knowledge. Lean Six Sigma is one of the key skills and traits that one needs to support corporate executives with their survival and growth plans. It’s that simple!